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ciboriaadastra · 6 months ago

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🔥khoa and/or talia

I can do both! :3 under a cut because I talk too much

Talia my lovely <3

Preface: I won't get into the violent racism of the Morrison retcon and any characterization that builds upon it or the orientalism in pre-Morrison canon because those are obvious popular opinions people should be against. Anti-racism is not a hot take, basically. And there are people on this website who have already talked about this better than I can with the insight of being directly targeted.

Talia shouldn't be the focus of man pain or the target of blame for it, because—aside from the fact that this is lazy, misogynistic writing—she actually has little to none to do with the source of angst for those characters (namely, Bruce and Damian). Fanfic writers are extremely annoying about this.

I cannot read a regular batcentric fanfic that involves Talia, because she is always utilized to be a source of angst when at best she's a vehicle for it and it becomes quite clear this is the writer's way of dumping their misgivings about Talia, either as a potshot at her in a different shipfic or the fanfic's premise is [Character] stands around and yells at Talia for a thousand words.

The angst for Bruce and Damian specifically has less to do with her as a person and more to do with the theme of loss (abandonment trauma, loss of childhood, loss of control in your life, etc.) for which she happens to be a key character in facilitating the events that allow its exploration. Considering that loss is a major theme in her story, it's only natural that characters who are tied to her development experience a form of loss in relation to her.

Neither of them should hold any grudge or contempt towards her over their own pain, because she did not do anything to them that would warrant it; people who think that they should overblow the effect of her actions vs. the effect of the status quo they all operate in. Bruce has abandonment trauma because he developed it after an unalterable traumatic childhood event. It will always be unsafe for Damian to grow up existing as a part of the al-Ghul bloodline just as it was unsafe for Talia. Bruce's issues are internal, Damian's are systemic. It's hardly Talia's fault (especially not solely hers) that these issues rear their heads and strike.

Could they irrationally blame her for their problems? I guess, but most people aren't coming from a perspective where they would purposefully have characters behave irrationally for the realism after which they may check themselves (or be checked by someone else); most are rationalizing the irrational because they would behave that uncharitably to others. And its the misogyny.

Idk. I think Talia's a great character when you don't constantly have a bitch in your ear telling you she's a horrible mother and that she's an example of Bruce having terrible taste in women. My house is open for MILF lovers and women enjoyers.

Talia should have friends who have nothing to do with the Batfamily (or being adjacent to it) and don't know anything about her family or the League of Assassins.

Pretty self-explanatory, but I think it's not enough for her to have friends in the League, friends in fellow assassins, or friends in the bat-network, because it still creates a space where Talia is looked down upon by somebody for factors outside of her control or for not being the kind of woman they think she ought to be.

I also think she should be at the club.

She's transfem because I said so.

The transgender narrative, if you would.

Speaking on a meta level, it's about how trans women and transfeminine people are treated as if everything is their fault (indicted on false, bigoted narratives for things they would never do), having such a small network due to being isolated from a healthy source of community, being a target of fetishization, a constant trend of loneliness due to these factors outside of their control.

It's also about Talia leaving men (manhood) behind to discover who she is as a woman. The transition from an old life to a new one that provides a better sense of power and control over oneself than what existed in the old life. The transgenderisms in the concept of death and rebirth, a theme associated with the al-Ghuls as guardians of the Lazarus Pits.

I know transfem hcs are not popular (especially for canon female characters), so this isn't meant to be a hot take...I just haven't seen anyone else consider transfem Talia before. At least not outside of t4t Brutalia, which is often mostly about making transmasc Bruce make sense in the overarching story (Damian) than it is about both of them having trans narratives/themes. That is a problem more generalized to tmasc4tfem hcs than it is specifically a Brutalia problem, in that usually the transfem character's transfemininity is treated as an afterthought.

Though that last bit is not as annoying as people who reinvent the test tube eugenics baby backstory for Damian because the idea of Talia being trans is so beyond them for some reason. Like...why is eugenics more plausible than transfemininity to you? That's weird!

Minhkhoa you are so... *punches wall*

People who see zero value in his character just because he occupies the same archetype Two-Face represents (childhood friend turned foe) are needlessly obstinate.

The excuse is essentially that they don't want to read about a concept that is like a pre-existing concept but with a different perspective/spin on it. Which is an odd opinion to have when you're reading Big Two cape comics and you are constantly reading new perspectives/spins on the same concept, because an end does not and will not exist for them. And it may in part have something to do with Harvey's canonical whiteness vs. Minhkhoa undeniably being a SEAsian man.

Idk. It's strange to me, because Harvey and Minhkhoa exist in different periods in Bruce's life that do not overlap. Harvey and Bruce went to school together when they were little and reunited when Bruce returned to Gotham. Minhkhoa occupies a specific timespan between Bruce's highschool years and his return to Gotham. Harvey is not present during Fear State when Minhkhoa breaks the truce. When Bruce seeks out Harvey during Gotham Nocturne, Minhkhoa has long left Gotham to train Clownhunter.

In addition, the reasons they are important to Bruce's character are different. Harvey's deal is that Bruce cannot be so personally removed from the politics of Gotham and the plight of the average Gothamite and still think he can make a meaningful difference. Bruce was oblivious to Harvey's personal struggles, so all the help Bruce tried to give him generally did more harm in the grand scheme of things.

Minhkhoa on the other hand encapsulates one of the overarching themes introduced in BTK: think bigger. Bruce is not maximizing his potential to help the world; he's focused on a dinky rotting city off the coast of mainland New Jersey, a small state in the imperial core. He could renounce his status and generational wealth to commit himself to taking down criminal/capitalist empires all over the world exploiting people in countries in the Global South, to no longer be of the exploitative class and instead become an avenging angel for the exploited. Bruce is a one cause, one dedication type of person. Which isn't bad, just different. The point is not who is more right but to contrast different approaches to vigilantism and to critique a different aspect of what makes Bruce's status as a wealthy, ruling class American an obstacle to his efforts to reduce crime.

I hate fanon interpretations of Minhkhoa </3

If I was paid $100 to wallop people with a wooden baseball bat every time they said the word "psychopath" as a legitimate description of him, regurgitated ableist stereotypes around AsPD and personality disorders in general, or elected to flat out erase the struggles Minhkhoa had since his childhood despite it being an important aspect of his backstory and characterization simply because the concept of a person who struggles with low empathy is deeply uncomfortable to them; I would have enough money for a down payment on a house.

I've talked at length about this to you before here last year, but it still holds up. You'd think it'd be hard to fuck up the characterization of a character who only has like...three points of complexity...but then you will always be surprised.

I'm also :/ at the growing trend of Minhkhoa getting sucked into the fanon Batfamily vortex of doom. It will not end well for him.

I don't like the Wight Witch being added to Minhkhoa's lore. She should be her own independent character.

This is part of a bigger issue with Minhkhoa's characterization in which other DC writers strip important things from what Tynion established and adding relationships that don't provide his character with any meaningful development to make up for it. The singular L I've seen Ram V take when writing Asian characters.

I like Rhea Sinha. Her story is interesting and engaging on its own. I don't think Minhkhoa (and Bruce by extension) needed to be part of it. You could replace them with any other men and it'd still be compelling. For once in my fandom life, I want my blorbo (Minhkhoa) out of the good story.

It's also that this is a pattern of women being linked to Minhkhoa just as in-universe proof he exists outside of Bruce. You see this with Angelbreaker as well when she makes a comment during the Shadow War arc about Minhkhoa just wanting her to be his Catwoman. Which was extremely corny. You can have Minhkhoa attempt to emulate Bruce for the parts of himself that he believes is lacking or to outdo Bruce in ways he thinks Bruce could have been better without trying to make them 1:1 in every single way possible, else he just comes across as goofy and like he has no principles of his own besides spite for a man who dumped his ass 20-some years ago. Like...I get he's obsessed with Bruce to an embarrassing degree, but why do women have to deal with his mess?

I'd rather comic writers create characters who are just made to flesh out Minhkhoa's existing lore (at least what can be made cohesive of it) than create characters who are clearly supposed to have their own stories who just get linked to him just to be linked, if that makes sense. Like how Alfred exists to explain who raised Bruce when his parents were murdered and who helped Bruce in his early Batman years and who is there to help Bruce when he's too injured to retreat to the Batcave on his own. Flat and static characters have a place in media.

#per aspera ad askra #ask game

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ahopefuldoubt · 5 years ago

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“I can recognize my voice and myself in Aaron, but it’s also a fun leap of characterization.”

#somehowyouwill #nondisneyedit #animationedit #the prince of egypt #jeff goldblum #aaron #hope is hard to kill #new stuff #my gifs #well this only took me 3 years to finally make #i've thought about that leap of #characterization more than any rational person ought to

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stillness-in-green · 3 years ago

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Ahistorical, Absurd, and Unsustainable (Part Three)

An Examination of the Mass Arrest of the Paranormal Liberation Front

Introduction and Part One Part Two

PART THREE: Ethical Problems

Law Enforcement Conduct

The first thing that jumps out—the thing everyone talks about first and foremost about the raid—was Hawks’ murder of Twice. Murder is a controversial word in this context, I know, but I stand by it: regardless of his guilt or his intent, Bubaigawara Jin was a fleeing man who Hawks made a cold, rational decision to quite literally stab in the back. In that moment, Hawks appointed himself as an executioner of the state and murdered a man without due process—no trial, no judge, no nothing. It was an extrajudicial killing,[26] and while I know many people in the U.S. have gotten kind of jaded about that sort of thing, let me assure you that police brutality is still police brutality even when it’s being exercised against people who have committed crimes.

To illustrate this, allow me to share a few more excerpts from the Penal Code:

Assault and Cruelty by Specialized Public Employees: When a person performing or assisting in judicial, prosecutorial or police duties commits, in the performance of their duties, an act of assault or physical or mental cruelty upon the accused, suspect or any other person, imprisonment or imprisonment without work for not more than 7 years is imposed.

Abuse of Authority Causing Death or Injury by Specialized Public Employees: A person who commits a crime prescribed under the preceding Article and thereby causes the death or injury of another person is dealt with by the punishment for the crimes of injury or the punishment prescribed in the preceding Article, whichever is severer.

The punishments for Criminal Injury are imprisonment for not more than fifteen years or a fine of not more than 500,000 yen or, if the injury results in death, imprisonment for not less than three years. That’s really what Hawks ought to be looking at for Twice's murder, save that apparently heroes just aren't liable for this stuff, otherwise they'd be up against it all the time in the course of “fighting villains.” Certainly, Hawks doesn’t seem to have faced any repercussions thus far, beyond having to apologize in a press conference.

Now, again, many American readers of My Hero Academia are deeply embedded in a culture that normalizes police violence, and so there is a lot of callous handwaving about how Hawks did the right thing because Jin was a significant threat. In response to such dismissal, let me provide a few more numbers:

In the U.S. in 2019, law enforcement killed over a thousand people.

In the same year in Japan, law enforcement killed two. Two people.

In the U.S., a major factor in how police keep skating on these deaths is the legal doctrine of qualified immunity, which is nominally intended to protect officers from frivolous lawsuits in cases where they’re ruled to be acting in “good faith,” a vague ruling which has made successful prosecution of police brutality and negligence all but impossible.

Japan, and I cannot stress this enough, does not have this doctrine. The significance of law enforcement taking a life is not so casually brushed aside in other places in the world, so please don’t try to tell me that Horikoshi was trying to get across the idea that Hawks did the right thing, easy as that. The critical depiction of heroes and Hero Society dehumanizing their enemies is all over the manga.

When the Tartarus guards discuss what the government is doing about Gigantomachia, one of them complains that the higher-ups can’t use missiles—missiles!—on him because he’s quote-unquote-human.[27] During their battle at Kamino, All Might tells All For One that this time, he’s going to put him in a prison cell—he characterizes his attempt to kill All For One six years ago as a mistake. Even in the spin-off manga, Vigilantes, designated police representative Tsukauchi[28] looks absolutely aghast at Endeavor’s willingness to use lethal force against Pop Step, an innocent-until-proven-guilty minor, even though, at that time, they have all the evidence in the world that she is actively engaged in setting off bombs in populated areas.

Most prominent is the series’ treatment of the High End Noumu. The heroes rationalize them as corpses, monsters, inhuman, all in order to kill them guilt-free,[29] and this rationalization spills over to Shigaraki during the War Arc, as the chasm of understanding between heroes and villains reaches its most stark. Yet, that same arc was proceeded by the reveal of the truth about Kurogiri, which had Tsukauchi directly acknowledge that they may have misunderstood the Noumu as the series dangled the possibility that Kurogiri possesses lingering awareness from Shirakumo Oboro. Earlier, we had Ending, a man who wanted Endeavor to kill him and thought Endeavor would do it specifically because Endeavor killed the High End, and this act set him decisively apart from the non-murdery heroic norm. Even into the War Arc itself, we were getting new information on the Noumu: to wit, we were shown incontrovertible proof—in the form of Woman’s internal monologue in Chapter 268—that the High End Noumu do think.

Even if we assume the government has relaxed its prohibitions about public servants assaulting people in the course of carrying out their duty, it does not follow that Hawks’ extrajudicial execution was totally fine. Heroes are not supposed to kill because police are not supposed to kill, and in Japan, it isn’t assumed that they will the moment they run into resistance.

And look, this is not to say that Japanese police never get away with police brutality. Obviously, the country has its own problems with the issue, typically involving racism and ethnocentrism. But the way that some people in the fandom just brush off Jin’s death does a disservice to the way the series frames Hawks’ actions and what that framing is communicating to a Japanese reader.

Also, even putting aside the matter of his death, openly taunting a mentally ill man about how easy it was to fool him definitely pings me as an act of mental cruelty, though of course there’s no one to sue Hawks over that one, seeing as he murdered the victim and only witness. (Chapter 264)

That all said, there are other issues with the heroes’ actions during the raid. One is called out right in the text: Midnight acknowledges that the use of chemical agents is illegal, but calls upon Momo to engineer knock-out drugs to use against Gigantomachia anyway. Is that an action Momo will face any repercussions for at all? And if not, what does it imply about the setting that she won’t?

Here’s another big one: what’s the legality of heroes using their quirks against civilians? Because that’s what the vast majority of the PLF are, civilians. Oh, they’re suspects, sure, but throughout the manga, “heroes” aren’t set up as people who just fight any and every tiny crime they come across. From the very first chapter, heroes are set up as a specific counter to “evildoers” designated as “villains”—legally defined as people who use their quirks illegally two or more times.[30]

There is a very illuminating scene in the second chapter of Vigilantes in which Aizawa confronts Knuckleduster for his assault of a random businessman and, the moment he realizes Knuckleduster is quirkless, apologizes for the misunderstanding and walks away. If Knuckleduster doesn’t have a quirk, Knuckleduster by definition cannot be a villain, and thus, Aizawa is not authorized to throw down with him.[31] It’s somewhat unclear, not least because a lot of the evidence is in the more-interested-in-systemic-worldbuilding Vigilantes, but there is reason to believe that heroes are not allowed to use their quirks against people who are committing mundane crimes.[32] If anything, I should think that heroes only using their quirks on people who are using their quirks illegally is part of the philosophical scaffolding that gives heroes their moral authority—you see this argument from the first bearer of One For All, who loudly espouses that people not only should not use their quirks selfishly, but that quirks should only be used to help others. This kind of supposed selflessness is what MHA’s current society is built on.

To see the relevance here, consider Trumpet. Oh, he absolutely was using his quirk illegally, but can the system prove that?[33] After all, he only ever used it on allies—do you think they're in a big hurry to snitch on him? Do you think Mr. Compress is going to? And if the police can't prove Trumpet used his quirk illegally, then is he even a capital-V Villain? What about all those other rank and file types? Certainly we saw the ones at the villa fighting back with quirks, but what about those supporters at bases scattered around the country? Did they fight back, and if so, did they do it with quirks? If not, was it legal for them to be targeted by heroes?

More importantly, can they mount an argument on that, be it a legal or a moral one?

The Scope of the Operation

The next big ethical problem actually predates the raid itself, and it’s this: how did the Commission know where to target their raids? How did they obtain that information? Specifically, how many privacy violations were involved? It strains credulity well past my personal breaking point to imagine that Hawks and the Commission were able to get every name, every base of operations, especially given the limitations they were under—the fact that Hawks couldn’t communicate openly, the hard time limit before the PLF put their plan in motion, making sure they didn’t tip off someone in the massive secret organization that had people working in heroics, the government, the infrastructure, etc.—but let’s consider the sorts of avenues the HPSC did have available to them.

