#graphing inequalities | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

countrymusiclover · 9 months ago

Text

2 - Possible Futures

Part 3

It's About Time

Tags just ask - @lover-of-books-and-tea @bvbwestfall l @bubble-blu @liesanddreams @bethanymccauley @skeletonontheroad

Rain was pouring against the windows of the Cooper house. Georgie and I were laying on his bed since I had finished my homework earlier so my parents let me go over to hang out with the oldest Cooper. Georgie was reading a magazine of women in bikinis and I was looking at one of Sheldon’s comic books from his room. “Georgie. Dad told me to help you study for the math test.”

“I don't need your help. Get lost.” Georgie grumbled eyeing his closed bedroom door.

His father George Sr hollered from the living room. “Georgie, let him help you!”

“Come in!” Georgie yelled and his younger brother came in seeing the dirty room floor. “What's your problem?”

Sheldon started picking things up by the end of his pencil. “No problem. I'll just...tidy while we talk. Before we start, I'd like to get a sense - of how much algebra you know. Do you understand solving and graphing - linear inequalities?”

Georgie flipped to another page. “Sure.”

“Explain it to me.” Sheldon challenged him.

Georgie paused before he answered. “Uh...first you solve 'em...and then you graph 'em.”

“And how do you do that?” Sheldon challenged him a second time.

“Uh, you know, carefully.” Georgie answered him before Sheldon left the room in a huff.

Rolling my eyes at my best friend I closed my book rolling over to hold myself up on my elbows. “You do realize if you fail the test you won’t play football anymore right?”

“Yeah I know. But I’ve got this.” He answered me closing his magazine.

I glared at him, eyeing his uniform hanging in the corner closest of his bedroom. “Just let him help you. Otherwise I’ll have to deploy my secret weapon.”

“Oh yeah and what’s that?” Georgie challenged me.

I smirked getting up in his face grabbing at some locks of his curly brown hair. “I’ll cut your hair.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” Georgie gasped sitting upright on the bed.

I sat upright getting in his face even more so where our noses were touching. The smirk didn’t drop from my face. “I bet I can run to the kitchen and get them faster than you could.”

“Don’t start a fight you won’t win.” Georgie got up from the bed and I scrambled to my feet too.

He narrowed his brown eyes at me. “Sounds like a bet to me, Cooper.” I bolted out of his bedroom door slamming the door in his face where he flung it open chasing after me down the short hallway.

The wooden floor underneath the carpet creaked until my feet hit the kitchen floor and I yanked open the drawer inches from grabbing the scissors. “Ah Georgie!” I screamed, feeling arms wrapping around my waist and we stumbled to the harsh tile.

“I won’t let ya cut my hair.” Georgie pinned me on the ground holding my wrists down with his hands.

I glared for a second before I busted out laughing. “I’m only messing with ya, Georgie. I love your hair.”

“I do too.” He smiles down at me releasing my wrists hearing someone coming in our direction.

Missy stopped in her tracks carrying her doll named Celeste. “Woah. We’re you two about to make out?”

“No.” I quickly answered her, blushing like a tomato.

Georgie snapped, waving her off and getting to his feet helping me up afterwards. “No we weren’t. Get out of here!” I tucked my hair behind my ear thinking back to our last year of middle school.

“Woo-hoo!” I giggled hanging off the tire swing that my dad had put in my family backyard of my house.

A bicycle skids to a stop in the driveway where I stopped swinging around super fast to see who it was. “Y/n, I finally know what I want to be when I grow up.” Georgie dropped his bike in the grass rushing over to me.

I kept slowly moving the tire swing around, holding tightly onto the rope to not fall off. “Oh yeah. What ya got?”

“You know the rich bad guy from Back to the Future who has the hot and skinny wife?” He asked me.

I replied back. “Yes.”

“I want to be like him.” He said back.

I leaned my body into the rope that I was holding onto. “So where am I in this future of yours?”

“If we're lucky my hot and skinny wife might have a hot brother you could marry.”

I snorted out a laugh. “Marriage and kids don't sound too bad.”

“With a hot and rich husband.” Georgie chuckles climbing up on the tire swing beginning to sway us around where we were pressed up against the other hoping to not fall off.

Lifting my gaze up to his I felt my face starting to turn red and it was in that moment I realized that I had my first ever crush on my best friend. “Right with a hot and rich husband…” I mean who would be foolish enough to turn him down.

“Hey, I got some matches and fireworks in the garage stored away. I was thinking we try'em out.” He jumped off the tire waiting for me to follow him. Getting off the swing I grabbed my bike and we rode back to his house.

Peddling my bike by his I got a little distracted thinking back on what he said about his future. If i was lucky maybe down the road in a few years he would feel the same. “I was thinking I might marry you when we get older.” We pulled into his driveway and that night we accidentally blew up one of the neighbors mailboxes which had to be the coolest thing ever.

The next evening after we had all passed the test Sheldon knocked on his door again. “Georgie? I need to ask a favor. It's private. Can I come in?”

“Come on. What do you want?” Georgie was reading another one of his magazines and I was just laying beside him. We had been chatting until he interrupted us.

Sheldon came to stand at the foot of the bed. “It occurs to me you have something in common with Captain Kirk.”

“We both have cool hair?” Georgie asked him.

Sheldon corrected his brother’s statement. “In order to succeed, you both play fast and loose with the rules.”

Georgie shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, I suppose we do.”

“When you cheated on the math test, what was your strategy?” The nine year old genesis asked.

I made a face at the younger boy. “You’re asking him for advice on how to lie. I thought I’d never see the day.”

“Me neither, Y/n.” His brother glanced at me thinking back on his plan. “Well, I guess the most important part was not stepping on anything wet before the test. And not getting an "A."

