#i am resigned to the reality that I am only capable of using this blog to write long blog-style posts when i post at all

[buskingalbatross]

i met dan and phil two months ago today! 💫

the intrinsically strange and nerve-wracking social interaction that is a m&g is something i once assumed i would simply never choose to put myself through. but, considerate of their argument that we are all in fact mortal and i may never get a chance to hug them ever again, i realized that i had assumed wrong. back when this tour was first announced, i realized i really did want to meet them after all these years if i could.

several people can attest to how epically i vacillated over what to have them sign (it was truthfully a months-long series of vacillations). i eventually decided that what i wanted was a single object that encapsulated all – or almost all – of my creative offerings to the phandom in 2024. so, after some thought, i started learning bookbinding. so that i could bind together the phanfics i’ve written and have them sign them.

the project plunged me into the world of ficbinders and bookbinders, a world which i now delight in being granted access to. the book that they signed, which i posted photos of in this post, is simple and the work of a beginner, but i’m also quite proud of it. for someone who famously cannot tell what a straight line looks like, it’s a miracle i made such a neat and structurally-sound book.

the stories in it range from a howl’s moving castle-esque wizards au (but weird) to vampire phan to the story i wrote from the pov of a wagtail. there’s also some phyuri in there too. four different phanartists have artwork in the book, and all of them are absolutely amazing. i want to mention one of them, @pierogish, because without her support of my stories i absolutely would not have had the guts to walk up to dan and phil and ask them to sign those stories.

to help contextualize the whole thing to them, i opened up the book to show the page i wanted signed, where i had already tucked a print of pierogish’s art of them as wizards (which you can see more of here!). they were both so kind and enthusiastic – phil said “i love being a wizard!” which sort of made my entire life, and dan said he loved my presentation of the book. because i had basically meticulously choreographed the whole interaction for myself beforehand, that comment meant a ton to me.

on behalf of pierogish, i also got to show them (and gift them a print of) her Sister Daniel art – an honor of the highest order.

as the proclaimed winners of rpf forever and also as creators who inspire me to live life and tell stories in my own kind, creative, queer way, dnp signing this book was one of the coolest moments of my life. being surrounded by the phandom was magical, as it always is. and seeing their show was unquestionably as healing and celebratory for me as they hope it is for everyone.

bonus signed pierogish art + tit set in nashville:

[thanksjro]

Zero Point, a Last Stand of the Wreckers prose story- I Sure Hope You Like Eye Imagery

Ooh, an artsy start to our prose this go around.

This story takes place after the events of Last Stand of the Wreckers, with our dear friend Springer well into his Overlord-induced coma.

Roadbuster is a gentle soul, when he’s not busy ripping people’s spines out.

Roadbuster’s been put in charge of the Debris station since Springer’s out of commission. It’s boring. He’s bored. He has a routine he follows, but there’s only so much grave-visiting/security-checking/weapon-building/eyeball-cleaning a guy can do within a 120 hour day before it becomes less of a routine and more of a compulsive habit.

Springer’s eyes are a specific shade of blue known as Matrix Blue- supposedly a marker for being Matrix Compatible. Considering that Senator Shockwave had to go and get multiple guys some nonconsensual plastic surgery to make sure they could actually fit the Matrix, I’m going to go ahead and say that that’s some bunk someone made up to hype up the mysticism of Primehood.

Springer’s obviously in a bad way, and it’s not looking like things are going to get any better. You can tell, because this is the point where his internal monologue kicks in, reflecting on just what it’s like to die, and his past. Sure hope they don’t have any vats filled with corrodia gravis on this space station.

Back before the war was The War, Springer was young and naive, but his boobs were just as awesome as they are now.

Springer became slightly disenchanted as his time on the front lines went on, thinking that he needed to do more to help the Autobot Cause. He decided he wanted to join the Wreckers, though he knew next to nothing about them at the time, and everything that he’d heard probably should have sent him running in the opposite direction. Decepticons caught by Impactor and friends would kill themselves in the middle of the street if they managed to escape.

But we’re dealing with a mind that’s been shaped by a civil war, now aren’t we? Impressions are warped for Autobots, because Decepticons are evil, and therefore they deserve that sort of thing, now don’t they? Nobody is immune to propaganda.

Springer first met Impactor at Sherma Bridge, where he saw him punch through a ship’s windshield, spear the driver’s head with his drill-hand, and then land the thing in front of a memorial statue. Gee, what a guy.

Springer, even though he’d seen all this and was feeling a little wary about this whole situation- which is a very valid reaction to witnessing a murder, no matter who’s been killed- decides to get put on the list of reservists for the Wreckers.

It’s amazing they even bother with Rung at all, isn’t it?

Springer’s interview is a violent one, because this is the Wreckers, and we don’t ever go half-mast on anything- Impactor falls out of the fucking sky in the middle of a huge battle and tells Springer that he’ll be coming with him. And that was that.

Oh hey, it’s the IDW2 eating chairs. And hello, Kaput, it’s nice to see you again.

Kaput’s diagnosis is as bleak as it is cryptic- Springer’s probably for sure going to die. Kaput seems to only exist to tell people they’re dying or dead, unless they’re the once and future Optimus Prime.

Kup’s pretty bummed out about this whole thing, pacing like a 1950’s father in the birth and delivery waiting room. Kaput doesn’t seem to notice, or is too lost the the medical sauce to realize that him going on about how they fixed that weird humming noise Springer’s legs used to make is making folks anxious.

Roadbuster asks just what exactly’s wrong, if they fixed everything from his ripped-off face to his weird humming legs. Kaput doesn’t like confrontation, so he blathers on for a bit before admitting that they haven’t found the zero point.

Roberts, how many times are you going to do this to Kup? First Rodimus, now Springer- did Kup bully you in primary school? I’m starting to get concerned.

That was six months ago, and while Roadbuster had been polite about it at the time, all the nothing that’s happened since has made him feel a little less kindly toward Kaput.

Okay, who’s ready to find out why doctors and mechanics aren’t the same thing on Cybertron? Because I sure am!

So they have to account for the soul, is what you’re saying. Is this about having some sort of bedside manner, because the mental aspect of healing has to be taken into account? Or is it more to do with the bizarre implications of the soul being physical as opposed to metaphysical, and therefore capable of being destroyed? The ethical conundrum that the spark presents is fascinating.

If a break happens between these two nerves, it can cause the energy of the spark to be redirected away from the points it’s meant to go, like a heart with a hole in it. Yes, the blood is still inside the body, but it’s not inside the veins and is therefore useless, and in fact is directly harming the body.

Roadbuster, after reflecting on the grim reality Springer is currently living, breaks out Wreckers: Declassified. This isn’t reading for personal enjoyment or ego-stroking however- Roadbuster actually greatly dislikes reading about himself in Fisitron’s datalogs. No, this is more of a last-ditch effort to save Springer’s life.

Roadbuster learned to read to act on a theory brought up by Rung- he and Kup are friends, on account of both of them being very old- that the spark is psychosomatic in nature. It can be influenced by intense emotional responses to potentially heal the physical self. They’re willing to try this, because nobody really knows how exactly a spark works, so Rung’s guess is as good as any.

Story time for the evening picks up on a chapter in a story called “The Wreckers’ Air Attack”, getting right into where Megatron’s about to shoot Impactor in the back of the head. But not without pontificating first.

This is so over the top, so romantic- and I’m talking Romantic as in the literary style. I don’t even know what to say here. Luckily Impactor does.

Fisitron may not know what this whole scene is about, but we as the reader do. The hardcover trade edition of Last Stand was published roughly a six months after “Chaos Theory”, where we got THIS exchange:

If this is what Megatron’s poetry is like, it’s no wonder Impactor isn’t a fan. Purple prose out the wazoo, incredibly flowery imagery- I’m sure there’s an audience for all that, but I doubt Impactor’s a part of that crowd.

Megatron is distracted just long enough for Springer to descend upon him on the sky sled, like a murderous Santa Claus, jumping off so the sled can slam into Megatron and send him careening down the side of the mountain.

That’s taken care of. What next?

It’s at this point that Roadbuster checks what chapter they’re on, because he’s really not the biggest fan of Fisitron’s writing style. Guess he isn’t one for fanfiction, or adverbs. Turns out, each of these datalogs are less blog posts and more fully-fledged books. Every single one of them.

