#but that unfortunately seems to be still an issue with most trade professions

[skyfulloflilac]

im thinking of quitting college for the second time and switching to trade school again... my mental health and concentration is still pretty shit, so i just dont have the energy for college (even if ur perfectly healthy its just ridiculously demanding these days, i know so many who got a burn our from it). im not sure what id study yet, but im seriously considering electrician or something energy industry related. theyre not exactly smth im passionate about, but due to allergies and join issues most jobs id love are not possible for me so those would be the best choices i think

[anakinisvaderisanakin]

Evil Unmasked AU Part 3 - Lord Vader (aka Ahsoka learns the truth)

If anyone had, by sheer luck, missed the news or the announcement - every single broadcast via the holo networks made sure to either remind or inform people of the event. “Revered war hero and former Jedi Knight revealed as the Emperor’s right hand man”. Every single one left out the man’s birth name, the name by which he had been celebrated by Republic forces and maligned by the Separatists mere months before the revelation. The Hero with no Fear, he had been dubbed by the media. It was easy to see, in hindsight, that this too may have been a ploy constructed by the then chancellor, Palpatine.

Anakin Skywalker had been built up, like a fictional hero bestowed with charm, intellect and skill. His appearance had never detracted from the positive spin on his tale, his handsome features inviting people to buy into and accept the public image created for him. It was this man, this living legend, that had been retooled to masterly.

The man who had been cherished, with his wit and his cocky half smiles masking a perceived shy insecurity, was nowhere to be seen now. Once or twice, in the wake of major events during The Clone Wars, Skywalker had been projected on holo networks. The interviews had been brief, the young man seemingly uncomfortable by the attention, as if he struggled to live up to the public image tied to his name. For the past month, since he had been renamed, none of that persisted. While it was evident that the man cared even less for making public appearances or statements, he had been forced into giving a slew of them.

Every broadcasting network wanted a tout-a-tout with this reinvented icon. Little of the boyish charm remained, and all that persisted of Skywalker seemed to be his dry sarcasm and his inherent desire to act out in favour of his political and personal beliefs. As he had explained, with little interest, his “loyalty has always lied with Emperor Palpatine, and it will remain to do so.”

To those who had known Skywalker closely beforehand - those who remained alive to tell the tale, that was - were shook by the altered man, and the confusion this change left behind. His new persona was so vastly different, he might as well have been a new person altogether. Some would say that Skywalker had always been a snake in the grass, had always maintained a charade - acting out a falsehood to lull former friends and allies into trusting him. On the other hand, some were convinced something tragic must have happened to Skywalker, or that he had been bribed or manipulated by the Emperor into giving up on his morals.

Ahsoka reacted accordingly.

She had been lucky to miss out on the initial, official inauguration of her former master. She had come back from Mandalore, no longer a child but a woman. Forced to grow up at the age of 17, her and Rex had been the only survivors. And Maul, of course, who’d made his escape and remained cleverly hidden ever since. The fall of the Republic had been enough of a shock, in the wake of Order 66 and the death of Jesse and the entire 212th battalion. On top of that, the Senate’s power had been reduced to virtually nothing, restrictions and documentation of every single Galactic citizen had become mandatory; every ship was to be licensed and catalogued.

A long list of names had been released to the public with large bounties on their heads; names of those considered dangerous foes to the newly formed Empire. Most of them were former politicians, military deserters and Separatists; few were Jedi. Ahsoka didn’t take that as a good omen, seeing as the omission so many Jedi names probably came from the fact that Order 66 had already eviscerated the order. Ahsoka herself had been absent from the list, as had Rex, and as such they were presumed dead to the new government.

While Ahsoka had let out a sigh of relief to see master Yoda and Obi-Wan were noted as dangerous Jedi fugitives still considered to be alive; her stomach sank when master Plo and Anakin’s names remained absent.

Ahsoka had, thankfully, been left in the dark when her former master’s fate was concerned. She had assumed him dead, at first. Two months had gone by, she and Rex parting ways soon after they had buried their fallen soldiers and friends on the unrecorded moon where their Jedi cruiser had crashed. It was too dangerous to stay together, and while Rex had returned to Coruscant for supplies and to hopefully seek out further clones who may have avoided or resisted the command of Order 66 and the inhibitor chip’s programming - Ahsoka had lingered in the outer rim. A brief meet and greet - albeit unfortunate - with Hondo Ohnaka had granted her a false new identity as Ashla, before relocating to the mostly peaceful Thabeska. In the blink of an eye, two additional months had passed. Then another, and another. Settling into mundane life, building a new future; she had honed her knack for mechanics and turned it into a profession - making just enough credits to scrape by. Five months had passed since the end of the war, when the news finally reached her.

Ahsoka had been scouring one of the few off-planet affiliated trading shops for supplies and tools. She was in desperate need of spare parts for her comlink which had been dead since she arrived. She had promised Rex they would stay in touch somewhat regularly, and figured it was finally safe to reach out and catch up. Rex, Ahsoka presumed, was still located on or near Coruscant in hiding. She would have by-passed the slim offering of flimsiplast and data-tape prints, had a preview the issue of the day not been screened on the beat up, flickering holo screen poised on the wall above the aisle as advertisement to draw her attention. A reporter seemed to be enthusiastically interviewing one of the freshly promoted Imperial figureheads. The sound was muffled, the image grainy - but it was the voice that caught Ahsoka off guard.

“It has been just short of six months since the Republic was officially denounced, and the new Galactic Empire firmly installed. How do you feel this transition has affected you?” asked the reporter, eyes wide with awe and admiration as his face filled the holo-screen.

“Very little,” said a gruff, monotone voice - so void of emotion or excitement, that it came off as nearly synthetic. “I believe my position is quite similar to that of my pre-Empire self. While I am no longer, by profession, a knight or a general - I still carry out similar services. It is, naturally, expected of me to hunt down detractors and traitors. There is little difference in leading a war effort where casualties are a constant, and leading a judicial effort of assimilation.”

The words were big, foreign, and unnerving. Words Ahsoka had never heard uttered by that particular voice before. The voice itself seemed unrecognizable; twisted, and warped. But still, a familiar note to it remained - one that urged Ahsoka to keep watching, one that beckoned her, and compelled her naive curiosity. Her stomach sank before she even had laid eyes upon the screen, before the image that came with the distorted voice could confirm her greatest fears. As she focused on the screening, the reporter had come back into frame and Ahsoka’s heart pounded nigh painfully hard against her ribcage as she waited for the man that was the focal point of the interview to answer the next query.

“Do you struggle with any guilt, in regards to your unfortunate responsibilities? I understand it must have been difficult to carry out the order of persecution towards the Jedi order. Indeed, you were raised within those walls, were you not? Indoctrinated with their religious beliefs, did you ever doubt their teachings beforehand? Were you ever disillusioned by their cult before the assassination attempt upon the Emperor came to light? I am aware that you wish to distance yourself from the order, but I’m certain you understand the importance of your shift.”

“My own former master lied to me. That was the moment at which I was first privy to the mastery of manipulation that ran deep within the sect, as he had been required to carry out their dishonest schemes. I was not raised within the order, but I was offered training under the false pretense that I might free someone close to me from slavery once knighted. This was another malignant lie, as I was restrained from realizing these wishes.”

Ahsoka didn’t notice the screwdriver slipping from her hand, nor did she pick up on the clatter as it hit the durasteel floor once the man’s face came back into view; at once painfully reassuring, and horrendously frightening.

“I feel no guilt in the wake of my actions. I pity the Jedi order for their misinformed notion of the Force as a sacred yet passive entity. True power and understanding of its whims has thus evaded them. I pity their hunger for control, and their warmongering. I pity their attempts at kidnapping and brainwashing young children into following their flawed dogma, and any child present at the temple during the march is indeed better off becoming one with the Force, than continuing to serve a false doctrine. I was not raised entirely within the temple, and as for my morals, no person within the order served as a model or mentor me through true honesty,” said a begrudging Anakin Skywalker - and there was a prominent anger flickering beneath the drawled monotone.

Outwardly, Anakin appeared nearly the same as he had the day Ahsoka had said goodbye to him before she set off to capture Maul, and he went to rescue the kidnapped then Chancellor Palpatine. Anakin had offered a forlorn yet gentle smile as they parted ways. His wavy hair had been long and unruly, but his eyes were bright, and blue, and warm. Full of hope. On the holo screen, despite the inevitable blue tang to the recorded session, his face seemed pale and gaunt; fine lines were traced around his eyes, at the corners of his lips, and dug into his forehead.

His sockets seemed dark and sunken, as if sleep had evaded him for weeks. His expression was a perpetual scowl, his arms folded across his chest as he stood nonchalantly beside the armchair that had no doubt been offered for him to settle into. He was taller than Ahsoka recalled - even with the limited props of the room the conversation was being held in, he towered over every single piece of furniture.

The reporter, Ahsoka recognized him as Mas Aqui - he’d been present at her trial, waiting with bated breath to record her conviction - had been tall and lanky then, but seemed almost frail and miniscule while standing next to the former Jedi he was now bothering.

“It is my belief that the order had a singularly negative effect on my character, and it is impossible for me to harbour any remorse towards a sect that so thoroughly stunted my growth. In the wake of Order 66, and the subsequent termination of the Jedi sect, I have had sufficient time to consider the events. I believe the Jedi were inherently incapable of showing humanity. It is for this reason, first and foremost, that I am determined to distance myself from any remaining ties I may have to the order. I consider myself enlightened, and do not wish to be associated with the negative connotations of the cilt that so maliciously affected the Galaxy.”

Ahsoka couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. The words coming out of Anakin’s mouth seemed pre-scripted in their delivery, but still genuinely professed. They sounded nothing like the man who had nurtured her, and cared for her as an older brother - but the conviction behind them was similar to the one that had backed every lesson he had taught and passed onto her. She felt cold and numb, hands trembling and eyes wide as she stared at the unsettling display.

Anakin’s dark blonde hair was trimmed and combed back, a few fresh battle scars lining his brow and his left side cheekbone. His robes seemed a mixture of de facto Imperial garb, armour, and sacred Jedi robes twisted to mock the order's very existence. But his eyes were the biggest detractor. Their colour could not be discerned, but their iridescent, glowing quality carried through. The blood vessels were visible, lining the irises like an intricate work of haphazard artistry. Cruel, calculating, animalistic. Ahsoka had seen those same eyes too many times, and had been confronted with their unhinged quality in the Sith Lord Darth Maul’s every expression. In Maul, they conveyed a deep seated insanity - in her former master; they spoke of a fury so overt, it seemed to reach right through the screen with their oppressive glare.

“I see. As to sum up our brief rendezvous, Lord Vader, I am obliged to aim a few final questionnaires at this past connection of yours - I aware that this is to be the last time, as of now, that you speak out on the matter - and am thus mandated to collect a few loosely affiliated tidbits,” Aqui cautiously pointed out.

“Make it a quick affair,” was Anakin’s only reply; gleaming eyes narrowed in a disgruntled surrender that matched his threatening cadence.

“Very well. There have been some questions frequently asked by our dedicated viewers. As such, I’ve picked out the topmost three. They may be a bit personal of nature, so feel free to dodge them if you are uncomfortable with their direction,” the reporter reassured.

Anakin’s dramatic eye roll at the implication was grand and demeaning, but served as the only, silent reply. Aqui shrunk back, no doubt feeling embarrassed by the disregard of his patience and attempt at pandering.

“Do you miss any of your connections within the fallen Jedi order, and if so, whom?”

“No,” was Anakin’s direct response, a sharp warning of a hiss. “Every single one of them was a traitor and a liar. I pity their ignorance, but I do not mourn them. I rejoice in their fall, and I would aid the Imperial efforts to eradicate their kind all over again if need be.”

Ahsoka swallowed back the lump forming at the base of her throat; her eyes burning as they watered against her will. The Jedi had cared deeply for Anakin. Master Yoda, Master Plo, Obi-Wan. How could Anakin not have seen their love? They may have practiced a no attachment policy, but Obi-Wan had clearly contradicted the rule to his own detriment. So had Ahsoka, one of the reasons behind her decision to sever her ties with the order - something she knew that Anakin too had longed for.

“Is there any hope for a Jedi on the run to reform and thus evade persecution?”

“No. Some have attempted to reform, but it is in the grand scheme of things, useless. The Jedi are the sole reason behind the detriment of the Galaxy, and their hubris is the foundation upon which the war was built. No man or woman raised within the temple walls is unaffected by their harmful teachings. As such, few if any may break the vicious cycle. I have yet to meet a truly dedicated Jedi who would admit their fallacy and turn away from the sect. The few reinvented Force wielders I have come across, have all doubted the order before its inevitable fall, and were thus given the tools necessary to break away,” Anakin simply stated, still as arrogant in his stance; his tone premeditated but with a sincerity that made Ahsoka feel sick to the stomach as a lone tear escape and trailed lazily down her cheek.

“Alright. Finally, what is behind your change of persona?”

Anakin’s expression shifted for a brief moment, the rage behind his eyes laid bare and unveiled. His eyes burned, their glow predatory and unadulterated. He seemed to heave a sigh, his mouth drawn into a repulsed sneer. When he spoke, his voice was calm and calculated, but his eyes were dangerous and intimidating.

“Anakin Skywalker is dead. I do not associate myself with this man, whom the Jedi were attempting to shape me into. I reiterate, and hope to never need state again, that I denounce my past as an act forced upon me. In severing my ties to the order, I have found freedom with the true facets of the Force. As such, the Emperor has bestowed upon me the title of Darth Vader. Lord Vader is the only title befitting of my stance within the Empire. Lord Vader is the name by which all Galactic citizens are expected to address me, as is my right. There is no Anakin Skywalker, and there never was. The Jedi order destroyed the weak child bearing that name. I am Darth Vader, and that is all that there is.”

Another tear followed the first, and Ahsoka bit back a choked sob as she covered her mouth. The Anakin Skywalker she had known was no more. Barely a trace of him remained. In his place, stood Sith Lord Darth Vader.

Vader, who would stop at nothing to keep his promise and reaffirm his loyalty towards his Emperor and master.

****

Because I was inspired by the commenters of the second chapter to explore how Vader may be used for propaganda, I wanted Ahsoka to find out about Anakin's turn through one of the many media Palpatine would no doubt promote Vader through. Vader could be used as a tool to strengthen the notion of the evil Jedi, and his breaking free from their brainwashing. I figured this was a fun spin on it, and included it! There will be more coming!

Ao3 link below:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/32029582/chapters/79572163

[magic8realism]

Chapter 1: Therapy

It was an all too familiar experience, sitting there with nothing but the sound of deafening silence. How many times has it been now? Eight? Nine? Maybe less? Was it sensible to keep count? No, she promised herself she would not entertain such thoughts. She reminded herself that she was here to get better. Yes, that is precisely what Michaela told her. She needed to get better, but was that even possible? Is it possible for someone who had been through what she had gone through to get better? Michaela said she should not give up, that she had made some excellent progress, but her mind knew that Michaela had no idea that it was all an act, a false persona. People need to put an act sometimes to get by. Life demands it. Certain professions would not allow its occupants to survive without it. Her situation was not different.

“Miss. Collins, are you okay? You haven’t said anything for a while now.”

Her eyes darted towards the blond middle-aged woman sitting right across from her. Mary Grove was her name, was it? Michaela told her she was the best therapist in the city. Her friend did say the same thing about other therapists before her, yet not a single one of them had been able to help her. Maybe she was a hopeless case. Maybe she should just accept the fact that she would never overcome the experience and just give in. It would be nice, leaving this world with all its troubles. The ironic thing was that her traumatic experience had left her brain so fragmented and incapable of aligning its contradictory demands that she would no longer know if death was really what it wanted. She would find herself at one point at the pit of a spiral of depression so intense that she would wish she was dead. Her sadistic mind would even go on to devise one method after another in search of the best way to go. A few moments later it would recoil in terror. Her heartbeat would race, her whole body would start to convulse and her chest would struggle to fill her lungs with air. The episode would go on and off for hours until it totally annihilated her grip on reality and sent her crawling into a corner to wait for her impending doom.

“Lesly are you okay?”

No, she was not okay. No one in this god-forsaken city was okay. What made this woman believe anyone was okay? Isn’t that what they say any way? That every single individual suffers from an issue of sorts?  

“Do you need me to get you anything?” Mary asked with a concerned look on her face.

“I’m fine,” Lesly finally decided to answer.

Mary nodded her head, acknowledging the response she was given. She started scribbling on her notebook before she finally decided to address her newest patient, “Shall we continue?”

When Leslie smiled emptily in response to Mary’s question, Mary proceeded, her gaze cantered undividedly on Leslie, “Michaela told me about your situation, but I would like to hear your story.”

Oh yes, the story, that god-awful story. She must have told that story like a hundred times. Although she would like nothing more than to forget it, her brain would make sure to remind her every once in a while. True to its sadistic streak, her brain would not only reminisce on the moments when she was most helpless and scared but would also make her relive every excruciating detail of that experience every chance it gets. Nightmares were quite common and as awful as they were, they were still preferable to the far more harrowing and intrusive flashbacks. Yes, sharing the story should be a breeze. Why would she object to telling it?

“You already know it. Why go through it again?” Lesly answered dryly.

“That’s fine. We won’t discuss it then,” Mary responded with a smile. It seemed that she had had her fair share of difficult patients before Lesly showed up.  

“How’s work Lesly?”

Was Mary trying to approach the problem from a different direction now? Lesly had encountered that strategy a lot, especially when she was reticent. It was obvious what Mary was trying to do.

“You are familiar with my line of work,” Lesly answered calmly.

“Michaela told me you are a brilliant lawyer.”

Brilliant indeed. She could barely afford these sessions. Ever since the death of her younger brother seven years ago, she had been suffering this overwhelming guilt that robbed her of sleep. That guilt would only be eased a little when she distracted herself with work. However, it was not long before she lost the sense of comfort that work gave her. Every case she took made her feel miserable, not only because some clients proved to be the absolute worst human beings on earth, but also because she was the reason the people who really needed help found themselves financially crippled soon afterwards. Eventually, she began taking more cases pro bono. She convinced herself that she was balancing some of the bad with a little good, but sadly that was not the case. People do charity work for different reasons. There are those who help out of the goodness of their heart, and there are those who help for purely selfish reasons, to fix their public image, deceive people into thinking they are somebody that they are not, or even use their charity organization as a front for illegal activities. She could easily fall into the second category. Helping was one way she could convince herself that she was not a bad person, and because she knew that was a lie, she found herself charging her clients little to none over and over in an effort to mask that reality. It was not long before her savings dried up and she found herself downgrading everything in her life to make ends meet. That did not bother her much. As long as she was handling that overwhelming sense of guilt, she was fine. Soon afterwards, she joined Sonata, a charity organization concerned with helping the victims of human trafficking and putting an end to their suffering. Unfortunately, every case she took through Sonata following the incident was nothing more than a blatant reminder of what she had gone through.

“Lesly?”

“I’m sorry. I was just thinking about a case I encountered at work today,” Lesly finally decided to answer, realizing that the long time she took to respond was also a sign this Mary person could use to figure her out.

