#i often refer to my brain and its functions as though it's a computer with programs and hard-coded scripts

[steakout-05]

fellas is it alterhuman to feel kinda sad that you were born with flesh and bones instead of built with steel and synthetic material and that your eyes don't glow an unnatural yellow in the dark. to yearn that one day the cracking of your bones will be replaced with the whirring of circuits. to imagine a future where you can easily mend and repair and swap out your parts on a whim. cause like. i feel that

honestly i think i feel less like a human and more like a positronic brain that was spawned into a human body in some fucked up mishap and now i'm just here.... wait would that technically make me a cyborg-

[thehivemindsys]

Lycanthrope Heisenberg Headcanons (Includes NSFW)

I realized I haven’t said much about some of the newer RE characters in my AU, so why not start with everyone’s favorite trash hobo?

TW for medical talk, cults, child abuse, abduction, unethical experimentation, NSFW, cannibalism, and obsessive behavior.

-Karl is a quarter German, a quarter Jewish, a quarter Spainish, and a quarter Romanian. The Heisenberg family has an extremely complex lineage dating back hundreds of years, though Karl is most connected to his German heritage due to growing up there. He speaks German fluently, and also speaks Romani and English, though his fluency in those two languages is less than stellar.

-The Heisenberg Family were once a great lineage of people known for their advances in technology and stallion breeding-which is why House Heisenberg is represented by “The Iron Horse.” It is said that Karl’s Great-Grandfather is the inventor of the modern horseshoe and the reason horses can still be tamed by humans today.

-The Heisenberg Family was murdered by Pre-Spencer Umbrella, before it became a corporation and was more of a cult that had stolen the Sonnentreppe flower away from the original tribe in Africa. The orphaned child, Heisenberg, was taken away by a matriarch in the cult, Miranda, who eventually became Mother Miranda. The Pre-Umbrellas cult eventually split in half, one half following Miranda and becoming The Village of Shadows, and the other eventually becoming Umbrella Corp.

-Karl, being the first of the Lords to be taken, was subject to the worst experimentation out of all of his siblings. Because his body adapted so well to the Cadou, he was also implemented with a strain of the Lycanthrope virus, making him the first lycan in the village, the “alpha” of the pack, and giving him three forms-his cadou mutant form, his lycan form, and his human form. This is why The Duke refers to him as “The most dangerous Lord,” As Karl is not only insanely intelligent he rivals Wesker in terms of power and ability.

-Karl Heisenberg is 6’3”, and around 400 pounds. Though most of the weight is in muscle its also a lot in fat, making him a typical “musclegut.” He also has quite a lot of hair on his body, which adds to his weight. Despite his body type he is extremely athletic, powerful, and strong, able to carry around thousands of pounds of weight like it’s nothing.

-Karl’s wolflike tendencies give him a taste for human flesh, a need to hunt, heat cycles, and other dog-like tendencies that manifest in strange ways. He even gives himself tounge baths on the occasion.

-Karl may appear outwardly human, but there are many details to him that make him appear more than just human-he has pointed, elfish ears, sharp, retractable canines, piercing yellow eyes, clawed fingers, and his cock knots even in his human form.

-Karl’s ferrokinesis is controlled by a set of electrical organs in his shoulderblades, creating a magnetic field around him that allows him to control metal. Non-magnetic metals are unaffected by these organs. If Karl focuses his abilities, he can even control the iron in someone’s blood, similar to bloodbending in Avatar: The Last Airbender, but he often gets too aggressive and winds up bursting blood vessels.

-Due to the magnetic field created by Karl’s organs, a lot of modern technology such as cellphones, computers, and televisions will either short out or go haywire around him, especially when he’s using his abilities. This is why Karl doesn’t use modern computers or lab equipment, as it’d be useless in his factory.

-The Soldats are created via a complex process of fusing metal with flesh, but they aren’t entirely braindead-Karl disables their brain functions just enough so they are technically still alive, but cannot retain memories, feel pain, or develop a personality outside of aggression and extreme loyalty. The process by which the brain functions are removed is gruesome and they are mostly kept alive via electricity and life support devices.

-Much like Wesker, Karl’s sexual needs are insatiable, even rivaling Wesker’s at certain points in his preferences. Karl is gay, but often has sex with female lycans during heat seasons to propegate the pack and continue his legacy. He however, much prefers men, and tends to get quite obsessive with the men he enjoys-following them around, taunting them, cutting them off from their friends and family, and pampering them once they’re in his grasp. Karl has a fetish for married men, and often fantasizes about taking them away from their wives and breeding them-which is why he was so obsessed with Ethan, he could easily whisk him away and get him pregnant.

-Karl likes chew toys. A lot. Usually bones will do the trick but every so often he will need a rubber toy to sink his teeth into, like any canine. He also really enjoys playing tug-of-war, so be sure to keep your nice shoes away from him.

-In his lycanthrope form, Karl stands at around 8ft tall, and in his Cadou Mutant form, he stands at around 27 ft tall. He’s still much shorter than Lady Dimitrescu, whose mutant forms are much taller.

-Though Karl has a strong hatred for most of his family members, he is much less hostile towards Donna and Moreau, treating them with more kindness and tolerance-though he often gets fed up with Moreau’s devotion to Miranda and is still somewhat unnerved by Angie.

-Karl tends to switch to German when he needs to swear, or say something off handed. His favorite nicknames are also in German, consisting of things such as “mein schatz,” “häschen,” or “Schnucki.” For English nicknames, “buttercup” is the go to but “puppy” or “rabbit” works just as well.

