#benchmark value

[allcalculator]

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This Allcalculator.net's calculator is a general guideline based on formulas, as its results are not intended as strict values that a person must achieve to be considered an ideal weight.

[bonefall]

is there any death in the rewrite that you consider to be really graphic? where do you draw the line in the violence of a character's death?

Hmmm... Probably Tigerstar honestly! The cats wrote a song about his organs falling out.

I think when it comes to the "line" of a character's death, it's very subjective. Me and every other kid who read WC pogged out when Tigerstar had a really drawn out, horrific death on-screen, but I'm still haunted by Sootfur with his broken leg, falling down towards a badger while Squilf couldn't save him and seeing the aftermath of his "sightless eyes" when the animal moved off him.

One of those was objectively less graphic, but imo a LOT more harrowing. I think emotions are a lot more important in how deaths are received by an audience than the actual blood and guts, which I think gives you a decent idea of what you're gonna get here.

I think Leopardstar's rock concert is the "ceiling" of how intensely I describe deaths. I think that one's pretty graphic, but it's for a reason. The point is that it's a brutal killing that haunts Mistystar, you get me? And I try to write "around" the gore, describing sounds, the rest of the body, etc.

There is also cosmic/body horror with the Ancestor Rats, and more importantly, BB!Cats do food processing. They skin dead animals and separate the organs and such. When I get around to doing an entry on animal fat, I would also like to show WHERE in the body the fat is stored on certain animals. It's a lot more important to nutrition than you think it is.

BUT whenever I feel like I'm "around" Leopardstar's Boulder Appointment or an Ancestor Rat, I always always tag that. Less "violent" things like the song about the organs (Tiger's In A Heap) and more gentle food processing (like an offhanded mention of removing entrails or skinning) isn't tagged.

If I ever end up including a "diagram" of where fat is stored in the body or "how to properly skin a small rodent" It will be tagged as gore and I'd try to stay tasteful to begin with, I would ABSOLUTELY never drop something like that on anyone untagged and unwarned.

[thislittlekumquat]

I think the reason that I hate the argument that other animals are intelligent the way humans are intelligent is not because I disagree with the spirit of the thing but because I need to be absolutely certain that we all agree that all living things are worth caring about regardless of their intelligence. Elevating animals to our level of intelligence is not destroying ye olde heirarchy of being, it's just making the top a little heavier for no other reason than to justify what 9 times out of 10 ends up being ecofascism and/or social darwinism repackaged for the entire animal kingdom.

[39oa]

i feel like most of the time when ln4 calls for team orders im like girl 🙄 but today he was clearly wayyy faster setting purples all over the place and um! sometimes u gotta respect. it's not like it's detracting anything from op81 either like this is his first time at the track and he said it himself he could've done a better job... idk i just think effone fans need to chill sometimes <3

anon is there something i said in particular to warrant this message or did you just want to share your thoughts HSLDFH but yeah for sure it would have been silly not to swap! oscar's tyre management will improve with time and experience and i think most fans are capable of acknowledging that especially with how large the gap ended up being despite his lucky vsc and per being per... honestly sometimes i feel like people are reflexively harsh to lando's radio messages because his tone comes off as disagreeable even though i'm like lowkey that's just his voice 😭

[marketxcel]

Top 10 Most Valuable Global Brands of 2024

Explore the latest rankings and insights into the global business landscape with our blog on the "Top 10 Most Valuable Global Brands of 2024." Discover the strategic moves, innovations, and market dynamics propelling these brands to the forefront of success. Stay ahead of the curve as we delve into the stories behind the numbers and unveil the driving forces shaping the business world this year.

[arithmonym]

how many chin ups do you think camilla hect could do. i think she values exercise form over quantity so nobody has really seen her go full out but if she DID. i think she would beat records

i can do precisely zero (0) chin ups, so i'm a bad person to benchmark this, haha!!

... you know that scene in star wars where luke does pull-ups with yoda on his back, though? that's camilla and palamedes.

