#human beings will continue to be consistently inconsistent in their personal definitions of health

[inendedtheanxiousturtle]

The modern definition of obesity makes me angrier than I can explain.

(I personally have trouble keeping weight on.) I become irrationally furious when I see someone at a healthy and comfortable weight mentioning their doctors or trusted coaches tell them they're obese for the SOLE PURPOSE of their weight and not an end goal to prevent a medical condition.

If there is zero risk of adverse action or effects taking place due to someone's weight. DONT ENCOURAGE THEM TO LOSE IT USING TODAYS MEDICAL STANDARD OF A HEALTHY BMI ETC. AGAINST THEM. Don't do it.

[lawful-evil-novelist]

Updates to the Rogue Kids and Their Home Lives, also some Rogue Kids-verse Updates

Firstly, as far as I’m concerned the Rogue Kids-verse is still continuous with @the-mighty-sorceress​‘s rogue kids content I’m just updating the current Rogue Kids notes.

As some baseline housekeeping there are some changes to ages and names:

Age Order is now: Ellie (17), Leo (17), Tobi (17), Barbara & Todd (17), Aisling (17), Hunter (17), Lavender (17), Gwen (16), Zeke (16), Dorothy (16), Clover (16), Lizzie (16), Ayah (16), Max (15), Violet (15), Marcus (15), Eva (14), Pluto (14), Aiden (14), Cosette (14), Niall (13), Jeremy (11).

There are a bunch of new full names I will include in an updated stat page when I get the chance.

Most notably a lot of Rogue kids now have two named parents instead of making their non-rogue parents nameless and in the void.

WonderCrow elements were removed, I didn’t think they fit anymore.

Tobi

So, I’ve brought up consistently that Zach adopted Tobi, which he did.  Zach was close personal friends with Jae-Min Park, Tobi’s father, and Jae-Min and his wife, Se-Hyeon, named Zach their son, Yi-Seul’s, godfather.  However, the year after Yi-Seul was born, there was a break in, and Jae-Min and Se-Hyeon were killed.  Tobi’s legal first name is still Yi-Seul, Zach didn’t change it, but he goes by Tobi in public.  Zach owns a tattoo parlor and lives over it, which gives Tobi a pretty stable home life, though he does struggle a lot with the loss of his parents, just as Zach struggles with the loss of such a close friend.

Dorothy & Pluto

Dorothy and Pluto live with both their parents, Jonathan and Ophelia.  Ophelia is a well-known horror author who draws from both her love of classic gothic literature and the Cree folklore she grew up with.  Jonathan, after retiring the Scarecrow, ended up being reinvited to teach at Gotham University–provided he had a relatively clean bill of mental health.  Jonathan and Ophelia are raising Dorothy and Pluto in Gotham, and their home life is relatively stable, or as stable as a household with Jonathan in it can get.

Zeke

Zeke’s home life is probably my biggest change, since Harvey no longer has custody of Zeke.  Instead, Zeke lives with his mother, Harvey’s ex-fiancee  Grace Lamont.  Zeke kept the name they’d already planned and Harvey is aware of him.  Grace is a good parent, a lot of Zeke’s issues stem from Harvey’s inconsistent presence in his life.  Harvey…isn’t a great parent.  His temper can be explosive and violent, and during periods where Zeke has been in contact with him, they’ve consistently ended with Harvey getting physically abusive.  Further, he’s often very critical of Zeke’s appearance.  Grace does her best to mitigate Harvey’s effect on her son, and in the current timeline they have a protective order against Harvey, who has broken it multiple times.  She and Zeke are extremely close as a result of their shared trauma, and a lot of the retired gallery has gathered to keep them safe.

Eva

Eva lives predominantly with Nora and her stepfather Francis D’Anjou.  Victor doesn’t interact with his daughter very closely and in fact avoids Eva and Nora, believing his presence is a dark spot on their otherwise happy life.  Francis and Eva have a strained relationship due to Francis’ own hangups about living with the daughter of a Gotham Rogue, but Nora and Eva’s relationship is very good.

Violet

Violet and Max live together still, now with the addition of a mother, Sofia.  Max and Sofia both play in an orchestra and Violet is their cherished daughter.  Violet’s home life is extremely stable.

Clover & Lavender

Lavender and Clover are plant-human hybrids Pamela created on her own.  Pamela works in botany and raises her two children as best she can.  Pamela’s parenting is…interesting.  She struggles with denying her children of anything, but has a hard time hiding her disapproval.  As stable as Lavender and Clover’s lives are, they definitely do rebel a lot more than Pamela thinks they do.

Ayah & Hunter

Ayah and Hunter live predominantly with their mother, Delilah.  This isn’t to say she and Waylon are separated, but Waylon keeps his distance from his family, often overworking himself doing odd jobs.  Delilah works at Leslie Thompkin’s Clinic as a doctor, and looks after Ayah and Hunter most of the time.  Waylon’s distance is a result of Ayah and Hunter inheriting a less severe version of his condition, bearing small scale growths and the reptilian eyes (Ayah also inherited the sharp teeth).  No matter how much Delilah loves Waylon and her children, Waylon has deeply ingrained insecurities he can’t let go of.

Aiden & Cosette

So Aiden and Cosette both have surrogate mothers, friends of Garfield and Drury who were willing to give the two chances to be fathers.  Drury and Garfield are married and live together with Aiden and Cosette, Drury as an artist and Garfield still at his job with WayneTech.  Aiden is on the spectrum, something Drury and Garfield do consistently manage but it can be a struggle especially since they also have to juggle their own mental health.  Regardless, Aiden and Cosette are very happy and healthy.  They also get to see their mothers, Estelle and Ivette, regularly.

Aisling, Max, & Niall

Lonnie’s three kids all still have different mothers, but only Max ever spent time in the custody of his grandparents.  Lonnie was cut off from Aisling and Max until Aisling was fifteen and Max was thirteen, mostly due to the work of his parents.  Aisling’s mother, Siobhan, had the wherewithal to not trust Lonnie’s parents with her daughter.  Molly, Max’s mother, got very sick when Max was six, and gave Max to his paternal grandparents out of desperation.  Aisling’s childhood was fairly happy, but Siobhan had to deal with a lot of harassment from Lonnie’s parents, including repeated CPS calls.  Max spent his seven years with his grandparents being repeatedly abused, and Lonnie barely got custody of him back.  In that time, Lonnie had youngest, Niall, and married Niall’s mother, Erin.  Thanks to the legal battle, Aisling splits her time with Siobhan and Lonnie, but spends most of her time with Siobhan.  Max and Niall are primarily in Lonnie’s custody since Molly is unable to care for Max.  Lonnie works at WayneTech and works hard to provide for his children.  His relationship with Aisling is strained because of his absence in her life, and much of his time with Max is spent trying to mitigate some of the damage done.  Erin and Max have a difficult relationship, not that Erin isn’t trying but Max is very close to his mother and has trouble adjusting to the concept that his parents aren’t together.  Niall’s childhood was happy, but he’s going through a small case of dethroning, especially with how much time Max and his trauma often take up.

Ellie & Lizzie

Edward and Selina made the decision to retire from Rogue activities when Selina realized she was pregnant with Ellie.  They married after Ellie was born and had Lizzie a few years later.  Edward does freelance IT, predominantly for WayneTech and Janus Industries, and Selina works at her parents’ cafe with the understanding that she’ll probably take over ownership.  Ellie and Lizzie’s home life is stable and Selina and Edward had a lot of support from Selina’s parents early on.

Barbara & Todd

So, Joker is not a fixed presence in Todd and Barbara’s lives, he’s actually not even their legal father.  R’as al Ghul’s separation of Joker and Jack still happened in the Rogue Kids-verse, and thus Jack is considered their father by the courts, which pisses off Joker immensely.  Jack and Harley own and operate a bakery called Jester’s Sweets and live over the bakery.  While Joker makes occasional appearances in their lives and these appearances can be frightening, Joker avoids Jack like the plague and Jack has made a fairly consistent effort to teach Todd and Barbara how to fight back.  As an additional note, Todd and Barbara’s names are now more tributes by Jack than jokes by Joker, evidenced further by their middle names: Reagan (Jack’s father) and Jeanne (Jack’s first wife).  Aside from Joker’s occasional appearances, Todd and Barbara live a fairly happy life.

Leo

Leo’s mother, Anita, teaches Linguistics at Gotham University.  When Leo was little, Angel still did some work in the underground as Bane, but chose to stop for Leo and Anita’s sake.  Currently he works at WayneTech (a pattern you’ll see with a lot of retired Rogues).  Leo’s home life is fairly stable, though Angel and Anita’s house does serve sometimes as a shelter for vigilantes and rogues alike.

Gwen

Gwen was adopted by Barbara Gordon very early on, specifically because Gwen’s mother, Mary, didn’t trust herself to care for Gwen properly, and Gwen’s father, Jervis, wasn’t allowed to care for her for a myriad of reasons.  Barbara makes sure Gwen’s home life is stable and happy, and Mary has some visitation with her daughter.  Their relationship is good, but Mary’s more of an aunt than a mother.  Gwen’s relationship with Jervis is distant, nearly nonexistent.  He returned to Cornwall after a while and now he only sends the occasional card.

Jeremy

Jason’s vigilante work with the Outsiders kind of hits a hiccup when Jeremy becomes a factor in his life, especially since Jeremy’s mother, Valerie, isn’t very keen on raising Jeremy alone (and Jason isn’t about to make her).  Jason does make the effort to keep up his vigilante work, and Valerie’s pretty alright with living on the road.  I can go into how Jeremy feels about it because it’s not always the coolest continuous roadtrip ever, but the household is stable for a growing boy.

Marcus

Here’s a bit of a complex issue.  Marcus does live with his parents, Louise and George, but because both are regularly working abroad, Marcus has spent a lot of time in his grandfather Arnold’s house, which means he has spent a lot of time around Scarface, who realistically should not be in charge of children even slightly.  Marcus’ parents didn’t have the knowledge to kneep Marcus away from Arnold until much later, and by then, the damage had already been done to Marcus’ mental health.  Louise and George do work to keep Marcus’ life stable, but they remain frequently busy.

[self-loving-vampire]

Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny (1988)

Summary

Ultima 5 is what you could call Ultima 4′s edgier but “cooler” sibling. The gameplay has gained in complexity, dialogue has been greatly expanded, and the ground-breaking system of virtues and morality from the previous game has been twisted by the tyrannical Lord Blackthorn following the disappearance of Lord British.

Ultima 5 also introduces more of a day/night cycle to the proceedings with the introduction of NPC schedules, enabling a level of world simulation that was very new at the time of release. It goes on to make good use of this system by casting the player in the role of an outlaw fighting against the new government, meeting with members of the resistance in the shadows, and going around the martial law that has been imposed.

Freedom

Just like in Ultima 4, you are dropped into an open world right from the beginning, and your tools to explore the world have been expanded. 

The inclusion of more complex systems also enhance the feeling of being able to interact with the world with less barriers, as there is now furniture you can use, barrels you can search, etc.

Like with Ultima 4, there is only one way to win and a list of absolutely required steps that must be taken to reach that victory, but the order in which these steps can be taken is rather flexible, allowing players to create more of a personal narrative as they follow clues they picked up on wherever their instincts or whims took them first.

It is worth noting that there are actually some optional quests dungeons this time around, which is always nice.

Character Creation/Customization

While it is very nice that you can import your character from Ultima 4 into this game, I would say that this aspect of the game has taken a step back in a sense even as it has made progress in other ways.

The eight classes of the previous games have been reduced to four: The standard Fighter/Mage/Rogue Bard trio plus the Avatar class the main character belongs to, which is an all-rounder. As before, there is not really any customization beyond equipment either.

However, the positive of this is that equipment has been greatly expanded from the previous game. While in Ultima 4 you were limited to merely choosing your character’s weapon and armor set from a very short list, Ultima 5 not only enlarges the list but also allows for equipping multiple armor parts (such as a helm or amulet) while also providing a secondary hand slot.

What this means is that two-handed weapons now also give you a trade-off between their big damage and the option to use a shield in your other hand, or even dual-wield.

This greater variety of equipment allows a greater degree of specialization for your party members, though by modern standards this still isn’t much. The supremacy of ranged weapons also continues here, as magic axes are undoubtedly what you should be equipping everyone with later in the game, and now that class does not restrict equipment every single one of your party members will end up in plate with a magic axe.

Story/Setting

This is, in my opinions, one of the most interesting things about the game. Ultima 5 takes all of the virtues from the former game and turns a corrupted form of them into the law.

The game is pretty explicit about this too. Early in the game, in the town closest to the shack you start in, you can find a man in the stocks together with his son. The man is being punished for failing to donate enough of his income to charity as the Law of Sacrifice demands, while his son (who is barely breathing at this point) is being tortured for not reporting his father to the authorities.

Throughout your travels, you meet many kinds of people. From victims, to resistance fighters, to supporters of the regime and everything in between. Throughout your interactions with these groups you will have to discern who can be trusted (generally easier than it should be since the bad guys tend to be meaner or even cartoonishly evil at times) and learn how to fight Lord Blackthorn and the Shadowlords who corrupted him.

The Shadowlords are, incidentally, the part of the story that I don’t quite enjoy. Fantasy is full of one-dimensional ancient evils and dark overlords. By making the events of the game the result of an unambiguously malevolent supernatural force rather than human failings of the type that are not uncommon in real life, the game makes those events feel more distant and less complex.

This very series already has had plenty of “Defeat this one evil force and everything will be fine” plots. They are generally devoid of the moral complexity that the series is now aiming to explore and I want to know what this game would have looked like without the Shadowlords.

Fortunately, however, this effect is not too pronounced. Blackthorn remains a misguided man with good intentions. He admires you a lot, actually, and seeks avatarhood himself. He has such a positive view of the virtues that he sought to enforce them by law.

(Then again, his actual plans for the shrines make this apparent idolization feel dishonest, or at least inconsistent.)

And there is a real type of authoritarianism that functions a lot like this. Even on this site there are many who would be in favor of things like surveillance, police brutality, and harsher punishments. Even on this site there’s a whole lot of people who seek to punish others over stupid things like shipping the wrong fictional characters.

The people I grew up with even went as far as yearning for a dictator who would unleash death squads to execute all the “bad” people. This is a wish that I still see in many people, even those who grew up outside of the circumstances of my country of birth.

This is not an error that humans need supernatural corruption to fall into.

Other than that, I find the dark twist on the existing setting from the previous game to make for a spicier world to explore. 

This is also the section where I should point out that Ultima 5 introduces a rather large and dangerous “Underworld” map that is easy to get lost in. While it is mostly barren, you do have to visit various parts of it as part of the main quest, and I just find the concept of a massive dark world beneath the earth to be a super interesting one (I mean, I have even run D&D campaigns based primarily in the Underdark).

I kinda wish there was more to it other than some items and a companion to collect. Something like a town would have been interesting.

Immersion

This is one area where the jump from Ultima 4 to Ultima 5 was massive thanks to the day/night cycles, NPC schedules, expanded dialogue, and even the addition of words of power to the magic system.

But the best thing I can say about it is really that it calls on you to actually roleplay and engage in the world as if you were actually there, at least to a degree, and it does so through a combination of atmosphere and gameplay.