[brostateexam]

The trouble began, as it usually does, when I saw something funny on my computer. It was the middle of the morning on a Wednesday, a few years back, and I came across news that Le Creuset, the French cookware brand, had made a line of “Star Wars”-themed pots and pans. There was a roaster made to look like Han Solo frozen in carbonite ($450) and a Dutch oven with Tatooine’s twin suns on it (“Our Dutch oven promises an end result that’s anything but dry — unlike the sun-scorched lands of Tatooine”; $900). A set of mini cocottes had been decorated to resemble the lovable droid characters C-3PO, R2-D2 and BB-8.

I was also looking at Twitter that day, something that I can say for sure not only because of what happened next, but also because I look at Twitter just about every day. (This is not terribly unusual in my profession — I am an editor at The New York Times Magazine — but I think it should be stated clearly upfront that I have something of an acute problem with it.) I took a screenshot of the cocottes and uploaded it to the site. I wrote, as an accompanying caption, “The Star Wars/Le Creuset pots imply the existence of a Type of Guy I find genuinely unimaginable...” — just like that, ellipsis and all. I hit send. I guess I went back to work after that. My email records show that I sent a big edit memo to a writer. Then, around lunchtime, things started happening.

If you don’t use Twitter — which is perfectly normal; about three-quarters of Americans don’t — you should know that the platform has a function called quote-tweeting, which was introduced in 2015. It allows users to show a tweet they’ve encountered to their own followers, while adding their own text or image to comment on it. You often see people use this function to respond to some contrived prompt that crosses their feed (“What’s a great song that features an impressive horn section?”). Less often, though often enough that the practice has its own name, quote-tweets are used to roast and clown on people — to trot them out in front of a new audience, drop their pants and spank them. This is referred to as “dunking.” (x)

[megid0nt]

huh. y'all remember the era where physical dictionaries were more ubiquitous? well, it was like that when I was young, or at the very least my family insisted upon keeping a small repository of reference materials on hand, so we had a copy of Webster's Ninth.

(ohh yeah. that's what I'm talkin about. I made my workplace not throw out their old copy just bc of my own personal nostalgia lol)

anyway, fuckin dictionaries. What gets me about them is that like... modern conceptions of dictionaries is just a spot where you find definitions of words, which is *true*, but often there's more!

the whole purpose of this post here is to talk about that section from page 1536 to page 1540: Signs and Symbols. My favourite section of any reference book, changed my brain chemistry, etc. etc. Not because this book or its example is in any way notable in particular to me, but because I fucking love systems of glyphs to communicate meaning. and like, IDK, I used to sit in my 7th grade class transcribing info from it into my own personal reference notebook just because I really really liked playing with symbols and knowing what they mean

It's not like I liked them or found them interesting because I was unduly interested in the stars, or anything like that.

No, I just liked wingdings. and I think as I have grown up I've kinda stopped noticing that and stopped playing as much in that space, resting on my laurels on my alternate latin replacement script that I use for my own notes a bit. And idk, I think I want to play more in that

Like, what's been interesting me lately is bitonal art, and my fondest art work I've done lately has been creating and formulating bespoke icons and glyphs for my POS keyboard keycaps; if I dive back into letting myself be swept along by the whimsy of systems of icons I think that could bring me a lot of joy.

The biggest hurdle to that for me, however, is bringing the art I like doing into a physical space in a way that works for me. I think my best bet might be to get a desktop laser cutter for sticker cutting (not one of the branded ones that locks you into their material ecosystem, though) such that if I start doing more glyphmaking as vector graphics I can cut them into stickers for keys and the like.

What's weirdest for me, though, is how different the repositories of general information like this look and operate now. I can't google "what's the symbol that looks kinda like a backwards c with a serifed little mark?" and reliably know I'm going to get the answer of an apothecarial scruple, and most attempts I make at searching for glyphs online fall short.

but on the other hand,

centralization of repositories of information lead to blind spots and biases, like not knowing what a Manicule is or the inclusion of the iron cross solely through its use representing the sign of the cross.

IDK where if anywhere I'm going with this. It's deeply bizarre to have grown up surrounded by print and then grow into a digitally encoded data world, and perhaps my interest in data types and data encoding are more of the domain of systems of communicating ideas than it is in service of achieving any vision or dream. And it's damn isolating to be confined to unicode; even my little flourishes like using &c instead of etc, which emojis I use, and how I punctuate and choose words, none of those can make it feel like the same varied and human communication that the ability to just doodle in the margins does. The fact that my options are :) or :D or =) or 🙂, sure there's a lot.

I understand why it's like this, and I understand that for computers to function basically at all there needs to be a consensus-driven common system of data encoding for information interchange, and that the granularity of the real physical world far, far outstrips what's reasonable to expect computers to transmit. But given how much of human communication is now hitched to computers, it feels like a fundamental paradigm shift in the ways that we're getting to interface with one another as a consequence.

idk if I'm goin anywhere with this or just wanted to chat about dictionaries for a while. but like, I guess I just hope kids are still getting passionate about this kinda shit and dotting their i's with circles or hearts.

[notanotherinfjblog]

Why are you so invested in mbti? I'd enjoy seeing your reasons. Do you honestly think theres any realistic ground to it? I think its on to something, i see it as a blueprint for something that is going on the human brain that creates similar processes of thought in humans, like its onto to something bigger.

Hello anon! :)

I do think there are realistic grounds to it and I do agree with you here. You know, it always bugs me when people refer to MBTI as 16 personality types. People with the same MBTI type are not the same people. Instead, they simply process the world in a similar way. They may share some aspects of their personality because of that, but they are not the same people. Our cognitive functions are nothing but specific activation patterns in our brains, as Dr. Dario Nardi found out in his neuroscientific research, and those activation patterns manifest in our way of thinking, our way of speaking, our way of moving. We cannot separate our bodies from our cognition and those are the patterns that I see daily in other people's faces. Once you see the patterns, you can't stop seeing them. I guess, that's why I'm so invested. Because I'm obsessed with humanity.