Sheldon knitted his brows. “Why wouldn't you want an "A"?”

“'Cause that would raise suspicions. Who would believe I got an "A"?” Georgie shakes his head at his ridiculous question.

Sheldon gasped. “Wow. Tell me more.”

“Okay, when you're telling a lie, it's important to throw in some details. Like, when I was wanted to spend the night at Ricky's house, and Mom asked me if his mom and dad were gonna be home, I said, not only are they be gonna be home, his dad was gonna teach us how to cook turkey legs in the smoker.” Georgie explained his story.

Sheldon responded, making me facepalm my face into my hands embarrassed. “I like turkey legs. Were they good?”

“There weren't any turkey legs, you dope. His parents were in Branson.” Georgie chuckles slightly annoyed at him.

Sheldon walked over to the door opening it to leave the room. “That's incredible. I totally believed you.”

“Now get out of here, I got to finish reading this.” Georgie opened his magazine once more when the door shut behind Sheldon. He could feel my gaze focused on him so he sat the magazine down in his lap. “What you gotta say?”

I shifted to lay back down against his pillows. “You know you teaching him to lie ain’t gonna end well for him.”

“I don’t care. He never gets in trouble for anything. If he gets caught maybe he won’t be such a pain.” He shakes his head, sending me a half smile.

Comments really appreciated ❤️

76 notes · View notes

uboat53 · 3 months ago

Text

Well, as expected, Trump can't keep his focus on policy attacks against the Harris-Walz ticket and keeps wandering off into racist/sexist/bizarre personal attacks. Many say that this is a Trump problem, but I think it's a lot bigger than him in a way that's going to keep hurting Republicans long after he's gone. LONG RANT (TM) time?

INTRODUCTION

I'm sure you've noticed the Very Serious (TM) Republicans like Lindsay Graham and Marco Rubio and Very Serious (TM) conservative media outlets like the Wall Street Journal that keep talking about how Donald Trump would absolutely destroy Kamala Harris in November if only he could keep focused on policy instead of pursuing personal attacks and angry vendettas. Of course, all of them are missing the main reason Trump isn't talking about policy; Republican policy is overwhelmingly unpopular.

Look, I don't give Trump a lot of credit. I don't think he's very intelligent or insightful and I doubt his ability to focus on anything but his own personal vendettas for more than a few minutes, but the man knows popular. You can see him at work at his rallies, he'll start spitballing on something and play with it back and forth with the crowd until he finds something that resonates, it's what he does.

If Trump isn't running on policy, there's a good reason for it. Of course, we should look at specifics to illustrate the issue.

ECONOMICS

To put it bluntly, the Republicans don't have much of an economic policy anymore. Maybe the used to, but that's all gone. There are only two policies they have left, two things you can guarantee will happen under any Republican administration with a minimally compliant Congress: (1) they'll cut taxes for rich people and corporations and (2) they'll try to undo regulations.

That's it, that's all they've got. Now go around and ask people if they think cutting taxes for rich people and corporations is a good idea. I'll bet you don't get many positive responses and you'll get more than few profanities. Even cutting regulations doesn't do so well when you actually get specific about which regulations. People dislike the idea of regulations in general, but they like those regulations that keep the air and water clean.

Now, there was a point where Republican policy had some grounding. Back in the 70s when the Laffer Curve was first proposed, no one knew where the point at the top of the curve was.

(For those who are unaware, the Laffer Curve is the idea that there is some optimal tax rate. Taxing below that rate raises less money for the government, but taxing above that rate also raises less money because it overtaxes the economy. You should look it up, it's a very interesting concept.)

Nowadays, of course, we've got 40+ years of research on it and we have a pretty good idea that the optimum top marginal tax rate is about 70%. In other words, there is, at current tax rates, no way to grow the economy by cutting taxes, but Republicans keep doing it anyways. It's like a zombie policy that's immune to evidence and reason and just keeps on going from sheer inertia.

Of course, that's just the evidence about the economy as a whole. We also know that, starting in the 1980s with a wave of tax cuts and deregulation, worker pay stopped increasing with productivity. In fact, we've seen decades of stagnating wages and increasing income inequality under Republican economic policy to the point where you can actually look at graphs of economic data and point to where Ronald Reagan was elected based on where things started getting bad for average people.

Yet, still, Republicans hold to this economic policy. Despite all of the evidence and the very real consequences it has had for our economy, Republicans cling to the economic policy of Reagan circa 1980 with no interest in creating something new that they could hang their hats on. It really does speak to the state of ideas in the party.

FOREIGN POLICY

And foreign policy? Yeah, Trump can't talk about that either. Dictators like Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin aren't very popular and NATO and democratic countries are. Heck, support for Ukraine has fallen since its peak, but it's still more popular than Trump himself.

Maybe there's a case to be made that the views of Cold War-style Republicans like Rubio and Graham who are pro-NATO, pro-Ukraine, and anti-Russia, are popular, but that's not Trump's policy. His foreign policy runs pretty hard against what most Americans think our foreign policy should be.

The one thing in his foreign policy that has even a little bit of positive approval is his plan for tariffs, but even that would fall apart in the details. Most people who support it do so with the vague idea that it would protect US jobs, but how many of them would still support it if they knew how likely it is to turbo-charge inflation? Yeah, I'm pretty sure it'd sink like a lead balloon if he talked about it enough that it actually started getting coverage.

DOMESTIC POLICY

Okay, so there's economic policy, there's foreign policy, and there's domestic policy which basically comes down to "everything else". I'm going to take his domestic policy ideas from Agenda 47, Trump's official campaign site, instead of Project 2025 because Trump is pretending not to know anything about the latter (despite cheerleading it behind the scenes for years), but they're really not all that different.

