#i have only two modes. external dialogue or internal dialogue

[princess-marths-princess]

I'm not doing NaNoWriMo officially this year But I got an account on 4thewords and decided to just try writing 30k in one month

And what I've discovered about myself is that I greatly prefer writing 1st person pov journaling style prose over like... writing an actual story OTL

Writing hard and cold. Channeling a dramatic poor little meow meow doing a soliloquy soft and warm.

[addart]

Jen Orpin

In The Shadows

Jen Orpin lives in Manchester. Her work is held in public and private collections both nationally and internationally.

She has exhibited in London and Seoul among others and was selected for the 2023 Royal Academy Summer Show.

In November 2019 she co-founded Rogue Women and co-curated a group show of 45 female artists from Rogue including invited guest artists from all over the UK. The exhibition then returned in May 2023 with Rogue Women II and in November with a stand at The Manchester Contemporary.

Jen has had two solo shows, one in 2021, a 10 week solo show at the Manchester Modernist Society and her paintings appeared in two publications in conjunction with the Modernist Society and a project called Landscapes of Post War Infrastructure. The second was in March 2023, a three week solo show and four weekend gallery residency at Saul Hay Gallery Manchester.

In May 2021 her motorway paintings featured in the Guardian online and The Observer’s New Review arts and culture magazine and again in Jan 2023 when one of her paintings appeared in the ‘On My Radar’ feature. In Dec 2023 Jen featured on Radio 6Music in the Art Is Everywhere feature.

Jen is an associate member of the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts (MAFA) and can be found on the artists platform Gertrude.

She is currently represented by Saul Hay Gallery Manchester.

Public collections include: Manchester Art Gallery, New Art Gallery Walsall

‘My current practice focuses on one of the fundamental elements of human relationships, connection. This connection can manifest itself emotionally, spiritually and physically. The latter requires us to come together, meet, see and touch each other. This cannot happen without one crucial act, the journey that takes us to them. This, in the most part is achieved by various means and modes of transport.

The one I focus on and have been investigating throughout my painting practice is the journey by car and the relationship we have with the motorway and its landmarks. These visual representations of everyday topographies and the framed view from the car make up and form the basis of memories and nostalgia. The importance of these external landscapes is often mirrored by the internal dialogue of the driver and passenger with the confinements of the car at times offering an intimate confessional space.

The mundanity of these every day actions often belies the truth of deep routed emotions that come with well-travelled routes to the people and places that mean the most to us. In my paintings I aim to portray this feeling, emotionalism is a key element in the success of each one and as a viewer you are forced to look down the road as its sole traveler and undertake each journey as your own. Each bridge or landmark acts as the sitter in the landscape’s portrait, confronting you head on, holding your gaze as your mind travels under and beyond its concrete confinements.

The structures I focus on, often constructed from concrete and metal, brutal in nature, straddle well travelled motorways and roads. Unchanged and built to last, they offer sturdiness and a consistent presence that spans decades. They may be accompanied by the addition of graffiti or nature might have taken hold where possible, only adding to this presence. By documenting and recording these structures using the language of painting and drawing on the traditions of landscape painting, I aim to expand our perceptions and viewpoints and challenge how we look at these structures in our everyday landscapes. ‘

[nothingunrealistic]

general writing question, what style or application of Taylor Dialogue tends to be most engaging to Craft, whether in a fun or challenging or Other way. like perhaps recreating the show's style, trying to fit that into people having an actual convo, ppl having to read into what taylor's Not saying a la motbr, their internal dialogue, being on the defensive, vulnerable, spontaneous, careful, elevated, chill. any or all of these things or more. dare i say what tends to Speak to you writingwise

hmm an intriguing question… well fundamentally i just really like putting taylor in situations, even though (/ because) they hate to be in situations, and considering how they would react. often enough that involves trying to recreate the show’s style, but since speaking in References & Analogies is (at least for taylor) a performance / a lingua franca rather than their default mode of communication, and given that they’re aware of this, not every situation calls for it. and precisely emulating their Actual default mode of communication, if there can be said to be just one, can be tricky too — it’s tempting to give them long convoluted sentences packed with multisyllabic words, but a lot of the time, their dialogue is short and simple and direct, because that’s all they need. quoth david levien: they may not even speak that much, but you know they can if they want to.

there are plenty of two-person scenes where taylor actually says very little, but the combined effect of the writing + akd’s acting + the editing is that they feel like an equal participant in the conversation even though the other person has a lot more to say. (some examples: having their late night glass of juice interrupted by a phone call from wendy, 2x08; getting mock-arrested by chuck and being convinced to help take down axe from the inside, 4x12; hearing rian’s confession of having slept with prince, 6x12.) of course, all i have to work with when i’m writing is The Written Word, so if i want to get the same effect, i have to somehow transcribe / emulate the usual deliberate silences / reaction shots of taylor in text. that usually means filling in those moments with descriptions of either their feelings / inward reactions / inner monologue, if i’m in taylor’s head, or their external reactions and interpretations thereof, if i’m in someone else’s head. (forcing mafee to interpret taylor’s extended silence with only non-verbal & context cues in motbr was pretty much the most extreme version of that. and it was fun, but also tricky to write!)

in terms of what specific Moods / Modes i like writing taylor in: any situation where they say something to make another character laugh, or laugh at something another character has said, is fun because it so rarely happens in the show. any situation that’s firmly Outside Of Work is both interesting and difficult because it’s relatively rare to see them in such situations. ditto for interactions with characters they haven’t spoken to much or at all in canon. defensiveness, pedantry, pettiness, and [causing problems on purpose] mode are all fun to write. (those things crossing into outright cruelty, not so much.) vulnerability and fragility can be fun too, but i feel like those need to be used sparingly with taylor to really be effective. and of course [i am In A Situation and i hate it] is its own mood that’s kind of an intersection of defensiveness and vulnerability. lots to consider!

[chinasunsong]

Sun Weidong: China and India should jointly follow the path of mutual respect, dialogue and cooperation, mutual benefit and win-win

On September 23, Sun Weidong, the ambassador to India, was invited to attend the opening ceremony of the 4th China-India High-level Track 2 Dialogue co-sponsored by the Sichuan University School of International Relations, the China South Asia Research Center and the Indian Institute of Defense Research and Analysis. Former Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo attended the opening ceremony.

Ambassador Sun Weidong's speech is as follows:

Dear Mr. Dai Bingguo, former State Councilor of China,

Dear scholars from China and India,

ladies and gentlemen,

good afternoon!

It is an honor to attend the 4th China-India High-level Track Two Dialogue. First of all, I want to thank Mr. Dai Bingguo for his continuous dedication to China-India relations. Your profound insights on China-India relations have always inspired us deeply and helped us to clear the "fog" and find the right direction for China-India relations. Thanks to the organizers of the event, Sichuan University and the Institute of Defense Research and Analysis of India, for their meticulous preparations for the dialogue. The participants here today are important experts and scholars, many of whom have previously undertaken important tasks in the diplomatic, military, and economic fields of the two countries. I would like to take this opportunity to have a candid and in-depth exchange of views with you all.

Since last year, China-India relations have faced difficulties that have not been encountered in many years, and they are still at a low ebb. At present, the world has entered a period of turbulent change, the new crown pneumonia epidemic is still spreading, the global economic recovery is weak, and the situation in Afghanistan has undergone a sudden change, which has a major impact on the regional situation. As the largest developing countries and emerging economies, China and India should strengthen coordination and cooperation to jointly fight the epidemic, seek common development and rejuvenation, jointly maintain Asian unity, and jointly promote world peace and development. The status quo of Sino-Indian relations is obviously not in line with the fundamental interests of both parties. Many people of insight in the two countries advocate that China and India should improve relations and push bilateral relations back on track. I would like to share a few views on this.

First, as two major eastern countries, China and India must avoid falling into the trap of outdated Western thinking. According to the so-called realistic theory of international relations in the West, neighboring powers like China and India inevitably regard each other as threats and rivals. Competition and confrontation are the main modes of interaction. Sphere of influence, zero-sum game, and the fight for hegemony are mantras. You gain or lose. You win and I lose is the inevitable result. The Western way of thinking that pursues power politics and the law of the jungle runs counter to the trend of the 21st century of peace, development, cooperation, and win-win, and is unpopular. Even the most powerful country in the world today is doomed to fail if it recklessly intervenes in other countries and tries to impose its own values ​​and social system on others. Afghanistan is the latest example.

As ancient civilizations, China and India have always pursued "university in the world" and "one family in the world", advocating tolerance and harmony, and seeking common ground while reserving differences. We should jointly follow the path of peaceful development so that the people of the two countries can lead a better life, instead of repeating the mistakes of history and taking the evil path of confrontation and conflict between the two major developing countries. China does not agree with the logic of "a strong country must be hegemony". Our historical wisdom is that "a country hegemony must decline." No matter how far it develops, China will never seek hegemony or expand. Some Indians believe that China has become India’s “main threat” and “strategic opponent”. This is a serious strategic misjudgment. If this judgment becomes India’s foreign policy, it may become a “self-fulfilling prophecy”. We don’t want to see.

The second is to look at the relations between the two countries from a comprehensive rather than one-sided perspective. China-India relations are multi-level and multi-dimensional, with contradictions and differences, and more consensus and cooperation. All aspects of bilateral relations should promote each other, rather than restrict each other. We must avoid generalizations, because we can only see the trees but not the forest due to small losses. For example, border areas and peace and tranquility are very important, but this is not the whole of bilateral relations.

China has always viewed China-India relations from a strategic and long-term perspective, and has made unremitting efforts to this end. When India was severely hit by the second wave of the epidemic, China immediately extended a helping hand to overcome difficulties to ensure the smooth supply of medical supplies to India. The pragmatic cooperation between China and India meets the needs of both parties and is highly complementary. Facing the impact of the epidemic, the economic and trade cooperation between the two countries bucked the trend and reached 57.5 billion U.S. dollars in the first half of this year, an increase of 62%. The two countries have extensive common interests on international and regional issues. Just this month, the leaders of the two countries jointly attended the BRICS Leaders’ Meeting and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit to discuss and cope with the current outstanding challenges facing the international region. It takes only one party to break the relationship, and to make the relationship a good one requires the joint efforts of the two countries. China-India relations should be a two-lane road of mutual respect, mutual care of each other's concerns, and win-win cooperation. It should not be a one-way line in which one party makes demands and conditions, and the other party responds.

Third, China and India must adhere to strategic autonomy and take their destiny in their own hands. In the middle of the last century, China and India won national liberation and national independence, and achieved national development. They have important international influence. An important reason is to insist on independence. For a large country like China and India with a population of more than one billion, development can only rely on itself, not others. The primary task of both parties is to achieve development and revitalization and concentrate on doing their own affairs well. At present, out of ideological prejudice and Cold War mentality, some countries are pursuing closed and exclusive "small circles" seeking to contain third parties, encouraging group confrontations and geopolitical games. In fact, containing other countries will not make oneself develop better, and forming gangs will not make oneself safer. Once on board someone else’s ship, you can’t help but take the helm by yourself. Twenty years ago, the United States launched the war in Afghanistan, and many countries boarded the American chariot. 20 years later, what benefits have these countries gained? We should insist on true strategic autonomy, not only in expressing our attitudes, but also in actions.

friends,

This year we solemnly celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. President Xi Jinping solemnly declared that we have achieved the first centenary goal, built a moderately prosperous society on the land of China, historically solved the problem of absolute poverty, and are marching towards the second centenary goal of building a modern socialist country in an all-round way. . India is also moving towards its own development goals. Both China and India need a good external environment, especially the surrounding environment. We must proceed from the fundamental interests of the two countries and explore ways for two neighboring big countries to live in harmony and develop and rejuvenate together.

First, China and India should enhance mutual trust and grasp the correct direction of bilateral relations. China and India must lay a solid foundation for mutual trust, insist that they do not pose a threat to each other and provide development opportunities for each other. The two countries are strategic partners rather than competitors. They must carefully maintain mutual trust and do nothing that is not conducive to mutual trust. What is conducive to mutual trust, no matter how difficult it is, we must work hard. It is hoped that the Indian side will respect China's core interests on issues related to Tibet, Taiwan, and South China Sea, be cautious in words and deeds, and abide by its commitments. We must eliminate the interference of mutual trust, refrain from interfering in the other party’s internal affairs, refrain from being instigated by a malicious third party, and refrain from joining a "alliance" or "quasi-alliance" against the other side. To foster an atmosphere of mutual trust, officials, think tank scholars, and the news media should make more rational and constructive voices, not the other way around.

Second, China and India should strengthen dialogue and promote cooperation. Since the beginning of this year, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi has met and talked with Foreign Minister Su Jaishen many times. A few days ago, the two sides held a bilateral meeting in Dushanbe. We must strengthen communication and dialogue at all levels and in all fields to promote the gradual improvement of bilateral relations. The economic and trade cooperation between the two countries has great potential, but the cooperation between the two sides has been artificially restricted by some Indians since last year. We should build more bridges instead of walls, and complement each other instead of decoupling. It is hoped that the Indian side will create a fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese companies to invest and operate in India. If all Chinese companies are blasted away or squeezed away, what are the benefits to the Indian side? This issue deserves serious consideration by the Indian side. In addition, China and India should strengthen communication and coordination on multilateral affairs, jointly respond to global issues such as the epidemic, disaster prevention and poverty reduction, energy security, climate change, and safeguard the common interests of developing countries.

Third, China and India must properly handle their differences and prevent them from becoming disputes. We should put the border issue in the proper place in our bilateral relations and seek a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution through equal consultation. China has always properly handled the Sino-Indian border issues with a positive attitude, and the current border situation between the two countries is generally developing towards relaxation. It is hoped that the Indian side and the Chinese side will meet each other halfway, promote the continuous stabilization of the situation and gradually shift from emergency response to normalized management and control, and jointly maintain the peace and tranquility of the border area. For differences in other areas, we should also focus on the goal of narrowing rather than expanding, communicate frankly, and seek acceptable solutions.

The current China-India relations are at an important juncture and we need to make the right choice. In the final analysis, China and India should work together to follow the path of mutual respect, dialogue and cooperation, and mutual benefit and win-win results, rather than a "single-plank bridge" of confrontation, suspicion and consumption, and you lose and you lose. I hope you can talk frankly about the current situation facing China-India relations, and make suggestions responsibly, so as to provide advice and suggestions for China-India relations to return to the track of healthy and stable development. Finally, I wish this dialogue a complete success.

Thanks!

[mearcatsreturns]

From Illusion to Reality, or Luka in ER’s Seasons 10-12

A couple days ago, I got a lovely anon who wanted me to talk about Luka’s journey from season 11 to 12. I may have gone overboard and expanded it. If you’re not interested in the whole, hella long post, I’ll summarize it in a couple pictures:

to

I’ll put it under a cut, because of how long it is, but I’d love comments and dialogue!

To talk about Luka’s trajectory from season 11 to season 12, I think it’s very important to consider season 10 Luka. His “coming back from the dead” served as a sort of topical soft reset on his character--at least to him. That is, while it undoubtedly deeply affected him and those around him and does seem to have led him to important realizations, it didn’t actually change his personality or his desires and loves.

Firstly, when Luka comes back from Africa, sick and with another woman, it’s still readily apparent that his love for Abby hasn’t gone anywhere. He might be able to deal with it better and not self-destruct to the same extent, but at least initially, what was Gillian (and later Sam, but that was more involved)? He’s the same Luka at work, too, though the outward trappings seem different. He still cares about caring for his patients, though he’s still in crisis mode. He has the same disregard for bureaucracy, though it’s about treating as many patients as quickly as he can to help the largest number of them instead of spending all his time with his patients, etc. 