[whokilledjared]

the sluttiest thing a man can do is be himself. (& takes on social media)

Hi.

I'm lonely.

The moment I got "two weeks off school" in sophomore year, life went to 4x speed & I can't turn it off no matter how hard I try.

Maybe COVID-19 adolescence did numbers on me. Somewhere between the iPhone 5c and ChatGPT, 14-hour screen times have live-streamed to me a steady, homogenous death of culture.

Nothing is cool anymore. Nothing is sacred. Every movement is a trend, and every cult classic a sequel.

The value we place on things being beautiful, on being "cool," and our gatekept appreciation of how hard these things were to find: it's been co-opted, or perhaps stolen. It's been stolen by the new merchant class. "Disruptors" and "innovators" turning our lives into a burgeoning black mirror prequel. Soon, we'll graduate too, and we'll wring every morsel of value in each others' lives dry for cash.

Plain and simple, I think we're being manipulated.

Your dates are an algorithm. Your music is a social signal. And Zuck knows when you sleep.*

God. What the fuck are we doing???

“Individuation is becoming the thing which is not the ego, and that is very strange.” — Carl Jung

Recently, I deleted Instagram. My first impulse was to post a story or something, announcing my departure. But then, I thought that would be lame.

I got rid of my account, too. Kinda. Over 1 year, over 800 followers removed, and what remains of me is a little grey icon, and "JM_0000000010" where my name and face used to be.

yay.

There were many people I wish I could have been friends with, but I wonder, too, why I find myself so drawn to the validation of others. Does social media affect me worse, or do we all just choose to ignore it, languishing in private?

At any rate, this last year has almost felt like re-learning how to be a human being.

Personally, I think one of the biggest markers for maturity is when you become willing to disappoint the people you know in favor of what feels right to you, when you start to unravel the stories you’ve told yourself (or been told) about who you are and what you should be. In short, the sluttiest thing a man can do is be himself.

And sometimes, I think about every college student that has ever lived. My grandmother, my dad, and so on. Just consider for a moment all kids who graduated before 2010:

What was it like for the ones in 1940? To walk around, before a campus had computers? In 2006: To meet someone pretty, but forget their number? In 1999: To cram into dorms, and watch Seinfeld live on-air?

Would I, like my dad in 1988, have braved cold night, brisk wind, & landline phone-call just to knock and see if my friends were too busy to hang?

What stories could I tell if there was even the slightest chance of getting lost on the way home from a party?

Humans are social creatures. We crave our friends like water. To me, the clearest difference between Dasani and Instagram is that one of them comes in a bottle.

Yet despite these distractions and comforts we have in 2024, somehow, we still have engineering students. People who carve out time in their day to sit down, look at paper, and solve differential equations. But then, that's not so hard, is it? It just takes time. Precious, fucking, time.

At Meta, leagues and leagues of these engineers power behavioral scientists, who are competing for the highest salary. Their benchmarks? Your FOMO. Guilt. Anxiety. Obsession. The worse you feel, the more you engage with their content. The more you engage with their content, well, you're starting to get the point.

Try something for me: Open up Instagram, but don't tap anything. What happens? How many little animations? How many tiny nudges prompting you to get lost? Our home-pages are billion-dollar diving boards, hoisting us over engineered catacombs of subconscious quicksand.

My homepage is my FOMO, my envy, and my crushes. The pain and struggle of trying to be someone who I am not. My little existential crises, bundled-up, packaged, and shipped with a like button.

To abandon your social networks entirely, however, requires a safety net of close friends. After all, your friends are online, and you'd be miserable without them.

This is the problem with our monkey brains. Millennia of sociological natural-selection have made us quite great at feeling terrible. We're damn good at making tribal status games to play with, too.