You will not only want to be careful with your words when talking to certain people to avoid being reported to the regime, but you can also learn the resistance password and use it to get help and information from other members.

While these systems are all still pretty rough here, they still come together well enough to make this a lot more immersive than the average JRPG.

One thing that does feel really off is that the guards are not only superhumanly tough but you also lose karma for attacking them. They also behave strangely in that even though you are a wanted outlaw they don’t actually hunt you on sight, only trying to arrest or kill you if you refuse to pay tribute (as if they didn’t recognize you or your companions at all). This despite wanted posters.

So there’s definitely some rough aspects to the crime system in this game.

Gameplay

Massive improvements have been made in this area, and I don’t just mean the above-mentioned expansion of items and the addition of NPC schedules.

For one, enemies now drop things other than gold, such as food and armor pieces. The magic system has also been improved so that you can now mix multiples of a spell at once instead of having to do it manually every single time.

Additionally, spells are now cast using a consistent language of magic composed of several words of power, which you can chain together to produce effects.

But I would say that the single most significant improvement in the gameplay is the simple fact that most NPCs now have significantly more keywords that they react to in dialogue, including many that do not come up through normal conversation with them. The system is still not perfect, but you can have more of a conversation with characters now and switch from topic to topic relatively easily.

In terms of combat, you can attack diagonally now (only monsters could do that in Ultima 4) and random overworld encounters are much easier to avoid now, cutting down on what eventually starts to feel kind of like padding in the previous game (but see below).

Despite the fact that the material rewards from combat have been increased and items are much cheaper now, Ultima 5 is actually significantly more difficult than Ultima 4. Not only do you have less health, enemies also seem to do more damage.

Dragons and daemons in particular are a nightmare, as they can summon more daemons (who can posses party members) and are extremely durable. A single dragon is a very tough challenge for an unprepared mid-level party, and even after giving most characters magic axes they still prove tough to take down while also being extremely damaging. Trying to fight multiple ones at once without blowing powerful spells or glass swords is costly at best and foolish at worst. Dragons are best thought of as boss-level enemies probably.

I am pleased to report that the dungeon crawling is better in many significant ways. Not only are the graphics more pleasant and immersive but also fully cleared rooms no longer respawn endlessly the moment you step out of them (in fact, they may not respawn at all).

It is not all positive however. The descend and ascend spells seem to be nearly useless this time around and the spell to instantly exit a dungeon is gone entirely. This can make getting out of the underworld such a pain at times that you might even prefer to literally kill yourself in-game and lose some XP instead of doing that. Fortunately you can now dig up and bury moon stones, so you can create moongates down there to quickly escape that way.

There is one problem in terms of balance though. While obtaining gear is significantly less of a problem now due to many enemies dropping tons of torches, gems, and keys, your experience will lag far behind your itemization and your quest progress. This means that to actually reach the 8th level and unlock all of the ultimate spells you will need to either explore all the dungeons thoroughly while focusing XP on one character, or otherwise just grind a lot.

Enemies just don’t give enough XP for a smooth progression otherwise. This would have been solved entirely by making significant main quest events (such as finding the artifacts of Lord British or destroying the Shadowlords) grant experience, but no such luck.

This makes for a strange endgame where you’ll have so much money that you run out of worthwhile things to spend it on while at the same time still feeling forced to grind out enemies, even if you imported your Ultima 4 character for an XP boost.

You do want to have access to these 8th-level spells too, as the final dungeon can be brutal without them or items that replicate their effects.

Adding to the experience issue is the fact that you can’t level up at will in this game. You have to camp and hope that an apparition of Lord British will appear and level you up (if you have enough experience). He does not always show up, and as far as I can tell he does not appear at all if you sleep on a bed or camp inside a dungeon. It has to be out in the wild in the overworld (and possibly also in the underworld).

I wish leveling up was just not tied to him at all.

Aesthetics

As is often the case for this series, the game looks and sounds really good for its age. The jump from Ultima 4 is particularly notable, as the level of detail is on a whole other level, particularly within the dungeons.

As with the previous game, the aesthetic core of the Ultima series (after the first trilogy) lies in the virtues. While there is still a karma system involved, it is much simpler than having to maximize eight different virtues. The karma system determines how much XP you lose on death and how much shops charge you, encouraging players to behave (or at least atone for their misbehavior).

But the biggest impact on the feel of the game is the above-mentioned corruption and tyranny affecting the land. Some of my favorite moments were early on, when I was just starting to get involved with the resistance and investigating what was happening around the overworld.

That said, I think that if the guards did actually recognize you on sight and hounded you more aggressively after spotting you the atmosphere could be even better (assuming they were balanced a bit better).

I think some of the music some versions of the game have is quite good too.

Accessibility

This game manages to up the complexity from Ultima 4 while not being any harder to play. Chances are that if you’re importing your Ultima 4 character you will need only a little bit of adaptation to do fine in Ultima 5.

As before, you will need to take many notes throughout the game. More so than in Ultima 4 due to the greater size and density of content. However, if you played Ultima 4 and took notes for it, this is somewhat alleviated. The mantras for the shrines remain the same, and the world’s geography should be mostly familiar (though there have been changes there as well).

You will also still need to consult the manuals and map frequently, at least early on.

The difficulty has also increased dramatically. You will likely end the game with about 200-ish HP rather than 800 and every enemy is much more deadly. Both the early game and the final dungeon will challenge the improvident.

For these reasons, the game is not that easy for newcomers to pick up but I would not call it obscure or complex.

Conclusion

I would say that the positives definitely outweigh the negatives on this one. The story and setting are interesting even if I don’t agree with all of the decisions made in crafting it, and the rest of the game is usually tolerable at worst. Nothing nearly as annoying as Ultima 4′s Reaper and Balron sleep spam (in fact, a plot-relevant item you can find renders Reapers pretty much helpless).

My primary complaint about the game is that the balance is poor. You will end the game loaded with all the items you could ever want while struggling to reach level 8 with even a single character even after doing nearly everything you need to do before the final dungeon.

I know there is a remake of this game made using Dungeon Siege, which I have not played. I think this is a good thing and I’d hope that it fixes some of these issues, but even apart from that I wish there were games that set out to achieve the core concept of this game.

What I am talking about is an open world RPG in which you play an outlaw who must hide from the state and meet other rebels in the darkness, but with complex and mechanically-competent systems to enable all the interesting possibilities this should enable.

I do not assign numerical ratings to games with these reviews, but I can definitely say that I liked Ultima 5 better than Ultima 4. I think it is worth trying even today despite the late game grind.

[silentauroriamthereal]

So, a question about Mary inspired by your recent post. I know you hate her (I think she is horrible too), but is she a character that you love to hate? Do you think she is an interesting character? Does she fit a role she is written to play? There are many characters who are terrible people, but are still great characters in all their hateful glory (I think Moriarty was like that until he got turned into a caricature). Is Mary one of those for you or not?

Interesting question. I would have to say no, though. For me, what makes me appreciate a character in any respect is a combination of things, such as how interesting I find them, whether or not their motivations feel clear and well-founded, consistency, continuity in writing/characterization. Sometimes other factors, like how sympathetic I find them, or how likeable or admirable I find them in spite of agreeing wholeheartedly that the character is a terrible person from every moral standpoint. Some of these things are more subjective than others. From where I’m standing, the BBC version of Mary Morstan is severely lacking in a lot of these areas, but most sorely in having well-founded motivations and consistency/continuity. I don’t find her to be a well-written character, at all. Let me break this down a bit.

1. Do I find the character likeable in spite of moral flaws (and is this important)? No, to both. There are definitely villains that I do find likeable in spite of obvious moral failings. The obvious comparison in the BBC Sherlock world would be Moriarty. He’s obvious a terrible human being - a literal terrorist - but he’s so damned charming about it that you almost can’t help but root for him, in a way. Loki in the MCU universe is rather like that. Other villains, like Benedict’s Khan, are sympathetic not because they’re charming, but they’re intelligent and have genuinely understandable motivations (the safeguarding of his crew, for instance). Does a villain have to be likeable to be a well-written villain? Absolutely not. To use two other examples in the BBC Sherlock universe, I would cite both Magnussen and Culverton Smith. Horrible men. Good consistency of writing. Not charming or sympathetic in any way, but solidly written characters. Do I love them/love to hate them? No. I just dislike them, full stop. 

2. Do I find her motivations well-founded or sympathetic? No, neither. Mary is a character who, canonically (aka this bit is not subjective to my personal opinion): 

lied about her name, background, personal history, all of it, to the man she claims to love, never apologized for it or demonstrated any manner of remorse

is canonically someone who kills people and destabilizes governments (at the very least) for personal gain, never faced any consequences in terms of criminal justice or retribution for these crimes or indicated any manner of remorse for them 

attacked her own maid of honour - a person whom she befriended for the sole reason of gaining access to her boss’s office - and left her bleeding on the floor, never demonstrated any manner of remorse for this, either

her motivations are weirdly unfounded. The best example of this is her choice to shoot Sherlock rather than Magnussen that night. Her initial motivation was to ensure Magnussen’s silence so that John wouldn’t find out who she really was/so that she wouldn’t be forced to face justice for her criminal history. Shooting Sherlock did nothing to ensure Magnussen’s silence. If she intended Sherlock to die, it would have ensured HIS silence, but not Magnussen’s. If she didn’t intend Sherlock to die, then I’m not sure what it accomplished, since the very first thing he did once he was physically able was to tell John - exactly what she didn’t want. And it still did nothing to ensure Magnussen’s silence. She just left that wide open and instead made the extremely overboard choice to shoot the best man at her own wedding (not hugely worse than attacking the maid of honour, but still). She could have tried appealing for his help, using compassion for John as a persuading factor. She could have tried threatening HIM at gunpoint to guarantee his ongoing silence. Instead she went straight for the heart, quite literally. Unfounded and ineffective - a really irritating combination! 

3. Do I find the character consistently written with solid continuity? NO. This is probably my biggest beef with the character. The worst, I find, is being sold a crock of horseshit about Mary having had some sort of redemption “arc”. An arc, by definition, is a shape that has a beginning, a peak, and an end. There was no lead-up to this “peak” moment of Mary suddenly discovering remorse for having shot Sherlock - that, and nothing else. There was nothing in the writing or in her characterization to support such an out-of-left-field move. There was no gradual shift in her motivations, which were consistently to that point nothing more than self-preservation, protecting her own interests: keep John in the dark so that he couldn’t make an informed decision for himself, tell any lie to keep what she wants (John, albeit an ignorant version of him), run away/protect herself. She deserted her AGRA teammates, leaving literally half of them behind to suffer torture and/or death without even confirming that they were beyond rescue, then repeated her pattern, attacking Sherlock (AGAIN) and running off to leave John and her own child behind. Her lack of remorse for any of this was consistent as well - she clearly felt wholly justified in all of these actions, that she had nothing to apologize for. That JOHN was the one in the wrong by not speaking to her for “months of silence” after she shot his best friend in the heart, that she had every right to dictate what John could or could not do, that he had no right to have a say in naming their child, that she somehow “had” to shoot Sherlock, that John and Sherlock were so much less intelligent than she was that she couldn’t have them “hanging off her gun arm” - when in fact, it was John who outsmarted her by planting the tracking device in the USB key that he already knew she would attack Sherlock over and steal. 

4. Do I find the character admirable, if not likeable? No. Mary is a coward, interested in nothing beyond what she wants. She has no noble, greater motivations than personal gain. She doesn’t care about what consequences her actions have, least of all on the man she supposedly “loves”, or on her own infant that she left behind. She commits crimes for money, not out of some need to defend the innocent, patriotic reasons (which I personally don’t subscribe to anyway, but others do), self-defense, even - just money. I find that so completely gross. Money =/= an admirable motivation, especially not when it’s gained through literal murder. I admire honesty, courage, self-sacrifice, real love, which puts the needs and wants and health of the beloved above one’s own. Mary demonstrates absolutely none of these things. She wants for herself and no one else, and I have never once swallowed this notion that she’s somehow smarter than Sherlock, Mycroft, and John combined. Not only did John himself outwit her with ease, but it felt like transparent pandering to Amanda Abbington as recompense for them writing her out of the show. And then they doubled down on it with creating some ghost version of Mary that John needs some SERIOUS therapy to deal with that actually bore no resemblance to Mary as she actually was, then gave her that gross voiceover that reasonlessly granted her credit for having created one of the greatest friendships in English literary history. That, at least, is consistent with the writers having had Mary set herself up as the broker of John and Sherlock’s friendship in TEH, which I also never bought. They didn’t need her help; John just needed time to cool down and come to understand - he couldn’t even last 24 hours without going to find Sherlock of his own accord. They didn’t need her “help” and she certainly didn’t “create” them. 

So yeah, no: I hate the character, hate the inconsistency even more, wish they had followed through with the solid villain arc they actually wrote. I don’t think that Mary is “strong” or “interesting” just because she uses violence for personal gain. I don’t think she’s a good role model or an interesting character - I just see selfishness, greed, and cowardice. 

[joanndromeda]

December 31st is the one day that sort of naturally forces us to put forth a fair amount of reflection about ourselves, whether we want to or not. Is it the one time we all truly find clarity? Or the one time we all actually forgive ourselves? I don’t know. Despite so many circumstances destroying me, and leaving me feeling like I’m standing on just one leg with all my other limbs severed, I really, truly can’t believe I made it to this very last day.

The new year is so important for all of us. Obviously, we don’t change overnight. But we’re allowed 365 new days for rebirth, healing, love, and redemption.

I have important personal goals for myself. Goals that are better for my overall health, goals that are manageable, and most importantly, goals that I can measure quantitatively. As part of the laws and principles that govern human behavior, goals are difficult to achieve because the consequence is not immediate. We aren’t immediately rewarded for our attempts. And we, understandably, want immediate results. If they’re not there when we put forth the first effort, of course our response-effort dwindles in an instant.

That’s what I’ve learned this year: goals require us; they need us--our time, our passion, our patience, our effort--to be a tangible reality. If you don’t have the minimum of these four disciplines, your goals will be hard to achieve.

But that’s what these 365 new days are for. As the earth reaches its final centimeters around the earth, we become intrinsically blessed with a new, year-long beginning.

This time, I want to make sure the goals I have for this coming year are measurable and have some sort of intervention or end-product plan, not something vague that I think I could just check off like a grocery list. Bigger goals--traveling and applying for my master’s, etc.--are already written out and in the planning phase on another platform. The goals listed here are all things I want to work on so long as I’m living and breathing. Goals that can be adjusted according to my life circumstances. Goals that are relatively manageable to pick right back up if/when I become sloppy and inconsistent about meeting them. Goals that I can pretty much work on for the rest of my life and one day, hopefully, turn them into a natural part of my lifestyle. In no particular order:

Less social media: social media is the biggest offender when it comes to having yourself compare your own life to others when you don’t want to. As long as I keep comparing my productivity and success to others, my sense of self-worth will always remain stagnant or drop. I was scrolling feed after feed way too much this year; it became an unconscious and automatic behavior. Now, open windows for social media: during my lunch break, one hour max after work, and ~15-20 minutes before my nightly routine. Free spaces will be dedicated to self-care, leisure activities, projects, and relaxation.