Trump wants to "certify teachers by their patriotism", abolish teacher tenure, cut funding to any school that doesn't teach subjects the way he wants them to, re-introduce prayer in schools, and close the Department of Education. He wants to establish a commission stocked with conspiracy theorists to investigate autism, he's both approved of and opposed plans to negotiate drug prices, and he's planning to deport tens of millions of undocumented immigrants. He wants to dramatically expand the death penalty, end any government involvement in civil rights, and try to use federal health care money to prevent people from getting transgender surgery even if they pay for it themselves.

None of these things are popular and all of them would be even less so if he actually went around promoting them or worse, tried to actually follow through on them. And Project 2025, which he has disavowed even while maintaining close ties with those who wrote it, is even worse. If you think targeting transgender people polls badly, wait until they come for abortion, birth control, IVF, and pornography.

MESSAGING

You can see all of that in the way that people who only live in a conservative world try to attack liberals. The Wall Street Journal, for example, recently tried to attack Gov. Walz, now Kamala Harris' VP pick, for creating a state system of family and medical leave, providing free college for kids under a certain income threshold, making it easier to vote, and providing school lunches.

These only sound like bad things if you live in a bubble of conservative media that separates you from the real world. Real people love feeding hungry children and letting caretakers take time off to care for loved ones!

POPULARITY

We need to pause for a moment here and address one thing. You see, Trump and Republican's economic policies are unpopular, yet more Americans say they trust Trump to keep the economy strong than trust Harris. How can that be?

Well, there's an old saying (and I'm paraphrasing here) that people are Republicans in theory, Democrats in practice. In other words, they like the vibe of Republicans and they like the sound bites but, once you actually start to talk about the details of any given policy, they don't like Republican ideas at all.

I'm pretty sure that's what's going on here and it's one more big reason Trump doesn't want to talk policy.

CONCLUSION

Look, I get the instinct from Republicans that they'd like their presidential candidate to be more serious, but if they ever want that to happen they're going to have to grapple with the fact that the policies they want are not anything that would ever win an election. Trump is running on personal attacks and vendettas because he knows that these are all way more popular than the actual policies that he and Republicans actually want to put in place if they were to win and the only way to keep any sort of advantage on any policy is to keep it vague.

Until that changes, don't expect any Republican candidate to make a serious policy based argument for their election, even after the age of Trump.

#politics #us politics #trump #republicans #economics #reaganomics #long rant (tm)

51 notes · View notes

lipshits-continuous · 9 months ago

Text

Topological Spaces 1: Introduction and Metric Spaces

Welcome to the first of several posts about general topology! The goal of these posts is to give an overview and introduction to key concepts in topology. I will try to give intuitions about definitions and results so that even if you're not as aquainted with formal mathematics you can still get something from this. Whilst there aren't any prerequisties per say (for the reason above), for those who are interested in the moral formal aspects it will be helpful to be familiar with real analysis. Some familiarity with linear algebra is also helpful in this post though probably won't play a role going forward.

Topology is such a broad subject that assigning one goal is quite hard. One early goal is to generalise the notion of continuity and other familiar notions, which we shall do. Topology certainly doesn't stop there. One large goal is to find properties which are invariant under homeomorphism (bijective continuous maps whose inverse is also continuous). We shall see some examples of this as we go further!

The goal of this post is to give context to the definitions of topological spaces and continuity via the study of metric spaces. The definition of a topological space can seem quite dry and like it's been plucked out of thin air when just presented without motivation. In this sense, metric spaces are the bridge between familiar concepts in real analysis and the more general setting of topology.

1.1: Metric Spaces:

As the name might suggest, metric spaces are sets with an appropriate notion of distance between points in the set. For the real numbers, we have an intuitive sense of distance between two numbers: the absolute value of their difference. From this, we can immediately get three desirable properties we'd want a notion of distance to have:

Positivity: |x-y|≥0

|x-y|=0 if and only if x=y

Symmetry: |x-y|=|y-x|.

These are desirable because this says, in order, that distance is always positive, two points are the same only when the distance between then is 0, and the distance beween x and y is the same as the distance between y and x.

The last property is not as immediately obvious from the definition but is still a fairly intuitive property that we'd expect a notion of distance to have: the triangle inequality. Formally, for any x,y, and z real number we have |x-y|≤|x-z|+|z-y|. This just says that the distance between two points is always shorter than the distance achieved by adding an intermediate point. The name comes from visiualising this with lengths of a triangle! The proof that this holds for the absolute value can be found here.

You might ask whether there are any more properties we'd like but it turns out that this is enough to generalise a lot of concepts in real analysis in an appropriate way. That is, we still maintain a lot of nice results without requiring too many rules. So let us finally see the definition!

Definition 1.1:

Note: It's common to combine the first two axioms together but for the sake of clarity, I have separated them.

Examples 1.2:

The details of why each of these is a metric can be found in this post.

A result of the second example is that metric spaces are also an appropriate generalisation of normed vector spaces. The fact they are a generalisation is seen from the fact that the discrete metric cannot be seen as the result of a norm and isn't restricted to vector spaces.

1.2: Continuity:

Intuitively, continuous functions are ones that don't have gaps or sudden jumps. In the case of functions from the real numbers to itself, we can view this as "we can draw its graph without lifting the pencil". This can be restated as "points that are close to each other remain close to each other after the function is applied". But how does one formalise "closeness"? With distances of course!

Definition 1.3:

Remark: Continuity departs on the metrics. A function that is continuous in one metric isn't necessarily continuous in another.