Roadbuster’s feeling kind of hopeless at this point, and it’s not hard to understand why; there hasn’t been any sort of response from Springer at all in all the months he’s been reading to him.

He considers the contents of the only datalog he hasn’t cracked open yet, outright skipping over it every time- #113, the one about Pova. He doesn’t ever read it because it’s full of false information, as was made very clear in Last Stand #5.

Springer joined the 17th iteration of the Wreckers, after a hazing ritual so brutal, it required the addition of an amendment to the Misuse of Weapons Act. Horrifying. None of the original members of the Wreckers had survived the war by the point Springer had been brought on- except for Valve, who does not count because he left the Autobots to go be a Decepticon, a fact which will never be expanded upon, much like Eugenesis Skywarp having been an Autobot for some friggin’ reason.

Springer, once on the inside, realizes that maybe the Wreckers are a little too dark a shade of gray for him to be able to sit comfortably with- the battering of POWs just a little too enthusiastically, the bending of the rules a little too sharply, the blatant disregard for the Tyrest Accord being smoothed over with an “oopsie doodle!” It’s looking like the Wreckers aren’t completely on the straight and narrow; shocking, I know.

Still, he doesn’t really see the point in arguing with it, instead just trying to make sure that he’s not the one doing the maiming and such. Complicity is not the answer to this sort of behavior, Springer.

When Squadron X came onto the scene, Impactor was so upset at the perceived slight- because obviously if Squadron X was the Decepticons answer to the Wreckers, and they were a bunch of murderous assholes, what did that make the Wreckers?- that he made it everyone else’s problem. The Wreckers WOULD destroy Squadron X. It was his new goal in life.

This went exactly where you’d expect such a singleminded hate-boner to go.

After the execution of eight POWs who should have been let go due to being on sovereign territory, Springer decided that enough was enough and called the cops on Impactor. High Command had been itching to get this guy back under control, so things moved pretty quickly after that.

Springer resigned from the group afterwords, but then everyone started coming out of the woodwork, pestering him to come back and LEAD them, because they were worried about being shut down. The likes of Roadbuster and Whirl don’t exactly make for good executives. After thinking about it, and after the trial, of course, he agrees to come back on as the leader of the Wreckers. So began a new era.

Back in the real world, Roadbuster’s trying to read the falsified account of Pova, but just can’t go through with it. He decides to tell Springer the truth, if only so he won’t die with a bunch of bullshit bouncing around in his brain.

Springer did so many drugs in Eugenesis, he BECAME drugs in Last Stand.

So Springer is apparently the greatest hype man to ever live, as he pumped everyone up so much about getting Squadron X, they just went completely feral the moment they saw their ship. Squadron X wasn’t even doing anything, and the Wreckers were frothing at the mouth.

When this lead to the inevitable, and Springer was trying to break down the door to prevent Impactor from racking up eight war crimes in under two minutes, Roadbuster and Whirl had a little moment. They knew what had happened, they knew that they couldn’t stop it, they knew that Springer couldn’t stop it, and they were pleased as punch about it.

Once Impactor had been arrested, the other Wreckers were worried that they’d be the next to get ratted out. To try and prevent this, they created a false narrative to lure Springer back into the group, placing him in a position of leadership to soothe his worries about the others having been complacent in the murder of Squadron X.

Roadbuster finishes off this horrifying admission with a non-apology, complimenting Springer on being a good leader. Then he notices that Springer’s got a tear in his eye.

That’s a [ tair ] , not a [ teer ]. It took me a second, too. English is a nightmare of a language.

He tries to buff the tear out, manually peeling back Springer’s eyelid to do it, only to find that maybe Rung wasn’t completely full of shit after all.

[tessatechaitea]

Justice League Annual #1 (1987)

Martian Manhunter has five thousand different super powers compared with the one super power of the rest of the team (Black Canary's sonic scream. The other "super powers" are just technological accessory based).

If this comic book isn't about Martian Manhunter's addiction to Oreo cookies then what am I even doing with my life? The only reason I love Martian Manhunter is that he loves Oreo cookies and I view him as the father I never had. Whenever I had a problem growing up, I would think, "What advice would Martian Manhunter give me?" And that's why I was so fat in Junior High School because the answer was always "Eat more Oreos." I know Martian Manhunter's eventual addiction is to "Choco's" but fuck Choco's. Fuck them like every other off-brand Oreo cookie. They fucking suck. Speaking of things that suck, this dick isn't going to suck itself. Now picture me pointing at the comic book because I need to read it. That's how I begin reading all of my comic books. And I say it loudly so the neighbors will think, "Oh boy! That guy next door isn't a nerd at all! Total sex maniac!" The "Hunting the Manhunter" blurb on this cover reminds me that Millennium is coming up and I think I hated that? No, no. I'm sure I loved it! There are two things I couldn't get enough of in my teen years and comic books was the second one of them. Kord Industries has bought some property in the middle of Ultra-Nowhere, South America, and some of its employees have gone off to scout the location.

Wasn't that the episode with the shape-changing hottie who loves sucking the salt out of men? You know what I'm talking about. Also she was probably a male monster posing as a female monster. Proof of that theory is that every single episode of the first season of the original Star Trek could also have been the name of a gay bar.

Inside the abandoned research facility, the Kord employees encounter pretty much the same thing Kirk, Spock, and the other one encountered:

Vampire John Travolta! It's possible I'm misremembering the Star Trek episode.

While on monitor duty, Guy Gardner discovers that large groups of people on four different continents seem to be under the control of a single will and Batman asks Martian Manhunter, "Do you think this is League business?" What the fuck else would be, Bat-Turd?! A new Internet fad like planking or the Harlem Shuffle? I mean, it totally could be that except that the Internet doesn't really exist during this story. I mean if you want to be a pedant about it, I suppose the teenage Internet across college campuses. But nobody likes a pedant so just shut the fuck up and live in my reality while you're reading my stupid comic book review. Just take the fucking Red Pill and relax! Except don't do that because the idea of The Matrix Red Pill has been co-opted by the worst of humanity who think they're somehow the most logical and philosophical people on the planet when they're really just awful monsters rationalizing all of their mean desires.

How did people come away from reading this comic book hating Guy Gardner and not also despising Batman?

The Justice League splits up into teams of two to cover the mass hypnosis issues in Paris, Tokyo, Sydney, and Los Angeles. I'm not sure Batman knows how to balance teams because he sends Doctor Fate and Martian Manhunter together while leaving Mister Miracle with Blue Beetle. Here are my teams: Guy Gardner with Blue Beetle because Blue Beetle is effectively worthless and Guy Gardner has the most powerful weapon in the universe. Batman would go with Black Canary because her sonic scream is sort of like a bat's echo location. Martian Manhunter would go with Scott Free because they're both aliens. And Booster Gold would team up with Doctor Fate because their outfits match. Blue Beetle and Mister Miracle head to L.A. with some, um, problematic dialogue? I think?

This is an "anal sex/everybody in Hollywood is gay" joke, right?

With newer comic books, a scan of 620 pixels (basically the width of the main column of the blog (although I think the width changed when I added the Goodreads app. I should probably fix it so the 620 pixel pictures stop bleeding off into the right-hand frame (if you're reading this on Tumblr, just ignore it. Just ignore everything since Tumblr fucked up their code and now I can't even center pictures or get the captions to sit snugly right up underneath the scans))) was usually enough to read the dialogue clearly. But with these old comics on newsprint, they're fuzzier and the font seems much smaller. Sorry about that but I won't betray my artistic integrity by scanning less than the full panel! At least not in this case is my defense against the pedants who can easily find many examples of me doing exactly that. First Black Canary is treated like shit by Batman and now she teams up with Booster Gold who can't stop hitting on her until she reminds him she's a competent limb-breaker. This must be the kind of comics Comicsgaters wish we could return to! "Remember when women were treated as sexual objects and not one member of the Justice League was Black and constantly said, 'Booyah!'? What great times!" Black Canary and Booster Gold become John Travolta Vampire slaves almost immediately because Batman chose the improper team pairings. It's bad enough that Batman would fail at making proper pairings but it's extra bad when Batman is being written by a writer and the writer made that choice. I mean, how do you pass up the opportunity to team Booster Gold with Doctor Fate?! They would look so fucking good together! Batman and Guy Gardner (you know how you can tell Hal Jordan is the real Green Lantern? Because people will say "Green Lantern" when discussing him instead of "Hal Jordan") wind up in Tokyo where Doctor Light is all, "Hello, boys! I'm a vampire now!" Then she blinds the fuck out of them because Batman forgot to put on his Bat-sunglasses.