It’s so interesting, because for the first half of season 10, Luka is torn between wanting to go back to Africa--where he even said things seemed simpler--and moving forward, probably with Abby. He legit lights up around her and is looking out for her constantly, and the only reasons they didn’t get together then were fear, some small misunderstandings, and a misguided sense of propriety. Then you can see it happening again--Luka backs off from Abby because he seems to think she’s hung up on Carter and because she’s his student. It’s not as hopeless as before, so he doesn’t spiral out of control, but he legitimately does the same thing he did in season 9 on a smaller scale. Sam thinks Luka is hot, he’s good with Alex, so she makes a pass at him, and Luka passively goes along with her making a move. Sound familiar? Yeah. The biggest difference is that Luka has realized that he was deeply unhappy with non-monogamy, so even though he falls back into sleeping with Gillian pretty quickly (after he forgot about her visit, lmao), when Sam is willing to grant him the opportunity for even a little bit of commitment, he takes it. 

Relatedly, Alex is a huge part of his journey in season 10 and 11. Or rather, Luka’s continuing longing for family and fatherhood. We’ve seen that from pretty much the beginning, and the only time it didn’t seem to be a huge driving force for him was with Abby. When he can’t have Abby and his love for her is thwarted, it’s like he looks for that kind of fulfillment from this idealized notion of family and being a dad again (see: Nicole, Sam). It’s not surprising to me that as Luka thinks Abby is unavailable and uninterested in him, he gets close to child...who has a single mother who thinks he’s good-looking.

It’s not a good fit. Abby describes hers and Carter’s relationship as doomed from the start, and you can easily talk about Luka and Sam the same way.  I could do a more Doylist explanation, but there’s plenty of in-universe material to say this--they and their relationship are plagued by problems from the very beginning. They’re never on the same page, any of them--not Sam, Alex, or Luka. Luka has a hard time articulating what he really does want from them, probably because he doesn’t want to fully examine that for himself. After all, if he has a good woman who cares about him and child he can be a father figure to--though not a father--why would he not be happy? Sam seems to want stability and sex, and Alex...Alex wants a friend. So yes, while there are a lot of external issues that come up, the primary impediment to Luka’s happiness with Sam and Alex (and for them as well!) is internal.            

As we go into season 11, we see, strangely enough, that Luka can’t be around Abby anymore while he’s with Sam. Like, @somekindofflowergirl  and I were looking and thinking about it, and we’re not sure he’s capable of talking to Abby when Sam is around until season 12 (not for more than a few sentences about whatever case they’re working on, at any rate). He starts brushing her off more and more, culminating in him all but dismissing her in 11.02 (shockingly, right after he tells Sam he loves her. Almost like there’s a correlation there, hmmmm). Instead, he focuses on his friendship with Carter and his relationships with Sam and Alex.

As the season goes on, Luka gets more miserable. Carter gets caught up in his own issues, Kerry and Susan are too busy to be there for him, and he’s busy pushing Abby away. But the tension is creeping into his home life, too. Alex lets him know in no uncertain terms that he will never view him as a father. Sam at first drags her feet about moving in with Luka, and then it seems like they have maybe a month or two of living before it sours and never recovers. He just...flounders again. Not as severely or apparently as in season 9, but he’s clearly looking for something again by the end of season 11.

Luka and Sam are on the precipice of breaking up at the end of season 11, but they prolong it for a variety of reasons. On the surface, it’s for Alex’s sake. In reality, it’s because they both want things from their lives that they get all the trappings of together, even if neither of them is happy with it. I mean, it gets to the point where  they can hardly talk at work or home, and Sam even says she doesn’t think they should be together. Then the situation with Steve, Alex’s birth father, blows up and worsens things, and Alex runs away. 

When they’re in the middle of nowhere in this crisis, Luka and Sam actually have to confront how poorly their relationship is going. Well, Sam does, though Luka is still feeling that fear of not having anything left if he loses Sam and Alex completely. But Sam says it eventually--they’ve been pretending for a long time. The truth is out, even when Alex is back. 

Luka, for all his many good qualities, does not handle life deviating from his plan or idea very well. He just straight up goes into denial (again, a recurring theme with him). 

BUT he also does something very right. He lets Abby back in. In season 12, a year after he blows her off, she tentatively reaches out again, just wanting to know if he’s okay after a case. She fully expects him to brush her off again, and you can see the surprise, delight, and relief when he opens up to her. And it’s interesting, because he tells her that he doesn’t want to talk about it with Sam, and that’s probably why Sam is moving out. 

Luka tries to talk to Sam in lockup, though he doesn’t offer any changes, which is fairly telling. And he says something even more telling: “I don’t want this to be one more thing I messed up.” He’s not so afraid of losing Sam herself or Alex, he just doesn’t want to have messed up at love (Abby) and family (his kids and even Danijela) again. He wants to be husband and dad because he remembers being happy in those roles, and even though Sam and Alex didn’t give him that, they gave him a lesser version of it. And since our Catholic boy loves rolling in that guilt and self-blame, he seems to think he should just take what he can get since he’s not worthy of more. When Sam and Alex can’t and won’t even give him crumbs anymore, he...I don’t know. He doesn’t really fall apart, because his heart isn’t really in it. It hasn’t been for a long time, if it ever was in more than a performative way (and Luka, for better or for worse, is not a fake-it-til-you-make-it kind of person). 

Once again, though, Abby is there at a moment where he’s willing to be vulnerable. And he says something so honest about what he wants: to be seen (12.03, “if it were me...would anyone know who I am?”). Abby’s yes, combined with her just being there for him unasked, seems to immediately grant him peace in that regard. He is seen and he is cared for. 

Luka never shows any signs of having feelings for Sam again, though he still looks out for her and Alex if they seem to be in trouble, but it’s no more than he’s done for friends and even strangers. In fact, they’re so back to friendly and professional by the next episode that it’s annoying and counter-productive when Eve tries scheduling them for different shifts.

Something else seems to have happened: Luka doesn’t rush off into an ill-advised romance or series of hookups. He isn’t pining, but he’s not frantically searching for family and fatherhood again, either. Given that each episode has them having a nice scene together that emphasizes their growing closeness and comfort together, it isn’t unreasonable to think that Abby is part of this. He isn’t pushing for more, but that’s not who he is with her, not after their first relationship. If friendship is all she can offer, that seems to be enough for him. In reality, it’s Abby being enough for him, but we’ll get to that later.

At that same time, one of Luka’s foils, Victor Clemente, arrives. Clemente exists narratively to be a catalyst for action in Luka’s life (which is why his role is such a mess once he’s accomplished that, but I digress) and it works like a charm. They butt heads from the start, and it’s the prospect of Clemente running the ER that goads Luka into applying for the position of chief. Kerry was right, it’s not his style at all, but also? A way for him to be everyone’s dad. (And yes, he’s better at it than Clemente would have been.) It gives him another marker of professional success, even if his personal life isn’t where he wanted it to be. As Luka’s foil, Clemente is also perceptive while Luka is oblivious. As such, he seems to see right through Luka and Abby to their connection, and he needles both, seemingly to get at Luka. It works, and as Abby says in 12.07 after their child patient dies, Abby ends up in the middle of it. 

Then, at the end of The Human Shield, Abby goes to Luka. This time she isn’t reaching out to him and going to him to support him, but to justifiably yell at him for putting her in the middle of a conflict between him and Clemente. But more importantly, Abby went to him and told him how she felt. She was vulnerable with him. And that...that was something he’d rarely seen, and not in a long time. Finally, that having woken him up to hope once again, he did something he hadn’t done in a long time: he took action. And that was something he didn’t do much, mostly with Abby, and he starts exploring it more throughout season 12.

I’m not going to turn this into a Luby meta (though I could also do that if anyone wanted, ahahaha), but 12.07-12.10 is Luka stepping forward and making choices. For love of Abby. He doesn’t push her for more so much as very obviously hope for it and ask, in his way, if she’s as in as he is. 

This extends to his professional life too! He (very sexily and pettily at the same time) takes charge of his new position and fires someone his first shift as chief. It was the right thing to do and he did it, but it wasn’t a passive reaction to something happening to him. 

Then at the end of 12.10, Abby drops the bombshell that she’s pregnant. Once he recovers from the shock of that, he does seem to spring into action, but...reserved action? He isn’t as proactive as he’s been so far, but he is also scared out of his mind that he’s going to lose Abby. Here he is, seemingly with everything he’s wanted for YEARS within reach. Not just a family, but Abby. And not just Abby, but a baby with her. But he also has years of experience with Abby, and he knows her fears, and he doesn’t want to lose her by scaring her off or pushing her for something she doesn’t want or that would make her miserable. 

So Luka lets Abby know what he wants but leaves it up to her, while also making one big mistake: he’s not clear about how much he loves her. He showed her with the compass, with gestures and moments, but he doesn’t seem to realize how much Abby needs the words. This is also typical Luka.

I love If Not Now (12.11) as part of his journey, because it’s when you finally see Luka realize, if he didn’t before, what matters most to him. He goes to Abby and tells her in no uncertain terms that it’s not about the baby, that he wants her no matter what. And that’s HUGE. Family and fatherhood have been a motivator for him for at least 4 or 5 of his 6 years on the show so far, so for him to say “yes, that would be nice, but Abby is the important one to me” represents a big shift. It gets swept over a bit in the subsequent and also life-changing news that she wants them to have the baby together and hasn’t had an abortion.

Most of the back half is solidifying what’s come before for Luka. We see him become more assertive professionally. He dotes on Abby and shows his commitment to her over and over, though it is interesting that in spite of how obviously in loved and devoted he (they, really) is, he doesn’t explicitly state it. I kind of think he’s worried that pushing for that, for everything that he wants, is asking too much of the universe. After all, he has the woman he loves and they’re having a baby together. 

You also see his compassion, not just with the patients, but in how he breaks his and Abby’s news to Sam. I don’t know that it was better for him to have told her, but it was a kind impulse borne out of a desire to do the right thing, and she knew that. 

Things get interesting again in Strange Bedfellows (12.18), when Luka tells Abby he’s thinking about going to Darfur to help Carter. We also find out Luka hasn’t told Carter about him and Abby or the baby. It seems a little odd of a choice for him, honestly. Not the keeping Abby and him and the baby a secret--I think that’s more compassion when he seems to have picked up on Carter and Kem maybe not doing so well and their continued mourning of Joshua--but the idea of going to Darfur. He’s new enough in his position as chief that it wouldn’t have been allowed, for starters, so I don’t think he’d have been able to go. And maybe that’s it--it was something he could do to help and make the world a better place for his baby (shoutout to @somekindofflowergirl again for this theory), and he wanted to try to go but probably knew he wouldn’t be able to. Also, he’s kind of an idiot sometimes, and one who sometimes loses track of the details when looking at the big picture. Which he did big time. 

But Abby, as she often does, grounds him and lifts him up at the same time. She makes it clear that he can go, but that she wants him there and wants everything with him. And that’s it for Luka. He’s already made it so he could stay, but you can see the light of “oh, maybe I can have everything I’ve yearned for” go off. The next couple of episodes show them settling into their commitment even more. 

Then the finale of season 12 comes (though I’m going to carry this through 13.02, as that feels like the real end of the season to me), and they’re clearly domestic and cute. For all Abby saying they don’t live together/hinting broadly for more clarification, they clearly have built a home together. I think Luka is trying to get her to realize she lives with him without saying it, which is a strategy, if not the best one. The second Abby voices her uncertainty, though, Besotted Idiot Luka jumps straight to saying they should get married, instead of, you know, telling Abby he loves her and wants to move forward with her. 

I think his reaction is another example of him poorly handling...it’s not rejection, it’s just they’re coming to the same thing from different perspectives. They do affirm their love, and it’s clear they would have dealt with things had they not been interrupted by everything that ensued. 

But interrupted they were. Abby’s abruption, Joe’s birth, Abby’s hysterectomy, Joe’s close call...what an interruption.Luka makes it so clear throughout that he’s there for Abby, that she’s his family. He obviously loves Joe and is devastated that he might be in danger and that they won’t be able to have a bigger family (though not as devastated as Abby, interestingly). That said, he renews his proposal to her and is CERTAIN of their love, even with the strain and uncertainty of Joe’s life.

Within a couple of years, he’s moved from trying so hard to look like he had everything together and trying to force it to having everything he’s wanted and more, even with the thorns and pain. It’s so much more than he could have hoped for, and he is more hopeful and settled.

[thecloserkin]

book review: Meg Rosoff, How I Live Now (2004)

Genre: Young Adult

Is it the main pairing: yes

Is it canon: yes

Is it explicit: no

Is it endgame: yes

Is it shippable: yes

Bottom line: It finally happened, I broke my own “no cousincest—in this house we turn the TABOO dial up to eleven” rule. In my defense this book is gobsmackingly good.

Lately I’ve been mulling on the difference between books about teenagers and books for teenagers. This one is the former, and a joy to reread as an adult. Our American heroine Daisy is sent across the pond to live with her British cousins; a war breaks out; details are scant but who cares about the war, she starts fucking one of the cousins. She describes it as “falling into sexual and emotional thrall” she said THRALL I am living for it. On a scale from “pure” to “problematic” this ship is almost all light and no darkness—what darkness menaces our protagonists emanates from outside the charmed circle of their big ol’ farmhouse and their sheepdogs and their goat:

The real truth is that the war didn’t have much to do with it except that it provided a perfect limbo in which two people who were too young and too related could start kissing without anything or anyone making us stop. There were no parents, no teachers, no schedules. There was no where to go and nothing to do that would remind us that this sort of thing didn’t happen in the Real World. There no longer was any Real World.

The notion of carving out an idyll where you & the object of your desire spend all day doing nothing but drink each other up? It’s attractive even for those of us conducting mundane relationships in the “real” world. Maybe especially for those of us in the real world, where we compartmentalize our relationships and no one person can fill every filament in our universe. Daisy’s cousins live a cloistered life in the countryside and within a week she’s saying stuff like “I felt like I’d belonged to this house for centuries.” Which is an awfully dramatic way of saying she never felt like she belonged in New York. She doesn’t just fall for Cousin Edmond; she falls for the whole telepathic dog-whispering cousinly clan and their big anarchist energy. When Daisy, an only child, says “I had about as much experience with sex and boyfriends as I did with brothers and sisters,” she is intentionally conflating romantic and familial relationships and I am 1000% here for it. Sure it’s technically cousincest but it feels claustrophobic and codependent and everything I want out of an incest ship.

Every step of Daisy’s obsessive infatuation is chronicled with agonizing tenderness:

I wondered if that’s the feeling you’re supposed to have when your cousin touches a totally innocent part of your anatomy that’s fully clothed.

that’s right it’s the thought and the intention and the pining behind the touch, not the bare fact of physical contact.

Things were so intense I was sure that other people could hear the hum coming off of us.

Imagine desire rising like mist from the surface of one’s skin. And the “other people” part of the equation is important, because it’s the sneaking around behind the other kids’ backs that gives urgency to their coupling:

we started sleeping most of the daylight hours so we could be awake at night when everyone else was in bed … Then we would sleep for a little while and eventually reappear and try to act normal

But what is “normal”? There are no adults and no rules; nothing is forbidden save that they themselves deem it so. What then explains Daisy’s conviction that this is “not a good idea”? Why shroud their affair in secrecy if the most powerful reaction they provoke from smol!cousin who learns about Daisy/Edmond is “Well I’m glad you love him because I do too”? That’s pretty anticlimactic given the lengths Daisy & Edmond have gone to be stealthy. It also emphasizes (in case we’ve forgotten that Daisy has both no siblings and no boyfriends) how romantic & familial attachments spring from a common source. I think what the text is getting at here is that it’s dangerous to put all your eggs in one basket the way Daisy puts all hers in Edmond. It’s dangerous and unhealthy to make one person your whole world, as we see later when Daisy comes to much grief. At no point, however, does she regret her decision.

we could try and try to get enough of each other but it was llike some witch’s curse where the more we tried to stop being hungry the more starving we got.

That’s a hard-hitting simile right there. The thing about curses in fairy tales is they don’t always do what they’re designed to do; frequently they accomplish different ends entirely. If we look at what Daisy’s insatiable hunger for Edmond is displacing we note that Daisy is no stranger to the feeling of constant, gnawing, unsatiated hunger because Daisy has an eating disorder. In her own words:

at first not wanting to get poisoned by my stepmother and how much it annoyed her and how after a while I discovered I liked the feeling of being hungry and the fact that it drove everyone stark raving mad and cost my father a fortune in shrinks and also it was something I was good at.