Examples 1.4:

Now I'd like to prove a fairly common result to further demonstrate continuity.

Proposition 1.5:

1.3: Open Sets in Metric Spaces

Now we shall see the first aspects of topology creeping in. One way to think about open sets which don't have any points "at the edge". This is immediately clear in the definition we will give below but when we generalise the notion of an open set, we will seemingly lose this. However, we will see that this intuition will still hold!

Definition 1.6:

Example 1.7:

We will now define the notion of an open set using these open balls.

Definition 1.8:

This does indeed formalise "no points at the edge" since for open sets, all points close enough to x are always in U.

Remark: Openness depends on the metric. For example, {0} is open in the real numbers with the discrete metric but not with the absolute value metric.

Now, "open ball" would be a silly name for it if they weren't indeed open in the sense of definition 1.8 but luckily they are!

Proposition 1.9:

Example 1.10:

Open intervals of real numbers are indeed open with respect to the absolute value. If we have the open interval I=(a,b) for finite a<b, we may view I as an open ball by setting x=(b+a)/2 and r=|b-a|/2. Then I=B(x;r).

Now we shall prove a very important result about open sets that lets you build new open sets out of old opens but will also be the foundation upon which we generalise the notion of open sets!

Lemma 1.11:

Proof:

Remark: Finiteness is important for 3. If we consider the real numbers with the absolute value metric then (-1/n,1/n) is open for all (non-zero) natural numbers. However their intersection over all n is {0} which is not open in this metric.

Typically, courses would usually talk about closed sets now. However, since the discussion doesn't vary much between metric spaces and topological spaces, we will hold off for now.

1.4: Continuity in terms of open sets

This is a very important step in our journey in generalising continuity. This section with along with the next section will suggest that open sets are actually the structures we'd like to study!

Lemma 1.12:

Before we prove this, I'd like to just comment on why this still alligns with our intution about continuity. The right hand side is saying that points end up close together in Y must've been close together in X.

Remark: It is important to note that U open in X does not necessarily imply f(U) is open in Y when f if continuous. For example, take f(x)=x² in ℝ with its usual notion of continuity, then (-1,1) is open but f((-1,1))=[0,1) which is not open. Maps for which open sets are mapped to open sets are called open maps.

We will see examples of how to use the property on the right hand side in the next post!

1.5: Equivalent Metrics

The goal of this section is to see that sometimes different metrics will give rise to the same open sets!

Definition 1.13:

Example 1.14:

I will omit the details of the proof for brievity. Not that the 2 on the right hand side comes from the fact we're in ℝ² and isn't related to the 2 in the metric.

Remark: Not all metrics are equivalent. The discrete metric and d₂ are not equivalent metrics.

Proposition 1.15:

Corollary 1.16:

This ultimately means that some metrics generate the same open sets. Then Lemma 1.12 tells us that equivalent metrics give the same continuous funcitons since we can view continuity in terms of open sets. This suggests that what really matters here is which sets are open. This is what we shall exploit to generalise continuity even further! But that shall have to wait til the next post!

#maths posting #mathblr #maths #mathematics #topology #lipshits posts #long post #undescribed

62 notes · View notes

thisisthinprivilege · 1 year ago

Text

Submitted anonymously

One day I will describe to you the entirety of my hellish experience at the school of public health of which I attend, but until then here is just a sampling.

As a fat person, attending a public health school is extremely difficult (more difficult than I realized it would be) for many reasons, but two of those reasons are the two mandatory classes. I’m in an introductory public health class now and though it is supposed to cover all aspects of public health, every single one of the first ten lectures discussed obesity. We have guest speakers and they have all addressed it in some way or another.

The thing is, their topic may not have anything to do with weight specifically, but they always find a way to work it into their lesson. For instance, one woman was discussing the difficulties of surveying populations. She mentioned that the weight category was often a difficult one with regard to accuracy when people are self-reporting. She mentioned that no one ever says they are a heavier weight, because hell why would they-that would just be embarrassing for most people. This is not an exact quote, but it is pretty close.

First of all she laughed while she said this-super professional- and second, people with secret eating disorders would absolutely lie to say they weighed heavier in order to help cover up their secret. It was really frustrating to have this public health professional be so immature about such an important topic.

The worst thing about this class so far, however, has been the student presentations. A few have been about obesity (I think there is a competition over who can say the word obesity more frequently) and none of them have treated the topic with the least bit of sensitivity, maturity, or professionalism. The worst one started with showing graphs about how high weight correlates with low socioeconomic status, so far this is reasonable and points out a lot of issues America is having with regard to cheap food due to government subsidies. It took a turn for the worst when beside his talking points he showed degrading images. The first image showed a kid having trouble deciphering the difference between chocolate cake and a pile of vegetables, thereby reinforcing the stereotype that fat people really don’t know the difference themselves. The second image showed a very fat child eating at a McDonalds. I wondered if this child had consented to his picture being taken in the first place, much less put on the internet and made into a meme where this presenter presumably found it.

When people laughed at the image I felt disgusted and bile rise in my throat. What kind of monsters laugh at children; my peers are supposed to be professional adults.

Finally he ended his presentation with discussing ways to reduce obesity, but instead of discussing ways to close socioeconomic and inequality gaps, he only focused on what fat people need to do. He said that though doctors are telling fat patients to lose weight there must be some disconnect because so far it hasn’t worked so doctors should double down on fat patients. He was clearly implying that fat people were too stupid to understand their doctors the first few thousand times and just completely ignored how low socioeconomic levels come into play, even though he knew they did.