Batman steals this move from Doctor Light in the next regular issue.

Doctor Light kisses Batman and he's all, "Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. I get it. Being a vampire is pretty awesome. No wonder writers write vampire versions of me every other year or so."

I don't think the editors briefed Willingham on what Beetle's Bug can and can't do.

Beetle lands at Kord West and is immediately swamped by John Travolta Vampire's thralls. So he does the thing he does in nearly every comic book except the one where Maxwell Lord shoots him in the head: he runs away. But he doesn't run fast enough and winds up possessed aboard the Bug with Mister Miracle. The story hints that Miracle gets possessed just after the scene changes but he's Scott Free, the world's greatest escape artist! I would guess he'd be the one to save everybody else but judging from the cover, it's Martian Manhunter who keeps from getting possessed. In Australia, Doctor Fate wades into a group of infected people because he's a gigantic arrogant prick. He's all, "I'm a frickin' Lord of Order, assholes! I know a spell that can get to the root of this problem!" And then the Vampire John Travolta is all, "I'll kill Kent Nelson if you don't leave his body." And Doctor Fate is all, "Well, J'onn, I've gotta go! Nice hanging out with you! Ta ta!" Which leaves Martian Manhunter as the only person left on Earth who isn't infected (or at least the only person left who is in this story). I bet that's pretty lonely. But Martian Manhunter is used to being lonely. I wonder if he's capable of making his right hand into a female martian so he can fuck it? Martian Manhunter has no idea what he's dealing with so he puts on Doctor Fate's helmet to gain all of the other powers that he didn't already have without it. But only for a few seconds because Superman would never be able to get an erection again if he found out Martian Manhunter had all of his powers and could also do magic. J'onn wears the helmet just long enough to learn what Doctor Fate learned about the contagion: it's a sentient cell! It's smart cancer! And I guess Vampire John Travolta was Patient Zero. Now J'onn just has to figure out how to fight Smart Cancer. I don't even know how he'll defeat it because I just looked up Smart Cancer in the Who's Who to read about its weaknesses and wouldn't you know it? There's no entry for Smart Cancer! Maybe it was in an update that I don't own. Like that version of Who's Who that was just loose pages to stick in a binder! I have that one too but it's possible I just didn't buy all of the expansion packs. Martian Manhunter heads to the source of the contagion to meet Smart Cancer head on. What he finds is a boss from Castlevania.

When you have thousands of people at your disposal, is the most effective way to use them shoving them together into one giant person?

The first thing Smart Cancer's Granfaloon does is try to smash J'onn with its people fist. In effect, it's smashing a dozen people head first into the ground so that dirt sprays up all over the place. So I guess a dozen or so people are now dead, right? It's not like Smart Cancer gave them invulnerability to massive head wounds.

I think this panel is the one where all the Justice League editors through their hands up in resignation and sighed, "I guess the Justice League is ridiculous now."

Martian Manhunter realizes, like me, how fucking stupid Smart Cancer is to put all of its people in one gigantic people-shaped basket. Since all the minds are linked, he realizes he can throw the Fate helmet on one of the people and Doctor Fate can possess Smart Cancer. It works but only for a limited amount of time. Doctor Fate can't hold that many people under his sway. But Doctor Fate does know who can control Smart Cancer: the martian! He can shapeshift his cells into some kind of prison or something. I don't know. It was explained in the most basic medical and scientific terms but they were still beyond my attention span. In the end, Martian Manhunter contained the Smart Cancer in him and that's where it lives now? Oh, and speaking of "the end," check out this clever and titillating final panel:

"Why's it gotta be the ass of the only woman on the team?" I say while pulling my pants down.

Justice League Annual #1 Rating: What?! I don't rate annuals! I mean, maybe sometimes I rate annuals. This one was okay. It was sort of interesting but I was disappointed that Vampire John Travolta wasn't the actual enemy. I hope Smart Cancer fights its way out of J'onn and makes another appearance later.

[asphaltapostle]

What I have long predicted is now coming to pass: Google believes it should assume control.

Out of all the technology companies that have made my knees knock and my voice hoarse and my [Tweets manic](https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q="google" %40ficklecrux&src=typd) as a technoheretic in the past several years, Jumbo Google would easily take home the winning trophy for Dystopian of the Millennium. I have been rehearsing an especially dear pet prophecy of mine, unsolicited, to family, friends, and podcast guests since 2011 in which I end up arguing quite convincingly that Google is a dead ringer for the 16th-century Vatican: an inherently self-isolating organization with an absolute monopoly yielding gargantuan levels of essentially passive income from a service which nearly everybody transacts with, but only Google understands (and is therefore assumed to be its only possible provider,) which inevitably develops such a distance from the rest of the populace and their way of life (in tandem with total notoriety and celebrity among them all) not intentionally out of malice, but from the delusion of mythically-bestowed philanthropic duty that is borned of and compounded by this economic and cultural isolation in a perpetual accumulation of power and wealth that radicalizes the monopolizers — the majority already highly predisposed to zeal as they would’ve needed to be in order to find themselves in this singular, universally powerful position over every other class — and leaves their egocentric minds to wander exempt from all criticism save for that of fellow radicalized monopolizers, who together begin to feel more and more comfortable wondering aloud about themselves in increasingly fantastic presumptions: what if all of this was bestowed upon us because we are superior to them? What if it is our divine responsibility as superior beings to take charge and shepherd the common people as our sheep — for they cannot possibly know as well as we what is truly best for them?

You see it, right? And you can feel a very specific flavor of terror that is both awed by the scale of the circumstances created by so few human minds and sincerely amused by the absoluteness of your own inability to alter them in any way. Perhaps you even recognize this taste as one perfected by Christianity’s ancient advertising business, but Google knows so much about you that it’s rumored to’ve been selling user data to the Judeochristian God for some time now at a 10% discount, and so we extrapolate and anticipate, yes?

Of course, it’s admittedly satisfying for me to deliver you to this godfearing place in the most perverse look what I saw first that you didn’t see because you’re just not as bright but lucky for you, I’m so fucking generous with my wisdom sort of thinking around which the entire personas and livelihoods of fringe movement fanatics are built upon, but this is my one thing, okay? I’ve been waiting years for the right time to formally argue this theory in depth, and — thanks to this year’s public spotlight finally pivoting on the giants who’ve been silently swallowing their competition and relentlessly forcing their already ridiculous margins higher and higher in relative obscurity for decades, the time has come, indeed. The common people’s trust in Google had a godawful week.

Don’t Be Evil

On Monday, Gizmodo reported that twelve frustrated Google employees were quitting the company in protest of their work assisting the Department of Defense to “implement machine learning to classify images gathered by drones” for the detail fleeting Project Maven, despite some 4000 employee signatures on a letter addressed to CEO Sundar Pichai requesting (in full) that he “cancel this project immediately,” and “draft, publicize, and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology,” citing the infamous “Don’t Be Evil” motto, which Google then proceeded to remove from its code of conduct for the first time in 18 years the day after the New York Times article went to press, on April 5th.

On initial approach to the abstract of this story, from the ass to our thoughts arrives an easy narrative of a Silicon Valley mutiny comprised of twelve brave, conscientious souls who’ve been eaten up inside by their complicity in the filthy deals made by their power-obsessed CEO over scotch and cigars in a dark D.C. study — kept awake for months by the sound of his puffing cackles at satellite images of dead toddlers in a bombed-out street.

Ah ha, we say. That man is no good, and he just wouldn’t listen! They knew they didn’t have a choice… They only did what they had to do…

The reality of internal disagreements at Google, though, manages to be even more theatrical. The sheer volume of correspondence must surely be beyond anything capable of the enduser’s imagination, so let’s phone a friend: my favorite peek into the day-to-days of inter-Google existence is an old blog post by Benjamin Tilly on his first month at the company in which he was compelled almost immediately to describe in great detail how best to “deal with a lot of email in gmail” at peak efficiency using shortcuts and labels. “As you get email, you need to be aggressive about deciding what you need to see, versus what is context specific.”