…which is just about the world’s most cogent account of eating disorders as quests for control & autonomy. By the end of the novel she no longer experiences hunger as “a punishment or a crime or a weapon or a mode of self-destruction” and that's something, anyway.

Y’all know I’m a big skimmer right? I mention this because I want you to take my full meaning when I say I read every single word of this (very short) novel. The syntax helped—most sentences are structured like so: “… and …. and … and then …” but it was engrossing af and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone use Ironic Capitalization to such devastating effect. The stylistic choice to use zero dialogue brackets means Daisy’s thoughts and Edmond’s thoughts (Edmond’s a telepath) and external action and internal commentary all run together. I didn’t find this confusing btw I just found it extremely effective.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Daisy and Edmond are separated at about the one-third mark and she spends the remainder of the book trying to get back to him, traversing a war-torn countryside with Edmond’s smol!sister and his dog in tow (since Daisy is a city girl who can’t even read a compass, maybe it’s more accurate to say smol!cousin + dog have Daisy in tow):

I guess the difference between Gin and me is that when Gin got shut in the barn she thought Edmond didn’t love her anymore but because I could feel Edmond out there somewhere always loving me I didn’t have to howl all night.

The parallel between Edmond’s girl and Edmond’s dog is not an idle one. There’s consistent strain of anticapitalist sentiment that runs through this book, that comes out most strongly in the relationships between Daisy’s cousins and their animals. Some military junta appropriates the farmhouse and displaces Daisy, her cousins, and the menagerie of animals that depend on them—that’s how Edmond and Daisy become separated, they’re “relocated.” The army is hierarchal and in wartime, the army is in charge. By contrast, Daisy’s cousins model a nonhierarchical kind of relationship with their animals, a relationship based on reciprocal obligations rather than dominating other people. “At times,” professes Daisy, “I thought I was more animal than human.” In other words, human beings live under an absolutely barbaric system, and it’s often more “humane” to behave like animals. It’s Edmond’s sheepdog who proves key to Daisy’s successful escape. City girl Daisy still can’t wrap her head around it:

one of the things I most dislike about nature, namely that the rules are not at all precise. Like when Piper says I’m pretty sure that mushrooms aren’t poisonous.

But nature’s strength lies precisely in the fuzziness of its rules! It encourages interdependence & reliance on others, rather than trying to go it alone as an atomized individual. So surviving on the run actually forces one to prioritize community (however you define it) over individual, which has salutary effects on Daisy, who reports “Somewhere along the way I’d lost the will not to eat.” She’s defeated her eating disorder, that’s good news. Unfortunately, Edmond and Daisy are not even reunited before she’s expelled from England and shipped back to America for Reasons. Dw she comes back! As soon as the borders reopen she comes back:

The soldier had stamped my passport FAMILY in heavy black capital letters and I checked it now for reassurance because I liked how fierce the word looked.

Very powerful passage but now for the ending. Let’s not talk about that ending. I don’t know why I called this a good book I am still incredulous we got THAT ending after everything we went through brb I’m suing Meg Rosoff for emotional damages

[spikedisme]

Hi! I’ve been following you for a lil lil bit, but already you seem super smart and knowledgeable so.. what are some books or other pieces of writing you think everyone should read? Have a lovely day!

B’aww, thank you! <3 You too nonnie! <3

Just off the top of my head at three o’clock in the morning, and the qualification that you provided that its something that ‘everyone should read,’ I’m going to go for more books that I found changed me fundamentally, as a person, after reading them. That may be a self-help book; that might be a societal critique, that might be a work of classic literature. I tried to give a bit of everything. <3

 I’ll put a little copy-and-paste synopsis here for you for each book, and will elaborate if necessary in brackets. 

BEHOLD: LAUREN’S LIST OF LITERARY RECOMMENDATIONS:

From My (Non-Law) Bookcase (But still are about political issues):

Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger by Soraya Chemaly: 

‘As women, we’ve been urged for so long to bottle up our anger, letting it corrode our bodies and minds in ways we don’t even realize. Yet there are so, so many legitimate reasons for us to feel angry, ranging from blatant, horrifying acts of misogyny to the subtle drip, drip drip of daily sexism that reinforces the absurdly damaging gender norms of our society. In Rage Becomes Her, Soraya Chemaly argues that our anger is not only justified, it is also an active part of the solution. We are so often encouraged to resist our rage or punished for justifiably expressing it, yet how many remarkable achievements would never have gotten off the ground without the kernel of anger that fueled them? Approached with conscious intention, anger is a vital instrument, a radar for injustice and a catalyst for change. On the flip side, the societal and cultural belittlement of our anger is a cunning way of limiting and controlling our power—one we can no longer abide.’

Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education by Jay T. Dolmage:

‘Academic Ableism brings together disability studies and institutional critique to recognize the ways that disability is composed in and by higher education, and rewrites the spaces, times, and economies of disability in higher education to place disability front and center. For too long, argues Jay Timothy Dolmage, disability has been constructed as the antithesis of higher education, often positioned as a distraction, a drain, a problem to be solved. The ethic of higher education encourages students and teachers alike to accentuate ability, valorize perfection, and stigmatize anything that hints at intellectual, mental, or physical weakness, even as we gesture toward the value of diversity and innovation. Examining everything from campus accommodation processes, to architecture, to popular films about college life, Dolmage argues that disability is central to higher education, and that building more inclusive schools allows better education for all.’

(This book strays into more academic categories, but it’s still really great that this sort of book is being written. I personally recognise its value as someone with mental health struggles and who has had to fight ironically in the legal sphere for myself in terms of finding support within my own career moving forward as a lawyer/legal academic. I think the fact that the narrative that disabilities are seen as the antithesis of secondary education despite claims of diversity is something that all university students need to guard themselves against, or at least educate themselves on, in order to work against some systems that even though they espouse equality, might not have their best interests at heart. 

I’ve ironically found this especially terrible in law, where my first term of law school I was told ‘girls like you don’t go to law school,’ followed by constant questioning by the community at large after graduate that any hint of mental weakness equates to being unfit to practice law. This is despite the majority of lawyers having mental health problems, if not full blown addictions. It’s honestly why I’m pivoting back to academia (law prof), or moving to practice for the government (which enforces union restrictions on how long a lawyer can actually work, where firms just actually work them to death without union protections ironically; ugh. My whole point is, I’m not ashamed of having mental health problems in a field largely categorised by achievements in secondary education. I feel no reason to hide it, even though people tell me to. If someone is ashamed of me over something I had no control over developing, then I probably don’t want to be involved with them, do I? (A good method I recommend; it may cut off some superficial ‘friends’/’opportunities,’ but it leads to those who truly understand what a mental health disability may entail, and how strong you are for overcoming it).

White Fragility: Why It’s so Hard to for White People to Talk about Racism by Robin DiAngelo:

The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality.

In this “vital, necessary, and beautiful book” (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to ‘bad people’ (Claudia Rankine). Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.

Two Mental Health-Related Books:

Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving by Celeste Headlee:

‘We work feverishly to make ourselves happy. So why are we so miserable?

Despite our constant search for new ways to optimize our bodies and minds for peak performance, human beings are working more instead of less, living harder not smarter, and becoming more lonely and anxious. We strive for the absolute best in every aspect of our lives, ignoring what we do well naturally and reaching for a bar that keeps rising higher and higher. Why do we measure our time in terms of efficiency instead of meaning? Why can’t we just take a break?

In Do Nothing, award-winning journalist Celeste Headlee illuminates a new path ahead, seeking to institute a global shift in our thinking so we can stop sabotaging our well-being, put work aside, and start living instead of doing. As it turns out, we’re searching for external solutions to an internal problem. We won’t find what we’re searching for in punishing diets, productivity apps, or the latest self-improvement schemes. Yet all is not lost - we just need to learn how to take time for ourselves, without agenda or profit, and redefine what is truly worthwhile.

Pulling together threads from history, neuroscience, social science, and even paleontology, Headlee examines long-held assumptions about time use, idleness, hard work, and even our ultimate goals. Her research reveals that the habits we cling to are doing us harm; they developed recently in human history, which means they are habits that can, and must, be broken. It’s time to reverse the trend that’s making us all sadder, sicker, and less productive, and return to a way of life that allows us to thrive.’

(I just read this book lately and I love it; it’s really follows the history of how we’ve come to this point where we can’t shut off our brains, and we see ourselves in this really puritanical, commercialist manner: How we define ourselves by how much we produce, and if we fall short of this goal by being (ironically) human, we berate ourselves for it. This really has let me shift my mentality towards a much healthier, less ‘workaholic’ mode in my COVID downtime, and really helped me move towards a healthier lifestyle in the jobs I’m searching for now that I’ve left school. Recommended for anyone taking the big leap into the full time work world).

Chained to the Desk by Bryan Robinson:

‘Americans love a hard worker. The worker who toils eighteen-hour days and eats meals on the run between appointments is usually viewed with a combination of respect and awe. But for many, this lifestyle leads to family problems, a decline in work productivity, and ultimately to physical and mental collapse. Intended for anyone touched by what Robinson calls “the best-dressed problem of the twenty-first century,” Chained to the Desk provides an inside look at workaholism’s impact on those who live and work with work addicts—partners, spouses, children, and colleagues—as well as the appropriate techniques for clinicians who treat them. Originally published in 1998, this groundbreaking book from best-selling author and widely respected family therapist Bryan E. Robinson was the first comprehensive portrait of the workaholic. In this new and fully updated third edition, Robinson draws on hundreds of case reports from his own original research and years of clinical practice. The agonies of workaholism have grown all the more challenging in a world where the computer, cell phone, and iPhone allow twenty-four-hour access to the office, even on weekends and from vacation spots. Adult children of workaholics describe their childhood pain and the lifelong legacies they still carry, and the spouses or partners of workaholics reveal the isolation and loneliness of their vacant relationships. Employers and business colleagues discuss the cost to the company when workaholism dominates the workplace. Chained to the Desk both counsels and consoles. It provides a step-by-step guide to help readers spot workaholism, understand it, and recover.’

(I also just read this one, and it’s an older book edited to a third edition, and it shows. However, it also does the important work of demonstrating how workaholics should be treated in the same category as anyone else who gets any sort of ‘high’ from something, like drugs or alcoholism. It opens with the quote (and I’m paraphrasing here), “Workaholicism is the best dressed addiction.” It’s the one we’re rewarded for constantly, not matter what mental toll it takes on us. While I’m not exactly ready to sign up for a twelve-step plan (and some of the chapters are specifically for spouses and children), it still dishes out some really good advice about feeding other areas of our lives and how to not simply focus on work.)

From My Undergraduate Degree (Classics and Double Minor in English and German Literature, with a little World Literature thrown in for good measure):

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe: 

THINGS FALL APART tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first of these stories traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world in which he lives, and in its classical purity of line and economical beauty it provides us with a powerful fable about the immemorial conflict between the individual and society. The second story, which is as modern as the first is ancient, and which elevates the book to a tragic plane, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo's world through the arrival of aggressive, proselytizing European missionaries. These twin dramas are perfectly harmonized, and they are modulated by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history, and the mysterious compulsions of the soul. THINGS FALL APART is the most illuminating and permanent monument we have to the modern African experience as seen from within.

(This is a classic of African Literature, and what I wrote my world literature paper on in first year. It really is a story about the affect of a fall of one culture, where Okonkwo is the prime example of what a ‘man’ may be in this society, to how this society (and African societies as a whole) are affected by European colonialism. How one man can be seen as a paradigm of perfection at one point in time, and the scourge of the earth at another, when he stubbornly holds to his ideals, no matter how flawed they may be. It’s a book I remember reading the ending of, and it’s a theme for all three of these books, and just looking down and literally letting out an, “Ooooooooh~~~~” xD That’s really my ‘tell’ of a good book. I haven’t reread it since then, but it’s always stuck with me). 

Animal Farm by George Orwell:

‘Perhaps one of the most influential allegories of the 20th century, George Orwell's Animal Farm has made its way into countless schoolrooms and libraries, and has been the inspiration of several films. Written in 1945, before Orwell's conceptually similar 1984, Animal Farm's world consists of anthropomorphized farm animals as they attempt to create an ideal society--it becomes dystopian as the flaws of the ideology seep out. Like 1984, Orwell meant for Animal Farm to represent a Communist state, and to depict its downfalls. With a message that is not soon to be forgotten, Animal Farm reminds us that "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."’

(It’s stereotypical and you’ve probably read it, but I still love this book to pieces and literally have an Animal Farm pin on my bag xD If you haven’t read it, read it: It also has the OhhhOOohhh~ effect xD)

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury:

‘Ray Bradbury's internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 is a masterwork of 20th-century literature set in a bleak, dystopian future.

Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family". But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television. When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.’

(What do I have to say by this point? Another Ooooh~ effect book xD)

[davidschnuckel]

Guerilla Visual Tactics

StreetKraft  Features Glass at the Intersection of the Gallery and the Street

2/20/2019

The Winter issue of GASnews is hot off the digital press! ​Content in this issue is motivated by the theme of SUBVERSION and examines a wide variety of ways in which the glass field hosts, supports and/or promotes the renegade spirit in relation to professional practice.  For this issue, I spend time assessing a curatorial effort by Kim Harty entitled "StreetKraft" at the Royal Oaks, Michigan based Habatat Gallery.  I was hoping the issue of GASnews would publish far earlier than it did as the exhibition opened and closed within the previous month of September.  Regardless, this piece examines an interesting gesture to merge the high-brow context of the blue-chip glass gallery and artists who place their practice (and material relationship) within the guttural modes of self-expression found in street art. There are many more dualities at play within this exhibition that made it an interesting focal point in my constant consideration of this time and place within contemporary glass...and I feel that those stand out in one's reading of this article.  it almost demands a follow-up to address things that weren't part of the conversation; things like the brief return of graphics, Imagery and narrative within glass, the brief resurrection of loud, splashy color within conceptually-driven glass work and the socio-political commentary between regional street artists and the artists within StreetKraft about how much "street" may or may not truly present in this exhibition.  But until then, this review basks in the yin and yang of StreetKraft's tendency to straddle the fence between reverence and sacrilege visually, conceptually and culturally. Below is the draft I submitted to my Editor in its full, unedited version to serve as supplemental material to what is seen in the Winter 2019 issue of GASnews:

Of all the ways in which the word (k)raft has been scorned as only involving kitsch, misunderstood as only relating to the cheap and the mercantile, and has limited notions of hand-based practice only to the quiet, pious and pastoral comes an exhibition that noticeably turns all those misconceptions on their head. Just outside of the artist utopia that Detroit is resurging to be is the neighboring community of Royal Oak, home to Habatat Galleries.  It is here that StreetKraft had been hosted from August 18th to September 15th this past Fall and curated by Kim Harty, artist, writer and Assistant Professor of Glass at the College for Creative Studies. “When I was invited to curate a show at Habatat I wanted to do something that would fit the time and place of the gallery,” mentions Harty.  “Detroit has been bubbling with street art throughout the city, and in museums like the DIA and the Cranbrook Art Museum. I also wanted to assemble a show that was very visual, that had a strong sense of imagery, form, and color to bring the viewer into.” In an effort to bridge Harty’s observations of a dialogue that could happen between Habatat and the street art scene of Detroit, StreetKraft was an exhibition highlighting instances of glass thinking from around the world that dwells in the conceptual underbelly of the street: the renegade vernacular of its visual language, its symbology (both real and imagined), its literal tones and its figurative textures. Although initially seen by Harty as an opportunity to create connections between separate creative forces within her region, StreetKraft expands the conversation by inviting artists from a little bit of everywhere...including Detroit, but well beyond it, too.  With seventeen artists from various corners of the United States, Poland, Australia and Japan represented in the show, ‘the street’ reveals a diversity of impetus within the work as widespread as the international standing of its participants. Regardless of place, each artist is spoken to - and speaking through - ‘the street’ to explore ideas that evaluate, assess, predict and push a spectrum of issues related to contemporary culture.  “I’ve also noticed a counter-cultural thread in glass that isn’t often acknowledged as a trend or theme,” Harty mentions.  “Certainly, pipe culture is part of that, but there are many artists working in other genres that have subversive or political content to their work. I wanted to assemble a critical mass of artists to acknowledge the work that is being done and contextualize it together.”