Seeking refuge in quirked up septum piercings and boygenius listeners, my time in counter-cultural, alternative "scenes" between St. Louis and Tampa has shown me that even the weirdest of folks and the most removed can accidentally find themselves reduced to nothing more than high-school popularity contests. Even if I love them. Even if they're amazing people. We're human.

We can't "quit social media" as much as we can't "quit bottled water" Sure, we can, but it's inconvenient. And even without a bottle, we're still drinking water.

So I lost touch with my friends. I got no new updates on their lives. I forced myself into the inconvenience of not having a phone to reach for in fleeting moments of boredom. Suddenly, I was out of the loop. Suddenly, I was bored. And suddenly, nobody missed me. My only friends were the ones I had the time to text. Everyone else ... does not exist.

Weekends have become more valuable than ever. Without the empty social calories of seeing my friends' pictures, I find myself planning hangouts as often as my schedule allows. I have more lunches, more study sessions, and more is done in the company of less.

And I have the time to breathe.

And in this calm, I think I found my answer: it's my misplaced ambition. These fears of anxiety and people I thought I would miss, they seem represent something I want to see more of within myself. Something I want to develop, lean into more deeply, as an individual. And I think that's quite normal; to look out into the world and feel attracted to things we want to see more of. This is, I think, how everyone develops their own definition of beauty — and of coolness. It's largely the intersection of what we find most interesting, and what we want to see more of in the world. Because beauty and coolness, by definition, are rare and hard to find. If they were everywhere, nothing be beautiful, nor would anything be cool.

When we all turn into wrinkles and cataracts, bad backs and heart attacks, for a brief, glorious moment, our lives are going to flash before our eyes. In this moment, you'll see your story. The ultimate progression of you.

How much of that will be skibidi toilet and reaction clips? How much of that will be arguing on the internet? Can you tell me, just how much of your life will you have skipped over to pacify your intentionally-lowered attention span?

That girl whose number you couldn't find Those passing questions over coffee that you couldn't search on Google The boredom of a subway ride

Those are not inconveniences, they're what the older generations refer to as "life."

* (oh, but if you can't sleep, consider this aside: Google knows the angle you walk at, how fast you're walking, and they've got crowdsourced pictures of everywhere around you at all times of the day. fun bedtime thoughts <3)

[jeffstormer]

On Awards, and the Grief (and Growth) of Giving Up

I made a big life decision at the start of this year I want to unpack here today, for obvious reasons.

As of this year, I made the decision to formally stop submitting my work for any kind of award, event, or industry recognition tied exclusively to a public/fan vote. Further, I would not ask others to submit on my behalf, and would go so far as to ask people not to do so. I'd like to talk about why I made that call and what it means to me.

Before I do, a necessary disclaimer: No shade whatsoever to those who do submit to those kinds of awards, and campaign for those kinds of awards. I recognize the market value in that kind of thing; the personal validation that comes from a group of people announcing you as the best. I see that all, and I'm proud of you for earning that recognition. This is strictly one person's opinion.

With that said, why did I make that call?

The truth is, from the moment I entered the tabletop industry, winning an ENnie was, to me, the benchmark of success. It was the sign that I was good at this. I let it define my relationship to my art. I couldn't stop, couldn't be satisfied, until I held that trophy.

So, every year, I would submit, and every year, I'd fall short, and every year, I'd be crushed.

At times, I could look at the list of nominees and winners and feel confident that we didn't have a chance. Other times, I didn't feel that way. But I was always viewing my work in competition, which warped how I perceived art on the whole.

Eventually, I came to the realization: it's not going to happen, and all aspiring to this platform is going to accomplish is "making me jealous of my peers instead of feeling in community with them." To find real satisfaction with the work, it can't be through that kind of mechanism.

Which is to say: I gave up. I acknowledged "my work is never going to be the kind of beloved that puts me on that pedestal, so all I am doing is setting myself up for disappointment. Better to be personally proud of something, and recognize the contributions made in other ways, than to hold yourself in a system that grinds you down year after year.

