#he also has hard core FOMO

[sarasa-cat]

Oh Fuck!

I suspected that at least one of my cats can count small numbers of things.

Normally his bedtime treat is made up of three very tiny freeze dried chicken snacks. But the new bag we opened tonight has BIGGER ones so I only gave him two — and because they were bigger they required more effort from him to gobble them up. So I obviously thought we were good and that was that bc I measured it by mass.

But then he looked at me. And he would not get settled into bed. And he licked the front of his upper lip and looked up to the place where treats are stored and then looked back at me and again licked the front of his upper lip. Which is his how he conveys “bring me food, oh humble butler of cats, as I am hungry and deserving of tasty things to eat.”

And he would not get into bed. Lick lip, tap cabinet. Lick lip.

I tried reading a book but no luck. This cat knew he was cheated bc TWO is not THREE (despite the larger size of the treats).

Wtf?

After a while I finally gave up and got him his third treat. Satisfied as all hell he jumped into bed and squiggled around on his back and now the purrrrr motor is going.

This little (well, large, tbh) cat boy can count smallish numbers.

Fml.

FML.

(Tomorrow I am cutting all of these new treats in half)

[mamthew]

Some thoughts on Metaphor: ReFantazio. I avoid spoilers for the most part.

It’s maybe impossible to overstate how much I love Persona 5. It’s my favorite game of all time, and directly started me down the path to being a radical. It’s got some flaws – many of which were fixed in its rerelease, Persona 5: Royal – but it’s such a fantastic package in terms of story, gameplay, art design, music, and thematic resonance that it’s hard to fault it for them. I’ve played and enjoyed subsequent P5 material, but none of them are nearly as devoted to a political message as the original, meaning that even though they’re all good, they ultimately fall short of what I love about the initial game.

Metaphor: ReFantazio is a 2024 RPG by a good number of the folks who made Persona 5, and you can immediately tell. It has a very similar art style, uses many of the same sound effects, has a similar battle system, and is built around the calendar/social links/social stats system that the Persona series is known for. It is essentially a Persona game, but set in a fantasy world rather than contemporary Japan, and without Persona’s emphasis on Jungian psychology and the tarot. It’s also thoughtfully political, but in a way that’s maybe less engrossing and blisteringly relevant than Persona 5. That said, what it does have to say is worth engaging with, as it uses its more traditional fantasy setting to comment on the ideological underpinnings of RPGs as a genre and games more broadly, as both an artistic medium and an industry.

In many ways, Metaphor is “Persona does Final Fantasy.” It’s clearly an homage to Final Fantasy at its core. It may have Persona 5’s battle system, but it’s got FFV’s job system, and it’s reworked the “one more” mechanic to feel more like the Brave/Default system from Bravely Default, or the Conditional Turn-Based system from Final Fantasy X. The job system is especially interesting. There are 14 basic jobs, with each job having 1-3 class change upgrades that unlock at specific Social Link levels with the job’s corresponding character. Every party member can use any job, but have very individualized stat spreads that make certain jobs more viable than others. For example, Strohl starts with the Warrior job, which hits hard and doesn’t do much else. He could use the Mage job, but his physical attack is like double his magic attack, so that would probably be a waste of his massive attack stat. That said, some players might opt to train him through Mage anyway, because at level 20, Mage gets a skill that increases MP by 15%, which they could equip to Warrior so he can use more of his big hits that spend MP. I, on the other hand, trained him in Pugilist, which has powerful physical moves that spend HP instead of MP. It’s a bit more risk/reward, but Strohl has considerably more HP to spend. And that’s one of the seven party members, each of which has their own unique stat spread.

That customizability is fun and rewarding, but limited by the use of a Persona calendar system. I’m less inclined to experiment and try training characters in weird directions when I only have ten in-game days to reach the end of the current dungeon and only have about an in-game year to reach the end of the game. Due to the FOMO brought on by the time constraints, I spent about eight hours just mindlessly bashing enemies in old dungeons in order to unlock all the jobs, which was pretty decidedly unfun, and I ultimately only got to play around with maybe half the fully upgraded jobs in the end. Persona’s time-management (which often translates to some occasionally brutal resource management in dungeons) has always ratcheted up the games’ tension and forced a level of deliberateness in decision-making. That works fine in Persona, but dampens the freedom of choice I associate with job systems. The calendar generally feels like a weird thing to keep. On one hand, the narrative and mechanics have been built around it, but on the other, part of what I enjoy about the calendar in Persona is the mundanity of it. The changing of the seasons, interspersed with real-world holidays, as experienced by a protagonist who is attending high school and therefore at the mercy of the calendar, all help to complement the familiar contemporary setting of a Persona game. In Metaphor, there are no seasons or holidays, the weeks have five days instead of seven, and the one-year cutoff for the action is arbitrarily enforced by a spell rather than by familiar societal norms, so the days tend to blend together. This calendar has all of the anxiety of Persona’s system with none of the novelty, and that’s not a great place to be in.

That said, what Metaphor loses in variety from the calendar it gains from its much larger world and its travel mechanics. Each chapter of Metaphor is set in a different city, and the characters must travel to each city using their gauntlet-runner, a land-based version of the classic Final Fantasy airship complete with a pilot who’s clearly Atlus’s take on a Cid. Each city has several dungeons, landmarks, and surrounding towns that the party can travel to and explore as side-jaunts to juggle as options within the time-management system. Some of these can take several in-game days to reach, but traveling has its own activities that raise social stats, craft items, or even develop social links with party members. In Persona 5, many of the side activities had their own unique content but wasted precious days to do, and travel-time feels like a way to alleviate some of that sense of waste, by limiting you to just “bedroom activities” like reading books, cooking, tending to plants, doing laundry, cleaning the floor, bathing, or inviting party members to hang out. You have to go to the extra dungeon either way, so you’re stuck on the gauntlet-runner either way, so you might as well raid the pantry, use the shower for a small Exp bonus, cook some fermented meat with Hulkenberg, do some laundry with Heismay, and then read a fantasy novel while you’re there. Much of the traveling system feels like an iteration on the central premise of Persona 5: Strikers, allowing the characters to go on a road trip and see a bunch of cities but without the dearth of things to do outside of dungeons from which Strikers suffered.

Metaphor is in most ways an improvement on Persona 5. It’s a much bigger game, with a more strategic battle system and prettier visuals. That said, its dungeons are generally a bit less interesting. They’re more straightforward, without the verticality that made especially Persona 5: Royal’s dungeons shine. They’re also less colorful, less surreal and – I guess a bit ironically – less metaphorical. That makes sense, since all the dungeons are actual locations within the game’s world and must therefore follow the world’s logic, but it’s weird infiltrating a giant fantasy airship and being struck by how much duller it is than Persona 5’s Diet building – a real-world place known for being boring. The music, too, is less interesting than Persona 5’s. It’s still technically solid, and there are certainly some bangers, but because the soundtrack is aping Final Fantasy in genre and instrument choices, it’s much less engaging than the acid-jazz of Persona 5. Metaphor also has less to do than Persona 5 or especially Royal. The game doesn't require that you grind up relationship points with social links, which cuts out a lot of the frustration of the social link system, but also means that there's no reason to take characters on dates or to the movies or to play darts. The world feels less varied because the activities are much more clearly laid out by which social stat they increase.

Both this game and P5 are punching way higher than their weight class in terms of budget and team size. They’re both essentially AA games that have been catapulted into the AAA space, and both are a generation or more behind in terms of actual graphical power. Both games made up for that discrepancy with stylish artistic flair, and while that papering over succeeds in both games, the stylizing of Metaphor feels less relevant to the game than with Persona 5. Persona 5’s intentional use of color and effects make it feel both pulpy and like agitprop material, which are two of its major artistic influences. Metaphor’s stylings, however, mostly make it feel like Persona 5, which clashes a bit with its more classical fantasy setting. I’ve seen a number of people complain about the game’s graphics being outdated, and I think the fact that it retreads so much stylistic ground is why the unimpressive graphics are more noticeable this time around, even though it’s much better graphically than any previous Atlus entry. The game’s reuse of many Persona sound effects aggravate this issue. Those sound effects feel punchy and contemporary, and work great in the context for which they were created: a game that turns rpg genre conventions on their heads by using a contemporary setting. Here, in a game that’s purposely leaning into more classic genre conventions, they instead feel lazy and out of place. The game clearly had great sound designers; there are plenty of new sound effects as well as the old. I wish they’d had those sound designers replace the reused sound effects as well. The game's localization, however, does set it apart from Persona 5. Metaphor is another JRPG to outsource its localization and English voice work to the UK, rather than the states. Most of the characters are voiced by UK voice actors, and they all do an outstanding job. Honestly, the weakest link voice-wise is the protagonist's voice, which was clearly directed to try to be fairly flat and unaffected. Still, I'm just so happy to have a voiced protagonist that I didn't mind all that much.

Metaphor opens by posing a question to the player: does a story have the power to change the world? I figured when I started the game that this question was referring to Persona 5, and the difficulties of creating a story with a specific, clear political message and having to deal with its audience agreeing with the message and longing for that change but not working to bring it about – or even worse, a chunk of its audience refusing to acknowledge it as political at all. While Metaphor was clearly inspired by that initial tension, it addresses a much broader question than that: why do video games – works in a medium that tends toward fairly radical political theming – seem to attract audiences that refuse to engage with their theming? Much of the game’s use of Final Fantasy elements is in service to this question, since Final Fantasy is sorta the seminal RPG. The game’s antagonist, whose name is frustratingly spelled Louis and pronounced Luis, represents in some ways the ideological underpinnings of Final Fantasy and is even designed to look like the FF1 Warrior of light, with long flowing white hair and curved horns. The main plot of the game involves a powerful spell that forces the kingdom to hold a democratic election. When the king is assassinated, his voice thunders down from the sky that the crown will go to whomever the most citizens believe in their hearts should be the next king in about a year’s time. The protagonist enters the race because he opposes the two frontrunners – Louis and the head of the very racist Sanctist church.

The protagonist often reads from a utopian novel and communes with the novel’s imprisoned author, a man named More, probably because he represents the demand that society improve and offer us more. The novel discusses the workings of an idealized version of our contemporary liberal democratic system, and all the party members fight in some way to try to realize that system. The novel itself was banned and all its copies burned, while More was arrested and sentenced to exile for writing it. While both the protagonist and Louis love the book, they had vastly different takeaways from it. The protagonist and his party see the book as calling for a society built around caring for its citizens, protecting and providing for those without the means to protect or provide for themselves. Louis, on the other hand, sees the book as calling for a society built on “true equality,” where all are forced to fend for themselves and only the strong survive. In both cases, the circumstances of one’s birth theoretically don’t matter, and leadership isn’t decided by a bloodline, which makes both visions look preferable to the world of the game: a heavily racially stratified monarchic theocracy. With the crown up for grabs, both characters have the opportunity to try to realize their visions of this utopian system, if they can convince the populace to back them.

This conflict is, deliberately, the conflict at the center of liberal democracy: is our system meant to be more individualistic or more collectivistic? Does the “liberal” mean that individuals must fend for themselves without a societal support structure? Does the “democracy” mean that the strongest must sacrifice the fruits of their advantages to provide for those without the same advantages? That the game takes the side of the whole over the part is unsurprising, given that it was made by the folks who made Persona 5. And hey, that’s the side I agree with more, so no skin off my back. But, using liberal democracy as the basis for its core theming makes Metaphor feel considerably less radical than Persona 5 did. Most of the oppressor/oppressed relationships in Metaphor are ones for which we have answers, which stands in stark contrast to the real-world-inspired conflicts in Persona 5, and when the characters look to the utopia of the novel for a solution, they’re looking to the answers we already have. And as Persona 5 already told us, those answers are insufficient.

That said, what feels backwards about the game’s theming becomes more interesting when we consider it instead as a metacommentary on the politics of RPGs. Louis, the villain who looks like the Ur-FF Protagonist, is an individualist to the extreme. His vision for a perfect world is one where all compete to live and only the strongest survive. That’s barbaric to most folks whose brains haven’t been poisoned by weird sectarian internet communities, but it’s also pretty much how RPGs operate: you keep fighting guys who are weaker than you to make yourself stronger until you’re the strongest, and then your character uses that strength to change the world the way they want. This is – crucially – also how this RPG operates. The protagonist might oppose Louis’s vision, but he still has to do so on Louis’s terms. It turns out that the conflict at the heart of liberal democracy is also the conflict at the heart of many power fantasies: we imagine ourselves being strong enough to make the world fairer, but in doing so, we engage with an individualistic framing. When looking at the metaphor of Metaphor, we can think of the protagonist as the story of a game and Louis as the narrative told through its mechanics; ultimately, what a story says is still constrained by what the game does. So the question of whether a story has the power to change the world is complicated by the introduction of the constraints placed upon a story by its medium. Why didn’t Persona 5 change the world? Metaphor implies it’s because its audience is primed to see its brand of power fantasy as apolitical – not even about the world to begin with.

I think increasingly often about a time I got into an argument with the admin of a Persona 5 Facebook meme page. He’d posted a meme complaining about people’s need to inject politics into Persona 5, an otherwise apolitical game. I found this absurd. The game in which you infiltrate the Japanese Diet building to stop a fascist from stealing an election is apolitical? The game where the personification of humanity’s tendency toward rebellion leads the party into battle to destroy the god of wealth at the center of a panopticon? It was beyond comprehension. But an art form that constrains most of its narratives to center around accruing power through conflict in order to elevate oneself as an individual has maybe inevitably attracted an audience that’s allergic to the idea that fiction can and usually does say something about the real world. And when I say “allergic,” I don’t simply mean “unwilling.” We’ve crossed into a political moment where the arbitrarily-defined level of “woke” in a piece of media determines whether a chunk of people will deign to engage with it at all, but based on my googling, Persona 5 is hilariously considered “not woke” (though Royal is simultaneously both “woke” and “anti-woke,” the remake of Persona 3 is too “woke” to bear, and Metaphor ReFantazio is under scrutiny but they seem to be leaning toward “not woke”). So the line in the sand is whether or not a game comments on the real world, but that line is drawn by people with shockingly low media literacy.

One element of the story that confused me clicked into place once I considered this angle. The game’s world is plagued by huge and brutal monsters called “humans.” In the game's world, the word “human” refers only to these monsters, while the sentient denizens of the game’s world call themselves “people,” or refer to themselves by their fantasy races. It’s bizarre to hear characters talk about “humans” and mean big weird giants that massacre towns and aren’t recognizably human at all. But when we consider this through the lens of a metacommentary on games, this choice comes to make sense. In an RPG, the player is a human roaming through a world of non-humans. They’re infinitely stronger than everyone around them, and in the end, only the human’s decisions matter. Everything exists to placate the human, and if the human refuses to engage with a story on its terms, then that pretty much destroys everything the story is trying to do. Those characters who exist solely to make the human feel something become fodder, to be ground up and discarded by the human. If we look at the relationship between art and audience from the perspective of the art, the audience becomes something like a kaiju, applying its own warped reading to the text, forcing it to submit to that reading. A story only gets to change the world if it first wins that battle with the human, and humans are getting increasingly combative. Obviously, there’s story reasons for the word choice that I won’t spoil here, but they align pretty nicely with my reading.