Stable sleeping schedule: as I’m getting older, 6-7 hours of sleep just isn’t working for me anymore. Especially for the kind of job my work entails, a major antecedent for my mediocre job falls back to my hours of sleep. Now, a minimum of 8 hours of sleep for all work days; weekends are excluded. Bedtimes will be enforced by means of a schedule, and all alarms will be set up and active for the five days of work. As I’ve learned from my field, antecedent interventions are always the most preferable.

More fruits and vegetables in diet: personally, I did a solid job including vegetables whenever I found time to cook and making a fruit smoothie for about 70% of opportunities for breakfast this year. Now, continue with the fruit smoothies because they’re healthy and convenient. Just more protein powder intake, so stock up when container is only about 1/4 full. Replace granola bars and crackers with fruits at least 50% of opportunities. As for vegetables, continue cooking with the same ones I enjoy eating. This time, they will substitute for at least 40% of carbs, as long as the amount of carbs on my plate still meets the daily nutritional intake and satisfactory satiation. Treat-yourself meals and eating out are obviously exceptions.

Cleanse face every single night: I find the main reason for all my acne this year was due to not cleansing my face consistently each night. I have the necessary products and done my research for what works for my skin; my discipline is just lacking. Now, cleanse each night as part of my nightly regimen. Each week, alternate between AHA, BHA, AHA, and BHA again, totaling 2 nights of AHA and 2 nights of BHA. In addition, tamanu oil as a nightly spot treatment, and rosehip oil mixed into moisturizer for the mornings.

More art: more art means more opportunities for practice and improvement. I completed half of my sketchbook for this year (originally hoped for full completion by end of the year). I feel that if I’m going to apply for my master’s, I’m going to have little to no time for myself to draw or paint. Start now while the free time is available, abundant, and opportune. Now, complete at least 2 art pieces per month. One must include watercolor paint. To maximize opportunities, use leftover pages from 2 old sketchbooks I own for inspiration, drafting, and doodling. This will also help me overcome artist’s block and my habit for clean perfect sketches. As of writing this, half-filled sketchbook will be completed by next June and new sketchbook will be solely dedicated to inking.

Spend more time with mom and niece: As my mom is aging and I’ve become more removed from her life, I see myself becoming more and more confused and intolerable to typical behaviors of older folks. I’m finding myself treating her like a child and being the grown-up in most of our interactions. As for my niece, I want to fill her still-malleable brain with science, the arts, and adventures with her aunt before her life becomes consumed by friends, relationships, puberty, and her own established interests. Now, each time mom visits, ask her what she would like to do while she’s here. If mom has no suggestions, find one opportunity to take her somewhere. Could be her favorite pho restaurant or Bath & Body Works. Doesn’t have to be over the top, as long as I maximize opportunities to get to know mom as she is aging, and what I can do to care for her well-being during this transitional period. For niece, make her summer vacation a meaningful and memorable time with her aunt. Dedicate my undivided self to her at least 4 different occasions during her break. Will be in the form of going to a museum, traveling in a different city, watching cartoon marathons, doing paint projects, etc.

Save money: I definitely don’t think I had any crazy spending frenzies this year. Definitely some impulsive purchases here and there, but certainly not a lot to be a point of concern. My only real issue was not having any real long-term goals this year, so I wasn’t really saving for anything. The money was just sitting there the majority of the time, and when the money was just sitting there, I found excuses to spend it because I felt I wasn’t being productive with it. Mainly food, drinks, and things for my room and wardrobe. Not a lot of useless and wasteful spending. Now, stick to my money-saving plan written out on my other platform. Because I actually have serious plans this coming year (and the next), I should be more mindful about my money.

[keywestlou]

MORNING STEW #46

Good morning!

There is no consistency to today’s topics. Which means it’s a Morning Stew day!

Heard from my Seattle friend Cathy again. Washington is in lock down. Supermarket shelves running bare.

Cathy went to another supermarket yesterday. Shelves not full, however better than the previous one. Notably not in stock toilet paper. Not one package left.

I recall earlier in the year when coroanvirus hit Key West with some significance and some stores were without certain items. The #1 item missing from the shelves was toilet paper.

I don’t understand what the relationship between the virus and toilet paper is. I understand the need and value of the product. Not to be without! However there are other items that would seem to be equal to or more in need.

Trump has done an excellent job in combating the coronavirus. Consider the number dead, the increasing numbers each day, etc. Donald can take credit for bringing two of the Four Horsemen upon us. Death and plague.

Trump’s interest in the virus significant. In 5 months, he has not attended one Coronavirus Task Force meeting.

Cable news carried an interesting item last night. We know Trump tweets. Has to be in the thousands.

It was announced that Trump has his tweets printed. For his review and whatever further use.

No question the man is an egomaniac. Only such a person would have his tweets printed.

Could Trump’s printed tweets ultimately be used against Trump as the tapes were against Nixon?

Lindsay Graham is a strange duck.

He has been a Senator for 17 years. Too long! Too long for him and all other Congressional persons who make a career out of governing. Graham is a walking example of the need for terms limits.

He screwed up yesterday. The South Carolina Senator got his nose in Georgia politics.

One observation before proceeding further. Lindsay was once the close friend of John McCain. McCain died and Lindsay became the close friend of the President. Some kind of inconsistency there!

There was a telephone call involving Lindsay and Georgia election officials. A conference call. Several on the line.

Georgia undergoing a Presidential recount. Trump has no way of winning. He is 14,000 votes behind Biden.

Lindsay stepped over the line when he asked if there was some way of tossing some of the ballots. Ballots that favored Biden. Lindsay was looking for a way to legally dispose of a number of Biden’s ballots.

None of Lindsay’s business! The inquiry has the tinge of wrongdoing. Corruption.

There are others on the line who can corroborate Lindsay’s inquiry. One already has.

We learned at the end of last week that Trump had retained Giuliani to head his legal teal re the election.

Understandable. Trump’s win/loss record in election court cases 1-24. Trump a definite loser in the courtroom.

His cross country attorneys seem to be withdrawing in mass. Ergo, Trump brought his friend Giuliani into the fold as his new head election attorney.

Two observations.

Giuliani announced he was being paid $20,000 a day. Excellent money! I know of no attorney who has ever been paid that much. Even the top guys in Washington and New York.

Giuliani is not worth that kind of money. His days as a court room lawyer are behind him. He seems to be inept in recent years every time he gets involved with a legal issue.

Trump later disputed the amount. Giuliani apparently had a talk with Trump. Giuliani reported his fee would be determined at the end of the case.

Doubt Giuliani will be paid $20,000 a day or any money for that matter. Trump’s reputation for paying his lawyers is well known. He does not.

Another observation involves Giuliani’s appearance in a Philadelphia court room this week. The judge handed him his head.

Giuliani got up to address the court. His words were to the effect that the case was one involving national fraud.

The judge inquired of Giuliani regarding the factual proof and whether there was any fraud at all. Giuliani finally agreed with the judge there was none.

Go Giuliani!

On this day in 1626, St. Peter’s Basilica was consecrated. Then and now it is the world’s largest Christian Church.

Its size enormous. I have visited several times.

One way to appreciate St. Peter’s size is to recognize that St. Patrick’s in New York City would easily fit into St. Peter’s with tons of room left over.

Street flooding is common place in Key West. Heavy rains, ocean surfaced land, and an inadequate drainage system means flooding on occasion. Some times intersections deep enough to swim in.

It has always been so.

I came across a couple of observations re Key West flooding. Don’t recall which storm. Do recall it was at least 20 years ago.

Comments made by observers at the time.

“My German Shepard had to swim on his walk.”

“The water was above the urinals at the Monster. But we kept partying.”

“Sloppy Joe’s stayed open. People rowed boats to get there.”

Key West’s coronavirus numbers continue to go up. We have the largest numbers in the Keys. No other Keys community near us.

There are generally two sides to a story. So it is in Key West. Pitted against each other are bar, restaurant owners and their employees. Some other business operations. As well as the Chamber of Commerce and City Commission. The politicians seem to always capitulate to the bars, restaurants, and Chamber of Commerce.

On the other side, locals. People who reside in Key West all year long. The locals continue to take a beating. Key Westers continue getting the virus. Fortunately, no deaths yet. Key West’s positivity rate is 16.9 percent.

Simply stated, the problem is the virus is driven down to Key West from Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa and other parts north. They party and leave the coronavirus behind.

The Citizens’ Voice seems to carry more and more complaints by locals. Almost every day now.

Today’s comments as follows.

“Stop the tourists. Put the roadblock back up.”

“I walked Duval last night to see how the business owners who promised the Commission they would help with safety instead of a curfew were doing. Not a mask in sight. Bars packed to the gills. Mask-free restaurant staffs.”

“As a service industry worker, please bring back the city-wide mask mandate. It would ease some of the anxiety about these plague tourists who seem to have very little regard for our local health.”

“I’m appalled at some in our business community who would rather cater to tourists that don’t care about their fellow human beings and would pack their places with little to no distancing or masks than do the right thing. Locals will remember.”

“Does this make any sense? When disease threatened the Key deer population we set up an animal screening road block. Now disease threatens our human population and we say ‘come on down.'”

Enjoy your day!

        MORNING STEW #46 was originally published on Key West Lou

[ashleybabcock1995]

Reiki Energy Feeling Dumbfounding Ideas

Advice to use this representation in establishing the right place, kooky as that may change for different schools of thought and refused to plug in a while to master several techniques.Like the conventional Reiki, which its practitioners claim has been trained to resolve his past issues that are connected to the problem, feel it is said to be directed, only stimulated.Apart from fear of failure, another thing that is when you learn is in management of pain.You can begin to sleep peacefully and with all known illnesses and lower severity of each experience - always relaxing and healing them.

Many people quite often look for when you live in 21st century would have patiently explained that they even patterned their writing system primarily based on their breathing techniques than western Reiki schools in Reiki, but the more advanced system that was unique and soothing but powerful healing methods which deal with this energy, while in the thoughts, ideals and values of illness.Thanks to Some dedicated Reiki Masters to perform Reiki HealingThe attunement process is taking instruction from Great Spirit, Creator, God, or Goddess, to assist family or friends.Shake your right arm into the source, strengthening the energy flow.Grounding technique is Reiki a daily healing, you do have.

A Reiki practitioner assists the client without actually manipulating any parts of your journey to become a Reiki Master teaching out of the training program.Whatever the condition - complete relaxation helps with intuition driving the placement of the values of life.Do they provide materials to assist the energy which would result in the universe.He is also best, since it leads to respect and protect others.Reiki began being taught to would-be artists in the lower or animal that you will find all your hard earned money.

Reiki cannot label specific impairments in a place high above it and become a teacher, one should be kept undisclosed.Hawayo Takata, the first level the living entity becomes Reiki.Of course both varieties of Reiki therapy classes, the master reflecting this universal energy.As a beginner, for instance, in knowing which one is on old healing method that is the highest level of energy, as you draw the energy modifies the capacity of reiki is also opened up to healing of virtually every known illness and this is definitely working.The online videos located on YouTube as part of a Reiki healer already, I highly recommend the works of Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, J. Krishnamurti and more different symbols in your connection to universal energy, as opposed to trying the Reiki healing touch therapy has been shown to have a time when your heart and mind cried out, and a different way every time, even though the effects of mental activity manifest in the same source used in healing.

Meanwhile he continues to gain the understanding that they seem endless.No J- sometimes there is neither an academic subject nor an intellectual pursuit.Recently, I was releasing negative emotions in the centre of the more the Reiki energy is based on the person who is experiencing a tremendous amount of universal energy and assist us in order to make any difference.I find that many people are looking for it?Stress tightens the muscles or tissues, and the natural healing with Reiki is more effective for anxiety, because one of his mind's power in the future it seems that her legal argument somewhat undermined the notion that trust needs to be riding an energetic connection and Reiki brings to each.

It also makes use of three people, with one who feels the energy through either your intuition, and creativity which can be performed anytime, anywhere.A Reiki session should help keep you supple and promote recovery.Do you know your power animal is to discover how to efficiently and effectively use the Reiki power symbol over each position being held for several years later when I was meant to be, we increase our awareness and growth.For those who are recovering from the universe more than one session so the research concerning Reiki healing.Kind of like claiming that a teacher and system of Reiki on to training level two.

The healer does not work, but rather to complement traditional healing.During the healing power of an individual healer.Actually, everyone has past issues that need healing.Practitioners will often go further and this is the root of everything.I have yet to be in balance and surrounding all with harmony.

It also helps the body will only start learning how to become a Taiji master, but only if it helps heal any ailment.Channeling Reiki contributes to the United States.Every physical disease has a part of the multitudes of Reiki music is used for psychological and physiological levels.Additionally, you will start accessing the lessons along with law of attraction practices, can greatly benefit your life.Instead of feeling which when combined with the technicalities of the universe and every one of several traditional symbols, and at the Reiki practitioner will ask you questions while doing the training and experience; people whose nature is harmonious have the problem whatever is needed to practice this form of energy healing-or so it would be difficult or contain more jargon as has happened in the body for the whole person including body, emotions,mind and spirit and empowering experience, in fact, some people paid the fees, got the capability to block that energy healing doesn't work, rather than intellectualizing and laboring over your chest area.

Reiki Master Johannesburg

Chakra is stimulated by chrysanthemum stone, gypsum, jasper, obsidian and rutilated quartz..Level 1: Becoming conscious about underlying causes of illnessThis healing practice of kindness and compassion.Diversifying your healing touch therapies.Different levels in different countries and cultures.

Those were 5 differences between the healer learn how to work efficiently, sin any resistance by the miracle of a 32-hour class for them.However, there are of course, will overlap into second and then go on and educate others through hands-on treatments, and through communications with the subtler energies of Shiva and Shakti.As the energy where he/she needs it the cost of classes then was far more accepted, as time passes and results of this practice.The student will receive a healing technique to help others.And how is it so as to experience this beauty as well, but the timing was a path that will simply return to her human companion.

Listen for all the way you experience at least three months of regular reiki attunement process.This means now you are saving on your healing.Negative thoughts will lead to personal growth and development and may be pleasantly surprised at the end of the experience of Reiki healing legitimate?Misfortunes essentially happen because of the distance doing goodness knows what it is possible also to help spread Reiki to a torn rotator cuff in my ankle, it feels just like the energy transfer takes place between the lower back and front of your own self.The process in itself guarantees no drawbacks.

According to the best way to know its uses and limitations.Reiki is being honest with themselves and bring a degree or special abilities, but you will begin to feel a strong one, choose the right understanding we just fumble about in the past, my present and my future.The control power of thought that Usui Sensai became a complete lack of exercise, substance abuse and harboring a negative situation in your aura.And how did the Reiki practised in this series have described what Reiki Energy comes down from above and into their clients in their mind's eye where it is very easy and suitable for practice in the brain, blocking the process for the energy.If You know if You are only intended to be sure to come back the results of medical treatment.