There's no shame in admitting you're giving up in something. Sometimes, things are meant to be failures. Sometimes, your best will never be good enough. I can recognize the ways in which my work is special (we hold a world record in Actual Play that will, frankly, likely never be topped, maybe not ever in my lifetime at least), without holding myself accountable to a standard that frankly, doesn't apply to the kind of art I make.

That said, there's also a grief in admitting that.

It's an acknowledgment that, on some level, the goal that I set for myself was a failure. That awards I have previously wanted to win are permanently out of my grasp, that I have failed to achieve a goal. That I, on a very literal level, wasn't good enough to do the thing.

And that's tough. Moreso on some days than others.

But, in spite of it all, I feel great about this decision. I feel like I made the right decision for myself, my work, and my trajectory as an artist.

It has been a profoundly difficult year for me, 2024. For personal reasons I cannot get into publicly. For professional reasons I've spoken about elsewhere (feeling increasingly isolated from Actual Play as an artistic community and industry).

But in this one area--claiming my own satisfaction of the work and using that to guide my own way forward--I am content.

[donnapalude]

coming from this post with thoughts.

without getting into how silver comes to develop his new role of pirate king, harboring previously unseen hyper-masculine traits, there is certainly something to say about silver's relationship with madi having only an appearance of equality, while actually being a pretty clear-cut case of benevolent sexism. especially with the triangulation that flint adds, that marilyn frye quote always comes to mind:

"all or almost all of that which pertains to love, most straight men reserve exclusively for other men. the people whom they admire, respect, adore, revere, honor, whom they imitate, idolize, and form profound attachments to, whom they are willing to teach and from whom they are willing to learn, and whose respect, admiration, recognition, honor, reverence and love they desire…those are, overwhelmingly, other men."

silver loves madi in his own way, but in the construction of his new identity she clearly becomes an accessory more than an inspiration. his model or benchmark for everything he becomes, whether by imitation or opposition, always remains flint. and this is not a statement about superior love, i just find it a very typically sexist process. this is very evident in his speech to flint about power:

"to be both liked and feared all at once is an entirely different state of being...in which, i believe, at this moment, i exist alone."

the speech is placed at the end of s3, but there's nothing indicating he changes his mind later on. and the only point of comparison that exists for him is clearly flint. because if he bothered to look a little to the side, he would see that madi is most certainly both liked and feared by her own people and certainly better than him. she demonstrates this very explictly during the incident with mr. dobbs in 308. silver prides himself in the fact that mr. dobbs wants to repair silver's disappointment at all costs, but madi's men never disappoint her in the first place. there may be disagreements we don't see among them, but there's real unity and belief there, not only a momentary patchwork of guilt, obligation, appreciation and intimidation. and the simple reason for this is that her care for them and their cause and for doing whatever necessary for it is genuine and they trust it. but this lesson coming from her, he does not imagine to learn it. not only does he not see she is a better leader, he eliminates her entirely from the equation by not even admitting she is at least on par with him. he says "i exist alone".

also relevant, the most important moments of bonding for them come from silver being vulnerable with her and taking her on as a tether to save himself from flint's darkness. it is important to note that, while i am sure madi had a mutual exchange in mind (and maybe silver also did in theory) we never really see the opposite unfolding. which is probably also due to the insulting lack of interest from the authors in developing her character. but if we must take the text at face value, this makes the particular form of reliance silver has on her not entirely benign. still marilyn frye:

"in their relations with women, what passes for respect is kindness, generosity or paternalism; what passes for honor is removal to the pedestal."

the positioning of him and flint as individuals possessing some shared darkness within them that she cannot comprehend and from which she must be protected, while also performing the role of guiding light, is most certainly both paternalism and a pedestal. there's no sense there of madi possibly having her own demons. and the unloading on her of the emotional labour necessary to make him and flint work together is also a very typically gendered assignation. partly because it indicates this is perceived as her natural feminine duty. partly because the willingness to show defenselessness only before a woman is also not necessarily a neutral choice. it still belies a worldview that places men's opinions as the defining judgement on one's identity. it's not only a matter of trust. silver is infinitely more scared of flint thinking him weak than madi doing so, because flint's opinion would actually be a devaluation, whether so intended or not.