“Care to share it with me?” Mary asked patiently, hoping to get Lesly to finally open up.  

Lesly sighed, wondering whether it was worth it to say anything at all or not. She eventually decided to randomly choose a case and to present it to Mary as a way to fill the silence.

“There is this woman, early twenties, who came to the city of Redlyn in hopes of finding a job that would support her and her five-year old son. She trusted the wrong people and ended up in a prostitution job that she could not leave for fear that her son might get hurt. We managed to save her, but we can’t find her son.”

“That is awful.”

“Yes, that is what people normally say, and yet no body is doing anything about the problem.”

“Lesly, what makes you think the problem is getting worse?” Mary asked after a moment of silence.

“What makes you think it’s getting better?”

“Wouldn’t you consider the changes the newly elected mayor promised to make a step in the right direction?” Mary clarified.

Leslie could not help but laugh at this point, “Politicians!”

Unable to keep her real thoughts to herself any longer, she continued, “The slave-trade has grown prosperous due to the city’s stagnant environment, yet despite the growing numbers we announce, politicians still insist that we exaggerate. Why do you think that?”

“You tell me.”

“Because they are entangled in that mess. The persistence of the problem helps them. They get paid a handsome some by the syndicates running the show to stay quiet. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the city’s major political figures are involved in the lucrative sex-trade that such an activity gave rise to.”

Silence again. The crime rate in the city of Redlyn was high. That was an undisputed fact. The factors behind the increase in crime rate, however, were a source of a major controversy. As with any community, there are those who believed that hijacking people’s freedom through stricter laws was the answer. There are the conspiracy theorists who would either trace the problem to some foreign powers or locate it in the existing government. And then there are the religious fanatics who would simply interpret every occurrence as God’s punishment to the sinful.

“That is…an interesting analysis, Lesly,” Mary replied hesitantly after a moment of silence.

Great! She must have already been categorized as another conspiracy theorist. Lesly did not normally care what other people thought of her, but she did not want Mary to needlessly prolong those sessions. One session every two weeks was torture enough.

She leaned forward in her seat and tried her best to control her simmering temper as she reasoned, “Dr. Grove, how would you explain the rising crime wave? The inadequacy of the law enforcement system? The corruption of the judicial system? And the fact that parts of the city are totally controlled by syndicates and criminal organizations rather than a functional government body?”

Mary would not answer the questions. She just sat there waiting for Leslie to voice the one experience that was the source of this seething, yet somewhat controlled anger.

Realizing that she had revealed more than what she wished her therapist to find out, she stood up, turned her back to the middle-aged woman and began walking towards the window. Lesly took a couple of deep breaths and tried to think of way to handle what remained of the one-hour session. She wanted to leave that instant, but Michaela was waiting outside. Leaving would mean subjecting herself to the hellish nagging, crying and pleading that resulted in the guilt-ride that brought here in the first place. No, leaving was not an option, and apparently beating around the bush and answering questions with questions was not working either, especially since she was exhausted and sleep-deprived. What else was there to do?

Her eyes scanned the small garden through the window. The sound of children playing and laughing immediately caught her attention and had her search their surroundings for the source of their amusement. She soon found out that it was a small golden retriever running around the kids in circles and chasing after a toy they were holding. Something about the scene evoked a surge of emotions within her. She could not understand at first why the scene affected her so much, but she soon managed to put a name to the phenomenon…nostalgia…but that was not all there was to it. Something else was making her eyes burn. They were tearing up. The more she fought that, the harder her eyes pulsed. She tried to keep herself composed, but so many things were out of order right now that she could not keep track of everything. Something was bound to slip out.

Almost involuntarily, she found herself whispering, “Things would have been easier if he was around.”

“Who Lesly?”

“Christopher.”

“Your brother?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

What was there to talk about? The guy lived his whole life treating her like nothing but the family he always wanted, but she never returned the sentiment. She hated him at first because he was her father’s love child. Christopher was twelve when she first met him. He was four years younger than her. His mother had passed away when he was two and he spent the next ten years in the care of his maternal grandmother. Her father kept his existence a secret from her up until he could no longer do so. Christopher’s grandmother passed away and her father had no choice but to bring him over. What made it easier for her father to do so was the fact that her mother was no longer around, too. Her father only had one person’s feelings to worry about and those were hers. She spent the next year fully ignoring Christopher’s existence for her sanity’s sake up until the moment she went to college.

Lesly finally got to acknowledge Christopher as a brother when her father passed away. She had just graduated from college and she was trying to put herself through law school. The sight of Christopher weeping at her father’s funeral tore at her heart strings. She realized that Christopher had just lost the only family he knew. Their relationship grew from that point onward, but it was not long before it hit another hurdle along the way. She did not know whether it was the lack of guidance or the fact that he had been spoiled by everybody who cared for him throughout his life, but Christopher had grown up to be the most irresponsible person she had ever encountered. He could not keep himself in college and would not even bother looking for a job. His reason, of course, was that he did not need the money after he was finally granted access to the trust fund left to him by his maternal grandparent. Every encounter the two had followed the same routine course. She would criticize his irresponsible behaviour. He would call her a stuck-up a bitch, and then the two of them would keep their distance until he sought her out again. It was always him who initiated the contact, never her. He was the one who would call to check on her. He was the one who would arrange dinner appointments to meet her. He was the one who constantly called her office to plan things around her schedule. It was obvious that he loved her a great deal. She loved him, too, but for some reason, she was never capable of showing it, and now he was dead and his blood was on her hands alone.

Why didn’t she keep her mouth shut? If she had tried to reason with him rather than criticize and point his flaws every time she saw him, he would not have stormed out of her flat in anger and got himself killed in a car accident. Why did she do that? Why was she so harsh with him? She was an attorney and a damn excellent one. She should have been able to use her words in a more effective manner than that. Did she still resent him for being her father’s love child? Was that the real reason? Did she secretly want him dead? Did she even love him or was she lying to herself the entire time to make herself feel better? Maybe she deserved what happened to her, getting incarcerated, tortured, and raped. She should have died that day. She should not have been rescued.

“Lesly, what are you thinking?”

“Nothing,” Lesly answered in a small voice.

At this point, Mary could not help but sigh in frustration at her patient’s lack of cooperation. She placed the cap over her pen, put her notebook aside, took a deep breath, and tried to reason one more time, “Dear, I’m trying to help you. You are obviously suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. What you have been though is horrendous in every sense of the word. You have to open up.”

Still not convinced, Lesly asked, “What’s the point? It won’t erase the fact that it happened. It won’t erase the fact that I deserved it.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Because I’m a horrible human being,” Lesly replied softly.

“Lesly, it is common for sexual assault victims to blame themselves. The most important thing to remember is that…”

“Did you not hear me? I deserved it,” Lesly interrupted, almost breaking down.

Mary tried to hold back from saying anything that would further enrage Lesly. She took a deep breath, tried to rearrange her thoughts, and then proceeded one more time to convince her patient to speak, “Lesly, perhaps you can help me understand the situation better by telling me exactly what happened.”

Lesly tried to calm herself down. She closed her eyes to keep the tears that were threatening to fall from falling, and counted to ten. She could handle this. She could power through if she wanted. She had done it before, and she could do it again.

She slowly walked back to her seat, sat down, then spoke softly, “I helped someone.”

“And?” Mary asked encouragingly.

“I paid dearly for it.”

[victorianwhitechapel]

Ada Wilson

Ada Wilson (b. Zoa Ada Bisdey Elbury)

Birth date: 1863 Attacked: March, 1888 (ca. 25, survived) & 25th June 1891 (ca. 28, survived) Death (age): August 24th 1952 (aged 89)

Complexion: ? Eyes colour: ? Hair colour: ? Height: ? Ocupation: Seamstress, tailoress, waterproof hand clothes making.

Resting place: ?

***

Early life

Zoa Ada Bisdey Elbury was born in 1863 in Bristol, to Henry Edwin Elbury and Emma Fry. They married shortly before she was born. He had been born and bred in Bristol, and she was from Somerset. Henry’s father and elder brother were both stoneware potters – he followed them into this occupation, and seemed to do reasonably well. By 1871, Henry and Emma had been married for eight years, and had three children – Ada, Charles and Henry – and a servant. They lived in what seems to have been reasonable comfort on Clarence Square, in Bedminster, Bristol.

In the circumstances, it is hard to know whether the family’s next appearance in the census – at 39 Stratfield Road, in Bromley St Leonard, signified a reversal of fortunes. If guests and auxiliaries were anything to go by, then they had a lodger in 1881, rather than a servant. There were more mouths to feed (Rose, Emma and Thomas) and Ada, now 17, was earning her living – as a tailoress.

1888 Attack

Ada Wilson lived at 9 Maidman Street, Burdett road, a small thoroughfare lying midway between the East India Dock and Bow roads in Bow, a district in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in East London. On March 28, 1888, at 12:30am while she was at home she was attacked by a man of about 30 years of age, 5ft 6ins in height, with a sunburnt face and a fair moustache. He was wearing a dark coat, light trousers and a wide awake hat. According to Ada, the man was a completely unknown, and forced his way into the room and demanded money, and when she refused he stabbed her twice in the throat with a clasp knife and ran, leaving her for dead. It is reported that nearby neighbours almost captured the man, but he found his escape.

Witness and neighbour Rose Bierman, a young Jewess who lived upstairs with her mother at the same building as Ada, explained that she knew Ada was married but didn’t know her husband, and that she was always getting visitors. About the man who attacked her she said that “whether he was her husband or not I could not say.(…) Well, I don’t know who the young man was, but about midnight I heard the most terrible screams one can imagine. Running downstairs I saw Mrs. Wilson, partially dressed, wringing her hands and crying, ‘Stop that man for cutting my throat! He has stabbed me!’ She then fell fainting in the passage. I saw all that as I was coming downstairs, but as soon as I commenced to descend I noticed a young fair man rush to the front door and let himself out. He did not seem somehow to unfasten the catch as if he had been accustomed to do so before. He had a light coat on, I believe. I don’t know what kind of wound Mrs. Wilson has received, but it must have been deep, I should say, from the quantity of blood in the passage. I do not know what I shall do myself. I am now ‘keeping the feast,’ and how can I do so with what has occurred here? I am now going to remove to other lodgings.“

A couple of young women rushed up to two police-constables on duty outside the Royal Hotel, and said that a woman was being murdered. The two constables, Ronald  Saw  and  Thomas  Longhurst, immediately ran to the house indicated, and there found  Ada Wilson lying in the passage, bleeding profusely from a fearful wound in the throat. Doctor Wheeler, from the Mile End road, was instantly sent for, who, after binding up the woman’s wounds, sent her to the London Hospital (Sophia Ward), Whitechapel, where Dr William Rawes ascertained that she was in a very critical condition.

Detective-Inspectors Wildey and Dillworth had charge of the case, and looked for the attacker. Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, April 1, 1888 issue reports that “subsequent enquiries … revealed the fact that a dispute arose between the woman and a man who she states is her husband … He was pursued for some distance by a neighbour … But the would-be murderer sharply turned a corner, and was soon lost in the labyrinth of streets.” No conviction was ever obtained. By the time Ada Wilson returned home from the hospital, on April 27 1888, all hope of finding her attacker – or of proving anything in a court of law – seemed to have disappeared.

Authorities at the time of the 1888 Whitechapel murders made no link between her attack and those murders and she never was questioned again.

Mrs Wilson

On 2 January 1889, a little over eight months after returning from the hospital, she married Samuel Wilson (she was already using his surname as many women did when lived with their common-law husband but weren’t legally married) at the registry office in Bristol. Samuel was older than Ada: he said that he was thirty-three on his marriage certificate. He described himself as an engine fitter. He abandoned Ada in or around February 1891; she returned to her parents’ house in time for the 1891 census, at which point the family resided at 78 Rounton Road, Bromley St Leonard. According to the enumerator’s records, Ada was married, twenty-seven years of age, and a “waterproof hand” – making waterproof clothing from India rubber. This profession – lightly skilled, but perhaps quick to be picked up once one had the job – perhaps suggested a degree of specialisation, but Ada was still firmly in the clothing-manufacturing trade.

Ada was attacked by her husband again on June 25 1891. He was drunk and asked her money, which she didn’t have, and he asked to live with Ada again, but the proposition failed to appeal to her. “Go to work,” she said, “and be different”. He was arrested. According to the Daily News, July 8, 1891 issue, “Samuel Wilson, 40, was indicted for maliciously wounding Ada Wilson, his wife” who was also injured with a knife on her neck. Her parents were also assaulted. When the case came to the Quarter Sessions at Clerkenwell on 7 July 1891, Samuel Wilson defended himself. The chairman Mr. Richard Loveland-Loveland, said that “the prisoner was a very dangerous character, and therefore he would be sentenced to six months’ imprisonment with hard labour.” She asked for a separation.

Little  more is seen  of Samuel,  or  Ada.  Whether  they  ever  took out  their separation  order is  not  known. In December 1898 Ada’s brother Henry had a daughter and named her Zoa Lavinia  Elbury.

Later life

Zoa Ada Wilson died on August 24th 1952, aged 89 of a pneumonia, at the Whipps Cross Hospital in Leytonstone, London; she was the widow of engineer Samuel Wilson.

Aftermath

Authorities at the time of the murders made no link between her attacks and the Whitechapel murders. Samuel Wilson was never arrested for those crimes.

***

To know more:

Casebook website - Casebook Message Boards - Press report (from Casebook) - Press report (from Casebook) - Press report (from Casebook) - Biographic details from Casebook website - Wiki Casebook - Casebook Forums

JTR Forums

Jack The Ripper.org - Press reports (from Jack The Ripper.org)

Jack The Ripper Tour

The Jack The Ripper Tour

Jack The Ripper Map

Crimenes de Whitechapel (Spanish)

Jack El Destripador (Spanish)

Red Jack (Italian)

BEGG, Paul (2013): Jack The Ripper. The Facts.

BEGG, Paul & BENNETT, John (2014): The forgotten victims.

BEGG, Paul; FIDO, Martin & SKINNER, Keith (1996): The Jack The Ripper A – Z.

EDDLESTON, John J. (2001): Jack the Ripper: An Encyclopedia.

FIDO, Martin (1987, 1993): The Crimes, Detection and Death of Jack The Ripper.

HINTON, Bob (1998): From Hell… The Jack The Ripper Mystery.

JAKUBOWSKI, Maxim & BRAUND, Nathan (1999): The Mammoth Book of Jack The Ripper.

MATTHEWS, Rupert (2013): Jack the Ripper’s Street of Terror: Life during the reign of Victorian London’s most brutal killer.

RIPPER, Mark: Ada Wilson. Doubly Unfortunate, in Ripperologist no. 125, April 2012.

SCOTT, Christopher (2004): Jack the Ripper: A Cast of Thousands.

SUDGEN, Phillip (1994): The Complete History of Jack The Ripper.

[lovelilijazunde]

60 follower special

well well well, somehow i went a whole day without registering that I hit 60 followers, and then 61, and thusly should celebrate for it!

I decided to give you: a country I created! There is other stuff for it too, but I didn’t get images of them :( 

Warning: it’s long

Enjoy!

FACTS:

Create-A-Country

Note: all English spellings of the places and names have been implemented for the ease of the reader. We fully understand that Americans find it difficult to understand our written language, so we have translated into English as best we could.

Uzplauxvil (oose-PLOW-ville). The citizens are called Uzplauv. It was based off a mixture of the Latvian word for “flourishing”, uzplaukums, and the French word for town, “ville” because some of the first settlers of this area were French and Latvian, as well as English, Scandinavian, and German. The pronunciation is French-based.

Founded in 1790 on what is now the Canada/Minnesota border, it replaces the state of Minnesota and most of Ontario, as well as Wisconsin, half each of Illinois and Indiana, and shavings of Manitoba. It contains all five Great Lakes and the Headwaters of the Mississippi. North to South, it stretches from a point equal to the tip of Kentucky to Hudson Bay. East to West, it stretches from the Easternmost edge of Manitoba to the Western border of Quebec.

Uzplauxvil is landlocked, though there are many lakes contained inside of it, and it adjoins Hudson Bay. It contains a boreal shield in the North, with the Great Lakes-Lawrence forest region in the center, as well as prairie in the Southwest, coniferous forest in the Mideast, tallgrass aspen parkland in the Midwest, and deciduous forest in the Southeast. At the very Northmost stretch, there is a section of Hudson Plain. There are no mountains, only forests and plains.

The weather is cold and snowy in the winter, and warm in the summer. It gets colder the further north you go, and rainier the further East you go. It also rains a lot near the larger bodies of water. Those areas are also prone to thick fog in the fall and spring, as well as early mornings in the summer.

Most people in the Minnesosk region live around lakes, since there are so many of them there. People in Wixing, Bayside, and Dallirt tend to gravitate towards the central Great Lakes, just as Ryokin and Shlavto people tend to gravitate towards Hudson Bay. And of course, in all districts the people also center around the capitals of each district. Other than that, the population is pretty evenly distributed, with plenty of farm settlements and old logging settlements that turned into towns and cities spread across the districts.

In Uzplauxvil, there is a wide variety of work done, but a lot of it is centered around healthy logging and mining processes, as well as a booming trade in fishing. Since Uzplauxvil has so many lakes, and so many of them large, even though they are a landlocked country they still are a lead in quality fishing industry. Uzpluaxvil is very nature-based, and though this is a product mostly of the main religion, Quatrysm, it is truly a part of everyday life in Uzplauxvil. As a result of this, Uzplauxvil is regarded as the most eco-friendly developed country. They revolutionized hydroelectric power, and found a healthy substitute for coal and oil to fuel their wonderful system of elevated train tracks. They are amazingly quiet, as to disturb as little wildlife as possible. Uzplauvs have made many environmental-protection laws as a result of their belief that all creatures are equally important. Uzplauxvil has only one language. It is unique in the way that it is written. To the ear, they are speaking English, perhaps with a slight French accent in the North and West areas. But, written down, it is a mystifying alphabet of 37 letters. However, it a phonetic alphabet, with each letter having a specific sound, so it is simpler in that manner. Uzplauxvil is also unique in their numerical system, with completely different symbols than the traditional. Thus, the signs are completely indecipherable to someone who has not learned the language, and it would seem even more confusing that the inhabitants do not speak in gibberish, and instead in perfectly normal-sounding English. The alphabet is easy enough to learn. The numerical system is quite a bit harder, especially if you start out as a non-Uzplauv. There are definitely some challenges to living in Uzplauv, mostly concerning  the nature-based society. Lots of people think that Uzpluaxvil should focus less on the environment and more on technology. Unfortunately, this is in opposition to their eco-friendly approach to life and religion, so thankfully this is not a generally popular idea.