Now we have a bit better idea of the aggressive emailing that was a sure constant on a normal workday at Google in 2010, so it must’ve been deafening after 8 years of Gmail development as 4000 employees no doubt vented, debated, and decided to organize last month, though without making much headway because the leadership’s response was apparently “complicated by the fact that Google claims it is only providing open-source software to Project Maven,” this new knowledge having significant effect on our mind’s image of Sundar Pichai’s activities in Washington: he is now swapping seats with a frustrated Colin Powell in order to install OpenOffice onto his desktop from a flash drive, and we recall that Google’s Googleplex headquarters resembles nowhere in modern life more than a brand new playground built in a design language borrowing heavily from Spy Kids. And though these Twelve disciples are unnamed for the moment, a few of them could immediately land book deals by going public, and every single one would always have by default not only the badge of “I landed a job at Google,” (which is really to say I have hit Life’s maximum level cap,) but “I worked at Google for a while, but ended up quitting to do something else,” which is guaranteed to make you the most interesting, intellectually superior person present in whatever crowd for the rest of your life. The ultra-cool Sarah Cooper quit Google to become a comedian and even got to talk to Kara Swisher! I won’t pretend to understand big tech’s diminutive bastardization of prestige, but “more than 90 academics” jumping to publish an open letter (adjacent to a huge DONATE: Support the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots button) in which they “write in solidarity with the 3100+ Google employees” who’s terrible boss decided to help some lackeys in the Pentagon set up their email and didn’t text back for a whole hour doesn’t sound 100% sincere. Notably, I don’t know how or why the fuck 90 people would go about collaborating on a single document, but if it really was managed, they definitely used Google Docs… At one point, it was fun to think about the history of the friendly side-scroller-playing garage ghouls and dorm dorks who gave cooky, wacko names to their dot com startups in parody and defiance of the lame-ass surname anagrams on the buildings of their established competitors, but those who’ve stuck around have only done so by becoming expert at SUCKING UP EVERYTHING around them, and it pisses me off every day how worried I am that my species will finally be done in by a company with a name like Yahoo! and be known only to a bunch of adolescent interdimensional silicon blobs 30 million years in the future as that bipedal race who remained dignified until the last 0.01% of their reign on Earth, when in way less than a single generation, they all just went FUCKING INSANE and blew themselves up because they suddenly hated all sense.

“Google” is perhaps the worst of these to have to shout in fear and/or anger in your last moments as it sounds in American English like you’ve startled your subject with a ticklish pinch followed so immediately by an esophagus-busting chokehold that the two events appear simultaneous, and in real English English, it almost always sounds like a parent speaking of a character on a pre-K children’s television programme whom they find quite foul and upsetting, but will manage to refrain from expressing so otherwise because they know that Teletubbies shit is the most quickly forgotten stage of television viewership. It’s fascinating how exclusive the word “Google” is to American English because in everything else it really is complete nonsense, but lets halt all etymological discussions right now because we’ve only now just finished with Monday.

The Soul Ledger

On Thursday, all of my Google experiences, suppositions, and soul-detaching screenshots were usurped when a thoroughly alarming internal company video called The Selfish Ledger was leaked to The Verge, which I watched once then and do not want to watch again for the sake of this piece, but I will. Though the big V has been disappointingly timid for years about editorializing — when tech journalism desperately needs some confident, informed opinion more than ever — Vlad Savov’s accompanying article should be read in its entirety, to which I can add my own terror where he perhaps could not. The production style is technically identical to that of the very popular thinkpiece-esque, motion-graphics-paired-with-obligatory-sharpie illustrated videos which you find playing at max volume on your mom’s iPad from where she’s fallen asleep on the couch at 9PM, but the repeating stock string soundtrack multiplies one’s discomfort as such that we would all end up in the fetal position without remembering the transition were it not for the appearance of trusty old Dank Jenkins, who’s face I thankfully associate heavily enough with his infamous down-and-out Tweet to be a welcome respite in attention before the very scary hypothesis for which it’s been buttering me up, as best summed by Vlad:

> The system would be able to “plug gaps in its knowledge and refine its model of human behavior” — not just your particular behavior or mine, but that of the entire human species. “By thinking of user data as multigenerational,” explains Foster, “it becomes possible for emerging users to benefit from the preceding generation’s behaviors and decisions.” Foster imagines mining the database of human behavior for patterns, “sequencing” it like the human genome, and making “increasingly accurate predictions about decisions and future behaviors.”

The next time the what if they do something scary question comes up in a casual conversation about Google, you’ll have something a lot more substantial than just speculation. Or will you? The Verge reached out for comment and got an awfully convenient response.

> This is a thought-experiment by the Design team from years ago that uses a technique known as ‘speculative design’ to explore uncomfortable ideas and concepts in order to provoke discussion and debate.

Wow! Leave it up to grand ole Googe to reveal the ultimate excuse for just about any suggestion or behavior, though it does seem almost deliberately uncomfortable, doesn’t it? No matter — whether or not this video was ever about a project or tangible product development, or simply to explore uncomfortable ideas because it is proof that the company has reached that critical Vatican stage — if you’ll remember — where they now feel comfortable exploring Very Bad, but Very easily made Real Ideas amongst themselves about what would happen if they allowed their system to nudge its users around a different, slightly less optimal route to the bar, let’s say — without their knowledge — in order for the system to collect traffic data for the sake of its own interests? Which would be, technically, in the interest of all Ledger users now and in the future, so why not?

> The ledger could be given a focus, shifting it from a system which not only tracks our behavior, but offers direction towards a desired result.”

This, my dear privacy-obsessed friends, is the real issue with data collection — its power over huge groups by way of their behavior and it is never going to be remedied in any significant way by ad-blockers or VPNs because the EndUser shall always out number you 50 to 1, even decades from now. EndUser does not understand — or, crucially, have any desire to understand anything technical about what leads to the PewDiePie videos playing on his filthy screen. Here’s a great opportunity to escape Silicon Valley’s technolibertarianism and resign your Darwinian empathy in favor of meaningful and truly-effective action: if you want to avoid a future Google Church (or Google Government, more worryingly,) you should invest your time, effort, and knowledge into electing officials more capable of understanding and regulating Big Tech.

Google Government

The internet as it stands is made possible by Google as the goto resource for online advertising. In 2016, “Google held 75.8 percent of the search ad market, bringing in $24.6 billion in revenue from search ads,” according to Recode. By 2019, “that’s expected to grow to $36.62 billion in revenue, or 80.2 percent of the market.” Google’s edge in user behavior and targeted advertising combined with their extensive resources available developers to integrate independent platforms with Google’s software services at various levels makes it very difficult for any advertising-funded individual or organization to compete online without dipping in to the Google universe. YouTube — a Google property since 2006 — has actively invested in and supported a new career path entirely within their own platform that is rapidly becoming popularly aspired-to by young children, while the reality of existence as a full-time YouTuber is far less glamorous than the immediately-visible surface would indicate, and the effort already expended by my generation in its pursuit has already made us insane.

So, what would the internet look like if Google didn’t exist? We know they’ve been working with the government now on various projects, but what if some terrible exposed transgression of theirs suddenly warranted an immediate shutdown and seizure of all Google properties? Well, we know from a post on Quora by Googler Ashish Kedia that even 5 years ago, the sudden absence of Google for “2–3 mins” set the internet into a bit of a panic, reducing overall traffic by 40%. In the time since, we’ve all grown exponentially more dependent on Google properties: billions of people rely on Google Maps for directions and, thousands of companies (including the Pentagon and other government institutions) rely on Gmail and GSuites for intercommunication, file sharing, task management, etc., and more and more academic institutions rely on Chromebook devices running connection-dependent operating systems. It’s not much of a stretch to argue that Google’s sudden disappearance would constitute a Civil Emergency in the United States, which will only become a stronger and more serious incentive for regulatory bodies to look the other way.

Though the tangible results of advertising have been quantified significantly in the past 20 years, one can’t help but wonder after watching YouTube ads for the new Mercedes-Benz S-Class on toy unboxing videos if the companies who spend big bucks on Google advertising understand where their money is going, but they know that if they don’t advertise there, their competitors will. This, of course, is a fundamental practice of a monopoly, and it’s yielded Google so much fucking money that they cannot possibly spend it fast enough, as evidenced by their investments in life extension — so that, perhaps, they will have more time on Earth to figure it out.