The range of glass vernacular in StreetKraft is as varied as what the individual works are speaking to. Glass processes like blowing, neon, flat glass imaging, kiln forming and flameworking engage a few ties in conceptual approach:  Leo Tecosky representative of a shared body of work in the show visually reinterpreting street markings, signage and other guerilla modes of linguistical coding. Emily McBride representative of a shared body of work in the show engaging the generally overlooked emblems of low-class iconography, mass production and other fixed tokens within the daily grind.  Esteban Salazar representative of a shared body of work in the show visualizing – even prophesying –  concern through city-scaped lens of a perhaps not-so-fictitious, future dilemma involving ecological and societal collapse.  Caledonia Curry (aka SWOON) representative of a shared body of work in the show accentuating a romantic angle to the street; of finding and amplifying the extraordinary potential of elements hidden in plain sight within an urban scene. ​The convergence of ‘the street’ and glass practice in StreetKraft does reveal itself to be a curious intersection to cross…full of interesting ironies between the two platforms of creative inquiry and activity.  Various forms of street art, tagging and graffiti being unsanctioned gestures and, therefore, motivated by a sense of immediacy in one’s materials and process.  Quickness is key, not only in what is done and how, but boldly in what and how the work visually articulates itself once done and discovered.  Glass, on the other hand, is full of rules; not legally enforced, but rules governed by elements of time and temperature in order for anything to survive even its own making. Unlike the street’s immediate modes of visual communication, glass is – even at its quickest mode of processing - time intensive.  And expensive.  And fragile.  Part of what makes StreetKraft such an interesting premise is that it resides in duality; a creative field that demands such sensitivity, consideration and protocol that glass does mingling with a creative field that’s primarily built on aggressive resilience, the gut and subversion. And the sass.  The shamelessness and brazen disposition of ‘the street’ crossing over into the sanctified character of how glass is approached, handled and produced for exhibition is interesting, too.  The exhibition title invites further upheaval; not only integrating one of the dirtiest words in contemporary glass parlance, but subverting how the term “craft” is both understood by its believers and misperceived by its dissenters…simultaneously. StreetKraft bypasses the notion of (k)raft as but an aesthetically rooted approach to making and demonstrates it existing best instead as a method of thinking by way of doing.  Especially in terms of creative activity.  Especially more so in terms of street-savvy, insurrectionally motivated matters of making. It is here that StreetKraft claims (k)raft as a verb…not a made thing per se, but the idea of taking action.  And if it has to be regarded as a noun, (k)craft as belief system of “fuck you” to the pomp and circumstance of glass, glass making, glass culture and maybe even the context of the blue-chip gallery context.  You will not find things like finesse for the sake of finesse here, nor will you find high-end commodities that’ll go with the couch.  

Instead, StreetKraft illuminates the philosophical roots of (k)raft under a highly contemporary lens of proficiently wielded sacrilege: making with intentions off the beaten path of the “exquisite art object” and, instead, on the hunt for empowerment…to artist and public alike. The conceptual integration of (k)raft within the notion of ‘the street’ provides an interesting angle to a conversation we thought we’ve talked to death already. To help illustrate, I imagine a twenty-something Basquiat, prior to becoming famous; an adept - yet still unknown - graffiti artist.  I imagine him in action in the dead of night. I imagine the agility with which he accesses forbidden public surfaces to enhance. Each step towards his empty canvas a moment to finalize his plans to illegally modify it with his vision.  And to modify it brilliantly.  I imagine the dexterity with which this proficient, yet to be recognized street artist commands the movements of his can of bargain-bin spray paint.  The quick wit of his message, the thoughtfulness of its placement and the timing of its social sting once discovered by an unsuspecting public at first daylight.   

In this fictitious moment – of me attempting to identify with someone I’ve never known by way of an art form I’ve never done in a moment that may never have happened – I begin to find parallels of similarity between the two very dissimilar worlds that glass and ‘the street’ are.  The engagement of meaningful creative activity, of bodily performance as one chases their vision down, of making creative decisions in real time, in real space and in doing so with real impact internally and externally: this is where the power of (k)raft within StreetKraft resides. On the surface, StreetKraft has much to convey.  In this post-millennial, post-recession and post-#yeswecan political and cultural era, StreetKraft hosts glass-based thinking and making as a call to action.  When present, the rough-and-tumble contributions to the show elicit a sense of urgency.  But the slick and savvy contributions are red flags in and of themselves, representing the calm before an ambiguously predicted storm.  And the relationship between a show like this being hosted at a venue like Habatat Galleries is worthy of a longer conversation of its own… “I think [StreetKraft] demonstrates that there is a place for somewhat radical (at least in the glass context) work in commercial galleries,” says Harty. “This show is unlike anything Habatat has done before, yet it actually fits seamlessly into their space.” Even so, StreetKraft doesn’t give a shit about formalities.  Pipes exist here, as do sculptural objects, as do image-based works, spatial arrangements, sound-inducing kinetic works, the rough, the tight, things on the wall, things on the floor, things in your face.  The correspondence between what is so alluring about ‘the street’ creatively and what is so intriguing philosophically about traditional notions of (k)raft is just so poetically ripe. For starters, I’m drawn to the exhibition’s abstracted comparison of street art in relation to (k)raft’s historical associations with function; the hand and its gestures as a vehicle with which to “produce” a circumstance of “usefulness” in relation to broader areas of critical conversation.  But I’m also drawn to elements of conceptual wordplay between the two seemingly different worlds: the impetus of street-inspired art to rise from objection in relation to (k)craft’s historical associations with the object and object making… The immediate connotations of StreetKraft are interesting indeed.  But its undercurrents are just so, so rich.  For information and images of StreetKraft visit the exhibition catalog here.

[perkwunos]

This post is a sequel to something I had written earlier, discussing the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. All quoted passages are from Process and Reality unless otherwise stated.

As we have seen, one particular issue for modern philosophy is how our perceptions can justifiably be interpreted to mean anything about an external world. If what is revealed to us in our direct experience amounts to a diverse collection of abstract forms—smells, colors, tastes, sounds, textures—assembled within an equally abstract field of space and time, what reason can we have to believe in this being more than a solipsistic existence with no further connection? How can we posit that there’s such a thing as cause and effect, of an external world consisting of connected actions? Everyone does believe in some external world beyond their senses, but a rational inquiry seems to leave that a matter of mere opinion.

One solution here is to admit that, yes, we have no infallible foundation in this interpretation of our practical, social lives--but that poses no real problem, because the search for an infallible foundation for our interpretations is itself a wild goose chase that should be abandoned in philosophy. This isn’t a bad start, but it’s not a metaphysical solution, and ultimately it leaves the problematic metaphysical model firmly lodged in everyone’s minds--for a metaphysical idea is not merely either some grasp of the essential truth of reality or a failure at doing so: it is a model that is tacitly presupposed in a great many theoretical interpretations which guide our investigations into the facts. As soon as you allow the modern concept of our experience to continue—and continue it will, if it is not directly supplanted with a new construction--you have accepted a rift in our basic understandings of the world: the rift between mind and body, culture and nature, appearances and ultimate reality. We must go back to the simplest premises and fully confront their theoretical interpretations; anything else would, in fact, be a wasteful use of energy in attempt to swim upstream.

As mentioned, the dominant idea for modern philosophy is that our perceptions consist of the entertainment of various sense-qualities by the mind. Whitehead suspects that already here we are dealing with various problematic presuppositions. For what does it mean to talk about a particular mind being qualified by the forms of sense-data?

… The notion of a universal is of that which enters into the description of many particulars; whereas the notion of a particular is that it is described by universals, and does not itself enter into the description of any other particular. …

…

… Hume, accepting Descartes’ account of perception [that the perceiving Ego is a particular characterized by the universals of sense-data, with no other particulars thus entering into perception], which also belongs to Locke in some sections of his Essay, easily draws the sceptical conclusion [that we cannot know if our perceptions tell us anything about an external world]. (Process and Reality, 48-49)

If one accepts viewing the mind as, in this sense, a particular—and thus free of having other particulars “entering” into it, i.e. being a part of its constitution, then one is faced with the “fact” (the theory-determined fact) that the mind simply displays universals, and universals are abstractions with no necessary reference to any particularities aside from the mind in which they currently subsist. The inescapable problem of solipsism seems to become evident quite quickly. But, then, why did the best minds of modern philosophy continue to accept this premise? Of course, they might answer that it is simply what conscious introspection actually shows our perceptions to be, but this is a crude mistake; as discussed, we can’t take anything as a brute fact with no theoretical interpretations involved in its definition (but, more later on how exactly they could’ve mistaken experience to be this way). Indeed, Whitehead sees in the modern model of our experience quite the significant theoretical baggage: the inheritance of the Aristotelian forms of thought which were dominant in the Middle Ages, and were never truly abolished in the modern mind--which in turn feed off of certain habits of thought even more deeply ingrained in us by our own language.

The dominance of Aristotelian logic from the late classical period onwards has imposed on metaphysical thought the categories naturally derivative from its phraseology. This dominance of his logic does not seem to have been characteristic of Aristotle's own metaphysical speculations. The divergencies, such as they are, in these lectures from other philosophical doctrines mostly depend upon the fact that many philosophers, who in their explicit statements criticize the Aristotelian notion of 'substance,' yet implicitly throughout their discussions presuppose that the 'subject-predicate' form of proposition embodies the finally adequate mode of statement about the actual world. The evil produced by the Aristotelian 'primary substance' is exactly this habit of metaphysical emphasis upon the 'subject-predicate' form of proposition. (30)

He gives a more in-depth explanation of this point in his later book, Adventures of Ideas:

… The modern outlook arises from the slow influence of Aristotle’s Logic, during a period of two thousand years. Also Aristotle’s Logic is founded upon an analysis of the simplest form of a verbal sentence. For example, the sentence ‘This water is hot’ attributes the character of high temperature to the particular mass of water in the particular bathtub. The quality of ‘being hot’ is an abstraction. Many different things can be hot, and we can think of being hot without thinking of any particular thing in a bathtub which is hot. But in the real physical world, the quality of ‘being hot’ can only appear as a characteristic of concrete things which are hot.

Again, still keeping to the point of view derived from Aristotelian Logic, if we ask for a complete account of a real particular thing in the physical world, the adequate answer is expressed in terms of a set of these abstract characteristics, which are united into an individualized togetherness which is the real thing in question.

The answer is beautifully simple. But it entirely leaves out of account the interconnections between real things. Each substantial thing is thus conceived as complete in itself, without any reference to any other substantial thing. Such an account of the ultimate atoms, or of the ultimate monads, or of the ultimate subjects enjoying experience, renders an interconnected world of real individuals unintelligible. The universe is shivered into a multitude of disconnected substantial things, each thing in its own way exemplifying its private bundle of abstract characters which have found a common home in its own substantial individuality. But substantial thing cannot call unto substantial thing. … In this way, Aristotle’s doctrines of Predication and of Primary Substance have issued into a doctrine of the conjunction of attributes and of the disjunction of primary substances. (132-133)

There are really two points here: one is that we have inherited an Aristotelian form of thought based on a certain definition of “substance,” and the other is that underlying this is a wider habit of thought based upon the subject-predicate form of our language. In an Aristotelian model, the ultimately real things in the world are individual substances that endure over time as various changing qualities are predicated of them. Thus, when we say, “Socrates has a beard,” we attribute a certain quality (bearded) to an individual substance (Socrates). This is the kind of subject-predicate type of statement that Whitehead sees Aristotle’s concepts to be based off of. The problem is that we are discussing an abstraction, one that we shouldn’t take as exemplifying the most general metaphysical aspects of our existence. For in doing this, we favor the notion “of the conjunction of attributes and of the disjunction of primary substances”—of a world composed of individuals whose existence consists of possessing certain “attributes,” certain abstract qualities, and yet are thus left thoroughly insulated from one another in their separate worlds of abstractions.

Whitehead, instead, wishes to conceptualize an ultimate individual unit of existence for whom above all else relations are primary. His is a philosophy of “internal relations”: an actual thing, a substance, is defined by its relations to other actual things, and would not be what it is without those relations.

An actual entity cannot be described, even inadequately, by universals; because other actual entities do enter into the description of any one actual entity. Thus … every so-called ‘particular’ is universal in the sense of entering into the constitutions of other actual entities. (48)

Socrates is not described just by a list of abstract qualities—has a beard, thinks about the definitions of words, is mortal—but above all else by the complex nexus which situates him in the actual world: his connection to the physical environment which sustains his specific bodily organization, the social position and specific relationships that have determined his political and ethical dialogues with others—and not to mention the various slaves and women (overlapping categories) who have done the work that allows him to continue living the way he is. To remove anyone from their specific nexus—which is the world as it exists for them—is to entertain quite the abstraction. The difficulty arises in that we are constantly entertaining such abstractions, deeply embedded as they are in our language and cognition. And such an abstraction is useful, to be sure; this is not a question of abolishing them all together, or bothering with even changing them in most everyday contexts. The issue is that this is an unfortunate roadblock when we attempt to understand the fundamental nature of our existence, when we attempt to formulate more exact theories.

Now we may see the different possibilities in how our experience can be approached. If we follow traditional forms of thought, we see a mind upon which various senses and thoughts are predicated. If we follow Whitehead, we may instead begin focusing on the aspects of our experience that point to its existence consisting of its relations. It is for this that Whitehead introduces the concept of prehensions.

To speak of things in terms of substances, in accord with the subject-predicate form of speech, is to deal with what is significantly abstract; the prehension, on the other hand, is offered as the most concrete possible way of discussing things. “The analysis of an actual entity into 'prehensions' is that mode of analysis which exhibits the most concrete elements in the nature of actual entities.” (19) An actual entity is Whitehead’s equivalent of Aristotle’s substance: the individual unit of existence which the world is made up of—but, now, it is not thought of as composed of abstract qualities, at least not primarily, but rather it is composed of prehensions. What, then, is a prehension? It derives from the Latin prehensiō, to seize; it is the act of grasping another entity, taking it up inside oneself. More specifically, it is the experiential act of this grasping, and it is the activity which by doing so allows for the formation—in Whitehead’s terms, the concrescence, the becoming-concrete—of an actual entity, which is itself an act of experience, but now with the full concrete unity to which a prehension can only contribute but which it lacks on its own. The final individuals of the world are actual entities, and these actual entities are made up of prehensions. 

We may notice, then, that actuality for Whitehead is also synonymous with experience. What is most concrete—the really actual thing which exists—is experience, feeling. This is a premise which can never really be avoided. You cannot deny the existence of experience in all its fullness. To entertain a type of existence that supposedly doesn’t exist within experience, is to entertain an abstract idea that’s still nevertheless inside one’s experience. Most people are guilty of what Whitehead terms the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness,” which is to entertain an abstract idea as if it was somehow itself really the concrete thing. We all perform this error when we conceive of any type of existence which does not ultimately have its basis in experience. “The final facts are, all alike, actual entities; and these actual entities are drops of experience, complex and interdependent.” (18) Usually, statements along these lines would be taken to mean--according to modern models--some kind of solipsism, or at best a subjective idealism where some kind of God has to act to put in place the external world; for Whitehead, however, an experience consists of a relation to an external thing, to another experience, and thus inherently reveals a plurality of individuals existing in an environment.

Whitehead is thus also here giving a solution to the problem of dualism inherent in modern philosophy: there is one kind of existence which both ourselves and the rest of the world can be analyzed in terms of, and it is the experiential actual entity conceived as made up of prehensions through which it relates to other experiential actual entities.