I really enjoyed Metaphor. It took me 110 hours, and I managed to complete all the social links, beat the extra boss, and unlock every class with the protagonist. A run that doesn't do those things probably could finish it in like 85-90 hours. Either way, it's shorter than Persona 5. I still prefer Persona 5; its politics are much sharper, obviously, but it also has a much bolder and more unique style. But anyone who really enjoys Persona or old-school Final Fantasies should give Metaphor a shot, since it's a pretty fascinating merging of the two, and it uses those associations to comment on the video game medium, the purpose of art in fomenting societal reform, and the shortcomings of liberal democracy. And if you haven't played either, it's a long, complex, standalone RPG in a new ip, which makes for a pretty good jumping-on point to Persona, from which it takes many of its mechanics.

[just-emerald-star]

I've been hooked on My Adventures With Superman for 3 weeks now and you know what, I now know why.

This is the first superhero/action media I've been obsessed with in a long while.

To be clear, I've been obsessed with The Spider-Verse films thus far and the MCU's last hold on me was WandaVision. But outside of those, not much else has caught my attention. And I finally understand why.

I'm fed up with cinematic universes.

There's a reason my relationship with the MCU broke off post WandaVision. After that show, I pretty much lost interest in having to watch what's next cuz shared universe lol and how they'll try really hard to convince you to see all the films & TV shows just so you can keep up with the universe.

Between the fact that I'm a broke bitch, movies being expensive and having spent 10+ years keeping up with ALMOST every fucking film the MCU has offered...I may be a bit burnt out ngl.

Combine that with my immense disappointment in how Young Justice S3 turned out or whatever the fuck the DCEU ended up being as of it's recent offerings and you just have me facepalming repeatedly for the past couple of years.

The studios wanna keep making these interconnected films but keep forgetting the most important part when creating their 10+ films & TV shows: They're all reliant on what's coming rather than what's in front of them.

There are exceptions but not by much. Regardless, I'm genuinely tired of hearing about plans for a rebooted universe or how the MCU plans on giving us more shows & movies but can't be bothered to pay their workers fairly and rush their CGI artists to near death.

Which brings me back to My Adventures With Superman (or MAWS as I'll be calling it going forward cuz long title lol.) This show was the first time an action/superhero show has me hooked. Action shows used to be my shit and I'd obsess over them. Young Justice was the last show to hype me up. And sadly that show fell into mediocrity as well due to it's inability to know when plots should end and having too many characters on screen.

MAWS however is solely focused on Superman characters and has a much smaller cast as a result. It's not focused on expanding any bigger universe but instead focus on Supes' beginnings and how he becomes the great man of steel who protects Metropolis. For once I don't worry about anything beyond what's being established in said show's plots.

I can't wait to see what's coming next at the moment cuz I know the season finale will tie up most of the plots established while leaving us hanging with what's coming for S2. And honestly, that's all I really want. More self-contained media that isn't reliant on having a shared universe.

"But what about the DCAU back in the day???"

All those shows worked and ended up coming together for Justice League quite nicely cuz EACH SHOW WAS MOSTLY SELF-CONTAINED AND FOCUSED ON ITS CORE CHARACTERS FIRST. They weren't entirely worried about Justice League. Even then, the crossovers were solid cuz they were often one-offs and damn good ones as well.

If they choose to have MAWS be the start of some DCAU reset, I'd be down for that but I'm also ok with just having self-contained superhero projects from here on out. I am completely burnt out from shared universes and the severe case of FOMO I get when I choose to save money.

TL;DR Go watch MAWS and support this lovely cartoon. Superman is back y'all and he's amazing (so are Lois & Jimmy too.)

If you made it this far, I shall leave you with this meme-worthy pic of my son Jimmy from MAWS. Enjoy <3

[yibennianyaji]

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

So, friends, what is going on with the MCU? We're now at the end of phase four (I think? I've lost track of that sort of thing entirely) and there's a very palpable sense of the air coming out of the balloon. By which I mean not that the movies have gotten bad—some of them are (Eternals) but most are still falling squarely within the same C-minus-to-B-plus range that has characterized this franchise from day one. And yet, without very much having changed, it's clear that something has changed. The MCU used to be something that I—and a lot of other people—enjoyed talking about, and maybe even more than that, arguing with. When it was bad, that was something that felt worth calling out. Now it's just something to shrug at.[1] What I want to do with this post, then, is not so much review the new Ant-Man movie (which is definitely at the C-minus end of the aforementioned scale but still isn't that exciting to talk about) as to try to work out what it can tell us about why the MCU feels so inessential these days.

There are several obvious culprits when trying to identify the cause of this shift. Avengers: Endgame put a period on an eleven-year film and TV project that maybe made it easier for people to hop off the bandwagon. The pandemic following soon after shook people out of the habit of going to see the latest Marvel offering in theaters two or three times a year, and it's hard to regain the sense of FOMO that made doing that seem reasonable. The Disney+ MCU shows we watched instead of the movies have fallen in an uncomfortable middle ground between the two mediums, not as compact as the films but not reaching for the classic TV virtues of building character arcs and relationships either.

To me, however, it seems as if the problem is both simpler and more profound. The reason that Marvel superhero movies aren't landing the way they used to is, well, the superheroes. Avengers: Endgame saw off Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, and Scarlett Johansson, three of Hollywood's most charismatic performers, who were playing three of the franchise's biggest draws. Chris Hemsworth and Tom Holland have subsequently made soft exits. Other MCU stalwarts—Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen—have transitioned to TV (and in Olsen's case, had their characters killed off). And, of course, the tragic death of Chadwick Boseman has removed what was probably intended to be a central figure for this batch of movies. There's a void at the heart of the franchise, and while new characters may eventually come to fill it, right now feels not at all unlike where we were during phase one, still trying to figure out what there is here to care about. Except now the novelty of the cinematic universe concept has faded, and the star power that made that concept seem plausible is absent.

It's in the context of this void that we have to consider the decisions made with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Scott Lang is one of three MCU characters who are still standing and capable of headlining a movie.[2] It makes sense to try to make him, alongside Doctor Strange and Captain Marvel, into the core around which the next stage of the MCU can be built. Makes sense, that is, until you remember that Scott, despite starring in two previous MCU movies and having major roles in two others, has never cohered as a character. He's a tech genius who walks around with a permanent air of confusion. A self-destructive fuck-up with criminal tendencies who is also a genial dad and a bit of a fuddy-duddy. His superpowers are mostly used for gags—the franchise has never figured out how to make the genuinely awesome power of miniaturization work in a fight scene—and his heroism feels largely informed. When he rises to it, it's usually because of a risk to his loved ones—most often, his daughter Cassie—or because he's too awed by another hero to say no.[3]

In fairness, Quantumania is clearly aware of all of this, which you can tell because the movie opens with a voiceover by Scott saying everything I've said in the previous paragraph, albeit more generously phrased. The purpose of the movie is thus to reposition Scott as a genuine hero, not the heroes' comic relief. It does so, first of all, by making him not a hero at all. As the film opens, Scott is retired not just from the Avengers but, seemingly, from any other job. He's written a book about his adventures, but doesn't seem to be doing anything else except playing devoted boyfriend and father to Hope and a now-teenaged Cassie. This frustrates Cassie, who believes her father should be using his powers to help people, and has been getting arrested while using miniaturization tech to fight off cops who try to break up protests and clear out homeless encampments—a radical note that the film raises and then immediately shies away from. At the same time, Scott learns, Cassie has been developing a device that sends signals into the quantum realm, where Hope's mother Janet spent decades before being rescued in the previous Ant-Man movie.[4] Despite Janet's warnings, the device malfunctions and sucks the entire Pym-Van Dyne-Lang family into the quantum realm.

The quantum realm, as it turns out, is inhabited with all the things that make for a good adventure backdrop—there are strange and dangerous creatures to run away from and/or make friends with, a marketplace where unsavory characters haggle over dubious wares, a bar where you're as likely to be stabbed as get a drink, and badlands where mysterious nomads roam. And there's a villain, Kang the Conqueror, another variant of the character introduced in the first season of Loki. Kang arrived in the quantum realm decades ago and was rescued by Janet, who then joined forces with him to repair his ship's power cell so they could both return home. Right at the moment of their triumph, Janet realized that Kang was the perpetrator of multiple genocides, acts that he'd resume if allowed to escape. She sacrificed her own chance to get home by destroying his power cell using Pym technology, but not before he regained some of his powers. Kang then began to take over the quantum realm, rebuilding his empire in miniature. The arrival of our heroes gives him access to the kind of tech that could restore his power cell and allow him to escape, while the rebels who have been fighting him for decades hope to use that tech to defeat him once and for all.

This is, in other words, the kind of story we've seen many, many times over the years, in books, film, and TV. It goes all the way back to Edgar Rice Burroughs's A Princess of Mars, and examples of it are as recent as Tron: Legacy. And the two things that need to be said about how Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania executes this story are, first, that it doesn't make a lot of sense for Scott Lang, and second, that the film doesn't even try to make it make sense. The standard template for this story sees the hero dropped into a long-running conflict and quickly embroiled within it. Their original goal may be simply to get home, but by the end of the story they're supposed to be emotionally invested—they've fallen in love with the leader of the rebellion, or discovered something essential about themselves in this new world with its new opportunities for heroism, or become so disgusted by the villain's perfidy that they whole-heartedly adopt the rebellion's creed. None of that happens in this movie. Scott's goals remain what they always were—to protect Cassie. He never gets particularly involved in the rebellion.[5] Right at the end he makes the same choice Janet did, to sacrifice his chance to get home in order to prevent Kang from escaping, but the emotional foundation for that sacrifice hasn't been laid (and immediately after he makes it a new way to get home appears, so it isn't even that much of a sacrifice).

There is some good stuff here. Jonathan Majors's second take on Kang is as magnetic as his first, and makes the idea of him as this chapter's ultimate villain an enticing one. The flashback in which we see Kang and Janet's friendship grow and then shatter is extremely well-done, and Janet's self-sacrifice lands incredibly well for a character we've known for less than an hour all told. The rebels are a fun motley bunch, including an enjoyably dry performance from William Jackson Harper, some zany CGI creatures, and a hopefully star-making turn by stuntwoman Katy M. O'Brian as rebel leader Jentorra. Late in the film it's revealed that the ants Hank was experimenting on, who were also drawn into the quantum realm, have spent subjective thousands of years evolving, eventually developing a hyper-technological socialist society—an idea that deserved much more space in the movie[6], but is pretty neat for what we do see of it. But as you'll note, none of these things involve Scott, who ends up feeling like a bystander in his own movie.[7]

Of course, that last bit isn't new. Scott has always felt like someone who stumbled into his own stories, all the way back to when he fell into heroism after trying to rob the wrong house. The second Ant-Man movie leaned into that by making Scott the relative straight man to an ensemble that included his semi-criminal friends Luis, Dave, and Kurt, his FBI monitor Jimmy Woo, his ex-wife and her husband, and a villain, Hannah John-Kamen's Ghost, whose story aroused more pity than disdain. The result was one of the best MCU movies for reasons that, I think, tell us a lot about why the franchise has started losing steam. It's not just about the characters. It's about the relationships.

There was a period, roughly between 2012 and 2015, when it seemed like the MCU was interested in doing the thing that creates fertile soil for a fandom—let its characters grow and change, and let the relationships between them develop. To let Tony Stark grow past his need for an armored suit. To sit with the tragedy of Steve Rogers's separation from Peggy Carter, and his determination not to let the same thing happen with Bucky Barnes. To make the Avengers friends as well as teammates. That all proved a mirage, of course. The MCU's now-famous tendency to devour itself, to end one story on a definite note of change and then roll that change back as soon as the next story starts, quickly asserted itself. But the fumes of that impression carried the fandom forward all the way to Avengers: Endgame, kept our investment in the characters going even though what was showing up on screen was flat and samey. Once that story ended, however, the fumes dissipated, and it's now easier to see that there's nothing in this franchise worth getting invested in.

There's no better encapsulation of the MCU's determination not to do the things that attract fans to stories than the fact that Quantumania discards all of Ant-Man and the Wasp's supporting cast[8] in favor of a parachuted-in "family" theme with Hope, Hank, and Janet that it then singularly fails to earn. As I've noted in the past, in the new MCU the only people who matter are the ones whose names are in the title, so it's obvious why this movie doesn't want Scott to have relationships with people like Luis or his ex anymore. But it also doesn't sell the relationships it does want us to care about. We don't feel the love that supposedly exists between Scott and Hope, or the connection that has formed between Cassie and her step-grandparents. Even relationships that should have been a slam dunk, such as Hope's attempts to reconnect with her mother after decades of separation, don't land. And despite all the emphasis the film places on it, Scott's connection with Cassie still feels generic, the standard protective dad template we've seen in a million movies rather than a relationship between these two specific people, who are starting to figure out how to relate to one another as adults.

As phase four draws to a close, it's clear that Marvel has put all its eggs in the cosmic basket. In multiverses and variants and a villain with a thousand (identical) faces. What's been left by the wayside is any reason to care about all of this. As Quantumania demonstrates, that reason will not come from the legacy characters, who are being flattened out of what little personality they had in order to suit the needs of this new, gargantuan, story. Again, I don't think this will lead to the vaunted "death of the MCU". It will take much more than that for people to stop going to see these movies. But I do think we're witnessing the death of the MCU as a fannish phenomenon—a death that, in all honesty, has been a long time coming.

[1] When you say things like this, some people start talking with great yearning about the looming death of the MCU, but I don't see any reason to anticipate that. Cultural currency is, after all, something very different from actual currency. As Avatar: The Way of Water recently demonstrated, it is possible for millions of people to spend billions of dollars watching your movie, and not have a single further thought about it as soon as the credits start rolling.

[2] Yes, I know that officially the title of the movie includes Evangeline Lilly's Hope Van Dyne, indicating that she is a co-equal hero to her male counterpart. That was barely true in the second Ant-Man movie, however, and it certainly isn't the case in Quantumania, in which Lilly gets virtually nothing to do and is repeatedly upstaged by the actresses playing her character's mother and stepdaughter. This is presumably due to her much-publicized anti-vaxxer positions, so good riddance.

[3] It's never stated outright, but between how the incident is described in the previous Ant-Man movie and this one, it seems very clear that Scott has no idea what the fight he was roped into in Captain America: Civil War was about. This is both hilarious and horrifying.

[4] Cassie has only known Hank, Janet, and Hope for a couple of years at the outside, but has nevertheless become proficient in miniaturization technology and even has her own supersuit. She also calls Hank Pym "grandpa". This all feels very awkward and like a way of shoehorning in a family theme for a character who already had another family, which goes almost entirely unmentioned here.

[5] Cassie does, but Cassie is the latest in a long line of teenage girls whom Marvel are clearly positioning as potential heroes going forward, and by far the least interesting and individualized of the bunch. Her affinity for the rebels never rises above the generic.