But what I find fascinating is that we all instinctively know about MBTI, even when we don't know it. I work in academia and I run experiments that test how people can figure out specific patterns without being aware that they're doing it. They think they're just guessing, but they're not. Their subconscious is running complex computations all day every day and they don't even know. The same is true for MBTI types. For instance, I think it's fascinating how 80% of couples in movies are played by an ESFJ actress and an ESFP actor. When it's an ESFJ actor, it's most likely an ISFP actress. Even in same-sex relationships on screen, it's also typically an FJ and an FP. I highly doubt that casting directors (or whoever is in charge) consciously choose to cast actors by their MBTI types and yet they know.

Intuitives are rather rare in the movie industry, though some types are harder to find than others. It's not uncommon for one intuitive to find their way onto a cast full of sensors. They often get cast for characters that are supposed to be weird in a certain way that does not fit in with the vast majority of people. An example that comes to mind here is the movie "The space between us" where they needed the main actor to portray a character that lacks social skills and moves very strangely due to his deformed bone structure because he was born on Mars that has a different gravity than Earth does. So what did they do? Cast an INFP. But when there are more than two intuitives on set, something's up. On that same movie, for instance, there is also an ENTP actor and the director himself is an ENTP as well. Because when there is more than two intuitives somewhere, it's usually because the person in charge of the project is an intuitive themselves and then the intuitives come in packs. The most insane example for that are the Harry Potter movies. Seriously, about 80% of the actors on set, both child and adult actors, are intuitives. The likelihood of that happening is close to zero, it's completely insane. I haven't looked into any of the directors of the later movies, but the first two were directed by an ENFP. These are most likely not conscious decisions by anyone involved. We just gravitate towards specific people we want to work with, and we gravitate towards specific people we think would work well with each other, and that's often very specific combinations of MBTI types.

And we have biases. Not everyone of the same type has the exact same bias, I think that's also related to how and with whom we grew up, but there are trends. For instance, my ESFJ mother has married two Ti-doms. My INTJ brother keeps dating FPs. My ESFP friend keeps dating ISTPs. My ESTJ friend keeps adding intuitive friends to her collection left and right, no idea how she finds them all. None of them go specifically looking for those other types. They just naturally gravitate towards each other and it's a reoccurring pattern.

And there are subtypes within the same MBTI types as well. I know many many ESFJs, so let's take them as an example. Among ESFJs, you find the sweet lovable himbos, the overprotective mother hens, the jesters who can't stop teasing everyone, the lionesses who would start wars, etc. That's all different manifestations of what dominant Fe can look like. Not every ESFJ will remind you of another ESFJ, but sometimes you find clones within the same subtypes, which I always find extremely exciting: two people of the same type that move and act and talk, sometimes even look so much like each other that they could basically be clones. For instance, I think it's very funny that Daniel Radcliffe and Elijah Wood keep getting mistaken for each other wherever they go as they are both ENTJs. Or whenever Doctor Who needs to cast a new actor to play the Doctor (who has been played by several NTPs and two of the three showrunners have been ENTPs as well), multiple people keep crying out for them to cast people like Richard Ayoade, Rahul Kohli etc., who are also ENTPs.

We all know about MBTI, even when we don't, and I think that's fascinating.

(Sorry, I know I'm always derailing these ask posts a bit. I hope it still makes sense.)

[im-the-punk-who]

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@rnmmarchformeta​ Day 1: Tonight’s theme is: Themes

Malex and Music: Tracing a relationship through music used in the show - Part 1

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Given that both Michael and Alex have a personal connection to music, I wanted to go over some of the intricacies of what the music choices and lyrics/stories behind the songs used might tell us about Malex. The music choices in Roswell New Mexico are deliberate and often incredibly pointed. Particularly in the case of Michael and Alex there are elements of their relationship that are not so much underlined as written about only in the lyrical choices that play under their scenes. This choice for me made rewatching the series a lot of fun because as I discovered the lyrics to some of the more obscure song choices I kept discovering new intricacies and motivations for each of their decisions. Below the cut for length.

(Author’s note circa 2007:  (rawr xD) I’m focusing specifically on the parts of these songs that play over or in direct correlation to scenes where Michael and Alex are both present. I would love to explore this theme in the wider context of the whole show and how their interactions with other characters might change some of these but...this is already like 6k and that’s just how the peas and carrots cooked. That said I will be referencing other characters and relationships as relevant, particularly, I will be talking at some length about Milexa and the airstream scenes in 2x06. I personally have a favorable reading of the scenes and what they mean for Michael and Alex. I also talk briefly about Milexa in a few other spots - they’ve been marked as ‘Milexa’ or ‘Miluca’ if you wish to skip them, although I don’t know if this will make sense as a whole without them. But, should you wish. Proceed accordingly. <3)

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Posted on AO3 here.

Sedona - Houndstooth (1x01)

The first song we hear in relation to Malex is ‘Sedona’ by Houndstooth. The song plays during the reunion as we see Alex confront Michael about the chemicals found around his airstream. The verse that plays underneath the scene references how, due to its scenic beauty, the town of Sedona was once a highly sought after filming location but had fallen into obscurity when cowboy movies went out of style in the late 70′s.

Similarly, Alex tells Michael that he is ‘wasting his life.’

“Does the macho cowboy swagger thing ever get old for you?”

“Did it get old for you?”