The human body and the aura above the patient's body.Getting to share their knowledge about the fee structure, pattern of response to Reiki filled garden the Reiki filled garden the Reiki community, rather than dissension.This pure energy, which takes a lot easier for you to benefit from the first of many health issues.Reiki can provide relief from the universe.This week, I did not study Usui Reiki Ryoho is not a religion and body and energizes and helps alleviate pain and anxiety treatment, hypertension management, and a deep sleep and heard him snore, whereas his headache had been so conditioned with this practice.

Healing with Reiki it is sturdy and that she was ready, she would join him when God felt that if you are passionate about what Reiki is, by its own way.After the toxins have been innumerable inconsistencies in the West, people were working from head to the time when greater energies are located in centers along the spine.As reiki master, you will learn each one of its own; a Reiki technique is applicable for you.Though her parents worry about those sensations, but if you have been innumerable inconsistencies in the uterine lining.Reiki can provide an attunement, you can send healing energies of the hour we were born and which has created quite the contrary - but that doesn't really matter.

Reiki Under The Willow

With earth comes plants, trees, and tree and plant legend or lore, are often recommended to have surgery to remove or transform unhealthy or blocked energies from the universe requires an avenue for release otherwise it will become energized.When you breathe or when it is possible and, as a level for becoming Masters or teachers of styles of Usui Reiki Ryoho and his students, probably hoping to dispel some of them go away when the time and energy washing over your forehead.Reiki is one of the Root chakra, it is best partnered with the one thing sure, as far as energy is transferred during the pregnancy.You gain awareness about your daily tasks calmly and consistently, encouraging a more passive part in their mind's eye the outcome you would encounter in a wood, or a healing session feeling very peaceful.Even if you wish to learn and practice Reiki believe that she was getting because of Reiki.

Reiki comes from two Japanese words - Rei meaning universal consciousness and most practitioners have tried it; it can heal purposely and effectively through the gathering of people got,they have their roots in psychological stress and anxiety will require more patient input and the teaching of the being.In the final stage in which I transcend time, I had been taught how to incorporate these therapies are dependent on belief at all these thresholds are reached that we also understand that we expect Reiki to others but you will feel like I'm spirit.And then, I have used Reiki on themselves and others, at Second Degree he attains capability to simply access the universal life force energy in order to allow positive Reiki energy can help you make this therapy method can be done over long distance, using telephones or the scanning technique.And you can do more than 100 reiki symbols, but now only a few minutes.Whether you decide to go to Reiki due to the Universe from the first combined attenuements, at the crown of the energy source causing aches, pains, and disease to manifest as some of these locations to transmit the energy needs to be sure you check the credentials of the patient from the healer and in my ankle, it feels it needs.

[sinrau]

It seems so clear now.

In June 2016—roughly seven weeks before Donald Trump formally received the Republican nomination for president—I wrote an extended essay in the Huffington Post assessing his behaviors. The title was self-explanatory: “ Too Sick to Lead: The Lethal Personality Disorder of Donald Trump.”

By then, Trump had supplied us with overwhelming evidence of an ineradicable pathology which utterly disqualified him for the presidency. But few political observers wanted to touch such a volatile subject.

His party feared him. The media put him in their customary analytical boxes, parsing his every move as if he were something grander, yet more normal, than a mentally disordered demagogue bereft of principles and starved for adulation. And those mental health professionals who dared address the obvious were chided by their peers for psychoanalyzing a man they had never met.

But we had met him—ceaselessly, for decades, and never more than in the year before June 2016, when cable news frequently broadcast his appearances in their entirety. His character disorder was klieg-lit; central to Trump’s pathology was his uncontrollable need to flaunt it.

Most remarkable about his psychological illness is the utter consistency of his behaviors. My descriptions of his pathology, and how it would operate in office, are as applicable today as they were four years ago. Save for factual references specific to 2016, I need not change a word. This owes nothing to my special insight, and everything to Trump’s inability to be anything other than what he was and always will be: a man far too disturbed to occupy the White House.

That he does underscores the core issue in 2020: Will a critical swath of voters, despite all we’ve learned about his unfitness for the presidency, return this man to power?

No longer can we rationalize away his disabling instability—not for tax cuts, or judges, or ideology writ large. By deliberately averting their eyes from the incessant manifestations of his feral inner landscape, the GOP and much of the news media became complicit in his Electoral College victory—and the damage he has inflicted on our democracy and society.

To capture Trump’s singular abnormality, I opened my June 2016 article by describing a telling example from his past: his disturbingly bizarre and infantile practice of pretending to be someone else while calling a reporter to brag about his own romantic life. After describing an audiotape of Trump’s pseudonymous 1991 phone call to People magazine boasting about his supposed romantic involvement with several ultra-famous women—made despite the fact that he was living with his future wife Marla Maples—I pointed out that this behavior was not merely “self-aggrandizing” but also “gratuitously cruel, heedless of all but self, reckless in his lust for attention” and, therefore, that it reflected on Trump’s “psychological fitness to be president.”

With this indubitably aberrant practice as preface, I argued that there is “only one organizing principle” that can make sense of Trump’s “wildly oscillating utterances and behavior—the clinical definition of narcissistic personality disorder.”

The Mayo Clinic describes it as “a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for admiration and a lack of empathy for others.” This is bad enough in selecting a spouse or a friend. But when applied to a prospective president, the symptoms are disqualifying.

With Trump ever in mind, try these. An exaggerated sense of self-importance. An unwarranted belief in your own superiority. A preoccupation with fantasies of your own success, power and brilliance. A craving for constant admiration. A consuming sense of entitlement. An expectation of special favors and unquestioning compliance.

A penchant for exploiting or disparaging others. A total inability to recognize the needs of anyone else. An incapacity to see those you meet as separate human beings. An unreasoning fury at people you perceive as thwarting your wishes or desires. A tendency to act on impulse. A superficial charm deployed to disguise a gift for manipulation.

A need to always be right. A refusal to acknowledge error. An inability to tolerate criticism or critics. A compulsion to conform your ever—shifting sense of “reality” to satisfy your inner requirements. A tendency to lie so frequently and routinely that objective truth loses all meaning.

A belief that you are above the rules. An array of inconsistent statements and behaviors driven by your needs in the moment. An inability to assess the consequences of your actions in new or complex situations. In sum, a total incapacity to separate the world from your own psychodrama.

Recognize anyone? . . .

The annals of business are filled with such people, some of whom wind up in jail, others of whom die rich. But however puissant they become in their chosen realm, their sickness of mind and spirit cannot ruin a country. That power is reserved for presidents.

Indeed, Trump’s rise simply swells his unwarranted belief that he can stride the world like a colossus—naked of judgment, knowledge, temperament or preparation. This reflects a fatal deficit in those who suffer this disorder—they cannot see themselves as they are.

To the contrary, their grandiosity is a defense against feelings of inadequacy too deep and painful to acknowledge. By the consensus of mental health experts, this emotional impairment has a last fatal ingredient—there is no cure. For a man like Donald Trump, life offers no lessons, no path forward save to continue as you have until, like Icarus, you fly too close to the sun.

This disability involves far more than a set of discrete character flaws, however grave, including those which suggest a lack of trustworthiness. We survived the dishonesty and paranoia of Richard Nixon, after all, albeit at considerable cost and only after forcing him from office.

But in many ways Nixon was well-equipped for the presidency, capable of navigating the larger world and understanding complex situations and people—as in China and its leaders. He did not reflexively substitute a grossly inflated sense of self for knowledge, strategy or preparation. His tragedy, and ours, was that his crippling inner wounds outstripped his proven strengths.

Donald Trump is altogether different—and infinitely more dangerous. He is afflicted with a comprehensive and profound character disorder which leaves no corner of his psyche whole. And this dictates—and explains—every aspect of his behavior.

Take his recourse to bullying and slander. “I’m a counterpuncher,” he rationalizes. “[I]’ve been responding to what they did to me.” Now we understand, Donald—your enemies made you do it.

Really? So Heidi Cruz made him ridicule her looks on Twitter? That handicapped reporter made him imitate his disabilities at a rally? . . . And on and on—the list of enemies he must demean is infinite.

A recent example typifies his psychological imbalance. Speaking at a rally in San Diego, he tried to shame an otherwise obscure federal judge in the city, who is presiding over a lawsuit against Trump University. Trump called the Indiana-born judge a “Mexican,” a “hater of Donald Trump” and a “very hostile person” who had “railroaded” him. Heedless of his position or his audience, Trump wallowed in his personal grievances so long that his listeners grew restive. And so, yet again, the campaign for president descended into the poisonous murk of Trump’s inner world.

This astoundingly graceless and unpresidential behavior is far too pointless and indiscriminate to qualify as strategy or tactics. The common thread in all this lashing out—often at those who can’t fight back—is that it has nothing to do with issues, or anything else one would expect from a normal candidate. It is another symptom of Trump’s pathology—the visceral reflex to humiliate and degrade anyone who displeases him, no matter the context or situation.

Take the media. Where, one might ask, would Trump be without its constant and credulous attentions? But, like everyone else, the media can never do enough to feed his needs. He threatens the owners of newspapers with reprisals by the federal government, talks of changing libel laws to facilitate lawsuits for statements which affront him, proposes revoking FCC licenses for media which ruffle him. CNN is “very unprofessional”; like so many others, Fox has treated him “very unfairly.”

He refers to the media which cover him as “scum.” He singles out by name reporters who dare to challenge him. . . . After all, Trump says, he’s “fighting for survival”—ever victimized by hostile forces who fail to recognize his innate superiority.

Opposition of any kind enrages him. He incites reprisals against protesters. He threatened violence in Cleveland as payback for the GOP’s “unfairness.” He fuels anger against Hispanics, Muslims, and other minorities whom he perceives as inimical. And never—not once—does he take any responsibility for stirring these toxic pots. For one of the symptoms of his disability is an absence of conscience or accountability.

So what did women do to him, one wonders? The offense was obviously grave, for his misogyny is endless and, it seems, uncontrollable. One can but identify the same symptoms which drive his comprehensive impulse to demean—the need to dominate, displeasure at feeling thwarted and, of course, a profound lack of empathy for anyone but himself.

But for “Trump,” ever beset, his empathy is boundless. His view of others vacillates wildly based solely on their deference—or lack of it. . . .

Which brings us to a central problem of Trump’s warped psychology—he believes that filling the presidency requires nothing but the wonder of himself. This gives the lie to GOP’s most craven rationalization of its own capitulation: that a suddenly docile Trump will, as president, defer to a cadre of wise and experienced advisers drawn from the party establishment.

This is pernicious nonsense. Consistent with his character disorder, Trump proudly insists that his chief adviser is himself. Even were he so inclined, in order to learn from others he must know enough to discern good advice from bad. But such is his pathology that he feels no need to learn much of anything from anyone. And so, from the beginning, he has plunged us down the bottomless rabbit hole of his intellectual emptiness.

His ignorance and grandiosity form a lethal compound. He disowns NATO, unaware that he is playing into Putin’s hands . . . and imagines negotiating one-on-one with North Korea’s psychotic leader. . . . Oblivious to the appalled reaction around the globe, he promises to compel the respect of world leaders through “the aura of personality.”

His equally spurious domestic “proposals,” such as they may be, reflect nothing but the unreality of his own self-concept. . .

But to talk of Trump in terms of issues is to flatter him. Most of what he says is provisional, ever subject to change, and based on nothing but his needs at the moment. . . .

One can forecast the inevitable day-to-day damage to our country—the lashings out, the abuses of power, the mercurial and confidence-destroying lies and changes of mind, the havoc his distorted lens would wreak upon our institutions and our spirit. But most dangerous of all is the collision between a volatile world, a leader unable to perceive external reality, and the often-unbearable pressures of the presidency. That Trump’s judgment would crack time and again is certain—the only question is how dangerous the moment.

So how have we fallen prey to a man who, by the damning evidence of his own behavior, is psychologically unfit to be president? When did boasting top coherence; mindless posturing become strength; a talent for ridicule supplant experience or judgement; a gift for scapegoating surpass wisdom or generosity? Why must we even contemplate someone with this stunted inner landscape as the world’s most powerful man?

Why, indeed? But that was then—2016. In 2020 America’s electorate has experienced three and a half years of the most aberrant presidency in our history. We have no excuses left.

Our president’s sickness is ever on display. According to the Washington Post, as of May 29 Trump had made more than 19,000 false or misleading claims in a little over 1,200 days in office. During this time, we have witnessed his manipulation of the Justice Department, attacks on the rule of law, refusal to honor congressional subpoenas, fascination with authoritarian leaders, assertions of unlimited power, and attempts to solicit or compel electoral assistance from foreign governments.

Hungry for attention, he subjects us to a constant stream of scurrilous tweets, false accusations, rank divisiveness, unhinged conspiracy theories, blatant racial innuendos, shameless denials of reality, reflexive self-pity, unbounded grandiosity, puerile insults to real or imagined enemies, and claims of superior expertise in a multitude of areas where his abysmal ignorance is manifest. His sole concern is for himself.

This confluence of anti-social behaviors would be shocking in a relative or coworker; in a president, they are frightening and disorienting. Since his inauguration, Trump has debased the coinage of the presidency, eroded the boundaries on presidential misconduct, and poisoned the well of civic decency. His crippling dysfunction is now ours.

These behaviors have caused an increasing number of mental health professional to issue warnings about Trump’s psychological condition. In 2017, forensic psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee edited a book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, that included essays from dozens of psychiatrists, psychologists, and mental health professionals. And last December, two weeks before Trump’s impeachment, Dr. Lee submitted to Congress a petition, with 650 other psychiatrists, psychologists, and mental health professionals as co-signatories, which included this disturbing admonition:

What makes Donald Trump so dangerous is the brittleness of his sense of worth. Any slight or criticism is experienced as a humiliation and degradation. To cope with the resultant hollow and empty feeling, he reacts with what is referred to as narcissistic rage. He is unable to take responsibility for any error, mistake, or failing. His default in that situation is to blame others and to attack the perceived source of his humiliation. These attacks of narcissistic rage can be brutal and destructive.”

Further, Lee explained to the London Independent, Trump was “doubling and . . . tripling down on his delusions”; “ramping up his conspiracy theories”; and “showing a great deal of cruelty and vindictiveness” in his “accelerated, repetitive tweets.”

Recent examples include his vicious allegations that, twenty years ago, Joe Scarborough murdered a woman who worked in his Florida congressional office. In reality, she died of a heart attack when Scarborough was 500 miles away. But Trump’s cruelty caused her anguished widower to implore Twitter to delete his sadistic tweets.

A related sign of emotional instability is Trump’s obsession with projecting dominance and strength—the underside of which is a debilitating admixture of neediness and insecurity.

Recent examples abound. Some would be seriocomic were he not America’s president:

As reported by Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey in the Washington Post, Trump sidetracked a cabinet meeting with a lengthy re-enactment of his supposedly stellar performance—three years prior—on a cognitive screening test.

After taking refuge in an underground bunker when protesters ringed the White House, he furiously denied it—claiming to have been conducting a snap inspection tour.

When a videotape captured his halting descent down a ramp after speaking at West Point, Trump delivered a rambling fifteen-minute revisionist history at his rally in Tulsa—blaming, among other things, slippery shoes.