There is one major religion in Uzplauxvil, even though there is freedom of religion. Since it is the religion practiced by the royal family and most government officials, is is naturally the most popular and widespread. The major religion is called Quatrysm, with the practitioners called Quatrysts. It is unique to Uzplauxvil, and is the worship of four goddesses, the Quatrys: the goddess of animals, Nkumn; the goddess of families, Calmangh; the goddess of weather, Shavook; and the goddess of plants (such as harvest or lumber), Korytir. They make up the major four aspects of life. There is also a host of smaller gods and goddesses who serve the Quatrys. They are the gods and goddesses of more everyday things such as apple trees, blacksmithing, and clouds. This belief system influences the people to be more considerate towards nature and the world around us. It has also affected our modern technology, limiting the use of pollutant-creating transport systems and factories. There are four smaller important groups: the such as the Arts: gods and goddesses of the theater, music, writing, and tactile art. The religion has no food restrictions, but you must say a blessing over every meal you are presented with, because something had to die to gift you with the bounty. Many Quatrysts are vegetarians or vegans as a result of this, and, like Europe, they eat far less meats than vegetables as opposed to the U.S.A.

The other religions include the beliefs of the Anishinaabe and Dakota native americans who originally lived in the area, as well as different sects of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.

My country is governed by a Queen, a Council, and a Cabinet. 

The Council is made up of elected overall heads of each district. Their job is to address issues in the Queendom and provide laws and solutions to be approved by the Queen. They focus on making sure the needs of each district are met. 

The Queen position is hereditary, with the former Queen handpicking the most worthy of her female relatives as the new Queen. The qualities that a good Queen possesses must include a sense of justice, compassion, wisdom, a cool head under stress, common sense, and a sense of equality. She may choose any relative younger than her, including sisters (Marquess), aunts (Baroness), cousins (Duchess), nieces (Earless), daughters (Princess), granddaughters (Queenling), and grandnieces (Lady). These positions pre-Queen are mostly title only. They still have to work to put themselves in positions of power and to become landowners. This is to create a sense of humility and equality with the common people, and to create a system where anyone can advance. 

It is possible that if a suitable female candidate cannot be found, that a male would ascend the throne, but it has only happened once, after the reign of Queen Judith the Progressive in 1890. There were fewer girls born into the royal family at this time, and most of them were spoiled and deceitful. Thus, faced with limited female options, Queen Judith appointed her nephew, Earl William, to the throne. He became known as King William the Just, and was a wise and fair ruler. 

Any candidate must have passed the Maturity Test before she can ascend the throne, and often she takes it before beginning her training.

Common people are appointed to the Cabinet and Council, and the idea is that any future Queen should rule for the people, not the power and politics. Before becoming the Queen, the Queen Candidate must undergo vigorous training and tutoring by the Queen and the Queen’s advisors. She must be able to run a country as soon as she is crowned, so this training process takes years. Knowing this, the Queen usually begins to train a candidate as soon as possible. If the Queen dies without having handed over her throne, the paperwork would be horrendous, and the Cabinet and Council would have far more than their fair share of work. In the case of an unstable or unfit Queen, the Council and Cabinet will vote to impeach her. The Queen can pose or veto laws, and has the final say in any and all High Court cases, though she is reigned in by the judge and jury. 

The Queen may marry whomever she wishes to, though it is traditional to marry an Uzplauv.

The Cabinet is appointed by the Queen and approved by the Council. The Cabinet is made up of the heads of particular parts of the government such as Treasurer, Strategist, Armorer, Judge, Cook, etc., each of them representing their entire profession as well as leading them.

Since Uzplauxvil is split up into several districts, there are smaller Cabinets and Councils within each district. In each district, the council members are made up of the Heads of each town, with the cabinet members being the same positions as the Cabinet members, just at a local level, and deferring to the Cabinet members.

There are no political parties in Uzplauxvil. Every district is focused inwards, so that is as close as they come. This is based on the Uzplauv government looking at what happens to countries with political parties, and strongly discouraging that type of behavior there.

ALPHABET AND NUMERICAL SYSTEM:

NATIONAL ANTHEM:

[yngwrthr]

“The Minority Right-wing Leadership goes on the Offensive

The opposition between the KPD’s tendencies would revolve around the basic problem which was not resolved by the first congress: the position to be taken on the trade union question—but the battle lines would not be firmly drawn until the struggles were over. In effect, in early May of 1919 the Rote Fahne (organ of the Berlin central committee) was still directing the members of the KPD to participate in the reconstruction of the General Union of Miners. The central committee also helped form an Agricultural Workers Union and a Railroad Workers Union. Both would collapse after the failure of the strike called by the central committee. Despite its unfortunate experiences, the central committee, into whose leadership Levi was reluctantly co-opted in April, supported working with “what already exists”: the trade unions dominated by the SPD. The failure of the proletarian movement irremediably blocked any possibility that the former Spartacists would move towards the left, although some of them were open to the ideas of the left.

[...]

Levi, a lawyer by profession, had met Lenin in Switzerland during the war and had collaborated with the Zimmerwald left, moving closer to bolshevism, particularly in regard to the need for another party besides social democracy. He contributed to bringing about closer relations between Spartacus and the IKD. He situated himself at the point where bolshevism and Spartacism intersected. Once he was co-opted into the KPD leadership, he announced a new “centralist” line which was soon destined to lead to the exclusion of the leftist currents. From his contacts with the Bolsheviks he would retain only the idea of a strong party: what basically attracted him to Leninism was what the latter preserved of social democracy, and not those aspects which went beyond social democracy. He considered the left to be responsible for the defeats and denounced “verbal radicalism”: “to be a communist does not mean using the most radical phrases, but having the clearest vision of social reality at every moment”—precisely the kind of false opposition in whose name the Bolsheviks extirpated the leftist tendencies in Russia. The left responded immediately: the Hamburg Kommunistische Arbeiter-Zeitung published an article on The Roots of Dictatorship.[1] The new centralizing measures were due to the fact that many KPD members came from the USPD (the Spartacists). The party must be “the means provided to the masses for their own intervention”. Levi had applied, to the KPD, principles imported from the USPD, “an organization where the leaders rule the masses”.

[...]

The Heidelberg Congress

Availing itself of the method employed by the SPD right wing and center against the left prior to the war, the central committee lumped the members of the opposition together with the syndicalists: it would prove, however, that it knew perfectly well how to distinguish between them.[2] The central committee wanted to transform the debate into a struggle between Marxism and anarchosyndicalism. With this purpose in mind it quoted articles which had appeared in the leftist press. Since the left allowed all the currents of the real movement to express themselves in its press, it was hardly difficult to find articles which confused syndicalism with unionism in its columns: in the series entitled “A Contribution to the Debate on the Trade Union Question”, for example, which appeared in the Hamburg Kommunistische Arbeiter-Zeitung. Attending just to its texts and even to the minutiae of its texts, the central committee’s position might seem more rigorous and more Marxist than that of its opponents: this, at least, was how the Italian Left chose to assess the German Left. Reducing the German Left tendencies to a variety of revolutionary syndicalism post festum (cf. Chapter 17) contributes nothing new. The Italian Left’s study of the debates within the KPD provides endless proofs of textual fetishism, and shows a preference for Levi’s “principles” instead of the sometimes confused revolutionary positions of the opposition.[3]

During the summer the left factions of northern Germany had reached a clear conception of the new organizational form and had explained it with sufficient clarity to cause unionism to be attacked by The Syndicalist, the organ of the revolutionary syndicalists. The left was able to direct its counterattack at the root of the question. But Levi precipitated a split by unexpectedly distributing a text at the congress entitled “Principle Theses on the Fundamentals of Communist Tactics”.[4] The central committee claimed that the conditions of clandestinity justified the fact that this document had not previously been published and distributed for discussion within the party. But the text ended as follows: “Those members of the KPD who do not share these views concerning the nature, the organization and the activity of the party, or those who have opposed them orally or in writing, must be excluded from the party.” This text was, in addition, quite clever in that its first consequence was a split within the left, between the majority (Hamburg) and a minority (Bremen, with Frölich and Becker). The weight of the decentralizing tendencies within the left led Bremen to remain within the KPD,[5] all the more so as it seemed to find leftist aspects in the KPD. Within the KPD, it would be “the only communist current within the German section of the Third International. With its 8,000 members in Bremen and its daily newspaper, Der Kommunist, the Bremerlinke ... would only have a limited influence”.[6]

Indeed, that portion of Levi’s theses dedicated to electoral and trade union tactics was ambiguous in the highest degree and could be used to justify rightist and leftist methods at the same time, depending upon the situation. This will contribute to a better understanding of Bremen’s break with the left.

“The KPD cannot reject, in principle, any political means which contribute to the preparation for these great struggles. But these elections, considered merely as a preparatory means, must be subordinated to the revolutionary struggle, and the application of such means can be abandoned in utterly extraordinary political situations; when revolutionary actions have begun and move towards the decisive phase, then the application of parliamentary methods becomes obsolete or provisionally superfluous.”

Ultimately, the KPD program would not go beyond this expression of the problem. Among German communist theoreticians, only Rühle would analyze the issue by maintaining that the phase of the proletariat’s participation in parliamentary activity had utterly come to an end, and justified abstentionism in both the revolutionary period as well as the period of reaction.

The central committee’s “Theses” defined the trade union question in the following manner: “The task of the political party consists in assuring to the proletariat the free utilization of economic means, even, should it be necessary, at the cost of the destruction of the trade union form and the creation of new forms of organization.” The text’s tone was decidedly revolutionary and anti-unionist, and articulated an ideology of the “vanguard”.

“The idea that the party should abandon its leadership role in revolutionary actions, in favor of factory organizations [a meaningless sort of discussion, since the German party, while it was revolutionary, never “led” anything—N.B.] and that the party should limit itself to propaganda, is counterrevolutionary because it seeks to replace the clear vision of the workers vanguard with the chaotic power of the masses in a state of flux.”

The KAPD would also have a vanguardist perspective. But in its case the vanguard was not the group of people who were thought to have the most advanced consciousness, of those who possessed the clearest “perspective” on the issues, but all of those people who dedicated themselves to initiating, before anyone else did, the fight against society: they would thus set an example for the rest of the working class.

The “Theses” contained an idea which was seldom expressed during this era: “The conception according to which one can create mass movements by means of a particular form of organization, and consequently that the revolution is a matter of the form of organization, is rejected as a relapse into bourgeois utopia.”[7]

Only those who understood the true social and political nature of the authors could reject this text: they would consequently also know what the Levist leadership had done (and would yet do) (return to parliamentarism, work in the trade unions, fusion with the USPD) independently of what it first stated in accordance with the circumstances. It was this fraction of the left which rejected the “Theses” with 18 votes against 31 votes. On the fourth day of the congress, 25 delegates (the 18 plus 7 others with consultative votes) were excluded. These delegates represented the regions of Berlin (including, at that time, the Rote Fahne, the party’s mouthpiece), Hamburg (which would not join the Frölich-Becker tendency), Hanover, Essen, Dresden and Magdeburg.

After this first purge, there was still an internal opposition, since the abstentionist tendencies had remained in the party, believing that their position was justified by the theses they had just adopted. In regard to the trade union question, the central committee was forced to reach an accommodation with the representatives from Rhineland-Westphalia who did not want to hear anything about a return to the trade unions. In November 1919, the Ruhr sections of the KPD were still in favor of collaboration with the AAU, which might have prevented the infiltration of syndicalists into the region’s unions. But the KPD leadership opposed this proposal.[8]

Many have argued that the preparations for the First Congress of the KPD were rushed in order to deny its “representative” character. In any case, Heidelberg could barely achieve a slim majority in favor of parliamentary and trade union action: the last thesis on exclusion was adopted with 29 votes against 20. The opposition was still strong at that time. At the Third Congress (February 1920), “the majority of the districts of Northern Germany, including Berlin, had joined the opposition; the total number of party members was officially registered as 106,000 at Heidelberg, even though it could not have been so many, having been reduced by almost one-half”.[9] The theses approved at Heidelberg, according to Eberlein, generated strong opposition when they were publicized in the various party locals. In the summer of 1919, the KPD dissolved its organization in the army, the League of Red Soldiers, which had become a focal point of the opposition. But many combat organizations (KO) continued their activities after they were officially dissolved. Eberlein states that the majority of the operatives of the armed groups were later incorporated into the KAPD. Other exclusions would be necessary and the Third Congress would implement them.

The KPD and KPD (Opposition)

Between October 1919 and March 1920, the proletariat was still reeling from the effects of its defeat. The left honed its perspective, as did the right, represented by Levi, and above all by Radek. Radek had played an important role in Russia in the struggle against the left Socialist Revolutionaries and anarchists, which had caused him to lose his radical ideas and metamorphose into a convinced “anti-spontaneist”. Commissioned by the Bolshevik government, he returned to Germany at the end of 1918, and intervened in favor of the Spartacus-IKD fusion. After February 12, 1919, he spent one year in prison: however, while in prison he carried out a considerable amount of activity on two levels. On the one hand, he was the first to re-establish diplomatic relations between Russia and Germany, receiving numerous visits while in prison from various political and military figures.[10] He then became convinced that the German revolution was provisionally terminated and that the Soviet Union had to be consolidated through traditional diplomatic means. In addition, and this aspect of his activities was obviously connected to his diplomatic efforts, he supported Levi’s positions and pressed for the exclusion of the leftists. His work A Contribution to Communist Tactics, published by the central committee, was the ideological expression of the KPD’s tactics. The role of the party was analyzed in this pamphlet in totally Bolshevik terms: dictatorship of the so-called “conscious” elements over the rest of the class, which was conceived as a mass of labor power incapable of raising itself to a level of consciousness sufficient to carry out the revolution. To assume this role, the party must purge itself of all impure elements, and first of all, of all those who deny the revolutionary validity of the Leninist concept. Without explicitly saying so, Levi and Radek were equally guided by the idea of fusion with the USPD, which had several hundred thousand members, while the KPD had approximately 50,000 after its split: this was one more reason to exclude the left. The party had to return to “revolutionary parliamentarism” and to “entrism” in the trade unions, particularly since the membership of the latter had grown by 600% from November 1918 to December 1920: trade union membership had almost become compulsory with the institutionalization of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft (cf. the KAPD program).

Criticism came from many different leftist publications: Die Aktion, the Hamburg Kommunistische Arbeiter-Zeitung, the Bremen and Dresden Der Kommunist, etc... It was a very diverse movement. Some subversive artists (generally expressionists) contributed to Die Aktion: this was the source for the accusations of dilletantism and estheticism directed by the CI’s polemicists against the German Left. Some of these artists had a long history of opposition to the conservatism of the official workers movement. C. Einstein (a close associate of Pfempfert, the editor of Die Aktion), an enemy of rationalism and, in art, “classicism”, wrote in 1914: “A union of rationalists will never change anything; it would do nothing but bring about a little more order. The social democracy, the military academies and the public schools are perfectly identical.”[11] The revolutionary reflux would cause them to return to art, in one form or another.

In the meantime, they became acquainted with the texts of Pannekoek, especially World Revolution and Communist Tactics, published in Der Kommunist of Bremen in December 1919.[12] Another one of Pannekoek’s articles, published in the same journal, was entitled The New Blanquism.[13] This is how Pannekoek characterized the ultra-centralizing conceptions established as principles by the KPD central committee, for whom a political minority “gathering together the conscious proletarians” seizes and holds political power, identifying this process with the conquest of power by the proletariat. This is what happened in Russia: the party was justified there by the enormous mass of the peasantry, a significant part of which aspired to private property, to capitalism rather than to socialism. The preservation of a proletarian dictatorship therefore requires, in Russia, an enormous effort, and hence the appearance of a dictatorship of one part of the class over the class itself. In the conditions prevailing in the highly-developed capitalism of Western Europe, however, the revolution can only be the spontaneous uprising of the working masses. This is why the proletariat must overcome its bourgeois “culture”: this task cannot be accomplished by a leadership clique, however conscious it may be, but only through the maturation of social contradictions (for which theoretical works comprise a precondition and a basic element).

[hellomissmabel]

The worst in us - epilogue

MASTERLIST

Pairing: Bucky x reader, Steve x reader

Warnings: Mentions of cancer. BuckyNat.

Word count: 1.500 - ish (not counting the recap from the last chapter)

Summary: Flashforward. Y/N is still at Stark Hospital and much has changed.

A/N: Inspired by the word “Onsra” (Boro) - that heart-wrenching feeling you get when you realise a love won’t last. Written for @howlingbarnes her “languages of Love” challenge.

Series masterlist

Previously

The next morning comes way too soon, falling heavy on your heart. The story never made it to the front page, so you guess Bucky was able to change Natasha’s mind after all. But the damage has long been done. You’ve tried hard to let go, to make amends with the future that has just slipped past your fingers. And often you still allow yourself to swing back to the memories that were stolen from you.

Wanda was there to watch it all, to watch you get carried away by your loss, your spirit and your heart fade away. But she was also there to watch you pick yourself up again, filling yourself with moments of magic and wonder. After a while, you even stopped pondering about all that’s left undefined. But you will always remember that day you learnt that there will never be love at the bottom of a hole you dug for yourself.

“So those are all the new interns?,” you ask Wanda while you oversee the abundance of young and enthusiastic souls march into the atrium of Stark Hospital.

Wanda finishes up her report on her iPad before she looks over the balcony and at the interns gathered a couple floors down. “Yeah,” she sighs slightly annoyed, “You’ve got one or two, I guess?” She pulls up the register on her tablet and her eyes swiftly scan all the names on the list and their corresponding departments where they’ll be starting their internships as of today.

“One of two? That’s even less than last year. Seems the gynaecology department isn’t as popular as it used to be,” you joke lightly, spotting a certain young man in the crowd and waving at him, to which he turns around in embarrassment. “Or maybe it’s just budget cuts again.”

“Is that your eldest?” Wanda points to where the blond used to stand before he decided to ignore you, his mother.

“Yeah, that’s my son,” you chuckle dryly and take a peek at which residents you’re getting this year.

Wanda hums, a little smile playing on her lips. “Is he walking in his father’s footsteps?”

“Nah, he wants to be a brain surgeon. Says brains are way cooler than fractures and intestines and all that jazz. Or babies for that matter,” you laugh together with Wanda until you see Pepper step out of the elevator with Tony by her side, addressing the horde. Wanda, as head of communications now, takes this as her queue to return to her post and start getting the remaining paperwork done.

Returning the tablet to the brunette, you throw a glance over her shoulder where your husband is watching his son, too. “I’ll see you for lunch?”

“Yup! Have fun with the fresh blood!,” Wanda shouts back before rounding the corner and hopping into the elevator.

Your eyes cross briefly and you blow him a kiss, to which he shakes his head and winks back at you. It feels good to know that nothing has changed over the years. Sure, you hit a rough patch when he almost found out about your infidelity, but things got smoothed out rather quickly.

Steve never found out the true nature of your beef with Natasha. He will also never know why every year, on your birthday, you receive the exact same postcard signed with a “B”. Steve doesn’t know about what could’ve been between you and Bucky, he doesn’t need to know that those postcards are Bucky’s way of saying he still thinks about you. It’s a silent agreement you wish to keep just that, silent.

Do you still wonder what could’ve happened? Do you think you’ve made a mistake? Maybe. Did you regret it? Maybe. But do you regret your marriage and your children? Absolutely not.

You continue to watch your son until it’s time for all interns to team up their corresponding doctors. Finding yourself a spot close to your husband, you both stand at the back, waiting for your name to be called out. Steve links his pinkie finger with yours, a gesture that has stuck around during the years, and he smiles down at you fondly, with that exact same sparkle in his eyes.