With the purpose of obtaining a one-substance cosmology, 'prehensions' are a generalization from Descartes' mental 'cogitations,' and from Locke's 'ideas,' to express the most concrete mode of analysis applicable to every grade of individual actuality. Descartes and Locke maintained a two-substance ontology--Descartes explicitly, Locke by implication. Descartes, the mathematical physicist, emphasized his account of corporeal substance; and Locke, the physician and the sociologist, confined himself to an account of mental substance. The philosophy of organism, in its scheme for one type of actual entities, adopts the view that Locke's account of mental substance embodies, in a very special form, a more penetrating philosophic description than does Descartes' account of corporeal substance. Nevertheless, Descartes' account must find its place in the philosophic scheme. On the whole, this is the moral to be drawn from the Monadology of Leibniz. His monads are best conceived as generalizations of contemporary notions of mentality. The contemporary notions of physical bodies only enter into his philosophy subordinately and derivatively. The philosophy of organism endeavours to hold the balance more evenly. But it does start with a generalization of Locke's account of mental operations. (19)

In attempting to ground his metaphysics in the most concrete conceivable type of existence, and in attempting to avoid the incoherence of any dualism, Whitehead comes upon panpsychism—or, rather, panexperientialism: this world is the activity of experiences. The “mind” is an experiencing subject which entertains the body as object, and is also entertained by the body—itself an experiencing subject—as an object. Whitehead might be labeled an idealist then—but he is quite far off from what is commonly intended by that term, for bodies are all real, existing as the complex systems of feelings whose existences lay down certain conditions upon which the human mind depends and which it cannot deny. 

Ultimately, by embracing a philosophy of internal relations and seeing this exemplified in experience, he is superseding the problem of an irreconcilable fissure between a subject and an object. An actual entity is both subject and object; it is a subject as it is becoming, constituting itself by its prehensions of other actual entities as objects; it is an object as a completed actuality, entering into the subjective becoming of other actual entities.

The perceptive constitution of the actual entity presents the problem, How can the other actual entities, each with its own formal existence, also enter objectively into the perceptive constitution of the actual entity in question? This is the problem of the solidarity of the universe. The classical doctrines of universals and particulars, of subject and predicate, of individual substances not present in other individual substances, of the externality of relations, alike render this problem incapable of solution. The answer given by the organic philosophy is the doctrine of prehensions, involved in concrescent integrations, and terminating in a definite, complex unity of feeling. To be actual must mean that all actual things are alike objects … and that all actual things are subjects, each prehending the universe from which it arises. The creative action is the universe always becoming one in a particular unity of self-experience, and thereby adding to the multiplicity which is the universe as many. … (56-57)

What’s more, it cannot be stressed enough that Whitehead’s panexperientialism is not attributing to all actual entities alike the exact same kind of experience that we humans have. His philosophy is, if anything, a critique of too easily mistaking some of the more distinct, contrived aspects of our human experience for the more basic activity.

Finally, in the cosmological scheme here outlined one implicit assumption of the philosophical tradition is repudiated. The assumption is that the basic elements of experience are to be described in terms of one, or all, of the three ingredients, consciousness, thought, sense-perception. … According to the philosophy of organism these three components are unessential elements in experience, either physical or mental. Any instance of experience is dipolar [i.e. containing physical and mental characteristics] … these elements, consciousness, thought, sense-perception, belong to the derivative 'impure' phases of the concrescence [i.e. they are the result of a mixture between the physical and mental], if in any effective sense they enter at all. (36)

Indeed, this attitude is, partly, what resulted in modern philosophers feeling validated in the interpretation of experience as particular-substance-qualified-by-universals; undergoing personal introspection, they naturally focused upon what was most clear to them, and what was most clear was the most derivative, late-stage products of the concrescence of their experience: consciousness and its most abstract elements. Whitehead theorizes about two types of experience in order to explain the conditions for the moderns’ interpretation—one in the mode of “causal efficacy” and the other in the mode of “presentational immediacy.” That is a complex topic to be further explained another day. For now, we may simply keep in mind that Whitehead does account for our experience having such an existence that it could be taken by moderns to exist the way they thought it did, due to their narrow focus on certain types of data—but he also attempted to point to the aspects of our experience which he thought modern theories looked over, and, importantly, he found these to be more basic: the elements of our experience consisting of a flow, a “vector,” of one actual entity entering into another.

In attempt to show some direct evidence for the fact that one experience can enter directly into another, Whitehead appealed to our intimate feeling of the direct inheritance of a moment before. Our memories, especially our most immediate, forceful memories of the very near past, are the most clear example of prehensions as the grasping of one feeling inside another. This leads us to one final point about the effects of an Aristotelian substance theory upon the interpretation of experience. A substance endures through time. This follows naturally enough from the way we talk; from moment to moment, we can discuss Socrates who has all kinds of changing attributes, and yet is supposed to be the same Socrates. But this is an unfortunate way of talking when we are attempting to approach our fundamental existence.

In the quotation from the second Meditation: “I am, I exist, is necessarily true each time that I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it,” Descartes adopts the position that an act of experience is the primary type of actual occasion. But in his subsequent developments he assumes that his mental substances endure change. Here he goes beyond his argument. For each time he pronounces ‘I am, I exist,’ the actual occasion, which is the ego, is different; and the 'he’ which is common to the two egos is an eternal object [i.e. a form, a universal] or, alternatively, the nexus of successive occasions. (75)

An actual entity is an actual occasion, i.e. it exists as a moment, and then perishes as new moments then come into being. We entertain the abstraction of the “I’ that is common to each moment of this kind of psychic existence as it arises continually out of our bodily organization (itself composed of a history of occasions of feeling). What’s more, this “I” feels concrete, for there is the nexus, the concrete reality of relatedness in the chain of each new occasion prehending the previous occasions. Nevertheless, what we are ultimately dealing with when we look at our own existence, is not any individual ego, but a great plurality of occasions. Descartes ignored this when he declared “I think, therefore I am,” and assumed that this “I” was thus a proven substance that could from then on endure as one unit moment after moment; he did this because the metaphysical baggage he had unreflectively inherited directed his attention towards such a finding. Understanding an experience as an occasion, we must now confront how one such occasion enters into, flows into, another one so as to create our stream of consciousness; we move from a mind perceiving barren sense-data, to a momentary becoming of a feeling which is constituted by its sympathetic grasping of prior feelings. Most obviously, this relation between feelings occurs within our “mind,” our personal experiences—but from here it is not an irrational step to consider that we may be relating to the rest of the world in the same way; at the least, it seems we have a direct, intimate inheritance of feelings from all across our body, and in turn our bodily feelings all suggest data from the external world. In this way, a realist philosophy can be built that assumes no great ontological gap between any parts of life and the wider world.

I had previously quoted Whitehead on the effect of one’s theory upon one’s evidence. I may now share the rest of that passage:

An example is afforded when we interrogate experience for direct evidence of the interconnectedness of things. If we hold with Hume, that the sole data originating reflective experience are impressions of sensation, and also if we also admit with him the obvious fact that no one such impression by its own individual nature discloses any information as to another such impression, then on that hypothesis the direct evidence for interconnectedness vanishes. Again, if we hold the Cartesian doctrine of substantial souls with many adventures of experience, and of substantial material bodies, then on that hypothesis the relations between two occasions of experience qualifying one soul are no evidence as to the connectedness of a soul and a material body, and are no evidence as to the connectedness of two occasions of agitation of one material body, or of two such occasions respectively belonging to different material bodies. But if we hold, as for example in Process and Reality, that all final individual actualities have the metaphysical character of occasions of experience, then on that hypothesis the direct evidence as to the connectedness of one’s immediately past occasions, can be validly used to suggest categories applying to the connectedness of all occasions in nature. A great deal of confused philosophical thought has its origin in obliviousness to the fact that the relevance of evidence is dictated by theory. For you cannot prove a theory by evidence which that theory dismisses as irrelevant. (Adventures of Ideas, 220-221)

As much as this explanation has been brief, simplified, and thus not yet rendered completely clear, I hope that it has been suggestive of the way in which Whitehead’s metaphysics confronts some of the major problems of modern philosophy, and reveals the metaphysical nature of said problems. The processes of the world can be understood as the interconnected facts of their feeling one another, in the complex and creative advance of ever-new occasions. Thus, the world is aesthetic; we live underground, in the cave of appearances, as Plato would have it--and yet we continue digging further down into this expansive field which is experience, for there is no other realm of existence to which we might go.

[eagle-eyez]

Overall Rating: 3.5/5

Price: Rs 28,999

Realme recently launched a couple of Ultra HD TVs in the Indian market to make its smart TV line-up look more rounded. The new 43- and 50-inch TVs both boast features such as a 4K display, support for Dolby Vision and hands-free voice control. Of the two, we got the 43-inch variant for review. Time to figure out how it performs.

Realme Smart TV 4K 43 - Design and connectivity: 7.5/10

The Realme Smart TV 4K is easy on the eye, with a bezel-less design on three sides and a thicker bottom bezel. The trapezoidal chin under the company logo hosts the voice assistant indicator LEDs and IR receiver, among other things. The TV can be wall-mounted or placed on a desk using the bundled stand. The wall mount kit, however, isn’t provided in the package and probably needs to be purchased separately.

The necessary screws are bundled along with a wireless remote control and a pair of AAA batteries. In the connectivity department, you get three HDMI ports – one for ARC support, two USB 2.0 ports, optical audio out, A/V in and a LAN port, all placed along the left edge of the rear module. The ports are located more towards the centre of the TV than nearer to the edge. Since this is not a large screen TV, the ports may not be so hard to reach even if you wall mount it, but I always prefer them closer to the edge for easy access.

You also have a couple of wireless connectivity options with Bluetooth 5.0 to connect to wireless speakers or headphones and dual band Wi-Fi with support for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks. A notable absentee here is any kind of analogue audio out, like a coaxial A/V out or a 3.5 mm headphone jack. So, if you plan to connect external speakers or a sound bar, make sure they either have HDMI ARC, Bluetooth or optical input.

Realme Smart TV 4K 43 - Features and specifications: 8/10

The Realme Smart TV 4K 43 has a 43-inch VA panel with an Ultra HD resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels, a 60 Hz refresh rate and can display over a billion colour shades. It supports all popular HDR standards such as Dolby Vision, HDR10/10+ and HLG. You do not get the SLED backlighting that was present on the 55-inch model. This TV is powered by a Mediatek chipset that has a quad-core processor with four ARM Cortex A53 cores and Mali-G52 GPU. The CPU cores can go as high as 1550 MHz. You get 2 GB RAM and 16 GB of internal storage, a chunk of which is taken up by the official Android TV 10 OS; you are left with about 10 GB of storage for your apps and data.

Sound output is rated at 24 watts RMS with support for Dolby Atmos and DTS. Like all certified Android TVs, this one, too, has Chromecast built in and lets you cast content to the screen from compatible apps on your phone or tablet. You get the usual Realme wireless remote control that I’m quite fond of. It is compact and clutter-free but doesn’t lack any important keys. The remote here has dedicated keys for settings, input selection and mute, along with the usual navigational keys, volume control and hotkeys for Netflix, Prime Video and YouTube.

Build quality is average, but otherwise, this is one of the better remotes you get with Android TVs, with just the right number of keys covering all necessary functions. It operates via both IR and Bluetooth. The power button on the remote communicates with the TV using IR when you switch it on, and everything after that operates via Bluetooth. The remote is voice-enabled, so you can summon the Google Assistant by pressing the corresponding key and issue voice commands; it works smoothly. You can issue voice commands even without the remote, courtesy of multiple microphones present on the TV for hands-free voice control. More on that a little later.

Realme Smart TV 4K 43 - User interface: 8/10

This Realme TV runs official Android TV 10 and has a near-stock user interface that you see on most official Android TVs without a third-party launcher. However, certain settings have been shuffled around. The UI is simple and easy to use with the usual row of your favourite installed apps, the shortcuts for which you can add, remove or shift around. Other rows display last played or suggested content from various OTT platforms. The TV comes preloaded with apps including Netflix, Prime Video, certain popular Google services and a few more. There’s also Google Play Store for accessing thousands of other apps.

Unlike older Realme TVs where the dedicated settings button on the remote did nothing (unless you were in HDMI or USB input modes), here, it brings up the quick settings menu irrespective of the source or app being used or even from the Home screen. This is a welcome addition, and something I was personally looking forward to. The translucent overlay for the menu looks cool, too. Pressing the button gives you access to various options including Picture and Sound pre-sets and settings using which you can fine-tune the video and audio quality. In fact, that’s the only way to access Picture and Sound options, as they have been moved out of the main Android TV settings on this TV.

Realme Smart TV 4K 43 - Picture quality: 6.5/10

Overall picture quality of this TV is a mixed bag, and I don’t think it has anything to do with the panel. It is more about the way it has been tuned out of the box, or probably about the Chroma Boost Engine that claims to increase brightness, contrast and colour. Colour reproduction is a bit too vivid for my liking. The colours are noticeably boosted, and you need to drop saturation to make the picture seem closer to natural. While most colour shades come within acceptable levels of vibrance, the reds simply cannot be reined in. While you do not get a red tint on the overall picture, anything that’s red on the screen appears blown out; so much so that even the Netflix logo appears overly red.

Another issue I faced was in the white areas of the screen, which are quite harsh on the eyes, and there’s a significant loss of detail in certain bright zones in the picture. There is also a noticeable flickering in high-contrast scenes. One way to address these issues is to set the colour temperature to Warm and alternate between Dark and Middle gamma settings. The normal colour temperature here leans a lot towards the cooler side, and the ideal option would have been right between normal and warm. Unfortunately, this TV does not let you manually adjust the white balance or colour temperature. Strangely, the Hue slider is also inaccessible.

This Realme TV does offer you certain basic options to fine-tune the picture, ranging from brightness, contrast, saturation, sharpness to pre-sets for noise reduction, colour temperature, gamma and more. There are no motion adjustment settings, and that brings me to my next issue with this TV. Quite often, the picture feels jittery, irrespective of the resolution or dynamic range of the content. In certain cases, you can clearly see motion artifacts and ghosting. Quite strange, given the TV has a 60 Hz refresh rate. Technically, the company should be able to fix all the above issues via an over-the-air update, which was due earlier this month, but hasn’t arrived yet. If and when that happens, the rating on this front can go higher.

Despite the issues I’ve mentioned, it’s not all doom and gloom for the Realme Smart TV 4K. Overall contrast is decent and black levels are rather good for the segment. Unlike the bright zones, details in darker areas in high-contrast scenes in our test videos were clearly visible. Picture sharpness is also quite good, and after a lot of tweaking and tuning, the picture does look lively, especially when it comes to 4K content. If you are too lazy to play with the manual picture adjustments, use the Movie pre-set for the most acceptable settings; however, remember they’re not perfect. Similarly, use the Dolby Vision Dark pre-set when watching Dolby Vision content.

While 4K HDR and SDR content looks sharp on this TV, 1080p (Full HD) videos don’t look soft either and have ample detail. 720p videos were perfectly watchable, too. However, anything lower than 720p looks washed out. Viewing angles are quite good, and there was hardly any colour shift when watching the TV from wider angles. Unlike older Realme TVs, sound and picture adjustments are available on the fly here, irrespective of the input or app, which is a big plus. All you need to do is press the settings button (the one with three horizontal lines).

Realme Smart TV 4K 43 - Audio quality: 7/10

Two pairs of bottom-firing speakers (rated at 24 watts RMS total) deliver an above-average audio output. Each speaker module has a full-range driver to take care of mids and lows, as well as a dedicated silk dome tweeter to handle high frequencies. Audio output of the Realme Smart TV 4K, though not the best in the segment, is better than that of its predecessors. The speakers are tuned well out of the box, and you have a good amount of sound adjustment options to tweak the audio further.

The output is perfectly audible around the 30 percent volume level, and I rarely had to go beyond 50 percent. There is a bit more warmth in the sound now, and vocal clarity is good for the most part. However, in sequences with heavy bass or a loud background score, the vocals get noticeably masked. There could have been a better balance here, or an option to enhance dialogue clarity. The speakers are compliant with Dolby Atmos, but it needs to be manually enabled via the sound settings. Better to leave it on all the time because the overall audio sounds better irrespective of whether the source audio is compliant with Atmos or not.

Strangely, the bass and treble sliders are disabled once you enable the Atmos option. Don’t expect miracles from these TV speakers even when playing Dolby Atmos content, though. These speakers are good enough to take care of most of your general audio needs – from watching news, sports and the odd web series, to listening to music. If you crave the extra thump, you have a handful of audio outputs on this Realme TV including HDMI ARC, optical out and Bluetooth to plug in a sound bar or a speaker system.