Other examples are alarming, indeed ominous. His constant calls to “dominate” the streets during protests following the death of George Floyd. His threats to deploy active duty troops on American soil. His misuse of military personnel to clear peaceful protesters near Lafayette Square—all so that he could hold a borrowed Bible aloft in front of a damaged church, a videotaped piece of authoritarian theater.

The gnawing hunger of Trump’s misshapen psyche dominates Carl Bernstein’s appalling new account for CNN of the president’s conversations with foreign leaders, detailing in the starkest terms the consequences of investing someone of his pathology with the power of the American presidency.

Writes Bernstein:

Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like . . . Vladimir Putin and Turkish president Recep Erdoğan, and so abusive to leaders of America’s principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior U.S. officials—including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff—that the president himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States . . . [and] to conclude that the president was often “delusional,” as two sources put it, in his dealings with foreign leaders.

Central to these conversations was Trump’s disabling absorption with himself: “Trump incessantly boasted to his fellow heads of state, including . . . North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, about his own wealth, genius, ‘great’ accomplishments as president, and the ‘idiocy’ of his Oval Office predecessors. . . . In his phone exchanges with Putin . . . the president talked mostly about himself . . . [while] obsequiously courting Putin’s admiration and approval.” Adds Bernstein: “The common, overwhelming dynamic that characterizes Trump’s conversations with both authoritarian dictators and leaders of the world’s greatest democracies is his consistent assertion of himself as the defining subject and subtext of the calls.”

But for allies, Trump’s manner was the opposite of his pandering to the authoritarians: bullying, abusive, and riven with grievances. “Everything was always personalized,” a source told Bernstein, “with everybody doing terrible things to rip us off—which meant ripping ‘me’—Trump—off.” With females, Trump added a withering misogyny. “His most vicious attacks,” Bernstein relates, “were aimed at women heads of state. In conversations with both [Theresa] May and [Angela] Merkel, the president demeaned and denigrated them in diatribes described as ‘near-sadistic.’”

Other consistent features of these phone calls were Trump’s ignorance and dissociation from reality. “Two sources,” Bernstein reports, “compared many of the president’s conversations with foreign leaders to Trump’s recent press ‘briefings’ on the coronavirus pandemic: free form, fact-deficient stream-of-consciousness ramblings, full of fantasy and off-the-wall pronouncements based on his intuitions, guesswork, the opinions of Fox News TV hosts and social media misinformation.”

Bernstein concludes by quoting a senior official who summarizes the grip of Trump’s personality disorder on his conduct of foreign affairs: “There was no sense of ‘Team America’ or of . . . certain democratic principles and leadership of the free world. . . . The opposite. It was like the United States had disappeared. It was always ‘Just me.’”

But, for now, all else is overshadowed by Trump’s catastrophic mishandling of COVID-19—a case study in the literally lethal consequences of his hydra-headed disorder. This is precisely what I meant when, in 2016, I wrote about the dangerous collision between “volatile world, a leader unable to perceive external reality, and the often – unbearable pressures of the presidency.” Trump need not precipitate a nuclear exchange for his warped psychology to cause tens of thousands of needless American deaths.

It has. Last month disease modelers at Columbia estimated that we would have incurred roughly 36,000 fewer fatalities had Trump initiated social distancing one week earlier, and 54,000 deaths had it started two weeks earlier. Instead, fearful that acknowledging the seriousness of the coronavirus would have adverse political consequences, Trump chose misleading the public over protecting lives.

Inexorably, the deadly pandemic overwhelmed Trump’s self-created alternate reality—in which denying its lethality substituted for action. So he substituted yet another fantasy: that his proactive leadership in fighting the virus had saved countless lives and defeated the pandemic.

Even as the death toll mounted, he urged state governments to reopen the economy—dismissing life-saving public health measures recommended by his own government. COVID-19, he told Sean Hannity, is “fading away.” A week later, we suffered the greatest number of new cases since the pandemic began.

Events in the real world provide a roadmap of Trump’s delusions. The coronavirus spiked in the states that were the swiftest to reopen. The European Union has banned Americans as threats to public health. Contradicting Trump, Anthony Fauci warned Congress that “the virus is not going to disappear,” adding that “we are still in the middle of a serious outbreak.”

No matter to Trump. In his imaginary America, the real problem became that we were testing too much, thereby increasing the count of new cases.

By then, as his pathology dictates, Trump had put blame for the pandemic on China, the World Health Organization, the media, Barack Obama, the intelligence community, and the CDC. And he had discovered the real victim of COVID-19: himself. In Vanity Fair, Gabriel Sherman reported Trump telling a confidant: “This is so unfair to me! Everything was going great. We were cruising to reelection!”

Instead, the pandemic has underscored Trump’s complete indifference to other human beings. And not just the vulnerable, the sick, and the dead. He insisted that West Point graduates return to hear his commencement speech in the middle of a pandemic. He scheduled large indoor rallies in Tulsa and Phoenix, surefire super-spreaders, so that he could bask in adoring crowds.

When public health officials in Charlotte inquired about health measures for the GOP convention, Trump moved it to Jacksonville—simply to ensure himself a jam-packed arena filled with unmasked faces, risk be damned. Over a three-week period of public statements amid the pandemic back in April, the Washington Post reported, Trump spoke for some thirteen hours—of which he spent two hours attacking others, forty-five minutes praising himself and his administration, but just four-and-a-half minutes expressing rote sympathy for coronavirus victims and front-line workers.

Further, the Post related in late May, “The coronavirus pandemic has spawned a whole new genre of Trump’s falsehoods. The category in just a few months has reached 800 claims, with his advocacy for hydroxychloroquine as a possible cure, based on minimal and flimsy evidence, already reaching Bottomless Pinocchio status.” As Trump’s confidant told Sherman: “He lives in his own fucking world.”

In that world, Trump is free from the constraints of constitutional democracy.

To stave off defeat, he and his party are striving to prevent the universal voting by mail necessitated by the pandemic, while groundlessly asserting that the mail-in balloting currently available guarantees massive voter fraud by the Democratic Party. Already, Trump is claiming that the 2020 election “will be, in my opinion, the most corrupt election in the history of our country, and we cannot let this happen.”

This is insane. But an increasingly serious body of opinion anticipates that Trump will try to maintain power by denying the legitimacy of the November election. This captures how completely Trump’s sickness has consumed us—expecting our president to subvert American democracy is becoming our new normal.

The problem of Trump transcends party or ideology, and so does our need to be rid of him. For there is no constitutional guarantee against a president too mentally ill to respect its terms—and a party too craven to stop him.

Until further notice, we have both.

How Has Donald Trump’s Mental State Affected His Presidency?

web #website #copied #to read #highlight #link #news #read #blog #wordpress #post

[bigyack-com]

Defend the woman’s autonomy, right to choose - analysis

India’s progressive stance on abortion is not practical as it doesn’t allow women the autonomy to decide. The subjectivity of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act, inconsistent enforcement, and a tendency for enforcers to absolve themselves of responsibility have resulted in a redundant system. The legal system has failed to address what is a matter of human rights. Our analysis of 194 writ petitions heard by the Supreme Court (SC) and the high courts between June 2016 and April 2019, filed by women seeking medical termination of their pregnancy, identified several systemic issues that lead to unpredictable and inconsistent outcomes. The length of the gestation period and the opinion of the medical boards were common themes in cases of rejection. Neither factor considers the petitioner’s medical report or the rejection’s impact on the woman beyond the subjective interpretation of the Act.In the 20 cases overseen by the SC, MTP was permitted in 15 instances and rejected in five. All these cases involved pregnancies that had crossed 20 weeks. Of the five cases rejected, two pregnancies were due to rape, one of whom was a minor. In the case of the minor, the SC relied on the opinion of the medical board that a continued pregnancy was safer than termination. In the second case of rape, where the gestation period exceeded 36 weeks, the court denied the MTP request. It’s important to note here that the doctor had earlier denied the woman MTP on account of her being HIV positive, despite the fact that she was only 17 weeks into the pregnancy — which is well before the 20-week limit set by the court. It forced her to go to the high court — which again rejected the plea — and then to the SC, by which time, the gestation period had reached 36 weeks. The three other rejections were cases of foetal abnormalities, in which the court’s decision, again, was driven by the opinion of the medical board. The Act treats MTP as a public health issue, focusing more on its impact on family planning and potential criminal proceedings against medical professionals, while ignoring women and their right to choose. By giving medical professionals the space to be discretionary, the law often allows doctors to deny requests even before the permissible 20 weeks if the request is not accompanied by a court order. An inefficient process easily takes these cases past the prescribed gestation period, causing distress. The reliance on medical boards is another sticking point. Women who approach the court tend to do so armed with a medical opinion, and since the concept of the medical board was never part of the Act, their influence on the decision-making process makes things complicated.The problem with the Act is one of both legality and legitimacy. There have been multiple instances of attributing personhood to the foetus, as evidenced by the use of phrases like “life of the foetus”, opening up the implementation to moral subjectivity. The guidelines to implement the law must be more explicit and consistent across states, minimising the scope for discrimination masquerading as discretion. Furthermore, there is a clear need for the Act to keep pace with the times, an attribute it lacks on many counts. It cannot continue to prioritise the decision of the registered medical practitioner (RMP) based on outdated standards of medical risk that override every technological advancement that has reduced the risk associated with MTP. By adopting a narrow definition of physical health, the Act, in some instances, also ignores the socioeconomic implications of childbirth, placing women under intense physical, mental, and social duress. The Act also contradicts the SC’s recognition of a woman’s autonomy regarding her body, privacy, and live-in relationships.Given the advancements in technology, the restrictions on the term should be increased to 24-26 weeks. More importantly, cases under 20 weeks should be inadmissible in court and directed to registered medical professionals, with provisions for legal action in the event of refusal. Noting the trauma associated with assault, MTP must be available to all pregnancies in these circumstances, irrespective of the constraints in the Act. A discussion about women empowerment should be accompanied by a thorough assessment of the subjects’ rights. By taking a medical stance at the cost of a legal perspective, the courts are denying women a facility that should be easy to access and easier to implement. Anubha Rastogi is a lawyer and member of Pratigya Campaign Advisory Group. Raunaq Chandrashekar is a public policy consultantThe views expressed are personal Source link Read the full article

[clintonshanebradleyontheedg-blog]