When you build a collection of the world’s smartest people in a self-sufficient environment that discourages exploration of other lifestyles and ideas, and you sustain the society with a gargantuan, relatively low-maintenance revenue stream, you create a culture which is not only well-primed for isolationism, but is also extremely inefficient. In fact, with its vast collection of abandoned products and properties, Google must surely be one of the most inefficient companies in history. Thinking back on recent software releases along with its recent entries into the hardware space, Google is also one of the worst competing tech companies. Very little aside from Gmail, Google Photos, Google Maps, and Chrome have found their place or garnered significant usership. Google Play Music is unintuitive and impossible, Google Allo and Google+ are all but forgotten addendums to other services, and Google Search — its core, original function — has been out of control for years, and all of them are designed blandly and excruciatingly tiring to look at.

Google Shun

If this all has stirred nothing more in you than a desire to eliminate Google from your own online life as much as possible, there are alternatives in almost every one of the sphere’s they dominate. As of late, DuckDuckGo has accumulated a fair amount of buzz and coverage as a private, more relevant alternative to Google’s plain old search engine. Though it is clever enough to list us as the first result for “extratone,” I’ve found it simply insufficient as a replacement in my own life because, essentially, it rarely delivers what I’m looking for. By contrast, Dropbox Paper is such an elegant cloud notetaking and word processing software that it makes Google Docs look simply idiotic (and warrants its own review very shortly.) For getting around, know that MapQuest is not only still around — it’s now a very competitive mobile navigation app.

I, myself, have allowed Google as complete of access to my information and behavior as possible because I believe “privacy” is a completely futile endeavor if one wishes to be a part of society, though I do often use alternatives to Google services simply because I fucking hate the way they look. If you want a more complete list of services and software that allow one to shun the Google God entirely, you’ll be forced to seek out less dignified sources like Lifehacker and Reddit and decide if the additional time you’ll spend using most of them to accomplish the same tasks is really worth your digital angst.

If Google were to be more explicit with its users and staff about its aspirations to take over control of our lives, there will be little to do but accept the future they intend to create because they’ve long been too powerful to control. In the meantime, I’d suggest you continue to use whatever software works best for you and refrain from wasting your time fretting on conspiratorial suppositions of what the tech industry may be doing to “invade your privacy,” because there is no longer any such thing, nor will there be ever again. However, I would also urge to you worship your own Gods, whomever they may be, for Google will never be worthy. I, for one, shall only pray to our Mother Sun.

#social #google #future #web #privacy

original post

[wakeninglife]

*This post has a better visual aesthetic on my other blog @ wakeninglife.home.blog, please check it out there* The In-Between: Balancing Your Dreams With Your Responsibilities

                      Life, everything existing outside our own bodies.

                      Life, everything existing within our own bodies.

                      Feeling lost between both states of being, life.

                                                          ***

We all have a dream, a desire to live our lives a particular way, but so many of us get lost in between how we think we should be living and how we want to be living our lives.

Personally, I constantly find myself somewhere in between thoughts of work and ways to earn money, and thoughts of art and ways to enliven my soul.

See, it is interesting how money, which is at the root of our existence, is simply an idea, someone else’s idea. Steve Jobs said in the PBS documentary Steve Jobs-One Last Time “. . .everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you”. This makes a lot of sense to me.

For example:

Let’s go back over two hundred years. . .

It is 1790 and Alexander Hamilton thought, ‘You know, the Bank of England is super nifty. . .the United States should have one to print, distribute, and store money too!’, so he proposed the National Bank to Congress.

As the year progressed the proposal gained supporters and opposers. Thomas Jefferson was definitely an opposer. . .or hater, if you will. When President Washington asked his cabinet for their input Jefferson explained, ‘This whole National Bank business is for one, unconstitutional. And two, if it does exist, it is going to favor the wealthy only, so that is not cool’.

Jefferson’s ideas did not influence Washington enough, instead, Hamilton’s became a reality in February 1791. Eventually, the National Bank would lead to the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913.

Today our lives, in regards to money, were partially formed from the thoughts and proposal of one individual, despite the efforts of another just as smart individual.

Moral of the Story:

“. . .everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you”.

So, going back to those dreams we abandon for the life we are currently living:

“I want to *insert action* but do not think I can because of *insert reasons*”

The only person holding us back from living our best life is ourselves.

That dream we have resigned ourselves to never achieve is out of bounds only because we placed it there. There are millions, billions of people who are living solely in comfort zones and wishing life would pave the path towards their dreams. Instead of working towards them we end up believing that they, we are futile. So we pursue the “logical” path-the path we think has less risk. But less risk does not always mean greater payoff.

We need to stop waiting for the right time, and the right way. There is no perfect moment where every little detail of our lives is going to align. There will always be bills we need to pay, vehicles we need to fix, chores we need to complete. But there is not always going to be an opportunity to travel, to see our favorite artist live in concert, to take a chance on our dream job. The dying know this best.

(Not my image. Find the original here.)

“Regrets of the Dying” is a punch of reality in the form of a blog post written by a former palliative nurse, Bronnie Ware. In the post, Ware details the five most common regrets of persons during their final weeks:

“. . .1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others

expected of me.

2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier. . .”

Clearly, each regret shares a theme-desire to have lived authentically.

 I am young. 22 years young to be exact but I have realized life is too short to not be living it exactly how I want to be.

I struggle with balancing who I think I am supposed to be based on societal standards and who I know I want to be based on my soul standards. I worry I am not working enough. I worry I am not writing or drawing enough.  I feel bad for wishing I had been born in a European country and a 20 hour work week was my normal and not 40 hours. I feel guilty for not wanting to work overtime. I feel afraid I will never get to travel, leave this country. I begin to feel like my life is a continuous series of unfortunate events (shout out to Lemony Snicket aka Daniel Handler) that I have no control over.

But I am realizing, all of these worries and feelings of guilt are simply fear. Fear of living my best life. Fear of breaking the unspoken rules of society. Fear of failing. Fear of succeeding. I am realizing I can live life however I want. See, personally, I grew up thinking until very recently we need to have money, and lots of it, to travel the world. From reading travel blogs and websites like Nomadic Matt or Great Big Scary World and watching TED talks like “How to Travel the World With Almost No Money” I have realized to live out a dream of traveling it does not require as much money as it does guts. And I think that can be said for just about anything else. 

Now, I am not naive and am not trying to say that money does not matter and is not necessary. I am not trying to say I do not want to earn money and make a living and meet my responsibilities. I guess I am just trying to say there is a balance to outer and inner reality. . .and we have much more control over both than we often realize.

Moral of My Story:

There is no better time to be living, to be creating the life you want to than right now. Yes, reality, life is the way it is BUT it is the way it is because billions of single ideas were ran with. And one of those ideas could very well be yours, mine, ours. We are capable of changing not only our lives but life as a whole.

                                                          ***

                 Life, everything existing outside our own bodies.

                 Life, everything existing within our own bodies.

                 Feeling like the creator of both states of being. living.

Want to get more information on the first National Bank of the United States? Here are some sources:

Hamilton, Jefferson, and the First National Bank of the United States

A Timeline of the National Bank

*Not every image I own. Copyrighted or public use images/videos are linked and used as fair use.  

Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.

[garykrepak]

I’m in an incredible amount of pain.

This last thirteen months has exposed every single weakness within me and broken them. Broken everything I thought I was and utterly crippled my ego. Every part of me hurts. My body, has responded to the stresses of the last year with enormous mineral deposits in my muscles. “Mothballs” as my El Paso masseuse called them as she kneaded her petite hands into the giant knots in my upper back. My neck and upper back, in seemingly perpetual downward gaze at this device I’m pecking on. It has devoured my year and my efforts upon it only netted my freshly disemboweled newborn business venture only twelve invoices of sales for the entirety of 2020.

I acquired a small amount of debt, a small amount of regret and a great deal of sorrow all laying the backing tracks for the confident, determined, creative and occasionally funny front I put on for the world to consume. All in hopes that it would summon the confidence of buyers of equipment from long-stilled factories behind borders vying new embargoes at one another.