For me, this scene is as much an introduction to the past between these two as their present. Gone but not forgotten, their interactions are a ‘script’ that the two of them play off of. In other words, Michael and Alex don’t so much interact as play off of what the other expects from the other. This becomes especially clear when in 2x05 we learn that Alex has at least once before warned Michael about ‘wasting his life.’

When The Truth Hunts You Down - Sam Tinnesz (1x01)

The next scene is this one, in which we see Alex contemplating an old picture of himself. We then see Michael watching him.

Later, the last line is overlaid with Jesse telling Kyle about the existence of aliens.

The truth about Michael’s alienness is quiet literally hunting them, but so is something about Alex’s past. As we get to know him, we learn just how much his father is interconnected with all of the worst moments in his life and everrything he has buried and tried to run from in order to avoid it. Michael, Roswell itself - Alex ran halfway across the world to try to run away from the trauma of his youth, and yet here he is.

“Nostalgia’s a bitch, huh?”

“You know I thought when I got back from Iraq you would be long gone.”

“Is that what you want?”

“We’re not kids anymore. What I want doesn't matter.” 

We also find out something of the nature of his and Michael’s relationship and that there are clearly still feelings between them - no matter how much Alex is trying to deny it.

Give Me The Night - Des Rocs (1x02)

This is one of my personal faves from the Malex soundtracks. It just *slaps* okay?

Aside from the obvious nod to Michael’s alienness, this song underscores the divide still between Michael and Alex despite the passionate kiss they shared at the reunion. Michael is initially flirtatious and full of swagger - until Alex shuts him down.

The fallacy of Alex’s rebuke and his dismissal of the feelings behind the kiss are underscored by his refusal to even look Michael in the eye as they talk. Even if he tries to deny them, the truth of his feelings hunts and haunts him because he feels he can never act on his own desires. And in turn when presented with the about face, Michael turns bitter as the push-pull is reinitiated. Michael falls back to the script they’ve been rehashing to save his feelings - ‘puts on a show’ as it were, and Alex falls for it hook, line, and sinker. He is still unwilling or unable to see the truth that lies beneath the surface.

“Isn’t there some law about building on a historical site?”

“A historical - oh you mean because the UFO crashed here? Yeah, we’re not supposed to build on Santa’s workshop either.”

For Michael, who at least to me was obviously hoping things would change this time around, this must feel like a bucket of cold water, especially in the face of Liz Ortecho’s knowledge and seeming easy acceptance of the aliens’ existence. While Max might get his happy ending, Michael is left to keep hiding from the person he loves, never being seen and wondering if Alex’s feelings are even real. 

Two Princes - Spin Doctors (1x02) (Miluca)

In rapid fire we have the next three songs as Michael and Alex spend some time at the Wild Pony. This verse plays under the interaction when Alex comes in the bar and spots Michael.

“Though he got kinda hot. In a ‘sex in a truck, smells like a river, never introduce him to your mama’ kind of way.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

My boy. My child. My bluntest instrument in the tool kit. Has no one ever told Alex Manes that saying you hadn’t noticed an objectively hot guy is hot is basically code for ‘I haven’t stopped staring at him since I walked in and my brain is not functioning at a high enough level to mask that fact’? Son, please, this is a drunk Wendy’s.

(Also this is huge foreshadowing for Miluca - Michael and Maria don’t have sex *in* a truck but it’s pretty close, we find out later that Michael/the aliens smell like rain, and she tells him he’s not meeting her mother at one point. The angle of this shot is also, for me at least, a hint that Michael is going to become the object of these two ‘princes’ affections, at some point.)

Anyway this is basically poking fun at Alex Manes, repressed disaster, for having no clue what love is and trying to express his affection through like, everything except anything anyone would understand as romantic love. (And we will see this in the flashbacks as well as present day - that Alex mostly uses his station or advantages as a way to show the people he loves he loves them, rather than using words. When he offers Michael the shed, brings him the guitar, uses his military connections to find out about Michel’s mom, hacks into Maria’s computer...listen I got more.) But that isn’t enough, as we’re learning. If only there were some way Alex could also learn that lesson.

And seriously, “This one said he wants to buy you rockets?”

How’s It Going To Be? - Stephen Edwards (1x02)

“Is there really nobody in this world that you wouldn’t risk everything to save? Sad.”

Oh Isobel, if only you knew.

So, aside from returning the kiss Michael initiated at the reunion, Alex has soundly rejected every advance Michael has made for a relationship. Despite that Michael seems to have been harboring some hope that things might be different not that Alex is back more permanently. But now with Isobel bringing into question what he’s willing to sacrifice, I think he might be realizing that toll has been extremely steep already.

(Also truly obsessed with how both Alex and Michael have positioned themselves so that they can casually glance over at each other without arousing suspicion. *Boys*. It’s not that complicated what is this middle school?)

We know that Michael doesn’t like having to keep secrets, and again I have to wonder if he’s regretting not telling Alex he’s an alien, or wondering how that conversation would have gone.

From the previous scenes we can tell something in their relationship is coming to a head - maybe Michael is hoping it’s that he can finally stop keeping secrets from Alex and show Alex who he really is - that Alex will stop misreading him. That Alex will change.

But there is also the expectation that if that happens, Alex will likely leave again. Not just because that’s what Alex’s trauma makes him do, but also because that is how Michael frames all of his relationships. As ‘until you leaves’. He is shown to have a habit of catastrophizing because he doesn’t believe himself to ‘belong’ anywhere(HA) and this is one of those times we’re shown that.

Come With Me - Gold Star (1x02)

“Home can be a person.”

And here we have Alex “thinking about who he was” as Maria closes up the bar. Given where this scene leads with him and Michael, I think the rest of the lyrics to the song are incredibly poignant.