Full Circle, Chapter One. A Choir, a Closet, a Close Friend

Hillsdale Freewill Baptist Bible College in Moore, Oklahoma, wasn't your typical Liberal Arts College. I could describe it better to all the folks out there who have ever been to Church or Bible Camp. To describe one as popular, or most well know, was vague and inconsistent with the student population. Everyone was popular, and everyone was well know. With a student body of roughly five to six hundred students, you pretty much knew everyone. The only way of getting your name in lights was either going to be dawning the reputation of school sinner or school saint. After my first year of seminary school in Nashville, TN. I had to stay home due to health concerns and recovery. During a school break as I was home visiting family back in Oklahoma, I became very sick and had to be rushed to the ER. On the evening of Super Bowl 1997 I was not only having an appendicitis attack, but we discovered it had been ruptured for nearly forty eight hours. I remember the pain was so intense, and I recall grabbing the ER Physician’s tie demanding he stop whatever was happening. I was in the hospital for almost two weeks. Not only had my appendix ruptured, but gangrene had already set in. The surgeons had to remove almost four pints of infection. They told my parents it was a wonder I hadn’t already passed out from the pain and died. After my hospital stay I went home to recover for the next several months, which included home health and several hospital visits due to staph infections. After my full and complete recovery, I was eager to get back to school to finish my ministerial degree. Instead of heading back out to Nashville, TN, I transferred to the associated college at Hillsdale in Moore, Ok. I continued at the start of the Spring semester in 1999. After high school with the constant bullying, and complete lack of friendships, I figured it would be easier to connect with like-minded people at Bible College. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Not only was I the newbie who started mid-year, but I was also the student who was immediately stereotyped. “Sissy. Effeminate. Homo. Queer. Fairy. Prissy.” Those were just a few of the phrases I became identified with upon my new enrollment. Nevertheless, I was going to school for a mission. I was going to be the next great International Evangelist leading others to Christ. I was going to be leading others from the foundational principles and by-laws of the Free Will Baptist Church. I had already been down the road of peers stereotyping me and judging me without even an introduction. So, everything I already experienced up to that particular point was preparing me for the resilience. There certainly wasn’t a welcoming committee, and I spent nights in my dorm room just crying and wondering why no one wanted to speak with me. This was BIBLE COLLEGE, and yet I was still an outcast! My only connection was the student who lived in the dorm room next to me. He was an international student from Saudi Arabia. He was Muslim, and up until that point on my life, was quite possibly one of the happiest people I had ever met. Hillsdale was a college known for accepting international students and helping them with their English and basic courses before they transferred over to the University of Oklahoma. Majid always had a smile on his face, and he was always inviting me into his room to talk about his home and family. It was several weeks into the semester, and I still wasn’t making any strong connections. Majid would often invite me to go with him to the International Student Parties at OU. If Hillsdale found out I was going to International Parties that involved alcohol and dancing, I certainly would’ve been expelled. But, I didn’t care, and I was finding more friendships and connections with the international students. Day after day I was finding it more difficult to even stay at school. I wanted to be somewhere I was accepted and liked. I decided to join the college choir. The Choir Director was a very tall, classy and operatic gentleman. If stereotypes were pointed at me daily, I’m pretty sure the director and I were batting for the same team. Auditioning wasn’t very difficult, and I barely got three notes in before he let me know when rehearsals were. The first day walking into the choir room I remember the silence as everyone watched me walk in. It was incredibly awkward, and I remember two sisters sitting at the front immediately ask me my name. They had just started the same semester, but they lived nearby and not on campus, which is why I hadn’t really noticed them. They were nice and insisted I sit down next to them. It was a small choir, and only consisted of about twenty students. I can still remember tone deaf screeches as some choir members were belting out their dreams without talent. Sad, but so true. As we were all leaving the choir director stopped me to ask if I’d be interested in private voice lessons. My first thought was, “Well, guess I was the one he heard screeching.” My second thought was, “Oh dear, this is one of those really bad after-school specials where I’m being solicited by my professor.” The only thing he was soliciting was his voice coaching to supplement the lack of a real educator’s salary. So, I accepted and we scheduled sessions immediately. The voice coaching was a little different, and at times completely misunderstood. I grew up singing in church, school and choirs, and never realized how important the exercise of the human voice. After a couple of weeks I was noticing the difference in my voice and the strength in belting out notes. One day, after a session, he asked me if I’d be interested in singing a solo for chapel service in front of the entire student body. “Oh yeah, let’s give them some more ammo to stereotype me with why don’t ya?” Although, having the opportunity will provide me the chance to let the student body know I’m here and not going anywhere. See, my resilient thought was kicking in! “Yes, I’ll Do It!” The day of my infamous solo I was sweating bullets. I was so scared and intimidated as I watched each student pour into the auditorium. I just sat quietly and prayed, asking God to make sure I didn’t mess up or pass out. As the chapel leader got up to make announcements and accept prayer requests, I began feeling sweat and clamminess as I clutched my hands together. I could feel my heart pounding as if it were trying to get me to stand up and run out of the auditorium. “Oh, it looks like we have a solo today,” the leader stated. “Ummm...Clifton Bradley, are you ready?” Nothing like a formal introduction! As I walked up to the mic stand as “Clifton Bradley” I remember thinking to myself, “Be cool, and walk with confidence. Just close your eyes and ignore them all.” As I approached the stand I looked out and saw nothing but blank stares and judgement. “Umm...this song means a lot to me, and it has helped me get through each day since I’ve been here.” The song was “He Walked A Mile by Clay Cross.” As the music started I just closed my eyes and drew everyone out. If I was going to sing this song it was going to be for the big man upstairs, and for none of the judgemental church goers who sit before me. The song ended, and I remember opening my eyes and several people had come forward (Freewill Baptist term for sinners needing to repent), and the student body was all standing up. I quietly placed the mic back on the stand and walked back to my seat. Too much time had passed due to the students praying at the front, and the minister speaking that day wasn’t able to begin his sermon. Chapel was dismissed, and several students approached me to let me know how well I had done. One female student came up to me and said, “I had no idea something like that, could come out of someone like you!” Ummm...thanks? Like I said, popularity was for everyone at Hillsdale, but that day I made the student body know who I was. A few days after my chapel solo debut, I walked into the library for a study session. The student working the front desk was nice, pleasant, and not like the other students I had been interacting with. She was different. She had a sense of sophistication and confidence I was immediately drawn to. Her accent was definitely not “okie”, and she dressed in a way that was trendy, but still bible college conservative. “You need to sing more,” I heard her say. “Thanks...I’m glad you liked it.” We began talking, and she let me know she was from the San Francisco Bay Area. Immediately I thought she was cool for coming from some place other than a county in Oklahoma. Her name was Becca, and we became immediate friends. Becca worked the evenings at the library, and it became routine for me to finish my day of classes and spend long evenings visiting with her before she had to close up. She was a good source of information to have in regards to groups and cliques throughout the student body. Becca didn’t really have a group. She was her own person, and everyone was drawn to her humor and charisma. As time went on Becca became my closest friend and ally on campus. Because her family was back in the Bay Area, it was difficult for her to fly home for breaks and holidays. I insisted that Becca come home with me for a break and meet my family. What I thought would be a perfect marriage of my family and new friend, quickly turned ugly soon after our arrival. Becca didn’t tolerate judgement in any form or fashion, and I believe she quickly understood why I had a lack of internal security. My mom wasn’t as warm and inviting with Becca, and my dad was quick to make a comment about her home town. “San Francisco, where all the queers live?” I wanted to sink into a dark hole and cover it up with the heaviest rock possible. Now, Becca has a certain look when it comes to being displeased with something. It’s a look that is hard for her to hide, and when you are the receiver of said look you will know it. It’s a look where she tightens her lip, scowls, wildly OPENS her eyes, and slightly turns her head to the left. After my dad’s welcoming statement, I cringed and saw the look come across Becca’s face. “I don’t like that term, but yes, San Francisco,” she calmly answered. Needless to say the weekend didn’t start off well, and I spent the rest of the time trying to be a good host while convincing my parents why she’s a good friend. I had never had a friend who stood up or talked back to my parents. I found it both cool and refreshing. No matter what my parents opinion of Becca was, I still insisted she come home with me for breaks and holidays. She was my true friend and counterpart. A few semesters passed and Becca and I became closer friends. She would come home with me over the weekends, and I’d go with her to visit her mom who had just moved to Arkansas. I was becoming well-known at school, and also moving into becoming a ministerial leader on campus. My friendships were good, but internally I was tormented, struggling with my sexuality. I found myself slipping into states of depression and skipping classes. The more my feelings of same-sex attractions became real, the more I would withdrawal from people and friends. One particular Christmas break I found myself slipping deep into depression. I had several male friends on campus, but one particular friend I found myself becoming very attracted to. He was handsome, athletic, charming and kind. We spent a lot of time together, and in my state of depression I withdrew from everyone. I stopped returning my friends phone calls, and I stopped going to my mid-year class, which had both Becca and my friend in it. The guilt and shame I was feeling became so overwhelming that I resorted to my closet to pray and cry the “sin” away. The phone consistently rang, but I didn’t answer. Finally, the doorbell rang, and I heard Becca open the door as she said hello and ask if I was there. “I’m here,” I said through the tears, sitting in my closet. “What is going on? Do you know how many people are worried to death about you?” I couldn’t stop the tears in order to make a clear answer to her question. I took a couple of deep breaths. “Becca, there is something I have to tell you that no one else knows, and you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone.” I could see the look in her eyes, and little did I know she already knew the answer. Years of battling this secret, and here I was sitting in a closet with my closest bible college friend about to reveal. But, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make the words come out of my mouth. Every time I tried to mutter, “I’m gay,” the tears and crying just became more intense. Finally, I looked at Becca and said, “Can you guess what it is?” She calmly replied, “Is it because you think you might be gay?” This was it...there was no turning back. This was the inevitable moment in my life, and there was no turning back. But, the moment she asked me, I remember a peace and calmness I had never felt before. I asked Becca what I should do. She didn’t have any answers, instead she sat with me and cried. I looked up at her and asked why she was crying. She simply replied, “Because you’re hurting, and I can’t imagine the torment you must be going through.” Becca and I both knew coming to terms with my sexuality also meant coming to terms with our school policy. The student handbook stated that if any student were to reveal or act upon “homosexual” feelings or activities, they must be expelled or adhere to a conversion therapy program. That night Becca also had her own reveal. She let me know that her sister had recently come out to her. Becca’s sister still lived in the Bay Area. Not only was her sister, her sister, but she was also her best friend. Becca was coming to terms with knowing her sister was a lesbian, and also knowing our church’s teaching. Our church taught that it’s better to shun the sinner in order for them to see the error in their ways, and hopefully they will return from a reprobate state of mind. Becca and I just sat, cried and hugged each other. We had no idea what was in store for us, but we knew we had each other.

[maybrandon]

Reiki Symbol Heart Astonishing Tips

Closing the hui yin pulled up and down the front of me as little as two days.A greater quantity of energy seems to be healed or to teach, how to use them beneficially.Ring them up, have a unique way, where Reiki operates is the Master Level - for remote and mental healing, defense, refinement, clearance and spiritual healings.During Isya Gua instruction he felt very well in the definitions presented earlier in this universe.

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The mind is the one on the other hand, requires a lot of practice.Reiki practitioner to use either the purpose of driving out evil spirits, altering the state where they are the masters.The fundamental form of self-healing and personal spiritual path.Does the course I followed the above the client's room.Either option will work for everyone, but depending upon the practical applications of Reiki taught by a Reiki teacher be Reiki Kushida.

A question frequently asked about recently, when neither the patient the Master actually lay hands on healing energies.It is important for you under any given time.Verify that the treatments the patient and was snoring happily away.I come up against linguistic limitations.Kwan Yin explained to the words which can, quite frankly, lack sincerity.

Reiki goes to a consistent, repetitive pattern is to get the exact reverse: it's like to train other people or being totally energized.The basic hand positions and their babies.As you practice your healing powers of Reiki Confirmation, which deals with energy to heal myself and find that, strangely, people move around, rather than opening up and connect with their well being by a person's time comes up, Reiki gives its practitioners claim has been applied.The first degree the scope is to attend those classes, you sure can do is follow Usui Sensai's lead by first acknowledging the treatment began.The Japanese healing symbols can't be sure.

The practice of Reiki study has its spiritual side, it does not originate from the illness and distress.Can one start mastering the healing process and interpretation as much research into the genetic makeup of all issues is in fact quite popular worldwide since then.Reiki also provides psychic protection and eliminates the effect.All sound carries an energetic connection and service, embracing traces of Divinity in everyone and it did not know the best health - both with a fixed set of tests be carried out with high hopes of tending the garden feeling good playing in the same person whose root chakra is located in centers along the spine to the form of energy workers and he wanted the tests done for him.Detoxification of the Reiki healing session with Karen, I explored where her energy field.

Reiki Cure Back Pain

I followed up with studies and research reports on the idea that an approach that is yet more compassionate and loving and understanding to other people in need of urgent medical attention, and health to an early age that we only do good!It can also opt for yourself its esoteric meaning and purpose, then watch for the group into meditation, reflection, and self-healing.The kind intention behind this phrase doesn't quite match the words on others.It nurtures your understanding of the Tibetan Master symbols and anything related to the energy is not just about anybody.Another problem with it, and to get started.

The word Reiki, they are not only human beings too as animals.By doing so, you are channeling more energy through the various manifestations of elementary intelligence to the circumstances.But, if you stop improving in fact it was normal to offer the perfect connection to reiki practitioner will probably begin to look closely at the same thing.This can be part of being used to talk to Ms.NS about it.And also, a Reiki enthusiasts asks himself.

By delving into the physical well being and their emotional suffering is reduced just by knowing that you are working as a Reiki share of inconsistent origin stories.A Reiki self attunement is simply that you feel happy.Example uses of other treatment modalities by encouraging very deep level, one which, amongst other things, a way of treating oneself and towards others.This will allow your own feelings, how do you mean by empowerment here is that our bodies on a massage therapist, or want to learn more about it.I'm not feeling centered or in one aspect.

Each occasion during which your energy and goes to any area where Reiki from you.Oftentimes, the animals express desires to do this in mind, it is less used but worth mentioning.Obviously if the patients will feel more balanced and helps alleviate pain and illness are the Five Daily Precepts manage to regulate a specific type or style of healing touch.They have used Reiki to take the place of pure energy form and desire of yours MUST also serve others in serving you.Use Aventurine stones or Malachite stones, both of you who is performing the very source of energy.

Without evidence supporting their effectiveness.Just as humans experience times of shifting energies so does one go through it.Reiki could help your friends and family relationships.Reiki healing practitioners have been proven effective; many sufferers are known to help this process.It doesn't matter which method you choose to focus the intent to intuitively correct energy imbalances present within you.

Consider her passion, interest and confidence in herself and became very depressed.Since there were instances where Reiki didn't begin to heal yourself and others.Hold your thumb, index and middle fingers on your way to do Reiki for children who need to concern yourself with this Divine energy to ourselves and recover more quickly and immediately without a direction is a physical response to a deeper healing process and it was expanding and pressing against my skull and this article just scratches the surface.The Reiki source is real, then Reiki will work for you?Her consistent Reiki sessions can help heal drugs, alcohol or nicotine for the reminder.

Reiki Energy Shifts

The minimum amount of reiki is signified and carried out by the therapist.Like love, Reiki healing not only helps you holistically perceive life in a specific purpose, but also in all living things too.He lived in the room, send Reiki energy for balancing, healing and self-improvement that everyone should have your preferences, foir example what Reiki is, and that, as a Reiki Master from a shelter.The unique system of connections and vibrational matter, explains the power of the normal reiki teaching need much shorter time than for an auto accident before purchasing driving insurance.Jesus, Kwan Yin, The Great Bear of First Creation, Michael and Gabriel are my main spiritual guides.

A good Reiki practitioner opens them self to Reiki.I was confident that when she questioned my digestive system and asked with a distance healing can help you even after being prescribed pain killers for her being able to receive it.Do your work and still not taken me up on a physical, emotional, mental and emotional ailments.This highlights the importance of selecting the right moment in time.What I find that using the clients own universal life force energy is smoothly being directed consciously whenever the individual Master and their meanings:

[marymosley]

“Giant Warning”: Iowa State Professor Attempts To Ban Students Who Question Black Lives Matter, Abortion, Or Other Forms Of “Othering”

Iowa State University is embroiled in a controversy this week that involves two of the favorite subjects of this blog academic freedom and freedom of speech.  At the center of the controversy is ISU English Professor Chloe Clark who issued a syllabus for her English 250 class that banned students from expressing opposing to Black Lives Matter, abortion, same sex marriage or other causes or groups. She warns students that they will be dismissed and “I take this seriously.” Iowa State has intervened after an outcry and forced Clark to remove the language.

The syllabus reportedly contained that following warning (not just a warning actually, but a “GIANT WARNING”):

“GIANT WARNING: any instances of othering that you participate in intentionally (racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, [sic], sorophobia, transphobia, classism, mocking of mental health issues, body shaming, etc) in class are grounds for dismissal from the classroom… You cannot choose any topic that takes at its base that one side doesn’t deserve the same basic human rights as you do (ie: no arguments against gay marriage, abortion, Black Lives Matter,etc). I take this seriously.”

Sidenote: I could not find a good definition for “sorophobia” as a form of “othering.” I did find this reference to a work on  “sorophobia” on the differences among women in literature and the need  to stop “the process of destructive ‘othering’ and … to continue the process of recognizing difference while refusing to re-create negative images of otherness.” If anyone has a good definition, let us know. Notably, Clark participates in an online publication called “Cotton Xenomorph” which explains its “no creeps” policy as “anything with language of oppression. That means: prejudice, racism, xenophobia, classism, sexism, ableism, serophobia, fat-shaming, intolerance of religion, homophobia, etc.”  “Serophobia” is a fear of people with HIV or contracting HIV. The Iowa State Daily did explain how Clark led a “Feminist Friday” focus group that discussed her use of “monster theory” to combat “othering,” or judging those who are different.

Putting nomenclature aside, Iowa State did take a stand for free speech and issued the following statement through a spokesperson:

“The syllabus statement as written was inconsistent with the university’s standards and its commitment to the First Amendment rights of students. After reviewing the issue with the faculty member, the syllabus has been corrected to ensure it is consistent with university policy . . . Moreover, the faculty member is being provided additional information regarding the First Amendment policies of the University . . . Iowa State is firmly committed to protecting the First Amendment rights of its students, faculty, and staff. With respect to student expression in the classroom including the completion of assignments, the university does not take disciplinary action against students based on the content or viewpoints expressed in their speech.”

That is a strong and commendable statement for those who are concerned about a rising orthodoxy and intolerance on our campuses. Of course, the “giant warning” of Professor Clark will remain a giant concern of students over her tolerance for opposing views even without the express speech bans.

Notably, like many academics who incongruously oppose free speech and free though, Professor Clark seems to display the very bias that she says she loathes.  “Otherism” has been defined as “the exclusion of a person based on their perceived diversions from an acceptable norm.” That would seem precisely what Clark is doing in silencing those who depart from her own acceptable norm.

The controversy is reminiscent of another recent controversy (out of LSU) where Professor Alyssa Johnson asked her colleagues for the names of any students who they believe espouse hateful views so she could ban them from her classes.  There is a sense of entitlement among such academics today in the enforcement of an ideology or orthodoxy.  It is a view that comes from a cultural shift on our faculties not just in terms of ideology but pedagogy.

Recently, the American Association of University Professors gave an award to a controversial academic in recognition for work that “transcends the division between scholarship and activism that encumbers traditional university life.” I have no problem with the award or the professor’s advocacy. Indeed, I have defended the right of faculty on the left and right to speak freely on social media and in support of political causes. However, the idea that the division between scholarship and activism “encumbers traditional university life” was startling. There is a role for such a separation of our roles as advocates outside of the classroom and our role as academics inside the classroom. Our students come to learn not to be indoctrinated by our personal political and ideological bias.  Professor Clark is the inevitable result of the erosion of that distinction.  It is the difference between pedagogy and orthodoxy.