So to start with, they send in Hawks, who’s specifically trained to extract information from people without raising suspicion about his motives. Doubtlessly, he’s able to get all sorts of names,[34] starting with the higher-ups—not just Re-Destro and his inner circle, but also any of the advisors that e.g. run businesses that they invite him to patronize, MLA heroes, and so on. And with a decent crop of names in hand—let us assume for the sake of argument that Hawks had some way to communicate those names to his handlers—the HPSC can start doing background checks and digging in.

Where do these people come from? Where were they born, and, if they moved, where did they settle? Where do they work? What are their social pastimes? Trace the commonalities, look into publicly available records, use wiretaps…

Yes, the police in Japan can totally use wiretaps if they suspect organized criminal activity—it was one of the powers expanded significantly under that controversial 2017 law I footnoted earlier. One thing to note is that this does require a warrant, or at least the expectation that a judge will grant a warrant.[35] But how far does that go? Can they get a warrant for financial records? How about phone records? E-mail accounts?

Can they wiretap people for no reason save their association with a name Hawks provided? If a PLF member attends a Jazzercize class on Thursday mornings, does every member of that class start noticing a weird little reverb on their phone calls for a week? Does Re-Destro’s hometown have an influx of people poking around evaluating its potential as a place to live? If Slidin’ Go once snatched your dog out of traffic and you subsequently bought a Slidin’ Go keychain, are you and your family now under investigation?

Getting details on people like the CEO of Detnerat and the head of the Hearts & Minds Party is probably pretty straightforward; heck, investigating Kizuki Chitose’s publication history was probably a goldmine in and of itself. That sort of surveillance gets more complicated and difficult to justify—and to make credible to the reader—the further down the chain of command you go, though. Sooner or later, the HPSC would have had to make a call: knowing that they don’t have the time, freedom, and resources to perfectly get only and exactly everyone that’s a real threat, do they overcompensate or do they undercompensate?

You only have to look at Hero Society to know which answer they were going to go with.[36]

To be fair, undercompensating, while it clearly would have been easier on their strained resources, ran the risk of leaving threats out there to come back to bite them later. They likely thought that they’d done enough undercompensating for Shigaraki Tomura, compounded by the fact that apparently there hadn’t been enough done about Destro’s followers back in the day, either. I mean, better to grab everyone and then let the courts sort it out, right? Rather than risk innocents getting hurt?

Well, let’s talk about innocents. Innocents, and the costs of overcompensating.

Pictured: a man who was in daily close contact with the leader of the movement and who was at one point in time in possession of a copy of the movement's manifesto. (Chapter 218)

The problem with grabbing everyone in a group, even the most obviously PLF-aligned groups, is that there are always going to be both people who don’t seem to know anything because they’re very good at living double lives and aren’t particularly active on the recruitment front, and people who don’t seem to know anything because they legitimately don’t know anything.

The Gunga Villa is straightforward enough—on paper, it was probably reserved for a business retreat for four months, because you certainly wouldn’t want some random newlywed couple booked for a nice mountain honeymoon recognizing Shigaraki Tomura wandering around. Same story for the employees; the MLA wouldn’t have put the League up at the villa if there was a chance that anyone there would rat them out. So I think we can assume relatively fairly that anyone in the building the day of the conference is solidly implicated, whatever their claims might be otherwise.

Of course, plenty might well try to claim that they were just there for the vacation, or just started work last week and had no idea the place was a nest for conspiracy, but that was where Hawks spent most of his time, and most of the people at the villa presumably fought back against the heroes. It might be a complicated process, matching hero eyewitness testimony to every person there, but you can at least sort of see the path to it.

Other groups, however, are a lot less straightforward. Consider the following categories:

The Liberated Districts

As I discussed earlier, Deika was presumably a high watermark on societal saturation, but Deika still only counted 90% of the population as “Liberation Warriors, lying in wait.” That leaves 10% unaccounted for. So who are those 10%? Are they children?[37] Some children too young to know anything about the PLF, and some old enough to know but not yet old enough to be considered warriors for the cause? Are they instead elderly people, maybe remnants from when the MLA first started to infiltrate the town that have just never had enough close family or social life to get pulled into the Liberation Army by the usual vectors?

By far the worst option is if Trumpet’s 90% accounts for anyone even remotely connected to the MLA—that would mean one out of every ten people in Deika is legitimately completely ignorant of what the powers that be had brought in. How on earth are you supposed to tell those people apart from the other 90% when the heroes sweep in and arrest absolutely everyone? Or are we to believe that the HPSC had time to get in an agent to flash a covert L-sign at everyone in town and they only arrested people who visibly acknowledged it?

These problems only get worse for our hypothetical town that’s 70% PLF. That opens you up to far more people who have only recently started getting drawn in. Consider the disaffected twenty-something whose family has no idea what’s been keeping him out so late in the evenings. The young mother who met the nicest and most convincing people via the daycare, but whose husband is always out of town on business trips so she hasn’t had time to introduce him to anyone. The working parents who just joined up and whose kid, away at hero school, doesn’t know anything—yet.[38]

Evaluating these peoples’ social circles and financial history for other PLF attachments is going to turn up a ludicrous number of false positives unless the Commission can narrow down exactly when and where such people crossed paths with the ideology of Liberation. So many people would have been raised to it, people whose entire lives are suspect, but mistaking even one new recruit for a lifelong loyalist gives you exponentially more avenues to baselessly suspect people—and as established, the Commission just doesn’t have the time to be overly discerning.

Detnerat, Shoowaysha, and Feel Good Inc.

This is another line of attack that seems like it should be a bullseye, but is actually quite the opposite. Detnerat is a business that is run by the leader of the entire movement, yet the fact that not everyone who works there is a member of the MLA is one of the very first things we find out about them! Miyashita was something akin to a personal aide or secretary to Rikiya, someone Rikiya liked well enough that he was on the verge of introducing Miyashita to his other friends—and Miyashita didn’t know the first thing about his boss’s true affiliations. It’s patently obvious from that alone that not everyone at Detnerat is PLF, and it's likely that the numbers of the faithful are even thinner at Curious and Skeptic's outfits, where they're high-ranked executives but, crucially, not actually in charge.

This is, of course, complicated further by the fact that people who work at e.g. a publishing house are probably there because they agree with that publishing house’s politics, whether or not they know what’s going on behind the scenes. Ditto with Detnerat—certainly there would be people there who just needed a job and could charm their way through an interview without an inner passion for the work, but loads of people probably work there because they legitimately believe in the company’s ethos. So how do you tell people who have relatively radical personal politics without having any idea about the terrorism apart from the people who are absolutely PLF/ex-MLA but who are now lying about it because their organization's cover is blown and the response to that is, “Well, time to go back underground!”

The Hearts & Minds Party

Membership of this party would seem to be a good indicator, but using it that way too unquestioningly is also very flawed. This is because the HMP particularly is probably an excellent recruitment tool for the MLA/PLF. The note above about having radical political beliefs but still being ignorant about the planned acts of terror is especially true for the HMP. The Commission cannot just pull the voting records and arrest all of them because plenty of them are going to be totally ignorant of what was really going on with the heart of the party, only joining up because they believed in the kinds of things the HMP was platforming on—less repressive quirk use laws, prison reform, very possibly issues like the abolishment of the legal category “villain” or greater social safety nets. Just because someone votes for those things, doesn’t mean they know about or would support the MLA’s violent extremism or the PLF’s anarchic goals.

So at what level of initiation does the Commission call a cut-off? How long does someone have to have been voting straight-ticket HMP for them to be considered condemned by that association?

Over and over again, the question arises: how did the heroes and the police distinguish the initiated from the uninitiated? And given that Japan’s legal system at least nominally requires that guilt be proven, what are they going to do when huge numbers of those people claim innocence?

The Presupposition of Guilt

Let’s take a few minutes to circle back to what I talked about earlier, the presumption of guilt and how it relates to arrests, convictions, and the perception of arrestees in Japan. This is going to swerve hard back towards real-life Japan issues for a bit, but it is exceptionally relevant when examining what’s likely to happen to the people arrested in the raids, innocent and guilty alike, so thanks in advance for bearing with me.

In Japan, the rate of conviction is extraordinarily high—if you’re in anime fandom and active in social justice circles, you may have seen the tumblr posts about the country’s famed 99.9% conviction rate.[39] There are a range of explanations for this. Defenders argue that, compared to police in many other countries, police in Japan are very cautious and don't move to prosecute unless a case is all but airtight; thus, many who are arrested may well be released without charge if there is even the slightest doubt that the case will hold up in court. One can easily see truth to this by looking at the numbers on how many people are arrested in Japan versus how many are actually charged: Wikipedia notes (albeit without citation) that in the U.S., roughly 42% of arrests in felony cases result in prosecution, while in Japan the figure is only 17.5%.

Conversely, critics note that a major feature of convictions in Japan is the confession, and confessions can be coerced, particularly in the sorts of conditions that those imprisoned in pre-trial detention are kept—no legal representation, no contact with their families, loved ones or employers, no requirement that they be informed about what they’re being charged with, potential weeks upon weeks kept in isolation, sessions of questioning that can extend for most of the day.

There have also been cases in which confessions have been found to be falsified, for example by having the suspect sign a paper and then filling in or altering other details after the fact.

There are some other factors about confessions to be aware of here:

In Japan, it is not legally permissible for a suspect to be convicted solely based on their confession. The constitutional provision in this regard is something called himitsu no bakuro, the “revelation of secret.” The revelation of secret is something in the confession that is factually verifiable and which, at the time of the confession, only the suspect could have known. Common examples are things like the location of a previously undiscovered body or the time and location where a weapon used in the crime was purchased. The majority of verdicts that are overturned in Japan are overturned because of issues with a confession.

Sentencing is also very lenient compared to the U.S., particularly if the suspect was cooperative with police and admitted guilt (seen as showing remorse). Thus you wind up with a situation in which suspects believe that they’ll lose a case if they go to trial (because practically everyone does) and prosecutors—rather more aware of the weaknesses in a case than a confused and vulnerable layman—don’t want to bring a shaky case to trial, and thus both parties are invested in whatever will get the suspect out with a minimum of effort. The result of this is a high number of people released on “suspended prosecution,” which is an admission of guilt, but with a prosecutor's decision to show lenience while still establishing precedent for possible later offenses warranting more severe punishment. This is a particularly common result for first-time offenders, especially in non-violent crimes.

Note that suspended prosecution is not at all the same thing as being released for lack of evidence; a suspect is conceding their guilt by accepting the arrangement. However, many suspects who the police might not be confident in convicting are known to sign confessions and accept the arrangement regardless, because, along with fear for their livelihoods, it’s known that judges tend to view extended time in detention as a sign of guilt. Also too, if admitting guilt is seen as showing remorse, then maintaining one’s innocence is often perceived as a lack of remorse—leading to fears that fighting the charges will result not only in defeat, but also in harsher sentencing!

All of these factors combine into a problem with perception of guilt that feeds on itself endlessly at all levels. Let me use a run-on sentence to summarize: the general public views anyone who is even arrested as probably guilty, because the police are seen as generally only moving on those who are guilty, because police specifically only prosecute those who they can all but prove are guilty, but guilt can be “proven” by a sufficiently detailed confession, and while confessions are required to have some corroborating evidence, they can easily be falsified and may well be offered up with minimal resistance because the suspect is also convinced that judges will only be harsher on them if they put up a fight because suspects also believe that they will be convicted at trial because everyone knows the conviction rate is unbelievably high.

Japan likes to think of itself as a “safe” country, which is in large part why its deeply concerning arrest and detainment procedures have held up repeatedly in court. These things help keep people safe, after all, and who wouldn't want people to be safe?

Returning, then, to the matter of My Hero Academia and the Paranormal Liberation Front mass arrest, I don’t think it’s overstating things to claim that the dehumanization of villains and the glamorization of heroes has probably exacerbated these problems.

Cruel punishments are illegal under Article 36 of the Japanese constitution? But what if someone really, really deserves it, though? (Chapter 94)

You can see that willingness to shrug off civil rights violations as long as it means safety in the symbol All Might represents, a hero who is there to beat up baddies, not ask questions about why they're being bad. Ditto Tartarus, where the Bad People get put, regardless of whether their Bad really warrants so awful a punishment or whether the severity of such a punishment serves as an effective deterrent.[40]

As to the presupposition of guilt, if a hero thinks they saw someone Doing A Bad, and confidently testifies to that effect, who’s going to doubt them? It’s blunt to the point of headache-inducing that Midoriya Izuku, the boy who will be the greatest hero, who’s treated by the story as if he’s the first person in history to think about “saving” a “villain,” doesn’t even start to think about such a thing until he literally experiences a psychic impression of a five-year-old crying within the heart of Shigaraki Tomura.

At the press conference in Chapter 306, it’s illustrated numerous times that huge portions of society don’t particularly care about Dabi’s accusations. They don’t ask for Hawks to face justice for the murder he openly admits to committing; they don’t ask for apologies for the heroes’ wrongdoings. They ask for heroes to make them feel safe. Even if it means lying to them; even if it means asking Endeavor to go out there and “take down” his firstborn son. People are uneasy about the accusations, certainly, but what they want is not for heroes to take responsibility for their actions, to atone for them, but rather to deny that there’s any truth to the accusations at all.

This is not a society that, in the wake of Gigantomachia’s rampage, is going to be open to the possibility that some people caught up in the mass arrest are legitimately innocent and that everyone, even villains, deserves to be afforded the full extent of their rights.

The Dissolution of the HMP

Speaking of rights, let’s go over one that we can immediately see has been flagrantly violated in the manga compared to the state of real-life Japanese law—the overnight dissolution of the Hearts & Minds Party.

As discussed earlier, it's unlikely that every member is a dyed-in-the-wool terrorist. There are bound to be perfectly innocent people in the country who just so happen to agree with the HMP’s campaign platforms. Now, all of those people are going to turn on the evening news[41] and be blindsided with the news that their political party has just been dissolved and some enormous percentage of its membership arrested. This was not publicized or forewarned; it just happened, in a matter of hours. Do you think those people—people who are members of a party that specifically opposes the current status quo—are just going to nod and say, “Oh, wow, that sucks, but who am I to question the wisdom of the government and its agents? Time to find a new political party, I guess!” Would you?

I can assure you that you wouldn’t, because let me be clear: under current Japanese law, what we’re told happened to the HMP is unbelievably illegal—not only because they were dissolved at all, but particularly the speed with which that dissolution was carried out.

I mentioned earlier, in the section “Japan and Illegal Organizations,” that there were methods by which organizations can be dissolved. Now I’d like to look at that in more detail.

Any organization that’s been flagged as a potential threat—that “terroristic subversive activity” designation—can come under investigation from the Public Security Intelligence Agency. Their recommendations are then passed up for evaluation by a member of the Public Security Examination Commission,[42] who can pass a variety of prohibitions—the bans I mentioned earlier on printing activities, public assembly, and a few others. These prohibitions are issued in periods lasting up to six months, at which point they are re-evaluated and can be dismissed or renewed.

If the Public Security Examination Commission decides that the comparatively soft-pedal restrictions on freedom of the press or freedom of assembly are not sufficient to deter the organization in question from committing terroristic subversive activity continuously/repeatedly in the future, the Commission can elect to order the organization dissolved. This revokes their rights mentioned above entirely, and further stipulates that they liquidate their assets,[42] and that no member of or representative for the organization can take actions in the organization’s interest (e.g. things like opening bank accounts or buying property). The only exception to the latter restriction is a designated representative for the organization who is granted the right to manage its assets in the process of overseeing the dissolution.

Any of the designations above can be appealed, but dissolution is permanent until specifically overturned.

Now, it might well seem that the HMP could be targeted under the “advocating for subversive terroristic activity” criteria, but here’s the problem with that: that criteria is based on the organization engaging in/advocating for such terroristic subversiveness as an organizational activity—that is, the activity in question is a foundational, core aspect of the organization’s endeavors. And I simply don’t think that’s how the HMP operates. To reiterate, I believe they’re a recruitment tool, meant to siphon people into the MLA (later the PLF) proper, but otherwise a perfectly legitimate political party with real political aims, outreach, goals, and so on.