Hardly paying any attention to the ceremonial distribution of interns, you take his other hand and place it over your stomach. “It’s a boy,” you mumble right before Pepper proclaims his name. Steve doesn’t have much time to digest the secret you’ve just shared with him but according to the rumour mill, he walked on air the entire day. And just like you knew he would, he charmed all the interns, just like last year and the years before that.

And just like Wanda said, you had only one resident. Not even two, just one. But she was a pretty girl, easy on the eyes and very well-spoken. As you were giving her a tour around the hospital, she only asked relevant questions and never interrupted you. You would get along just fine and were actually looking forward to tutoring her and passing along your knowledge of the trade.

“So do you have any kids of your own?,” she queries when you’ve arrived at your office.

“Well, my son is actually here today as well. He’s a foster kid we adopted when he was sixteen. The family that was supposed to take him in backed out because they wanted a baby, not a teenager.” You give her a sour smile at the memory, walking her towards the lecture hall where she’ll have most of her classes.

“I also have twins and this little bundle of joy,” you rub over your swollen belly, “We didn’t plan him but he’s more than welcome.”

She laughs joyfully, impressed by the fact you’ve got three kids. “Unfortunately I’m an only child. I would’ve loved a little brother or sister.”

“If it’s any consolation, three kids is a handful, I can assure you that,” you assure her as you lead her back to the front desk to pick up her badge.

She nods softly, thanking Wanda as she hands the girl her new badge. “What are their names?”

You give her an amused smile, charmed by her curiosity. “Teddy is my eldest and the twins are Becca and Buchanan. I know they probably sound old-fashioned to you.” The girl blushes adorably, already giving away the answer.

“But my husband’s mother died when she was young and he was raised by his aunt Rebecca, Becca for short. As for Buchanan…,” you let the name rest on your tongue first, “I once knew a man with that name. It was his middle name, though. He left quite the lasting impression on me. But I never call my son by his full name, I prefer to use Bucky instead.”

“Bucky?,” she asks intrigued, her eyes big with surprise. “That’s what my mother used to call my Dad, too.”

You stop in front of your office again, your hand on the doorknob. “What did you say your name was again?”

“Ellie. Ellie Barnes,” she pipes up in her sweet voice. “Do you by any chance know my father? James Barnes?”

“I’m sorry but the name doesn’t ring a bell,” you lie smoothly, opening the door to your office and telling her to take a seat. She does so and neatly folds her hands in her lap, looking less nervous and more chipper than when she first shook your hand.

“So why pick gynaecology, hm?”

“My mother is battling against ovarian cancer and my Dad always held a silent admiration for this profession. I guess that’s why I’ve always felt drawn to this line of work.”

Bucky’s memory soars into your thoughts and you succumb to your curiosity, those impeccable blue eyes at the back of your mind taking the upper hand. “Looks like you’re pretty close with your father.”

“Yeah, he’s a good guy. And even though things weren’t always good or great between my parents, he moved to the Hamptons when she got sick so he could take care of her. We talk almost every day. He was very excited to hear I’d be tagging along with you. You’ve got quite the reputation, Doctor Y/L/N.”

“Y/N,” you smile softly,” please call me Y/N. No need for such formalities.”

She visibly perks up at this. “Thank you, Y/N.”

“Doctor Y/L/N,” Darcy pops from behind her computer, holding a standard-issue hospital phone to her ear. “It seems your pager isn’t working. But a woman just went into labour in the waiting room on the third floor.”

You exchange glances with Ellie. “Ready for some action? You can sit this one out of you want to. But I can tell you that watching from the side-lines isn’t nearly as exciting as getting in the action itself.”

“No, I’m good. I’ve got this,” she guarantees you, straightening her back while tying her chestnut locks in a messy ponytail, the exact same hair colour as her father.

However, it seems she inherited much more than just his hair colour, but also his charm, attitude and hypnotic eyes. You’d even dare say they’re more spellbinding than you remember but then again, it’s been years and you memory might be fooling you.

And if she truly is her father’s daughter, you’re sure she’s up to the task. Who knows, maybe she’ll even be as good as you. Or even better.

Fin

Tagging: @avengerofyourheart @a-little-hell-to-raise @marvelingatthewonder @mrshopkirk @hardcorehippos @knittingknerdy @winterboobaer @italwaysendsinafightt @viollettes @myserium @feelmyroarrrr @justareader @austinamelio @volklana @4theluvofall @bovaria @themcuhasruinedme @theoneandonlysaucymo @caplanbuckybarnes @nenyakj @amrita31199 @emilyevanston @minervaem @howlingbarnes @buchananbarnestrash @youandb @you-and-bucky @fvckingsteverogers @thatawkwardtinyperson @that-sokovian-bastard @abovethesmokestacks @marvelrevival @marvel-fanfiction @justanotherbuckydevotee @barnes-heaven @heartmade-writingbucky @buckyywiththegoodhair @captnbarnesrogers @mellifluous-melodramas @its-not-a-phase-hux @melconnor2007 @ivvitm1109 @toofuckinfabulous @ailynalonso15 @jurassicbarnes @hollycornish @delicatecapnerd @camigt1999 @learisa @curlyexpat @palaiasaurus64 @fanndas-snow-goddess @crisssivonne @yourenotrogers @tomhollandzs

Onsra tag list: @melavale @debzybrazy @supernaturaldean67 @tomboyk @shadowhunter7 @allyp1023 @sophiedarting @movingonto-betterthings @magicintheelements  @seeyainanothalifebrotha @redroomproperty @dsny87 @aquabrie @shortiiqt16  @lost-in-the-stories @themanwiththemetalarm @passiononfire  @lbouvet @sugardaddybarnes @c0ldhearted  @soymikael @ourdreamsrealized @aletheladyinred @mileysebschmidt  @evyiione @nerdyandproud9 @mizzzpink @salty-holographic-stickers @curlycals

@itsjaynebird @mauriccee (tumblr won’t let me tag you!) @with-a-hint-of-pesto-aioli (I’m sorry!!!)

[zydrateacademy]

Current Activities in Gaming #196

BDO-Roleplaying edition! I haven’t done much but I really need to rant a bit. I consider myself fairly open minded when it comes to a character concept level. That wasn’t really the issue here though. The character concept in question was... fine, for what little I know about Black Desert lore. They were one of the elven classes, they were a couple hundred years old, and were expelled from their noble family because it was either them or a lady lover they had. I don’t know what this universe’s stance on homosexuality is but I can understand if other universes have a conservative edge to it. I guess it depends on how conservative Korea itself is, I guess? I don’t know. What little background I had gotten from this specific roleplayer was mostly fine, but it was their style that irritated me. The fact that they couldn’t do three lines of text without a couple of typo’s should have been a warning sign for me, usually a clear sign of youth. I know this because I remember how I typed when I was a youngling on the internet. It was bad, not necessarily born out of laziness but mostly just never paid attention. Somehow most of my content was just a race to the submit button and if my point came across then who cares, right? Their words were not abysmal to look at to be fair, but the warning signs started cropping up over and over but so far my RP has been relegated to the tavern RP hotspot. Tavern RP has always been bottom barrel and I really should know better when the usual RP scene here is several scantily clad women sitting around in a circle, sometimes shamelessly flirting with each other.

Anyway, one of them approaches me in my usual coward corner, where I wallflower until someone sees fit to approach me. Someone did. At first it was fairly standard bar-room talk. Asked me name, profession, tried to get into my hobbies. She even earned some level of respect when she, ICly, pointed out the usual trope of people dropping their entire backstories with no real provocation. She guarded some of her secrets as some memories can be painful, especially for an immortal race and it’s probably very difficult to live an immortal lifespan without a few mistakes along the way. I can respect that. Unfortunately, I don’t think they thought that deeply.

This person was on me for the better part of two hours, and I noticed some issues with their style. Firstly, their sense of location and law. I’ll elaborate shortly. My character is a complicated woman and I do something that I don’t think any other roleplayers really do: Lie. Sure, some rogues will lie about what they do for a living. They’re not a thief... They work in “acquisitions”, and when inquired they’ll usually just spin it in some way. Many players may engage in lies of omission, by not giving their RP partner all the information in a single sitting. Fair enough. But how often do player characters actively give false information? Mine does. She will never mention and outright deny any criminal enterprising. Her work as a thief and assassin, she will lie about outright. She advertises herself as a bit of an “Anti-thief”, someone who breaks into homes, businesses, and sometimes even prisons. I think that’s a real job IRL, known as a “security consultant” these days. That in itself isn’t a lie, but she makes no mention of actually stealing from certain clients while she does it. “Looks like someone beat me here, some of your stuff is missing. Here’s what you can do to improve your current accommodations.” That kind of thing. Unfortunately this skill is lost on lesser players. Multiple times, my ‘guest’ would make offhanded comments that amounted to outright murder. Their morality was variable but strange. Claiming to be a sort of adventurer who takes on basic jobs but then later admitting that not enough work gives her a challenge (consistency is probably this player’s second problem). Yet when my character tried to call her out on this she’d usually justify it with things like “Well when a corrupt noble goes away, who’s going to care?” This is insane to me. Murder in general is looked down upon, even assassination is illegal. I asked some sources about the assassin-like classes and they’re largely from an eastern landmass that isn’t even in the game yet, so their culture is largely unknown but the consensus seems to be that assassination is not an actual legal institution in the landmasses we have access to. Yet this person just kept offhandedly commenting on killing people. So there’s that.  Next on the list was Ego. She partook in some interest in hiring my character, not really getting the hint (fourth on the list: Not really taking any social cues) that her work as an anti-thief is largely background RP. I wasn’t looking to make an entire event of it, at least not yet. The idea was to just give her an address, I’ll compile some basic information about their home and would write an IC report when I found the time. I’d do this for anyone.  Nay, this person insisted to be there with me as a ‘guide’, but I would later find out that this player would prefer to metagame and godmode my actions every step of the way. “Nope, can’t do that, there’s a magic rune in the way” or “That lock is the absolute best she can afford, because she herself is an expert lockpicker” (an actual IC claim from earlier in the conversation when asking about my character’s work). Because of course, right? At one point, and this was all IC, I mentioned “just give me your home address and I’ll work on a report” and she literally replies with something to the effect of “Well if my magic does the job there won’t be a report to write.” ...So there’s a couple of things to unpack there. Not for a second did this person ask or address any defenses, immunities, or magic that I myself might possess. Not once did they note that I wouldn’t think about any magical defenses. The discussion never really got to an OOC portion but this player just up and went “Oh you’ll just straight up die if you break into my house by the way”. I was wondering why they kept wanting to hire me at all. Sounds solid. A+. Your stuff is secure. Fuck off?

It gets worse. After a couple of hours dealing with this insane prattling, circular conversation with about three mentions of actual murder threats against other nobles in a crowded, open inn... An associate I acquired from the BDORP forums finally logs into approach me for an IC arms deal. To be fair, this person does not know any of that. They don’t know that we are about to engage in what is essentially a pre-arranged mini-event to set up some plotlines. The problem is... They were like an annoying piece of tape that would cling to your hand despite trying to get into the trashcan. My new acquaintance is a better writer than me by miles... Or at least they are while I’m still really sick (had to call out of work a couple days ago). They still do something I don’t always do: Para-RP. That’s obviously short for “paragraphs”, meaning they don’t really post unless they have four or five full lines describing the exact tone she wields and the nuances of her ever changing facial expression. It’s very compelling stuff, though I did find it redundant every now and then. They also use “She would take this action” form of emotes. Would? So... are they? Is someone going to stop them? When are they going to? Just say you’re doing the thing! Still, can’t deny that it’s not fun to read. Anyway, this new acquaintance o’ mine spouts several paragraphs and this girl about how she’s not at all interested in what she has to offer as what is essentially “Generic Adventurer Elf #2713″. Each post getting a bit irritated than the last as the player experienced my frustration in an expedited timeframe. Eventually we head off to some docks for dock-trade related RP and certain PM’s where exchanged. My acquaintance actually stated that they warned this person that it would be dangerous, and they do a good job of giving off an aura of “not-to-be-fucked-with”, the kind of aura I hope my character conveys but doesn’t necessarily come through all too often. Once more, they stick to us like a growth. They don’t do much to hinder or interrupt the RP itself but they were clearly not welcome. They just kept interjecting with their character’s thoughts, like when my girl opened some crates of guns they would go “Ooh very nice”. Like shut the fuck up, this is an arms deal. Eventually my new team actually loads a gun and shoots at her, with a couple of paragraphs explaining what exactly would be needed to avoid being shot in the face. Distance would have to be gained, something would have to be thrown in the way. It was literally spelled out for them, practically handing them the ammunition needed to type out a proper avoidance response. I myself would have utilized my character’s martial arts, talking about her agility and might have slung one of the wooden crates in front of the bullet and diving behind the build (which she could have done at her position) and fleeing to a better vantage point to prepare for an actual firefight. Nay, all of that makes too much sense. All we get is a couple of lines that amount to “She uses her elf reflexes to bring her armored arm up to block the shot”. That’s all we got. She... lifted her arm up.  After a brief spout of OOC rage she basically got ignored by all three of us present because it’s godmoding at worst, and lazy in the best of cases. True, nobody has the right to just off another character without some OOC permissions involved. They were warned that riding our tails would be dangerous and they remained attached to us for seemingly no reason. After that my new team just made a five-post epic emote about how some shadow engulfed them and sent them away. Godmodey? Who cares, we just needed an excuse to not address their presence. This is a large rant for a seemingly petty issue in low-barrel tavern RP. You’re partially right, but this went on for maybe three or so hours and every red flag I saw, I was able to identify and I just acquired a huge mental list of all the things she was doing wrong and had to express it. This is not necessarily the primary experience of RP I have had on BDO, and my little arms deal is a sign of more interesting things to come. I guess I’m just stuck in a ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ moment. In a community where I am a newbie with no name, parking in a tavern is just a way to eavesdrop and maybe find some gems in the rough (which I have). Either way I hope this was an amusing read.

[pantmonger]

The Witch Cult Kickstarter Postmortem

With my Kickstarter wrapping up and only reaching five percent of its funding target I think we can safely say that it failed to achieve its goal. So now is the time to learn from this, and just as the entirety of the project up to this point has been public, I will also make this post-mortem public, in the hope others can learn from my mistakes. Below the cut is a lengthy read. Time to own some mistakes.

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What do I think were the failings of the project.

Audience: The limited size of my reach / audience

This I feel was the largest issue contributing to the Kickstarter failing to get funded. In some of these areas I personally needed to do better. While others areas were down to the vagaries of fortune. However it was such a big one that I will break it into several sub categories.

Audience: My existing fan base was not large enough to support the funding needed.

A year ago when I quit my job to commence work on this project I understood that if it was going to get funded, I needed an audience. With that in mind I read books on expanding your audience and implemented as many of the tips as I was able.

Daily updates, free content, tutorials, engaging with audience etc. Some of these I was doing anyway, but others embraced and implemented. Some others I lacked the money and /or free time to implement, such as competitions. This may have been an effort to reward miscalculation.

But there was always going to be an uncontrollable element here. By and large people who see my work like it. It is, without being immodest, of professional quality. It has after all been my profession for quite some time. Of those that see and like my work a percentage hang around to see more. But I have never gone viral, I have never had the fortune of cracking the number of fans that snowballs into a solid, interested, financially supporting, fan base of size. That is one nut I just don’t know how to crack. But I kept plugging away in to hope of it happening.

By the end of the year I had approximately doubled my reach with 500+ followers both on Facebook and Tumblr and another 300+ on Twitter.

But 1300 followers was just not enough for a project with such a low product price per unit but high overall needed funding to succeed. Even if everyone had financially engaged (a big ask there) at $15 each I was going to need 4500 to hit the funding goal. That number would now require a sizable uptake from previously not engaged people. Too much as it would turn out.  

Audience: Advertising and paid reach.

Which brings me to the second way to get interested eyes on your project, advertising and promotion. Here my failures were two fold. I do not possess skills in this area, and I did not have the funds to cover realistic advertising costs nor to hire someone who would know what they were doing in this regard.

I do not personally know what advertisements work best, what are the best money to return strategies or the best places to target. I went in totally blind, and that hurt the project. I have seen many posts about this very topic and how foolish it is to go in without a publicist but I had little choice due to the no funds problem.

In the end I spent a small amount, a couple of hundred dollars, on things like Facebook targeted advertising and similar, but only really gained a handful of likes and followers for the money. A very low return on investment as it were.

If I had more money to throw at advertising, I may have gotten more interested people, but even so I probably would have wanted to pour it into the project instead as I do not know where the threshold for more return then investment sits in this regard.  

Audience: Journalists and third party coverage.

Another mix of bad lack and poor effort combined here I'm afraid.

Talking to a few journalist friends, few of them if any are interested in covering generic Kickstarters anymore. That hurt my chances. But ultimately it was I who really dropped the ball here.

I have a knee jerk hate of self-promotion. Of spinning my message (even when it requires very little spin). Thus my efforts in contacting people were token at best. And I ignored other avenues as I did not want to 'trade' off hot button topics.

My game features a main character who is a POC with no assigned gender. Yet I failed to reach out to those that might want to cover such things.

My game is about a group of refugees fleeing oppression. Yet I failed to reach out to those that might want to cover such things.

My game is a solo project by a Brisbane local and once again I failed to reach out to those that cover these things.

If there was a ball I dropped, it was this one, all because I feel uncomfortable with that kind of promotion.

Lack of a demo

This is pretty straight forward. I should have had a demo, a vertical slice. And I did not. While I was working on my own dime, I wanted to focus on things that would matter, that I enjoyed, even if the project was to fail.

So I focused on art, on reusable in game assets, and on design. I ignored all but the most surface level code, as I viewed it as a chore. A necessary and completable chore, but one that could be done when I was getting 'paid' for the project.  

This was a mistake.

By the time I realised it, it was too late to correct. I feel that it affected peoples understanding of the project, and their faith that it could be completed by me, an artist.

And I missed out on the promotion a fun playable demo would have garnered.

Take home - Make a demo, preferably playable.

Lack of novelty / gimmick / stunning original gameplay

Everyone loves a gimmick, some novelty or a truly original gameplay break through.

My game little in the way of these things and those it had I did not highlight.

I felt that the structured and later emergent gameplay of solving platform puzzles and challenges through the manipulation of a personal light source and sound in an oblique view dungeon crawl was interesting in its own right. But I did a terrible job of drawing attention to this.

A demo would have helped, as would have more concrete examples.

But this was another dropped ball and a bad one to drop when the market is saturated with cookie cutter clones and cash -ins, I needed to stand out, but I failed to do so.

Saturation of the market.

This is obviously beyond my control but I would be remiss not to mention it.

At the moment every person and their dog is pumping out indie titles. Some are solid passion projects, others shameless 2 month re-skin cash ins. Consumers are both spoiled for choice and risk adverse and that's just in regards to products already on the market, not ones that require a chancy investment.

This made the challenge of getting my project funded greater, and unfortunately I failed to meet that challenge.

The little things

There are also a few minor things that I felt hurt my chances.

Not detailing my costs.