My body aches from stress and uncertainties. My brain, is so diseased with neurological and mental and emotional ailments and these, compound the stressors and are capable of taking the best laid plans and daily ambitions and place them in an ever-lengthening queue of unfinished projects, further delaying the fulfillment of an ever-lengthening queue of bills and personal goals. I’m simultaneously blessed with the creative and technical ability to fulfill should they be sold and... cursed with the encompassing hardships of the current pandemic and my own evolving person.

This year has changed me. I no longer covet things the way I had before. I covet hours when my memory is intact. I covet licks on the face from my dogs. I covet the increasingly distant occurrences of seeing true joy in the eyes of my loved ones. Sometimes I see it penetrate through the veil of concern, resentments and stress that merely being in my constant presence, must cast upon them.

It is not my wish to be unhappy or to be the source of unhappiness or stress in those around me. My very inventory of facts and my balance sheets are enough to do this all by themselves without any word from me.

I have to live with the fact that I’m in fact quite literally suffering from a progressive neurological disorder that is notorious in its resistance to traditional epilepsy treatments and medications. That diseased mind, is also battling with bipolar disorder and it has since I was a teenager. That diseased mind. Is also HIGHLY allergic to alcohol and as of today. I’ve managed to abstain from using it for some five months since my last four hour long binge which led to the inevitable realization that I shouldn’t have picked it back up again at all. But man. It lifted those rocks right off of my mind and body for that fleeting moment. Only to have them come crushing back down on me with the added weight of disappointment from those that expect better of me. Alcohol isn’t my problem today. It’s everything else. It’s... the depression created by circumstances more than brain chemistry. Circumstances that I fight like hell to improve or at least, to improve my attitude towards them. It’s an endless effort of trying to not focus on what’s wrong with my life but to focus on the good. It’s a ceaseless attempt to ignore the many scars and consequences of my past and an attempt to be gleeful at possibilities and occasionally I still get visited by muses in my mind and we go on great dances of creative tangos of invention and travel and songwriting and re-writing and of loves of pleasures yet to be had from gains acquired. Flights of fancy and of grandeur in my head that my market cannot or will bot muster the materials to build for me. Then the crash into reality. The reality is that I’m not going to be able to do or build or record those things in order to sell them. Sell them. In order to build new things, to finally complete that dream home which in my mind, and within reason; would be worthy of being featured in glossy magazines and hippie blogs alike. Every inch of that house would be curated, sculpted and made to harmonize with everything within it and with the gorgeous land that cradles it. Right now. It’s mostly demolished on the interior. The exterior was sanded down by my sons, myself and three men that we were able to hire for a while. Every inch of the exterior was refinished. The spruce logs subtly glowing in a grey shade normally associated with English libraries. I’m powerless to proceed with its rebirth most days lately. That same mind that invents and creates and sings and plays and paints and cooks. Is burdened by a depth of depression so profound that to fully speak of it to polite company would get me shunned by many. For their lives haven’t taught them to grasp so many challenges at once. I am surrounded by well heeled entrepreneurs that are my heroes. A lot of them got an easier start to life than I did and almost every single one didn’t make the poor life decisions I did. They weren’t Rebels like me. They obeyed. They joined the clubs. They completed their assignments. They went to colleges and universities on their parents money and launched businesses with the same. They are unapologetic disciples of the Bootstrap and I don’t fault them for it. They insist that their peers overcome and persist and minimize obstacles whenever possible as to not sully their aura of accomplishment. I prefer their company than those that spend too much time empowering their challenges and blaming others for their own poor decisions that led to their particular circumstances.

I legally, legitimately, by any measure of medical analysis, qualify for full disability benefits. And I refuse to seek them out. I insist that I overcome them and rather than allowing my diseased mind from crippling my potential by resigning to it. I refuse to let temporary circumstances to permanently impede my goals. My peers and possibly my own family wouldn’t like the fact that I’m sharing this to this small corner of the internet.

My goals. Are intended to produce things that will endure for generations. I may be long gone. But my work won’t be. In the meanwhile. I’ve got to beat epilepsy. I’ve got to keep bipolar on a short leash, and I’ve got to get emotionally and physically healthy enough to keep my body and brain and partners moving forward.

I’ve got a LOT to do and I’ve got approximately forty to fifty years to get it all done.

Help me.

[bpdgooglesearches]

a resignation

hey party people. under the cut you will find an explanation for why i’m passing off the blog, as well as information for prospective mods. a form will be posted shortly for those who want to mod.

i no longer feel capable of running this blog. i do enjoy it to an extent - it was very useful in serving as a vent spot for my feelings and what it has evolved to is even better. it is now an area where people may openly discuss their bpd and seek advice and comfort and understanding from people like them. not only that, having such a loyal group of people listen in on this blog and find comfort in it is a great source of validation and i receive responses when i’m in need of anything. that being said, i don’t want to just delete it and lose an archive or have someone take the url. since i know people have expressed an interest in modding, i figured i’d send out requests and evaluate people.

i had thought of getting someone to mod alongside me but i soon realized that i’ve lost the energy and i don’t always feel too good bearing the weight of people’s confessions and problems. it wouldn’t be an improvement to add someone to it, so i might as well just pass it along to someone else and transfer the emotional risk completely.

what prospective mods should know

in order to run this blog, applicants must have bpd and be understanding individuals.  “”“bpd makes it hard for me to be understanding!!!””” then please don’t run this blog. i know we all behave in different ways but the responsibility still stands and i do not want this blog to devolve into a garbagefest of discourse. 

this is the way it is currently run:

- people may submit through submit or asks. make certain to tag prevalent triggers if not marked but the submitter.

- often questions about terminology are deleted and people are referred to the faq in order to prevent build up on the blog

- all searches go on a queue

- various bpd-related posts can be reblogged any time inbetween

any of these things can be changed depending on what method works best for the mods; except, of course, tagging triggers.

the form will be open until tomorrow morning. once i choose the mods, i will message you through tumblr and if you do not accept by monday i will choose someone else. once i get confirmation, i will stay with the blog for a few days to make sure it’s running smoothly before i turn you loose. after that i refuse to be liable for any problems occurring on the blog.

please, i will reiterate, be respectable people on this blog. do not harass, threaten, or antagonize anyone who comes on the blog, the exception being someone purposefully antagonizing you. in that case, still do not harass or threaten, but backlash is fine. hopefully with a couple of mods it will make it easier if any one is incapacitated due to mental illness or otherwise. 

i felt like i had many more ideas i needed to communicate but in reality once i pass this off it’s up to the mods how to run it. i am hoping that this continues to be a good place for people to cope and discuss. thank you.

[lifewithcraig]

Resigned

It’s hard logging into Facebook and seeing people your age living in these pristine cities with these perfect jobs starting these seemingly perfect lives. I want a permanent, full-time job with benefits. More abstractly, I want to feel like I am starting a life instead of perpetually sitting in the sidelines.

Nothing has felt right since I graduated college. In junior high, a teacher asked us to write the most painful word on a sheet of paper. I wrote rejection. I remember breaking down in tears in class because rejection was the most overwhelming emotion in my life at the time. My friends had rejected me. My crush had rejected me. My peers had rejected me. In a lot of ways, I felt like my family had rejected me.

Fast forward to 2017, and I have to ponder whether anything has changed. I’m a professional intern who has only piled on rejection after rejection from jobs, classes, awards, etc. My career prospects are leading me nowhere. I knew my first internship at the healthcare firm was not right because I would have never been able to break out of healthcare clients. My current position is fun, but nothing I am doing is building my body of work. The work I do will never get me a job anywhere if or when the time comes to leave. My supervisor even admitted nothing we do can be put into a portfolio, which is why no one leaves at the agency.

My parents do not support me living away from home, and my aunt is evicting me from my apartment leaving me with nowhere to stay. But I feel bad asking for help because I know if or when they learn about my sexuality, the likelihood is strong they will want nothing to do with me. I’m repulsive, but even if I were capable of obtaining a relationship, I would never be able to go with it because I must hide who I am from my family. My family is my only support system, and yet, I cannot have an honest relationship with them.

The older I become, the less interested in friendship I become. I want to talk about how I feel, but I can’t bring myself to speak. I have become so good at becoming the person my friends need or want me to be, that I hardly know who I am anymore. I don’t know if I’m even capable of articulating or understanding my emotions. And to be honest, I doubt my friends are particularly interested. If they were, they would be reading my blog right now.