Of course, I can easily see the anger over all the destruction leading the Ministry of Justice to being heavy-handed in its response to the Paranormal Liberation Front and any organization even suspected of being associated with it, of which the HMP is the most prominent. I could also simply be wrong about what the HMP says at their rallies. Regardless of either of those possibilities, however, there is still the matter of the timetable.

There was a period in Japanese history that organizations—political parties especially—could be dissolved on the spot. The Meiji Constitution granted that right to the Minister of Home Affairs, a Cabinet position appointed by the Emperor, and indeed, any number of socialist, communist, or labor-oriented parties were banned and dissolved within scant months of their establishment for their alleged leftist or subversive leanings.[44] The Farmer-Labor Party of 1925 was dissolved three hours after its establishment! So clearly there’s some precedent—or at least, there was. Like many things, the power to summarily dissolve organizations did not survive the Meiji Constitution’s transformation into its modern-day incarnation after World War II.

The Subversive Activities Prevention Act, the same one that lays out the causes for dissolving an organization, also details a legally mandated process by which this dissolution is carried out. Most prominently, organizations cannot just be dissolved with no notice, no chance to defend themselves. Any disposition curtailing an organization's activities, from the bans on their printed material to complete dissolution, is required to be announced both via the government's official gazette[45] and, if the residence of a chief officer or representative of the organization is known, also via written notification. These notifications must be sent at least seven days before the hearing date—a hearing which, further, the organization has the legal right to send agents to in order to present statements and evidence in their own favor, as well as examine the evidence being presented against them.

This clearly did not happen. Bare minimum, Hanabata Koku, as leader of the Hearts & Minds Party, should have had an address the Commission could get ahold of, especially given all the snooping they so obviously must have been doing to unearth the extent of the PLF’s reach.

It’s instructive, in this regard, to look to history. To wit, I’ve said a lot about how gun-shy Japan is to dissolve organizations outright, thanks to its history of governmental repression—but how true is that really? If the government really wanted to, couldn’t it just decide to crack down on something and ride out the controversy? Has it done as much before?

To put all this into proper perspective: no. It hasn’t. The government has invoked the Subversive Activities Prevention Act against a group rather than individuals only once in all the time since the act was passed in 1952.

It was against Aum Shinrikyo, and it didn’t happen until seven months after the subway attacks. Even with nearly unanimous desire to prosecute, even though Aum had been under police surveillance prior to the attacks, even though lawsuits against them were and had been ongoing, meaning at least some measure of investigation was being done openly, it still took seven months to gather the evidence, submit it to the Public Safety Examination Commission, allow Aum their appeal, and enact the ruling. That’s because, in a society ordered by democratic processes, these things take time.[46]

But the HMP? No one who wasn’t a member knew about their affiliation with the League of Villains—much less an underground army!—until Hawks got the word out, and the Hero Public Safety Commission had to be rigorously careful that news of their investigations not leak because they knew they had their own moles to deal with. So far as we know, the Hearts & Minds Party remained a legit organization right up until the day of the raid. It is functionally impossible under current Japanese law for them to have been dissolved in the scant few hours between the commencement of the raid and the attack on Tartarus in which the two guards mention the dissolution.

Even if the relevant agency in the Ministry of Justice submitted their paperwork the absolute minimum of time in advance, there is no way the HMP and Trumpet—and therefore Re-Destro and the League and everyone else—shouldn’t have known that the government was moving against them. The only answer is that the Ministry of Justice was evading its legal obligation to notify both the public[47] and the HMP itself, or that the Japanese government, in the wake of the Advent of the Exceptional, throttled back on constitutionally guaranteed freedoms exactly the way human rights activists today are always warning about.

Stigma and Recidivism

In the same way that In Custody is not (or shouldn't be) a magic status effect preventing villains from escaping from police, In Jail is not an endgame state. Most people in prison are not there for life (or death) sentences, particularly not in Japan. Even if the majority of the PLF gets stuck in prison for decades, there will, eventually, be an “after” for them. So what happens “after”?

Well, like many countries, Japan has made efforts in the modern day to offer training classes and parole officers to help reacclimate ex-convicts into society once they’ve done their time, but it remains a difficult process, and the country has a relatively high recidivism rate. Given the stigma against criminals—present to a degree in all countries, but particularly exacerbated in Japan—it is frequently difficult for released prisoners to find stable housing or employment—both key factors helping to prevent recidivism.

So does MHA’s Japan have similar programs? Well, it’s hard to say, given that the only prison we’ve actually seen is Tartarus, which is obviously a poor model to base a lot of judgement on—save, of course, that any country that could develop a place like Tartarus is a country with an appalling deficit of care for criminals’ human rights, which doesn’t bode well for their other prisons.

Speaking of things that don’t bode well, though, we have two obvious examples in the canon of how convicted criminals fare: both Gentle Criminal and Twice are, it’s suggested, prosecuted for their foundational fuck-ups—Tobita for obstructing public duties[48] and Jin for his traffic infraction. It’s unclear whether they went to prison or not—given the relative lenience shown to first-time offenders, I’m inclined to think probably not—but even given these very mild offenses, their lives were turned completely upside-down, and no apparent efforts were made to help them through chaotic periods that saw Tobita apparently disowned and Jin losing his job.

Consider the harsh reactions they garnered and the apparent lack of assistance from any social structure despite the relative mildness of their wrongs, and things start to look very bad indeed for the PLF. Will there be any steps taken at all to deradicalize them? Does taking such steps seem likely, given what we've seen of MHA’s legal and carceral systems thus far? Further, if there is no plan for deradicalization, how exactly do the heroes propose to stop this from happening again (and again, and again and again and again)?

Here’s another alarming thought: what will be done with the children? There’s no way around the fact that the MLA, and therefore the PLF, included children[49]—and I don’t mean it in the tumblr sense of describing a sixteen-year-old as “a literal child,” though there would be some of those, too. No, I mean the grade-schoolers, the toddlers, the babies. Maybe some of them will have non-PLF family they could hypothetically go to, but as I have written about in the past, there’s a very real bias about orphans and other children separated from their parents in Japan, and even blood ties are not always enough to overcome that stigma. Alternative care is in a woefully sorry state as it is in Japan, and this would only be compounded for PLF kids—damned first for their criminal associations and again for being the children society doesn’t want.

However many thousands of them that may be.[50]

So here again, a question recurs. Where before it was, “How do you tell the guilty from the innocent?” here it’s, “How do you stop the societal backlash from ruining countless peoples’ lives both now and for decades into the future?” What kind of stigma will all these people—rank and file who come out of prison deradicalized and ready to rejoin society, children who were too young to understand why heroes took their parents away, ignorant family and friends who just lost loved ones to a massive government sweep, innocents swept up in the net and imprisoned for crimes they didn't commit—going to be facing? How long, then, before that stigma sees them radicalized in turn?

You cannot sweep 115,000 people under the rug and not expect there to be a stain—and given the narrative themes of the rest of My Hero Academia thus far, it’s absurd to think that’s even an option.

Next time: how scrapping the ex-MLA portions of the PLF undermines MHA's narrative integrity.

-----------------------------------------------------

Footnotes (Part Three)

[26] And in the legal sense, murder in the second degree.

[27] For the monstrous callousness of his comments in that conversation, said guard is immediately murdered by karma All For One. I very much hope we ever get Shishikura’s opinion on this, because I’m pretty sure the guard was his dad.

[28] Who, in Chapter 35 of that series, leads a group of police firing rubber bullets at an active villain, emphasizing that the police are trained in non-lethal tactics, and any escalation from that is not to be taken lightly.

[29] Indeed, you could make a fair argument that that’s exactly why the manga included the Noumu to begin with, though the lower-tier ones wind up captured as often as not.

[30] Vigilantes, Chapter 74.

[31] This sidesteps the matter of “rescue heroes,” those who focus on disaster response and evacuation. Note, however, that this is not a categorization that pits those heroes against non-quirk-abusing civilians. Non-quirk-abusing civilians are criminals for police to deal with, not heroes of any stripe.

[32] This would be in keeping with real-world de-escalation tactics. So for e.g. the purse-snatcher in Chapter 1, where we’re told he didn’t use his quirk until he’d been backed into a corner, I would bet that Kamuy Woods or whoever confronted the thief didn’t start actually using their quirk on the man until he went into giant mode. That is anyway a kinder interpretation than noting that he was a heteromorph and would have been using his quirk automatically just by virtue of existing in public.

[33] After digging him out from under the stairway it had a teenager drop on top of him, I mean. Did he even have much of a chance to use Incite at the villa, do you think?

[34] Though given that literally every member of the MLA we’ve met is addressed solely by their code name, I don’t for a second believe he could have gotten real names out of everyone he talked to.

[35] And judges virtually always grant warrants. It’s that presumption of guilt thing again.

[36] But that panel of the normally taciturn Edgeshot shouting at a bunch of high schoolers not to let a single person escape is pretty damn telling too.

[37] 14% of the Japanese populace is under 14 years old, so that’s not too far off, though I’d be inclined to think, based on everything we know about them, that the MLA was having more kids than Japan at large, not fewer.

[38] This should have been Uraraka, by the way.

[39] An exaggeration, but only by a handful of tenths of a percentage point.

[40] Though until recently, it’s served as a great check on recidivism, clearly.

[41] You know, assuming that they weren't all arrested in the middle of their workday or cleaning house or going to university or what have you.

[42] Both are among the agencies that make up the Ministry of Justice. I’d be willing to bet that, in-universe, the Hero Public Safety Commission is also under the Ministry of Justice umbrella.

[43] The funds are then remitted to the National Treasury.

[44] Though one thing to note for our current context is that, even when those parties were dissolved, it did not automatically follow that any duly elected representatives were expelled from office. Unless there was legal reason to remove them, any elected officials were simply rendered “Independents” rather than being affiliated with a political party. The constitution stipulates that Diet members can only be expelled by a two-thirds majority vote, though in such circumstances, most politicians choose to step down from their positions before it comes to such drastic measures.

[45] A newspaper or other bulletin officially authorized by the government to publish public and legal notices—in Japan these days, it’s an online site/newsletter.

[46] And they’re often still controversial with progressive activists, as the invocation against Aum was even contemporaneously! Incidentally, Aum’s dissolution lasted for a mere two years before the government panel ultimately declined to make it permanent.

[47] And if you don’t think the HMP had someone watching the official Japanese government website, you’re clearly not taking them seriously.

[48] And possibly more besides; the dialogue in question trails off in a way that suggests that the obstruction charge is only the first in a list.

[49] Start at Yotsubashi Rikiya being inducted when he was still in schoolboy shorts and continue right on up through the people we see in school uniforms in various mass battle scenes involving the MLA rank and file.

[50] And it easily could be thousands. If, say, even 10% of the PLF are minors, that’d be well over 10,000 kids, and thus we’re right back to overcrowding problems, except this time they’re about Japan’s child services programs, and the last thing they need is a new group of kids that numbers a full third of the number of children already in their care in real-life Japan. Naturally, the number only climbs if you think Re-Destro wasn’t counting kids in his initial reckoning of the MLA’s membership.

#bnha analysis #bnha meta #paranormal liberation front #meta liberation army #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #bnha #bnha spoilers #my writing #plf arrests #stillness has salt

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bylagunabay · 4 years ago

Video

youtube

THE ANTICHRIST BY VEN. FULTON J. SHEEN

Ven. Fulton Sheen delivers his prophetic sermon on the Antichrist, the Signs of our Times, the Apocalypse, the coming Chastisement, and exhorts Christians to call on our Blessed Mother and St. Michael for protection.

TRANSCRIPT

God Love You! I want these to be my first words of greeting to you as they will be the concluding words on each broadcast. “God Love You” means God is love; God love you; and you ought to love God in return.

Why is it that so few realize the seriousness of our present crisis? Partly because men do not want to believe their own times are wicked, partly because it involves too much self-accusation and principally because they have no standards outside of themselves to measure their times. Only those who live by faith really know what is happening in the world.

Well may Our Savior say to us what He said to the Sadducees and Pharisees in His time: “When it is evening, you say: It will be fair weather, for the sky is red. And in the morning: Today there will be a storm, for the sky is red and lowering. You know then how to discern the face of the sky: and can you not know the signs of the times?”.

Do we know the signs of our times? They point to two inescapable truths, the first of which is that we have come to the end of the post – Renaissance Chapter of history which made man the measure of all things.

The three basic dogmas of the modern world are dissolving before our very eyes.

First, we are witnessing the liquidation of the economic man, or the assumption that man who is a highly developed animal has no other function in life than to produce and acquire wealth, and then like the cattle in the pastures, be filled with years and die.

Secondly, we are witnessing the liquidation of the idea of the natural goodness of man who has no need of a God to give Him rights, or a Redeemer to salvage him from guilt, because progress is automatic thanks science, education, and evolution, which will one day make man a kind of a god. We are witnessing also the liquidation of rationalism, or the idea that the purpose of human reason is not to discover the meaning and goal of life, namely the salvation of a soul, but to devise new technical advances to make on this earth a city of man to displace the city of God.

We are witnessing also the liquidation of rationalism, or the idea that the purpose of human reason is not to discover the meaning and goal of life, namely the salvation of a soul, but to devise new technical advances to make on this earth a city of man to displace the city of God. It may very well be that Historical Liberalism of our modern generation is only a transitional era in history between a civilization which once was Christian and one which will be definitely anti-Christian.

The second great truth to which the signs of the times portend is that we are definitely at the end of a nonreligious era of civilization, by that I mean one which regarded religion as an addendum to life, a pious extra, a morale-builder for the individual but of no social relevance, and God is a silent partner whose name was used by the firm to give respectability but who had nothing to say about how the business should be run.

In the new era into which we are entering is what might be called the religious phase of human history. Do not misunderstand me; by religious we do not mean that men will turn to God, but rather that the indifference to the absolute which characterized the liberal phase of civilization will be succeeded by a passion for an absolute.

From now on the struggle will be not for the colonies and national rights, but for the souls of men. The battle lines are being clearly drawn and the basic issues are no longer in doubt. From now on men will divide themselves into two religions understood again as surrender to an absolute. The conflict of the future is between an absolute who is the God-Man and an absolute which is the man-god; between the God Who became man and the man who makes himself god; between brothers in Christ and comrades in anti-Christ.

But, the anti-Christ will not be so called, otherwise he would have no followers. He will wear no red tights, nor vomit sulphur, nor carry a spear nor wave an arrowed tail as the Mephistopheles in Faust. Nowhere in Sacred Scripture do we find warrant for the popular myth of the devil as a buffoon who is dressed like the first “red.” Rather, is he described as a fallen angel, as “the Prince of this world” whose business it is to tell us that there is no other world. His logic is simple: if there is no heaven there is no hell; if there is no hell, there is no sin; if there is no sin, there is no judge, and if there is no judgement then evil is good and good is evil.

But above all these descriptions, Our Lord tells us that he will be so much like Himself, that he would deceive even the elect – and certainly no devil we have ever seen in picture books could deceive the elect.

How will he come in this new age to win followers to his religion?

— He will come disguised as the Great Humanitarian;

— He will talk peace, prosperity and plenty not as means to lead us to God, but as ends in themselves.

— He will write books on the new idea of God to suit the way people live; induce faith in astrology so as to make not the will but the stars responsible for our sins;

— He will explain guilt away psychologically as repressed sex, make men shrink in shame if their fellowmen say they are not broadminded and liberal;

— He will identify tolerance with indifference to right and wrong;

— He will foster more divorces under the disguise that another partner is “vital”;

— He will increase love for love and decrease love for person;

— He will invoke religion to destroy religion;

— He will even speak of Christ and say that he was the greatest man who ever lived; his mission he will say will be to liberate men from the servitude of superstition and Fascism: which he will never define.

But, in the midst of all his seeming love for humanity and his glib talk of freedom and equality, he will have one great secret which he will tell to no one; He will not believe in God. Because his religion will be brotherhood without the fatherhood of God, he will deceive even the elect.

He will set up a counter Church which will be the ape of the Church because, he the devil, is the ape of God. It will be the mystical body of the anti-Christ that will in all externals resemble the church as the mystical body of Christ.