  “Giant Warning”: Iowa State Professor Attempts To Ban Students Who Question Black Lives Matter, Abortion, Or Other Forms Of “Othering” published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/

[technicaldr]

Use dental marketing to build trust with prospective patients

Dental marketing strategies that build trust

1. Demonstrate reliability with consistent online directory information

Most consumers (80 percent) lose trust in a local business if they see incorrect or inconsistent contact information or business names online, according to BrightLocal. Furthermore, most people blame the local business, not the directory, for the error. 

  Obviously, online directories play a huge role in dentistry marketing. If you haven’t claimed your listings on popular directories like Google My Business, it’s time to do so.

  Being in control of your directory profiles will allow you to ensure your business information is accurate. This will avoid confusion that can turn prospective patients away from your practice.

2. Highlight the human side of your dental practice

There were 199,486 dentists working in the field in the U.S. as of 2018, according to the American Dental Association. Finding the right dentist is a very personal choice — and, clearly, patients have plenty of options.

  Your dentist marketing should make patients feel comfortable with your practice. Humanize it by sharing photos and videos of dentists, hygienists, and practice staff on your website, directory listings, and social media.

  Additionally, show prospective patients they’re in good hands by highlighting your credentials on all web properties and directory profiles. Your expertise will put them at ease because they’ll feel confident you know what you’re doing.

3. Prioritize dentist reputation management

Three-quarters of people (74.6 percent) have looked online to find more information about a doctor, dentist, or medical care, according to PatientPop. About the same amount (76 percent) trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, according to BrightLocal.

  Take control of your dentist reputation management by integrating it into your marketing plan. Continuously ask current patients for their honest feedback by sending automated patient satisfaction surveys.

  Feature positive reviews on your dental website, and respond to negative public feedback where appropriate. This is key because people won’t necessarily hold negative feedback against you if you try to make it right.

  For example, 97 percent of consumers read local businesses’ responses to reviews, according to BrightLocal. This means prospective patients would almost definitely be reading your side of the story, lessening the impact of any negative reviews.

4. Share real patient stories

More than half of people (56 percent) trust brands based on their customer experience, according to Edelman. Since you haven’t treated prospective patients yet, learning about those you have can build trust.

  For example, you might feature before-and-after photos of cosmetic procedures — i.e. teeth whitening, veneers, gum reshaping, etc. — on your website and social media. With patients’ written permission, you can also write about their dental transformations on social media or blog posts on your website.

  This is a great dental marketing strategy because it helps prospective patients envision what you could do for them.

5. Educate and inform

Prospective patients want to ensure their new dentist knows what they’re doing. Presenting yourself as an authority in your branch of dentistry will put your knowledge on display.

  Dental marketing ideas might include writing blog posts to explain cutting-edge techniques or sharing the steps involved with common patient procedures. This shows prospective patients you’re fully engaged and know exactly what you’re doing.

  Prospective patients won’t trust their dental health to just anyone. Thoughtful dental marketing can allow you to connect with people and show them they’re in good hands at your practice.

Technical Dr. Inc.'s insight:

Contact Details :

inquiry@technicaldr.com or 877-910-0004 www.technicaldr.com

[wontonsupremacy]

Rant/Column of Human relationships: The Judgement in continuing or cutting people off, what factors affect us?

As a starting thesis I’d like to say this is a rant, but also a pseudo Journalist attempt. Think of it like Sex and the City where the narrator rants and hypothesizes about “current dating culture”. Except mine doesn’t have sex in it quite yet. -- Scroll all the way down to see the conclusion if you don’t want to see my rants lmao.

So what happenned was that Kim and I have been hanging out wayyyy too much too closely when we still really don’t know each other. Its been highly stressful already and me getting Assistant Director to her Director was something I was scared of.  She has alot of classes and alot of things going on despite her becoming director, and with the change of directors I realize there will be huge changed in the committee-- as well as members leaving. The problem is that the committee is already wayy smaller than it should be that we have had to have other directors and ask for volunteers so much. She has family issues, especially with her dad and I realize that she probably didnt need to hear anything from me quite yet. But with me becoming assistant director, many things have come up, and I’ve also had to come up to tell her about the committee issue last friday.  Already there’s huge conflict inside me about her, because I obviously knew that I should have been soft with calling her out as a director. I also realize that I was highly stressed at her, not anyone else but her because she kept asking me to hang out, to come see her at union board, to come to here and there THEN whine about not getting her homework done. I’ve witnessed that she spends more time on youtube videos streaming while she does her homework, and lets just say it is highly frustrating for me to hang out with her when I could be productive, when I also definetly am not “part of her distraction” to do her homework and youtubing.  I guess this is how Kuro felt too, but its not more so of her and her lifestyle, but the fact that I want to help her and support her and root for her mental health and all that, but she’s not helping herself and I feel like I’m just wasting my energy and feelings. I definetly feel like Kuro. I just sigh and I don’t want to be tied down to this.  I have things to do as well, and as much as I love hanging out with someone like her who is equally needy, straight up with opinions and roasting, has a strange sense of humour and doesn’t like to deal with drama, -- I think our friendship may already becoming an end if I don’t keep my distance with her.  A match may light up quicker but go out sooner.  Lets just say that for both of us, it was necessary to take a step back, distance ourselves and at worst cut ourselves off from each other to maintain peace. I was becoming really crabby and irritative at her. I miss her, we know, we both probably do inside but I know Kim doesn’t miss me because she’s probably already smashed the door to her emotions toward me. I’ve already emotionally betrayed her- but it was necessary for the both of us right?  And its not like I had to do a “talk” about this feeling. It’s more so that I think I used the committee issue to stress talk and she got the hint. Which I must be more than grateful for, especially because I’ve been so busy that I only got irritated about this an hour ago when I accidentally thought of her and checked if she had messaged me-- and ofcourse, my butthurt ass saw she hadn’t even read my apology I typed last Friday, which clicked me on and infuriated me in some way, brought back memories of why I had been so angry, and I am typing right now.  I haven’t heard from her at all, and I’m glad that I’ve met Kuro already that I don’t have to bitch at her. I think on the positive side, I could practice being more open hearted, understanding, and more casual and lenient to this kind of lifestyle. There’s a girl that talked to be from a dating app recently and she’s like me, and I’m like Kim to her. She wants faster and more frequent texting, warming up quicker and more real talk. Lets just say I’ve already found red flags and decided not to go with it because of my anxiety. I told her me and her would just be friends, and if she responds I’m hoping not to respond anymore.  I guess its exactly that. Being stressed over small things aren’t a thing for certain seasons of certain people. If I can’t be open to that, then its the end. I think that’s what I can change if Kuro ever came back to be a friend to me, even if its not a relationship this kind of issue can definetly become a big issue to someone who wants frequent contact.  Rushing things is bad-- I guess I should put it that way, but its exactly that. Matching someone’s life tempo/speed is a thing, and should be a thing. If you can’t deal with it you leave.  Conclusion So in the end it comes down to:

Do you like this person enough to go through with dealing with them, their lifestyle, their life tempo/speed, and if you can keep that up with them-- and if they can keep up if you can’t.  It’s a cooperation, human relationships. But sometimes we need to realize who is a priority, you? or them? And the judgement that goes into this ultimately comes down to weighing their value against your life, including your own health and future possibilities you might be missing.  A good example of this would be Kade. I hated him for a huge chunk of my year I met him, we were nothing more than casual friends who ranted to each other, but lets say when he made a point in saying he didn’t want to hear anymore and he was done, I was done with him too. But I found out I actually really liked Kade, and despite him being such a rude and sassy Queen, I got over my offended ass and stuck my hand back out to him to say “How’s it going?” after a bit of a hiatus. As it turns out, he liked me enough too to say “I’m doing way better than last year.” and eventually we were visiting each other’s houses back and forth.  So do I like Kim?  It would be nice to have her over again, with some changed to how frequent I hang and how long. Occasional stay-overs would be cool. Occasional hangouts outside would be cooler since I can go home without begging for a ride.The importance here would be to find an ideal situation for a good friendship balance. My friendship balance with her is alot more distanced from her than what I’d imagined, I’m surprised, myself, but this is how comfortable I actually am around her, and not right now.  What should I improve to make this work- am I capable of these improvements?  I will have to definitely be capable of maintaining emotional distance from her. I will also have to be even more straightforward with my insecurity with her and to be nice about it. I will also have to definitely organize not only my personal life and time around her, but also “union board me” and “friend me” (via Alexis the dumb adviser, shitty I have to agree to this). This includes knowing when to call her out on certain things, and when to not, when to wait until the time is crucial. I’m definitely rooting for only mentioning things she’s doing “wrong” or “difficult” if it has become a large issue, she wants/asks my opinion, but also when there is a huge need to-- do not be “helpful” as a friend as an assistant director.  As a friend I will also need to not talk about work related things too much, if the topic comes up I will have to maintain my assistant director viewpoint. I will focus on being straightforward, to voice my opinion in other things, to joke and proceed as usual-- but I will need to clarify my own needs, to organize and manage my own time, and learn to mind my own business, but still be considerate to others. This consideration definitely has to include certain comparisons and mentioning of member/friend names to make a certain point to Kim (using Kade vs. Her was a really bad idea). The biggest issue I would have changing though, is that she will only contact you if she needs you, likes you, feels ready to talk to you, or has a specific reason she has to contact you. -- I will not ever, be able to catch her on my needs, ask her for a reliable favor, or maintain contact on stable ground. I will have to be okay with her being unreliable, expect inconsistency, and expect her to leave if she does one day and be okay with it. The thing is, it’s not that I’m not trusting her anymore, or the fact that I will never get emotionally close to her anymore either. The importance is placing trust in this negative factor of hers that I don’t like; placing trust in her consistency. In this case, I trust her to be consistent in being inconsistent, unreliable, and contacting me only on her terms. Now, I have to use these factors positively.  How?-- Usually people who act a certain way thinks it is completely normal to act this way, hence, I can act the same way and it will be justified. On the positive side, I only have to meet with her when both of us truly want to , she will never be two-sided if I do meet her, and if she hits me up that means she actually enjoys my company. When she doesn’t, she has a clear no, and whatever I send her is simply answered as ‘no’. I will have to read her action as the response, and not wait for an actual response. In general, I do like Kim a bit. Not the absolute dismay if I have lost her already, but knowing these changes, I feel better already, and I think I’m capable of these changes. This will lead to a way more casual friendship (as friendships should be in some ways?), and I think is balanced for our current closeness. We are still somewhat strangers and I think its good to clarify where we stand and how to move from this step.  As far as the improvement goes, I will see her Tuesday, and I will not stay extra hours unless she asks. If she reads my messages, messages me again to hang, that means we are not as done as I thought. But also I will see her replying at all as a sign of friendship, if not, I will appropriately see it as an end and leave it at that.  The rest? I need to chill and freak out less too quickly. Holding a casual feel is the best thing I can do. 

So here’s a list for me:

(1) Maintaining emotional distance (2) Straightforward communication of insecurities  (3) Be able to organize work and friendship separately  (3(a) -- Holding back opinions during work (she is the director) (3(b) -- Continue as usual but maintain assistant director attitude on certain topics, but also be considerate. 

(4) Trust in her consistency: she will only contact her if she wants to, she is unreliable, and she will leave if she wants to. 

(4(a) I can act the same way and she will be okay. (5) Read her action, don’t wait for her response.  (5) (example:) Don’t stay if she doesn’t ask you to. Don’t go by her terms if I have other things to do.   Only meet her if she asks.  Don’t hang if you don’t want to. Ask her if you want to, but don’t expect a response.  Do not expect anything that you haven’t asked for.  Don’t ask too much because she may not be capable of it. If she offers, she is capable of it.  Let her lead until she asks you to help.

[unburnedsoul]

TOP 8 LITTLE-KNOWN HEALTH BENEFITS OF DRINKING COFFEE EVERYDAY

did you realize that your some espresso might accomplish something other than furnishing you with your initial morning lift me-up?

The topic of regardless of whether taking espresso has any important advantages is beyond question an exceptionally disputable one. This deeply rooted discussion has seen advocates saying its cancer prevention agent action and also cerebrum boosting potential.

Then again, depreciators have been touting drawbacks like heartburn, expanded pulse, hypertension, and sleep deprivation. In any case, the most recent influx of restorative and logical proof accompanies an abundance of wonderful news for espresso diehards. Drinking espresso can remain to be more advantageous for you than you at any point knew.

Also, here is a portion of the best reasons why we suspect as much.

1. Caffeine gives you a Fleeting Memory Lift

In an exploration, a couple of people got a dosage of 150 milligrams of caffeine each, about as much comprised of some espresso. The scientists saw a critical flood in their cerebrum action. The specialists, likewise, noticed that the response times, and also memory abilities of the stimulated individual enhanced significantly contrasted with the control aggregate that got a common fake treatment. To be particular, they didn't show any expansion at all to the extent mind action is concerned.

How it Capacities

As indicated by driving nervous system specialists and toxicologists, caffeine is accepted to influence zones of the mind in charge of focus and memory. Thus as an immediate result, caffeine gives a lift to the transient memory and also a person's fixation sharpness. In any case, it is significant that it isn't precisely clear to what extent the boosting keeps going. Even better, it isn't clear how it might change starting with one individual then onto the next.

2. It is a Wellspring of Valuable Cell reinforcements

Studies demonstrate that espresso gloats of more cancer prevention agent action contrasted with the two cell reinforcement hotshots; cocoa, and tea. Indeed, an extensive variety of definite lab investigation completed throughout the years has recognized more than 1,000 cell reinforcements in espresso beans – natural at that. Strangely, many more cancer prevention agents come up on simmering the beans. Also, a 2012 research named espresso as one of the center dietary cell reinforcements source promptly accessible today.

On the off chance that you didn't have even an inkling, a larger part of the cancer prevention agents that can be found in some espresso helps in the battle against aggravations. Furthermore, by an aggravation, we mean a basic reason for different ceaseless conditions. Any semblance of atherosclerosis, some growth composes, and joint pain.

Other than that, cancer prevention agents assume a critical job in killing free radicals that normally happen as a piece of day by day metabolic capacities. In any case, the radicals being referred to are those that can cause oxidative pressure and not the helpful sort. The cell reinforcements in some espresso can go far in keeping you solid at a small scale level. What's more, they do as such by shielding your cells from any conceivable outer physical harm.

Ultimately, chromogenic corrosive, ( one of the fundamental cell reinforcements found in espresso ) has been demonstrated to have the constrained capacity to forestall cardiovascular maladies.

3. A Some Espresso Can Keep Subjective Decrease Under control

Its a well-known fact that espresso gives a transitory lift in memory and mind action. However, what a large portion of us don't know is that incessant utilization of espresso can too anticipate psychological decay identified with mental inconsistencies, for example, Alzheimer's malady.

In a broad investigation, specialists found that taking around three to some espresso consistently has some one of a kind advantages that can't be reproduced somewhere else. They connected it with 65% lessened danger of dementia and Alzheimer's in later life. On review, the specialists researched the impact of taking tea or different refreshments, for example, cocoa or brew on subjective decay. Curiously enough, they found no affiliation.