Tell me what were you dreaming? Tell me who were you trying to reach? Gimme something real to believe in Or gimme a reason to leave So i left her standing under shining stars in the Silver moonlight by old Borough Hall - whoever you are

We know that after this evening Alex attempts to rekindle his relationship with Michael, still thinking about who he was, and maybe for the first time trying not to run from what he wants. He’ll be unsuccessful this time, but it’s the first clue that Alex is attempting to break a pattern that has held him in place for ten years.

While he may have been misreading Michael’s stunted growth, we’re starting to see Alex contemplate change in himself. This is the start of Alex’s two season long journey to break out of the fortress he’s built around himself. To ‘put his weapons down’ in an effort to be with Michael.

(She lets her guard down on her way back//to close her eyes and fall asleep - “It was late....I was tired.”)

God of Wine - Third Eye Blind

So clearly the writers were like ‘how can we hurt Milo specifically’ because these lyrics are *so good* as we hear malex talk about the way they view their relationship for the first time in the show.

The music starts just as Michael picks up the old photographs, first of the pod squad, then of himself and Alex playing guitars in the desert. As he packs up the airstream to move it off Foster’s Ranch, Michael is also thinking about the past.

Throughout the series, we’re given a bunch of musical lines about how Michael and Alex can’t go back to what they were, that they have to move forward. And it’s true - as we’ll see over and over again the dynamic they’ve had has been incredibly unhealthy for both of them. But they also cannot avoid the other’s orbit. And when Alex comes to talk to Michael it’s the first time we see him actually decide to initiate - to try and take what he himself wants, rather than waiting or hiding from it. But it is also very much Alex falling back into the ‘madness that holds a truth he can’t erase’ of Michael’s really, very, super, incredibly obvious feelings for him. Our boy is not subtle.

But Alex is still hunted by the past - before we know his history we assume that when Alex references ‘who he was before he went to war’ he means Iraq. But Alex’s war is his father. As much as combat can absolutely be a traumatizing experience, for Alex I never really read that as his main source. As he’ll tell Forrest later - “My PTSD triggers are a little more complicated”.

And so when he tells Michael he’s been thinking about who he was “before he went to war” for me that’s more a callback to who he was before Jesse found the two of them in the toolshed. “When this started.”

As Michael tells him “From where I stand nothing’s changed”  the words “I know, I know, I know” repeat in the background because WE KNOW. We all know, except Alex.

“And that’s a problem for me, Guerin.”

And the siren’s song that is your madness

“Because every time you look at me, I’m seventeen all over again.”

holds a truth I can’t erase

“- and I forget that the last ten years even happened. And then you look away and I remember all over again. And it almost kills me every time.”

All alone on your face

“I never look away. Not really.”

For Michael this is basically confirmation of what he’s been realizing over the last few days - that Alex has been totally misreading him and that yes, Michael, you’re going to have to use your words on this one. 

To which we see Alex’s brain 404-blue-screen for a minute as he realizes what Michael means. Which I personally really appreciate.

And especially since we’ve just learned that a lyric of this song was written on Rosa’s hand the night she died, I can’t believe it’s a coincidence in this being the song that plays underneath this scene - where Alex says he was thinking about who he was before. Everything changed that day for everyone - including Michael and Alex. Michael had gained a terrible secret he couldn’t share, that meant he changed his whole life and started needing to hide and lie and act out, and Alex - not knowing the truth - assumed that it was Michael’s way of trying to push him away and end the relationship. Which leads to the decades long miscommunication of Alex seeing Michael do that over and over again.

For the last ten years, Alex has been seeing Michael as the boy who looks away, then looks back. A Michael whose focus shifts to and away from him and who he sees as wasting his life; directionless and aimless. But as he realizes what Michael is saying he has to recalibrate everything he’s thought their relationship is.

This is possibly the first time Alex has realized that his view of Michael has been wrong. That he really doesn’t know Michael at all.

And we know this interaction has a profound impact on Alex in terms of how he views their relationship. I feel like this is one of those things that becomes a mantra for Alex, later down the line. He repeats it to Michael at Caulfield, and in his song as well, “You never looked away, now I won’t look away” to express his commitment to breaking down the walls he has built up for himself. 

Even though we know the relationship is doomed at this point, it’s the first time a stone falls from the walls Alex has built around himself in a decade.

Here - Chance Peña - 1x03 (Alternate title: “Home”)

Okay I would like to petition to make it illegal to have unreleased songs in episodes, Chance Peña help a bitch out. I had to watch a *fish show* to hear the full lyrics because they’re edited in the show! ( I will also note the next lyric is ‘goodbye, my dear’ which. rude.)

Anyway, we’re given these lyrics as Michael wakes up to seeing Alex has stayed the night. I took the editing, with the previous song choices, to be a reaffirmation of this being something new to Alex, but not necessarily to Michael. Michael knows what he wants from a relationship with Alex - even if he’s put the hope aside from time to time the want is always clear.

For Alex though, a relationship with Michael is something that scares him because of his fear that it can be taken away. (”I just thought that I could be happy, and not be afraid that if I loved anything my dad would destroy it.”) He is trying to make it work - “drawing near” to Michael - but he knows that in order to do that he is going to need to be uncomfortable. To face the fears that have held him back and kept him in comfortable limbo for so long.

I’m also going to flail about how, while RNM has the song listed as ‘Here’, the producer of the other show(Battlefish) identified the song as ‘Home’. I hope I don’t have to yell at y’all, other Roswell New Mexico fans, about how often that word has snuck up on me and knifed me in the back regarding malex. Especially since Alex *is* currently - well, here. With his home. Kill me please it would be kinder.