In desperate need for God, he will induce modern man in his loneliness and frustration to hunger more and more for membership in his community that will give man enlargement of purpose without any need of personal amendment and without the admission of personal guilt.

These are days in which the devil has been given a particularly long rope. For we must never forget that Our Lord said to Judas and his band: “This is your hour.” God has His day, but evil has its hour when the shepherd shall be struck and the sheep dispersed.

Has the Church made the preparations for just such a dark night in the decree of the Holy Father outlining the conditions on which a Papal Election may now be held outside of the city of Rome? Men who know history have seen these dark days coming. As far back as 1842, 105 years ago, Heine the German poet wrote: “Communism, though little discussed now and loitering in hidden garrets on miserable straw pallets, is the dark hero destined for a great, if temporary, role in the modern tragedy…Wild, gloomy times are roaring toward us, and the prophet wishing to write a new apocalypse would have to invent entirely new beasts – beasts so terrible that St. John’s older animals would be like gentle doves and cupids in comparison. The gods are veiling their faces in pity on the children of men, their long-time charges. The future smells of Russian leather, blood, godlessness, and many whippings.

And, I should advise our grandchildren to be born with very thick skins on their backs. That in 1842.

Well indeed may we be warned. For the first time in history our age has witnessed the persecution of the Old Testament by the Nazis and the persecution of the New Testament by the Communists.

Anyone who has anything to do with God is hated today, whether his vocation was to announce His Divine Son, Jesus Christ, as did the Jew, or to follow Him as the Christian. Because the signs of our times point to a struggle between absolutes we may expect the future to be a time of trial for two reasons: Firstly, to stop disintegration. Godlessness would go on, and on, and on if there were no catastrophes.

What death is to an individual, that catastrophe is to an evil civilization: the interruption life and for the civilization the interruption of its Godlessness. Why did God station an angel with a flaming sword at the Garden of Paradise after the Fall, if it was not to prevent our first parents from entering again and eating of the Tree of Life, which, if they ate they would have immortalized their guilt.

And, God will not allow unrighteousness to become eternal. He permits revolution disintegration, chaos, to come as reminders that our thinking has been wrong, our dreams have been unholy. Moral truth is vindicated by the ruin that follows when it has been repudiated. The chaos of our times is the strongest negative argument that could ever be advanced for Christianity. Catastrophe reveals the evil is self-defeating and that we cannot turn from God as we have without hurting ourselves.

The second reason why a crisis must come is in order to prevent a false identification of the Church and the world. Our Lord intended that those who were His followers should be dierent in spirit from those who were not. But, this line of demarcation has been blotted out. Instead of black and white, there is only a blur.

Mediocrity and compromise characterize the lives of many Christians. They read the same novels as modern pagans, educate their children in the same godless way, listen to the same commentators who have no other standard than judging today by yesterday, and tomorrow by today, allow pagan practices to creep into family life, such as divorce and remarriage; there are not wanting, so-called Catholic labor leaders recommending Communists for Congress, or Catholic writers who accept presidencies in Communist front organizations to instill totalitarian ideas into movies.

There’s no longer the conflict and opposition which ought to characterize us. We are influencing the world less than the world influences us. There is no apartness. We who were sent out to establish a center of health have caught the disease, and therefore have lost the power to heal. And, since the gold is mixed with an alloy, the entirety must be thrust into the furnace that the dross may be burned away.

The value of the trial will be to set us apart. Evil catastrophe must come to reject us, to despise us, to hate us, to persecute us, and then, then we shall we define our loyalties, aim our fidelity and state on whose side we stand. Our quantity indeed will decrease, but our quality will increase. It is not for the Church that we fear, but for the world. We tremble not that God may be dethroned but that barbarism may reign.

And three practical suggestions then for the times as Christians realize that a moment of crisis is not a time of despair, but of opportunity. We were born in crisis, in defeat – the Crucifixion. And, once we recognize that we are under Divine Wrath, we become eligible for Divine Mercy. The very disciplines of God create hope. The thief on the right came to God by a crucifixion.

And secondly Catholics ought to stir up their Faith, hang a crucifix in their home, remind them that they have a cross to carry; gather your family together every night to recite the rosary; go to daily Mass; make the Holy Hour daily in the Presence of our Eucharistic Lord and particularly in parishes where pastors are conscious of the world’s need and therefore conduct services of reparation.

And, finally, Jews, Protestants, Catholics, Americans, all of us, must realize that the world is summoning us to heroic efforts at spiritualization. It is not a unity of religion we plead for that is impossible when purchased at the cost of the unity of truth, but a unity of religious people, wherein each marches separately according to the light of his conscience, but strikes together for the moral betterment of the world.

The forces of evil are united; the forces of good are divided. We may not be able to meet in the same pew – would to God we did – but we can meet on our knees. You may be sure that no sordid compromises nor carrying of waters on both shoulders will see you through. Those who have the faith had better keep in the state of grace and those who have neither had better find out what they mean, for in the coming age there will be only one way to stop your trembling knees, and that will be to get down on them and pray.

Pray to Michael, Michael the Prince of the morning, who conquered Lucifer who would make himself a god. When the world once cracked because of a sneer in heaven, he rose up and dragged down from the seven heavens the pride that would look down on the Most High.

And, pray too, pray to Our Lady, and say to her “It was to thee who was given the power to crush the head of the serpent who lied to men that they would be like unto gods. And mayest thou who didst find Christ when He was lost for three days, find Him again for our world who has lost Him. Give to the senile incontinence of our verbiage the Word. And as thou didst form the Word in thy womb, form Him in our own hearts. Lady of the Blue of Heaven, in these dark days light our lamps. Give back to us the Light of the World that a Light may Shine even in these days of darkness.

God love you.

Ven. Archbishop Fulton J Sheen, 1948

#catholic #prophecy #end times #antichrist #st michael #blessed mother #mother of god #mary #fulton sheen

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fictionadventurer · 5 years ago

Note

Don’t let it go to your head + Man from UNCLE? (Or whichever fandom you prefer) for the prompt meme?

I really did intend to try to write something for this fandom. But I haven’t seen any episodes of the TV show in years, and I’ve never seen the movie (which I suspect is the fandom you’re referring to, so the TV characterizations probably wouldn’t hold much appeal for you anyhow). I wasn’t confident enough in my grasp of the material to come up with any decent drabbles.

I then tried to think of similar fandoms, or any fandoms at all, that would fit the prompt, but my brain was contrary and decided to use it as a spark for a scene from one of my original universes. Well, two, technically. I have characters from my long-abandoned non-magical fantasy romance, A Beautiful Tomorrow, and this drabble’s a bit of an experiment in switching up their story and moving into my Starfall universe (though the Starfall portion of it doesn’t really factor into this scene).

So even though it’s not fanfiction, it’s a little bit like fanfiction for my own characters, and I’ve been sitting on this prompt so long that I’m overdue to do something with it. I hope it’s not thoroughly disappointing.

Interior Worlds

Snowflakes drifted like daytime stardust beyond the schoolroom window. Daniela rested her head against the glass to watch it fall. She could take a moment to relax. Her student was absorbed in her geography text, attentive to the lesson for once. Even in exile, Lucia preferred tales of far-off lands to facts about her homeland.

Something moved in the faint reflection of the glass. A shadow darkened the schoolroom door.

Daniela bolted upright. Hoops clattered against the wall as she straightened her skirts. She patted down the flyaway strands in her hair, even as the more rational part of her mind told her it was unnecessary. Even though Prince Alessandro couldn’t see her hair, Daniela couldn’t shake the conviction that he would know.

He, as usual, looked as pristine as an oil painting, the pleats of his trousers and jacket crisp, every hair in place. His unfocused eyes seemed to see everything, including Daniela’s inattention to duty.

Daniela breathed deeply, steeled her spine, and gave a curtsy that would have made the Countess proud. “Good morning, your highness.”

He acknowledged her with a stiff nod. “Good morning, Miss Decardi. I hope I’m not intruding?”

Though he spoke it as a question, it had the effect of a command. He couldn’t be intruding when it was his house, his sister, and his employee, and it was her duty to accommodate him. “Not at all, your highness.” She was proud of the steadiness of her tone. She was ever amazed at how social training could cover fear and anxiety. “Lucia is finishing her geography lesson.”

He nodded and strode into the room, his cane lightly sweeping before his feet. “How does she progress?”

“Very well, your highness.”

Lucia lit up brighter than a star lamp and bounced up from her seat. She rushed to his side and led him toward the wooden chair next to the standing globe. “I know all the capitals!”

His eyebrows rose. “All the capitals?”

Lucia helped him into the chair with the patient confidence of a nurse three times her age. “All the important ones.”

Daniela explained, “She has learned to identify all the major cities of the western nations.”

Would it be enough? He’d made it very clear that Lucia’s accomplishments were her responsibility, but she had needed to take extra time to frame the lessons in a way that captured Lucia’s attention…

The barest of smiles softened the sharp lines of Alessandro’s face. “An excellent accomplishment,” he told Lucia. “But don’t let it go to your head. There’s much more of the world to learn.”

“I know,” Lucia said, with the enthusiasm of an explorer.

“By the time you come of age,” Alessandro said seriously, “you ought to be able to label a globe blindfolded.”

Daniela’s stomach twisted at the reminder of the prince’s astronomically high expectations.

Lucia only laughed. “Even you can’t do that, Sandro.”

His shoulders and spine straightened. “You think I can’t?” He lifted a hand to the standing globe beside him and turned it until his hand covered the entire Western continent. He pointed at nations. “Alsperra, Corlant, Myraldia, Ephros, Dartan.”

Lucia laughed. “You’re just guessing.”

“Am I right?”

“So far. But that’s the easy part.” She twisted the globe and planted his finger in the middle of the broad Eastern Expanse. “What’s here?”

He brushed his other hand over the surrounding patch of the globe. “The Espiren Mountains.”

“What country?” she demanded, unimpressed.

“It goes without saying that they’re in the western portion of Poresti.”

She twisted the globe again. “What’s here?”

“The Feshrin Peninsula.”

“Here?”

“The Midnight Islands.”

“How about here?”

“Well, now we’re just in the middle of the Avrian Ocean.”

She released his hand and threw her own into the air. “How are you doing that?”

His eyes, blank as they were, sparkled with mischief. “What do you think I did as a boy?” he asked. “I forsook all sleep and leisure, memorizing this globe so I could one day astound you with my geographical wizardry.”

“You’re cheating!” The accusation was half amusement and half outrage. Lucia looked toward Daniela. “Miss Decardi, how is he cheating?”

Daniela only shook her head in amazement. The globe included topographical definition, and most of the places Lucia had pinpointed were geographically distinct, but his quick, confident answers were still impressive. “I don’t believe he is,” she said.

Alessandro’s smile was as bright as the sun through a storm cloud, and just as startling. “Thank you, Miss Decardi. I knew I could trust your academic honesty.”

The words left her dumbfounded. Not what he’d said, but how he’d said it. It was like he’d transformed into a different person. Always, he’d been the meticulously polite prince, the exacting employer. But now, he was speaking to her, with genuine warmth rather than polite formality. As if some dividing veil had been pushed aside and she was seeing something of the man beneath.

She was surprised to find herself returning the smile. “Always glad to be of service, your highness.”

Lucia seized Alessandro’s hand again, and the game continued. He identified seven more nations, three mountain ranges and two archipelagos before he finally stumbled over a collection of nations in the southern hemisphere.

“It’s not Efzi!” Lucia cried triumphantly. “It’s Falni!”

“I think not.” He brushed a finger of his other hand over the flat surface to the nation’s left. “It’s a coastal nation.”

“It’s on the...” Lucia peered at writing on the land mass. “The Efni Flats.”

He lifted his head. “Miss Decardi, does she tell the truth?”

“I’m afraid she does, your highness.”

Alessandro withdrew his hand from the globe. “It wasn’t a fair test,” he told Lucia. “You turned the globe upside down. It doesn’t count.”

Lucia said, “That wasn’t in the rules!”

“We never defined the rules.”

The quarrel continued, with no real hostility. The answer didn’t matter so much as the contest and the camaraderie. Daniela had never seen either of them so at ease. Their lives had been painted by sorrow, weighed down by war, but here and now, they were a brother and sister caught up in silly games. Daniela thought she finally understood how Lucia could be fond of her brother. This was the man she’d always been able to see; this was what they brought out in each other.

Finally, Alessandro settled back in his chair. “If I made a mistake,” he conceded, “it means only that you have opportunity to surpass me. I still expect you to make a diligent study of geography.”

“I will,” Lucia said, then seized his hand. “I’ll bet you can’t get another one.”

He withdrew his hand from her grasp. “Unless I was very much misled, I graduated the schoolroom long ago. It would be rude of me to take you from your tutor any longer.”

Lucia turned pleading eyes toward Daniela. “Miss Decardi, don’t make him leave! I was learning geography, really!”

Alessandro began to rise from his chair. “I did not intend to distract your student. The schoolroom is your domain, and I apologize for taking your...”

“No. Please. Stay.”

The words escaped before Daniela had time to consider them. When she’d spoken them, she wasn’t sure what was more shocking—that she’d interrupted the prince, that she’d contradicted him, or that she truly did want him to stay.

She used every lesson in deportment she’d ever received to gather up her confidence and courage, then added, “It is an unorthodox lesson, but an engaging one, and Lucia enjoys it. If it pleases your highness, you may stay as long as you desire.”

The prince laughed. “Very well,” he said. “If the ever-proper Miss Decardi is willing to indulge this folly, who am I to protest?” He sat back in his seat. “But you must be willing to be judge of this contest.”

Daniela smiled at him—even if he couldn’t see it, he’d know. “Gladly, your highness.”

#thanks for playing!#and for patience!#and for putting up with a prompt fill that doesn't obey the prompt #i have a lot to apologize for here #answered asks #ask games #adventures in writing #a beautiful tomorrow #starfall #brambleberrycottage #this is my experiment in shifting the story to make them royals in exile #bringing the royals to daniela rather than daniela to the royals #putting the old nations into my starfall universe has helped give it lots of detail #but i've yet to decide how well the starfall nations line up with the old story #they're still from fantasy italy #but the country daniela was schooled in was fantasy england #and the royals should be coming there #except that the main setting in my starfall universe is fantasy denmark #so i'm not quite sure how to shift it #anyway it was fun coming back to these characters and playing with some of their old tropes for a scene #this kind of stuff got very repetitive in the old drafts but as a short maybe it's a little less sickening?

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hindieducation · 4 years ago

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Coronavirus and Its Impact on Education System in India

Coronavirus and its Impact on Education System in India. The freezing and the extraordinary effect of COVID-19 has shaken the world to its center. Extra, the higher a piece of the Governments over the globe have immediately shut scholarly foundations making an endeavor to involve the unfurl of the COVID-19 pandemic. In India as adequately, the government as an aspect of the cross country lockdown has shut every scholastic establishment, as a result of which, students going from school-going children to postgraduate understudies, are influenced.

These cross country terminations are influencing over 91% of the universes' student people. Various distinctive worldwide areas have applied confined terminations influencing a tremendous assortment of additional students. UNESCO is supporting global areas of their endeavors to relieve the fast effect of workforce terminations, especially for extra frail and denied networks, and to encourage the rationality of preparing for all through removed contemplating. The UNESCO report gauges that the Covid pandemic will unfavorably affect more than 290 million understudies all through 22 worldwide areas. The UNESCO appraises that cycle 32 crores understudies are influenced in India, joining these in resources and resources.

Subsequently, the legislature has give you e-learning program. Many ed-tech organizations have attempted to use the event by giving free on-line exercises or drawing in limits on e-learning modules. These measures have been met with overpowering reaction by understudies with some new organizations seeing as exorbitant as 25% uptick in e-learning. Removed considering seems a suitable answer for school kids all through this time as they give convenient, on – the-go and sensibly evaluated section to classes. E-adapting also comes as an eye catching and intelligent different as in correlation with study hall instructing.

Be that as it may, Covid-19 has provoked masters to reexamine the conventional method of preparing. Advanced preparing is by all accounts a practical answer for compensate for inside the deficiency for homeroom preparing for a timespan to 4 months while restricting the probabilities of any a contamination to undergrads until courses continue. Extra significantly, it has also presented the up to this point fringe issue of advanced preparing in India to the center stage. Going ahead, computerized preparing is bound to be implicit into standard preparing. This may permit comprehensive preparing by empowering concentrating all through different geologies in India. Moreover, it will introduce an open entryway for teachers to furnish you with hand crafted reading answers for every understudy.