[6] If nothing else, in order to create the callback to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids that this film so obviously demands.

[7] One character who does interact with Scott a lot is MODOK, a cyborg killing machine who turns out to be Darin Cross, the villain from the first Ant-Man, now transformed into an enormous, floating head. This is such a weird plot element that I have no idea what to say about it, but I knew I couldn't let it go unmentioned.

[8] Jimmy Woo appears in a brief, wordless scene, but everyone else is absent. Including Cassie's parents who, again, raised her on their own during the entire five years that Scott was missing during the blip, a point that the film seems almost eager to elide.

[anastkantdhangar]

Why India’s Social Milieu Needs An Urgent Contemplation

India, traditionally, has been offering astounding variety in virtually every aspect of social life - diversities of ethnic, linguistic, regional, economic, religious, class, and caste groups crosscut Indian society, which gives light to its very inclusive, secular and democratic character. But why there has been a social unrest lately?

India ranks 144th on the World Happiness Index out of a total 156 countries on the list, even behind the likes of Pakistan, ranked 66th, and Bangladesh, ranked 107th.

17th June, 2019, a 24-year old man called Tabrez Ansari was mob-lynched in Jharkhand. He was tied to a pole sometime around midnight, and was beaten brutally till 6 in the morning, and was also forced to chant Hindu sayings. As usual, police arrived late, Tabrez was taken to the hospital, where even his blood pressure was not recorded. He died four days later.

Kashmiri Pandits were victims to a similar unfortunate happening. They were forced to exodus from their own home, and ever since, Kashmir has been even more of a hot topic.

It was a similar mob which chased and killed Inspector Subodh Kumar Singh in December, 2018 in Bulandshahr. He was trying to control a mob that had gone on the rampage after cow carcasses were discovered nearby the locality. The same mob also raised slogans against the police during the unfortunate happening.

Back then, between 2015-2018 specifically, such things were done in the name of cows, an animal which holds a religious significance in Hindu mythology. Considerable amount of such happenings on the name of cow slaughtering frequently grabbed news headlines back then, and as a consequence, consumption of beef in India saw some low. When reports of cow being starved to death in official government shelters started coming in, and also about that stray cattle were destroying crops and farmers were not very pleased with it, politics abandoned cows. It is obvious that cows, along with other animals, need to be protected, also given the fact that dairy products are a must, there needs more to be done to protect and nurse them. But the project of fear and violence that had been started, still continues in various forms.

But, unfortunately, cases of mob-lynchings still take place in our beloved India. The very recent case of Palghar district in Maharashtra, where two Hindu saints, while being in police custody and being taken to Gujarat, were attacked by locals. Reports suggest that the rumors were spread in the area about a gang which abducts children, and on the suspicion of the same, the saints were beaten to death, while the act of police standing quietly beside raised many questions.

A particular section of society, including sections of media, left no stone unturned to give it a communal angle. And there is no denying that there are communal and casteist angles to most of such cases, but there is a larger angle to it. The fact that somehow normal and a routine act it has become to lynch anyone you disagree with, who is outnumbered, is a thing which we need to question. What message are we passing on to the youth? Aspiring to be a global superpower, what are we projecting ourselves as?

The Larger Picture

Democracy has space for various views, expressing dissent in a dignified manner, solving issues, but no democracy can justify use of violence or any arbitrary means to deal with dissent. The very feeling of people that they too are ours should not be compromised at any cost.

The fact that the frequency of such acts has increased in last few years outlines that a message has been passed on to the society, especially the youth, that to beat up someone who does not agree with you, or who expresses any or some form of dissent is a normal practice. Of course, there also has to be some manner and dignity in which dissent should be expressed in a democratic society. But to suppress dissent brutally should not be a solution in a civil society.

This the reason why a new debate had acquired the headlines for some time about whether and how India has been growing intolerant rapidly, but the media and the viewers, the public, a large part of it, did not pay much attention to it. This was and is, what I believe, still a relevant question to ask and explore.

A considerable section of the youth has grasped that dissent or disagreement can be or has to be suppressed, even if it needs violence, which is more than worrisome. This is very much evident owing to recent JNU Campus Violence amongst students back in winter during anti-CAA protests. And the youth today, is the future tomorrow, which is why this makes it even more worrisome.

This even stops many from expressing their views, fearing that might get beaten up by the people having other views, and by not letting other ideas to be out there in the society, the prevailing ideas of the authorities are being hailed as champions. This is where we are failing as a democratic society. We have stopped or started to prevent asking questions.

A democratic society is always full of different ideas, views and perspectives, that is the beauty of democracy. A democratic society always cleaves up, if a one and only idea prevails in the society, there has to be something wrong, we are never going to realize what's wrong in such a scenario, and we have contemporary examples of such autocracies. And there were reasons why human, with time, switched from monarchy to democracy, he liked the idea of discussing various angles and coming up with one which could be best, as it will cover as many as loopholes, angles and point of views as possible, for the best of interests for every section of the society.

The Core Youth Issue

India’s 65% population comprises of people aged 35 or below, making it potentially one of the youngest country in the world, but what’s fresh in them? 

A child learns most of the civil and moral values at home, he learns what he sees, and tends to practice the same, this is the normal scenario. What he learns through the education system, along with his moral values, is somewhat an outline of what kind of a person one is, how one’s attitude is. And India’s education system has been questioned ever since.

The Indian government’s very own draft education policy tells us that National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) rates 68% of our Universities average or below average, and 91% of our colleges are rated average or below average. These second-and third-grade colleges would have produced generations of average or below average students and scholars.

Today’s youth of India has been in the making for decades. A great deal of efforts must have been put in to finish off all the curiosity and hunger for knowledge and information. The youth no longer wants to understand why a system made them spend lakhs of rupees studying, when at the end most of them could not find jobs which could even earn them Rs.20,000 per month, but still are repaying their education loans. It is the official data released back in 2018 that around 67% families in India survive with a monthly family income of Rs. 10,000 or below.

Those who demand information, who understand their world, those who question the status quo, are the ones who sustain democracies. Can we expect such democratic ideals from the youth of a country where 91% colleges and 68% Universities are average or below average? 65% of Indians might be under the age of 35, but there’s little sign of anything fresh in their thinking. Their minds are not young. They were first burdened with great ignorance, and now they’ve been blinded by communalism.

With 91% colleges being second and third rate, it was inevitable that the youth is kept away from the realm of knowledge. This must have had a large say on why WhatsApp University became so popular, the very messages people received on their private chats must have felt to them that they now had an access to knowledge, the very fact that it was so easily accessible, made it very impactful. Lies and misleading information designed to prejudice them and incite them to violence now began to reach their smartphones as personal texts. 

Fear Of Speaking Out (FOMO FOSO)

Our Lok Sabha has passed amendments to Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act last year, that gives authorities the power to declare any individual a ‘terrorist’. After it was amended, many social workers who have worked for the under-privileged for years, and raised important issues which was not in the best of interests for the authorities, have been imprisoned under UAPA.

As an obvious consequence, many have held themselves back to not speak out on issues they would have spoken on otherwise, the fear of intolerance of some sections of the society which may turn ugly and the fear of trolls of social media of the great IT Cell may also have been the reasons for the same.

There was a very popular dissent outrage in the form of protests in the form of anti-CAA-NRC protests. Protests in cities and college campuses took place across the nation, some also turned ugly as violence broke out in certain protests. To counter anti-CAA-NRC protests, pro-CAA-NRC protests were also being held in various parts of the country, which was first of its kind. The national lockdown owing to the coronavirus pandemic has brought the topic to a stop, but during this lockdown, various student leaders of anti-CAA-NRC have been charged under UAPA.

JP Narayan addressing a rally during JP movement in 1974. Many scholars speculate that the real Emergency started not in 1975, but in 1974.

In the history of independent India, its hard to remember any other popular mass protest where people across the nation came to roads to express dissent to the authorities, only one such example crosses our minds - the JP Narayan movement in 1974, during the time when Indira Gandhi used to be the PM of India, which mostly included students, and was ultimately suppressed after imposition of Emergency in 1975. But owing to a new practice we have accepted of labeling every sound that questions the authorities as anti-nationals or leftists.

India has had a history of patriarchy, which still prevails in many forms. Women in India, historically, have not been provided equal rights and recognition as men do. In such a nation, be it in the name of anti-CAA-NRC, such a large all-women protest of a scale as big as Shaheen Bagh is a very, very rare thing. Irrespective of our political affiances and interests, the fact that historically deprived women actually came out and led a mass protest on their own, which lasted for more than 3 months and has come to a haul owing to the pandemic, this certainly deserved some thoughts.

Motive of the protest, political interests and such stuffs can be and should be questioned, but in the process we should also give some recognition to things which are rare and important.

We all may share different political thoughts, different political affiliations, but at the end of the day, we all belong to one nation, and our ideas should be for the best of interests for our nation and its people as a whole.

[angvs]

❛ ✶ ( LUKE HEMMINGS , CISMALE , HE/HIM )  —  did you see ANGUS DONNELLEY walking around campus earlier ? i hear a lot of people talking about the TWENTY TWO year old JUNIOR . from what i know , they are studying NEUROSCIENCE and are a part of DELTA PSI BETA . they come across as + EMPATHETIC but also - PERNICIOUS , which makes sense because on their instagram ( @gusdonny ) it says they are a TAURUS . when i see them , i think of dropping your coffee on the pavement , tattered crewnecks & denim , sitting in some hole in the wall restaurant at 2am , omw texts while still laying in bed , & chipped bitten nails . the most interesting thing i’ve heard about them though , is the fact that [ REDACTED ] , but don’t tell anyone i told you that .

wow  y’all  really  went  hard  in  your  intros  i  am  not  worThy !!!  hi  everyone !!  i’m  cj  and  i’m  from  the  true  north ,  strong  and  free ..  aka  canada  bby .  i’m  out  in  mountain time ,  which  is  why  i  am  SO  LATE ,  i  was  at  work  today  :~(   i’m  super  excited  to  write  with  you  guys  though  !!  i  brought  one  of  my  favourite  boys  ..  this  is  my  big  dummy  angus ,  but  pls  if  u  love  the  boy  at  all  call  him  gus .  

tw :  drug mention below

╰ ˚･ﾟ & some 𝒃𝒂𝒔𝒊𝒄𝒔

full name: angus  elijah  donnelley nicknames: gus age: twenty two date of birth: april 27th hometown: malibu ,  california preferred pronouns: he/him orientation: pansexual occupation: n/a , currently studying at beaumont  language(s) spoken: english ,  swedish ( very rusty ) pets: bulldog-terrier mix named cleo ( aka … luke hemmings irl puppy ,  i couldn’t help myself ok ) ,  but ... it’s  a  family  dog ,  so ... she’s  back  at  home  and  he  misses  her  EVERY  DAY .

PINTEREST BOARD !!

born  and  raised  in  malibu ,  angus  grew  up  with  strict ,  ambitious  parents . his  father  a  neurosurgeon ,  and  mother  an  architect .  it  was  very  early  on  that  they  instilled  their  high  expectations  for  the  boy ,  teaching  him  the  importance  of  discipline  and  responsibility .  their  intentions  were  good  of  course ,  as  every  parent  wants  to  raise  their  child  right ,  though  angus  wasn’t  truly  equipped .  in  actuality  the  couple  came  off  as  overbearing  and  their  high  expectations  deemed  unreachable  in  the  male’s  eyes .  as  he  grew  older ,  the  feeling  grew  stronger  that  he  would  never  quite  live  up  to  their  standards –  97%  on  his  mathematics  test ??  well ,  why  wasn’t  it  100% ??

family  time  was  scarce  in  the  donnelley  household .  with  both  parents  working  full  time  and  lots  of  time  spent  working  extra  hours ,  angus  became  independent  quickly .  his  mother  was  flying  to  dubai  for  work  quite  frequently ,  gone  weeks  at  a  time .  some  weeks  if  felt  like  his  father  LIVED  in  the  hospital .  but  he  was  saving  lives ,  and  how  could  angus  be  so  SELFISH  to  want  him  at  home .  it  meant  he  grew  extremely  close  to  his  two  younger  sisters ,  often  opting  to  spending  the  weekends  entertaining  them  rather  then  out  at  parties .  the  family  had  a  nanny  to  help ,  so  he  didn’t  HAVE  to ,  but  his  sisters  always  came  first  to  him  and  being  the  eldest  he  has  a  serious  case  of  protective  older  brother  syndrome .

after  graduating  high  school ,  he  somehow  managed  to  convince  his  parents  to  allow  him  to  head  abroad  for  the  year .  with  promises  of  coming  back  home  and  hunkering  down  into  his  pre med  degree .  the  couple  really  wanted  angus  to  head  straight  into  uni ,  but  with  tons  of  begging ,  they  sent  him  off ,  bank  account  full .  the  year  was  spent  travelling  and  honestly ,  just  having  FUN –  a  few  months  over  in  paris ,  london ,  italy ,  greece …  some  places  he’d  been  before  with  his  family ,  but  not  in  the  way  he  got  to  experience  them  now .  angus  continued  his  travels  to  japan ,  korea ,  new  zealand ,  australia …  never  staying  in  one  place  for  too  long .  but  the  fun  had  to  come  to  an  end .

as  promised ,  angus  attended  beaumont  upon  returning  back  to  the  states  studying neurosciences ,  getting  his  pre med  classes  under  his  belt .  he  is  a  legacy  kid --  his  father  having  been  apart  of  delta  psi  beta  when  he  attended  the  university .  becoming  a  doctor  has  never  quite  been  his  dream ,  so  much  as  it  was  his  parents .  while  the  male  continues  his  undergraduate  degree ,  he  wonders  if  he  should  change  his  path ,  though  that’s  not  a  conversation  he  can  have  with  his  parents .  angus  has  always  wanted  to  leave  an  impact on  others ,  in  what  way ,  well he’s  never  been  sure .  