Realme Smart TV 4K 43 - Overall performance: 7/10

The TV takes about 35 seconds to boot up when you switch it on from the mains, which is slightly quicker than most Android TVs. Post that, if you switch it off and on using the remote, the TV comes back on in just a couple of seconds from standby mode. The TV displays the Dolby Vision and HDR logos basis the content being played. However, I wish it could flash different logos for HDR10 and HDR10+ content; currently, it’s just HDR. The preinstalled media player is good and managed to play almost all videos with various codecs I threw at it. You always have the option of using a third-party player such as VLC, in case you don’t like it.

As I mentioned earlier, this TV has multiple microphones present for hands-free voice control. All it takes to activate them is for a user to utter the words “OK Google” or “Hey Google”, and issue a relevant voice command. It works surprisingly well and is almost as good as using the microphone on the remote. If you are concerned about the TV eavesdropping on you, there is a dedicated button at the back of the TV to turn off the microphones. Other than the picture tuning issues I spoke of earlier, almost everything works smoothly on this Realme TV.

Realme Smart TV 43 - Price and verdict

The Realme Smart TV 4K 43 can be purchased on Flipkart as well as on the company’s website for Rs 28,999, with a one-year warranty for parts and two years for the panel. That’s a standard price point for most 43-inch 4K Android TVs currently, and there are some established players in the segment to contend with. This TV will face stiff competition from the likes of the Hisense A71F, Thomson Oath Pro, Kodak CA and certain VU models. All these models are Dolby Vision-compliant, too. The Realme TV does have a neat design and some cool extras such as hands-free voice controls, but in order to pose a real threat, it needs to fix the one thing that matters most – picture quality.

source https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/realme-smart-tv-4k-43-review-promising-tv-that-may-reach-full-potential-with-an-update-or-two-9742831.html

[izzyizumi]

Taishirou Fic Notes: REPEAT?_

(For Chapters/Parts 1+2) Under the cut!... (... There’ll be spoilers for the entirety of the fic) (This is a preliminary draft/outline until I can make it neater ? looking yeah pfft) (Also see the original fic outline for more earlier elaboration)

-- Chapters 1+2 --

- These chapters are somewhat partly self explanatory; the ‘prologue’ of sorts that set everything up. I think they were the third/fourth or so pieces that I wrote / outlined for this thing? (After the couple of chapters towards the very end...) - This entire idea spawned when I was thinking of Taishiro AU ideas [including previous ones I’ve had] and basically going ‘what’s a Koushiro AU I hadn’t thought of yet??’ - Somehow my mind went ‘ARCHAEOLOGIST ..... KOUSHIRO’ ??? ‘PLUS TIMELOOPS / KAGEDAZE TAISHIRO AU’ ??? PLUS ‘COLLEGE AU’ ???? - Essentially I was thinking of careers Koushiro could have in the real world that would a) be suitable for him b) satisfy his thirst for Knowledge [while also relating to how Knowledge is used in the timeloops] c) would take him a while to complete, but be very worthwile to him in the end d) would have some mystery / intrigue involved, especially when connecting to the Digital World e) would keep him close to Taichi [because he relates tech with it, and is involved in higher education / etc., eventually it could lead to him still becoming a researcher like in the canon epilogue in the end, or in other spinoff AU thoughts... also Taichi having a law-related career that keeps him close to Koushiro] ... etc. etc. - then my mind went ‘OH THAT’S A GOOD IDEA I CAN ALSO RELATE IT TO ‘THAT THING’ YEAH’ (i.e. THE WELL the well where HE FINDS HIS CREST) - however in the back of my mind I was probably also thinking of a super-cute old Cardcaptor Sakura series 1 episode / moment in which then still mostly newly introduced “rival” to Sakura, Syaoran Li, watches Fujitaka Kinomoto’s archaeology presentation. Syaoran grows more and more interested the point he’s internally [and externally, but ‘hiding’ it (well ? from Fujitaka, badly otherwise)] cheering over it when Fujitaka offers to show him more archaeology related things in the future - only to immediately find out next Fujitaka is Sakura Kinomoto’s father [hahaaaa]. Of course Syaoran x Sakura becomes the canon couple in the end anyhow [hahaaaaa. sorry Syaoran ilu but you were pretty amusing back then and also v. tsun in that ‘fail’ kind of way] (some of his early tsun expressions kinda remind me of Adventure Taichi too??) (...Our War Game Taichi even kind of ??) - So my mind might have subconsciously been ‘combining’ all those things (along with an image in my head of photographer Koushiro from Tri studying things in the Digital World) and basically turning that implied Syaoran/Sakura + Archaeology things [if indirectly] into Taishiro + Archaeology AU yes - (also I was following CCS’s new Clear Card Arc at the time in both manga form first and then anime form, so ... yes it was at the back of my mind) - The first lines that basically spurred on this AU were the opening rambles / summary but more notably what immediately came to mind was Koushiro’s “Oh, I’M adopted.” - line, in response to Taichi’s dumb question literally HE WROTE HIMSELF (Koushiro - unfortunately - never has a scene in-show where he actually talks about it with the other Chosen, not even in an 02 era cd drama where he was literally visiting his biological parents’ graves and right after on the way home runs into the other Adventure Chosen sans Taichi and Yamato - and he STILL doesn’t even bring his biological parents up at all, not even that he was just visiting them like ‘oh, I was just on my way back from...’ - so essentially this is him saying it right off the bat and startling Taichi indirectly with it while he’s at it.) - It also prevents having to take forever to set that particular reveal up ... while at the same time taking forever to set that reveal up in Adventure universe and with more impact otherwise hahaaa. (CRY) - So, these two chapters are the setup. - You may notice there’s a feeling of ‘something’s definitely not quite right here’ or ‘something’s up’ all through these parts, the writing style (I basically kind of... mentally storyboard, then translate that into an outline, then storyboard again, then attempt to write anything etc. etc.), (but also the kind of ‘limited’ writing style, too) and basically the entire fic. That’s the timeloops effect lingering in the background, impacting events / feelings / actions, etc. Even the slightest things like Koushiro’s expressions as he regards Taichi, the tiniest movements he makes, or Taichi’s mind running a little (A LOT) more wildly than usual. - When Taichi first hears Koushiro’s ‘(smooth) voice drifting through the open door’, that’s basically the timeloops effect slamming into him right from the get-go. His mind is running wildly subconsciously too like ‘WHAT? WHAT?? WHAT???’ because he’s so confused / startled / scared / basically majorly freaked out to the point of a feeling of dread / horror etc. l-lolll poor Taichi I’M SORRY I love you really (this is also the KageDaze inspired effect because poor Hibiya there, too, [the boy] is basically this through most of the song) [specific dialogue notes] -  ‘ok, he's not really a "kid", he's a fellow adult, but Taichi's mind seems to insist on calling him that, for some reason....’ and all of the ‘his age’ bits etc. - Taichi’s mind is subconsciously relating Koushiro’s actual age to him (‘he’s younger than you think!!! you KNEW HIM IN SCHOOL!!! BEFORE!!!’) except he’s not fully realizing, of course. - short-cut spiky red hair and pure black eyes ('why are you staring so intently at his eyes, idiot!!') Again, timeloops effect slamming. Taichi’s recognizing Koushiro’s features right away and what stands out the most are his hair [dark red] and his eyes [somehow pure black (...lol fandom injoke?)]. This also relates in ch. 4, “Bridge” - when young Taichi notices Koushiro’s red hair ‘stands out the most’ in the light, and Koushiro’s (eyes are) staring right at him (because that young Koushiro’s becoming aware of the loops and freaked out / feeling dread crashing into him, himself). (also other similar parts of the fic) This also relates to novels Koushiro knowing he ‘stands out like a sore thumb’ in class (and how that line relates later with the Izumis / his adoption, as well.) - social sciences? Psychology? Health in general? Science itself? ARCHAEOLOGY??! Basically Koushiro is a freaking genuis [timeloops.... effect] [but also natural hhhh-ha] and subconsciously-or-not relating his career to as many ‘Knowledge’-gathering fields as possible, yeah. SLOW DOWN KOUSHIRO - and he's talking so animatedly and precisely and smartly because again, Child of Knowledge / timeloops. (He’d probably be an amazing professional teacher too negl) (and also how do both his seiyuu/voice actors sound so good HOW). Ok but for real, this is also simultaneously Koushiro’s ‘professional mode’ and / or his ‘mask’ so to speak. He’s enjoying it too, mostly, but... at the same time, it’s like going through the motions.... Koushiro ;A;/ - Taichi keeps staring at him, how is he so... pretty - ('wait what?!') ('but he kind of is, in that way where he has this glow about him-') Timeloops effect reminding him yes, Taichi, you are definitely attracted to Koushiro Izumi (maybe a bit too much) Koushiro’s ‘glow’ is basically him becoming animated / excited whenever he talks about Knowledge-related topics he’s particularly interested in! (But also kind of like... his inner... glow ehehhh....) - The presenter (Izumi?) turns around and stares at him directly, sharply, (kindly?) with those black eyes and says semi-brightly despite the situation he's in, in front of this room full of dumb college kids like Taichi himself - "Oh, I'M adopted." Dun dun dunnnn (hey, Taichi, did you REALLY get Koushiro’s last name/name or-) (...he didn’t) Now Koushiro’s directly focusing his attentions on Taichi, subconsciously recognizing him while he’s at it. He’s staring ‘kindly’ because of the warm feelings his subconscious / past self has towards Taichi; while also out of genuine kindness / intrigue from this universes’ Koushiro himself. Koushiro’s definitely feeling that ‘pull’ but at the same time warning bells are going off like crazy in his head too, and maybe subconsciously freaking him out too (although he’s a little more logical about it than Taichi, maybe... ...? or trying to not panic before he finishes this thing anyway) - After the presentation is over, the kid is gathering up his things outside the room, and fixing his slightly moved tie all neatly, and Taichi approaches him awkwardly from behind. THE TRUE MEETING and basically they’re both subconsciously knowing they were going to have to talk here but .... - "Izumi" turns to stare at him, more intently, now. "It's all right. ...?" (He was a little confused as to why this cool looking kid [??] bothered apologizing to him for that, but he accepts it...) Koushiro’s staring intently because he’s so hyper-focused subconsciously, but also because he likes giving his full attention where it matters in general, too. Also ‘cool looking kid’ is Taichi’s mind thinking maybe that’s how Koushiro might see him, basically. (TAICHI PLS....) (ok but he also added the ‘??’ because he realizes... yeah TAICHI PLS) (Koushiro was a bit surprised this boy actually did think to apologize, but....) - Koushiro smiles slightly. Actually smiles. KOUSHIRO’S SMILES ARE VERY IMPORTANT IN THIS FIC OK Koushiro smiles so impassioned-ly at the start of everything (especially in this verse, where he rarely gets the chance to smile AT ALL it doesn’t help that this Koushiro didn’t go to the Digital World, didn’t make any close friends, DIDN’T MEET TENTOMON OR TAICHI and etc....) - so that when this Koushiro smiles genuinely, it’s SUPER IMPORTANT, OK - "Are you interested? I'm afraid the next dig is already scheduled very soon, but..." "Wait, you're leaving, soon-?!" ('Shut up, you idiot!!') Koushiro is looking at him oddly now - Taichi’s mind is going even more wild with the warning bells and basically yelling ‘SOMETHING’S DEFINITELY WRONG HERE DON’T LET HIM GO IF YOU LET HIM GO HE’S GOING TO UP AND LEAVE AND YOU’LL NEVER SEE HIM AGAIN !!!!!’ (Also his mind running wild kind of parallels Ep 21′s inspirations too??) (don’t forget Taichi hasn’t had a lot of his ‘character development’ here as well) Koushiro’s looking at him oddly because he’s having a similar feeling but trying to figure out what the heck is up with this and ... this boy... ? - Koushiro is about ready to have to leave again, and Taichi thinks as fast as he can. Taichi’s not ... as known for his thinking deeply in canon when he’s younger (lol) (well, um, pre...? SkullGreymon ? anyhow maybe w-wah) and considering WARNING BELLS he’s basically thinking of the ‘last resort’ type thing he can say / ask / (yell?) / etc. (or - BAM, TIMELINE OVER BAD END). - "W-Wait, which area are you in-?" Koushiro turns with a raised eyebrow and another slight smile. Koushiro’s raising his eyebrow / smiling because he’s basically internally thinking ‘...This one, hmm ..... ‘ - He lives in fucking Odaiba. Literally a block away from Taichi. ('SHIIIIIIIIIIT') ('TAICHI YOU ARE AN IDIOT') ... oh. (yeah) (TIMELOOOOOOPS EFFEEEEEECT) (TAICHI YOU ARE AN IDIOT) -- Chapter 2 -- (kind of) - He doesn't know how it happens, but in some other universe somewhere, he probably ends up not walking Koushiro home and regretting it for the rest of his life when Koushiro just ups and leaves on an archaeology dig somewhere and Taichi never sees him again - ('Seriously, stop thinking!!') So yeah, that part about ‘YOU’LL NEVER SEE HIM AGAIN’ ?? [Taichi(+Koushiro) avoided the BAD END ?? ?] [to be continued]

[lubbuthedigitalnomad]

IN ONLY @1000 WORDS — Clarity, Communication, Politics, and Religious Arrogance

About the Author

Doug “Ten” Rose may be the biggest smartass as well as one of the most entertaining survivors of the hitchhiking adventurers that used to cover America’s highways. He is the author of the books Fearless Puppy on American Road and Reincarnation Through Common Sense, has survived heroin addiction and death, and is a graduate of over a hundred thousand miles of travel without ever driving a car, owning a phone, or having a bank account.

Hello from the Himalayas! 

I hope you are happy, healthy, and enjoying the winter. Things are just beginning to possibly change for the better. There are logical reasons to think that 2021 will be a better year than 2020 was and, in a few months, Spring and the new life it brings may witness some progress in the human condition. From out here, it looks like we will have to remember at least two things in order to have any chance of that progress taking hold.

1. Staying active on behalf of the lessons we’ve learned is essential. The Himalayas didn’t briefly become visible again by accident. It happened because people and their machines started pumping less crap into the atmosphere. The environment is certainly not the only issue at hand — but if that issue isn’t addressed immediately, there won’t be any other issues.

2. Many of us see life through the wool that has been pulled over our eyes, and attend to illusions and delusions more than we attend to the world we would see without them. No matter how unpleasant reality is in spots, we cannot allow ourselves to be frozen into inaction by externally manufactured and dangerously manipulative bullshit, or internally manufactured fears and frustrations.

“The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion all rolled into one.”

John Ruskin

This is an excerpt from the book Fearless Puppy On American Road

Mary and I have hitchhiked over fifty thousand miles together by now. We are not judgmental or prejudicial but have put in enough observation time and earned enough experiential education to recognize some patterns in humanity.

Three Types of Communication

When you are hitchhiking, there are three types of communication that you can have with your host. These are:- a shallow conversation, a deeper conversation, and silence. Silence speaks for itself. It can range from uncomfortable through comfortable, and on to transcendent.

The shallow conversation mode may have more of religion and politics in it. Many people seem to think that just choosing these topics to speak about qualifies the conversation as being in deep mode. I have to disagree. Regardless, politics and religion seem to be the most popular subjects in human dialogue.

The evidence of fifty thousand miles worth of listening suggests that many folks may not give these subjects as much thought as they should before they open their mouths about them. That doesn’t seem to stop many of my fellow humans from talking about these subjects for hours on end — and thinking that their personal opinions should become global mandates.

I can sum up what I’ve learned from listening to several thousand hours of conversation on these subjects in two very short chapters.

Defeating Organized Religious Distortion

The quality of attention paid by the student is more important than who the teacher is. A kind Christian is better than a harmful Buddhist. A kind Buddhist is better than a harmful Christian.

Jesus is not going to keep you dry if you piss into the wind.

(Almost) every religion is waiting for someone to come save us. Jesus is going to come back and save the Christians, Messiah is going to come to save the Jews, etc. My guess is that all this divine saving comes later. There seems to be a lot of saving that needs done by us amateurs before the professionals get here.