The second presentation discussed how sugary drinks caused obesity and because of that we should make labels more transparent. I am all for transparency when it comes to food labels, but there are a myriad of reasons for why sugary drinks are bad, not just because they make you fat. He then showed ads that “more accurately describe sugary drink products” rather than the ones with celebrities that are shown now. These ads showed faceless fat people with words that suggested that people not drink sugary drinks if they don’t want to look this way. These ads were in poor taste and extremely degrading.

Finally, the third presentation that was completely unprofessional discussed how black women had higher rates of deaths from breast cancer than white women. She said at the beginning these results controlled for BMI, but then went on to discuss how obesity played a huge role. She said that black women tended to be fatter than white women and that this trend in weight followed the trend in breast cancer death rates and that obesity must be the reason.

This reasoning seemed like she was just trying to find a reason to further blame fat people for all health problems. She said fat women had breast cancer detected later than thin women and I couldn’t help but wonder if that was because fat women are afraid to go to the doctor because they know they’ll be fat shamed. She had no discussion on that, just discussion on how black women needed to be educated on better food choices so that they and their children won’t be obese.

I have no problem in educating people on nutrition and helping them pay for groceries as one of her suggested programs discussed, but I do have a problem with only targeting fat people. Not all thin people understand healthy nutrition and not all fat people need to be educated. It is these assumptions that all fat people are lazy, stupid, ignorant, and in desperate need of a savior that make me feel both angry and full of despair at the same time. I have to give my presentation next week (about air quality), but I am honestly wondering how I am going to be able to do so in front of a group of people that can’t take me seriously because they find me to be both disgusting and an idiot. I have never felt so anxious in my life.

#thin privilege #fatphobia #fat discrimination #trigger warning #the o word #obesity is not a disease #medical fatphobia

64 notes · View notes

study-with-aura · 3 months ago

Text

Wednesday, August 28, 2024

It has been really busy around here since my parents are back to their campuses regularly again. That, and it has been so quiet! There's nothing wrong with the quiet of course, but it reminds me that Julien isn't at home anymore, which makes me sad. It is okay though. He is having a great time back at his university, and that makes me happy to know!

My updates may start to get sporadic again, as I am already starting to experience slight difficulties with staying motivated in studying. One would think, since I had an amazing summer break (despite the small studying I still did), that I would be good and ready to keep going until the next break. However, my summer was still packed with activity and maybe not a true break at all even though all of it was enjoyable and fun! The work this year is also more demanding. If you haven't noticed, there is a lot more revising going on with my notes and more writing and reading material in general. It will prepare me for more advanced studies of course, but I need to get back into the groove of it, so to speak, and I will.

Tasks Completed:

Algebra 2 - Learned about graphing linear inequalities + practice + practiced with the graphing calculator

American Literature - Copied vocabulary terms + read about Benjamin Franklin as a writer + read excerpts from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin + answered discussion questions + read about Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac in the article "The Prominent and Prodigiously Popular Poor Richard" + read over Benjamin Franklin's aphorisms and the virtues associated with them + wrote down three aphorisms from the list that I liked including what they meant + read over the article "Reflective Writing: A Basic Introduction" + read chapters 20-21 of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Spanish 3 - Read over an activity in Spanish to determine how much I could read and understand (I understood most of it) + reviewed gender and plural in Spanish

Bible 2 - Read 2 Samuel 22

Early American History - Watched a short video about the first Thanksgiving + read chapter 9 of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford

Earth Science with Lab - Watched a video about hydroplate theory and Earth's radioactivity

Music Appreciation - Read about and listened to Musical Signatures associated with Gustav Mahler + read about and listened to the "Refuge and Renewal," "Triumph and Tragedy," and "Awe and Affirmation" tabs about Gustav Mahler + copied major necessary terms from the H section of the music dictionary

Khan Academy - Completed US History Unit 2: Lesson 3 (part 1)

Duolingo - Studied for approximately 30 minutes (Spanish + French + Chinese) + completed daily quests

Piano - Practiced for two hours in one hour split sessions

Reading - Read pages 211-277 of We Are All So Good at Smiling by Amber McBride and finished the book

Chores - None today

Activities of the Day:

Personal Bible Study (Matthew 5)

Ballet

Variations

Journal/Mindfulness

#study blog #study inspiration #study motivation #studyblr #studyblr community #study community #study-with-aura

11 notes · View notes

faithfromanewperspective · 1 year ago

Text

the western sydney work ethic, mental health, burnout, inequality and ableism

inspired by ashton irwin on artist friendly with joel madden and 17902 sustainable urban development at the university of technology sydney

I’ve teased the idea of writing this post for a while now, and now I’m sitting in my borrowed bed in Sydney with the graphs and maps from my course still at the back of my eyelids and still processing the Vibes of catching up with my childhood friends and wondering if it’s too early to go to bed if the sun’s still up—it’s time to let it out. Because I found a bunch of seemingly unrelated things and put them together in a way that helped me process my upbringing and the way it’s positioned me as I go through life even now.

For background of this post, the Greater Sydney metropolis has a very stark rich/poor divide, where a large strip from the west going to the south of the city have been left behind in a variety of ways. In my uni course I see the maps on income, education level, job overqualification, crime, violence… they’re nice and set out, and they validate what I already intuitively knew—just like everyone who grew up in the area I’m going to refer to vaguely as Western Sydney. These graphs put words to something I’ve lived when I was too young to process it, something I hear the impacts of in 5 seconds of summer’s songs like I’ve never seen in any other art ever.

I know many people relate too and I don’t want to say you have to be from Western Sydney to get it. There are plenty of other places with similar trends, but this strip of suburbs, half a city, is where I grew up and the case study I’m going to use for the phenomenon I’m going to describe in this post.