╰ ˚･ﾟ & 𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒚

a  big  dumb  softy !!

what  if  i  left  it  at  that …. !!  no  but ,  honestly …  he’s  definitely  chaotic  neutral .  he’s  a  big  empath ,  and  will  usually  feel  for  you  to  his  core .  

i  have  some  tiktoks  to  link ,  because  our  beautiful  admins  inspired  me !!!  and  if  you  do  anything ... please  watch  these :  ONE ,  TWO ,  THREE ,  FOUR ,  FIVE  ( tag  urself ,  angus  is  the  idiot  that  makes  the  entire  thing  go  down )

it  could  be  sometimes  annoying ,  because  angus  can’t  really  ‘ pick  sides ’ ,  this  boy  can  see  the  validity  in  all  sides  ( in  most  cases ) .  he’s  definitely  loyal  to  you ,  but  he’ll  be  that  friend  that  brings  up  the  defence  just  to  make  you  really  think .  because  of  this  he  can  be  either  really  good  with  advice …  or  really  bad ,  there’s  no  in  between .  he’ll  hit  you  with  a  million  different  solutions ,  confident  that  every  one  is  good  … “ it  just  depends  what  vibe  you  wanna  go  for ”

he …   gets  distracted  easily .  he  dabbles  in  a  bit  of  adderall ,  with  his  course load ...  it’s  just  kinda  how  he  copes .  definitely  known  to  pop  some  pills  during  night  study  sesh’s ,  essays  &  finals  week .

he  doesn’t  LIKE  to  party  a  ton ,  like …  he’s  just  not  into  big  crowds  really ?  but  if  he  tells  you  he  doesn’t  want  to  go  out ,  it’s  VERY  EASY  to  change  his  mind ,  because  he  has  Big  FOMO .  but  he’s  22  yanno  and  he’s  in  a  big  party  frat  so ,  catch  him  getting  drunk  and  probably  high  every  weekend ,  off  to  the  side  with  a  few  less  people ,  or  in  the  smoking  pit  at  the  clubs  fawning  over  ur  outfit  or  smth .  after  he’ll  drag  your  ass  to  some  hole  in  the  wall  restaurant  and  order  way  too  much  shit .

he’s  lowkey  v  self  destructive .  it’s  something  he  doesn’t  even  realize  he’s  doing  most  of  the  time ,  but  he’s  genuinely  surprised  when  a  friend  sticks  around .  the  ones  that  do  stick ,  have  definitely  had  to  deal  with  him  fucking  about  and  being  overdramatic  in  an  attempt  to  protect  himself .  idk  why  this  is  so  important  to  me ,  but  he  FOR  SURE  made  a  few  tik toks  w  that  whole …. “ if  i  was  a  worm …  would  you  still  love  me ? ”  AND  if  you  told  him  no ,  would  be  pissed  for  days .

very  affectionate !!!!  with !!!!  everyone !!!!

╰ ˚･ﾟ & 𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒄𝒂𝒏𝒏𝒐𝒏𝒔

attended  a  semester  abroad  in  sweden .  is  very  rusty  now ,  but  can  hold  a  basic  conversation  in  swedish .

cleo ,  his  pup ,  is  his  absolute  pride  and  joy .  he  talks  about  her  as  if  she’s  his  daughter  ok .  misses  her  sm  while  away  at  school .

he’s  so  messy ,  but  will  defend  himself  by  saying  they  always  had  a  maid ,  and  then  realizes  how  DUMB  he  sounds .

sk8er  boi ~~  nah ,  but  he  actually  does  skateboard ,  and  is  trying  to  perfect  his  kickflip rn .

loves pizza pls

is  always  attending  live  shows ,  he  loves  the  music  scene  and  frequently  supports  locals

will  “ thrift ”  the  dumbest  shit  for  hundreds  of  dollars …

plays  guitar ,  but  doesn’t  think  he’s  very  good

╰ ˚･ﾟ & 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒏𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔

i  made  up  a  page  HERE ,  but  PLS  i  LOVE  brainstorming ,  so  don’t  hesitate  to  come  to  me  for  some  brainstorming !!

[gary--martin]

The beginning of the major project story

In October 2020 I began putting ideas together for a project. Something that I wanted to last, become part of my life on a longterm basis; something I cared about. At the time of writing this (January 2021), I cannot for the life of me remember what those initial ideas were. I had spent the summer reading and reflecting on my creative practice. The pandemic was going on way longer than I thought it would have and it had started to expose a lot of things for me that were just hiding from plain sight. I had many conversations with friends (Squad) over Zoom and ‘the group chat’ about internet cultures and the impact URL life is having on IRL life. Generally speaking we were finding the divide between the internet that we love, and the internet that was pissing us off, and trying to find out why we were getting so miffed about certain things. We had been talking a lot about Spotify, about how we didn’t like the network effect it had over musicians to release music on there despite the remuneration system seeming so unfair. I use Spotify to listen to a lot of music, so there’s definitely some cognitive dissonance going on there. I get that it’s convenient for listeners. And I also get that getting your track in a popular playlist can get you loads of streams (and so maybe earn a bit of money). But as a group we reflected on the namelessness of this system. How easy it was to leave playlist running and not know who or what you are listening to even if asked. "Ah its on this playlist" was a phrase we discussed a fair bit. You might argue that this system allows for greater music exploration, finding things you’ve never heard before. And you’d be right. But radio does this and I have no gripes with radio. What’s all that about? Artist and Computer Person, Elliott Cost wrote a short paper on the vastness of a website. In it he talks about how over the last few years… "platforms have stripped away any hint of how vast they actually are. As a result, users only get to see a tiny sliver of an entire platform. There’s been an overwhelming push to build tools specifically designed for engagement (like buttons, emoji responses, comment threading) instead of building tools that help users actually explore. This has replaced any sense of play with a bleak struggle for users attention. The marketing line for these new tools could easily be, "engage more, explore less."" He tries to combat this in the websites he designs by adding explore buttons that randomise content, for example. You can see this in action in a website he contributed to called the The Creative Independent. "One thing we did implement was a random button that served up a random interview from over 600 articles across the site. I ended up moving this button into the main navigation so that readers could continue to click the button until they found an interview that interested them. It’s fairly easy to implement a “randomized items/articles” section on a website. In the case of The Creative Independent, this simple addition revealed how expansive the site really was.”

https://elliott.computer/pages/exploring-the-vastness-of-a-website.html  Sticking with the website theme, another thing we discussed as a Squad was the increase of Web 3.0 models in comparison to out current 2.0 models. We’d all done some listening to and reading of Jaron Lanier, who after writing a few books about the future of big data and the potential to monetise your own, eventually just wrote a really on those nose book about getting off social media. It’s called ‘Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now’. To the point right? After feeling the negative effects of social media throughout 2018 and 2019, I’d reached breaking point, and this book tipped me over the edge to try going cold turkey. It was surprisingly easy and I loved being away from it all, especially Instagram. That app can do things to you. For quite some time I was obsessed over crafting the perfect post for my music and creative practice that I stopped making my core content to focus on keeping up appearances on Instagram. I don’t think it works like this for everyone. Perhaps some people are more susceptible to the allure of its powers. Maybe it rooted in some insecurities. Either way, the network of people I was following and that were following me back were certainly not social. Our relationships were built on tokenistic and obligatory likes and comments. The FOMO was hitting hard and I wasn’t getting anywhere with my art and music. I’m still off Instagram, all Facebook platforms in fact. I got rid of WhatsApp and forced my friends to use Signal. Cos that’s what you do to people you love, shine a light down on anything toxic in their life while sitting on that high horse. I have returned to Twitter, months and months after being away from everything, because I’m trying to start a record label during a pandemic. You can’t meet up with anyone or go anywhere, how am I supposed to do guerrilla marketing if everyone is staring at their computer at home everyday? I could’ve come up with something online perhaps, and perhaps I might still. But for know I’ve jumped on Twitter and am just following everyone in Cardiff involved with music. I’m playing the spam game until we can go outside again. Then I’ll delete that little blue bird from my computer again. I appreciate that these networks are useful and convenient. And there aren’t any good alternative with the same network effect. But the thing that Lanier said that really struck me was this idea that there needs to be enough people on the outside of it all to show others that it can be done. So until something better comes along, I am happy to sit outside of it all. Jenny Odell is helping me through this with her book “How to Do Nothing.” As we discussed this as a Squad we noticed that much of what we were talking about was about aligning your actions with your values. It’s something seemingly impossible to maintain in all aspects of your life, but I genuinely think the more you can do this the happier you’ll be. We do it in so many other aspects of our lives, I wondered why it was so difficult to musicians who hate Spotify to not use, or for those riddled with anxiety to not use Instagram. I think a huge factor of this is down to that word convenience again. Now, convenience is king. But, “At what cost?” I will ask. For every few seconds shaved off, kj of energy saved, or steps reduced in completing a task or getting something, there are hidden costs elsewhere that the consumer doesn’t have to worry about. And I think this is worrying. Not that I think things should be deliberately inconvenient for people. But on reflecting on this, I am happy for things to be a little ‘anti-convenient’. For processes of consumption and creation, to have that extra step I do myself perhaps, or for it to take that little bit longer for a package to get to me. Or even that I spend some time learning how to do whole processes myself. Anyway, back to those Web3 chats…. the Squad noticed that the new Web seems to include glimmers of Web 1.0 and the return of personal websites, as well as newer ideas like decentralised systems of exchange. Artists that can do a bit of coding and seasoned web designers alike are creating an online culture that focuses on liberating the website and our online presence from platform capitalism. Instructions for how to set up your own social network (https://runyourown.social) are readily available with a quick search, and calls for a community focused web are common place from those dying to get off Twitter and live in their own corner of the internet with their Squad, interconnected with other Squads. What’s this got to do with Third Nature? Well it means I decided to build our website from scratch using simple HTML and CSS. I intend to maintain this and eventually try to move the hosting from GitHub Pages over to a personal server ran on a Raspberry Pi. There is a link between the anti-Spotify movement and the pro-DIY-website culture, which is that ‘aligning your actions with your values’ thing. Before Third Nature had a website though - before it was called Third Nature for that matter - I had this idea… What if there were an alternative to Spotify that was as fair as the #BrokenRecord campaign wanted it to be? I could so have a go at making that. Maybe on a small scale. Like for Cardiff, and then expand. After sharing the idea with the Squad though we did some research and actually came across a few music platforms that were doing these types of things. More on this in the next post…

[easyhairstylesbest]

Aries Monthly Horoscope

MONTH OF January

Monthly Snapshot

You don’t have to do it all yourself, Aries! For many Rams, 2020 was a time of shouldering an immense load of responsibility. Not only were there three planets in your dutiful and ambitious tenth house, but for the past six months, your ruling planet, Mars, has been blazing through YOUR sign, pumping up the passion but also spiking your stress levels.

The nonstop intensity levels off this month as Mars settles into grounded Taurus and your stabilizing second house. You’ll be able to prioritize and be productive—and you’ll get by with a little help from your friends. That’s a relief after so many months in the hot seat!

With Jupiter and Saturn now in Aquarius and your cool, collaborative eleventh house for the long haul, you can simmer down and make decisions guided by both your head AND your heart. Just try to make the most important ones before Mercury turns retrograde on January 30, scrambling signals and making you second-guess yourself.

Week 1: January 1-10

Yes you can!

Ready to feel anchored and clear on your priorities? This week, a brand-new energy is coming in. On Wednesday, January 6, your ruling planet, Mars, wraps an extended six-month visit to Aries (since June 27), which has been heating up your first house of personal passions, independence and fresh starts.

Normally Mars only stays in one sign for six weeks, but due to a fall retrograde, you hosted the red planet for FOUR times the usual duration. It ramped up your charisma, confidence and “It” factor—but since Mars is the “energizer bunny” of the cosmos, this passionate planet also had you going nonstop! You might have a million exciting projects and prospects, but could also feel scattered and overwhelmed.

Good news: This Wednesday, Mars enters Taurus and your grounded second house of work, money and security, staying until March 3. Your focus, determination and organization skills will be charged up by the metaphysical motivator. Pick one or two top goals, break them down into action steps and prepare to watch your ideas transform into reality. Who knew being methodical could be fun? Enjoy the deep satisfaction of making project plans and checking item after item off your list.

Since Mars can add stress and motivation in equal doses, you might have to budget for some extra expenses, including some you didn’t see coming. Necessity is the mother of invention, Aries. During this Mars transit, you could amp up your revenue streams with a bold ask or by proudly hanging your shingle for a side hustle. Who knows what that could grow into?

Week 2: January 11-17

Financial flux

Get ahold of your finances this week, Aries. Mars and Uranus, both in Taurus and your second house of money and work, make cosmic moves that demand changes.

Speedy, stressful Mars (your ruling planet) in Taurus is revving up your revenue, but it will also make your work and finances feel extra demanding. On Wednesdaclass=”body-el-link standard-body-el-link” y, January 13, Mars locks into a heated square with structured Saturn, a tense standoff that can feel like you’ve got one foot on the gas and the other on the brake. Saturn is in Aquarius and your eleventh house of teamwork, indicating that some members of the #AriesArmy could be forming their own resistance pod.

Why the backlash? Instead of getting mad, get interested. It’s likely that if these people felt heard instead of hustled, they’ll provide valuable feedback that could improve the overall outcome. That said, you’re a motivated Ram on a mission, and there’s no sense pretending otherwise. Some people may not want to move at your pace, and maybe they aren’t a fit for your 2021 plans. That’s okay—give them the choice to stay or go. You only want to work with people who are 100 percent aligned!

On Thursday, January 14, financial plateaus start turning into peaks as revolutionary Uranus ends a five-month retrograde through Taurus and your money zone that began on August 15, 2020. If your income’s been erratic or some part of your work has been stuck in stop-and-go motion, things should start to pick up speed. New sources of income or freelance gigs could pop up. With tech-savvy Uranus here, you might decide to hop aboard the cryptocurrency craze. (Fun fact: For the next two weeks, there will be ZERO retrograde planets, a great time to make some decisive moves!)

Also this Thursday, the Sun makes its annual meetup with powerhouse Pluto in your tenth house of leadership and authority. Are you truly stepping up to your greatest heights, Aries? This could be a day when you come out of hiding and show the world what a visionary you truly are!

Pay special attention to any power struggles as these two ego-driven luminaries collide. The people who seem threatened by you, or hellbent on trying to control you, could be turned into allies if you play your cards right. Rather than competing with them, see if there’s an opportunity to collaborate by playing to both of your strengths. However, if you’re constantly overstepping the same turf, it might be better to divide and conquer—or to carve out clearer boundaries. (Note: The tenth house rules fathers, so there could be unresolved “dad issues” embedded in any dicey dynamics.)

On Sunday, January 17, the planets stage an event that only happens once every seven years. Expansive Jupiter will form an embattled square with liberated Uranus. These two freedom-seeking planets can bring massive breakthroughs when they play nice, but in a square, you could find yourself pulled in dueling directions.

With Jupiter in Aquarius and your teamwork house facing down Uranus in Taurus and your stabilizing second house, you’re not sure whether to compromise or stand your ground. If something doesn’t align with your core values, going along with the group will only lead to trouble later. But don’t just dig your heels in either. Take a step back and refuse to be rushed into important decisions now. Look at the big picture and think about where you’d like to be in, say, a year. That could help you find the middle ground between acting impulsively and being stubborn at your own expense.

Week 3: January 18-24

Aquarius season begins

Welcome to Aquarius season! On Tuesday, January 19, the Sun joins Mercury, Jupiter and Saturn in the Water Bearer’s realm, staying until February 18. With all this action in your eleventh house of teamwork and technology, you could be branching out big-time, collaborating with kindred spirits whose ideas complement your own.

Heads-up: Next week, Mercury will turn retrograde, a tricky time that can mess up communication, technology and plans. Get ahead of the curve by backing up important data and making sure everyone on Team Aries clearly understands their roles and goals.

This week, your ruler, Mars, has two more intense dustups—and since Mars is the warrior planet, he’s always braced for a fight. On Wednesday, January 20, Mars will make an exact mashup with disruptive Uranus, both in Taurus and your second house of finances and security. With these two hotheaded planets merging, your “volatility index” could go through the roof. Work and money stress could push you to your edge.