this obviously culminates in silver removing madi's agency by deciding for her how the rest of her life is going to go. and while it's true he also does this to flint, it remains crucial that the only way he can see this working in relation to him is to treat him as an equally formidable opponent that he must defeat. while, in his mind, madi can be quietly stowed away when required. the outcome is really not entirely different from the image rogers has of knitting-eleanor.

[muppet-facts]

Muppet Fact #1061

Late Friday, the Writers Guild of America confirmed that the writers at Sesame Workshop have reached a new five-year contract with the company. The negotiation company said in regards to the news:

“We are so proud to work for an organization that values its writers, and we believe this new contract will positively impact writers throughout the children’s media landscape. ‘S’ truly is for Solidarity. We are glad to have a contract in place that allows Sesame to do what it does best – lead."

A spokeswoman for Sesame Workshop said:

"This agreement is a testament to our dedication to our creative talent, and we appreciate the WGA’s collaboration in working with us to establish this new industry benchmark."

Source:

Earl, William. “Variety.” Variety, April 19, 2024. https://variety.com/2024/biz/news/sesame-street-writers-strike-contract-1235977139/.

[kiefbowl]

hi! do you have any advice for negotiating a higher salary? i think the job i was hired to do a few months ago deserves a better pay but idk how to go about asking for it

This is so spooky I was literally thinking about making a post about asking for more money this morning. you must have been listening to my thoughts lol

Yeah, I have some advice, but keep in mind that different companies and industries might have little quirks I'm not aware of, take these points as very broad advice you might want to adapt for your own personal situation:

If you company does any kind of raise schedule (as an example: every year on your anniversary you are entitled to a 1-3% raise based on performance) - if you're about 8-12 weeks until that time, try to hold out until after you get that raise. I only suggest this because almost all companies will tell you the raise you negotiated takes over as your new raise schedule, so this is really just to get more money in the long run. The 8-12 weeks benchmark is just a suggestion to try to keep your request to negotiate and your scheduled raise in different financial quarters, which might help.

Have a clear goal of what you're asking for. Clear doesn't mean "super specific" but it can. At minimum, have the number you're going to be asking for. What's probably better though is to have the number you're going to be asking for if nothing else changes, and what more you'd be willing to do for even more money than that.

Only answer questions that are asked, only provide information as needed. You can start the conversation by saying "I'm coming to you requesting a raise" and let them respond to that. You can say things like "My duties have expanded including xyz" and you can say things like "I think my skillset is valuable" and "I think I provide x value to the company because of y reasons," but don't just launch into a spiel about what you think you deserve without seeing how they react first.

Talk in numbers. Just get straight to the point when they ask how much. Have a number for the amount per year if salary/amount per hour if hourly, plus convert that number into the percentage raise it would be. Asking for 20% more is a big ask, you know what I'm saying? Even if it's fair on the market for you industry, if they're paying that low from the market it means it's built into their business plan and you might want to consider a different company. and if they set a precedent with giving you 20%, they don't have much to stand on when you go tell all your buddies and they start asking for 20%. And if that's the situation at your company, at that point, you might wanna consider just unionizing instead lol.

It's good to consider the other guy on the other side of the table when you're negotiating. People give you things you want if you're considerate of the things they want. Some things to keep in mind that might be on your boss's plate: annual budgets, quarterly budgets, hiring quotas, hiring freezes, established pay structures decided by powers that be way above them that they have no control over, the fact that they will have to take your request to their boss and/or HR to get approval...like speak intelligently to these concerns as best you can. And be in a quid pro quo mindset. The argument is either "I already do this incredibly valuable thing you don't want to lose so give me more money or I will stop doing this by going elsewhere" or "I will do even more incredible value you don't want to lose if you give me more money, or I will do nothing by going elsewhere." Focus on what do they get and what do they lose if you don't get what you want. Except in professional parlance :)

Have confidence that you have every right to just ask. You are not some shit covered indentured peasant speaking to your god appointed king. You are a human person who is allowed to have adult conversations with other adults. If you can keep that confidence of "I'm just an adult having a normal conversation" it'll keep you on track and not get swayed into whatever tangets your boss my hem and haw on. Short, sweet, and to the point as best as possible.