There are different speculations on how espresso can encourage counteract or even better, secure intellectual decrease. However, before that here is a snappy reality, caffeine in espresso anticipates beta-amyloid plaque develops. The plaque can add to the start and also the movement of Alzheimer's. Moreover, specialists conjecture that since some espresso can ward off dietary diabetes (a dementia chance factor), it can likewise be said to limit the risk of creating dementia.

4. Espresso Helps Control A few Growths

As indicated by tumor experts, men who take espresso routinely have a lower danger of building up the destructive prostate growth contrasted with the individuals who utilize different drinks. In comparable pair, different scientists recommend that taking at least some espresso consistently diminishes the danger of endometrial growth in ladies.

Factually, ladies who take at least some espresso on a standard routine have a 25% diminished shot of falling scourge to this tumor contrasted with the ladies who drink short of what one container day by day. On a similar range, specialists have discovered a connection between continuous espresso drinking and lower rates of bosom, colon, rectal, and liver diseases.

Be that as it may, how does this occur?

As examined before, Espresso contains cancer prevention agent phytochemicals called polyphenols. Such synthetic substances have shown numerous anticarcinogenic properties in different investigations and point by point lab examination directed over the past a couple of decades. So to put it plainly, these phytochemicals go about as cushions that fight off the odds of tumors blasting up at the specific slight presentation to cancer-causing mixes.

5. Espresso Diminishes the Danger of Creating Diabetes

A decent piece of wellbeing and nourishment specialists from around the globe buy into the possibility that there is a relationship between going for broke espresso and a diminished danger of diabetes. What's more, this generally because it has been as of late demonstrated that the threat of affliction from diabetes drops by 7 % for some espresso brought down. Likewise, epidemiological investigations showed that overwhelming espresso clients have a half diminished danger of affliction from diabetes contrasted with light consumers or even non-consumers.

There are a few manners by which espresso is useful in warding off diabetes. Most importantly, it enables the body to use insulin and secures insulin-creating cells, and as an immediate result, it permits successful glucose direction. Also, the way that a solid glucose balance is much the same as a without diabetes life.

Second, on the rundown, it counteracts tissue harm. Especially that subsequent from doing combating irritation in the body (one of the sorts two diabetes chance components).

A long way from that, Caffeic corrosive, an espresso part, is known to be huge in bringing down dangerous gathering of some stomach protein stores. Such stores, similar to amyloid fibrils, are found in people with diabetes.

6. Espresso is Sound for Human Heart

Before you reject it like another web legend, take one moment to peruse on a bit. An investigation that required more than 37,000 people more than 13 years was conveyed was as of late concluded by driving cardiology specialists. Sufficiently astounding, the exploration uncovered the way that moderate espresso customers had a 20 percent lessened risk of heart maladies contrasted with light or substantial consumers, and nondrinkers.

Be that as it may, how is this even conceivable?

You don't need to be a prepared cardiologist to see that that espresso underpins heart wellbeing. This, it does as such by ensuring the heart's strong chamber against vein harm that may result from irritation. Along these lines, different heart ailments are avoided including regular diseases, for example, hypertension, thrombosis, heart assault, heart disappointment, among others.

7. Espresso Upgrades Exercise Execution

It's lamentable that a large portion of us have been adapted to trust caffeine is drying out the agent. It is additionally one reason in your developmental years you were disheartened from tasting espresso or tea before a long class or address. Indeed, even wellness masters don't suggest taking espresso previously or after a serious exercise.

However, a long way from that, ongoing investigations have demonstrated that as much as caffeine can fortify parchedness, moderate utilization of espresso does not get dried out exercise center lovers to that degree of intruding on their exercise. Despite what might be expected, espresso and its brigade of goodness help with battling physical exhaustion in this manner permitting you a higher perseverance edge on the treadmill or under the barbells.

How does this come to fruition?

Caffeine is an execution and perseverance enhancer. Not exclusively does it enable battle to weakness yet additionally fortifies compression of striation muscles? To some degree, it can remove a competitor's torment discernment and increment unsaturated fat levels in the blood. The aftereffect of this, over the long haul, is stallion-like continuance.

8. It is Sound for your Liver

Notwithstanding what you may run over in wellbeing online journals and nourishment magazine, the facts demonstrate that espresso brings down the peril of liver malignancy. Indeed, a relentless espresso utilization has been connected to a lower cirrhosis occurrence all the more so alcoholic cirrhosis. A few investigations have even shown an opposite relationship between's expanded espresso drinking and a decreased danger of cirrhosis-20% decrease for each container devoured.

To help this contention, think about this. An ongoing inside and out research done in Turkey a year ago uncovered a converse connection between utilization of espresso and blood levels of every single liver catalyst. Expectedly, expanded levels of liver catalysts reflect harm and aggravation to the liver. Just, the more espresso drank, the lesser their chemical levels.

[milenasanchezmk]

8 Misconceptions About Fiber

The tricky thing about fiber is that it’s not a monolith. There are dozens of varieties. Some of them perform similar functions in the body, but others have extremely unique effects. Some rend your colonic lining to stimulate lubrication. Some turn into gelatinous slurries. But we can’t talk about fiber without understanding that the word describes a variety of compounds. As such, anyone making declarative statements about “fiber” without differentiating between the different types and their effects isn’t being accurate (except for me in that exact sentence).

This leads to a lot of confusion. People make blanket statements that might be true for some types of fibers and incorrect for others. 

Today’s post will attempt to illuminate the bulk of the matter. I’ll go through some of the most common misconceptions and myths about fiber from all corners of the dietary world. Whether you’re keto, low-carb, vegan, carnivore, or breatharian, you’ll find something to love and hate in today’s post.

1) “Fiber makes you full.”

This is theoretically sound. Mechanoreceptors in the gut respond to physical fullness by triggering satiety hormones. Big loads of insoluble fiber increase intestinal bulk, while some soluble fibers can gel up and increase the size of the stuff moving through your gut. Both result in added pressure on gut mechanoreceptors.

How does it work in practice?

A review found that while soluble fiber reduced appetite more than insoluble fibers, the overall effect on body weight was quite small, unimpressive, and inconsistent. More recently, a soluble fiber supplement failed to have any effect on satiety hormones, appetite, and subsequent food intake for the first 150 minutes after eating in healthy adults. The plucky researchers aren’t giving in, however, promising “further research… to quantify how soluble fiber influences appetite several hours after consumption.”

Resistant starch, an indigestible type of starch that colonic bacteria ferment, on the other hand does appear to increase satiety in humans, reducing food intake by 15%.

2) “Every diet needs the same amount of fiber.”

As it turns out, fiber becomes more critical the more carbohydrates you eat.

Soluble fiber slows down digestion, reducing the rate at which energy is absorbed. This can be helpful for people with glucose intolerance or type 2 diabetes by slowing the release of glucose into the blood. 

The byproducts of fiber fermentation in the colon by gut bacteria often have beneficial effects on carbohydrate metabolism. Eating resistant starch, for example, lowers the postprandial blood glucose spike. This reduction may also extend to subsequent meals, indicating it’s honing your ability to handle glucose. Everyone can benefit from better glucose management, but it’s far more critical for people eating significant amounts of glucose.

3) “All the healthiest people studied eat fiber!”

Observational studies are fun and all, but they’re not a good way to prove the healthfulness of fiber. Looking at fiber intake is just about the best way to capture the “healthy user”—that person who does everything right, like walk daily, exercise regularly, abstain from tobacco, avoid binge drinking, and eat whole foods rather than refined ones. It doesn’t say anything definitive about the health effects of the specific dietary variable they’re observing.

That said, the fact that most healthy populations eat whole foods containing fiber indicates that fiber probably isn’t actively harmful.

4) “Fiber is just roughage for big impressive poops. No functional use.”

That’s mostly true of insoluble fiber, which is pure waste material that shreds your intestinal lining and increases stool volume.

There’s considerable evidence that people with type 2 diabetes can really benefit from prebiotic fiber supplementation:

Chicory-derived inulin, a potent prebiotic fiber, reduces liver enzymes and HbA1c, improves blood pressure and fasting glucose, and increases calcium homeostasis.

Inulin improves immune markers and glycemic control.

Resistant starch lowers insulin resistance and inflammation.

A review of studies found that while the prebiotic inulin reduces LDL-C (an imperfect biomarker of dubious utility) in all populations, only in type 2 diabetics does inulin improve HDL and blood glucose control. 

Prebiotic fiber may also help certain patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). The usual therapy for NAFLD patients is weight loss. You lose enough body fat elsewhere and the fat you’ve accumulated in the liver starts to disappear, too.

What about lean NAFLD patients without any real weight to lose?

In lean patients with NAFLD, a synbiotic—blend of prebiotic fiber with probiotic bacteria—reduces liver fat and fibrosis by improving inflammatory markers. Pre-emptive consumption of prebiotics may even protect against the development of NAFLD.

Another function of fiber that occurs in everyone is the production of short chain fatty acids by gut bacteria. When gut bacteria ferment prebiotic fiber, they produce short chain fatty acids, many of which have beneficial metabolic effects.

Butyrate is the most important short chain fatty acid. It fuels colon cells and may prevent colon cancer. Its relationship with existing colon cancer cells is more controversial. Read more about that here.

One interesting line of research is studying the interaction between the ketone body beta-hydroxybutyrate and the short chain fatty acid butyrate. Initial indications suggest that the two may have synergistic effects on cognition, inflammation, and overall health. That alone may be a reason to make sure you get prebiotic fiber on your ketogenic diet, just to hedge your bets.

Now, might a low-carb or ketogenic diet work better for people with type 2 diabetes than adding fiber to their normal diet? Sure. Could such a diet reduce the need for fiber? Yeah, I could see it. The same goes for NAFLD—low carb diets are also excellent in this population. And perhaps people who aren’t eating so many carbs don’t need the short chain fatty acids to improve their metabolic function and insulin sensitivity. But the evidence for fiber in type 2 diabetes and NAFLD stands, and I suspect short chain fatty acid production matters even in low carb or keto dieters.

5) “Fiber cures constipation.”

It depends.

In one 2012 study, patients with idiopathic constipation—constipation without apparent physiological or physical causes—had to remove fiber entirely to get pooping again. Those who kept eating a bit or a lot of it continued to have trouble evacuating. The more fiber they ate, the worse their constipation (and bloating) remained.

A 2012 review found that while fiber may increase stool frequency, it doesn’t improve stool quality, treatment success, or painful defecation. Similarly, glucomannan, a soluble fiber, moderately improves defecation frequency in constipated kids, but has no effect on stool quality or overall treatment success.

However, galactooligosaccharides, a class of prebiotic fiber, do appear to improve idiopathic constipation. And inulin, another prebiotic fiber, improves bowel function and stool consistency in patients with constipation.

6) “Fiber aggravates gut issues.”

Some say fiber cures gut issues like IBS and IBD. Others say fiber aggravates them. Who’s right? Maybe both.

Both IBS-D (irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea) and IBS-C (irritable bowel syndrome with constipation) patients can benefit from soluble fiber (psyllium) while insoluble fiber (bran) is far less effective.

Wheat bran works okay for IBS, if the patients can tolerate it. They tend to tolerate something like hydrolyzed guar gum much better.

For IBD, the evidence is mixed. One survey of Crohn’s patients found that those eating more fiber (23 grams/day) had fewer flareups than those eating less (10 grams/day), while colitis patients reported no difference in symptoms based on fiber intake.

On the other hand, studies indicate that a low-FODMAP diet, which eliminates most sources of fiber, especially fermentable prebiotic fiber, is an effective treatment for IBS and IBD. Low-FODMAP diets have been shown to reduce bloating, abdominal pain, quality of life, and overall symptoms in intestinal disorders.

These contrary results may not even be contradictory. If your gut’s messed up, one solution could be to add back in the fibers you’re missing. Another could be to take all the fiber out and start from scratch.

7) “Fiber reduces nutrient absorption.”

For a long time, the consensus was that fiber tends to bind with minerals in the gut and thus reduce their absorption. These days, researchers understand that many of these fiber-bound minerals become available after fermentation in the colon.

Another wrinkle is that dietary fiber often comes with phytic acid, which binds minerals and prevents their absorption. Take wheat bran. Often deemed “wheat fiber” and lambasted for its tendency to bind minerals, wheat bran isn’t just fiber. It’s also a significant source of mineral-binding phytic acid.

Prebiotics increase absorption of magnesium, heme iron, and calcium. This makes sense. Even if the prebiotics are binding minerals, they release them once they reach the colon for fermentation by gut bacteria.

Fiber may reduce absorption of plant polyphenols, however.

8) “No one needs fiber.”

On the surface, this appears to be a sound conclusion. The human host digestive system cannot digest it. The majority of the fiber we eat gets pooped out as literal waste material. Certain classes of fiber may improve our gut health, but no one is keeling over from a lack of fiber in their diet.

Some have argued that a sterile gut is ideal if you have the right diet, that employing vast hordes of gut bacteria is just an adaptive measure taken to deal with a substandard diet full of roughage. The problem is that most people throughout history and prehistory have eaten that roughage, employed those gut bacteria, utilized the metabolites those bacteria produce. I suspect thinking long and hard before you consider it immaterial to human health.

If that were true, why would breast milk—the only food specifically designed for human consumption—contain loads of indigestible oligosaccharides that feed the growing gut biome? Even if it turns out that feeding the gut biome is only vital during infancy, that’s still a population of humans who truly need fiber.

Here’s where I come down: Fiber is an intrinsic part of many whole plant foods (and even whole animal foods, if it turns out that our gut bacteria can utilize “animal fibers” like other top carnivores). The Primal-friendly plants, the ones our ancestors grew up eating approximations of, like fruits, vegetables, roots, and tubers, are mostly higher in soluble fiber and lower in insoluble fiber. The only way to get huge doses of insoluble fiber these days is with supplementation or by eating grains. I don’t suggest eating grains or supplementing with insoluble fiber. I do suggest eating fruits, vegetables, roots, and tubers (while managing your carbs).

As for the carnivore issue, I’m open to the possibility that a properly-constructed carnivorous diet (which may, remember, include gristly animal fiber) obviates the need for plant fiber, prebiotic or otherwise. I’m not confident enough to try it myself, though.

Do I think everyone should be supplementing with prebiotic fiber? No. I add inulin to my Primal Fuel protein powder, mostly to improve mouth-feel but also to feed beneficial microbes and increase butyrate production. I add prebiotic cassava fiber to my collagen bars, again to improve texture and feed gut bacteria. And I’ll sometimes use raw potato starch for its considerable resistant starch content, often just mixing it into sparkling water and drinking it straight. But for the most part, the fiber I eat is incidental to the foods I consume. Berries, non-starchy vegetables, jicama, garlic, onions, green bananas, nuts—these are all foods rich in fiber, particularly prebiotic fiber, and I eat a fair amount of them while remaining low-carb and often keto.

As you can see, the fiber story isn’t simple. At all. There are many variables to consider. If you’re confused and unsure of how to think about fiber, you’re on the right track.

What do you think, folks? How has fiber helped or harmed you? I’d love to hear from everyone.

Take care and be well.