On a positive note, the combination of energizing Mars and innovative Aquarius can bring a lightning-bolt moment. You could have a brilliant moneymaking idea out of left field or devise a clever way to increase your profits using technology or connecting with new markets virtually. Looking for work? A freelance gig could pop up unexpectedly—and you’d be wise to at least hear the offer because it might open some exciting doors or lead to a more permanent position.

Be careful about asking too many people for advice, especially on Saturday, January 23, when Mars gets snagged in a tough square to more-is-better Jupiter in Aquarius and your group sector. While it’s not a bad idea to get feedback before committing to any big moves, too much opinion-polling could leave you even MORE confused.

A Mars-Jupiter square can give you a wicked case of FOMO, and you might be afraid to commit to one lane lest something better come along. Be careful about sharing money with friends or signing on for a group expense this weekend. You could end up footing an unfair part of the load, whether it’s a heavy-drinking friend’s liquor tab when you’re sipping soda or being stuck playing project manager/planner while everyone else has fun.

Could this be the call to take inventory of your inner circle? Saturday is also the annual Sun-Saturn conjunction, a sobering day when you may view things through the harsh lens of reality. You could notice traits of your friends or associates that make you question whether you’re on the same page anymore. While this pessimistic vibe WILL pass, it’s worth paying attention to those tough and inconvenient truths that surface.

Whatever the case, it’s time to surround yourself with people who can be mentors or true champions of your goals. Those consumed by petty dramas won’t get you there. But aligning with colleagues who are farther along than you, or friends whose healthy relationships are #goals…well, being around them is bound to rub off on you!

Week 4: January 25-31

A miracle in the middle

Think team effort! The week kicks off with a disquieting bang on Tuesday, January 26, as the Sun in Aquarius and your eleventh house of groups squares off against disruptive Uranus in stubborn Taurus and your second house of values and income. Things could feel erratic, with a crew member (or members) coming off as impulsive or pushy.

You may need to assert yourself with a dominating person, or else you could feel whiplashed by conflicting demands at work. Set all this against a backdrop of simmering financial stress, and you’ll hit your threshold. Warning: Pushing too hard today could result in an explosive reaction—one that will be hard to walk back on when better days arrive. And since an upgrade is right around the corner, we strongly advise you to keep your temper in check.

Your payoff arrives on Thursday, January 28, when the Sun makes its annual conjunction with anything-is-possible Jupiter in imaginative Aquarius. Considered by many astrologers as the “luckiest day of the year” (and recently dubbed the Day of Miracles), you’ll experience the transformative power of teamwork. This 2021 Sun-Jupiter meetup is multiplied by a full moon in Leo and your fifth house of passion and fame. Playing well with others can attract the applause you deserve—and sharing it will only deepen the satisfaction.

Look back to the Leo new moon of August 18 for clues about what might be coming your way. You could attract buzz for a creative project or reach an exciting romantic turning point thanks to Leo’s fire. But no need for it to be lonely at the top, Aries! The collaborative Aquarian transit helps you share the spotlight with people whose ideas complement and elevate your cherished dreams. This is literally the kind of day when wishes come true.

It’s important that you use thiclass=”body-el-link standard-body-el-link” s lucky day to get fully aligned with your peeps because communicator Mercury goes retrograde in Aquarius and your group zone on Saturday, January 30—a backspin that will potentially churn up drama on Team Aries until February 20.

For the time being, make sure you’ve triple-checked everything before hitting “send” or “post.” Back up your files and inspect your tech. While you’re at it, avoid being seen as the squeakiest wheel on the team—and if possible, hold off until the end of next month on any digital launches or debuts.

LOVE & ROMANCE:

The new year starts with a sizzle then settles into a simmer, and you won’t mind a bit. Your 2021 opens with lusty Mars in Aries and romantic Venus in Sagittarius, an adventurous combo. But after January’s first week of lingering holiday heat, both love planets will make significant changes into grounded earth signs.

Since June 27, 2020, your ruling planet, Mars, has been in Aries, an extended six-month trip thanks to an autumn retrograde. Normally Mars stays in one sign for about six WEEKS, but the randy red planet has been revving up your mojo and magnetism for four times longer. It’s been exciting and stressful in equal measure, sparking newfound independence, exciting boudoir chemistry and perhaps a bold step forward with a partner.

On January 6, Mars will finally depart your sign, hunkering down in Taurus and your second house of security and sensuality until March 3. If a relationship has been fast-paced and frenzied, you can shift into a stable groove, truly considering whether your values and day-to-day lifestyles align.

Then on January 8, affectionate Venus settles into Capricorn and your grounded, goal-oriented tenth house until February 1, its first of two visits that will bookend 2021. You’ll want to know where things are headed, to make concrete plans or create more of a structure in your love life. For couples, working on a shared goal, perhaps a business, can bring you closer. Single Rams might get into a coaching program or mastermind group with others looking to create fulfilling relationships.

Keep on hitting the same blocks? Seek mentorship or programs to cultivate self-awareness and remove the obstacles that keep you from finding what you truly want. (Check out Astrostyleclass=”body-el-link standard-body-el-link” ’s new course Cultivating Relational Intelligence, produced by us and hosted by our astro-friend Colin Bedell of QueerCosmos: https://astrostyle.com/queercosmos).

Key Dates:

January 9: Venus-Mars trine

Bring on the lasting love! As affectionate Venus and passionate Mars harmonize in stable earth signs, you could have true romance with all the trimmings—sensuality and stability. Skip the “come here now go away” players and their mixed messages. A partner who makes you feel secure is suddenly the most attractive catch in town. Coupled? Mark a long-term relationship with a thoughtful gift to let your mate know how much you cherish them.

MONEY & CAREER:

  Dear Reader: To bring you cutting-edge financial and career astrology, we’ve class=”body-el-link standard-body-el-link” replaced our monthly Money & Career horoscope with an expanded new offering. And we’re bursting with excitement to announce it!

We invite you to join our free Astropreneurs community, where we’ll be sharing tools and trainings via a private Facebook group, free webinars and cosmic career coaching all through 2021 and beyond! Wheclass=”body-el-link standard-body-el-link” ther you’re an entrepreneur, a dreamer with a side hustle or just looking for deeper satisfaction from your work, we’ll guide you to your path and purpose by the stars.

Join our Astropreneurs mastermind at https://astrostyle.com/astropreneurs21.

Love Days: 28, 6

Money Days: 21, 11

Luck Days: 19, 10

Off Days: 3, 8, 16

See All Signs

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Aries Monthly Horoscope

[throwawayrants]

I’m not happy.

I feel alone. I had a terrible year at my first college. I spent maybe like once a week calling my mom to cry about how alone and depressed I felt all the time. And so to come to a new college and meet more welcoming and friendlier people I actually began to feel happy? At peace for once? I successfully got a role in the colleges musical...I joined the choir and got a spot in the acapella group (Barely anyone had tried out but still)...I was given not one but two different roles in different students’ directing plays...I even got a bid to join a sorority which I was later officially initiated for. At the same time I was gaining countless Instagram followers from people from the school and as superficial as it sounds, that seemed like even more of a plus that more people knew me and were interested enough to follow me. And for once in my life I was finally getting somewhat of a college experience going to gamedays and parties to drink like any stereotypical college student. I even (after complaining for years about my perpetual singleness and lack of experience dating anyone despite being on the planet for two decades) began seeing a guy who went to a college near my hometown. And if I didn’t need further proof to announce to the world that I am in fact, for once succeeding in life, my midterm grades were much better than I’d previously gotten at my other school.

So what is the issue? I just listed off all these wonderful things that happened to me within just the past couple months since transferring schools and yet I’m not happy.

See, the truth of the matter is, many connections I made at the start of school wouldn’t last whether due to my goddamn social anxiety or a mixture of other factors. There was also the fact that I’m shy and on top of that, an introvert. But still, anytime I’d want to take a moment to myself my FOMO would kick in and I’d have the nervous fear that I was isolating myself like I seemed to have done at my other college leaving me to then be a nervous wreck. I was scared to approach perfectly nice people for fear they’d not like me. AND despite the fact that I’d joined a sorority, lately my social anxiety has been at a huge peak when I’m around my sorority sisters. In no way are any of them toxic but I get this nagging sense that they’re all closer to one another than I am to any of them and it makes me feel like I’m doing everything wrong and feel completely left out because of my inability to be truly close to anyone. For example, one girl who I grew close to immediately after we discovered we were both transfer students and pledging to the same sorority has drifted away from me recently. And I have no idea why other than that maybe she’s simply not interested in being my friend after meeting other people. The same can be said with how I feel about the majority of people in the theatre department, I’m friendly with many, but close with few.

My work ethic lacks balance as well. As I mentioned earlier I was joining a sorority, rehearsing in two plays, a musical, and two choirs all at once along with taking 20 credits. So to say I juggled it all nicely would be a plain lie...So many days I felt burnt out and tired that it was hard for me to do homework and I spent sleepless nights attempting to type four pages for essays due in three hours. And to be completely honest there were many times that I felt close to crying but couldn’t simply due to how busy I was.

There also is the fact that the guy I’m currently seeing isn’t my boyfriend he doesn’t want a relationship and frankly neither do I with him and yet somehow we’re in an amicable friends with benefits situation but it gives me pain all the same. Again, not because I want a relationship with him but because I want to feel that undeniable emotional AND physical attraction to someone that I have yet to feel with anyone to actually want a relationship.

As for my grades, well, as can be inferred from earlier, I’ve been putting off two crucial assignments that are already late due to my procrastination and urge to get this off my chest so I’m just praying for a c right now in that said class.

So you see, I put on a façade thinking that maybe if I can convince enough people that I’m happy and thriving in life, I can convince myself as well. And why do it other than the obvious fact that I don’t want to be viewed as more of a nervous wreck than I already am? Because after being told for years throughout high school how much better college is when it didn’t meet those great expectations freshman year it felt like even more of a letdown. I never went to a single party. I never got that core group of friends. And I never got a boyfriend like so many people told me I magically would in college. And as a result of all this making my self esteem drop and depression take over, my grades suffered as well. Also not to I mention I was a musical theatre major and every single thing I tried out for that year I was denied (I know you need to have thick skin for the entertainment business but to be given that blow on top of everything else didn’t help my anxiety).

So to come to a completely new school and get the chance to start all over again made me excited but also feel like a nervous wreck. I spent maybe every night that week leading up to when I moved in crying to my mom about what a pathetic loser I was and how I was afraid of how my new school wouldn’t be any different. So when the pieces appeared to come together in my life it’s what I told everyone and it’s what I wanted people to believe. So they wouldn’t just see a complete mess of a person like what I’d been in the past year who appeared to cry uncontrollably and at the drop of a hat. I’ve slipped up a little now my mom knows I’m not entirely okay and I think my best friend does too. But other than that I’m trying my best to not let anything show and I needed to just get it all out in words for once. So fuck it I’m posting it here.

[batch83]

Well done, you!

An LSE Journey Essay

Looking deep into ourselves to find our real motivation can be hard especially when everything around us have been going by in a blur. Our true purpose, should we ever find it early, tend to get lost somewhere between making a living, paying the bills, raising kids and running a hundred different errands. Before you know it, you're well into your middle age and wondering where did the last 10 years go. It is in this age that I started to question what my endgame is.  

I was born in the North to Ilocano parents, raised in Metro Manila and educated in both private and government institutions.  I majored in Architecture but majority of my work is in another discipline.  For the past 13+ years in Singapore, I worked, and mostly enjoyed, working in Civil Engineering specifically in Geotech where we do a lot of underground works for tunnels and transport structures.  Such a badass feeling for a female to actually do this in a predominantly male field! I left the Philippines not because there was a pressing need to provide. On the contrary, I have a stable but boring job in the city. I was surprised when I got the call from a foreign headhunter that, at the prospect of new adventures and since there's nothing to lose (they paid for all the expenses anyway), I relented and went along to see where'd I'd end up. Fortunately, fate has been good. 

Being a migrant worker for most of my youth can be quite unsettling.  I have all the time in the world in a new environment full of possibilities, earning a decent disposable income and not saddled with pressing responsibilities. When you're new in a foreign land, the allure of all things shiny are very tempting. It's these times that I went on a spree, a moderate one by standard, but to an Ilocano it's a spree nonetheless.  Year in and out, I accumulated stuff that I liked and like to share with my family. But as my belongings grew and lugging them from one rental house to the next becomes harder, I thought "there must be more to gain in living here than this".  

Enter social media.

I spent numerous hours scrolling, clicking and just wasting time away but it's an upside that I saw an A-LSE sponsored seminar on one of the shared posts. At this point I'm already indoctrinated in the concept of financial management by another OFW (also an admirable Fin-Lit and Social Enterprise advocate) and seeing the A-LSE program page with all the bright faces of the students, my curiosity was piqued. What is this group that makes people come together and learn new stuff to improve themselves? The FOMO (fear of missing out) is strong and I had to join in on the fun. I finally got in a year after putting my name down on the waiting list.

 And so, the grind begins.

 The program started with self-introspection -- who are you, what makes you get up in the morning, what's your mission -- its wading at the rubbish and finding the bits that radiate sunshine. It's the equivalent of doing the Marie-Kondo in your life and removing the clutter.

As a parent, my goal is to give my child the tools and opportunities that will enable him to achieve good things in life. Not great, but good. I can only lead him to the starting line, I will leave it up to him to finish it in ways he sees fit.  Of course, to be able to do that I will need the financial capacity to provide for his primary needs but also to be there emotionally to support and guide him in his decisions. My goal is to show him the dignity in working and the joy of doing good, to impart the values I've learned from my parents, to have fun and appreciate the arts.

As a sibling, my goal to help them finish their tertiary education has been fulfilled. My siblings are now enjoying their chosen professions and has now embarked on new pursuits to ascend to the next level. Next is to help them map out their financial plans for the future -- that's a tactic to make them financially independent and not borrow money from me.

As a daughter, my goal is to see my parents enjoy the latter years of their lives and to help them come into terms that they need to step back and let their children take on the responsibilities on managing their estate.

As a person, my goal to become an instrument of change in however small way I can manage. Running for public office seems the easiest route but as I have no death wish and plan to live a longer-ish life, that's a no-go for me.

My goal is to achieve financial independence in the next decade, to establish my own enterprise, have enough to sustain my health coverage and retirement in the later years and leave a worthy legacy to my family. Lastly, I want to travel every year or every other year to places that are culturally rich and ‘gram worthy.

The 10 sessions have brought immense knowledge and insight about the core competencies of the LSE program. Journals have been written to provide a deeper insight for each session.

For Leadership, I find Tina Liamson's lecture on Migration & Principles of Leadership enlightening. The most fascinating has got to be from Dr. Juan Kanapi's Appreciative Inquiry. This is the first time I've heard of it and it's quite difficult to grasp the idea and can be easily confused with positivity. But at the end, It shows that if practiced AI is not just mind tricks but a powerful tool in realising your full potential.