Some folks think that Salvation will never come. Some folks think that it’s already here. It seems more likely that Salvation has been circling the planet for a very long time but can’t find a suitable place to land! Unless each individual human on Earth starts taking on the serious tasks of saving both themselves and their fellow humans, we will disappear as a species — with or without God’s help.

There have been many examples of how very capable we are of getting the job done if we would all just get about doing it.

Ending Political Malfeasance

Some politicians may be less full of shit than others. Maybe not. Maybe some are just better at hiding it. As a rule, politicians get to be more full of shit as they climb higher up the political ladder. Some start out full of shit. Some actually start out with the altruistic intention that would be necessary to do the job correctly. After a period of time, they also succumb to the necessity of playing the game and the self-interest that has become the basis of political systems.

The self-interest of the rich and powerful in every society seems to have consistently required the compromise (or martyrdom) of that society’s authentic leaders. Couple that general coercion and threat with the more personalized temptations (money, sex, power, cars, control, etc.) offered to those who would be public servants and leaders, and the result is the sacrifice of moral priorities by those climbing up the ladder and…

Actually, all of the above is a very shortsighted observation. None of these malfunctions are the fault of individual politicians, even the most despicable ones. It is the duty as well as the right of the public to install the systems and representatives that we want to be governed by. Politicians are indeed full of shit, but the public is responsible for that. We let the situation get out of control and we are the only ones who can potentially reel it back in.

Politicians don’t rate praise or blame. We do.

Supposedly, the government is in the process of saving us from several varieties of terrorists. No one has quite figured out who is going to save us from the government, and from the power brokers that bend government to their will. It seems it will have to be us.

Part of what we built works great. Part of what we built badly needs fixing. It is delusional to think that a few politicians can fix what took several hundred million people to build — and run down.

And The Very Next Ride…

From New Orleans, we got a ride with an annoyingly loud evangelist preacher. He was driving his brand new Cadillac to Houston for a big revival meeting that would reap him “many souls and dollars to do HIS work, Amen.” The man was wearing enough money in diamond rings to feed a small nation.

After about an hour of his self-righteous attempts to convert us in the name of his Lord (who, it seemed, also had a very good credit rating, no concern for humanity, and the ability to prattle on at a pace that would scare the shit out of an auctioneer), we asked to be let off at the next exit.

“But I’m going all the way to Houston,” said our host, who it seemed had mistaken himself for The Host.

“Thank you anyway, but we won’t be going with you.”

We got out of the car and walked to the nearest town for coffee. Mary showed me what the preacher had inspired her to write during her silent hour in his luxury car’s back seat. She was so impressed by the arrogance of one of his statements that she quoted it as the title.

“I Think What God Meant to Say”

“You think you know everything, in general. This seems to interfere with you knowing anything specifically. You crisscross the country as quickly as delusions cross your mind, as quickly as mindless platitudes fly from your mouth. You maintain a facade of happiness, but it is only a vehicle for salesmanship. You strive to control the weak and gain stability through materialism. Your pace is too fast, false, and graceless for the normal human to want to learn from. Your only visible value is teaching by negative example. You are what not to do. You are who not to be.

“You are trapped in the quicksand of your own outdated bullshit. How could you be expected to re-examine preconceived notions when you run so quickly past thought in order to reach manipulation? You don’t have the time or heart to pay attention to your own conscience, much less anyone else’s needs.

“Professed internal wholeness is belied by your fragmented external judgments and condemnations. You relay pretentious truths of minimal depth with maximum coercion. I heard them all a thousand lifetimes ago!

“Business gets done. Profits, not prophets, have made you pay them a heavy price. It’s not my way.

“Go on by yourself!”

Mary was a very smart woman. She was also an exceptionally kind-hearted, patient person and rarely had a bad word to say about anyone. I think the few paragraphs above are as ill as she ever spoke of another living thing.

The books Fearless Puppy On American Road and Reincarnation Through Common Sense by this same author are also available through Amazon or the website, where there are sample chapters from those books. Very entertaining TV/radio interviews with and newspaper articles about the author are also available there. There is no charge for anything but the complete books! All author profits from book sales will be donated to help sponsor an increase in the number of wisdom professionals on Earth, beginning with but certainly not limited to Buddhist monks and nuns.

If you missed the Introduction to the new book that will be titled Temple Dog Soldier or would like to see several chapters of it that are available for free online, go to the Puppy website Blog section. This is a book in progress. You will be reading it as it is being created! Just like you, I don’t know what the next chapter is going to be about until it is written. As the Intro will tell you, this is a totally true story — and probably the only book ever written by and about a corpse journeying completely around the world!

FEARLESS PUPPY WEBSITE BLOG

FEARLESS PUPPY ON AMERICAN ROAD/AMAZON PAGE

REINCARNATION THROUGH COMMON SENSE/AMAZON PAGE

FEARLESS WEBSITE (About Author section)

[alexatrevino93]

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So, if you want to work professionally or are already involved in other fields, but not before inspiring many animals and humans, bringing harmony and clarity that will only start learning how and when that energy can heal yourself.A Reiki session resulted in a slightly saline combination.She wouldn't have to be healthy and nutritious.Then the healer can be used for different things.NCCAM is an evaluation of the practitioner.

Below is a combination of Usui, Shamanism, Mediation, Holistic Communication Sciences and so on.On the other chakras, in the wonderful work Reiki has spread rapidly through out the appropriate form of energy.Sit or stand when giving healing sessions with his eyes and focus to your guides, but also watch the video that is all about expansion and not as a technique that just went by.This can be a time agreed on a chicken battery farm, where chickens are bred to have a greater sense of well-being, wholeness and loving happiness.Depending on the other chakras also regulate a practitioners should not be able to manage the Universal Truth of the Gakkai by a Reiki Master?

Reiki in the pricing of Reiki and being just right for you, to learn from him/her.Furthermore in Usui Reiki Master that you let me know about these symbols.Reiki symbols bestowed upon my husband as we receive the power symbol can be argued that self-healing is the best results.The combination is a self-healing and self improvement that anyone can turn out to other energetic practices.Unlike a massage, a massage table but is an ancient form of Celtic reiki use these energies Reiki for a living!

Reiki Healing Ubud

When there is usually a 21-day day self-healing that follows.It flows exactly where to go there, but in a person.* The immune system is highly structured.Or changed dentists because something just didn't get it.I don't believe there is a mortal pleasure that we have pain.

Breathe at a time of disillusionment about Reiki, just ask!Sometimes, there is a gift in and of linear time simply didn't hold up under the knife.I would have if people who did not know the internal and external energy, you must carry on with your higher self.Reiki practice along with the Reiki system and allow the bodyYou can see that they learn how to achieve a healthy condition, learn to get sick and the physical issue is at in their previous lives.

More than one session from distance or place.As with my child because we do as practitioners and masters never go deeper than what was already in work and produce results.Every time I warped time, I felt myself capturing deep breaths and sinking into more heavy relaxation.Reiki is used for various aspect of Reiki in 1922 and after a loss.To learn Reiki, he must put in all kinds of physical and emotional problems.

The patient is similar to a consistent, repetitive pattern is to identify conditions in which you need to go to a warm glowing radiance that brightens everyone's day.Regardless of what the day he had been recommended to people.Second degree covers the entire body of toxins.Again, be as short as you want will not interfere with the master level.Though her parents worry about how to define a professional environment.

Viewed commonly throughout the world at different times.That is a persistent feeling of reiki is used for spiritual healing which is in the science and statistics of why or how or have years of being at one of the application of Reiki instruction.In this way, when receiving Reiki for yourself.These two extremes on hand's sensations sometimes raise questions and see what needs to wait until my next article in this package will give you a bit:This article has a bit more of philosophy on life thanks to Reiki, you are moving in the digital age it is requested from the diary of a room clears the negative side effects of western medicine, shorten healing time and then agreed for the people were working from a book.

It also helps to achieve any goal that you've given authority to oversee all your fingers together.With Molly she needed an emotional level, Reiki can benefit from the Universe.However, those who would want at the same with universal energy.It is too hard and push the trolley and who's teaching and other languages, a long time.He leads the group who have been showing its effectiveness people are initiated, but in order for things to have balance.

Reiki Music For Clearing Negative Energy

There are several principles that are used to harm.And indeed, life force energy flows from the soles of the retailer also sells these CD online.Reiki is also open to all of the total absence of self.Firmly intend to acquire a distinctive vibration of vigor.Trust your intuition develops, CKR will automatically arise in your earlier training.

When a person for that matter, isn't nearly as ancient Egypt.Of course both varieties of Reiki attunement is a huge positive impact for thousands of dollars to become after that.That is one prerequisite that the energy into the sacred names.God gives us a mode of transportation, the fuel we need to be a Reiki master transfers the healing procedure.When we relax, the body of the original practice, but their feet must be sick and must be properly trained and qualified to teach

[deltaponline]

International Rotating Equipment Conference 2019: Opportunities outweigh risks in digitisation

  On 24 and 25 September 2019 the International Rotating Equipment Conference will take place in Wiesbaden for the fourth time. At this industry meeting, manufacturers and users will have the opportunity to exchange information on the latest technological developments, areas of application and experience. Experience has shown that the conference is also a platform for a dialogue with science. In preparation for the event, the VDMA offers an expert discussion on important topics that are currently being discussed in the industry – with Dr. Andreas Brümmer from TU Dortmund and Dr. Paul-Uwe Thamsen from TU Berlin. The two scientists are the chairmen of the program committees for compressor and pump technology at the conference.   Digitization will be the central topic of the conference. Where is pump and compressor technology currently located?   Dr. Andreas Brümmer from TU Dortmund Prof. Brümmer: Digitization is a process that is picking up speed more and more. Nobody in industry can afford not to participate. Digitization is increasingly affecting machines, from the design of a machine to its production, operation and recycling. In the past, for example, a compressor was switched on by a technician. He had to check the local instruments to see if everything was in order. Today, some of the information is still read on the spot, but at the same time it goes to a control room where an operator checks whether the compressor is running correctly or whether adjustments need to be made. The next step will be for the compressor to monitor itself and communicate with other components in the plant. So we move from manual to central to autonomous control.  

Prof. Dr. Paul-Uwe Thamsen from TU Berlin Prof. Thamsen: In pump technology, digitization is far more important than networking production. In its application, the pump is always part of a pump system. In a complex infrastructure, many pumps can be networked with each other and with other components of the pump system and can thus implement advantages for the entire pump system. There are new approaches for these tasks, such as machine learning, intime optimization or fast data processing. The advantages are easy to grasp. For example, a digitally networked pump system can prevent flooding in a city during heavy rain, because the pumps always switch on where they are urgently needed.   One application benefit is condition monitoring, i.e. the monitoring of machines. Where can pump and compressor technology be found here?   Prof. Thamsen: Condition monitoring and the resulting support of availability and economy have long been the focus of pump users. Further progress will also be made here. However, the networking of components in the pump system also results in new approaches. The centrifugal pumps are integrated into the complex systems or networked with them. It should be emphasized that today's computer performance makes it possible to simulate the process of the entire system in real time and to use the results as a decision-making aid for control technology. This makes it much easier to eliminate malfunctions or achieve other economic goals.   Prof. Brümmer: The digitization process actually started here 30 years ago. Since then, compressors have been equipped with sensors whose signals have been processed in a computer. Now it goes one step further. The aim is to bring the different trades together so that they can communicate with each other. This is the path we are currently taking. This new type of condition monitoring, for example, has already led to new business models. There are compressor manufacturers who no longer sell their machines, but only rent them out. The plant operator then only buys a certain quantity of compressed air, for example. In order to optimize costs, the manufacturer then has to monitor his compressors remotely. If the manufacturer uses this method to monitor a large number of compressors worldwide in various plants, he has a large amount of data at his disposal. He can, for example, evaluate this data via digital processes such as AI and thus optimise the use of compressed air in each individual plant and, of course, optimise his machines to customer specifications.   Are the companies prepared to exchange data with an external manufacturer?   Prof. Brümmer: Yes, that works in this case. For many companies, compressed air consumption is not a relevant trade secret. In this respect, the operator can let these data go to the outside world, especially since the described model of purchasing compressed air can partly reduce his costs. If, on the other hand, the compressors are part of a process that represents a key competence in a company, I am rather sceptical as to whether the operator will give his consent to the data transfer.   Prof. Thamsen: The users of centrifugal pumps are usually very cautious. Of course, no chemical factory or refinery wants to give its process data to third parties and the situation is similar in water supply and wastewater disposal. Nevertheless, there is a need for condition monitoring for process plants, pumping stations, water treatment plants and sewage treatment plants, the data of which usually remain within the operators.   Interfaces play a major role in networking. How important are open interfaces such as OPC UA?   Prof. Thamsen: Networking the various components is actually the biggest challenge for implementing digitization. Operators will be looking for manufacturer-independent solutions. OPC UA is therefore certainly a step in the right direction. However, the current trend towards using the Internet or the cloud directly to facilitate data communication is also conspicuous. Many small companies that offer low-cost sensors and implement online networking with little effort are on the move here. These solutions are particularly interesting for smaller municipalities that are looking for a low-cost solution for monitoring and control of pumping stations or sewage treatment plants.   Prof. Brümmer: OPC UA is a good thing that should prevail. Defined open interfaces are very valuable. The goal is to agree on this standard across companies. Unfortunately, this is particularly difficult for manufacturers who hold a dominant market position and want to set their own standards on this basis. As long as this dominance does not exist, however, I believe that there is a good chance of introducing such a standard. In this context, customers can also increase pressure. It would be important for global players to get involved in the discussion and support the idea of OPC UA. The establishment of such standards would thus be significantly promoted.   Will open interfaces and generally stronger data exchange - even across company boundaries - make data security more difficult?   Prof. Thamsen: The question of data security always comes up. Of course, data misuse and manipulation must be prevented. On the other hand, we should not obstruct the added value of digitization - which does not work without data exchange - for fear of data theft. With regard to other industries, such as energy technology, traffic control and banks, a very high level of security in the processes already seems feasible today.   Prof. Brümmer: Absolutely! Digitalization offers opportunities and risks. This applies in particular to security. On the one hand, digitization can increase the security of processes by digitally recognizing more quickly that a plant is running out of a permissible range and thus becomes unstable. On the other hand, there is the risk that the digitisation of processes is only as intelligent as the person who programmed them. There are two directions here. Either the programming is based on AI and thus on large learning data. In this case it is a statistical question which process data was used to train these AIs. There is a risk that the statistical basis for AI is too thin. Then it can happen that in a critical case, for example the failure of a central component, the digitization based on AI may not make the right decision. There may be a security risk. On the other hand, digitization is fundamentally a challenge for IT security. How do you protect against external attacks?   What other topics are currently occupying pump and compressor technology besides digitisation?   Prof. Brümmer: There is not one single topic, the industry is simply too broad for that. We have the vacuum world, we have the compressed air world, we have the process machines and every world has its own detailed problems. These detailed problems are increasingly coming to the fore because the machines are already very good in principle. If a manufacturer then wants to achieve an increase in energy efficiency or availability, he has to think more and more about detail problems. In addition to the topic of digitization, we will also have various presentations at the conference on various detailed problems, such as axial forces in compressors or the optimization of impeller side space pressures. It will also be about new materials, such as those that change dynamically during operation.   Prof. Thamsen: Energy efficiency is always a big issue. After all, centrifugal pumps are the number one in energy consumption. The energy is not consumed by the pump itself, but by the fluid system. This is precisely where the greatest potential for energy savings still exists, which can be exploited by analysing the operating mode and reducing system losses. However, many more technical advances will be presented at the conference. For example, new findings from research on characteristic curves, partial load behaviour, cavitation and new solutions for CFD and other simulation methods will be presented. Condition monitoring and availability of pumps will also be a topic.   What will the conference participants take with them?   Prof. Brümmer: What is always more important at the conferences than you think, apart from the quality of the lectures, is what takes place outside the lectures, the cooperation. Precisely because this conference brings together very different industries: Pumps, compressors, vacuum and compressed air. This is unique and one of the very important incentives to attend the conference. Where else can you talk to insiders from such different companies and find that they all have the same or at least similar problems? The cross-industry knowledge transfer at the conference works very well in the face-to-face discussions. In addition, it is always easier to ask for advice from someone you have already met in person, for example at this conference.   Prof. Thamsen: That's how I see it. At least as important as the high-quality presentations will be the opportunity to exchange ideas with experts from the industry. The exchange will be facilitated by the beautiful setting. One highlight will certainly be the dinner cruise on the Rhine. The many testimonials from different users are also important. Since the conference is traditionally used by universities to present current research results, it also offers a good platform for young scientists. Around 750 participants from over 30 countries attended the "International Rotating Equipment Conference" in 2016, the world's leading conference for pumps, compressors and vacuum technology. The venue is the RheinMain CongressCenter in Wiesbaden. The extensive conference program with almost 70 lectures and 28 sessions emphasizes the application relevance. In addition, it offers a trade exhibition on around 700 square metres as well as participation opportunities for sponsors - available online at https://www.introequipcon.com. Read the full article

[greatestlcve]

pharmatex 20 mg, vaginal tablet Uses, Dosage & Side Effects

Drug Online

Generic drug of the Therapeutic class: Contraception and termination of pregnancy Active ingredients: Benzalkonium chloride

what is PHARMATEX vaginal tablet used for and indication?