Your boss is probably not fantastic at negotiating because almost no one is. So don't even sweat it. Ambush them a little, be polite, lay it on the table, then ask them what's next. If they seem to be hesitant, weird, put off...you could read malicious evil intent into it, but they're probably just woefully under-prepared and might flail a bit as some distraction. Just be like "Well, we can table this and I'll follow up with you on Friday" if it really seems like they can't get nail down an answer, or if you know they have to talk to their higher up anyway.

You might just get it. It might be the easiest thing you've ever done. I've countered and gotten exactly what I've wanting in 0.005 seconds flat. That's always a bit bittersweet because you just know you could have asked for more lol. Your boss might already have numbers at the ready for when people ask for raises, they just need people to ask. If you're company is doing well and pulling in good revenue, you will probably have a very easy conversation. So go get 'em.

Most importantly, show them your switchblade have fun and just be yourself!!!

[nothorses]

I saw your tags on the post about trick or treaters not speaking and I am v interested in hearing more of your thoughts on the concept of “developmental delays”! I‘ve seen the idea that disability is a construct, but I’m not as familiar with the idea that development is also a construct. You have really great takes as an educator and someone who like, actually GETS how kids work, so I am interested in your thoughts!

I also know that posting on this subject might be poking the bear, so it is 1000% cool if you would rather not comment 💜 Tysm!

Oh I'm happy to talk about it! I love talking about this stuff, thank you for asking me to 💙

This isn't exactly new ground; there's been plenty of research into and writing on the subject, and deconstructing "development" as a static concept was, ironically, a huge part of my most recent development class.

The idea is that our understanding of "benchmarks" of development, which informs the larger concept of development as a whole, is heavily rooted in the assumption that Western culture is The Standard. We prioritize walking, talking, reading, and writing, which means we cultivate these skills in our children from a young age, which means they develop those skills more quickly than they do others.

To use one of my favorite examples from Rogoff, 2003, Orienting Concepts and Ways of Understanding the Cultural Nature of Human Development:

Although U.S. middle-class adults often do not trust children below about age 5 with knives, among the Efe of the Democratic Republic of Congo, infants routinely use machetes safely (Wilkie, personal communication, 1989). Likewise, Fore (New Guinea) infants handle knives and fire safely by the time they are able to walk (Sorenson, 1979). Aka parents of Central Africa teach 8- to 10-month-old infants how to throw small spears and use small pointed digging sticks and miniature axes with sharp metal blades: "Training for autonomy begins in infancy. Infants are allowed to crawl or walk to whatever they want in camp and allowed to use knives, machetes, digging sticks, and clay pots around camp. Only if an infant begins to crawl into a fire or hits another child do parents or others interfere with the infant’s activity. It was not unusual, for instance, to see an eight month old with a six-inch knife chopping the branch frame of its family’s house. By three or four years of age children can cook themselves a meal on the fire, and by ten years of age Aka children know enough subsistence skills to live in the forest alone if need be. (Hewlett, 1991, p. 34)" (pg. 5)

In the US we would view "letting an 8-month-old handle a knife" as a sign of severe neglect, but the emphasis here is placed on the fact that these children are taught to do these things safely. They don't learn out of necessity, or stumble into knives when nobody is watching; they learn with care, support, and safety in mind, just like children here learn. It makes me wonder if Aka parents would view our children's lack of basic survival skills with the same concern and disdain as USAmerican parents would view their children's inability to read.