The best lectures for Financial Literacy are the split sessions of Vince Rapisura and Edwin Salonga. (Edwin's lecture is about Social Entrepreneur but I remembered a lot more on his lecture about Finances, hence…) Who knew studying finance concepts could be this good? And most definitely not boring! I now have a deeper understanding about managing my finances better and learning that my current insurance is shit, which I really need to rectify soon. I can't tell you enough how the things I've learned from these wonder duos are gold. Call me by any other name (read: biased), but Ed's lecture is my most favourite of the lot.

The Social Entrepreneurship sessions have the most gravitas for these lectures carry the main core of the program. They're not all boring, mind you, but can be a bit challenging. The lectures on this series provided many useful tips for future entrepreneurial endeavors and is a big help in formulating our business plan. Other insights for the SE series can be read here and here.

At every journal writing, I try to reflect on what I've learned and think of ways to apply them in my daily life.  Most often I find things and events that need to be tweaked or heavily redesigned in order for it to be aligned with my future goals. Most pressing of these are the consolidation of my assets and liabilities, and making a clear plan on mapping out my finances that will include my son's future education.  The next point is to work on myself and how I carry myself as a leader starting at home. What better place to practice than to apply these learning in the household first? Hopefully, I will be able to improve my inability to forge meaningful connections to people by the time I have to build my own enterprise. I am not aspiring to be Miss Friendship, I'm ok with Miss Effective Boss or even Miss Influencer-For-The-Greater-Good. Tall order, I know, but we're allowed to dream and dreaming is free.

Joining the program made me realise the answer to my question, "So what happens now?" 

During my first few years as a migrant worker, my goal is to save so I can buy gadgets to connect me home. After having a mobile phone, a laptop and the ability to call home any time, ano na? As I enter my 14th year of being a migrant, I've somewhat been able to achieve the things I hoped for. Not the millions of dollars in bank account **fingers crossed**, but a comfortable life. But that restlessness persists. Learning that there are available avenues to pursue these in the Philippines is a big help in making me step into the right direction closer to the things I wanted to become. Programs like these give hope.  With that, I realise that there is more I can do back home than where I am currently at. I have the knowledge; I can share it -- starting with a small group of like-minded people who are willing to help themselves. Acquiring and sharing knowledge is free so I may as well start with that. 

All the sessions have been audio recorded and kept in a cloud that I shared with family members. Many of the things Dr. Kanapi said are the things I so want to say to my father. Sharing it is just a click away, let him hear it straight from the board-certified horse's mouth.  

I also plan to lead the residents in our small sitio towards a better understanding of financial management which can be instrumental in their livelihood. These people have been known in the family for decades. They have worked alongside our grandparents in tilling the land and their children continues to do so. While there have been advancements in their lives, I believe there is more to be done -- better education for their children/grandchildren, opening bank accounts, accessing government programs, using tech etc. I am excited to share with them the different concepts we have learned in the program, and also a good training ground for me to improve my leadership skills.

I highly commend the A-LSE program for striving to make the Filipino Migrant Workers' quest for relevancy and better lives. Much appreciation to A-LSE founding Team and the current secretariat who makes it run smoothly. The past month has been very trying but everyone has been great in providing feedback and extending their hands.  For that, a big Salute! to everyone -- for the team and the speakers who traverse the globe every year. 

As a program alumnus, I will most definitely uphold the values of the LSE in the best way that I possibly can. Sadly, my physical involvement with the LSE will not extend to the volunteer work for the next batch as  I have made plans for the next year that will make it impossible to fulfill my duties on the site . However, I am willing to extend my skill/expertise in whatever way I can as long as it is done remotely. 

Thank you, A-LSE.

Congratulations, Batch 83!

2019 will be remembered as the year I turned another leaf over.

[webuyofficial]

Stop Bellyaching: Focus on New Possibilities of Blockchain

Crypto news flood the Internet and everyone waits with bated breath, about to lose their minds, their future attached to what goes down or up. There is something I have to say…

Bitcoin is down again. The core currency — Satoshi’s dream — is down 90%. The blockchain is in a bubble! Is crypto dead? Is this the end of crypto? I can show you a graph for that…

STOP IT!

Do you know what happened? Bitcoin payments aren’t dead, They’ve just gone niche. Consider this one sample. When Frank and Nikki McKeever founded their small art retailer in Florida in 2012, they never could have imagined that cryptocurrency would become an integral part of their business.

“The crypto category has just exploded for us,” McKeever told CoinDesk, adding that he enjoys the grassroots marketing style of engaging with crypto fans on social media. “We’ve sold over 1,000 pieces of crypto artwork in 2018.”

The McKeevers’ gallery is just one example of how merchant adoption of bitcoin payments can still be viable for niche businesses that actively engage with the community. According to the bitcoin payment processor BitPay, the average value of the cryptocurrency payments it processed in 2018 was $678.77 — nearly double its $338.53 average retail payment value in 2017.

In short, the data indicates that crypto users are shopping less, but they’re spending more when they do.

We are in the middle of the most exciting mental revolution that has ever happened. Blockchain is not about this currency or another, it’s not even about technology. It’s about much more — it’s about changing our behavior as a society and as human beings. It’s about being more responsible for having more control over our own lives. And yes — a different way to coexist on Planet Earth.

Bubble — of course! Dotcom was also a bubble and we are living in a completely different world today as a result of that bubble. FOMO had caused the bubble to burst in 1999 the same as it’s happening today. That stands for Fear of Missing Out, and it is pervasive through the investor population. Ironically, that FOMO leads to more money chasing the same stuff (the stuff that has done the best recently), which pushes that same stuff higher and higher in price…until it doesn’t.

SO STOP IT! Stop concentrating on a minor aspect of this great change.Concentrate on exploring and exploiting the new possibilities blockchain brings. All reward potential comes with risk, and usually, they are highly correlated (e.g. higher reward potential is accompanied by higher risk). Depending on what you are investing for (retirement in a few years, staying retired, funding goals like education and raising children, etc.), recognize that to markets don’t go up forever.

But Bitcoin and Ether are down… Yes. They are. SO WHAT? The objective is the thing for you. Don’t get lured in by the “invest in what’s working now” crowd, and stay committed to what you truly want. How do you do that?

Your baby versus the soft cap

Most parents love their children and will do anything to support them, right? They want what they deem best for their children. They want them to have the brightest future. It is also no secret that parents and children often differ in opinions when it comes to how to reach this bright future. This is okay.

Each of us, after all, is a unique being that will ultimately choose his/her own way in life. It is important to respect this. It is the same with me and my children — not only my human children but the companies that I’ve created and reared as my babies and children.

As a person who started a few companies, I know what makes for a great business plan and what does not. That being said, life is much more complicated and the companies may turn out to be different from what was planned in the beginning. However, they are still my companies, my babies and my children…

With this in mind, I’d like to touch on the strange phenomena of the Soft Cap in ICO projects — if the soft cap is not reached, most projects just send the money back and go home. With this approach, maybe the project is not worth starting at all?

This is one of the reasons why WeBuy decided to move to the POTS (Production Oriented Token Sale) model. Our team is here to stay and we are going to build WeBuy to change the way advertising works. We hope that the community will support the idea and not just the speculative token value.

The economy is tough, the landscape frightening, but we will complete the mission! This is not about the Soft Cap or the Hard Cap — this is about our baby. We just need to give it the chance to decide what it wants to be, while it grows up.

The WBY token will fuel the rapidly increasing volumes of online-to-offline commerce.

Join Production-Oriented Token Sale (POTS)

Cost Per Token: $0.25

Stage 1 Starts 25th March 2019

Accepted Currencies: FIAT + Cryptocurrencies

Buy it at best value while you still can.

[wannabeentertainer]

A Case of the FOMOs

SOME (Social Media) gives me a bad case of the FOMOs (Fear Of Missing Out).

Transitioning from an office as part of a professional “team” to working from home as a creative “entrepreneur” has made me question a lot about myself. And as I prepare to go back to my govie job, I want to make sure I’m going to make the most of it instead of falling into old patterns of seeking external validation followed by periods of self-loathing if (when) it doesn’t materialize as expected. 

After reading many self-help books to try and find some insight (recommendations in a future post), I started to ponder whether or not I was an introvert or an extrovert, or maybe neither.

S’Ok. How do you determine one way or another: Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

Based on my extensive internet research, let me help you narrow it down.

CHOOSE WISELY. Because once labelled, it is really hard to change camps. We love to label each other. To know “where we fit”.

But the whole “introverted vs extroverted” thing has always rubbed me the wrong way.

Why do I have to choose? What if I sometimes want to be with ppl but I also sometimes want to be by myself? Sometimes I get into an elevator and look at my keys like this is the first time I’ve ever seen keys and maybe they’re magical keys that can unlock my husband’s mind so I can find out if he really liked my last play or was just saying he did to be nice (which is always the right answer, by the way). And other times I get into an elevator and can readily make eye contact and small talk like it’s going out of style. And SOMETIMES, both of those things happen on the same day!

Since I’ve been working from home for the past little while, I have to admit, it’s pretty great. Almost complete silence. No dressing up. No dressing at all, if I feel like it. Generally my only interaction with another living being was with Keaton, my fuzzy wuzzy kitty witty who has no real say in any of it, and can’t speak English anyway, so that’s easy.

For most of my life I thought I was an introvert because talking to ppl is scary. Talking to anyone used to be the hardest thing in the world for me. When I was a kid, I would literally hide behind my mother rather than talk to ppl. Well, to be more specific, FAMILY. Families are your first introduction to the social world. But they’re weird because they ask you a lot of really personal questions and they tell you you look “pretty” or “cute” all the time. Or say how big you’ve gotten and then talk about you in the third person to your mother like you don’t exist and can’t speak for yourself.

WELL GUESS WHAT GRANDMA? I’m so smart you have no idea, but my Mom’s legs are also pretty cool so I’ll just chill back here and stare at the wall, Ok?

I’ve gotten over a lot of that social anxiety by doing things like improv and stand-up comedy and various other acting pursuits where I am forced to be the centre of attention. Remember the whole “needing external validation” thing? Most actors are like that.

My theme song

Straight-up acting is definitely easiest because I’m speaking someone else’s words and being someone else. There’s usually a physical barrier between me and the audience, and the lights are so bright you can’t see them anyway. And I can always blame cast mates or the director or the stage manager or the lights or the costume designer, or front of house for “killing my vibe” that night. It takes a village to put on a theatrical or audio-visual production and you are most definitely not alone as an actor.

Improv is scary because the audience is part of the show. You have to rely on their suggestions to make things happen. They have a direct stake in the outcome so you better make them look good! And you are letting out a lot of the creepy things that have been hidden in your imagination and that more or less demonstrate how you view the world – but you’ve still got a team who has your back and can rely on your kooky “stage” characters to take the blame when shit gets too weird. Only take credit for your awesome choices. That is improv.

But stand-up is by far the scariest. It is improv and acting and public speaking to the highest degree. You’re speaking words that you wrote and hope to god are funny.  But you never really know if it’s funny until you get in front of an audience. Someone once told me, it’s akin to learning an instrument that you can only practice in front of an audience. You have no team and generally no director, and the competition amongst comics can be brutal. So you rely so heavily on the audience for validation. You have to win them over. That’s your job.  But inevitably, you will suck at first. You’re still learning! It usually takes a good 6 months to a year (or more!) of practicing jokes almost nightly to get a good solid 30 minute – 1 hour set. That’s a huge and scary ego-tripping commitment. No wonder so many comedians suffer from depression. I decided it was not good for me. That’s why I stopped. I hope to be able to go back to it one day, but you really have to have the perfect balance of drive, self-motivation, confidence, pride, ego, as well as humility, humbleness and a fair amount of goofiness never hurts.

Meanwhile, in my Left-Brain…

After spending many years as a university student doing research and then working in an office doing research, I frequently found office work distracting. Half my time would be spent fending off the gossip and small talk of others. And those were just the MEETINGS! So I concluded that I must be an introvert.

FACT!

About 2 years ago, when I was still pretty dissatisfied with my life as a public servant, I did a personality test. You know, one of those ones that tells you if you’re introverted or extroverted. This one was based on the Myers-Briggs model and I highly recommend doing it. Internet quizzes that go beyond finding out which princess you are, are kinda a guilty pleasure for me.

https://www.16personalities.com/

And I got INTJ-T. “The Architect – An imaginative and strategic thinker with a plan for everything”. 

Which made sense given my circumstances at the time. I was even kinda proud of it because so few women fall into that category.

And so, Ok. I’ve been working primarily as an actor lately and that means spending long bouts of time at home. An introvert’s dream, right? And while going through my exploration I discovered the obvious: I loved being at home all the time.

It just turns out that spending time alone also leads to me thinking horrible thoughts about ppl and life in general and actually, really just makes it difficult to motivate myself, because, let’s face it, I’m at home and I’d rather get stoned and watch a TV show than write for an hour straight. Cause, ddddammmmmnnnnn, have you seen The OA?! 

Don’t even talk to me until you watch that show. (This is actually an exaggeration and I am a highly disciplined and self-motivated person… It’s not like I have a secret Netflix account so my husband can’t see how much time I’ve spent watching Gilmore Girls…This is also an exaggeration…COMEDY!)

And I know a lot of ppl love coffee shops. “Oh just go work in a coffee shop!” They say. Well, coffee shops sometimes work. Because ppl are kinda policing you, right? I mean, you want to look like a confident, successful writer who totally has her shit together, but also appreciates the free bathroom, wifi, and seriously addictive baked goods.

I recently started going to coffee shops more often to work because I was realizing that I was actually feeling too lonely. Too isolated. And then I’ve also attended a lot of parties and events because that’s literally part of an actor’s job, and I realized that I enjoyed it. I would always say “oh, I’m just gonna go for an hour and then ghost” (ghosting: leaving a party without saying goodbye), but then end up staying for like 4 hours and singing karaoke.

Who is this girl? Have I been a closet extrovert this whole time?!?!?!?

But I also find coffee shops loud and distracting and I have to pay to be there. Don’t get me wrong, I love people watching. LOVE it. I could sit in a coffee shop all afternoon and just watch ppl. You don’t even have to have meaningful social interactions but can still be surrounded by them. Which is nice. It’s this weird introvert loophole. Like, if I’m looking at my computer screen and have headphones in, it’s a pretty clear social indication that I am NOT interested in talking to you, OKAY? But it’s ok for us to alternate looking at each other, as long as there is no eye contact. Eye contact when I’m feeling introverted leads to modest heart palpitations.

SO WHAT AM I? SOME MYSTICAL SOCIAL UNICORN?

So I took the test again. And MY RESULTS CHANGED into… (please say unicorn, please say unicorn…)

ENTJ-T.  “The Commander – Bold, imaginative and strong-willed leaders, always finding a way – or making one.” 

Huh.