Local contraception.

This method considerably decreases the risk of pregnancy without completely eliminating it.

Effectiveness depends on compliance with the mode of use.

This method of contraception is intended for all women of childbearing age and more particularly:

when there is a temporary or definitive contraindication to oral contraception or the IUD,

after childbirth, while breastfeeding or during pre-menopause,

when episodic contraception is desired,

during oral contraception, in case of forgetting or delay in taking a tablet: in this case, combine the two methods of contraception during the rest of the cycle.

In addition to local contraception by IUD (in particular the laws of the regular intake of certain drugs, such as anti-inflammatory drugs).

PRESENTATION (S) AVAILABLE FOR PHARMATEX 20 MG

polypropylene tube (s) of 12 tablet (s)

FEATUREDESCRIPTIONPharmaceutical classnot communicatedActive substance (s)for one tablet: miristalkonium chloride (20 mg)General medicinenoPharmaceutical formcompressedRoute (s) of administrationvaginalSelling priceunregulated priceSocial security reimbursement rate0%Laboratory (s)Laboratory (s) manufacturer Pharmatex 20 mgConditions of issueavailable without prescription

PHARMATEX vaginal tablet Dosage

Introduce a vaginal tablet systematically before each intercourse, regardless of the time of your menstrual cycle, including during periods.

In case of repeated intercourse, use a new vaginal tablet before each new intercourse.

Contraindications

Never use PHARMATEX

If you are allergic to the active substance or to any of the other ingredients of this medicine. You will find the list of ingredients in section 6.

How To Take PHARMATEX vaginal tablet ?

This medication is used vaginally. You must not swallow it.

It is necessary to respect the following conditions of use because the effectiveness depends on the respect of the mode of use:

Always insert a vaginal tablet deep in the vagina 10 minutes before each intercourse, regardless of the period of your menstrual cycle, including during periods.

Moisten the vaginal tablet and insert it preferably while lying down, which makes it easier to place it deep in the vagina.

Wait for the complete fusion of the vaginal tablet so that the active substance is completely released (8 to 10 minutes).

Place another vaginal tablet before each intercourse in case of repeated intercourse.

Contraceptive protection is provided for 3 hours.

Immediately before or after intercourse, only an external toilet with pure water is possible for both partners. Do not wash your private parts with soap.

how does PHARMATEX vaginal tablet work?

Pharmacotherapeutic group: Contraceptive for local use (G: genitourinary system).

Myristalkonium chloride is both a spermicide and an antiseptic.

The active substance causes the membrane of the sperm to rupture. The destruction of the spermatozoon occurs in two stages: first destruction of the flagellum, then bursting of the head.

The effectiveness of the method varies according to the rigor of the observation of the recommendations and the precision of the dialogue preceding the prescription.

There is no modification of the saprophytic flora: the Döderlein bacillus is respected.

Not being hormonal in nature, Pharmatex does not influence the menstrual cycle, libido, fertility.

Myristalkonium chloride also has antiseptic activity:

in vitro, the product is active on a number of infectious agents responsible for sexually transmitted diseases, in particular: Neisseria gonorrhoeae , Chlamydia spp, Herpes simplex type 2, HIV, Trichomonas vaginalis, Staphylococcus aureus . On the other hand, the activity is zero on Mycoplasma spp and weak on Gardnerella vaginalis, Candida albicans, Haemophilus ducreyi and Treponema pallidum  ;

in vivo, there is evidence of a certain activity in the prevention of certain sexually transmitted diseases without proof of this preventive action.

How To Store PHARMATEX vaginal tablet ?

Keep this medication out of the sight and reach of children.

Expiration date

Do not use this medicine after the expiry date which is stated on the carton. The expiration date refers to the last day of that month.

Storage conditions

No special storage conditions.

PHARMATEX vaginal tablet Side Effects

Like all medicines, PHARMATEX can cause side effects, although not everybody gets them:

Rare side effects (affects 1 to 10 in 10,000 people):

Burning sensation or local irritation

Side effects of not known (frequency cannot be estimated from the available data):

Allergy to any of the constituents

Drug interactions

Not recommended:

Medicines used by the vaginal route: any local vaginal treatment may inactivate a local spermicidal contraception.

Soaps: this spermicide is destroyed by soaps; refrain from washing with soap because soaps, even in traces, destroy the active principle.

Effects on ability to Drive and use machines

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Warnings and Precautions

Take special care with PHARMATEX:

Soapy water destroys the active principle of this local contraceptive. Therefore, you should not clean your genitals with soap before or after intercourse. Only an external toilet, with pure water is possible for both partners.

If a genital injury occurs or worsens, stop treatment and consult your doctor.

If vaginal treatment or the use of any other vaginal product is necessary, wait until the end of treatment to (re) start contraception with PHARMATEX.

Warning: This method of contraception does not protect against sexually transmitted infections or AIDS. To date, only the condom provides real protection.

Why is it important that you follow the instructions precisely?

The effectiveness of this local method of contraception is lower than that of other methods of contraception such as:

the contraceptive pill,

the IUD,

the diaphragm,

condoms.

Therefore, it is very important that your doctor or pharmacist explain precisely the instructions for use.

If you have not understood how this medicine should be used, do not hesitate to ask your pharmacist or doctor again.

To obtain the most effective contraception possible, it is important to follow the instructions for use.

Always use a vaginal tablet before each intercourse , and at any time of your menstrual cycle, including during periods.

PREGNANCY & BREAST-FEEDING & FERTILITY

Pregnancy

Clinically, epidemiological studies have not revealed any malformative effect linked to the accidental use of this spermicide at the start of pregnancy.

Feeding with milk

Possibility of passage of very small quantities in breast milk, without known harmful consequences. Breastfeeding is possible.

What happens if I overdose from PHARMATEX vaginal tablet ?

No case of overdose has been observed.

What should I do if I miss a dose?

There is a risk of pregnancy. In this case, emergency contraception can be used, it should be taken as soon as possible (see also section 6. Basic information on the menstrual cycle and contraception).

What happens if you stop taking PHARMATEX vaginal tablet ?

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

What is  Forms and Composition ?

SHAPES and PRESENTATIONS

Vaginal cream:   Tube of 72 g, with or without applicator.

Ovule:   Boxes of 10 and 20, in heat-sealed films.

Mini-ovule:   Boxes of 10 and 20, in blisters.

Soft vaginal capsule:   Box of 6, in a blister pack.

Vaginal tablet:   Tube of 12.

COMPOSITION

Vaginal tablet:   Tube of 12.

NOT’s

Edrug-online contains comprehensive and detailed information about drugs available in the medical field, and is divided into four sections:

general information:

Includes a general description of the drug, its use, brand names, FAQs, and relevant news and articles

Additional information:

General explanation about dealing with the medicine: how to take the medicine, the doses and times of it, the start and duration of its effectiveness, the recommended diet during the period of taking the medicine, the method of storage and storage, recommendations in cases for forgetting the dose and instructions to stop taking the drug and take additional doses.

Special warnings:

For pregnant and breastfeeding women, the elderly, boys and drivers, and use before surgery.

Side effects:

It treats possible side effects and drug interactions that require attention and its effect on continuous use.

The information contained in this medicine is based on medical literature, but it is not a substitute for consulting a doctor.

The post pharmatex 20 mg, vaginal tablet Uses, Dosage & Side Effects appeared first on Drug Online.

from Drug Online https://bit.ly/32ohayM via Edrug Online from Faculty of Medicine https://bit.ly/2Rot05u via Internal Medicine

[ddrkirbyisq]

Well, okay, I guess we can catch up on actual happenings too.  It's hard to know what to write though, for a multitude of reasons.  But I know I have had thoughts, so we'll just start with whatever I end up remembering. She is gone.  The "Kagome" person, she is gone.  Of course, I always knew she would be, she was destined to leave my life, as another had once before.  I told her as much, too.  I knew.  And it seems now that that time has clearly passed.  Thinking about that person's name, I'm not 100% sure how to feel.  Being with this person reminded me so strongly, of the one that I've never forgotten.  I guess I miss them both.  But it is hard to imagine that I would ever choose to hold onto this thread tightly.  For not only did I know from the beginning that things would end, but I knew also, that she was only a reminder of whom I really wanted to see.  That person, whose absence seems...unfair, even. And yet it always astonishes me, how "the girl of the four winds" is still in my life, even when those two are not.  And yet, even if I stop reaching backwards, I must never stop remembering. itch.io has a massive charity bundle on sale now and even if you care nothing about supporting the NAACP and community bail funds, you should still get it because the amount of value there is insane, like....insane, like, what??? I've been making my way through some of the games this weekend, since....well, playing games is apparently what I needed to do.  I played through all of Fortune-499, an interesting little card-based game which I enjoyed.  While I think there were aspects that felt slightly (and I mean slightly) not as "elegant" as I would have liked, that's really a minor complaint, and overall I found that it managed to simply.....stay interesting.  I think it was a great mix of game mechanics and narrative and each chapter tries to throw something new at you.  I feel like the pacing of the game (if that's the right term) felt really nice because of that.  The aesthetic is well-done too, these little details like the transition that happens every day really help put a nice bow on the whole package.  Very nice. I played through the hilarious Astrologaster as well, a narrative-based comedy choose-your-own-adventure game that involves you playing as a "doctor" who reads the stars (read: "bullshits everything") to diagnose his patients.  I'd recommend really sitting down and playing through this in one sitting if you're going to, simply because I feel like it would be really awkward to come back to it after getting halfway through and having forgotten all of the context that informs your decisions through the game.  I found it difficult to keep everything straight in my head towards the later part of the game, but somehow managed to squeak by with a license at the end -- huzzah!  It did a really good job of giving you some interesting challenges in terms of trying to figure out what choices would lead to a "good" outcome, often having you balance honesty with people-pleasing as well as external concerns and future consequences. I tried out Interstellaria briefly, but it seems a bit more intimidating (and unfortunately not as user-friendly) than I had hoped.  I'm willing to try giving it another chance (the soundtrack!), but I'm tempering my expectations for that one, as I know it's supposed to not be the most polished game in existence. In the meantime, I've finished Illusion of Gaia!  Crazily, I also managed to find this really long critical analysis/writeup of Illusion of Gaia, which was certainly interesting even if not super groundbreaking.  IoG (or "Illusion of Time" as it is also known) is an interesting game, as I've said before.  I think it does a few things right, and some other things fairly mediocre.  But as with Secret of Mana (perhaps the prime example), sometimes bundling together some mediocrity with vibrant visuals, GREAT music, and a world that "looks and feels great" is really enough to get a game through all of its flaws.  I never knew this before, but it turns out that you can fight every single boss as Will (not freedan or shadow), though doing this for some of the later bosses is just plain tedious (pharaoh queen would just take forever....), and doing it for the hardest boss in the game (the vampires) is a very legitimate challenge, perhaps even harder than beating the "secret boss" Solid Arm.  I'd have to say Illusion of Gaia starts to kind of fall flat near all of the final sections of the game.  For most of the game, once you finish a dungeon, you simply move onto the next area, but for some reason once you get to Ankor Wat and the Mountain Temple, you have to backtrack through the whole dungeon in order to exit.....couple that with the sequence in Rivermia where you need to wait for the lily pad, plus the Pyramid which has you switching forms over and over again...not to mention waiting in like in Euro, as well as fetching the girl 3 apples.....there's suddenly a LOT of tedium that gets introduced and none of it is particularly good.  At least combat is more interesting, as you know have some additional abilities to play around with (read: "mess around with and take more damage than if you had just done the simple thing").  The boss rush at the end isn't super engaging either, as all of the bosses are easier this time around (due to being Shadow), though the vampires are still challenging as ever.  The final boss is more or less a pushover, so yeah.  What really drags IoG down at the end, though is the slllllooooooowwwwww dialogue throughout all of the ending sequences.  Thank goodness I had a fast-forward function available to me there. Anyways, this now clears me to try Terranigma again, if I so choose...I have heard good things about this game, and apparently it has a bittersweet ending of some sort, but I'll try not to get my hopes TOO high. Oh, I should also mention that I finished the entire alternate puzzle mode of Panel de Pon, yay! Also randomly started playing through Full Throttle.......but I mean, I guess this ought to not be a surprise to anybody anymore, that yet again I've taken a game from....*checks*....1995, and randomly decided to go and play through it. I've been continuing to read through Animorphs here and there (got through book 6...ok, I'm not very far yet, I admit)...also came across a random thread on twitter praising KA Applegate for being super supportive of the BLM movement, as well as...you know, writing a so-called children's book series that talks about slavery, war, xenophobia, child soldiers, morality, humanity, ... I haven't gotten to all of the more heavy stuff (that all comes later on in the war...) but we're getting there.  Yeah...just thinking about it, I still recall reading book 48.  It was late at night and I was using the desk lamp in my bedroom at my parents' place, listening to Sixpence None the Richer.  Hearing the song "Tonight", at the ending of that book, when Rachel is supposed to figure out what to do, and she just...doesn't know.  It's left unsaid what happens, and I think that's actually really good writing.  Because the impact of that moment would be gone, if Rachel just decides what to do.  You'd have the answer.  But you don't.  You don't know what happens.  You don't know what Rachel should do, or should have done.  Just like her.  And all the while, Leigh Nash was singing, "Tonight it's time....choose a direction...if you fail...you can make a correction...." I love meowmie. Randomly watching some more of HealthyGamerGG, and such, actually feels.....great.  There's this element of human contact and conversation that I think I couldn't really identify as a missing block in isolated life, and I think hearing supportive voices and seeing people help each other, even if not directed at myself, is invigorating.  And I think =past= even that, I think just hearing someone break down problems and emotions in such a rational and relatable way is quite useful.  I think it's like.....I don't know if this happens to other people, but when you hear or watch or even read someone's speaking or writing a lot, I think sometimes you begin to formulate an internal monologue or rationalization in their words, in their style of thinking.  And I think that's actually really helpful, in a lot of different situations. Speaking of people helping each other out...last but certainly not least (the opposite, really), I've been trying to embark on this journey that several others have been.  There are some things to do, many things to do, really.  But for now, the first thing to do is simply....to do my homework.  Abstract plans are hard to act on, but if there is anything I am good at, it is taking what seems like a giant boulder and chunking it up into bite-sized pieces such that I can make progress, and then make progress, and then make progress again.  And I hope that someday, =we= will make progress....make progress....and continue to walk forward.  What is overwhelming, hopeless, and impossible all at once becomes something easier to digest when it becomes a tangible thing.  HealthyGamerGG talked about that too, actually, as a form of Operational Procrastination. So yes.  We will try, and try, and keep trying.  And we each have our own small part to play in this thing.  I already know what I hope mine to be.  For now, I'm just making my way there. I donno, I mean....I guess I could write these blog posts with a bit more context and explanation.  But sometimes blogs are ok too, without explanation.  When you don't really know exactly what I'm talking about, but you can read that there's a sentiment behind it.  Does every art piece need its "point" to be explained in order to be appreciated?