I got some general feedback from people who felt I was asking for too much funding at 70k for a solo project. It probably would have helped to do a break down that showed how once you took out the fees (10%) and the GST (10%) it dropped the amount of funding to $56k Australian over 1.5 years and that funding would also attract income tax. Meaning for that development period I would be working at a substantial pay cut. But without making that info clear and public people saw 70k and some thought it was an excessive money grab.

No physical assets

I went digital assets for simple reasons: cost control and available time.

I could not afford the time needed to deal with having physical products made, sent out, dealing with refunds, damages and returns, faulty products, overseas postage estimates and blowouts. I have no experience with any of these things and the financial margins were already so narrow that they could have collapsed the project. The risk seemed too great and I gave it a pass.

But people do love physical rewards, so it most likely cost me backers, but I cannot accurately predict how much.

Going it alone.

Yeah, this hurt me. Given the one bit of journalism about my project highlighted this as a major risk, it would be silly in retrospect to not accept that it would of influenced people faith in the project.

I was blinded by the desire to make my project. I did not want to have to convince someone else to shoulder the risk of my passion project and work on it for a year with me on that basis. I certainly did not have the money to pay someone. So I went it alone, and this hurt the project. I still think overall it was the right choice, but it was a factor the projects funding failure.

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What do I think were the success of the project.

Quality of the promotional art

Having a year is which to work on a lot of illustration and concept probably gave me the biggest skill jump I have had since I was studying it back in 2003. This showed in the quality of the promotional work for 'The Witch Cult' which was some of the best work I have ever done.

I felt it was effective at communicating the mood and tone of the game. As well as some of the novelty of the setting, such as the chicken huts striding over a Victorian London type setting.

The art did its job as well as I could of hoped, and was a definite successful part of the project.

Volume of Existing Assets

I felt the volume of assets I was able to create prior to the Kickstarter going live and throughout its existence helped foster faith in the project.

I felt it showed that the scope and detail that the project would encapsulate. That it was indicative of and communicated the expected final quality of the project. And that it was within my ability to deliver.

In retrospect, as mentioned above, the project should of cut back a bit in this area and added more on the code front. But I am still placing the effect of having these assets going in as something that affected the Kickstarter in a positive way.

The volume and scope of concept work.

Similar to above, having a large catalogue of concept art assets helped communicate the themes, tone and feel of the game.

They were also instrumental is generating interest, especially via the drip feed over time in the year leading up to the launch. They are probably primarily responsible for the increase in my audience size over the time leading up to the launch.  

Thus they served the dual process of providing me with necessary concept and served a second promotional function. I count this as one of the projects most successful parts.

Personal discipline

Over the duration of this project, while working from home and living off my own savings I managed to put in a solid 8 hours per day, 5 days a week for almost the entire year.

And beyond this being a point of personal pride, I felt that helped build backer faith that I would be able to deliver the project; that it would not fail through lack of effort or due to my depression (an illness that I have always been public about). That this was communicated through the number and quality of existing assets being produced by a me as solo developer. I feel this helped the project immensely and was a definite win.

The Kickstarter video and pitch itself

I researched a number of successful Kickstarters, especially around projects I personally loved like 'Sunless Sea' and took on board their basic structure.

I invested time into making little visual assets such a subject headers to give the entire pitch a polished feel.

I tested with my existing audience the kind of rewards that they liked and ones they were not so keen on and price points for them.

I made the pitch video the same way as I intended to do in game cut scenes, to communicate to backers the setting and its themes. Bought licences for music and at the risk of blowing my own horn, my own experiences with performance helped me with the quality of the overall video and its voice over narrative.

I feel all of this went as well as I could have hoped  

Within a few days I was endorsed as a 'Project we Love' by Kickstarter.

Over 25 percent of backers pledged enough to get the 'art of' book, the comic or both’.  

15% of people who watched the video, watched it to completion all 3.5min of it.

This area was in my opinion one of the successful ones.

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Conclusions

In the end the Kickstarter failed to achieve is funding goal. Although I personally had faith in the product, I failed to inspire others to the necessary levels through some promotional failing on my behalf and due to some elements beyond my direct control.

If I was to hit one big take home from this: You need an audience!

I still don't know how to get one. Good product, advertising, luck with journalists, luck with something going viral a mixture of all these things or something I have not yet considered. It is a hurdle, in my opinion, the biggest.

But much good that came out of this, despite its failure to get funded. I made some new contacts with other games makers and indie peers.

I gained new audience and extended my reach.

I felt part of the games industry again, in a way I had not since the big Australian crash.

I got to experience a year in which I was my own boss and got to make my own creative decisions. An entire year to work on my art: that was pretty amazing.

I also leave the Kickstarter with general good feelings about the attempt. People were willing to back my project, to pay for my art. Being a solo artist, you can often feel the yoke of impostor syndrome. But a bunch of folk, the majority of them strangers, put money forward saying 'I like your work, your project.'

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Where to now

In the short term I will need to take a step away from the project proper. My self-funding has come to an end and through necessity  I must again seek employment. Preferably back in the games and general art industries, as creating things is the only satisfying path for me.

I would still like to see the game itself become a reality. It will most likely happen by me working on it part time as my hobby project. But thought of pitching it at a publisher or existing game company may be other paths I could try.

I would also still like to tell the story of the cult, and always intended to make a comic about it, so that’s probably the next step for it. Who knows, maybe through comics, further art and demos I might gain that elusive beast called Audience and Kickstarter the whole thing over again, successfully this time.

To those who came on this journey with me, especially those that backed the project. Thank you. It’s been an absolute pleasure.

Michael Fitzhywel and The Witch Cult.

[drjekan]

Questions to Ponder Chapter 3. Blendkit 2017

Questions to Ponder How much of the final course grade do you typically allot to testing? How many tests/exams do you usually require? How can you avoid creating a “high stakes” environment that may inadvertently set students up for failure/cheating?  

·         It is usually the institution that applies the rules as to what can be done in assessment. I have been in some huge battles over this issue in several countries, as often those holding the institutional power are far from being subject experts in education or in assessing knowledge and seem rooted in test, test and test.  Unfortunately, his also include the teachers within the colleges and universities that have little or no formal training in the science, art and craft of teaching. It is beyond me how these institutions think that a Masters degree or a PhD qualifies you to teach? It is this institutional arrogance that is at the heart of bad education experiences in higher education.I am saddened beyond belief that this situation has not been addressed yet. It is even more distressing for students to be taught by outdated higher education teachers often holding the institutional rank of associate Professor and above. I have seen here in Japan, Deans of Nursing with no Doctorates in any subjects. Courses run by medical doctors, well great is they are teaching anatomy but if they-they think that an MD training is higher than a PhD then they really need to retire and quickly.Again I argue just because they have an MD, it does not mean that they can actually understand teaching. Teaching is not an add-on item. It is its own subject-specific science, art and craft as mentioned above.Put any of these over inflated blowhards up against a trained teacher in their subject and they will be soon exposed as the advocates of emperors clothing syndrome that they are. If I sound angry, I am, for I suspect the numbers of students who have had their lives marked by such people will be in the millions.

It is easy to avoid setting up high-stakes environments if you are working with educational professionals. Formative assessment, self-testing and reflection is a process where the student acquires knowledge over time. Course weighting should be in the process, the evidence of that process and the knowledge gained. If knowledge processed in, is the same knowledge processed out, it is banking education, memory learning and not about education. Students have to be encouraged to think and develop knowledge plus. However that is not the purpose of education, is it? I am reminded of what I wrote in My doctoral thesis at Bath University in the United Kingdom;

For an example - my values of love and compassion as a nurse and priest and how the nursing profession and educational system does not exemplify these values, they are almost a contradiction.  Nursing and education have different political and contextual agendas.  The values that I want to teach in the classroom of critical enquiry can be blocked by the policing and policy power of the establishment.  I want to be an educator who empowers students to think, the contradiction is I could actually be a banking educator (Freire 1970; Freire and Macedo 1987) in my actual practice.  Deciding which thread is the most important and how to frame that thread was problematic to me.  I truly could not disentangle the varying elements of my being and just present a selected distorted exclusion account’

(personal journal entry, August 4, 2003)

Again in 2007 in my thesis I was still struggling with the banking education system;

I am conscious that I am a product of my own culture and that I have been imported into Japan, in a pedagogic sense.   With the authority of the university, I brought with me a Western body of knowledge with which, if I delivered it without the consciousness that I claim, could easily result in my becoming a banking educator.  I could actually have reinforced the educative colonisation of Japanese nursing by Western educational paradigms (Wolferen 1991). What I have strived to achieve, and I claim to have succeeded in this, is the encouragement of Japanese nursing students to engage with a curriculum that was conceptualised through a lens of Western educational thinking and construction, but not in a sense that the knowledge I present has any more “rightness” than their own forms of knowing. Rather, I suggest that we are co-creating a transcultural learning space, one in which I am being instructed, moulded and modified by my context and praxis, and my students likewise.  This unique curriculum is one that is combined with a curriculum content that is Western in its educational framing and disciplines,  Eastern in its spiritual conceptualisation and made Japanese through its emergence in actual practice and implementation.  Therefore, in essence, a new form of educational practice has emerged in the inclusional pedagogy of the unique.(p.137)

Adler-Collins 2007. Unpublished doctoral thesis. Bath University Department of Education.

 What expectations do you have for online assessments? How do these expectations compare to those you have for face-to-face assessments? Are you harbouring any biases?

 ·         Online assessments in my thinking as expressed above are part of a process. The student self-assesses and critically reflect back what did he/she learn, what worked, what did not work. In formative assessment (informal) the online software I use provides me with in-depth analysis of every question asked. If several students have an issue with a particular question. Then it has been sign posted and my intervention is to revisit the subject and see how I can resolve the understanding. With large classes, I can easily support students with an audio feedback, noting the problem and suggesting possible ways forward.

·         I am male, white and English, of course, I have basses. I am privileged by my skin colour, my gender and my history. As long as I am mindful of these filters and conscious how they can change the lens of my interreactions. Then I do not see a problem. I am a Buddhist monk. I reflect, reflect and reflect. I have deconstructed the filters of my selfhood, I almost disappeared. Smile.

What trade-offs do you see between the affordances of auto-scored online quizzes and project-based assessments? How will you strike the right balance in your blended learning course?

Huuum, not such a big issue. Auto scored is great when it’s a factual item being reviewed. Critical thinking, ideas need manual reviewing. Holistic rubrics, if they are well designed can bring about a consistency of marking. But fall down if you are looking for original thinking. Teachers are at the heart of assessment, they advocate for the student's progress in gaining knowledge. Online marking is a tool, and only that it does what it is programmed to do.Human interaction can make those connections beyond that of a programme.

How will you implement formal and informal assessments of learning into your blended learning course? Will these all take place face-to-face, online, or in a combination?

 I am not a fan of removing the teacher from the equation. F2F is a precious time for the student and the educator/ teacher or facilitator. They engage with their knowledge progression, teachers identify the management of that process. Combinations work well. I use coffee shop clinic, an informal meeting where students can talk about issues. peer to peer, peer to the teacher. And the coffee is good..smile.

qfZSWwo~Ki5L

[jenesys-ph-blog]

Day 4: Shinkansen Bullet Train Ride to Sendai and Lecture on Japanese Agriculture Cooperative

Abdel: Again, the legendary Japanese time is confirmed: the bullet train arrived on time. Left on time. The bullet train? Of course, I was happily delightful inside to have finally experience the stuff you just read in your text books in elementary. Plus, I saw snow for the first time.

*It must be a first world country thing, or maybe just the Japanese, but I've noticed that there were no ticket inspections made during the entire two-hour trip from Tokyo to Sendai. People could switch seats but what about stowaways? I was meaning to ask that but never got the chance too.

*I appreciated Soma-san, one of Group C's coordinator, pulling Jun and I to the 0 km point at the Tokyo Station, the originating point of Japan's national railway network. Much like Rizal Park being the origin of all national highways in the Philippines, and the previous 0km in my beloved birthplace Marawi City, it was an Instagrammable moment. So I did, with Soma-san and Jun's shoes as well.

*It was unfortunate that the visit to the Miyagi Prefectural Government did not push thru. Hearing the supposed lecture on "an outline of the region , an introduction of the features and appeals of the industries and specialties; role of local self-governing body with emphasis on efforts toward regional economic revitalization; and economic, trade, and investment relationship with participating countries" from Japanese government officials firsthand would have not onlu achieved that purpose but also exposed us to actual public officers of Japan.

*The replacement visit though at Japan Agriculture Cooperative (JA) was welcome. All of the delegates had several questions for the President of JA, the speaker, after his presentation. As the President's presentation tackled on the present state of agricultural cooperatives nationwide and their role in securing Japan's agricultural sector, we all could relate. Most ASEAN countries, with India included, are experiencing the phenomenon of farmers becoming less and less viable as a profession. As of 2015, Japan's population engaged in farming is at 1.7%, or 2.09 million out of the 120 million Japanese.

 Anya: Today was E X H A U S T I N G. Not to complain tho, it was exciting as well :D

Early call time today because we got on the shinkansen bullet train! It was comfortable and quite warm inside the train. As a passenger, I wouldn’t feel the full speed of the train. However, looking outside, I noticed that huge buildings and streets were passing us by really quickly. That was when I realized that the shinkansen is really a powerful transportation technology as it covered those distances in second. With further calculations, our ride was two hours long so that meant that our destination, Miyagi Prefecture, was very far from the capital. Another exciting thing that happened during the train ride was seeing snow on the way! I had never seen snow before so I was thrilled to see it up close and sticking to the ground. I read that Sendai didn’t have much snow so I soaked up the sight of it from the train.

Once we reached Sendai, we got on a bus and went straight to the Japan Agricultural Cooperatives office. Mr. Masayoshi Abe. a senior executive of JA Midorino, introduced us to the concept of an agricultural cooperative and the role of JA to the Japanese farmers. The lecture made me realize that agriculture was still an important part of the economy; however, due to the technological development in Japan, there seemed to be decreasing agricultural practices. It was a bit alarming that the sales level had not changed much in the past decade (and in fact, decreasing in terms of rice sales!!), accompanied by the aging problem of the farmers. It was a good thing that they kept pushing for programs to engage the youth in farming, supported by their national government. It was smart of them to try to bring in the youth from the cities, because usually they were the ones with new technique, contributing to the development of the local economy.

 Blessy: It was the most interesting topic to me since my field is related to Agriculture. I realized that Philippines has more abundant land area for farming than Japan and yet our farmers are poor. There is a good support Japan government is giving to their farmers to sustain the improvement of their agriculture sector.

The average age of farmers is younger in the Philipines that should be its advantage. But because of the lack of law that will protect farmers rights and lack of technology that will help farmers improve productivity, Filipino farmers' status of living is behind Japan's.

 Dada: The highlight of the day were the Shinkansen ride and lecture at JA Midorino.

 We were traveling all morning to Sendai. Getting there, we've gone aboard the Shinkansen/ the bullet train. One common characteristic of developed countries are their progressive railway system. It is an efficient way of transporting people from places to places therefore catering more productivity.

Meanwhile, it is exhilarating to see snow during our ride to Miyagi prefecture.

Then, we attended a lecture by the JA Midorino regarding their goals and other details regarding their agriculture sector in Japan. Now, one of the pressing issue in the sector is the aging/ increasing average age of Japanese engaged in farming which is like in the Phil agri sector; the only difference is that Japan has an aging population while the Philippines has a young population. With that, Japan is trying to remedy it with partnerships. It is also good to know that small time farmers are supported and empowered through the cooperative.

 Darren: Today, we got a chance to experience a ride in Shinkansen (bullet train) going to Sendai. Most of us were tired but seeing snow for the first time was totally worth it. Nost just the Filipino delegates were excited to experience snow but also the others who came from tropical countries.

When we arrived in Sendai, we directly headed to Japan Agricultural Cooperatives (JA). As a student taking up Bachelor of Science in Agribusiness Management, I am very much aware that the number of young people engaged in agriculture - may it be from Philippines and Japan - is continually decreasing probably because most of them work in the corporate world.

What I observed in the Japanese way of living is that there is always an initiative for Japan to improve the lives of its citizen, and not just for profit. Since Philippines is an agricultural country, I am hoping that the linkage of trade and industry between Japan and Philippines will be strengthened after the JENESYS program. Hand-in-hand, Philippines will export its products and in return, Japan will also export their own products. In this way, sustainable economy between a developed and a developing country and strong partnership will be achieved.

 Grace: A ride on Tohoku Shinkansen. Bullet trains in Japan are the most exciting mode of transportation on land. This would be a perfect and fast transportation for persons who want to go to various provinces of Japan. This proves that Japan has high-level infrastructural technology. They have excellent security and operational management. They ensure all the passengers to be safe and sound until they reach their respective destinations.

On our way, we saw mountains, ricefields and roof of house nicely capped with snow. I felt so happy becuase it was my first time to see snow.

 Ian: It was a rainy day in Tokyo. We had our breakfast in the hotel and then went to the bus immediately. The weather became colder due to the rains. Again, we had our brief tour with Tokyo. We were able to see the emperor's palace again, the popular Sofia University and the Tokyo Meteorological Center. We were dropped off in a train station. Our scheduled event for the day is going to Sendai which is located on the northern part of Tokyo. The means of transportation we used in going to Sendai was the ever-popular bullet train (Tohoku Shinkansen bullet train). On the inside, it was different compared to ordinary trains. We sit comfortably and I have observed that it really lived up to its name. We were able to reach different stations in short time. In the train, I was able to see for the first time real snow. It was a surreal moment. We finally reached the Sendai station after 2 hours. As expected, the weather was cold. Our facilitators gave a brief introduction about Sendai. It was another long trip in the bus in order to reach Japan Agricultural Cooperative (JA). The scenery was a lot different to Tokyo. There are a lot of agricultural lands and establishments are smaller. We had our lunch at the JA Headquarters. After our lunch, the Senior Vice President of JA discussed the function of the cooperative and the effect of its establishment. One of the things I inferred from the talk was that Japan agriculture also faces a lot of problems, from the increasing average age of farmers, decreasing sales and even the foreign trade agreements with other countries. Which is also similar in my own country, the Philippines. However, the JA exerts a lot of effort to elevate the farmers. We returned to the hotel for the dinner. After that, we roamed around the streets of Sendai.

 Jerm: Almost missing the Shinkansen bullet train will stay etched in my mind forever – good thing we got there just in time. The bullet train experience was amazing having to see the different faces of Japan as we travelled through the different places we passed by. At one point we even saw snow – another first I could tick-off my bucketlist. What made the bullet train experience even better though was the company I had through it – sharing food and passing things to so everyone can get. After the train ride and transfer to the venue, we had another keynote, this time about agriculture in Japan. We were able to hear from representatives of the Japan Agricultural Cooperative that aims to improve the lifestyles of those involved in agriculture. It was quite insightful as we were able to discuss how Japan, despite its progress, still saw its agriculture as weak. Most people think agriculture is a sector for the less developed although they do not realize that most of the inputs in products originate here. We should also instill the same mindset here in the Philippines – that we already have somewhere to start on and that all we have to do now is build up’s on that and make it even stronger. Like all countries, Japan still does encounter problems like an aging agricultural population. This is critical as if the trend continues there would be no one left to sustain the practice. It was then explained that Japan does support activities that further encourage the youth to participate in agriculture and to make them see agriculture as a decent alternative rather than just a last resort.