A whole insurgency inside the technique we be instructed right now has been accomplished by Know-how. Each student will engage with a first class preparing, which isn't clear to present by the conventional white chalk and blackboard strategy for instructing. This new contemplating is additional eye catching, redone and lovely. A huge open on-line course (MOOC) is a web course pointed toward boundless interest and open passage by method of the net. India is considered to be the biggest commercial center for MOOCs on the planet after the USA. For the explanation that assortment of occupants in India is huge, enormous open on-line course (MOOC) is asserted to open entryways for a huge load of Indians with regards to bringing a scholastic unrest. On-line killed considering bundles give a marvelous function to income awesome concentrating with the help of web network.

Advanced learning has many advantages in itself like computerized learning has no actual limits, it has more learning commitment ability moderately than the customary examining, furthermore it is clever and understudies will be instructed inside the bounds of their typical change of commonality. In any case, computerized learning isn't with out its limitations and difficulties, since up close and personal transaction is generally seen as the ideal kind of correspondence as in examination with the moderately impersonalized nature of far off learning. Around the world, on-line preparing has met with some achievement. Because of India, we even have far to go sooner than advanced contemplating is viewed as standard preparing, because of undergrads living in metropolitan space have the comforts to determine on computerized preparing, all things considered, provincial space understudies don't have the necessary framework nor are financially solid to benefit the sources needed for computerized preparing. The development of the computerized training foundation by the Government of India by and by is by all accounts inconvenient as a result of nonattendance of value range. Extra, in any event, when the computerized framework is created, preparing must be given to the teachers to utilize the advanced framework to offer veritable and right, continuous and consistent preparing to the researchers. Distant finding out increasingly more relies upon the trustworthy energy deftly and normal Web network which can be a fantastical factor for Tier 2 and Tier 3 urban communities in India.

One other issue is that e-learning comes all through as impressively conflicting and indifferent skill. Also, e-learning is bound to observe an over the top dropout charge because of nonappearance of climate for assessing. Undergrads may are probably going to get occupied by gaming supports, electronic media at abiding and potentially won't generally feel a method of network though taking on-line exercises. Beneficial gracefully of preparing can likewise be in inquiry because of concentrating on the level of upper preparing and concentrating on the kindergarten/advanced education could be totally unique. Computerized preparing can't be used the indistinguishable at every level of preparing.

On the off likelihood that we extra up the daylight on the instructive material, advanced preparing might have a restricted degree as conversely with the composed and valuable materials which is provided in a scholastic foundation. Moreover, the validation of the scholastic materials is in question. E-learning will reliably furnish the understudies with totally unique information in various habits. Accordingly, the legitimacy of the instructive material ought to be inspected sooner than these provisions are circled with the researchers. Making of substance material, dispersal of substance material and examination of substance material ought to be performed. Mixed preparing needs to restore straight on and separation preparing ought to go related on the hip right now. Instructional information coursed in on-line ought to be accurately kept up. Because of in the end these computerized scholastic course exercises can even bring about hacking methods and interlopers coming in. The computerized security issue will remain in all spots though giving preparing.

In light of the episode of the pandemic, the work from home (WFH) culture is impacting in India. As social isolating is recommended as the ideal method to manage the unfurl of COVID 19, companies are defied with an exceptional issue of making certain it's undertaking as incessant in any event, when everybody is by all accounts working distantly. In this manner, not just finance managers or new enterprises in India have selected a web stage like Zoom App to remain related with their staff who're working from their homes however additionally the scholastic foundations have picked different computerized stages to encourage reading for their understudies. In any case, essentially instructive establishments in metropolitan regions can introduce these pleasantries. Again the inquiries are brought for the students up in country zones, the instructive frameworks in commonplace regions and their development.

With so different ways to deal with characterize e-learning and the instructive methodologies that might be taken in these considering conditions, many resources and further scholastic arrangement movement exercises have started utilizing the mastery. By method of purposes, for example, Zoom, totally various resources especially designing and planning resources of Pune have attempted the task of showing understudies by means of video conferencing. Unfazed by the wellbeing issues which such video conferencing purposes may represent, these objects are extensively utilized and have end up being valuable and with a huge load of advantages. There's a picture, sound clarity which makes presenting of data and learning powerful for each the educator and the understudy.

Also, in any case, there's a prominent downside as tests should be delayed. Assessments can't be completed on-line. It isn't just scarcely the question of allowing fixed and continuous concentrating all through the flare-up of COVID 19 pandemic yet also presumably the main issue for the instructor is to focus in on the general components of an all around grew course. Growing a deliberate and very much characterized on-line course, which supports the instructor and student, implies giving the appropriate time and installing the pertinent course parts into the e-learning environmental factors. Using ability, we will, if not present a solid different to the conventional preparing framework, alleviate and make up for the obstructions acted and bother provoked like an outcome of COVID 19 pandemic to the preparation framework and students by augmentation. Examining, as they state, is a steady and ever-advancing course of. The instructive establishments in India, from resources to colleges, can utilize this current misfortune as a surprisingly beneficial development and make advanced preparing a significant aspect of the instructive course of for all students later on.

#coronavirus #Education System in India

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jamesmartin30-blog · 4 years ago

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What Is Academic Writing And Why Is It Important?

Academic writing is becoming an extremely essential aspect of schooling as parents and teachers understand the importance of analytical thought abilities and prepare students for college.

Nevertheless, many pupils, guardians, and even many teachers have no understanding of this field of learning and why it is so important.

As such, it is necessary in English not just to teach scholarly literature, but also to make people understand why it is crucial to produce insightful and competent students.

What Is Academic Writing?

First of all, what is scholarly writing? Some students see writing as something they only have to do as the instructor said so, so it's going to be a boring so time-consuming task. Our goal is to bring an end to this kind of thought.

Clearly stated, scholarly learning shows students how to compose essays. It seems pretty easy, but there's a lot more to it than that.

Writing essays is a means of expressing abstract concepts, feelings, or views. Writers learn to create a very complex statement or description by merging sentences into phrases and phrases of an article.

Why Should Students Learn Academic Writing? Because Writing Is Thinking

Learning how to compose powerful essays is essential not just to get a good grade or get to a decent school and you'll get a good career or something. It 's vital because, at the most basic point, it's about having your own ideas and then rendering them rational and real, first to yourself then to your readers.

It is when you take these ideas out of your head and crystallize them on paper or on a computer. They 're in a situation where you don't always have to accept them for what they really are, but other people will do so. When the theories are convincing and strong, such thoughts will become the thoughts of others. It's the crux of conversation.

In other terms, positive thoughts are equivalent to good prose. If the words are not straightforward or consistent or lack structure, they would be bad prose, and many do not appreciate or approve.

Many authors begin at a point where writing is not especially strong, but through learning writing skills, they learn how to be more better writers, which means they are better thinkers.

Practicing writing is about sharpening the thought method – the more you practice something and the better you do it, the more people can listen to you.

The other significant aspect about academic learning, of course, is that students really need it for college! This is a very realistic and simple educational talent, so if anyone is trying to be a professional student, they ought to be at least a good writer so communicator.

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Skills Academic Writing Develops

Academic writing is important, but what particular skills do students have? They 're:

Strong communication

Students who can compose a persuasive and coherent article will talk in a straightforward, organized and assured manner. Not only are these people able to compose well, but they can communicate and analyze with the same techniques.

Critical Thinking And Reasoning Skills

The willingness to switch from one thought to another and to grasp the relation sounds simple, but it is shocking how few people really learn this skill. Nevertheless, learning to compose shows students how to think. In other terms, writing introduces "structured learning" to students.

Throughout fact, teaching shows pupils how to evaluate, or what scholars term "serious thought." Students tend to think, "Does what I tell make sense? "And," Is that what I read true? ”. We learn to accept facts, to understand complexity and context, and eventually to build the capacity to make up their own minds about issues. We believe that's the whole point of schooling.

Understanding An Audience

When you're writing an article, you ought to consider how it's supposed to be, what it's supposed to be, whether it's required or what it's intended to be, and how to deliver it in the most persuasive or approachable way. Through practicing writing, students know how to talk of their audience as well as how best to meet them.

Language skills

Academic research is a composite of all such language capabilities. You ought to have a good grammar. You ought to use an advanced language. You need to be able to respond to and appreciate the orders, and you will need to be able to speak freely and pose questions and voice your views. Perhaps more significantly, you need a lot of training.

If the improvement of professional English skills is something you are seeking, there is no easier way than to study academic prose.

Research Skills, Because You Learn A Lot

Finally, writing shows students how to carry out work. The truth is, students do not know the answer to any of the queries they are asked to respond in writing. It means they're going to need to go find out. The sophisticated word of "going to find out" is "study."

Through conducting research, students learn to appreciate their writing concepts at a finer level than other would would imagine. When they write on a science, cultural or literary topic, they know from doing work not only what they need to get a decent score, but they do recognize that there is a great deal to know on nearly any topic.

Types Of Academic Writing

Okay, so we may accept that writing is necessary and useful, but then what do students will need to know directly in academic writing classes? There are several types of essays with specific reasons. Here's a short sampling of a couple of them:

Persuasive essays – seeking to convince people of your view on the topic

For example: “In Praise of Idleness” by Bertrand Russell

Expository essays – explaining a topic to an audience

For example: “I’m an environmental journalist, but I never write about overpopulation” from Vox.com

Narrative essays – to convey a story in an essay.

For example: “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell

Composite essays - Essays that inspire, justify, or reveal a tale

For example: “Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell

Compare and contrast essays – taking two subjects and analyzing their similarities and differences

For example: “Once More to the Lake” by E.B. White (this is also a narrative essay)

Cause and effect essays – Essays that describe whether something has occurred or the consequences of an occurrence or operation.

For example: “The Adults in the Room” by Megan Greenwell

Analysis – not an essay sort, but a lot of essays seek to get readers to grasp the topic better.

For example: “A.A. Gill on Autobiography by Morrissey”

Research papers – typically convincing, expository or comparing and contrasting, while often involving quotes and analysis to justify the author's statements.

Characteristics Of Academic Writing

Until we wrap up, it is necessary to consider the characteristics that characterize quality academic learning. For any piece they compose, both students and authors will look for such qualities for their writing.

Focused, clear, and logical

One of the very first things we 're telling writers is that they need to Stay On Point. As a matter of fact, we literally scream that phrase in class because it was so essential to the process of writing.

Writing needs to be about a specific subject and only about that scope. In addition, readers should be able to fully understand not just thoughts and phrases, but how they communicate to form a larger argument. In other words, academic writing needs to make sense of it.

Convincing and interesting

The concept may make sense to a person, but that doesn't imply they 're in agreement with it. Academic writing has to move beyond reasoning and still be compelling – audiences will come to believe that the speaker makes a valid argument.

In addition, scholarly writing should be engaging irrespective of the topic. Sure, academy may be boring, but it's the writer's task to make the subject fascinating and worth reading. Each of the essay references in the segment above are thought-provoking and persuasive, even though some of their concepts might be less than thrilling to all readers.

Based on evidence

Finally, scholarly writing must be real. Storytelling articles are never imaginary, but if they were, they would be short tales, which are a particular type of character.

Writers of scientific literature should give proof of their arguments and conclusions, and analytical reasoning must be focused on what is true and can be claimed honestly rather than speculation or mere fiction.

Academic writing is a must for teachers. It is necessary for practical reasons, as students will have to write an essay for tests such as TOEFL, IELTS, and SAT, college applications, and then so many once they reach college. After graduation, whatever their role is, they'll have letters, papers, interviews, and speeches to write. It's not just philosophy – academic writing skills make sure students are ready for their future.

However, scholarly writing is critical far beyond bottom line. Reading scholarly writing sharpens brains, shows students how to relate, and strengthens their analytical abilities and capacity to comprehend others. Publishing is talking around,

But every student needs to be a successful thinker.

Let the English aid them move in there.

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genidma · 5 years ago

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The conscious experience

Am I conscious? And if I am conscious, then how do I prove that I am conscious, by making use of the conscious experience itself?

That’s actually a very interesting conversation. It’s certainly not an original thought.

The way I think about thinking, this sort of logic flows from the same set of schema, that governs my thinking regarding life.

And so, if I may begin by first articulating, what I personally don’t consider to be true. In fact, I think that the below mentioned have a high degree of being classified as the opposite of true. And I’d attach a higher than 80% probability to such claims.

There is no super deity: In a probabilistic sense, there may very well be intelligences out there that could be classified as vastly superior, compared to the level of intelligence that we exhibit (in our existing evolutionary state). I say this, considering the enormity of the universe and the possibility that there may be many multi-verses and a lot of dimensions out there. But the conscious experience, it appears, is born out of a number of different processes that can be categorized as non-conscious. So, it just doesn’t make rational sense as to why a super deity would want to micro manage the affairs and as it relates to an enormous amount of conscious agents out there. That being said, it’s interesting to think about the spectrum and how intelligences of varying types and scales could potentially co-exist on similar/the same planar. And on the other end of the spectrum, we are dealing with the very low end of the probability that humans are the only intelligent beings in the entire universe. If that statement ought to be considered as true, then that increases the probability that we are either living in a simulation, or that all other intelligent beings have left this universe. Or that advanced beings either live in the cauchy horizon or that their patterns are retained there. Or some other reason that could reasonably explain this oddity. Overall, it’s an interesting question and with respect to what came before the big bang. Or why something even has to be there before the big bang occurred. I think that these are both logical questions. I’d even go as to state, that if there was indeed a God like intelligence, then it certainly does not intervene and as it relates to the day to day affairs of intelligent beings, or non-intelligent beings at that. That super-intelligence is either doing it’s own thing, in it’s own corner, somewhere in the multi-verse or it ended up annihilating itself. So, that is my current stance on this sub-topic. That there is no super-intelligence in an interventionist sense.

And so, there are no angels, demons. There is no concept of heaven or hell.

There is no soul. At least there is no evidence that such a thing exists.

And so, there is no consciousness. In either the esoteric sense that it is characterized in a variety of different ways. Intertwined with the fabric of space-time. Allegedly flowing in and out of microtubules.

If there is no consciousness, then what is it that we experience? We experience something. Even though what we experience could be classified as a series of hallucinations brought about by the signals flowing through our brains.

Over the course of the human evolution, we have devised mechanisms that help us towards understanding our reality and our place within this reality. Maybe there are better mechanisms out there that we have yet to invent.

And so, in order to be able to define the conscious experience, we need to be grounded in truth and there has to be evidence that certain phenomenon drive certain outcomes.

Next, I think it’s better to classify what we experience as cognition. Cognition is driven by electrical and chemical activity in our brains and the mental aspect (related to the mind) is largely fashioned by our interaction with our wider environment.

Going back to the question that I started with and given the background that I have shared, cognition, it appears, is simply an interesting mixture of pattern recognizing functions.

I think that we can use simple examples in order to be able to separate the signal from the noise. Meaning, that:

We need need a discussion and as it relates to what certain words really mean or the meaning we attach to these words.

And this is important because we want to use mechanisms in order to replicate or seek to replicate how we think cognition functions. When it turns out that the processes we engineer may end up working differently, compared to how evolution has powered cognition.

Also, I think that using simpler examples is a better approach, as doing so helps in refining our understanding, with respect to the models that we will architect.

For example, Michio Kaku’s definition that a thermometer has a cognition (he calls it consciousness) of 1 (or 2, or +/- x e.t.c depending on how you look at it). Meaning, in response to the stimuli that the system gets from it’s environment, it either goes up or it goes down.

How we classify the scale from a thermometer to viruses/bacteria, to potato bugs, to chickens, to other animals and finally to ourselves. That is a conversation by itself. I think that, that is primarily a question of ethics. Care is to be meted and we shouldn’t let our unconscious urges and desires lead us towards categorizing the conscious experience as something that is convenient for us. And then, this classification turns it into something that could be very uncomfortable for the village idiot.