It’s hard when you feel like you need to be the embodiment of joy and levity and a good time. It’s hard when you have to pretend to be someone you are not or feel something you don’t feel. Honestly, the older I become, the more I feel like I just want to be left alone.

New Year’s was my favorite holiday because of the promise of new beginnings. But this year, I feel completely checked out and resigned. Between figuring out my employment situation and my job situation, I don’t want to get in shape or change my appearance or set any new goals. I just want to live and if I’m lucky, regain a sense of stability.

I don’t see the world through this sunny, idealistic lens where anything is possible anymore. I’m a queer person of color living in a white, heteronormative world that will never accept me. I’m underweight, unemployed, and misunderstood. I have no money, no home, and no significant other. The most valuable thing I own is on the verge of breaking any minute. I have a receding hairline, thinning hair, yellowing teeth, and a face full of blemishes. And the only place where I can speak freely about who I am and how I feel is a single page on the Internet that no one even reads. This is my reality.

[jacewilliams1]

From renting to owning – and reluctantly back to renting

I’ve been an airplane nut practically all my life. I grew up on a cotton farm, and one of the highlights of my youth was watching the ag planes as they sprayed our fields and those of our neighbors. One of our neighbors had a field positioned such that the plane, an early Air Tractor with a big old radial in the nose, would make his turn right over our house.

I always hoped he would get lots of bugs in his cotton. No matter what I was doing, much to the consternation of my dad and brothers, if an airplane flew overhead, work stopped until I had spotted the plane and it was out of sight. My feet may have been in the cotton patch, but my mind was in the clouds. The guy who sprayed our fields bought an old Tri-Pacer and gave us a ride once, and the dream having become reality, I knew that was something I wanted to be able to do myself.

We were poor, but I managed to come up with a little money in college to start taking flying lessons. Over a couple of years, I managed to log enough time to almost be ready for the checkride, but that final hurdle eluded me. A wife then came into the picture, and priorities were diverted for a while, but after a 10-year hiatus, I decided it was time to pursue the dream again.

The Viking is a fun airplane to fly, but there is a learning curve.

Four of us bought an old Cessna 150 for $6,000. We kept it a year, finished our licenses, and sold it for $5,800. It was then on to bigger and better things. The group bought a 1964 Bellanca Viking. Going from a 150 with a top speed of 100 mph to a Bellanca with an approach speed of 100 mph was a stretch, and probably not a wise one, but I managed to survive long enough to learn to handle the speed and power of the Viking. Partners came and went in the group, but I was always around.

During that period, I managed to use the plane quite a bit for work. I had a number of clients who lived in a small town that was a one-hour flight and a four-hour drive, and this being the good old days when gas was only $2.00 a gallon, I could make the flight for a hundred bucks. There was a courtesy car at the airport, and I made that run about once a month. It made sense, and the plane actually had a practical purpose. I could leave at 7:30 am, get my work done, and be back by early afternoon. It beat eight hours in the car.

As time went on, though, I found myself going there less. There were some other business trips, but not many. Most of the other trips I made were 100 miles, and the practical side of me got in the way. By the time you go to the airport, get the plane ready to go, make the flight, get a car, and drive to town, you could drive the whole trip in the same time, and with avgas having gone to $5.00 instead of $2.00, it was certainly cheaper to drive.

I found my use of the plane went down significantly. Sure, I could use it any time I wanted to, but it was hard to force myself to just go bore a hole in the sky for no reason. By this time I had two kids in college, so funds were not as free as they had been. I realized that I no longer had a rational reason to be in the partnership. For the time I was flying, I could have rented far cheaper. But I really liked the guys who were my partners, and there was just something about being able to go to the hangar and open the door and think, “That’s mine.” Even if I wasn’t flying it, I knew I could. I would fly enough to keep current, sort of.

A few times I went past the 90 days, but when I went out to do my landings to get legal, I always felt competent. By this time we had upgraded the Bellanca to a 1974 Super Viking which was much nicer. As nice as it was, though, when I got the $50 gas bill for just making three landings, it took a lot of the fun out of using it.

The Super Viking aged, as all things do, and it was needing some work. The ECI cylinder AD note hit us, and with 1600 hours on the engine, it didn’t make sense to not do a major, which would have been 30 grand. We needed some radio upgrades, which would have been another 20 grand. In addition, it really needed to be painted, which would have been another $20,000 or so. We would have invested $70,000 in an airplane that probably wouldn’t have been worth that much. We decided it was time to punt.

We found a gentleman willing to give us $29,000 for the Bellanca. He wasn’t planning on overhauling the engine, just replacing the cylinders. It wasn’t what I would have done, but then it wasn’t my airplane anymore. We found a nice, well-quipped Mooney 201 for right at $100,000. Using the proceeds from the Bellanca sale, we were still out $70,000, but that was no more than we would have been out had we kept the Bellanca. The Mooney was better equipped and gave the same speed on less gas.

Even though the Mooney was cheaper to operate, I still found myself reluctant to play with it. Truth be known, I really never got that comfortable with it. Just a few months after we bought it, my wife and I made a decision to move to Tennessee to be closer to our children and grandson. My partners bought me out. I had a little money, but for the first time in over 30 years, I didn’t have an airplane that I could look at and say, “That’s mine.”

It’s painful, but sometimes you have to say goodbye.

I’ve been in Tennessee for about 9 months, and haven’t touched a yoke yet. I do have a valid excuse. Things were a little hectic getting settled, and about the time we did get everything put up and organized, I had my left shoulder replaced. It’s a little hard to manipulate the controls with a bum left arm. But now that’s over, and my excuses have just about run out. My plan all along was to rent. There hadn’t been justification for owning a plane for years, if there ever was. I’ve been there, done that. I’ve identified where I’m going rent. I just haven’t taken the plunge.

The first step will be to get renters insurance. I thought that was going to run about $300, but I’m getting sticker shock in actually looking at it. Then I have to pick which plane I’m going to fly. The flight school has a Cherokee and a 172. I have a fair amount of Cherokee time, so that makes the most sense, but if I’m going to be sightseeing, which will probably be the main thrust of my flying out here, the high wing makes sense too. I have very little 172 time, so it would take longer to get comfortable. Either plane is going to be a step down after what I have most of my time in. It’s probably going to set me back $500 or so just to get the insurance and a checkout. And that’s just to get started. Of course, I was paying more than that a month in debt service and fixed costs for the Mooney.

You can say what you want to about renting versus owning. I fully understand the fact that if you’re not going to use a plane regularly, you can’t justify owning one, even in a partnership. I’ve known for years that I could have been flying more for less money if I just rented. But now that I’m faced with renting, the reality of scheduling and not having a fast, capable airplane to fly is staring me in the face.

Even though I can appreciate better than most renters what it really costs to operate an airplane, it’s still going to be hard to bring myself to pay over $2.00 a minute to rent one. Of course, on the other side of the coin, the Mooney just got out of its annual inspection, and for the first time in over 30 years, I didn’t have that sinking feeling in the bottom of my stomach when I saw the envelope with the bill for that in my mail, wondering how bad it was this year. I don’t have to wonder which thousand dollar item is going to break on it this year, in addition to the annual. In fact, I just got an email from my brother, who is still in the partnership, with a picture of the broken compression ring on the number two cylinder. Owning an airplane has its rewards, but sometimes it’s anything but fun.

So I will get it done. It’s time to give up ownership. I know that, and I’m resigned to it. Once I get checked out, I’ll arrange to go out either with my son or some friends and enjoy the Smoky Mountains from above. There will be new airports to fly into to add to my logbook. I’ll make friends with a new plane. When I was flying Cherokees before, they seemed really fast. Since I’m trying to slow my life down anyway, maybe the Cherokee will be just the right speed after all.

The post From renting to owning – and reluctantly back to renting appeared first on Air Facts Journal.

from Engineering Blog https://airfactsjournal.com/2019/03/from-renting-to-owning-and-reluctantly-back-to-renting/

[adamgdooley]

ETF 2.0 : Mega-Blockchains

Salutations dear reader from your ‘Suitcase Fund Analyst’, your humble observer of the periphery, the future and dysfunctions of asset management. As I travel far and wide to debate the prospect of ‘digital death’, recent events have taken me to Dubai and Hamburg. Yet no matter where I go, a common theme follows me – digitalisation, robotisation, artificial intelligence. The New Fund Order I wrote about in my book in 2015 is unfolding quickly, first in academia, then notable authors, then popular media, then event organisers, asset managers, distributors and eventually the common variety fund investor (ahem).