 Joan: It was an exhilarating experience for me rushing to board the Tohoku Shinkansen bullet train for Sendai at the Tokyo Station (Yamabiko 133). This state of the art transportation is vital to locals as well as tourists. Moving to surrounding prefectures via the bullet train is convenient and a time-saver. Along the railway tracks beautiful sceneries can be seen, from agricultural lands (rice paddies) , residential and industrial areas. One, image I can’t seem to forget is ye first sight of snow covered leaves of trees and the grounds as well. Un/fortunately, there is no hint of snow when we stop at Miyagi station but nevertheless the sky was gloomy and I felt chilly all the way to my joints and bones.

In the afternoon we had a lecture at Japan Agricultural Cooperation or the Japan Midori.

The Japan Midori is an important institution wherein group of persons engaging and passionate in agriculture converge and promote cooperation. One glaring fact and quite a disadvantage for the Japanese cooperatives and other corporation is the majority of the members are the aged. Hence, youths are aggressively encouraged to be farmers through different types of exposures, such as internship in farming, cooking shows and as a child grows up, instilling into them the importance of farming. This is not only happen in Japan though, in the Philippines the same scenario is evident. The difference is that, our government is not yet pushing for youth to engage more in agriculture, or maybe there are initiatives but I have not heard about it or these were not yet implemented.

The Midori sets up local shops and directly sell their products in these shops. This is beneficial as farmers do not need to transport their products and risk damaging their products and adding the expense to the consumers. This kind of set-up is familiar as there are already available facilities where farmers can sell their produce.

My take-away this day is that in union there is strength in other words “one for all, all for one”.

 Juliet: The Shinkansen ride gave me another realization of what Japanese is today- a developed country both in terms of its economy and society.The seat I took inside the bullet train gave me feeling that hopefully my country can also achieve such development.Moreover, the lecture on JA cooperatives which is actually my second time again showed me the "I do" spirit and norm of Japanese people in community building and management.This magnified my high regard of the Japanese culture and practice of getting together and helping each other. I observed that the collective way of farming and selling the farmers produce really not only strengthen the cooperatives but the people and communities as well.The JA also provides sustainability mechanism for the agricultural activities of the farming communities and life of the community people.The experience, mechanism, and norms of JA in business management and community building as shown in the case of JA Midorino really help to cultivate the vibrant Japanese agricultural communities. I hope my country can replicate such.I have high hope that despite the different agreements such as TPP and FTA, this cooperative spirit especially in Japan will not wither.This cooperative spirit is something of value that we as developing nation must imbibe.‪#JENESYS2016 ‪#JICE ‪#PHILIPPINES

 June: Riding the Bullet Train made me feel very interested in its mechanics. With a train traveling as fast as the bullet train, I thought about the technology used that would help it reach this speed and at the same the stabilizers it had so that the passengers’ experience would feel like it’s just an average train where you can walk around freely. With the bullet train passing by numerous towns, seeing these views was very beautiful to look at.

 From the Japan Agriculture Cooperatives, I was able to see that Japan has a similar situation with the Philippines regarding the ageing crisis in agriculture especially in the farming industry. The average age of farmers in Japan is 66 years old which is very similar to the average of farmers in the Philippines. Philippines being an agricultural country that has a lot of potential in this sector due to the abundance of resources (e.g. land, marine resources, etc.), this poses as a problem for the country in sustainable development given that future generations might have lesser amounts of production if the current average of farmers would remain unchanged.

 Love: When I joined the JENESYS Program, I really wanted to learn about the Agriculture Sector in Japan. This was realized on Day 4. But before going into details, I was so amazed when I rode the Shinkansen train. It was really a great experience and made me compare the transportation system in the Philippines. In the development work, transportation matters. Inaccessibility can really impede the development. If you cannot deliver goods and services rapidly, then progress might take slowly. On our way to the lecture venue, I saw how Japanese people maximized their land area in agricultural production. Even in small spaces/ lots/areas, Japanese farmers were able to plant different crops on their backyard. In farming, Japanese were technologically advanced. I saw different farm implement along the way as well as individual greenhouses established in front of their houses. Though Japan does not rely on farming as main source of income, still families were able to produce their own food for consumption. Greenhouse was constructed to protect the crops from extreme weather condition, i.e., winter/snow. I also noticed that the irrigation in the Philippines is better compared to Japan (that's what I saw and observed during the travel). No concrete main lateral canals and ditches were seen during the travel. Despite this limitation, I saw that synchronous planting was observed and highly- mechanization was practiced. Philippines and Japan are both calamity-stricken countries where different natural phenomenon are happening. I think we really have to deepen the relationship with them (the Japanese government). During the lecture, it was also emphasized that Japan is only 39% food sufficiency and arable land is decreasing as well as labor force/human resource is aging. The main focus of the discussion was the idea of collective action in farming from land preparation, planting to marketing. The cooperative is responsible in managing and marketing the goods and produced of farmers. With this, traders and middlemen are limited and most of the income goes directly to farmers which is very different in the Philippines. Wealth of ideas garnered through this learning experience is worth sharing to Filipino farmers and we could somehow adapt or modify their technologies with our existing resources.

 Nelson: If I were to sum up our fourth day in four words, these are: TRAVEL, SHINKANSEN, SNOW, and AGRICULTURE.

TRAVEL.

Travel because we spent roughly 5 or 6 hours on the road today. From the bus trip to Tokyo Station, Shinkansen ride to Sendai, and a long bus ride to our hotel in Sendai.

SHINKANSEN.

Our shinkansen ride bound for Sendai was the most memorable moment of this day. Firstly, except for me, I think it was the first time for the Philippines team to ride a bullet train. Secondly, it was another good time to mingle with the other delegates; take pictures, share food, and of course, talk. Our Tohoku Shinkansen ride to Miyagi gave us a short and very quick tour of the northern part of Tokyo.

SNOW.

All of us were screaming when we passed by a city covered in snow. Everybody panicked and had their iPhones and cameras ready to take pictures of the white picturesque view! We weren't sure which city it was but seeing snow for the first time in person was so surreal. It was like staring at a huge wallpaper of a forest and a village covered in white dust. Since there where tunnels, everybody was nose to nose to the shinkansen's window waiting for the snowed city gleefully.

AGRICULTURE.

I was a bit surprised about the status of Japan's agriculture industry because of the impression of how successful Japan is in almost everything; apparently it is not. Athough, Japan's agriculture isn't bad, it isn't as impressive as it was a few decades ago either. According to the lecturer of today's topic, the number of members, employees, and the rice sales drastically decreased and a few of its reasons are: the millenials are not interested in agriculture and there are no one for the aging farmers to pass on the business and these farmers abandon their business when they turn 80 and retire. This is why Japan Agriculture Cooperatives reach out to nearby countries for support and new ideas for interested youngsters.

It was a very eventful day that nudged us physically, emotionally, and intellectually. There is never a dull day in this program!

 Nina: Today we are scheduled to go to Sendai. We got up early, had breakfast, and went staright ahead to Tokyo Station. We had a chance to not only see their very famous bullet train but also ride in it. Their bullet trains are very comfortable, fast and efficient. We rode Tohoku Shinkansen bullet train and during the train ride, we saw snow! 😄 It was obvious that everybody was excited to see and experience snow, given that, we come from countries without winter.

Arriving at Sendai, you can already distinguish its difference from Tokyo. Sendai has no high structured buildings and it is surrounded by lots of fields (mostly rice and vegetable fields). We went to Japan Agricultural (JA) Cooperatives, a cooperative for those who are engaged in agriculture. Though their current number and state declined from what it is before, they still pursued in helping the community and improving the lifestyle of each and everyone. It was great knowing they look forward to strengthen partnerships with other ASEAN countries, European Union, U.S., and also China. It was alarming learning that they have a pretty high farmer average age which is 66.4 - even higher than ours, in the Philippines. I highly encourage that they promote benefits and advantages in joining farming to the youthI believe that this kind of cooperatives are really much appreciated and helpful since there is only a small portion of agricultural industry in the country.

After dinner, we went shopping at Don Quixote - our favorite! I was overwhelmed by the prices at the same time, the good finds. My favorite buy was the huge meiji chocolate. My family will definitely love it as much as I do 😄 We ate takoyaki and I bought ice cream from a vendo machine, sadly, my friends did not get to have one since nothing was going out even when they have already given their payments.

I had an awesome time today and I am excited for the coming days!

 Norshida: Soma san informed us about our trip to Miyagi in which we are going to travel thru Shinkanshen (Bullet Train). Been excited to ride a Shinkanshen for the first time as if I was a kid wanting to have a ride. Most of the Japanese walks very fast and I have been trying to walk like them but unfortunately I cannot walk at their pace. I also thought that once your an MSU'ans (MSU ALUMNI) you walk faster that any University Student in Mindanao since College Buildings were far from each other. I have observed that Japanese avoid delays in everything. We arrived at Sendai City at 12:10 PM, the biggest city in Tohuko Area. I've learned also that TO means East and HUKO means north, Sendai is also known as the City of Green. We were also able to visit at Japanes Agriculture in which I have an insightful information about the Japanese Agriculture, I have learned how they consolidate all of their agricultural products. I was amazed on the dynamics and mechanisms in the consolidation of their agri-products.

 Sittie: We were traveling most of the day. From rushing to the Shinkansen bullet train to bus ride from one place to another in Sendai that took us at least 1 hour of ride going to another place.

Our first stop in Sendai was a keynote lecture about Japan Agricultural Cooperatives that supports the agriculture industry of Japan engaged in various economic activities. It protects and elevate the operation of the farmers and they also give help to farmers financially. Knowing Japan's progressive status, they still consider Japan's agriculture weak as their production's declining as well as the members and employees due to demand and dietary shift of the consumers where they now prefer eating noodles and since most people who are engaged in farming are elderly, they encourage the youth in agriculture sector which our country should be grateful of where most of our farmers are not the aged as with the Japan's farmers

[hopefulfestivaltastemaker]

August 16, 2020

My weekly review of things I am up to and thinking about. Topics include public health, housing politics, forestry, and some thoughts on aging.

The Tale of Hydroxychloroquine and other COVID matters

I’ve been puzzled by the whole hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) issue for a long time and still am. Is it actually a safe and effective treatment for COVID-19? Maybe it is; it doesn’t seem that there is decisive evidence one way or the other.

Tablet Magazine recently ran a long article on the politics of HCQ, covering the debates around the centrality of randomized control trials and politicization of HCQ, especially after President Trump endorsed the drug publicly. I hardly consider this article the last word on the subject, but it helped slightly demystify the issue in my mind.

The public health profession in the United States is spending its credibility like 1923 Reichnotes. There was the contradictory messaging around masks (they won’t protect you, then they are necessary), the CDC’s inexplicable inability to procure COVID-19 tests, the slow reaction of governments to the threat, the chaotic reactions that followed, the transparently partisan public letter on BLM protests, and the politicization of HCQ.

Also this week, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia has approved a COVID-19 vaccine. The reaction of the Western press (one of many such articles here) has been negative, generally alleging that Russia must have cut corners and is rushing an unready and dangerous product to market. Maybe they are. But with the public health industry’s poor track record as detailed above, I’m going to need more than finger-wagging to take them seriously. How does the standard clinical trial procedure weigh the need for speed--in a situation where a delay of a single day costs thousands of lives and billions of dollars of economic losses--against the need for a thoroughly vetted product. I haven’t yet seen an article even attempt to parse the issue.

My experience with environmental policy and urbanism has primed me to be skeptical of experts. It’s clear to me that wide swathes of urban planning policy, for instance, are little more than codified folk wisdom that survives on institutional inertia. So it’s easy to believe that the same could be true in public health.

Would you believe that the NBA, of all institutions, has been a leader in the COVID response? They were one of the first major institutions in the United States, certainly faster than governments, to cancel activities for the virus and then developed the bubble to try to keep playing safely. Now the NBA has gotten approval for a saliva COVID-19 test that they financed, which is both less invasive and cheaper than the conventional nasal swap. Why was the CDC not in overdrive in January to develop a saliva test?

It’s probably as true in public health as it is in many other fields. Reform is needed, and reforms will come from the outside.

Housing Politics

Today the Trump administration threw a rock into the urbanist beehive with an editorial pledging to protect single-family suburban housing. For the past few years, HUD under Ben Carson has been developing an alternative to the Obama Administrations’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing regulation that would streamline reporting and use federal funding as a hook for cities to ease their zoning regulations. Recently the administration pulled the plug on that effort.

The move is extremely disappointing to me, though in retrospect perhaps it was too good to be true. Carson was out on a limb with his YIMBY rhetoric, and he received no support from the YIMBY activist class, which has regrettably decided that partisanship is more important than housing. The Trump Administration has eschewed market-oriented policies on other areas, particularly immigration and trade, to a greater extent than other recent Republican administrations, so the same on housing is not a great surprise.

Probably the most we can hope from the feds at this point is that a Biden Administration would restore some version of the AFFH, which, for its limitations, is better than nothing. The worst case outcome is that the Sanders wing of the party takes control of HUD and uses federal funding to obstruct market rate housing or as a lever to impose rent control. Since HUD’s legal basis for AFFH resides in the Fair Housing Act, maybe the lack of federal regulation would open the door to a legal solution. Or maybe Congress will pass something space aliens will drop apartments in the Bay Area.

Forestry

I started some work on a Forestry section of the Urban Cruise Ship site, though I can already tell it will require a few iterations. I don’t think the funder is going to be as interested in alternatives to forestry (e.g. grass, straw, hemp, etc.) for paper products as in recycling and source reduction, but I think the topic should be covered. I put together data for a plot on pulp yields per acre, and comparisons on some other metrics should follow. It doesn’t seem likely to me that there are any alternatives to trees that are much better, all things considered.

Agroforestry is an interesting concept. The basic idea is to intercrop trees with (non-tree) food crops, and the system should be more efficient than doing monocultures of either. This is formalized in the Land Equivalency Ratio or the Area Time Equivalency Ratio for an agroforestry system. Having reviewed a handful of studies, it looks like it is indeed more land-efficient, though I will have to dig deeper to be confident. This raises the question of why agroforestry is not more widely used already. If I had to make a guess--without having yet looked for published studies--it sounds like it’s a system that will be more labor intensive. Perhaps greater knowledge management and automation will make agroforestry a more attractive option; the same seems to be true of integrated pest management and recycling.

Unfortunately, my work on the topic was derailed by more urgent priorities right when I felt like I was making progress. I hope to get back to it soon.

I also want some material on wildfire management, a timely issue in light of the horrific fires that occurred in Australia early this year and the chronic fire problems in California.

Aging

The social isolation of the last few months has directed a greater share of my attention toward existential questions. It’s a bit early for a midlife crisis (I’m 38), but it would seem timely with current conditions.

So far I am healthy as far as I can tell, though am starting to notice subtle ways in which I am not as adept mentally or physically as I used to be. I very much dislike the prospect of aging, and although it may be pointless to complain about something that everyone experiences and (at present) can’t be prevented, I will still do so.

But for now, the most difficult aspect of aging to accept has been the gradual diminishment of opportunity. We tell young people, and I was told this many times, that they can do whatever they put their minds to. Mostly by default, I put my mind to mathematics and successfully ran down a linear track for my first 29 years: grade school, high school, undergrad, and Ph. D. program. But that trajectory came off the rails when got my degree, and for the last 10 years I have pursued a wide range of endeavors, all of which have, for a variety of reasons, failed to pan out.

Ten+ years ago, the thought of “I could do X if I was determined and put in the effort” was true, or at least seemed true, for most reasonable values of X. It no longer does. Yes, I know there are the late bloomers like Harry Truman, but people who start achieving major success late in life are the exception.

My understanding is that most people, generally some time in their 40′s, go through at least some period of regret about life decisions, opportunities not pursued, or feel a general lack of purpose. I suppose this will be a new challenge to navigate.

It is risky to self-psychoanalyze, so chalk up the following to wild speculation. Lately I’ve been thinking and writing quite a bit on issues around technological stagnation, chronic low fertility, and dysfunctionality in government. All this is probably, at least to some extent, a projection of my own personal frustrations.

[michellelewis7162]

How to Find the Right Plumbing Technician - The Very Best Tips on Employing a Specialist Plumbing

How to Find the Right Plumbing Technician - The Very Best Tips on Employing a Specialist Plumbing

 How to Discover the most effective Plumbing

The distinction with needing to pick a great plumber and also having to choose a joiner, building contractor or painter is that a plumbing is typically called when there is an emergency. This means that you might not have way too much time to browse. Plumber Charlottesville

 Anyhow, right here are some great pointers on just how to find a good plumber Charlottesville for all scenarios.

Unfortunately, it does seem that in the plumbing trade there are much more scary stories of people being scammed than from the various other trades. Naturally, every trade will have its "cowboys".

Plumbing additionally entails job that the majority of Do It Yourself lovers likewise don't have much experience in. Where some will take pleasure in placing cupboards with each other, or painting and decorating, not many will feel happy soldering pipelines or tampering fixing sewer lines.

So just how can you be sure that you're obtaining the ideal plumbing professional?

Discovering the Right Plumbing Technician

Usually the best path is an individual referral. In this manner you can a minimum of vet the Charlottesville plumber in advance and obtain enough info to make an educated choice. Obviously, if your pipes have sprung a leakage, or your toilet is gushing its materials up, you could not have much time to ask around for recommendations.

What to do in an Emergency?

In a plumbing emergency the initial port of call will most likely be the web or Yellow Pages. In the UK you can go to the Chartered Institute of Plumbing as well as Heating Design (IPHE). This is a charity whose goal is to "boosting the science, practice and design concepts of plumbing". There you will be able to look for registered plumbers in your postcode area. These are plumbers who have been vetted and also who fulfill particular criteria. The following action will certainly be to begin making some telephone call.

Prior to you accept anything it's vital to learn the following:

 ¥ How long they have stayed in business and also if they have facilities you can check out. A reputable plumber is will not disappear throughout the task).

¥ Obtain some referrals.

¥ Have they done comparable job in the past.

¥ Do they have insurance to cover your residential or commercial property (which of your neighbors).

¥ Do they ensure their work. Is this insurance policy backed? That indicates that if they go out of business after that you are still covered.

¥ Is the plumbing a member of a specialist profession body? If you have time, after that speak to the trade body concerned as well as to take a look at that they are currently registered.

 Certainly, if it's an emergency situation after that you could not have the ability to do all of the above. Yet it's good to ask these concerns anyway as well as you will certainly get an idea of what type of a plumbing professional he is.

Just how to Work With the Right Plumbing

Don't come under the trap of working with the first plumbing that you called. If it's an emergency situation, define thoroughly the problem as well as obtain a quote. Obtain quotes for 3 or four different plumbers to ensure that you can compare rates. They concerns that you need to find out from them are:

 ¥ What are their call-out costs?

¥ What are their per hour rates?

¥ When do they begin their prices? (some fee you from the time that they leave their workplace).

 How Much Will a Great Plumbing Charge?