As it is, our classification of cognition isn’t something that is to the advantage of chickens and other animals that we have domesticated. Note: I’ve started eating chicken again and I feel a slight tinge of guilt when I bite into the flesh. But, then, in my mind, I start equating chickens to dinosaurs and somehow I am able to justify my behaviour. But, I haven’t had red meat in a while.

For the record, if I was raising my own chickens, then I could probably condition myself to slaughter them in a humane and ethical way and then cook and eat them. But, if it happens that we encounter some slightly advanced alien species, that kind of look like a more evolved progenitor of the avian sub-species that we find on this planet. Then, my mind is going to start thinking how these advanced beings would perceive me, when they see me biting into flesh that looks like something that emerged from these alien types.

Considering the panspermia theory, that hypothesis isn’t really as wild or improbable. As improbable as it may seem, these questions would certainly start emerging in my mind, if I were to encounter a technologically advanced blue avian. In such a scenario and just to be on the side of caution, I think I’d probably stop eating birds at that point in time. Because, you do not want to unintentionally piss off your technologically advanced inter-stellar neighbours.

Overall, these problems disappear or start disappearing, as soon as cellular agriculture starts going more mainstream.

Next, I certainly don’t think embryos are alive and have a soul in them. There is neuronal activity in there. Off-course there is. Because nutrients have to be delivered to the different parts of the system. If you are going to pinch the embryo with a needle, then there is going to be an instinctive reaction that has been programmed via evolution. Knee-jerk reaction. An embryo is not alive.

I must state that the reason why I am sharing some of these thoughts is because I really hope that as humans we should use our cognitive surplus, in order to be able to learn more about how our brains function.

Also, I don’t say, or think out loud what I am sharing, with the explicit purpose of offending someone. Although, I really do not think that society ought to be structured in such a way that me saying something offends someone and that is not allowed. That’s a big problem.

Specially, with me (or anyone else at that) saying something is not inciting violence in any shape or form. An embryo is not a person and it’s not conscious. I mean, I eat eggs everyday.

Now, I have started thinking about how painful this must be for the chickens to lay billions of eggs each day. As well, the male hen, whose sperm is being used to fertilize these hens in the first place. So there are all of these thoughts. But, for now, I am still eating eggs, chicken and fish and not so much of red meat.

I guess, overall, problems emerge, because there are memes engrained in cultural settings. And there is group identify. And it’s easier to go along with the group vs forcing oneself to think independent thoughts. So if the the majority of the group believes that am embryo is conscious, then it’s not so easy going against that way of thinking. Unless, one chooses not to associate with that group, which isn’t necessarily an easy thing to do.

Coming back to breakthroughs in neuroscience. This is an area that could radically alter how we live, how we govern, and key breakthroughs could also help reduce so much human suffering on this planet.

Imagine being able to treat mental illnesses the way we treat ailments physiological of a nature. Same with addictions of different sort.

Imagine being able to truly understand someone else, when they allow you to share their emotions/sensations and their way of looking at the world with you. Even though that may occur for a short period of time.

Imagine, humans choosing to put down their weapons and deciding instead that they are going to invest towards enabling healthcare in their communities. And that all humans could make that decision at the same time. Because, we would finally have the means and the ability to be able to decode how the brain and the mind actually function.

There is a super long list of benefits that I can think of. I love thinking about thinking and all the amazing benefits that could be had. Two of my personal favourites include:

The ability to be able to encode knowledge in logic, so that it can be transmitted instantaneously from one system to another.

As well, if technological singularities are still lingering around in our universe (for any given reason), then the means and the abilities to be able to build the right kind of architecture, so that we can begin interacting with them (the singularities, technological singularities). Although, I would suspect that the singularities have an outer un-conscious shell which is intelligent and yet it is non-conscious. Then they have this inner dynamic that is vibrant and diverse and wholesome. Because if the universe is teeming with intelligences with different sort, then technological singularities must have devised some kind of mechanism in order to be able to retain and exercise their uniqueness. The alternative, increases the probability that the whole thing enables harmful mutations across these technological singularities. Like cousin marriages or the whole thing turning into a giant b0rg. And so, if everyone is thinking the same way in the b0rg, then is the b0rg really thinking? Is the borg really that much more conscious than slime mould?

Overall, I am still not 100% sure if I am conscious or not. I think I am more conscious on some days vs others. My experiences lead me to believe (a loaded word) that memories and how they are encoded, that this process plays a pivotal role and as it relates booting up our schema.

I believe that I am a good person and I am willing delay gratification in order to do the thing that is honest and ethical. This is a criteria (for lack of a better word that I can think of right now), that has led me to think about how I consume materials and information. Nobody is perfect. But I strive to do better. And I do make progress, because I measure most aspects of my life.

If our conscious experience has booted up, using principles and mechanisms that can be categorized as ethical and moral in a secular/universal sense. Then, in light of such a reality, our conscious experience is our property.

Now and increasingly into the future, we need to have agreements in place, with respect to who can access who’s property. Citing a clause that reality is far too complex for any one cognitive system to understand and then trampling over individual conscious experiences, is obviously not a good model.

I think it makes sense to go down to the absolute basics. Meaning, distill/boil down a narrative to the core fundamentals and build up the narrative in a logical and structured way. Because, you can then build up on these models in a way that is sustainable and replicable. The alternatives do not really offer safety/security/insurance/scalability.

So when we think about thinking, we can say that this is what we know. And here is the evidence. So let’s build on top of this, in order to help reduce unwanted and undesirable human and non-human suffering.

#conscious #cognition #thinking systems #wetware #cognitive systems #cognitive agents #thinking about thinking #suffering #brain #mind #ethics #super-intelligence #participatory universe #fermi's paradox #drake's equation #morals #morality

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likeproducts-me · 4 years ago

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For what reason is Beauty Important?

To comprehend the significance of excellence, we should initially characterize what magnificence is.

To put it plainly, excellence is the indication of affection in structure.

There are numerous emotional types of excellence, yet none of those definitions arrive at the center reality of what magnificence truly is and why it should make a difference to us.

Truth be told, on the off chance that you need to take a gander at the abstract adaptations, you could say that anything is "excellent", even grotesqueness.

We should adhere to something that exists as a generally accepted fact about excellence. Excellence and love go inseparably.

Indeed, one conceives the other.

Love brings forth magnificence and genuine excellence rouses love.

The two together can possibly make an upward twisting of satisfaction and cognizance.

The two things together can deliver a profound feeling of harmony.

A feeling that everything is directly on the planet.

Where does magnificence start?

mountain scene

Magnificence starts at the beginning of creation, since all genuine creation originates from affection.

Consider the words "boundless love".

This is the pith of our maker.

Our maker can just make appearances of affection, since that is the substance of God.

Something besides this means that something has turned out badly.

Something is showing that isn't of God.

So when endless love makes, all that it makes is excellent.

There are no special cases.

At the point when love's creation is seen in vigorous or actual structure, what you experience is excellence.

This turns out to be clear when we take a gander at the characteristic world.

Is there any such thing as a monstrous dusk in nature? No, obviously not.

When we witness the lively everyday routine and strength of any experiencing thing, we feel its magnificence, isn't that right? Have you at any point seen a sound woods or a superb mountain that is revolting? Most likely not.

What would beauty be able to show us ourselves?

lady sniffing daisy bloom

Genuine excellence is the impression of our maker. At the point when we associate with that excellence, it rouses us and causes us to feel better.

Here is the thing that we learn. We discover that we don't care for offensiveness. We are repulsed by it.

Then again, we appreciate excellence. We invite its essence in our lives!

This shows us something about our real essence, isn't that right? In the event that we leave every one of the abstract meanings of excellence and offensiveness behind, we out of nowhere have astounding clearness about what our identity is.

We can really see that we are of God.

We are of the heavenly.

How would we know this? Take a gander at it thusly.

You don't care for torment and you don't care for torment. You are not liable to call such things excellent.

Truth be told, taking everything into account, the sooner these things are gone, the better! In all actuality you probably need nothing to do with both of them.

For what reason do we normally dismiss things like savagery, torment, and languishing? This is on the grounds that these things are not in amicability with us.

They discuss a condition where God isn't.

They discuss a condition that isn't reality. At the point when we experience such things, we realize that we are not in contact with God.

lady unwinding on grassNow see things like bliss, concordance, harmony, and delight.

Take a gander at our capacity to normally invite the flawlessness of nature.

We open up to these things, isn't that right? Indeed, when you experience joy, I question that you are petitioning God for it to end.

Also, have you at any point requested God to eliminate a sense from harmony and supplant it with stress and tension? I'll wager not.

Do you perceive how clear things are the point at which you truly look?

Joy, congruity, harmony, and the apparent presence of divine nature in the development of the characteristic world are totally considered delightful by us.

Take a gander at the ease with which we broadcast "That is so wonderful!" while seeing a beautiful normal scene or something that makes us really upbeat.

We are supreme magnets for excellence on the whole its structures. We love it. We want it. It reconnects us with our maker.

It helps us to remember what our identity is.

We can get comfortable there and feel totally comfortable. In obvious magnificence, we find a sense of contentment.

Might you want to travel through your otherworldly arousing easily and certainty? I can show you how! Snap here to find out additional

Then again, we need to flee from the grotesqueness of strife, outrage, dread, and the entirety of their appearances.

We don't care for feeling isolated from our maker! We need to consistently be at home in the chest of heavenly love.

There we discover all we might need or require.

There we get ourselves. Furthermore, in that place, there are no inquiries like "Why this?" or "Why that?".

Just satisfaction and kind satisfaction.

For what reason is it imperative to bring more magnificence into my life?

brilliant light

It is so imperative to develop magnificence in your life since it exists as your nearest actual association with God.

It adjusts you to your real essence and that of your maker.

It relieves the spirit and satisfies you.

Genuine excellence brings such countless prizes.

There is inward excellence, which is the main creation.

At that point that can show as external excellence in an exhibition of all its brilliance.

Consider your cognizance an augmentation of the heavenly.

At the point when you are associated with your maker, you feel just love.

You feel harmony. You are satisfied. Since adoration transmits, it is normal for that affection to need to communicate apparently.

At the point when it communicates apparently, it shows excellence.

What are the various types of excellence?

leaf over water

We promptly perceive genuine excellence since it elevates and moves us. We realize instinctually that this is an appearance of God.

Actual excellence consistently starts with non-actual magnificence first. Non-actual magnificence is what can't be estimated, however it can absolutely be felt. It exudes from the inside.

Non-actual magnificence is seen showing through things like graciousness, love, appreciation, congruity, happiness, and harmony.

These things are all proof that innovative, divine love is being gotten and showing inside that person.

When the inward magnificence is felt, it will consistently try to show apparently in the physical. Possibly it is just about as basic as a grin.

Or then again perhaps it shows as a thoughtful gesture.

Maybe it shows itself through some imaginative creation.

Or then again perhaps it is just about as basic as saying, "I love you."

At the point when we quit opposing our maker's always present love, we will normally try to communicate that affection by making magnificence surrounding us in the actual world.

How might I make more excellence in my life?

The initial step is to treat your existence with adoration. Treat it with hallowed adoration.

Try not to deal with yourself like you are some expendable item. Quit acting as you don't make any difference.

God made you, thus you make a difference to that which makes and supports the whole universe. That is serious.

Also, you ought to modestly recognize that inside yourself.

Presently, onto the pragmatic ideas.

1. – Open the way to internal excellence

pink lotus blossom

Making magnificence relies on a certain something.

Your longing to be at one with your maker. It relies on you at last relinquishing obstruction and recognizing that you truly need the affection for your maker.

You profoundly need that dedication, love, and presence of the heavenly.

Quit rationalizing and putting silly decisions on yourself like you are a terrible individual or not adequate.

This is all absolute babble, so for what reason would you say you are engaging this? What's the advantage? There is no advantage.

It's simply a pardon for obstruction.

You ought to likewise realize that excellence has nothing at all to do with the decisions of others.

Magnificence isn't something that can be judged. It must be felt.

Actually like love. Keep in mind, the two things go inseparably.

2. – Let love and inward magnificence stream

lady with outstretched arms

Excellence is really an energy. In the event that you need to establish excellence in your external climate, you should saturate your activities and manifestations with adoration.

The benefit to this is that it makes whatever you do really agreeable and satisfying! What's more, this is such a ton better than exhausting and dull, wouldn't you say?

You will likewise begin to appreciate life.

Your life will feel like it is important, in light of the fact that you will become mindful that you are contributing proof of adoration into our planetary climate.

3. – Experience the delight of establishing external magnificence in your current circumstance

room course of action

In the first place, we should discuss your body. Disregard promoters' adaptations of excellence.

That is counterfeit and has nothing to do with what we are discussing here.

The most genuine type of actual magnificence has to do with wellbeing, dynamic quality, and innovative self-articulation.

This all beginnings with confidence and self-acknowledgment.

So deal with yourself, honor yourself, and don't be reluctant to communicate with adoration.

Next is your external climate.

Improve in a systematic climate? All things considered, you favor request over disorder.

Why would that be? Since it reflects congruity, which mirrors the fundamental idea of creation. It causes you to unwind and feel much improved.

It encourages you to complete more and experience less pressure.

Very much like you lean toward inward concordance, you additionally normally favor external amicability in your current circumstance. Both carry you nearer to your maker.

Lastly, we should discuss being more cognizant and innovative with your actual climate. As an individual, you have an astonishing ability to saturate your whole actual world with energy. What sort of energy will that be?

Will it be the most noteworthy energy of adoration and motivation? Will it be the energy of your heart that appreciates your actual climate? Put cognizance and high-vibrational energy into your actual climate, and watch how everything changes.

The stunning thing about this is that it doesn't make any difference in case you're rich or poor.

Indeed, even in the most small of settings, you have the ability to make flickering magnificence in each thing you contact.

#beauty #fashion #women #lifestyle #tumbler #viral

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transhumanitynet · 7 years ago

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Concrete Transhumanism - An Overview of Emerging Instantiations and the Transhuman Present Project

Transhumanism is a philosophy of lofty aspirations and universally applicable substance. Yet, when articulated at its usual level of abstraction, it is often misunderstood, especially if commonplace cultural connotations, myths, and fears from popular fiction inject nefarious undertones into what ought to be seen straightforwardly as a salutary overcoming of (deleterious) human limitations and a dramatic expansion of our potential through the application of science, technology, and rationality. Some accuse transhumanists of being a cabal of Illuminati who somehow secretly run the world. (How is this even possible, I wonder?) Others believe that transhumanists seek to turn humankind into the Borg from Star Trek or to create a dystopia where only a handful of rich Silicon Valley entrepreneurs will live forever at everyone else’s expense. Of course, no transhumanist actually even remotely resembles these stereotypes – and while it would have been quite helpful to have a few more Silicon Valley entrepreneurs as allies, the reality remains that the vast majority of transhumanists, including leaders of the movement, are people of ordinary means and relatively ordinary life situations. Transhumanists as people have much more in common with those who are unaware of, or hold misconceptions regarding, transhumanism than the latter persons think!

So what, then, sets transhumanists apart? Although we are generally people of ordinary means and circumstances, we are also people of extraordinary vision, and we see the world around us as in the midst of technological transformation which not only will have, but is already having, paradigm-shifting effects on everyday life. We are not beholden to status quo bias; we recognize that the present is a transitional state, and that life has not always been like this, nor will it always remain the way it is now.

Until recently, few efforts have been made to illustrate this observation concretely. But dedicated small associations of transhumanists are emerging to show the world what a transhuman present looks like. Through the projects they put into practice, the general public might get a glimpse of a transhuman existence, and in what directions it may head during the coming years and decades.

The Transhuman House and Foundation Library

If today’s technological capabilities were fully integrated into a residence, or even a room inside a residence, what would this look like? The Transhuman House, established in 2017, aims to answer this question. Version 1.0 of the Transhuman House opened to the public in Provo, Utah, in June 2017, even including an option for guests to rent a room via AirBnB. (See images from a 3D tour of Version 1.0 here.) The Transhuman House contains a showcase of emerging technologies, such as Nest, Alexa, and the Microsoft HoloLens. While observing and interacting with these examples of today’s devices – which either are already available or soon will become available for consumer adoption – visitors have the opportunity to read and study works from the Foundation Library – a wide-ranging collection of philosophical, scientific, technological, and fictional works exploring the ideas of transhumanism as well as visions of potential futures and specific pathways toward bringing those futures into being. In November 2017 the Transhuman House expanded into Version 2.0, moving into a larger (3-bedroom) building and adding touch screens and a giant touch-operable wall panel with which visitors can interact to learn about ongoing projects by transhumanist entrepreneurs and activists. Might most residences ten years in the future look somewhat like the Transhuman House? Now that there is a concrete illustration of what is possible even today, visitors have the opportunity to ponder the question of its wider applicability. The creators of the Transhuman House have given us a glimpse into what everyday life might look like with the emerging “transhuman” technologies more fully integrated into it. Some of these technologies are already available to consumers – so if you would like to create your own partial version of a “Transhuman House”, you may have the opportunity to begin setting up some of the components today.