Having spent the last decade and a bit in a more conservative, more sheltered area of suburban Brisbane, where people take it slow and at least attempt to have fun without getting completely wasted; where people have high expectations for their lives and livelihoods they never quite meet and where they’re the kind of emotionally aware that you hear all about how stressful that experience is: this was the backdrop of my teens and young adult years to this point. It’s where I learned about mental health and neurodivergence and ableism and where I really explored what faith and spirituality is to me. It’s where I never quite felt comfortable when people were too polite, where I poured all the belief they had in me as a gifted kid plonked into that environment I wasn’t native to into the delusion that I could deconstruct the unequal education system of their own creation if I only worked harder than anyone had ever worked before. Then they would finally listen. It’s where I tried and tried to get help for my mental health and wasn’t listened to either, not when I presented so well and was simply unable to unmask until I was unable to mask at all. Where the slightest bit of hope caused me to forget everything that was hurting me, making it a struggle to work through even to this day. where I wondered if I was some superhuman for the fact that I can work my ass off without even realising it’s hard work, a smile on my face and arms open for connection as always (the mark of health they say) while being desperately unwell, hurting, thinking I had it good compared to some of the people I’d see crumple under the pressure, I should be kind to them (not understanding why I found them so, so relatable).

I am not a freak of nature, or superhuman, though I am neurodivergent and twice-exceptional. I am the product of my upbringing and my ancestors. I carry generations of culture from hectares of foreign lands my ancestors made their homes on (ethically questionably in some cases I do acknowledge) and became part of the ecosystem of. It is, like most difference, a gift and a curse. Something that makes certain measures of ableism not apply to me, but creates others in their place. I’ll get into this more later.

in the strip of suburbs united by demographics we call Western Sydney, farmers from the notoriously difficult land of the Murray-Darling and immigrants from everywhere on the planet, some Indigenous but few Indigenous to Australia, make up classrooms, neighbourhoods, workplaces. Think I Am Australian by The Seekers, but just the verses, as a snapshot of some of the stories representative of the people. Interwoven in the landscape. We celebrated Harmony Day on the 21st of March in my primary school. Everyone had a different cultural background. We heard different languages spoken on the street. There were stereotypes. There were scared people trying to find their tribe, build a life in Australia, away from the larger scale farms, get their kids a good education to do a trade or go to university. Fear and angst and hurt coexisting with an appreciation of the juxtaposition of others you’d never head admitted out loud. But the second verse of the Australian national anthem was written just for us, or might as well have been. Beneath our radiant southern cross, we’ll toil with hearts and hands… google the lyrics, you’ll get it, you’ll see why I wish the rest of Australia did too: for those who’ve come across the seas, we’ve boundless plains to share, with courage let us all combine to advance Australia fair…

No one with the power to acknowledge this I interact with these days remembers the second verse. Except 5 Seconds Of Summer, in their ridiculous little promo videos, who I’d bet the rubble that’s left of my parents’ old house as the new owners turn it into a mansion because Gentrification, have no idea of what a meaningful gesture that is.

I can feel the wounds of being torn from the good parts of that experience closing over. And so it’s time to give the often forgotten stories on an often forgotten piece of land that made me and also these four wonderful humans who we are today, the credit it deserves. Start by telling our stories.

One thing I love about Artist Friendly is it cuts straight to it. Joel Madden is just incredible like that—in a world coming out of the 2010s pop decade of dancing while the room is on fire (bloodhound, 5sos) put your rose coloured glasses on and party on (Katy Perry’s chained to the rhythm) (these I would consider more analytical quotes of the era, one whose vibe was ‘forget all the pain in the world, let’s party and sing about how horny we are’ which for all my cynicism I did find fun)—he kept up his punk edge, kept investing in new musicians, searching for and investing in what’s real. He also really loves Australia, and when you put our underdog-supporting attitude next to Good Charlotte’s songs you understand why. Anyway, the episode pretty much opens by him asking Ashton about his background, and relating from the perspective of working-class-emotionally-unavailable/immature-parents-who-showed-their-love-through-provision-and-really-did-try-to-be-there-but-had-none-of-the-resources. I like the positive take. It’s high time we stop being classist and ableist towards the people who’ve met our needs as much as they were able, but it still wasn’t enough. Who taught us how to take opportunities, work to prove our worth, and through it all couldn’t even afford therapy.

I used to think my family was rich because we lived in Australia and my parents had gone to university. Never mind the fact that I was born when they were barely older than I am now. Never mind the mould in the walls or sneaky Tuesday night washing of the school uniforms in the summer when we got sweaty and there weren’t any spares or the mismatched bargain bin clothes we wore or the bedroom I shared with my sisters. I knew the people I compared us to. And now I do really believe if I’d grown up a bit less frugal or even a few k’s out of the area I did I wouldn’t be who I am. I wouldn’t have the perspectives I have, nor would this podcast episode have me feeling so seen. Like, yes I lived a bit further into the city than these guys, close to the train line without any farmland where the house values shot up seemingly overnight and meant the area I grew up in is experiencing a very weird disparity as two cities collide within it today. But we grew up in the same era in western sydney, we grew up loved and knowing that was a privilege and we grew up knowing from a very young age we had to spend our whole lives working hard if we wanted life to be manageable and we better be polite and better not ask for too much.

yet we also grew up with hurt. From the trauma we inherited from our caregivers as we encountered the attitudes and fears with which they faces the world. From what we saw our peers go through much too young to be able to draw boundaries with the empathy we felt too much of and understood nothing of. From broken family relationships that were all too common. From religion that hurting people used to cause or at least stagnate hurt instead of healing.

when I was burning out and struggling as an unrecognised neurodivergent I used to wonder why my father would place such value on the Protestant work ethic when Jesus died exactly so we wouldn’t have to strive. And I acknowledge that the PWE is harmful to many disabled folk or literally anyone who has experienced the demands of life and had their stress invalidated for it. Including myself. But never having the expectation of a life of ease and luxury? I do appreciate that. It’s given me a whole different metric for how I view life, one none of my friends except those who are from those years of my life understand. No one in Brisbane or my online international friends seem to get it. But I’m sure when you see yourself in this post, that some of you will (we might be the largely unheard minority but I’m sure we exist. Joel Madden is proof of that). It’s given me a differently calibrated emotional pain scale in many ways. Different standards for when the warning lights come on (and I’m very perceptive of angst and disappointment and always see them in others to be worse than they are because of it). And when I look at everything this band has accomplished, I know it’s the same for them.