This all depends. There are no basic guidelines for just how much a plumber Charlottesville can bill. So it's constantly best to obtain a detailed composed quote on the job to be done as well as the cost of this, including products.

Never pay 100% up front of the cost. You can be anticipated to pay a deposit, this is entirely typical. The plumber might have components as well as fittings that he needs to buy. See to it that the quantity is reasonable.

Hiring a Plumbing Professional for Non-Emergency Jobs.

Naturally if you are planning a washroom refit or thinking of setting up main home heating, after that you have more time to ask about, get quotes, suggestions, take a look at previous work and so on

. So what should you do to make sure that you work with the appropriate plumber Charlottesville for the work?

 ¥ Obtain a composed contract. This will consist of a thorough description of the work involved, the price, begin and also finish days. If completion day is essential to you, after that make this clear from the start.

¥ Get details of any kind of warranties. This is necessary both for the work he does and for the items he has actually bought.

¥ Maintain a diary regarding exactly how the job is advancing. This does not need to be outlined, yet it can assist in case there is a conflict later on.

 If You are Dissatisfied With the Work of a Plumbing technician.

In case that you aren't pleased with the work, then finest thing is to take up the concern with the plumbing professional. Do this in a calm and also simple manner. It's ideal to place your grievance in composing, mentioning specifically what you really feel was done correctly. You can have some proof from what you gathered when the job was in progression. Most of the time the plumbing will enjoy to remedy the concern. In these trades credibility is just one of the most vital aspects.

If this doesn't function, and the plumber is a member of a trade organisation, then you will certainly require to take it up with them. They will certainly help to rectify the issue. Want to supply all documents that you have of start and also surface dates, costs, as well as agreements. Likewise some pictures will certainly be useful.

If that does not work, after that you might need to take the plumbing to court.

In Conclusion.

Locating the right plumber is possible. However there is a lack of experienced tradesmen and also it implies that there are a great deal of dishonest plumbers around. If you adhere to these tips on locating the right plumbing professional after that you can minimize the possibilities that something will certainly go wrong.

 Before choosing a reputable plumber, you need to consider 5 essential points. This handy short article will assist you in the best instructions when considering the best plumbing services. By the end of the article you will certainly discover exactly how to make sure that the plumbing is accredited as well as guaranteed, gives you reasonable rate while providing worth, has lots of experience, responds to your needs quickly, as well as supplies either totally free solution or a budget friendly quote. Before choosing a reliable plumbing technician, you require to consider 5 important points. This helpful article will certainly direct you in the ideal directions when thinking about the appropriate plumbing services. By the end of the post you will discover just how to see to it that the plumbing is accredited as well as insured, provides you reasonable rate while supplying value, has plenty of experience, replies to your requirements swiftly, and also supplies either cost-free solution or an affordable estimate.

1) Is your Plumbing Professional Licensed & Insured?

Seems evident right? Yet there a great deal of plumbers in Raleigh North Carolina that are neither accredited neither insured. Occasionally a plumbing may grab the skill and begin doing tasks without also considering licensing. You as consumer need to be knowledgeable about these plumbers. State does an excellent work at seeing to it that experienced plumber passes all the needed testing as well as background checks prior to releasing the license. Insurance policy is likewise a very vital variable when choosing a trusted plumbing service. Consumers require to be secured in case of accidents. If something seriously fails, than plumbing technician's insurance provider might compensate for problems caused as a result of a crash or an accident. On the other hand, if the plumbing technician does not have appropriate insurance protection as well as something significant occurs, the probabilities are that consumer him/her self will certainly be accountable for the damages. There are several ways to discover if the plumbing professional of your option is licensed and also guaranteed. First you can ask the plumber on your own to see his/her permit. An additional means is to verify a permit by contacting your local state licensing board.

2) Does your Plumbing Service give a reasonable Cost?

Cost is an extremely sensitive subject these days. Everybody is regularly on the lookout for the most inexpensive automobile, more affordable appliance, or the most inexpensive TV. Plumbing on the other hand is a totally different story. Consider it, when you walk right into the medical professional's office do you ask "How much" the moment you enter the workplace? Possibly not! Certain, the cost is very important aspect but aren't you searching for a physician who can solve your trouble? Plumbers need to be seen in similar matter. In some cases the most inexpensive plumbing professional might not be the most effective choice. Much like the most affordable automobile or the most affordable TV. Value is very crucial as well as the appropriate plumbing will in fact save you countless dollars even though he/she is not the most affordable. Look at your plumbing professional as an expert that can identify the problem, offer you a general suggestion on how much time it will take to fix it, and also provide a precise price quote. Does the plumbing professional audio useful on the phone? Does he/she ask you the best inquiries? Sometimes it is far better to pay a little bit more and also obtain more value than get the least expensive plumber in the area. Among the most effective plumbers in frown at the concern "How much?" when asked in the very first 20 secs of the conversation. Therefore, don't request the rate right of the wager. See initially what value the plumber can offer and then inquire about approximate estimate to address your plumbing requires.

3) Look for a seasoned plumbing professional!

Experience has got to be just one of one of the most crucial criteria when selecting the best plumbing. When it comes to understanding and also capacity to determine the problem, there is never a substitute for experience. When calling plumber on the phone, the best thing is to define your trouble as well as attempt to measure plumbing's feedback. You are not always trying to find a plumbing professional to resolve your concern on the phone. On the other hand, what you are attempting to do is ... remain to obtain an understanding of the reality that the plumbing technician has actually taken care of similar issue in the past. As an example if you have leaking pipelines in the kitchen area, when calling plumbing service, you need to listen to something like the complying with "There could be range of things that can cause leaking pipelines in the cooking area, it could range from a tiny leak to a significant problem. We can come as well as for a "little charge" recognize the trouble and also allow you understand how much it will cost to fix it". What you are looking in a knowledgeable plumbing is a truthful response that includes some worth. What you are not looking for is a plumbing professional that says common phrases as well as does not address your specific worry.

4) Does the plumbing service respond promptly?

The number of times have you called an expert and get a recall 4 days later on? I am not sure if that ever taken place to you, however it is a very usual point in the sector. Reaction time is exceptionally vital specifically when choosing a credible emergency situation plumbing in Ralegh NC. Plumbing is taken into consideration to be an "emergency situation" solution. Your home could be swamped with water in less than 5 hrs if the problem is not properly settled. More than that, you could be facing water damages reconstruction which can cost hundreds of dollars to take care of. Consequently, reaction time is very vital. You ought to expect the plumbing technician or an answering service to react within at the very least 5 hours otherwise within a hr. Although, it is true that plumbers are very busy, an expert plumbing solution will constantly have a system in position to be able to respond swiftly. Ensure to talk to the plumbing technician straight to get a far better understanding of the problem that you are encountering.

5) Does your plumbing solution offer Totally free Price quote or Service Charge?

There is always a discussion whether plumbers must supply complimentary price quote or bill a fee. Once again consider physician's consultation. Do you be reluctant to pay little co-pay? Possibly not! Certain, some skilled plumbers will give TOTALLY FREE price quote. Nevertheless, if the plumbing technician seems knowledgeable, can resolve your trouble, as well as can react swiftly to fix you plumbing needs, you must definitely higher that plumbing even if he/she does not Offer Free estimates. If possibly you located a respectable plumbing services that can deliver excellent value while supplying a TOTALLY FREE estimate, than this is simply the bonus. Regardless don't allow TOTALLY FREE estimate be your only identifying aspect when hiring a plumbing technician.

Finally, when choosing a plumbing technician it is necessary to look for important factors such as license and also insurance coverage, worth at budget friendly price, experience while reacting swiftly to resolve your trouble, and either COST-FREE quote or a budget friendly service fee.

 Plumbing emergency situations can happen whenever and also with no kind of warning. If the situation is not merely an emergency situation, it is much better that you schedule your telephone calls throughout the regular calling hours because emergency situation plumbing prices are fairly more than normal plumbing solution prices. Below are a few tips to aid you out to pick the best plumbing service whenever you are confronting with a situation that calls for instant aid of a plumbing solution.

In today's hectic globe, one of the most effective methods you can consider to do marketing research is via online search. This saves your loan, energy along with your beneficial time. This way you will certainly be able to do comparison between various plumbing services very easily and also rapidly. You require to seriously look into their issues such as whether they rapidly reply to your emergency or take long time to reply you.

Constantly bear in mind to employ a plumbing company that features a fast feedback considering that they could be very accountable to take care of the issues immediately. By going to a plumbing business's web site, you will certainly reach check out the testimonials of the customers. This will certainly enable you to examine the services of a certain plumbing business as well as decide whether to pick it or otherwise.

A great idea while of emergency is to hire a company that specifically manages plumbing emergency situations. There are quite number of business that give emergency situation services at reasonable rates. You don't have to pay an added for their services. Additionally you can take into consideration asking your loved ones as well as friends to suggest you couple of reliable plumbing services in your location. They may have utilized few services when they met plumbing emergency situations.

There are several plumbing services that claim to offer 24 hour service, yet when you call them while of a plumbing emergency, they would certainly not supply support. Few various other plumbing firms have computerized equipments that ask you to leave a message. These business would not be helpful when you deal with a plumbing emergency circumstance.

Whenever you choose a pluming company, you should definitely select an accredited one. This will certainly make certain the quality of the services. Plumbing is naturally among the difficult work. To manage plumbing emergency situations extremely properly, calls for excellent expertise as well as abilities. A certified plumbing professional will certainly have the best type of equipment, expertise, skills in addition to excellent experience to ideally deal with the plumbing problems in your house.

 Obtaining a plumbing solution professional might be easy, but employing a plumbing specialist is not actually an easy thing to do. To stop on your own from making the most usual errors of selecting a poor plumbing solution company, you could intend to take into consideration a few points.

Largely, a fantastic plumbing technician has to be keen to provide outstanding plumbing services. In addition to ensuring that all your plumbing structures operate simply great, an unbelievable plumbing technician should be ready with the required tools, and he ought to quickly respond to any kind of plumbing emergency situations like leaking pipes or blocked drains in one of the most qualified method possible.

In addition, impressive services for plumbing should have the ability to deal not just with straightforward plumbing as well as drain difficulties, but they require to additionally bring back and reinstall even one of the most complicated plumbing problems that exist.

In addition, before employing a plumbing professional, guarantee that he is already guaranteed as well as is currently a State Professionals License Board (CSLB) passer. This might make you really feel a lot more peaceful that you are employing a signed up plumbing to handle your residence's plumbing difficulties, and you might leave him to review the properties of your house.

Furthermore, keep in mind that utilizing an unlicensed and inexperienced plumbing could possibly show up less costly for you, yet the truth is you may wind up spending a bigger amount of cash money as their incompetence might create unsolved plumbing problems to become worse and also more difficult to take care of, and this could inevitably require you to spend for much more so your existing plumbing problem could be absolutely repaired.

Additionally, a wonderful plumbing service provider of service firm also offers plumbing restoration and clogged up drain cleansing 24/7. It supplies accessibility also in the wee hours of the morning so it might supply you an excellent plumbing service. Despite whether or not you are experiencing plumbing difficulties inside your residence or inside your company structure, a remarkable plumbing service can handle them anytime.

So even though you are not preparing for any plumbing issues to happen in the future or if you have actually been struggling with a leaking pipeline for some time, perhaps you currently necessitate the aid of a skilled plumbing solution to keep you from bothering with all the unnecessary difficulty. Just keep in mind though that you need to not neglect any existing plumbing issues nor merely wait for these to become something uncontrollable prior to you pick lastly hiring an exceptionally experienced plumbing professional.

[richmeganews]

Millennial Presidential Candidate Pete Buttigieg Has Actual Ideas for Solving the Student Loan Crisis

Pete Buttigieg is a millennial who wants to become the most powerful man on the planet. But the 37-year-old isn’t that delusional guy at your office who thinks his idea for a start-up is going to spare him the monotony of working for a living. The two-term mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Afghanistan veteran is exploring a run for president, and although he’s very much a long-shot candidate, the Democrat’s campaign just said he cleared a fundraising threshold to qualify for June’s first official DNC primary debate. That means even if he doesn’t make any noise in the Iowa caucus or New Hampshire primary, Americans may soon be hearing a lot more from a young person who entered the prime of his professional life in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

With that in mind, Buttigieg called me up from South Bend last week to talk about one specific issue: the student debt crisis. We chatted about how he might work to revamp the system if elected, including where he stood on everything from the relatively radical idea of debt cancellation to the need for states to step up and fund public education like they did in the past. What follows is a transcript of our conversation, lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

VICE: I wanted to start talking a little bit about your personal experience with student debt before we get into some of my more policy-related questions. I know you mentioned in an interview at South by Southwest that your husband is pretty underwater. Pete Buttigieg: Chasten is a teacher, so that involved getting a master’s degree, and between the teacher training programs he was in as well as his bachelor’s and master’s, it’s left us with a lot of debt. I had the great fortune of getting the Rhodes scholarship and was able to come through Harvard without a lot of debt. But between the two of us, we’re going to have to deal with a lot of debt.

I’m curious as to how you think you’d compare yourself to somebody like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren who, as you know, have relatively progressive stances on education and student debt even though they haven’t directly experienced the modern incarnations. They belong to a generation that went to college at a time when America as a country and, even more significantly, our states, really did their parts to manage the cost of higher education. Not that it was easy for anybody, but I think maybe it was just more of a norm. Education was more something that, if you could qualify and were able to work, it would be priced reasonably. But I think we come at the issue in a pretty similar way. It’s just still a little more personal for me. My grandfather decided that I should never have to pay for college, and so he did what you would do then, which is you got a savings bonds, for, I believe, $1,000. And the intent was that that would mature to a level that would cover my college expenses, which was a reasonable thing to believe in the 70s or 80s, for sure. Obviously, it just doesn’t work that way now.

A lot of people in Congress still seem to think that you can pay for college doing part-time work over the summer and don’t understand that the rules of the game have changed. But how do you convince people that your age is a boon rather that a disqualification when it comes to to tackling some of these entrenched problems? Well, the way I look at it is you just have a different standing to talk about these issues when they’re personal for you. It’s one of the reasons why I often try to paint a picture of what the world would look like in 2054, because it’s the year I get to the current age of the current president. And you know, I think everybody in this race cares about it, but I just think it’s a little different when you’re personally preparing for it.

Ours is a generation that was merged into the labor market at the time of the Great Recession, and I think it’s just been shaped by that. And every generation makes its mark based on its experience. You go back to JFK, his inaugural address, he said something about how the torch had been passed to a new generation born in this century, which had been tempered by war and disciplined by a hard and bitter peace. So I don’t mean to claim some unique personal authority, or that I’m the only one that gets these things, but I do think that when they’re personal, you come at them with a different sense of urgency, for sure.

I’m anxious to see whether the other Democratic candidates in 2020 are mostly going to focus on people who already have debt or on those who haven’t taken it on yet. Which is a priority for you, and how you kind of distinguish between the two as a politician given that they essentially affect different constituencies? I think you probably are going to have two different lines of effort. If we target debt and not college costs alone, then it benefits everybody. So, for example, improving accessibility to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program (PSLF), expanding the cap on how much debt is forgiven to the Teacher Loan Forgiveness program—these are the things that stand to help those of us who’ve already graduated, and it could be a big difference maker for people going to school now, or even people, you know, sadly, [who] may be weighing whether going to school is a good move.

But I don’t think we should choose one. What will we have to do is make sure that we start moving these debt loads in the right direction. And when you have folks with these six-figure debt loads, whether we talk about creating refinancing options or whether we talk about paths to loan forgiveness, or even just adjusting how income-based repayment works, we can make a move there that’s somewhat retroactive as well as making it easier for the next folks who come along.

How do you feel about straight-up student debt cancellation, or if that’s too extreme, how you feel about at least allowing people to declare bankruptcy on their student loans? I think there should be a comprehensive strategy, and I’m not wedded to an individual element of that. So there may be trade-offs between how generous we want to make different forgiveness programs and what we do around bankruptcy, for example. But I think it should be considered. I mean we consider it in other credit markets, right? As long as it doesn’t harm access to credit for a future generation of students. Wiping it away strikes me as a little bit harder to take on for a couple of reasons. Obviously, cost.

To backtrack for a second, I’m sure—given that your husband is a teacher—you have more thoughts on the complete failure of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. I think it’s okay to have student loan forgiveness attached to certain things. And that’s why the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program for example, is so attractive. Right? It’s sort-of an exchange of value. What I think we should be cautious about is—you know, it’s not the same if you’re going into a very high-income profession. And again, this might be partly my perspective as somebody who married a teacher, but you know, teachers get paid roughly 60 percent of what people with a comparable education in other fields [make].

But the whole logic of the current student loan subsidy system, especially the fact that that graduate student loans are more expensive or graduate student debt tends to be more expensive than undergrad, is based on the idea that the folks coming out of grad school are going to go be doctors and lawyers and among the wealthiest people in our society. And unfortunately that means you’re doubly punished for doing something very honorable, like making the choice to become a teacher. And that’s why I think it makes sense, if we’re going to move in the direction of forgiveness, to have it be tied to income and not just some kind of blanket thing that makes no distinction between folks who are going to be just fine and are on their way to being in the 1 percent, and people who are struggling in the middle class and almost being punished for the fact that they got an education and used it to benefit others.

Totally. I think that’s an important distinction. I’m curious as to how you think you can maybe incentivize a state school to lower their costs besides putting a cap on the amount of loans one can take out that are backed by the federal government? A good place to begin is to make some federal support to states conditional on the level of support they’re prepared to provide to students. So for example, we could tie these students’ share of college costs to either an income metric or an affordability metric and then make some federal aid to states in the field of education contingent on them offering that up. Because what we’ve seen as a pattern is a lot of state schools have gone from being state-sponsored to state-subsidized to state-related—just providing less and less of that share. Now, the federal government could also pick up some of that slack. For example, if we reset the percentage of total cost of attendance that we think Pell Grants ought to be able to cover and properly funded that, it would take the edge off. But I still think that there needs to be a little more harmony among the states in terms of what they’re willing to do to keep costs under control.

It constantly blows my mind that this isn’t one of the biggest issues for almost all politicians. No one in an entire generation is going be able to buy houses, or in some cases even basic consumer goods. This seems poised to completely tank the economy. This is somebody else’s problem. They want to do the right thing, but in terms of where it falls among priorities, in the end, it’s not quite the same as one that they can relate to directly.

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<em>New Amsterdam</em> Is a Medical Drama That Fails Doctors—and Viewers

In an early episode of NBC’s medical drama New Amsterdam, viewers see a 10-year-old boy named Leo sitting on a hospital floor, listless and unspeaking. “He used to be energetic. Silly,” his mother laments. She explains to a doctor that, for several years, Leo has been taking a powerful cocktail of antipsychotic medications following a series of violent outbursts at school. “Who needs breakfast, am I right? Fistful of pills like that every morning,” the child psychiatrist Dr. Iggy Frome (played by Tyler Labine) quips as he reviews Leo’s list of prescriptions.