But then of course we see the old insecurities pop up again as Isobel arrives. Even if he is trying - Alex is nowhere near ready to jump out of the closet yet.

Fast Aint Good Enough - Inkwell Echo (1x06)

I debated adding this one because it’s a little bit reachy, but I thought it was significant in that even when they were seventeen, the thing Alex is ‘afraid of’ is his feelings for Michael - not necessarily of being gay but of what people like Kyle and his father do with information like that.

Wish I’d found the words when we were seventeen-

Kyle asks

“What are you so afraid of?”

-just as Alex catches sight of Michael.

(“I wanted to be the kind of person who won battles. It felt good.”)

Aside from Alex’s general need to protect Michael in any and all situations, I feel like the lyrics of this song - about the singer’s attempt to leave an abusive relationship - underscore that even before the toolshed, Alex was fighting. Even before the toolshed, he has been fighting to this cycle he is trapped in.

While he and Michael build their relationship he starts thinking seriously about leaving and not just surviving but he will ultimately choose to trap himself for years in order to hide his love for Michael.

Like so many gay kids, Alex is fighting a system that deems him guilty of sin - and takes his fighting back as a sign of his guilt. And in order to actually be able to love Michael, he is going to have to figure out how to put down the weapons and the hurt and break the cycle.

First Day Of My Life - Bright Eyes (1x06)

Are they serious right now I swear to god.

So obviously, we’ve got the origins for everything we’re told about Michael and Alex’s lives changing based on their feelings for each other in like two and a half verses of song. Forget the entire second season we have everything we need right here.

“It was the first time I liked our hometown, though.”

-

“Alex made me believe there was a place for me here.”

We know that for both of them this is really a moment of self discovery as much as it is a discovery about each other. 

For Michael in particular, who doesn’t know why he’s here or who he really is, and who previously had no plans besides leaving the planet, this is the moment that he realizes what he wants - to be with Alex.

And for Alex, to me, this moment is a brief glimpse into what his life could be like. We don’t have any confirmation if Michael is his first kiss with a boy or not, but we do know that this moment is significant in that it’s the first that makes Roswell feel like a place he enjoys being.

And as he is realizing that, the lyrics echo it -

But I realized that I need you // And I wondered if I could come home

(Screeching from the background: WOULD YOU COME HOME)

But of course, as the song says, these things take forever because...well....

(It’s because Alex is dumb. My poor dumb emotionally stunted child. Please go to therapy.)

In essence, this is the moment that sets Michael and Alex on their entwined path. The path that Alex will have to fight to get back to - the path Michael will lose faith in before he later starts to regain the hope that it exists. I also like to think about the link between the last lines:

Remember the time you drove all night // Just to meet me in the morning?

and the line from ‘Would You Come Home’

Would you meet me in the middle // Could we both stop keeping score?

I like to think about the parallel here, about meeting people where they’re at, and the love and care and effort it takes to be willing to drive all night to meet someone. Listen a bitch is soft and gay don’t look at me.

You Can’t Love Me - Novi & Tyler Blackburn (1x12)

(*Whispers and rocks back and forth* this is fine it’s all fine)

Once again we have a song whose lyrics give us a tailor made road map to Malex, and will pop up later in ‘Would You Come Home’. We’ve already seen the implosion of the way Michael and Alex have been orbiting each other for a decade, but now that Alex knows the truth, he actually has the ability to understand Michael in ways he hasn’t been able to before. (Something we’ll see later in Season 2 when he talks with Maria.)

And because of that, we see the true beginning of the journey of Michael and Alex back to one another in a healthier way.

But part of that journey is going to be realizing that what they’ve been doing and the way they have loved each other in the past isn’t sustainable - and maybe isn’t even the way they want to love each other.

“They’re my family, Alex!”

“Alright, maybe! But you are mine. I don’t look away, Guerin.”

“No. We’ve been holding onto this thing. And it’s gotten us nowhere. Just let it go.”

Even though the words are said in anger, there is some truth to what Michael says. Their relationship so far hasn’t been a good one. Where Alex is trying to repeat the words that Michael said to him that made such an impact on him, Michael is (well, a, trying to save his dumb boyfriend from getting flambayed) using the opportunity to reveal how little faith he has in their relationship. To say that no, this doesn’t feel like love.

But as much as the song lyrics are about loving someone who isn’t good for you, they’re also about changing and growing, and about a commitment to be better.

(Sound familiar? Brb, I’m gonna go jump off a cliff.)

Love is messy, and especially for Michael and Alex, love has always been something that hurts. “Home is where the hurt is” - and a really important part of their journey is realizing that, and realizing there is a different way of loving each other.

Additionally for Alex, this is when he starts to realize the full extent of his family’s involvement in hunting and hurting Michael’s family. It isn’t just his dad - his entire family line has been involved in this since before Alex was born. And still is. This is really where he starts realizing the roots of the guilt and shame he’s going to have to deal with in order to be anything to Michael - not even a partner but a friend.

This is the first step in that journey. Not just the commitment that yes - I want to build a home for you - but that first, I don’t know, maybe I need to put down these weapons and pick up a different set of tools?