Do we disallow our children from handling knives because it is objectively, fundamentally unsafe for a child of that age to do so- because even teaching them is developmentally impossible- or is that just a cultural assumption?

What other cultural assumptions do we have about child development?

Which ties in neatly with various social-based models of disability, particularly learning and, of course, developmental disabilities. If your culture doesn't value the things you are good at, and you happen to struggle with the things it does value, what kinds of assumptions is it likely to make about you? How will it pathologize you? What happens to that culture if it understands those values to be arbitrary, in order to accommodate your unique existence?

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

‼️ Warning: JP Spoilers‼️

Since Malleus is 178 years old do you think that's the equivalent of a 18 year old in fae years?

I don’t believe that’s the case! Lilia specifically states in 7-26 of the main story that dragon fae are still considered hatchlings at 200 years old (which Malleus hadn’t even hit yet). They are considered teenagers at 500 years old, and adults at 1000 years old.

If we were to compare this to typical values for human age markers, 200 years old would be like 1 year old (or what humans would still define as infancy), 500 years old would be like 13 years old, and 1000 years old would be like 18 years old (which is the age of “maturity” or legal recognition as an adult in most parts of the world irl).

Of course, this creates the confusing conundrum where is only 3 human years of difference between the fae’s 500 to 1000 years of age, but a much more significant difference between the 12 human years between the fae’s 200 to 500 years of age. This seems to support another fact brought up in canon: that fae perceive time and its passage very differently than other races do.

Note: if we consider the human age of adulthood in a rewiring sense, the brain tends to finish this process in the mid-20s (~25 years old is the commonly seen value, but scientific papers don’t hone in on a super specific number). (“Rewiring” doesn’t mean you stop learning, it’s just that the neurons are “pruned”, with unused ones being trimmed while used ones are left to be strengthened.) This is also around the time when the prefrontal cortex (the part responsible for higher level thinking) development starts to plateau. If this was the scale for comparison to 200 (1 year old) and 500 (13 years old), then the aging of fae would be more linear to the aging of humans. This would mean 200 to 500 years is ~13 human years and 500 to 1000 years is ~12 human years, which is pretty close.

Again, since Malleus hasn’t even hit the 200 year “infant” benchmark, he’s still considered an “infant” by dragon fae standards. He’s very much a child in some ways, which definitely clashes a lot with how he looks, but it makes sense seeing as he has a great lack of self-awareness and understanding of the world and the people that inhabit it. However!! I caution against taking these values and running with them as human "equivalents", because with such drastically different ways of aging between the two races (not to mention the difference between physically maturing vs emotionally and mentally maturing), there is no such thing as "true" equivalency.

[reeddraws]

Daily drawing 1765. I felt like doing a straight forward study today. It's been a while since I've done a value study, but I always love doing them and feel like they're always a good benchmark to check in with and see how I'm doing.

[momentsbeforemass]

The “ests”

We live in a society that exalts the “ests.”

The biggest, the fastest, the tallest, the richest. Whatever the benchmark is, we want nothing but the best.

It’s a fixation that causes a lot of problems for us.

Not because there’s anything wrong with being able to spot the best. Knowing the difference between a ripe apple (the best) and one that’s gone bad is kind of important.

The problem comes when our fixation with “ests” crosses categories. When we decide that apples are better than oranges.

Comparing apples to oranges is so obviously faulty that it’s a cliché. In at least 20 different languages.

Yet, you and I do it all the time. Not with apples and oranges. But we do it to ourselves and to others – when it comes to roles and worth.

We value the CEO over the janitor, the doctor over the nurse. You and I decide which person is best, based on the importance we attach to what they do. Confusing their role for their worth as a person.

It sounds awful when you say it that way. But it’s so engrained in us that we do it anyway. Usually without thinking.

When we do it to others, it’s corrosive. We see people as things – and we make them into idols to worship or into non-persons we can abuse or ignore.