I have spent a lot of time these last years advocating for neurodivergent acceptance. I’ve done so in a way that made sense of the decade previous, of existing in a world of inequality I’ve always been so sensitive to and of expectations that I took on as opportunities (because what else have I been trained to do)? And yet so much of it is about funding and resources. And when there isn’t that? You make room for my favourite thing ever: grassroots, unofficial but beautifully organic loving neurodivergent affirmation. Plenty of rural folks, my grandparents included, hate labels, prefer focusing on strengths and equipping young people based on those than accommodating difficulties. They’re often seen as conservative, bigoted, ableist, and some of them are. But they bring with them an important lesson about how to live with the realities of the economy that they struggle in too, too much to support someone else. They don’t have the same impossible expectations of their neurodivergent progeny and protegees and community members that many who hold in their heads an idea of perfection they hope to bring to their families do (the kind of things sometimes only a diagnosis can free someone from, and nothing from the memory and shame of) and that—that is an important attitude for all of us to have.

Some people are unconventionally neurodivergent affirming while knowing none of the terms, or maybe trying to hold off using them because of the same economic and confidence reasons I’ve tried to unpack. Some rely on simple kindnesses and explanations that centre around possibility, and go nowhere near deficit. Some people know intuitively or through hard life lessons themselves (usually the latter) the value of stripping all but essentials from the functionality of everyday life. Not making it any harder than it is.

Of course you can drum on the tables in math class. My son is a musician, I get how it is.

Liz Hemmings is the only valid neurodivergence parent—I’ll say no more, it is how it is

Sometimes when we advocate for things we have to be aware that the way the dominant in-power often wealthy culture has figured it out isn’t always the best way to do things. Environmentalism is a prime example of this. This is why we need brown environmentalism and to decolonise and listen to our Indigenous stewards and share power.

You can take a lot of lessons from a place that’s as culturally diverse as Western Sydney. And you can see how a work ethic is facilitated, rather than gatekept. You can see why Ash, when asked by Joel if he’s scared of every getting back to that life (ref to poverty) his attitude is actually one of gratitude and almost reverence for the place that shaped him, that brought the band together and everything that came from that point forwards. That shaped their attitude and birthed the grit that got them through being on tour with one direction and I don’t think he said it but in Ash’s case I bet the empathy he has for the fans and the way he just wants to connect and create a fun experience but also one where we’re deeply seen by moving songs is because he knows what it’s like for so many people. You can’t not if you grew up like we did. You can see why Luke at any chance will say ‘we’re from Sydney Australia’. It has a way of sticking to you, the rich culture that’s a patchwork of orphaned cultures, the way everyday life is like one of those adventures you emerge from with strong bonds usually only found in fantasy novels. You can see that the band is proof that those bonds exist in real life.

after a decade and a bit pretending I know what leisure is and how to have fun without Bad Angst I’m glad that this proof is still in my life. I’ve still got close friends from primary school and few can boast that (we might not quite be Calum and Michael in that regard, but they still have other friends from primary who they’ve kept in touch with despite geographical separation as I have).

Now I’ve acknowledged this and traced the strings that are much easier to see when my own life is mirrored in a podcast episode, maybe I can find the good among the cultural dysphoria in the circles I do have in Brisbane, and do value still for what they are even if they’re not quite the same. Now that I can see how a world of too many opportunities and not enough freedom can burn someone out who came from this background, with the type of brain that flourishes on being a latchkey kid and sketchy hangouts with deep conversations and questionable substances but crumples under expectation and too much choice and politeness, I can put my life back together in a way that validates who I am and where I come from, rather than what those around me tell me should be good for me.

as, I can tell by this interview, these guys have. I want to be able to talk about suffering without people acting like it shouldn’t be something we can comfortably say out loud, as Ashton does here and through music. My art isn’t quite the same, but the purpose behind it is so, so similar. I relate a lot to the importance he places on spirituality, even if I’ve tried to do something with Christianity that it, in the mainstream at least, isn’t built for and probably can only partially do on its own. Maybe the epitome of humility is being able to learn from other religions and see them as gifts from God even as, and I include Christianity here as well, anything can be dangerous if used in a way that it wasn’t meant for: anything with power to heal has power or hurt too. I’ve got so much respect for how Ash does it. I think this episode really cemented for me that, and I feel like it’s something we as a fandom don’t talk about enough because of their characterisation (and fair enough, if you’re famous you don’t want people dissecting every part of you, and I’m not going to do that just give a generalised compliment): these guys are so incredibly resilient and intelligent and invested in creating healing and they’re really fucking good at it. They might present themselves as goofs with one braincell that create bops and fan over other celebrities as if they themselves aren’t famous too, but so much of that is humility and them baring themselves in ways that are sustainable and really emotionally mature (for the most part) to be relatable to us as fans and invest in making that connection genuine. They’re not pretending, because they understand how it is to be human.