ON TO SEASON TWO

[canmom]

amateur philosophy of mind

a human body, perhaps more specifically its brain, is apparently capable of having subjective experience. I think I know what it's like to be me and it seems certain that other people are doing that whole qualia thing too. and I don't gave a good reason to think a human body isn't 'just' some arrangement of matter in motion, performing certain (astonishingly complex) physical processes.

in the past I've wondered, what if other arrangements of matter could fulfil the seemingly unknowable criteria for subjectivity, without us knowing? for example, what if a rock is experiencing being a rock? or maybe I should think not of an object but a process, so maybe a thunderstorm, or a river. an ant colony is an often cited example. but then we run into the lines we draw being arbitrary: why should we speak of what it's like to be a rock, and not half a rock, or an arbitrary collection of atoms all over the universe that just happen to meet the criteria?

and we can imagine what it's like to be a rock even less than what it's like to be a bat: how would a rock sense the world? it seems intuitive that if a rock is chipped it would feel something like pain, but it has no nerves or anything like that involved in the physical sensation of pain.

when scientists discuss animal consciousness, the criteria for 'likely to have subjective experience' are really more a matter of 'is it like a human' in terms of behaviour: can it solve problems, does it recognise itself in a mirror, does its communication resemble human languages etc. likewise, it's no coincidence that when I wrote my story house, written from the point of view of a house, I characterised the houses in very human ways. because we have no other referent: the only thing you definitely know for certain has subjective experience is you, every other case you have to assume by analogy with that.

regardless, tonight I was thinking... if we assume for the sake of argument that having subjectivity requires certain 'brain-like' properties like a certain degree of local complexity, feedback mechanisms, connection to sense organs, idk... stuff that brains do. is there really any reason to assume that there is only one subjective experience arising from a given brain at a given time?

some people reading this may be, or have friends who are, members of plural 'systems', which as far as I understand means they are capable of perceiving other people - where a person here means something like subjective experiences and desires and ongoing 'threads' of thought I guess you might say - inside their body, and these members of the system can 'front' and be the one in control of motor functions, speech etc. this isn't quite what I'm thinking about right now though, but it is relevant.

instead... I tend to perceive my own thoughts like threads on a multi core processor. (I know the thinking=computation analogy is overplayed but I can't think of a better one!) if I think about my own thoughts - think about having thought something I just thought, for example - it feels like another voice that's come up to comment on the previous one. sometimes it feels like I stage a conversation in my head between two positions.

but these voices or threads are not persistent identities. it would seem absurd to give them distinct names - they're all 'me', and they'll be gone as soon as I finish thinking that train of thought.

anyway, I was thinking just now - what if there was another train of thought running in this brain, with its attendant threads etc.? perhaps, for example, the processes in my brain and spine which coordinate muscles so that I can type these words has its own subjective experience? maybe my gut does? or perhaps as I write this post, the processes I think of as my subconscious, working away to figure out answers to questions which will leap fully formed to mind at some 'aha!' moment, are actually a collection of fully conscious trains of thought? (another silly computer analogy: a 'gpu' with thousands of subjectivity threads...)

and then there's the matter of continuity. i can be aware of my subjective experience right now, and access memories of prior thoughts. but how far can I think of the process of thinking those thoughts as 'the same' as the process right now producingva subjective experience? maybe this current train of thought, currently connected to certain motor functions and with priority over requesting certain sensory input such as sight, will 'die' once I write this post, allowing these brain-resources to be used by some other subjective-experience-generating process.

more disturbingly, because the only access to subjective experience of times other than 'right now' is through memories, it doesn't seem impossible that I could have temporarily been a p-zombie but laid down memories such that, when I recall them, I think I was having a subjective experience. but then we're veering awfully close to straight up solipsism. I'm going to have to assume I was having a subjective experience when I thought I did.

perhaps the strongest argument against this line of speculation is that the kinds of brain-process that cause subjective experiences to happen are probably 'expensive' ones - particularly heavy sorts of information processing, perhaps. after all, it takes time to 'think things through'. so it would be unusual for my brain to be doing multiple such processes at once.

of course, a brain is very unlike a computer chip: it's a thoroughly distributed process. a single core on a CPU or GPU is doing one thing at once, but what a brain does involves a complex network of interacting neurons, glial cells, etc. in this system, information is quickly spread across a very large number of cells.

but it's possible to sever parts of the brain from each other, as was violently inflicted on an enormous number of people as a severely cruel "treatment" called a lobotomy during the mid 20th century. for people with 'split brain', where the communication between the two hemispheres of the brain is severed, it apparently really is as if they have another person sharing their body, but one with whom who they cannot share thoughts.

this suggests that different parts of the brain can presumably have separate subjective experiences, at least when they are as large as a hemisphere. maybe even in people with communicating hemispheres, each hemisphere has its own subjectivity, but the communication between the different parts ensures that these subjective experiences are kept largely consistent with each other. even if a thought or feeling 'originated' in one place, it becomes part of the narrative of all the others. after all, the 'different' subjective experiences don't actually need to be thinking different things!

anyway, if there are other ephemeral subjectivities in my brain at the moment, and they're able to perceive these words originating with not-themselves, I wish them well? and I hope some future subjectivity will get to remember that experience, of passing a message from one to the other. that would be pretty sick.

really it must all be much fuzzier than this clean computer analogy implies.

[and-then-there-were-n0ne]

In the economic sphere too, the ability to hold a hammer or press a button is becoming less valuable than before. In the past, there were many things only humans could do. But now robots and computers are catching up, and may soon outperform humans in most tasks. True, computers function very differently from humans, and it seems unlikely that computers will become humanlike any time soon. In particular, it doesn’t seem that computers are about to gain consciousness, and to start experiencing emotions and sensations. Over the last decades there has been an immense advance in computer intelligence, but there has been exactly zero advance in computer consciousness. As far as we know, computers in 2016 are no more conscious than their prototypes in the 1950s. However, we are on the brink of a momentous revolution. Humans are in danger of losing their value, because intelligence is decoupling from consciousness.