What’s deeply interesting to me is that the only real difference between the two is that ENTJ is a leader and the INTJ a loner. And as much as I love toiling away by myself, it’s not always the best thing for me. I know this now. I lose interest unless I think I’m part of something bigger than myself and influencing change. That change might be as small as getting a friend to try a new recipe, but at my core, I know now that social interaction is very important for me. And it is important for all of us. We are social animals.

Although I frequently lose focus and allow myself to get pulled in many directions, it’s not because of some fear of working collaboratively, since I have a lot of friends in a lot of different creative circles. For instance, stand-up wasn’t the greatest because I was TOO alone. Being a researcher, writing papers alone in a cubicle is also not for me for the same reason.

But, possibly because I always have so many plans and ideas swirling around in my head and I just know that I can solve any issue with enough attention to it, I love my alone time and recharge by being alone.

So maybe I’m just a talkative introvert? A part-time introvert? Or maybe people can’t be labelled so easily…

My latest conclusion is that it has nothing to do with introversion or extroversion, it is because of FOMO. And in the SOME age (Social Media), I’ve got a bad case of the FOMO’s.

I just want to be loved!

I’m heading back to office work with the attitude of gratitude (for the money), and with a new outlook on what I value and need to feel fulfilled in the workplace (contributing to a community). 

I feel much better situated to be the best introverted/extroverted person I can be.

Keep Being Awesome,

Laura

[adventuresaroundasia]

Pin Me!

Most of you know that I love to travel, I lived in China for quite a while, and I’m location-independent right now. You may also know that I love cats and spicy food. But did you also know I’m a huge nerd?

Today I decided to hop off the travel/ expat life train and talk a little bit about the sides of me you don’t see: the super nerdy and slightly weird sides.

Here are 5 ways in which I am a giant nerd. Enjoy!

If this doesn’t scream confidence I don’t know what does…

1. I’m Obsessed with Survivor

One thing you need to understand about me is that I’m super obsessed with the tv show Survivor. Yes, that show is still on the air, and they just wrapped up their 40th season. FORTY.

You know how people talk about sports? That’s how I talk about Survivor. I’m super into the strategy, the social game, and the lengths people are willing to go to in order to win. If you haven’t watched Survivor in a long time, the game is a completely different animal now, and the level of strategy needed in order to win is super intense. I LOVE IT.

Not only do I watch Survivor religiously, but I also watch Australian Survivor and I listen to Survivor podcasts like RHAP’s (Rob has a Podcast)’s “Survivor Know It Alls” and “Why _____ Lost” (talking about why a player was voted out), and the Survivor Specialists. If you love Survivor and you don’t listen to Survivor podcasts, what are you even doing with your life?

Finally, I even applied to be on Survivor last fall. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it all the way to getting on the show, but I already have some new ideas for when I apply again this fall. Basically I’m going to be on Survivor, they just don’t know it yet.

 A quick intro to D&D if you’re curious

2. I Play D&D (Dungeons and Dragons)

When I first started dating my husband Chris, he told me he was the Dungeon Master (DM) for a local D&D game. I had absolutely no idea what D&D was, but I knew it was nerdy and that I should probably make fun of him for it.

Fast forward a few months and I’m on a quick visit home to Seattle when I met up with my childhood best friend who informed me that she ALSO played D&D. What??

The way she described the game sounded so fun that when I arrived back in Beijing I asked to join. Unfortunately my first game was a bit intense. Not only did I have no idea what I was doing, but I was also the only girl surrounded by a bunch of aggressive super-nerds. That game eventually fell apart at the start of summer (one session after I joined), and so I started a new game online with a bunch of Chris’ childhood and college friends back in Australia.

via GIPHY

That was about three years ago and I’ve been playing online with that same group of people ever since! For the longest time I used to play every other Sunday for 4 hours, but during COVID isolation I needed more of a social life, so I picked up TWO MORE GAMES, one on Tuesday evening and another on Thursday.

Both my new characters are SUPER WEIRD as well. One is a necromantic spore druid who makes zombies with fungus (and can cover her skin in it to become more powerful). She also has a “husband” named Gerold who is literally just a skull she found in the woods. Then I have another character that is a kappa (from Japanese folklore) water shaman who heals people by pouring the water from inside her head onto them (I make it super weird). She also has a cat-sized pet crab too. You’re welcome.

I’ve always been weird

3. I Love Pokemon (and still play Pokemon GO)

Growing up I was always super into Pokemon. I watched the show, collected the cards, and bought all the Gameboy games. As a special treat, my mom would take my brother and I to the games shop to buy a pack of Pokemon cards to put in my GIANT Pokemon card book.

Now that I’m an adult, I’m still super into Pokemon. Unfortunately for me, Pokemon Go came out while I was living in China, and I was SO UPSET that it was blocked. I even tried to get on with my VPN but there were NO POKEMON TO CATCH. WHYYYY???

Fortunately for me, I eventually left China and was able to start playing with my husband Chris. I still play Pokemon GO when I’m out and about, and I’ve found it’s a great way to get exercise while exploring a place. When staying with my parents, Chris and I would try and get out of the house every day or two and walk for a solid 45 minutes just to hit up Pokestops, take over gyms, and catch Pokemon.

I also play the Pokemon games on my Switch too! I already finished Pokemon Let’s Go, and I’m playing Sword and Shield Now! (I only took a break because I got really into Animal Crossing).

A Quick Enneagram 101

4. I’m Super Into the Enneagram

If you’re into personality types like Myers Briggs (I’m an ENFP!), you may have heard of the Enneagram. While the Enneagram is a personality-typing system, it really goes much deeper than just describing your outward personality. While you can take a test (which is only as accurate as you know yourself), the best way to figure out your type is just to learn about the 9 types and do a lot of introspection.

Rather than categorizing yourself by how you act and what you do, the Enneagram is all about WHY you do what you do. What are your core motivations, desires, and deep dark fears, and how does that impact you and your life choices?

The purpose of the Enneagram is to learn about your type so that you can discover the things that you do that aren’t serving you. What are the elements of your personality that are actually HURTING you and making life harder, and how can we, over time, let those go?

This is me.

My Enneagram Type: Type 7

Personally, I’m a type 7 (7w6 sx/so in case you’re an Enneagram nerd like me), and this knowledge has helped me SO MUCH. Through learning about the Enneagram I’ve realized that I have a huge aversion to talking about/ feeling really shameful or traumatic memories, and instead I prefer to just shove them under the rug and pretend like they never happened because I “don’t have time to be sad”. I also feel like there’s not enough time in life to do everything I want to do, so I have constant anxiety and FOMO that I’m missing out on something.

Finally, 7’s have this idea that happiness is something outside of yourself that you have to go and get. But once you actually get that thing, you don’t even enjoy it because you’re already focused on the next thing you just “need” to be satisfied. This ‘more is more’ concept when it comes to happiness leaves 7’s constantly living in the future, and unable to appreciate what they already have.

Wow, how exhausting is that?

Learning about the Enneagram has honestly been so enlightening for me, and I LOVE forcing others to get into it too. (Any other Enneagram nerds? Let’s be friends!!).

How to Get Into the Enneagram

If you want to get into the Enneagram, I suggest watching a quick intro video like the one above and then reading about all of the 9 types on the Enneagram Institute. This should give you a pretty good idea of what your type is (or at least help you narrow it down).

If you really want to take a quiz, you CAN but take a few quizzes and just read about your top-scoring numbers. For me, it’s usually 7 (by a mile! lol), 3 and 2.

Next, I recommend reading a book. I really like the Honest Enneagram as a perfect intro book. It was actually written this year, so it’s very current and easy to read! Once you’re dying for more info, get a really in-depth hefty book like the Wisdom of the Enneagram, or Personality Types. You can also join a Facebook group for your type too! (The 7 Facebook group is awesome).

Baby Woody in Vietnam!

5. I’m Obsessed with Cats

Many of you probably already know that I fostered abandoned kittens in Vietnam, but I don’t think you know how far this obsession goes. I love animals, but I’m particularly fond of cats, and I have a hard time rationalizing my desire to travel and live abroad with my need to have a pet.

I Foster Abandoned and Injured Cats and Kittens

So, in Vietnam I worked with Vietnam Cat Welfare to foster abandoned kittens until they were old enough to get all their vaccines. Before I did this, I helped nurse a street kitten back to health after she’d been hit by a motorbike.

Now that I live in Tbilisi, I’ve been dying to find a cat to foster, but unfortunately, it’s been difficult since most of the stray cats here are actually pretty healthy, and the ones that do need help are pretty much immediately adopted! (Wow what a horrible problem to have, I know!).

It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I saw a very unfortunate-looking cat in a diaper looking miserable that needed a foster family. Finally, my time to shine!! I immediately said I would foster her (and purposely didn’t show the picture of her to Chris because I knew he’d say no).

For the last three weeks, I’ve been giving her medicine, brushing out her tangles, and changing her litterbox constantly because she pees like a HORSE due to her kidney issues. Every day she’s getting happier and healthier which is super exciting!

Honestly, someday I’m going to open a cat cafe full of rescues and you’re all invited.

I Also Feed Stray Dogs

Now, it’s not just cats I love. I also feed stray dogs! Tbilisi has a huge stray dog population, and pretty much all of them have been tagged and vaccinated. The stray dogs are actually very nice, and most small shops have bags of dog food you can buy to give to the dogs.

So of course, I bought my own bag of dog food, and whenever I see a stray dog outside my apartment I go with a few handfuls of food to give them. Usually they’re not even hungry (seriously!) and they just want me to pet them. The other day I had a stray dog go on a walk with me, and he ended up following me for 20 minutes!

Hello stray puppy

I Used to do 4H for Cats

If this wasn’t all nerdy enough for you, let me tell you about my childhood hobby: 4H for cats. If you’re from the US you may have been to a county fair that had animal shows: horses, sheep, etc. This is actually through a program called 4H. Now, what most people don’t know is that 4H also has a CAT CATEGORY.

If you’re at the local fair and walk into a room full of decorated cat cages, you’ve found us. Now this is not a cat show with a bunch of purebreds. 4H is all about how well you take care of the animal and how much you know about them. They have you show off your cat in a specific order (teeth, nails, ears, fur, etc) and then you have to answer cat trivia questions. For example, did you know cats have three eyelids?

In addition, they also have trivia bowls, cage decorating competitions, audience choice and MORE. My childhood bedroom was decorated with giant show ribbons like I had a horse or something, but no… they were for my cat knowledge.

Pin Me!

Are You a Nerd Too?

Are you obsessed with any of the things above? Do you play D&D, watch Survivor, or read Enneagram books? Do you love to catch Pokemon or foster animals? Let me know in a comment below!

Fun Fact: I’m a Huge Nerd Most of you know that I love to travel, I lived in China for quite a while, and I'm location-independent right now.

[coin-news-blog]

Bitcoin Price: Cryptoverse is Trying to Guess the Next Move

New Post has been published on https://coinmakers.tech/news/bitcoin-price-cryptoverse-is-trying-to-guess-the-next-move

Bitcoin Price: Cryptoverse is Trying to Guess the Next Move

Cryptocurrency market and its swift and abrupt changes have given people a lot of headache, but also a lot to think about in the last week alone. People’s opinions on the near and far future of digital assets varies, but bulls seem hard at work. Nonetheless, analysts also urge traders to consider their warnings.

So what happened? The last week has seen Bitcoin falling below USD 10,000, despite Bakkt launching its long-anticipated Bitcoin futures, the volumes of which disappointed many. BTC price then dropped below USD 8,000. All this time, altcoins were struggling against this pull downwards, but many have felt it hard nonetheless. Despite seeing a slight rise in between and after the two plunges, with Stellar taking the lead among the top 10 rising coins, ETH also saw its gains erased in September, while XRP dropped all the way back to its December 2017 prices.

The 20% drop in BTC prices was blamed on a variety of events, including the underwhelming Bakkt volume numbers as some see it, as well as “the effect of Intercontinental Exchange Inc.’s new futures contracts and an unwinding of long positions,” as JPMorgan Chase & Co. says.

What’s going on now? Currently, while all major coins are in the red for the 7-day period (and all but XRP with a double-digit drop at that), in the last 24 hours, majority of the top 10 coins have appreciated, with XRP taking the lead with a rise of 8% (16:05 UTC). The lowest rise for now belongs to bitcoin with 3.9%. At pixel time it trades at c. USD 8,306 and is down by 16% in the past week and by 14% in the past month.

Also, the crypto market sentiment has recently deteriorated again.

What do people think will happen? Overall, the Cryptoverse seems optimistic about the market’s future. Particularly, many people believe that BTC is bound to bounce back and go full bull, and that altcoins might follow.

Trader Alex Krüger, for example, thinks that what we’re seeing is a correction within the larger bull trend. “Best to wait for funding to turn negative before going in size and holding,” he adds.

Popular crypto analyst and trader Josh Rager believes that “price can continue down but expect the bull trend to continue after pullback.” He compared the 2013 market to that of 2019, and said that “a 40% to 50% pullback isn’t that big of a deal when bitcoin has seen 75% pullback in the past that was followed by a 1,600% gain to ATH,” adding that “this pullback too shall pass and will hopefully make for great buying opportunities in the coming days/weeks.” He also stated that, in his opinion, the lowest price BTC will hit is between USD 6,300 and USD 6,600. “Price currently bounced off monthly support & if this area breaks could head to USD 6600 – based on higher time frames,” explained the analyst.

$BTC continuing to range between heavy support near $8k and can expect a bounce to $8700+ if this continues to hold

Any bounce I'll likely short but will continue to keep an eye on indicators and price action pic.twitter.com/9vYarErafw

— Josh Rager 📈 (@Josh_Rager) September 29, 2019

Phillip Swift, the creator of Bitcoin Golden Ratio Multiplier (a tool for better understanding of the cyclical patterns of Bitcoin adoption) finds that we are in a bull market and that the upcoming moves will show if there will be a bounce from this point, though even if there is a fall, he finds that “it’s worth looking at what is probable if we brake down again.”

5/ …because clearly we are in a bull market.  Multiple charts including the Puell Multiple show approximately where we are in the cycle (A,B,C on the chart).

Feels like this is the final test before we go full bull, so hold tight everyone! 👊 pic.twitter.com/5oHaLsibGU

— Philip Swift (@PositiveCrypto) September 25, 2019

However, even if the prices continue to go down, while many would naturally feel distressed, people seem to be excited about the opportunity they would get to buy the dip. Others, though, jokingly say they’d just have wait for a few seconds till the prices are back up.

Is that a trick question? What’s the joke?

Buying back, plus getting some more?$btc pic.twitter.com/aEbSBQeEY8

— Steve PEOPLE'S VOTE North (@snorth86293881) September 30, 2019

A Case for Hodl

Gold Bullion International co-founder Dan Tapiero tweeted that BTC is a great asset for long-term investors, and that there’s a good reason to hodl and not spend your BTC: “If you bought BTC Jan’13 at USD 13 but missed the 10 best days of performance in every year for the following 5 years you lost a ton of money over those 5 [years] despite having bought at USD13,” he says.