Zero State – The Alternate Reality Game

The Zero State is a Social Futurist Community – described as “an organization formed in 2011 to work toward the establishment of a pro-technology, Transhumanist, distributed, virtual State. ZS’ motto is ‘Positive Social Change Through Technology’.” As one of the Zero State’s co-founders, Dirk Bruere, explains, the primary meaning of the name “Zero State” is “the lowest energy state of a system, the place to which everything returns when the energy runs out.” The Zero State has had several incarnations, the latest of which is an Alternate Reality Game (ARG), whose fictional premise is that the participants are representatives of twelve technologically advanced Houses, which have become the dominant influences in a post-dystopian late 21st century – a new era subsequent to the turmoil that (in this fictional timeline) would characterize the proximate future. The real-world application of the game involves members of the twelve Zero State Houses undertaking projects today which would enable the more salutary aspects of that distant future to take shape. Through the approach of gamification and interesting storylines woven into concrete projects, it is hoped that this format will motivate more people who are interested in the promise of emerging technologies and their societal impacts to take specific actions to realize the kind of world we would wish to see.

The U.S. Transhumanist Party, of which I am the Chairman, recently initiated a collaboration with the Zero State under the auspices of House Rhadamanth. I anticipate that the gamification format will be particularly useful in achieving projects where large numbers of distributed, volunteer participants are required for success. There is a strong potential for synergies between the Zero State and the U.S. Transhumanist Party’s Transhuman Present project, announced below.

The Transhuman Present Project

The U.S. Transhumanist Party represents a broad spectrum of members from throughout the world, who consider themselves transhumanists and who have expressed alignment with our three Core Ideals:

Ideal 1. The Transhumanist Party supports significant life extension achieved through the progress of science and technology.

Ideal 2. The Transhumanist Party supports a cultural, societal, and political atmosphere informed and animated by reason, science, and secular values.

Ideal 3. The Transhumanist Party supports efforts to use science, technology, and rational discourse to reduce and eliminate various existential risks to the human species.

The Transhuman Present project is our next step for reaching out to our members and others who consider themselves transhumanists and inviting them to show us what transhumanism means for them in their own lives. Participation is easy and available in a variety of formats. Here is how to get involved:

1. Create a post on any social medium with the hashtags #TranshumanPresent and/or #IAmTranshuman. To render us aware of the post, you can either link it to the U.S. Transhumanist Party Facebook page, or e-mail Chairman Gennady Stolyarov II at gennadystolyarovii [at] gmail [dot] com with your submission. Make sure that we are able to download or otherwise access the content of the post.

2. The post should contain some manner of specific illustration – for instance, a photo, video, drawing, diagram, audio file, or other interactive medium – showing how your life, environment, or aspirations can already be recognized as “transhuman” in terms of incorporating emerging technologies to expand your potential and the potential of those around you. The post may also include artistic elements that express your vision and aspirations for the future – as long as these elements are your original work or specific to your setting. (In other words, we would like to see how individual transhumanists have made their own lives more transhuman – not just reposts of images highlighting the work of famous individuals like Aubrey de Grey, Ray Kurzweil, or Elon Musk.)

3. The goal of the project is to collect many contributions from a diverse range of transhumanists and to illustrate to the public that the ideals we hold are accessible, capable of integration with ordinary life, and of practical relevance to living in today’s technological era. You are encouraged to use the tools of social media to promote your post and the hashtags #TranshumanPresent and #IAmTranshuman. Consider creative ways of spreading these messages (for instance, integrating the hashtags into videos or taking a photograph of yourself holding a poster beginning with “#IAmTranshuman because…”) The best submissions will focus on answering questions such as the following:

a. How are you using technology in ways that greatly broaden your potential compared to what was possible in even the proximate past?

b. How does your life look differently now as a result of emerging technologies? In what directions is your life being recognizably transformed?

c. What previously insurmountable barriers has technology enabled you to overcome?

d. What achievements can you show the world, which were possible due to the role that technology has played in your life?

Contributions to the project are open to the general public, and one does not need to be a member of the U.S. Transhumanist Party in order to contribute. However, the U.S. Transhumanist Party reserves the right to curate any submissions and to assemble videos, collages, or other media using the content therein. Furthermore, by making a submission, the content creator grants the U.S. Transhumanist Party and any of its Officers a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive right to use and distribute the content at their discretion, without any further requirement of additional permissions or express or implied compensation.

Because the U.S. Transhumanist Party is an all-volunteer, non-monetary organization, the contributions to the Transhuman Present project will not receive monetary compensation, but they are likely to receive public exposure and may benefit the contributor through increased recognition and inspiration for others to adopt the contributor’s ideas and values toward the realization of a better future.

Contributions to the Transhuman Present project are open until July 1, 2018, at which time the U.S. Transhumanist Party will compile the results into videos, collages, and potentially other media that will show the world the range of transhumanist endeavors and improvements to living standards that are possible today. While we are a young political party, and the road toward winning elections is a long one, we can profoundly influence public opinion much sooner by providing a reputable and appealing vision of what is possible if our principles are put into practice.

Gennady Stolyarov II, FSA, ACAS, MAAA, CPCU, ARe, ARC, API, AIS, AIE, AIAF, is the Chairman of the United States Transhumanist Party. Find out more about Mr. Stolyarov here.

* hero image used from adobe stock

Concrete Transhumanism – An Overview of Emerging Instantiations and the Transhuman Present Project was originally published on transhumanity.net

#ARG #Foundation #library #tp #ZeroState #crosspost #transhuman #transhumanitynet #transhumanism #transhumanist #thetranshumanity

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spilledreality · 5 years ago

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Reading “Ignorance: A Skilled Practice”

I want to sketch a quick walk-through & response to Sarah Perry’s lengthy essay “Ignorance: A Skilled Practice,” framing it in a way that will make it useful as a back-reference working forward. This post is still somewhat long (2.2k words), but is a 6x compression of the original 12k, despite sneaking in commentary and relevant concepts from thingspace. I’ve broken it up into four sections with one-sentence abstracts:

Section I: "Indexicality” is a property of language in which an utterance’s meaning—or conveyed information—is “filled out” by unstated (i.e. implied) local context.

Section II: Indexicality is everywhere, and to greater degree than we typically presume. All meaning—and most knowledge—is local.

Section III: Indexical geniuses, cognitive bias, & the global knowledge game. Gut feelings are smarter—and the social sciences less insightful—than we assume.

Section IV: Possible strategies for exploiting our indexical genius while avoiding the epistemological impoverishments of the global knowledge game.

i. "Indexicality” describes a property of language in which an utterance’s meaning—or conveyed information—is “filled out” by unstated (i.e. implied) local context.

Indexicality refers to the degree to which local, situational context informs a statement’s meaning. Classically, “indexical” language is a pointing relationship—“I did that”; “He is here”—but as we will see, all language is more-or-less indexical. The difference is in extent. “The professor is in the classroom”: less indexical than “He is here,” but which professor, and which classroom? We’re still pointing; we’re still in a “local” language game. This is not the same as “ambiguity”: a local understands unambiguously the person toward which a pronoun is directed. Ambiguity is what’s left when the contextual clues cannot resolve the signifier. Rather, it is context sensitivity, an ability to situate a pointer in an ecology.

In other words, indexicality is a compressive affordance enabled by localism. Scientific language, which attempts to be globally objective & applicable, tends toward minimizing its statements’ indexicality. “The average human body temp is 98.6 F.” Still, though the local community implied in this statement is geographically broad, it is still temporally indexical. Humans far in the future will likely have different average internal temperatures, as did, likely, historic homo sapiens. The community which the utterance presumes—and thus omits from explicit saying—is global, but not timeless.

In other words, we cannot confuse this relatively minimal level of indexicality for its absence altogether. It is the tendency of many who play what Sarah dubs “the global knowledge game” to seek universalizing, global truths. Sarah calls these truths “non-indexicals,” but in the spirit of “most statements are context-sensitive,” it seems more fair to say—even following her own framework—that these statements imply, or adopt an air of, non-indexicality, but in actuality only approach it. We can call these pseudo-non-indexicals (PNIs). The overarching point: there is local information that applies to specific situations, and there is global information that purports universal applicability. The emphasis, for Sarah, is in purporting—a factoring resonant with some forms of epistemological relativism, and with roots in James Scott-style advocacy for metis.

Clearly, we can understand the evolutionary advantage which claims to PNIs enjoy in public relations (which constitutes a significant portion of institutional funding—the critical selection filter of the social sciences). And indeed the worldviews of our institutions these days lean modernist & internationalist, for better and worse.

ii. Indexicality is everywhere, and in greater degree than typically presumed. All meaning is local.

Sarah then cites David Chapman’s illustration of the way “any word can mean anything”:

We use words as tools to get things done; and to get things done, we improvise, making use of whatever materials are ready to hand. If you want to whack a piece of sheet metal to bend it, and don’t know or care what the “right” tool is (if there even is one), you might take a quick look around the garage, grab a large screwdriver at the “wrong” end, and hit the target with its hard rubber handle.

Words go the same way. Almost any word can be used to mean almost anything, in some context. You could play this as a challenge game… How about “The eggplant is a straw hat, and the spinach is yelling about politics.”

We’re in the kitchen of a vegetarian restaurant. A table’s entrees are ready, and the server who took the order is explaining to the one who will deliver the meal which diner gets which dish. One customer’s flamboyant straw hat is a salient, unambiguous identifying feature; you can see it all the way across the room. The other probably needs to turn up a hearing aid; you can hear their opinions about cultural appropriation all the way across the room.

The anthropological lens here is key: a customer has been referred to as “the spinach” because he is closely associated with spinach in the activity for which the linguistic utterance is a tool. “The spinach” stands in for—is indexical to—the implied context, the customer who ought to be served the spinach. The lesson Sarah takes away is that linguistic indexicality is ubiquitous and inescapable. She calls in Peter Unger’s 1979 “Why There Are No People” to assist, which imagines the way in which, were we given a novel object & a corresponding nonsense word as its “handle” (e.g. “This is a nacknick”), we could quickly begin discerning between nearby (not identical, but merely similar) objects “of its type,” and those dissimilar enough to not be of its type. This boundary would be highly fuzzy but feel real.

Note that such behavior should not be described as “recognizing” a category but as inventing it, from scratch. Though our language acquisition process may benefit from examples of native speaker usage, or reference to semi-formal definitions as in a classroom setting, we seem to do just fine extrapolating categories on our own. This portion of Unger’s paper serves as an elegant thought experiment for illustrating the inherent vagueness—or “radial cloud” of decreasing relation, birthed by even a single acquired example—which characterizes our concepts. (This portrait of concepts as structured but vague has been identified in cognitive science as Rosch's prototype theory, in philosophy via Zadeh's fuzzy sets, in LessWrong rationalism as a “cluster in thingspace,” and by Wittgenstein and Sarah herself as a "family of senses,” a thread spun from many overlapping fibers.)

“Every seemingly innocent fragment of information is secretly plotting how to escape its context and cause trouble,” Sarah has written elsewhere. When a Tweet goes viral—when it leaves its home community, the discursive situation which it was designed to respond to—its indexical information is lost. This lost content can include irony & affect, local linguistic norms & vocab, and the various reputations & positions of the stances of the discourse. (This is what John Nerst refers to in his factoring of the “signal” and “corrective”: a discursive position does not exist in a vacuum, but is reactive to other positions, setting itself in opposition to them, and thus, the dominant narrative in a community has much effect on how we understanding upstart challenger narratives.) A game of Chinese whispers (or to Americans, “Telephone”) plays out, where each user of a term distorts its meaning to fit the specifics of his or her own situation. In other words, people convert information as much as they are converted by it.

iii. Indexical geniuses, cognitive bias, & the global knowledge game: Gut feelings are smarter—and the social sciences less insightful—than we assume.

Citing Alexander Luria’s work on illiterate peasants, specifically their refusal to engage in games of abstract reasoning about topics outside their personal experience:

The adult peasants would only answer questions based on their own knowledge, and stubbornly refused to make deductions from given premises. “All bears are white where it is snowy. It is snowy in Nova Zembla. What color are the bears in Nova Zembla?” “I don’t know, I have never been to Nova Zembla.” Children with only a year or two of education, however, were easily able to engage... and drew inferences from hypothetical facts outside of their own observation.

Sarah dubs such uneducated people “indexical geniuses.” It is their ignorance which saves them. (Though my brief synopsis here risks this scanning as primativist fetish, the larger essay—and its “local situation” within Sarah’s larger oeuvre, such as her readings of Joseph Henrich—has no such air about it.) Here we enter her real thrust, a correction to a dominant narrative in our intellectual culture: behavioral econ, and its associated psychologies of cognitive bias.

Gerd Gigerenzer, perhaps the most prominent of the recent researchers who have challenged Kahneman-Tversky orthodoxies, is cited from the get-go. I’m aware personally of three types of challenges advanced by Gigerenzer:

Specific discussions of the ways in which individuals’ supposedly biased statistical intuitions are in fact mathematically sophisticated, e.g. Konold’s “HTHHT” problem. (Taleb, in economics, has made related arguments as to the failures of psychology labs to take into account the rich context of human life from which actors make decisions, e.g. cumulative tail risk.)

Arguments that behavioral economists misunderstand language, ignoring differences in connotations between two different statements and considering them linguistically “equivalent,” such that differing responses by individuals to the respective statements is cast as “irrational.” (e.g. the connoted difference between “10% chance of mortality” and “90% chance of survival.”)

Theoretical arguments and empirical findings as to the computational benefits of heuristics over probabilistic modeling, and a conceptual argument (i.e. a "frame” or “model” disagreement) as to why we ought not to call heuristics “irrational.”

All these are valuable challenges of a regime whose tally of appalling mistakes includes the ludicrous hot-hand “fallacy.” And the cognitive biases of behavioral econ are markedly similar to the floating list of logical "fallacies": Sarah notes with dismay that criticisms of Rousseau—who wrote child-rearing treatises—on the basis of his abandonment of his children had been dismissed, in discourse, as ad hominem [fallacy]. (As Taleb remarks about the class hypocrisies of Susan Sontag, this is not a question of ethics but information—if a car salesman tries to sell you American-made, but owns a Honda, there might be something wrong with his wares.) To Sarah, the "logical fallacy project" and "cognitive bias project" are both attempts at "bracketing" parts of reality, an out-of-bounds zone for the knowledge game in play. Luckily, all rules are contestable (this is what makes culture and science "infinite" games in the Carsean sense), thus, just as calling the "Rousseau scandal” ad hominem is “a move in the game,” so too is Sarah’s critique of the ad hominem fallacy.

What is the real threat of the global knowledge game? “Overconfidence in [it], especially [among the] social sciences, threatens the production and appreciation of the genuine kind of indexical knowledge that humans are geniuses at producing and using.” Our native rationality is (in Gigerenzer’s term) “ecological”—richly situated and contextual—and we replace it with an impoverished, global formulation which belongs to no one and describes no one.

Social science seeks to explain a broad phenomenon, like “learned helplessness.” A researcher chooses an activity which he believes encapsulates a larger phenomenon, such as: immobilizing dogs, administering electric shocks, freeing the dogs, and seeing if they attempt to escape when shocked once again. The resulting finding—that many dogs did, no longer, attempt to escape, ostensibly believing that they were incapable of it—is used, under the auspices of science, as a metonymic metaphor, more parable than global truth. The specific, contextual behavior—of dogs, no less—is taken as an indicator of some global truth about how learned helplessness operates in humans, indeed, as an indicator that we ourselves are inclined toward learned helplessness. (This is a subclass of the “narrow and conquer” method endemic to social science and philosophy, a tactic which will be explored in future posts.)