When we do it to ourselves, it’s corrosive as well. It puts us on a never-ending treadmill of not good enough. Because no matter who we are or what we’re doing, there’s always more. There’s always better. There’s always an “est” that’s just out of reach.

No matter who you and I do it to, it’s a toxic way to live.

And it couldn’t be farther from the truth, from how God sees things.

Think about it for a minute, you and I know from experience that a person’s role and person’s worth have no connection at all.

One of the wealthiest persons I have ever known (CEO, director on several corporate boards, etc.) is also one of the worst human beings I have ever met.

One of the kindest persons I have ever known lived in a cinder block house with a dirt floor (in Alexander County, Illinois).

In today’s first reading, St. Paul spells it out. There’s a list of roles that reads like the organizational chart for a church: “first, Apostles; second, prophets; third, …” making it easy to fall into our habit of comparing the wrong things.

But the context that he gives for that list? That draws us right back to the truth, back to the way that God sees things.

“As the body is one though it has many parts, an all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also in Christ.”

Translation – God’s love isn’t just for the “ests.”

Whether you’re looking at someone else or yourself, never confuse role with worth. God doesn’t.

Today’s Readings

[decolonize-the-everything]

"Note: 

There may be some resistance & discomfort when I say “we need to dismantle self-care”. The concept is prominent in leftist spaces & hailed as a radical form resistance. However, it is rarely understood in its original context with the necessary caveats which I’ll elaborate on below. It has also been sanitized, manipulated & co-opted for profit. As a result, it’s become bigger than what it was intended to be. People look to self-care now as a revolutionary “solution” to our collective problems (which it is not). Given that we live under capitalist, colonial systems that breed individualism, narcissism & self-centeredness, I think it’s important for us to rethink the utility of this concept today. In this piece, bringing in the knowledge of collectivist, land-based cultures, I’ll explain why it is urgent & critical for us to practice + embody COMMUNITY care which is a more complete framework that creates conditions of liberation needed for us to survive & thrive as we fight for the land & against the ecological destruction of our planet.

So even if you feel some discomfort arise, take a deep breath & hear me out."

- Ayesha Khan, Ph.D

Some quotes to consider:

The most prominent origins of the concept may be traced to Audre Lorde[...] She wrote about how cancer pushed her to realize that we all needed to slow down, pull back from oppressive systems, refuse to operate according to their values or accelerated “productivity” benchmarks when we can & that this divestment from a profit-driven system was critical for us to even begin to think about what collective “health” & healing means. It is an important first step in one’s political radicalization journey. It’s not everything & it wasn’t meant to be.

Self-care today is often reduced to: i) consumption of products, ii) neglect of community & erasure of the contributions of other beings who enable our care, and iii) one-sided, transactional extraction of care with a sense of entitlement to receive care without reciprocity or without focusing on daily practices of giving care in community. What does self-care look like in practice today?

Is there anything you do that doesn’t directly or indirectly involve the contribution of other beings? Even when we rest, there are conditions of some level of safety or security that have to be enabled for us to truly rest. So let’s take a moment to sit with how the beings at the other end of the “care products” we consume are being treated.

On the other hand, what does “self-care” that actively harms the collective look like? Relax at home alone with a sheet mask while ignoring a friend who reached out to connect because “you don’t owe anyone anything”, purchase care products & services from violent corporations killing our planet as a form of “self-love” while deprioritizing community building thinking it will heal you

Mainstream self-care has created NEW forms of oppression, extraction & exploitation. 

The perspectives I offer in my community care work are not MY novel findings but a responsibility I bear as part of my ancestral/ community teachings & traditions. These perspectives are sorely missing in leftist spaces. I write this piece to honor our collectivist traditions & to affirm the many global communities who find the concept of “self-care” reductive, confusing or fundamentally indecipherable. Our cultures are rooted in caring for each other & the land that sustains us all— I’m slowly learning to carry & embody these values by any means necessary.