STAGGERING FACT-A reason NOT to trade Btc and ONLY hodl. If you bought btc Jan'13 at $13 but missed the 10 best days of performance in every year for the following 5 years you lost a ton of money over those 5 yrs despite having bought at $13. Great asset for long term investors! pic.twitter.com/UJDGVUVuvK

— Dan Tapiero (@DTAPCAP) September 30, 2019

Also, entrepreneur and Bitcoin bull John McAfee stressed, that using BTC will stimulate its rise.

Meanwhile, trader and analyst Nick Core finds that, while “BTC did break the low, it’s not all that bad” when looking at the on-balance volume indicator.

$BTC did break the low but it's not all that bad on the OBV side.

This could setup a very easy trap for shorters anticipating the break, watching for some kind of settling on a swing low or a continuation of trend is the best option for those not in a position. pic.twitter.com/JCTvPdcdnI

— Nick Core 🏆 (@Crypto_Core) September 30, 2019

Possibility of New Highs

And while some are thinking that this might be a good chance to buy BTC and many altcoins too, not many people seem to think that USD 14,000 will be the high for the next five years, according to the poll by CEO of Three Arrows Capital Su Zhu. 51% believe that the chances for that are less than 10%, compared to 19% who believe in the very opposite.

What is the probability that $14k is the high for the next 5 yrs?

— Su Zhu 🦁 (@zhusu) September 28, 2019

Others, however, see BTC as a long-term option, saying that what matters will be seen in the future.

Being a perma bull is objectively +EV. Since bitcoin is basically a long dated call option you’re either going to be rich and be regarded as a financial wunderkind or everyone will forget about the ponzi and it won’t really matter.

— Flood [BitMEX] (@ThinkingUSD) September 28, 2019

On the other hand, trader Nick Cote noted the latest developments on the charts since the last BTC drop, but he emphasizes that he is “still bearish.”

Majority of charts on my feed since the latest #bitcoin drop pic.twitter.com/bJIb36ZQqo

— Nick Cote (@mBTCPizpie) September 29, 2019

Meanwhile, Fundstrat Global Advisors’ research chief Tom Lee, in what he called “just a statement of observation,” said that the current situation in the market is neither bullish nor bearish.

Before everyone starts freaking out whether crypto winter is over, remember the @fundstrat ‘rule of 10 best days’ (rule #6)

– ex-10 best days, #bitcoin down 25% per year. All the gains come in 10 days. Are u that good at trading?

PS: we believe $BTC is weak in trendless macro. pic.twitter.com/zzDOfPjVBq

— Thomas Lee (@fundstrat) September 28, 2019

Back in June, Lee said that FOMO (fear of missing out) may trigger a BTC price rise, while in a recent interview he said that if equities rise, bitcoin will follow, so all-time-highs and an altseason may be coming soon. In the interview for Yahoo Finance on September 26th, Lee stated that Fundstrat wasn’t surprised by the recent events in the market, as they could see it coming at the beginning of July, when the Bitcoin Misery Index broke below 66 and Lee warned that until it “falls towards 50, you shouldn’t really try and dabble in bitcoin.” He reiterated that the major stock index, S&P, being trendless is not good for BTC: “The S&P needs to make new a high before bitcoin can break out.”

Nonetheless, “Bitcoin is vulnerable but I don’t think the thesis is broken. So if someone saying does this mean bitcoin’s a broken story now. I mean l think long term holders should not worry,” Lee concluded.

Source: cryptonews.com

[cryptswahili]

Drivechain Creator’s Latest Paper Sparks Debate Over Bitcoin’s Future Security

Drivechain developer Paul Sztorc has the cryptocurrency community riled up over his latest blog “Security Budget in the Long Run.” The essay discusses the economics of BTC network fees over a long period of time and suggests rather than giving up the fees to competition, a dominant protocol should collect fees “from all networks.”

Also Read: More Than 30% of BTC Traffic Stems from the Veriblock Project

Unraveling Bitcoin’s Security Budget

Paul Sztorc has written another thought-provoking essay that has got many of the ‘bitcoin intellectuals’ talking. “Security Budget in the Long Run” speaks on how BTC could theoretically collect fees after many decades. Sztorc refers to this as the “security budget,” which is basically what participants are paying in order to prevent double spends and 51 percent attacks. Over the last few years during the scaling debate, many industry members showed concern about the block subsidy i.e the freshly minted coins and transaction fees miners get when they randomly find a block. A block needs to be instantly profitable to mine and Sztorc believes the block subsidy will continue to give the network more security in the future.

“Even though it “halves” once every four years (effectively falling by a factor of 0.84 per year), it hits for full force no matter how high the BTC exchange rate climbs,” Sztorc’s paper explains. “As long as annual appreciation 19%+, it fully compensates for the PP lost to the halvening.”

A graphical interpretation of BTC’s security budget over the next 40 years according to Sztorc’s essay “Security Budget in the Long Run.”

Sztorc then discussed the various theories people have used in the past, in order to describe what will offset the block subsidy when the block reward shrinks to zero. Many believe a relatively high fee market is needed for onchain transactions (txn) and most people wanting txn with cheaper fees will use the Lightning Network. For instance, Sztorc quotes the Bitcoin Core developer Greg Maxwell and other crypto luminaries for championing high fees back in 2017. The paper also underscores the rise of altcoins grabbing far more attention after BTC network fees crossed over $1 per txn and continued to rise.

“Furthermore, this (true) premise — that Altcoin-payments are indeed substitutes for Bitcoin-payments — is occasionally explicitly admitted, even by hardcore maximalists — Especially during the last fee run-up in late 2017,” Sztorc’s paper details.

The essay further states:

To me, this data refutes the theory that users will pay high BTC fees willingly. In fact, they seem to have only ever paid high fees unwillingly — during a brief “bubble” time (of relative panic and FOMO).

Bitcoin developer, economist, and Drivechain creator Paul Sztorc.

Lightning and Alternative Fee Sources

The blockchain researcher further digresses into theories of onboarding users onto the Lightning Network (LN) and the protocol’s theoretical alternative fee sources. Sztorc says that if the LN is successful then many transactions can be crammed into two onchain transactions. However, Sztorc has a hard time understanding how the LN will boost fees and guesses that they “cannot realistically increase by more than two orders of magnitude.” After detailing theories people have on how the LN can create a thriving economic system, Sztorc’s new paper details that he doesn’t have much faith in the user experience.

“LN also comes with new risks — the LN-design is very clever at minimizing these risks, but they are still there and will still be annoying to users,” Sztorc notes. “Users will prefer not to put up with them — So they will tend to prefer an Altcoin on-chain-txn over a mainchain-LN-txn.”

Some crypto enthusiasts didn’t like Sztorc’s opinion concerning the LN’s usability, while some described the LN user experience as being not even close to onchain payments.

Merged Mining and Sidechains

Sztorc concludes his paper by discussing two of his favorite subjects — merged mining and sidechains. Essentially the programmer says merge mined sidechains can do whatever altcoins can do and then some. Concepts like Drivechain could theoretically create large block sidechains that process millions of transactions per day. Sztorc’s paper says the Bitcoin network needs a high-security budget in order to prevent 51 percent attacks. In a sense, alternative chains will subdue the chances of a market-clearing fee rate, especially when higher fees begin to dominate and start showing signs of time dependency. Sztorc’s paper emphasizes how competition will make it difficult for BTC to collect miner fees and instead every network in existence should be a subsidy for BTC.

“A better way, is to attempt to devour the entire payments market and claim all of its fee revenues,” Sztorc concedes. “This can be done using merge mined Sidechains, without any decentralization loss.”

Of course, not everyone agreed with Sztorc’s assessment concerning long term security for the BTC network. After the founder of Coinmetrics, Nic Carter called the paper a “stunner” and “outstanding as usual,” many other developers and crypto luminaries threw in their two cents. BTC developer Eric Lombrozo said the essay was a “good read” but is “still very concerned about the economics of sidechains remaining viable unless we substantially alter the trust model.”

Sztorc emphasized on Twitter that the post describes competition with altcoins and not traditional payment networks.

A few bitcoiners responding were very stubborn, wholeheartedly insisting that a relatively high fee market is necessary to subsidize miners and higher fees will also mean BTC is successful. Veteran cryptographer Nick Szabo emphasized that he believes there are a few “bad assumptions” in Sztorc’s post. Szabo detailed that he has only seen one good argument for security under a transaction fee-only system. “That’s the volatility of fees, which seem to behave nonlinearly as blocks become full,” explained Szabo.

Sztorc’s article sparked a lot of criticism and conversation about the subject.

The many responses to Sztorc’s paper underlined the fact that BTC developers and maximalist proponents are still dead set on growing the fee market and LN solutions. It doesn’t seem like merged mined sidechains will be accepted anytime soon, unless it is enforced in a permissionless manner. Currently, a few alternative chains piggyback off of BTC in some form or another like Counterparty, Omnilayer, RSK, and Veriblock and there are more projects like the Stacks blockchain on the horizon. Core developers have been stubborn about Drivechain for quite some time and the issues stem from a deep distrust of miners. This is ironic given that their work is what secures the network and defines Nakamoto consensus.

What do you think about Paul Sztorc’s post concerning block subsidy and BTC’s security over the long run? Let us know in the comments section below.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Twitter, Pixabay, and Paul Sztorc’s paper.

Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.  

The post Drivechain Creator’s Latest Paper Sparks Debate Over Bitcoin’s Future Security appeared first on Bitcoin News.

[Telegram Channel | Original Article ]

[healthyeating43-blog]

6 Basic But Body-Changing Diet Tips

New Post has been published on https://dietguideto.com/trending/6-basic-but-body-changing-diet-tips/

6 Basic But Body-Changing Diet Tips

via Giphy

With the holidays well and truly behind us, it’s time to get our health back on track. While we have no regrets about eating that second, third or fifth slice of pumpkin pie and endless servings of mac and cheese, life is all about balance, so it’s time for some healthy switch-ups. And even though we’re ready to hop back on the health wagon, we don’t want to feel like we’re always missing out on all of life’s deliciousness. So, to you help you avoid food fomo, we spoke to celebrity nutritionist Dr. Oz Garcia who coaches goddesses, Gwyneth Paltrow and Naomi Campbell. He shared six healthy diet hacks that’ll help you stay on track, without feeling like you always have to say no!

1. Start the morning out with a high fat/ nutrient dense breakfast.

“One of the mistakes people make when dieting is starting the day with a non-fat cereal with skim milk or fat-free yogurt with fruit. These types of breakfasts will only hold you over for a short period of time and having you crave a mid-morning snack. Instead, a high fat, low carb breakfast will keep you satiated for hours and take away cravings during the day. A smoothie with flax, chia or MCT oil, two eggs with avocado or full-fat Greek yogurt with a tbsp of almond butter are all great options and will promote weight loss if you eat less during the day as a result of this kind of nutritious breakfast.”

2. Get on the cauliflower hype

via Giphy

“This just may be my favorite out of the healthy food swaps: cauliflower recipes are probably the best thing that happened to people on a low-carb or grain-free diet. It makes a delicious pizza crust, can be used in the place of rice, and can even fatten up your smoothies. Personally, I’m too lazy to make my own rice or pizza crust, but due to its popularity, Trader Joes now has a cauliflower pizza crust, and, you can even buy a pre-made frozen in some health stores. The rice is also sold pre-made so you don’t have to slave in the kitchen. When making smoothies, try using a cup of cauliflower (which adds texture without a weird taste).

Cauliflower is one of the cruciferous vegetables that is great for combatting inflammation, supports digestion and detoxification and contains only a fraction of the calories and carbohydrates that are in bread or rice. Additionally, it won’t impact your blood sugar in the same way; making it a healthier option for diabetics.”

3. Add leafy greens to your smoothies

via Giphy

“Smoothies can be a great way to start the morning or a calorie bomb full of sugar (even if it’s natural sugar from fruit)! I have a smoothie every morning with a high-quality protein powder, but I don’t use bananas or too much fruit. For creaminess – using a large handful of organic spinach, kale or even bok choy (yes it actually mixes well) can give your smoothie the right texture and then you’ll only need a few frozen strawberries or blueberries to provide sweetness.

Leafy greens are a healthy alternative because they contain a high water content which makes them hydrating – especially during a hot summer… They also have antioxidant properties, aid in detoxification, are full of vitamins and minerals, and are a good source of fiber (which will help to assist in elimination). Chia, Flax or Hemp seeds are another easy way to add in fiber, Omega -3s and protein while further stabilizing blood sugar to keep you full for hours.”

Posts You’ll Love:

4. Ditch the soy sauce

“You can eat a seemingly healthy dish such as chicken and vegetables, or a tofu stir-fry, yet it often gets spoiled with sauces which contain wheat, gluten, added sugars and artificial ingredients that can cause inflammation, digestive discomfort, and weight gain. Instead,  is one of the more natural healthy food swaps that I’ve learned to cook or marinate my foods with. If you order Asian takeout, ask for no sauce and use this instead.”

5. Spiralize

Source: Oleksandra Naumenko/Shutterstock

“Anyone with inflammation, autoimmune issues, or looking to lose weight should eliminate pasta – even if it’s whole grain or gluten-free. The calories and carbohydrates are too heavy. As a substitute, spiralized zucchini noodles are one of the best healthy food swaps without having to spiralize zucchini by hand. Even though there are low-carb tofu noodles and other pasta swaps, these have more health benefits. They are a great source of fiber, vitamins, and minerals and won’t ruin your diet. Add some turkey meatballs, broccoli, and fresh tomato sauce, and you have a deliciously, healthy meal without the guilt.”

6. Make healthy dessert swaps

“Too many of my clients get into ‘diet’ desserts. This includes frozen yogurt with sugary toppings, ice cream substitutes, etc. that are very hard to portion control. Eating a huge cup of fat-free yogurt or a pint of a low-cal ice cream brand that claims to be only 300 calories is still problematic. Regardless of calories alone, who wants to eat chemicals?! It’s better to eat portioned ‘real food” with nutritional value.’

1. Baked apple

Source: Tobik/Shutterstock

“If you like apple pie, baked apple is a great alternative. You just have to core the apple, then place on a baking sheet. Use a little cinnamon, Stevia and sprinkle on a small amount of gluten-free granola or dark chocolate chips. One apple alone can replace a slice of cake with a quarter of the calories and artificial ingredients. Baked apple provides fiber to keep you satisfied along with healthy antioxidants and polyphenols.”

2. Yogurt with almond butter 

“Instead of an ice cream substitute or frozen yogurt, try one individual portion of unsweetened plain Greek yogurt. Pair this with 1 tsp or tbsp almond butter. You can add ½ Stevia packet and even a few dark chocolate chips (at least 70%). A snack like this is low-carb, high in protein, low in sugar, under 200 calories and full of probiotics for healthy digestion. I don’t believe that eating non-fat dairy is necessary. However, when you add on the almond butter, it adds those extra grams of fat to keep you satisfied.”

We don’t know about you guys, but we are definitely going to be trying out ALL of Dr. Garcia’s tips, stat! Let us know if you guys found this helpful in the comments below, and if you’d like to see more posts like this again.

Source

6 Basic But Body-Changing Diet Tips