Next, the metaphor gets picked up by interested parties and further "fitted" to the case they are trying to make, for instance, Lenore Walker's 1979 "The Battered Woman," which cites the study in discussion. Each time a social science finding is re-appropriated, it is used in a way which is mostly honest but still adaptive—it is nudged, slowly, to some other belief entirely. A concept is formalized by a social scientist in a way pragmatically useful to a specific situation at hand; forty years later, it’s adopted by institutions for use in situations to which it is ill-fitted; this is even done with an awareness that it the formalization is ill-fitting, but a deep deference in our society for formalized, universal knowledge—which the scholar’s original, indexical factoring has masqueraded as��wins out nonetheless.

iv. How can we stay in a state of ignorant, indexical genius, and avoid the impoverishing effects of the global knowledge game?

Sarah: “The first step, I think, is to develop an aesthetic for it, to make it less invisible.” (See also: “Politics is about putting things on the table” and the roles of concept handles—or concept “crystallizations”—in assisting our understanding of their extensions.)

In the way of concrete actions, we can "restore lost context" to social science results which have been elevated to global knowledge parables: Sarah cites Gina Perry's work on Muzafer Sherif's Robbers Cave Experiment, and I’m aware of similar work surrounding the much-misunderstood Stanford Prison Experiment. So too with David Rosenhan's famous experiment with mental hospitals (in which mentally healthy students were admitted by trained psychiatrists, and then attempted to leave). It is no coincidence that the contextualization of these experiments defangs them: their original power was derived from their shocking contradiction of our native intuitions about human beings. When put into their proper context, the behavior of participants is rendered comprehensible; their psychological reactions to the situation at hand is commonsense or easily predicted, and the study adds little to our understanding of people.

Another approach is to encourage research that recognizes and preserves its subjects’ indexicality, such as already takes place in ethnographic practice broadly. Such research, however, is hindered by the significant amounts of time & resources required of it: many ethnographers first learn the language of a subculture, then spend years or decades immersed in it, learning the nuanced, indexical "truth" of its situation. (One solution is for researchers to focus on ethnographic understandings of their home subcultures, which they are already deeply immersed in—though as the fictional trope of a “naive initiate,” or “foreign correspondent” as protagonist recognizes, much of ethnographic insight comes in the researcher’s transition from outsider to insider, such that norms enjoy a stage of presence-at-hand before being normalized.) Sarah calls for "more stamp collecting, less Darwin" in the social sciences—in other words, more local, particular, & detailed explanations, less high-modernist theories of everything.

Last, we can engage in "honest fiction": parables that are upfront about their status as parables. We understand already that a fable, or aphorism, is a guiding structure that can be matched, through resonance, against situations in our own lives; a parable is a possible structure of solution dependent on context. (As a nod toward this, note that many parables contradict one another in their advice given: one toward prudence, another toward bravery, yet another toward agreeableness.) Sarah’s connection of ethnography and fiction is astute: both good fiction and good ethnography are bottom-up and detail-oriented, rather than theorizing and systematizing.

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exppresscarwashindia · 5 years ago

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Profitability Depends on Working Culture At your Car Wash

car wash businessWhat is your car wash organization culture? If your workers or colleagues are unengaged or uninvolved it will influence all aspects of your activities: your wash quality, your overhead, and—the majority of all—client experience. Yet, making a culture of energy, collaboration, and pride is far more difficult than one might expect. All in all, how would you approach gathering this sort of positive speed in the work environment?

Choose Mission for Your Car Wash Business:

Enthusiasm doesn't begin with WHAT, or HOW. Rather, it begins with your WHY. Normally a car wash is a business and deals and development are objectives. Yet, those can't be your group's center crucial, why. If it is, the reason should your workers truly care? Regardless of the size or area of your vehicle wash, you and your group have an interesting chance to help and serve others, going about as a positive power in your clients' day and giving a top-notch administration that they require. What's more, if a client requires uncommon help you go well beyond to address their issues and fill their hearts with joy. It's a basic thing, yet regarded, generosity and car wash services can shape crucial merit purchasing in to.

Excellence is Important in Car Wash Business:

If your strategic serving others, excellence is the characteristic following stage. Set aside the effort to characterize what (practical) greatness looks like in your worker's everyday exercises and set it in motion. At that point make those desires obvious and express during individual and group preparing exercises, surveys, and routine agendas. Every colleague knows precisely what is relied upon to them and how to make that greatness happen every single day they are at work. No matter which size business you are running, always focus on delivering best to the customers as it describes your work culture. The car wash business is where you require to make loyal customers sustain your business in the long run. Excellence is a point where you cannot compromise with in-car wash business.

Your Presence requires to be Felt in Car Wash Business

Car wash administrators, chiefs, and group pioneers assume an unequivocal job in the development of an extraordinary culture. Your frame of mind and activities set the pace for every other person. Be available at the wash, showcasing the equivalent phenomenal client assistance or more and-past frame of mind you anticipate from your group. Also, be accessible and proactive, prepared to assist your group when they are focused on, answer questions, and offer help at whatever point and anyway required. Become more acquainted with your colleagues and fabricate trust, and you might be shocked exactly how much reliability creates thus.

Socialize with Time:

If you talk about the co-worker or employees, then trust me they either act as the best part of the business world. They can either take the car wash business on to the next level or can spoil the business completely. So, you require to maintain team bond strong no matter what you require to work on. Indeed, even among section level or hourly specialists, incidental get-togethers or suppers where everybody can relax and be more normal are an extraordinary chance to help assemble these connections and build up that feeling of trust, inspiration, and having a place.

Give Credit, Praise, and Recognition

At the point when a representative is doing it right and thumping it out of the recreation center, let them know. Be free with acclaim, and in any event, when giving criticism or adjustment make a point to get out everything that the worker is getting directly before urging them to chip away at the zones where they've missed the mark. You can likewise actualize motivating force projects and praise group achievements with detailing or occasions. It works and it enables your best colleagues to feel far and away superior about their mounting achievements. The team at the car wash center expects praise and incentives and if they don’t at least you require to take care of these. These small steps help in taking your business to new reaches. The motivation of employees is very important for the success of the car wash business.

Don’t provide Comfort Zone to Employees:

Colleagues ought to be agreeable in as they comprehend their job and are incomplete order of the circumstance. Yet, physical solace can prompt laxity at work. Physically and rationally your group ought to consistently be on alert, continually checking the vehicle wash and client movement and constantly prepared to take swift, decisive action if necessary. Greatness requests mindfulness, and therefore our corporate car washes bar agreeable seats, the web gets to, road dress, and TV from workspaces, strengthening to colleagues that they are on obligation and have a vocation to do—and do as well as could be expected. Comfort zone in any business either it is retail or car wash, it slows down the pace of result and certainly leads to the downfall of the business.

Socializing Matters at Car washes:

If you're an entrepreneur, you're continually thinking about your clients: winning new ones, holding old ones, giving them an incredible encounter, developing the relationship. Without clients, your car wash business won't endure. Without them, there's no you. You're likely previously speaking with your clients in various manners, yet if web-based life isn't one of them, you're passing up a brilliant—and free—promoting opportunity. With in excess of 3 billion individuals utilizing internet-based life all the time, your clients are as of now captivating with their preferred brands. Ensure yours is one of them.

· Visibility on Social Media:

The cash of social media is eyeballs. The more watchers you get, the more prominent your odds of transformation. Without visibility on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn, you get no ability to see and miss out on the opportunity to, most importantly, remind individuals you exist. Make your quality known!

· Promotion at its best:

Catching consideration is just a piece of the fight. When utilizing online life for showcasing purposes, you, at last, require to energize activity. Make every one of your posts tally. Offer the new vehicle wash extraordinary, exhibit the cool new vehicle wash hardware, — give them the motivation to utilize your administration. In any case, recollect: no one requires to be advertised to constantly. Parity out your substance by sharing accommodating tips, off-camera looks, or posts that demonstrate your character. The interface on a genuine level, not only a business level.

· Direct Interaction:

Probably the best thing about internet-based life is one of a kind chances to talk legitimately to your clients. If somebody remarks on an image or post, ensure you set aside an effort to react! Pursue, re-post, and label different organizations in your locale; they'll likely do likewise for you. Make yourself open and responsive, and you'll manufacture enduring trust in your car wash business brand image.

To know more about car washes or book your slot for car wash, visit us at http://www.exppresscarwash.com/.

#car wash business #car wash #car wash franchise

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tradingstockmovies-blog · 5 years ago

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day trading books

What are the Best Day Trading Books to Read Now

Why should you Understand how to day trade?

Learning day trading is an art in it self that if could be master can help you make money effectively. Whether you are after an automated day trading strategy or a beginner's -- essential components should be considered like volatility, liquidity and volume.

The guide daily trading educates about the techniques to skim through hardships faced in the process of studying the techniques and mastering them rationally .The main technique to master is how to prevent losses instead of claiming the compensations.

Which are the best day trading books?

I frequently must answer this query I work in the financial services industry. Now-a-days this question asked on a regular basis. I am not going to sugarcoat it: successful trader is quite tough and tough today. Folks believe by viewing videos on you tube and make money from them isn't beneficiary. Competition is raised very much with the help of media we earn big amount of money in trading. Invest in yourself gives you lots of chances and potential to earn money. Reading about day trading polish and enhance your skill.

Ranked #1 - How to Day Trade for a Living How to Day Trade for a Living  Read More This Novel Is Currently Ranked with 4.7 from 5

This book is really a treat to see! I've read several trading books and even though I am a semi-new dealer, this publication is impressive informational and relatively easy for almost anybody to recognize. I cannot consider how a individual could leave a negative review for this particular publication.

The sad reality is 90% of traders drop money. THEY DO!! That is why books like this one are exceptional and extremely helpful. I just finished his second ebook, which talks about techniques daily trading and people are extremely useful in my day trading.

This guy is kind enough to give his personal email to say"if you have any questions shoot me an email". I just can not look at the horrible critiques that was given. In my view, the men and women who wrote negative comments do not recognize the true art of gambling. Thank you, Andrew, on you are hard work and determination!!

Ranked #2 - A Beginner's Guide To Day Trading Online A Beginner's Guide to Day Trading Online (2nd edition)  Read More This Novel Is Currently Ranked with 4.4 from 5

Having completed a degree in Finance and Accounting, I have profound knowledge about investing. However, I needed to learn more about the sector and trading. I understood there were resourcefully books out there to educate me about the art of gambling, and I was correct. This afternoon trading book has it all.

Trading includes two important aspects: greed and fear. If you cannot overcome themyou lose. Bear in mind, the markets are not simple to predict. Being a beginner make matters worse; however, reading this book, you see a trend with immediate impact.

The book lays down strategies that provide you the confidence to take you through the slippery world of trading. And, finallyI hit my minimum balance and began conservatively trading away with all techniques that I could recall. I developed a good entry and exit plan, stuck to a 2% reduction rule.

Ranked #3 - The Best Way To Day Trade: A Detailed Guide To Day Trading How To Day Trade: A Thorough Guide to Day Trading  Read More This Book Is Now Ranked with 4.3 out of 5

Ross keeps things straightforward in his pieces. Having read a slew of books on day trading, that this one was the most precious. It mainly concentrates on risk management for novices and is not exaggerated. I will undoubtedly use this book as reference for insight during my quest to be successful in trading.

I've followed Ross on societal websites for a while and he provides excellent content. If some parts of the novel feel difficult to comprehend, just visit his YouTube channel and look for what is bothering you. You will most likely find a detailed movie on a particular topic. It feels like Ross is obviously a great instructor and I would suggest this book to upcoming and long term traders.

Position #4 - 1 Hour Trade: Make Money with One Simple Strategy The 1 Hour Trade: Make Money With One Simple Strategy, This Book Is Currently Ranked with 4.2 from 5

This book is exactly as advertised. There is a simple and efficient trading strategy that is outlined in the front to the rear. Along with the well outlined and detailed strategy, the author also adds important day trading psychology like money and hazard management. He also provides a fantastic metric for novices on candlesticks and quantity / price actions.

This publication is for daring, disciplined, and motivated newcomer in the day trading profession that's wanting to receive their feet wet on the market without getting ripped out too premature. It's a great read. As other reviewers have statedthis book is succinct and more importantly, in my mind, actionable. As a relatively new day trader, keeping my emotions in check is the toughest part.

Ranking #5 - Day Trading for Dummies Day Trading for Dummies This Novel Is Currently Ranked with 3.9 out of 5

Having read this usually means you wish to turn into a S-E-R-I-O-U-S trader, right? Then this is definitely one of the basic books for you. And in case you've already watched some tutorials in trading in Youtube, or have researched Yahoo Finance and Stocktwits then this book is going to be your next step.

Frankly, this a well thought out book, researching the psychology of human thoughts in trading, easy to comprehend and most of all, you'll learn all of the essentials in day trading. You ought to know when and where to invest -- so allow me to tell you this -- this book will be your very first investment, trading money for this irreplaceable knowledge that you will definitely need for achievement.

While there are numerous books on trading, this book is a very good read to understanding investing better.

Position #6 - Day Trading for a Living Day Trading For A Living This Novel Is Currently Ranked with 3.4 out of 5

This book will prove to be quite enlightening and helpful for someone who has a watch to appreciate and acknowledge the instructions this book supplies. The book might be hard to understand for a beginner. You will be able to find out about the contents of day trading and exactly what it requires to become a successful 10 percent of investors.

But, there is always space for improvement:

When you read the novel, it makes you think that the exemplified patterns to be money-making.

It does not warn you about the results if you conserve a stock into the afternoon of earnings. It might have been better if it was reviewed by an expert editor to the correction of speech and writing style. A significant topic of Support and Resistance levels for trading is lacking in the publication. All these next books are ones you want to avoid. They could have great reviews but they're fake. When you look closely you will noticed ideal 5 star reviews are abandoned within precisely the same time period. Whoever wrote these two publications below,"compensated" or"hired" individuals to make the book sound really good but in reality a waste of time to read. Waste of Time to Read - Day Trading - Fundamentals and Tips Day Trading - A Basics and Tips

This writer has numerous 5-star ratings, in such a short range, just a few days. I don't get it! Yes I bought and read the book and can be inconclusive. It's characterized by continuous monotonous sentences and grammatical mistakes that are rather embarrassing.

The significant reason for purchasing the book, the facts and figures on locating a great inventory, how and when to purchase or sell trades are not there. This book needs to be adjusted and its fundamentals checked.

This Novel is Currently Ranked 4.6 out of 5 Stars, but in only a two Star Ranking!

Waste of Time to Read - Day Trading - A Beginners Guide This Book is Currently Ranked 5 out of 5 Stars, but all the testimonials are fake! Day Trading: A Beginner's Guide on How to Trade. Check out this link

This book will tell you just how to get started, the way to make money, how to prevent losing money, and a lot of the technical advice you will want. Provides excellent trading strategies and tips on the best way to proceed and earn money. This is only one of those excellent books to have a strong basic knowledge on day trading.

Impressive book for the beginners. In this book you will find some basic details about day trading. The content of the publication was excellent and easy to follow. I read this novel and get this book so useful. I will highly recommended this book to all my friends. If you would like to start earning a serious income whilst working on your own, then you want to understand how to trade stocks and other securities at the financial markets. I expect from this book you will be benefited.

Another Reason to Read the #1 Ranked Day Trading Book: It is totally free with Amazon Kindle Unlimited or just $1.99! Here is a similar review on "How to Day Trade for a Living"

Related link: https://tradingstockmovies.blogspot.com/2019/10/best-day-trading-books.html

I cannot recommend this book enough! As a novice trader, I have been looking for information on trading. I found this book extremely informative rather than overly complicated for my ability level. Any negative reviews are most likely wrongly based on the assumption that trading is low risk. This book actually explains this point in great detail. I loved the writer's first book so much I have devoured his next one ! The next book was on more complex day trading approaches, presented in a means which was not overly `'salesy". The cherry on top for me personally was the fact that the author was receptive to email communication for any questions from his readers. Honestly, I don't know why anyone could give this book negative reviews. In my opinion, those reviews just say a lack of understanding of how trading really works. When I had the opportunity to meet Andrew I would love to tell him how grateful I am for his novels. The educational value of the material has made me a more educated day trader currently!

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#day trading books

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