Within minutes of meeting Leo, Frome decides to take him off his meds, later exposing the boy to the absurdly risky process of “rapid-detox dialysis” to remove the medications from his system as quickly as possible. This detox, viewers are told, is intended to allow a trial course of behavioral therapy. But by the end of the episode, therapy is largely unnecessary. Freed from his psychotropic prison, Leo is restored to his old self: He smiles, hugs his mother, and freely articulates the guilt he’s been feeling over his father’s death. It’s a storyline that caters to nebulous fears and conspiracy theories about health care and pharmaceuticals. It’s also one of many times on New Amsterdam when complex medical problems evaporate as soon as anyone cares enough to address them.

Medicine is approaching a moment of reckoning in the United States. Costs are skyrocketing, physician burnout is rampant, and the health-care system is plagued by inadequate staffing, rushed appointments, and byzantine insurance rules as the population continues to grow sicker. Addressing these challenges is the raison d’être of Dr. Max Goodwin (Ryan Eggold), the new medical director of America’s oldest public hospital in New Amsterdam, which aired its fall finale Tuesday. The current state of medicine is a topic ripe for incisive critique and could offer fodder for meaningful TV drama. Unfortunately, the NBC series grossly oversimplifies the issues it portrays and leans into hero worship, which may lead viewers to troubling—even dangerous—conclusions about health care.

Since debuting in September, the show has followed Goodwin as he tries to overhaul New Amsterdam Hospital, a fictional behemoth based on the real-life Bellevue Hospital in New York, where I’m a resident physician. (The series was inspired by the 2012 memoir Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital.) Goodwin’s character is a familiar archetype: a maverick Man of Principle who jogs to work every morning, delivers self-righteous diatribes, and shows cynical onlookers the errors of their ways.

Soon after taking charge, Goodwin fires every cardiac surgeon (for placing “billing over care”), eliminates “untrained residents” from the hospital workforce, and does away with the emergency-department waiting room. In a recent episode, he encourages physicians to defraud the hospital through “downcoding”—providing expensive and time-consuming care to patients, then lying about it in the medical record. In doing all of this, Goodwin claims to be putting patients first, defying the nebulous higher-ups of the hospital, who, despite having only recently hired him, now seem bent on thwarting his efforts. That Goodwin also has cancer, as it’s revealed in the first episode, only adds to his zeal. “Let’s get into some trouble. Let’s be doctors, again,” Goodwin tells the hospital staff on his first day on the job, implying that health-care providers today are, somehow, something else.

From left to right: Tyler Labine as Dr. Iggy Frome, Finn Egan-Liang as Leo Chen, and Anupam Kher as Dr. Vijay Kapoor in the episode “Rituals.” (Francisco Roman / NBC)

New Amsterdam, which was the first new show of the fall to receive a full-season order, has proven popular with audiences, despite widespread critical consensus that it is simplistic and patronizing. I took a personal interest in the series ever since its television crew first appeared in the lobby at Bellevue a few months ago. At the time, it was easy for me to separate the telegenic TV doctors from the overworked, under-hydrated real ones, and the disparity between on-screen and real-life medicine is equally vast. But while accuracy has never been a requisite of primetime programming, skewed medical dramas like New Amsterdam can have a more insidious effect, poisoning how the health-care system and physicians are viewed by the public.

Television doctors can hold powerful sway over how people perceive medicine. Research has found that programs depicting physicians in an unflattering light correlate with negative and distrustful feelings toward doctors in the real world. Meanwhile, frequent viewers of valiant and courageous doctors on shows like Grey’s Anatomy tend to have positive beliefs about physicians, as well as higher satisfaction with their own medical care.

[Read: Health care in the time of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’]

This is worrying in light of the fact that over the past 50 years, TV doctors have devolved from caring, honest, and authoritative figures—as in the 1954 drama Medic, for example—into the arrogant and unethical characters we often see today. The hit series E.R. was among the first to depict hospitals as cold, inhumane environments staffed with callous and overworked (yet sympathetic) physicians, paving the way for the eponymous Dr. Gregory House, a pompous, rude, and drug-addicted (yet brilliant) diagnostician. Recently, Fox’s The Resident has taken the notion of bad doctors to the extreme, portraying physicians who routinely kill patients through medical error then cover up the deaths as accidents, all while belittling and abusing their patients and one other. Against this backdrop, distrust in physicians is rising, with only 34 percent of Americans now expressing confidence in medical leaders, down from 73 percent in 1966. Crucially, this decline has occurred despite the fact that most people still trust and admire their own physicians; it’s the medical profession more broadly that many see as increasingly suspect.

New Amsterdam is a throwback to the old-school, superhuman TV doctor with a notable twist. While Goodwin and his apostles are unflinchingly noble, they’re also clearly intended to be exceptions to the rule. Other doctors, the audience is told, are the problem: They are “corrupt and lazy,” perform unnecessary procedures to inflate billing and prioritizing golf over patient care. Even the lone surgeon who escapes the chopping block scoffs at Goodwin, saying: “You do know the whole system is rigged, don’t you? I mean, they’re not going to let you come in here and just … help people.” In another episode, Goodwin meets a homeless woman who is “skeptical” of doctors. “So am I,” he tells a colleague.

Working with patients, I’ve come face to face with the end result of this distrust, which often manifests as a deep reluctance to accept evidence-based treatments like vaccines, antibiotics, and needed medications and procedures. Frequently, patients and their families mention seeing something on TV, online, or in the news that scared them, though they often can’t express more than a dark, nagging suspicion that something nefarious is lurking behind the scenes. Once, a woman told me that The Resident had lifted the veil for her on how medicine really works. Other patients, perhaps bolstered by fictional storylines like Leo’s, have told me they believe doctors will only make them sicker. It can sometimes be impossible to assuage my patients’ fears, to the real detriment of their health.

There are, unfortunately, doctors who game the system, and who care more about money than about helping people, though they are outliers. There are also patients who are rightfully frustrated and angry due to negative or harmful encounters with these doctors. But in New Amsterdam, valid critiques of the incentives that allow bad actors to enter (and flourish) in medicine are supplanted by vague fear mongering and outlandish claims; scapegoating all doctors means overlooking the real, serious flaws with the health-care system.

Ryan Eggold as Dr. Max Goodwin (Francisco Roman / NBC)

If New Amsterdam has erred in identifying depraved doctors as the single biggest problem with American health care, the solutions the show proposes are equally disturbing. Never mind that banning residents from patient care, as Goodwin suggests, would dismantle the pipeline for training new doctors, exacerbating the impending physician shortage. Or that removing the emergency-department waiting room would mean filling beds on a first-come, first-serve basis rather than by medical need. Or that hiring 50 new attendings and an unspecified number of nurses, as Goodwin does in the first few episodes, would strain any hospital’s budget. In the only episode thus far to directly address the finances of the hospital, Goodwin offers a rare glimpse into his ostrich-like mindset, declaring, “The fiscal thing is really not my strong suit. I prefer to talk about the patients.” The absurdity of this statement, coming from the director of a hospital, confirms that Goodwin lives in a world without consequence. There are no trade-offs in this medical fantasy.

At the forefront of the show is Goodwin’s haphazard, manic leadership style, apparently inspired by Jim Carrey’s character from Yes Man. Goodwin’s colleagues repeatedly note that the medical director previously ran, and turned around, a failing clinic in Chinatown. Yet viewers are left with no sense of how he accomplished that—unless it was by uncritically accepting every offhand suggestion from the people around him. Attention spans, like cardiac surgeons, seem to have no place at New Amsterdam. Whims become policy, facing only token, if any, objections from the quietly skeptical administrator who tails Goodwin through the hospital, the business-minded Dean of Medicine, or the comically mute board of directors. The audience is meant to admire Goodwin’s fast-moving, shoot-from-the-hip reforms (he’s the anti-bureaucrat!), but the reality is that in medicine, pure intuition has fallen out of favor. With evidence-based medicine still in its relative infancy, many doctors are only now coming to terms with how frequently our gut instincts can be wrong.

Part of the problem with New Amsterdam is format. If the medium is the message, primetime procedural dramas venerate the quick-fix at the expense of substance. They rely, by necessity, on simplified, stylized versions of difficult medical problems. Surgical and medical “cures” abound. Ideas invariably work—if not on the first try, then certainly on the second or third. Storylines wrap up neatly by the end of each episode. Relative to real-world medicine, which is often messy and uncertain, TV medicine can be intensely satisfying and comforting to watch, tapping into an ever-growing societal obsession with instant gratification. The danger is that an inability to delay gratification, and to weigh nuance, is what brought about much of the dysfunction in the health-care system in the first place. Good medicine, and effective reform, takes patience.

Max Goodwin’s obvious redeeming feature is that he does seem to genuinely care about his patients. The fatal error of the show is assuming that other doctors don’t. Without Goodwin, physicians in the New Amsterdam universe are apathetic and inert, waiting to be inspired into action. At the real Bellevue, I have yet to meet a doctor who doesn’t care deeply about the well-being of their patients. Medicine is also teeming with people who are passionately working to reform health care through advocacy and research. The reality is that if good intentions alone were enough to improve American health care, the problems facing Bellevue—and so many other hospitals—would’ve been solved long ago. Addressing medicine’s many ills requires acknowledging their complexity; New Amsterdam does the opposite, leaving only frustration and fear in its wake. For a show about healing the system, it may do real harm.

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/11/new-amsterdam-nbc-show-physician-distrust-bellevue/576712/?utm_source=feed

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On the Decline of U.S. Manufacturing (and No, It's Not All About Automation) - YOUR NEWS

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On the Decline of U.S. Manufacturing (and No, It's Not All About Automation)

While automation is widely believed to be the key to manufacturing job losses in the United States, more recent research suggests globalization and practices by competitors like China have made more of a difference than otherwise might have been believed. (Photo Credit: Joshua Schnalzer/Flickr/Creative Commons)

Ready for a deep dive into economic trends and theory facing the American manufacturing sector? I get it—the topic may not be an altogether sexy one—but the implications that accompany these trends are important ones, so bear with me for a bit.

Gwynn Guilford, reporting for Quartz, recently penned an excellent analysis of the United States’ effective stagnation when it comes to growth in the manufacturing sector, an eventuality that even trained data-driven economists have misinterpreted by viewing manufacturing more holistically. She begins her piece by talking about Donald Trump decrying globalization as a job killer on the campaign trail, and this being dismissed by economists and other data-driven analysts as rhetoric in favor of automation as the dominant explanation for job loss in the States.

As Guilford tells it, though, Trump was closer to the truth than a lot of experts might otherwise have entertained—though for reasons he likely can’t iterate, so let’s not give the Devil too much of his due.

First, a matter of context. According to Guilford, who cites data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, manufacturing employment has declined by more than 25% since 2000, to the tune of some 20 million jobs. At the same time, however, the manufacturing sector’s output has continued to increase despite the job loss, roughly in line with growth in the U.S.’s gross domestic product (GDP). The easy explanation for this is that advances in management, skill, and—you guessed it—technology have made manufacturing processes more efficient, yielding superior output and production when adjusting for inflation.

True as these justifications for industrial improvement may be, though, there is still the matter of the paradox created with respect to rising output and concomitant declining employment in the manufacturing sector. Here’s where the economic theory comes into play. Susan Houseman, economist and specialist in matters of globalization, in conjunction with Federal Reserve economists, looked at detailed statistics regarding calculations of manufacturing output.

As Guilford explains, integral to understanding what Houseman and her colleagues saw is how economists assess year-to-year measurements. Not only do they look at the raw numbers of finished products made from one period to the next minus the costs of production (a principle known as “value added”), but they adjust for changes in price and product quality. The problem with measuring things in this way, meanwhile, is that adjustments based on assumptions of value can be misinterpreted as or otherwise confounded with sales data, making it seem as if the country is selling more goods than it is.

As Houseman et al. contend, this is precisely what’s happening with the consensus analysis of the U.S. manufacturing sector, and one relatively small subsector is skewing the observed data: computers. The evidence of this is alarming when controlling for the computing industry in plotting private industry and manufacturing growth over time. Between 1947 and 1977, graphs of statistics recorded by the Bureau of Economic Analysis show growth of manufacturing and private industry largely in step, on a steady incline. From 1977 on, however, taking computers out of the manufacturing equation creates a stark downward departure for the Manufacturing, Less Computers line. As Guilford puts a cap on this, “By 2016, real manufacturing output, sans computers, was lower than it was in 2007.”

In other words, the health of the American manufacturing sector looks to be dangerously overstated, and while automation did, of course, occur here, Guilford points to evidence that globalization and trade may have done more damage than previously considered. In this regard, China, a frequent target of Donald Trump’s as he stumped for votes, indeed plays a central role.

China’s emergence as a major exporter of goods is estimated by one group of economists as costing America over 2 million jobs from 1999 to 2011, helped by competitive advantages in the form of artificially devalued currency and cheaper labor, and exacerbated by the strengthening of the U.S. dollar, which reduced the demand for American exports. But American leadership is not without its culpability herein. As economists Justin Pierce and Peter Schott argue, China’s joining of the World Trade Organization as a member in 2001 negated the ability of the U.S. to retaliate against Chinese currency manipulation and other protectionist policies, a situation Bill Clinton, among others, encouraged as President of these United States.

In addition, going back to the notion of automation as a job killer, there are some logical flaws in the emphasis on this cause being a primary driving force. For one, as Guilford bluntly puts it, robots “have to work somewhere.” Given the statistic that more than 75,000 manufacturing plants in the U.S. closed between 2000 and 2014, for overall manufacturing output to increase, other factors would have to be at play. There’s also the matter of the United States lagging behind other developed nations such as Korea, Singapore, Germany, and Japan regarding use of robotics. The numbers, as they say, don’t add up.

Thus, if anyone or anything should get a wag of the finger, according to Gwynn Guilford, it’s “two decades of ill-founded policymaking,” the kind that “put diplomacy before industrial development at home, offering the massive American consumer market as a carrot to encourage other countries to open up their economies to multinational investment.” In doing so, we as a nation dismissed the threat of foreign competition and accepted (and continue to accept) the popular narrative that automation was and is the major driver of job extinction.

What’s particularly problematic about this mindset is that it obscures the importance of manufacturing to the U.S. economy and as a provider of skills to American workers. With production facilities closing their doors, there’s less incentive to do the kind of research and development that leads to better, more competitive products. As you might expect, too, the brunt of the costs of manufacturing’s decline outside of the computing subsector have been borne by the middle class, while the lion’s share of the benefits of globalization has been reaped by the so-called urban professional elite and multinational corporations.

In turn, politically and socially speaking, the country has become increasingly unequal and more polarized. All of these elements suddenly seem tailor-made for Trump and his faux populism to swoop in and capture an upset victory as he did in the 2016 election. The man struck a nerve in the heart of blue-collar America. Predictably and unfortunately, though, he hasn’t done much to boost U.S. manufacturing, instead focusing on tariffs and pushing the nation to the brink of a trade war with any number of entrants willing to fight back, and ignoring the currency manipulation angle that validates, in part, his anti-China tirades. Not that this exculpates the Democrats, either, whom Guilford characterizes as possessing “no vision for how to reverse the industrial backslide.”

All of this paints a fairly grim picture of the outlook for the manufacturing sector moving forward, as it does for the country’s susceptibility to divisive rhetoric and strongmen like Trump. To quote Guilford in closing:

US leaders’ longstanding misunderstanding of the manufacturing industry led to the biggest presidential election upset in American history. But they still don’t seem to grasp what’s been lost, or why. It’s easy to dismiss the disappearance of factory jobs as a past misstep—with a “we’re not getting those jobs back” and a sigh. Then again, you can’t know that for sure if you never try.

It’s one thing for political leaders, often derided as out of touch with John and Jane Q. Public, to misunderstand the issues about which they profess to know—assuming they ever understood in the first place. When economic analysts are falling prey to the same faulty reasoning, however, it doesn’t instill a great deal of confidence in those of us less well-versed in such matters. The most inspiring sentiment here is Guilford’s seeming doubt about whether or not the jobs we take for granted are really lost for good, that we don’t know for sure one way or another. Then again, we have to try first, and based on the current state of affairs, that’s no guarantee.

Considerations of the stagnation of American manufacturing accompany this week’s not-so-great news for workers amid an ongoing assault on workers’ rights from the political right. In a 5-4 decision that saw conservatives comprise the majority, the Supreme Court ruled that employers can compel their employees to sign arbitration agreements in which they waive their rights to bring class-action suits against the employer. Justice Neil Gorsuch, while indicating this practice of company management is “debatable,” nonetheless found that federal arbitration law does not conflict with the National Labor Relations Act, a piece of legislation in place since 1935 governing the rights of employers and employees alike, and designed to protect the ability of the latter to collectively bargain and form trade unions.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, meanwhile, speaking in dissent, was unequivocal in her negative assessment of the ruling, calling it “egregiously wrong,” and offering these additional sentiments on the matter:

The court today holds enforceable these arm-twisted, take-it-or-leave-it contracts—including the provisions requiring employees to litigate wages and hours claims only one-by-one. Federal labor law does not countenance such isolation of employees.

As the “Notorious RBG” finds, these agreements are evocative of the so-called “yellow dog” contracts used by employers until being outlawed in 1932 that barred workers from forming or participating in unions as a condition of employment. Now more than 85 years removed from a legislative remedy to such lopsided bargains, to know that we are potentially moving backward on the subject of workers’ rights is frightening.

Ginsburg isn’t the only one painting this decision in such ominously historical terms either. While the Court didn’t specifically address discrimination in the workplace with this ruling, civil rights advocates have expressed their fear it will set a precedent that will allow employers to skirt their responsibility concerning claims of discrimination and harassment in the workplace. Add to this fears that a conservative majority ruling in Janus v. AFSCME could strip unions of their ability to collect “fair share” fees from non-members who nonetheless benefit from union representation, and there is any number of reasons for concern for the fate of American unions and the imbalance of political power fueled and perpetuated by moneyed interests.

As with intervening to attempt to save manufacturing jobs, the impetus should be on lawmakers and the country’s leadership to steer the nation in the right direction on upholding workers’ rights, a point Ruth Bader Ginsburg emphasized in her dissent. At least as long as Republicans control both Congress and the White House, however, any pushback on efforts to undermine organized labor appears unlikely, especially while establishment Democrats fail to rise more strongly to its defense until it’s time to campaign—and even then there are failings, as the story of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 electoral loss demonstrates. A year-and-a-half after the fact, one is left to wonder what lessons, to be exact, the Dems have learned from their defeats of previous years.

Donald Trump was closer than he probably realized to the truth about China’s role in the United States’ manufacturing woes, and it got him to the White House. Until we as a nation get better at diagnosing this reality and abandoning the “robots took our jobs” narrative, crafting proactive-minded policy to adapt to the challenges of a global market, and ensuring that workers can organize and advocate for better wages and working conditions, we run the risk of similarly unqualified candidates taking advantage of the unrest that is apparent in teachers’ strikes and other walkouts which are happening, have happened, and will continue to happen—not to mention continued efflux of research and development skill, factory closures, and job loss.

On the surface, American manufacturing looks to be growing as it has in past decades. A deeper dive into the numbers, though, tells a more complete story—and one that doesn’t obviously lead to a happy ending. Let’s hope we as a country realize this before it’s too late and we fall too far behind on the world stage.

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