and you don’t get there by being some sort of Untouchable Philosophical Genius Figure. you get there because you’ve lived in community and you’ve survived hard things because of other people who’ve done similar and created authentic art too. You get there often because you have to: because putting on a fake show and doing stuff for likes and popularity was never going to work and will only screw you up in the long run and you’re worldly enough to see that from a young age and learn from your own intuition and empathy and experiences. You get there because you lived your whole life being resourceful and being street smart and doing what it takes to make good decisions and invest in yourself (who else do you have who’s worth more than that) and your future. Doing what it takes to make sure you’re alive to learn how to do better at things you’re behind in that might keep food on the table in the future, because there’s none of that oh-it-won’t-happen-to-me attitude. That part is very sustainable which I love. I also really really relate to it and have found it something I would get complimented on when I was younger, too young to be so mature. But I never attributed it to myself. I knew somehow, abstractly, I was disabled and nearing my limit and everything I do I did so I could survive. It’s the western Sydney work ethic.

and yet this often beautiful phenomenon has its ugly side. If you know you’re neurodivergent even without the words—more often than not the only people you see who you relate to are those who didn’t make it, who fell off the horse of functionality and into things like addiction and other things that exacerbate the inability to empower yourself. You figure that when you’re honest with yourself you’ll be dead by 25. Sometimes you give up on trying to prevent that and wonder if it’s even worth it to attempt to keep going: is your life really worth that effort?? What I’ve described is a combination of the experiences of many people I know, aspects of it are mine, and aspects mirror things I know these guys have mentioned about themselves (I’m going to leave it at that vague level of detail). You wonder why people believe in you, is it only because any other option is unmentionable? But what if you let them down like you know (fear) you will? And burnout is the epitome of this: the need to let go of trying. And without a decent amount of privilege it’s impossible to return from.

I’ve been there and scrounged at straws of privilege I do have, pretending I’m doing my job to the level that others expect while letting go of every expectation I have on myself. Still problem solving outside every box on how to get back on my feet because I know nothing else, radically accepting that I might not and whittling down all my needs in life to the most essential, that I might still survive even at my limited and diminishing capacity. While always relating to those our society sees as failures. I’ve borrowed from other cultures that aren’t my own to have a stubborn sense of worth while trying to keep afloat in a society and economy that says it’s conditional. My spirituality comes in here, as do my problem-solving skills: again, maybe this culture fears burnout more than anything, but maybe it has half a toolkit on how to get out of it. Only half. I have to pair it with what I learn from others too.

and even through that, I’m immensely privileged to have savant skills and a generally able body. Just like when you make it big as a musician you’re privileged by that. Against a backdrop of I’m-nothing-special. I’ve always struggled with questions of my felt worth, because I’m so conscious of my privilege and ability that sometimes I get the two muddled (though I know my ability doesn’t define my worth in things I do poorly at, and my persistence technically doesn’t either but I’ll be damned if I don’t try and try and actually find doing badly more validating of how I see myself than when I do well, so I chase it again and again, my dad is the same, it’s what makes us so adventurous). I understand the consciousness of things that are going well not lasting, and pouring creativity for new ventures into things like selling candles. Instead of letting achievements make me believe I’m someone more important than I am, using them as ways of giving myself space to do whatever’s next, dial off the pressure a little bit.

I understand appreciating others’ sensitivity and the social capital they bring everywhere rather than their material wealth or achievement and when Ash praised Calum for that and said it made him look bad I felt that. Both the experience of being that counter-cultural person who doesn’t give a shit about money but values connection so, so much more (and from all I’ve written, you can see why, can’t you) to still never being able to be as good a person as I see the need for in the world.

I understand missing family and constantly grieving that, as I weigh up the city of my childhood with the friends and culture I love versus the city of my youth with my feathered family who are my children and who I hate to miss birthdays of and the like, same goes for my sisters and parents and grandparents, the way Ashton, the only band member with younger siblings, hates missing all their milestones too. I feel privileged that Brisbane and Sydney are so close to each other and nothing in my life is as far as Los Angeles. I understand the nostalgia for Sydney. This whole post is proof of it.

I understand the unbreakable bonds between people who make this kind of art together. I understand putting disagreements on the back burner and realising the connection through writing is so much bigger and the connection can overcome whatever is going wrong. Heck, I feel privileged to understand and relate to how such brilliant brains work (nature: neurodivergence I won’t go any further into as well as nurture) as well as the environment that made them what they are.

all my life I’ve longed for that kind of community and connection I’ve seen largely in fiction, sometimes between people in real life. And I think having written this analysis (it’s taken me til my bedtime or later) I do have all the ingredients there. All the ability to make it, both in the practical way I relate to and am there for my friends and whatever I do in my silver bridges tag. In the neighbourhoods I eventually design that foster communities with all the good parts I’ve described but without the inequality and minimal poverty and hurt and violence. To everyone who’s shown me these things in myself that are so worth working for and I know I’m not savantly immediately good at, I am so so incredibly grateful. the city as a whole. My family and friends. The celebrities I grew up nearby and those who invest in people like them. People like me. May I keep investing in people: people like you. because what is humility but knowing there’s always something to learn, and what will bring all of us forward but learning it and putting it into practice in love and empathy that drives a grit that no amount of striving for striving’s sake can manufacture?

#western sydney #western sydney work ethic #neurodivergence #burnout #personal mental health tag #ashton irwin #artist friendly interview #5 seconds of summer #calum hood #luke hemmings #michael clifford #5sos #community #urban design #growing up poor #I did a big analysis and I will do this again #5sos5 city #silver bridges #neurodivergent liberation

20 notes · View notes