The very phrase ‘2.0’ has become synonymous with this period of change, the 4th industrial revolution, it is as prolific now as ‘hashtag’. Indeed my very own ‘#NewFundOrder 2.0’ was an attempt to capture the mood, moving beyond the dysfunctions of the Old Fund Order and focussing more on Fintech solutions that offer fund buyers a means for survival, indeed even resurrection.

Thanks to subsequent conversations I now even lecture on the impacts of artificial intelligence on funds and fund selection, digitalisation for me has taken on a very personal aspect in my working life. The fact I have seen well over 2000 fund managers in my time, like many, is rapidly becoming superfluous. My life is now split between Fintech and fund investing. Indeed as time goes on, in the space of only two years I may become more remembered as the guy who foretold the impact of digital on fund selection than being a fund selector for the best part of two decades. Whether I am talking about clones, drones or tombstones, Godzilla or the Orwellian Human condition, the digital frontier is not far away.

On the flight out to Dubai I watched again Trainspotting 2 or ‘T2’ for short. Irvine Welsh’s great contribution to modern culture and post pop, post Brexit, post Devolution Scottish vernacular. Euan McGregor’s character ‘Renton’ especially is the embodiment of post revolution dystopia, resistance giving in to resignation that the human condition is flawed but time is inescapable:

Choose Life: “Choose Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and a thousand others ways to spew your bile across people you’ve never met. Choose updating your profile, tell the world what you had for breakfast and hope that someone, somewhere cares. Choose looking up old flames, desperate to believe that you don’t look as bad as they do. Choose live-blogging, from your first wk ’til your last breath; human interaction reduced to nothing more than data.”

Welsh’s cynical futility of social media overlooks the significance to how we can interact, becoming ever more trusting of electronic social platforms over traditional sources of wisdom. Social media is only one part, the dematerialisation of everything into the blockchain coupled to advances in Artificial intelligence question not only capital models but human productivity itself. We head furlong into a Ridley Scott dark futurism of cybernetics and humans struggling to co-exist in 2049 or perhaps even becoming symbiotic ourselves, not human, not machine but a ‘Ghost in the Shell’. Do we want to be the blade-runners, the humans or the machines?

Having been heavily influenced in 2015 by Martin Ford’s book ‘Rise of the Robots’, Mrs JB bought me a new book ‘Life 3.0’ by Max Tegmark. The tagline ‘Being human in the age of Artificial Intelligence’ aptly describes the acceleration in the possible, as he notes: “Will AI help life flourish as never before, or will machines eventually outsmart us at all tasks, and even, perhaps, replace us altogether?”

So too then must our asset industry change. Moore’s Law is unwavering in this respect and no industry gets away Scot free. It has been in a stupor of old business models, commission, star manager culture, asset concentration, marketing, high costs, low transparency, lavish hospitality and poor fund selection. Asset management is beginning to detox from those heady party days. The party is over but for now the masses remain sedated on the methadone of vast market cap weighted Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs).

The reality is that ETFs also face issues, capable of so much more than how they are being used today, they have been held back by a simple presumption that pooled investing is about cramming masses into a single model yet somehow each trying to derive their own utility from it. Clearly it hasn’t worked, trust in asset management and active managers has never been lower, herding patterns are accelerating, as are the daily trading volumes of index products. The optical value of ETF has become a blunt question of only cost. A huge mistake but one being driven by the index manufacturers and misplaced academics and pundits. Perhaps in their minds they chose the lesser of evils. What started as disrupter is now supposed deliverer.

However concern turns to the asset concentration building among ETFs, as a result of using outdated index construction. In simple terms the pooling of vast uncontrolled open-ended structures, funnelled into controlled closed-ended securities, is a recipe for Minsky-like commodity bubbles. Earnings then do not drive price, the order book does, the equilibrium between buyers and sellers. This is an index anomaly and a missed opportunity for ETF. Before you may recall I have written about Tesla, how ETFs might evolve and take lessons from the Automotive industry and Electric Cars. I am now even more convinced that we are only at the beginning of ETF evolution. Fully dematerialised fund structures are the future, all others will become obsolete. It is no coincidence that active asset managers are rapidly buying ETF businesses, the potential for active intellectual property through ETFs is huge. This might be summarised as the move to ‘Smarter-Beta’ or codified Alpha.

However I believe ETFs will go much further in the future. I have already begun to structure and codify what ‘ETF 2.0’ might look like. It will form my next lecture at Fintech Circle Institute. A complete rethink of how ETFs operate, in 2.0 investors will have individual pathways, cross-matching assets for expected return, risk, time horizon and maturity, investors trade through Blockchain within the ETF, fully dematerialised, frictionless trading between investors. The key aspect here is the simultaneous checking of the asset pathway, individual pathway and block pathway – I call this your Asimov test. ETF 2.0 will allow;

• Manage individual investor pathways: for a large neural system, managing thousands of unique investors is achievable with bespoke journeys, targets, risk tolerances within one ETF,

• Combining automated client risk utility with asset allocation, algorithmic trading, and multi factor systematic investing attune to each investor,

• Statistical Arbitrage: identifying anomalies within the market, within and outside of the ETF and exploiting them continuously, such algos can also be used to monitor any behavioural anomalies between matches trades or investors within the ETF or the market,

• Restructuring the pooling of the ETF to assign stocks to match different investor time horizons and risk tolerance, moving us away from a one-basket-fits-all mentality that has underpinned ETFs to date,

• Investors may even be able to interact within the block, commingling wisdom of the crowd, the frameworks needed already exist in the likes of Crypto currencies and Differentiable Neural Computing like AlphaGo.

Tech is full of jargon but safe to say that Blockchain provides us the necessary infrastructure and AI the ability to manage it once created. The ETF becomes the centralised clearing agent for all of its investors and trades within the ETF allowing; instantaneous transparent straight-through-processing (STP) and delivery-versus-payment (DVP), investors still benefitting from novation, fully dematerialised fungible assets and economies of scale (as with current ETFs) but now investor trades are matched inside the ETF not simply pooled and traded outside on the market. It would make the investors within an ETF a complex adaptive community, trading as a block with the rest of the market. Meanwhile ETF 2.0 would communicate continuously with other ETFs, exchanges and trading platforms to ensure correct real time pricing. Everyone shares in the success of the ETF, assets and returns weighted to their individual pathway and maturity. The ETF provider deducts one disclosed cost to administer the algorithm, the trades and investors. While this may feel quasi-ponzi to some; this is no fugazi. The quandary left behind by Madoff (other than his conceit, deceit and fraudulent behaviour) was that the biggest failing of any ponzi is the incorrect estimation of cash flow and matching of assets over time. Eventually they run out of cash. The concept of cash matching individual investors is itself well supported by liability driven investing. The technology to match thousands of individuals has been beyond us, until now.

Once an ETF is repurposed for individual pathways; rather than aggregated pooled outcomes, then assets are coded for cost, time and risk-matched to investors who need them. ETF 2.0 can trade internally, frictionless through block-chain technology, within the ETF and then only traded externally with the market when in net surplus of cash or assets. In effect we can create mega-blocks of investors, providing efficiencies in turnover costs and accurate investor-matched, risk-targeted allocations. This re-design of mutual investing would require a complete re-think in how asset management is structured today: advisers, fund managers, fund investors, custodians, exchanges and clearing houses.

Digital frontier? Suddenly Passive becomes social, benchmarks become meaningless, replaced by block economies. In the GRID we can each view our own pathway to maturity in augmented reality from the comfort of our own home or on the move. Effectively we would create a different pooled model and we haven’t even begun to think about quantum computing and isotopic algorithms and a hundred other cool bits of jargon that few of us properly comprehend. Science fiction is rapidly becoming a near term indication of science fact, the lines are blurring. To some this may sound like the onset of techno-Marxism on asset management, for others its salvation. I will explore the concept in detail in my lecture and invite ETF innovators and coders to come together and create ETF 2.0.

As Jeff Bridges (Flynn) said in the film TRON Legacy, ‘Digital Jazz man…..

Go to Source

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from Statii News http://news.statii.co.uk/etf-2-0-mega-blockchains/ from Statii News https://statiicouk.tumblr.com/post/167513955797