Until today, high intelligence always went hand in hand with a developed consciousness. Only conscious beings could perform tasks that required a lot of intelligence, such as playing chess, driving cars, diagnosing diseases or identifying terrorists. However, we are now developing new types of non-conscious intelligence that can perform such tasks far better than humans. For all these tasks are based on pattern recognition, and non-conscious algorithms may soon excel human consciousness in recognising patterns. This raises a novel question: which of the two is really important, intelligence or consciousness? As long as they went hand in hand, debating their relative value was just a pastime for philosophers. But in the twenty-first century, this is becoming an urgent political and economic issue. And it is sobering to realise that, at least for armies and corporations, the answer is straightforward: intelligence is mandatory but consciousness is optional.

Armies and corporations cannot function without intelligent agents, but they don’t need consciousness and subjective experiences. The conscious experiences of a flesh-and-blood taxi driver are infinitely richer than those of a self-driving car, which feels absolutely nothing. The taxi driver can enjoy music while navigating the busy streets of Seoul. His mind may expand in awe as he looks up at the stars and contemplates the mysteries of the universe. His eyes may fill with tears of joy when he sees his baby girl taking her very first step. But the system doesn’t need all that from a taxi driver. All it really wants is to bring passengers from point A to point B as quickly, safely and cheaply as possible. And the autonomous car will soon be able to do that far better than a human driver, even though it cannot enjoy music or be awestruck by the magic of existence.

Indeed, if we forbid humans to drive taxis and cars altogether, and give computer algorithms monopoly over traffic, we can then connect all vehicles to a single network, and thereby make car accidents virtually impossible. In August 2015, one of Google’s experimental self-driving cars had an accident. As it approached a crossing and detected pedestrians wishing to cross, it applied its brakes. A moment later it was hit from behind by a sedan whose careless human driver was perhaps contemplating the mysteries of the universe instead of watching the road. This could not have happened if both vehicles were steered by interlinked computers. The controlling algorithm would have known the position and intentions of every vehicle on the road, and would not have allowed two of its marionettes to collide. Such a system will save lots of time, money and human lives – but it will also do away with the human experience of driving a car and with tens of millions of human jobs.

Some economists predict that sooner or later, unenhanced humans will be completely useless. While robots and 3D printers replace workers in manual jobs such as manufacturing shirts, highly intelligent algorithms will do the same to white-collar occupations. Bank clerks and travel agents, who a short time ago were completely secure from automation, have become endangered species. How many travel agents do we need when we can use our smartphones to buy plane tickets from an algorithm?

Stock-exchange traders are also in danger. Most trade today is already being managed by computer algorithms, which can process in a second more data than a human can in a year, and that can react to the data much faster than a human can blink. On 23 April 2013, Syrian hackers broke into Associated Press’s official Twitter account. At 13:07 they tweeted that the White House had been attacked and President Obama was hurt. Trade algorithms that constantly monitor newsfeeds reacted in no time, and began selling stocks like mad. The Dow Jones went into free fall, and within sixty seconds lost 150 points, equivalent to a loss of $136 billion! At 13:10 Associated Press clarified that the tweet was a hoax. The algorithms reversed gear, and by 13:13 the Dow Jones had recuperated almost all the losses.

Three years previously, on 6 May 2010, the New York stock exchange underwent an even sharper shock. Within five minutes – from 14:42 to 14:47 – the Dow Jones dropped by 1,000 points, wiping out $1 trillion. It then bounced back, returning to its pre-crash level in a little over three minutes. That’s what happens when super-fast computer programs are in charge of our money. Experts have been trying ever since to understand what happened in this so-called ‘Flash Crash’. We know algorithms were to blame, but we are still not sure exactly what went wrong. Some traders in the USA have already filed lawsuits against algorithmic trading, arguing that it unfairly discriminates against human beings, who simply cannot react fast enough to compete. Quibbling whether this really constitutes a violation of rights might provide lots of work and lots of fees for lawyers.

And these lawyers won’t necessarily be human. Movies and TV series give the impression that lawyers spend their days in court shouting ‘Objection!’ and making impassioned speeches. Yet most run-of-the-mill lawyers spend their time going over endless files, looking for precedents, loopholes and tiny pieces of potentially relevant evidence. Some are busy trying to figure out what happened on the night John Doe got killed, or formulating a gargantuan business contract that will protect their client against every conceivable eventuality. What will be the fate of all these lawyers once sophisticated search algorithms can locate more precedents in a day than a human can in a lifetime, and once brain scans can reveal lies and deceptions at the press of a button? Even highly experienced lawyers and detectives cannot easily spot deceptions merely by observing people’s facial expressions and tone of voice. However, lying involves different brain areas to those used when we tell the truth. We’re not there yet, but it is conceivable that in the not too distant future fMRI scanners could function as almost infallible truth machines. Where will that leave millions of lawyers, judges, cops and detectives? They might need to go back to school and learn a new profession.

When they get in the classroom, however, they may well discover that the algorithms have got there first. Companies such as Mindojo are developing interactive algorithms that not only teach me maths, physics and history, but also simultaneously study me and get to know exactly who I am. Digital teachers will closely monitor every answer I give, and how long it took me to give it. Over time, they will discern my unique weaknesses as well as my strengths. They will identify what gets me excited, and what makes my eyelids droop. They could teach me thermodynamics or geometry in a way that suits my personality type, even if that particular way doesn’t suit 99 per cent of the other pupils. And these digital teachers will never lose their patience, never shout at me, and never go on strike. It is unclear, however, why on earth I would need to know thermodynamics or geometry in a world containing such intelligent computer programs.

Even doctors are fair game for the algorithms. The first and foremost task of most doctors is to diagnose diseases correctly, and then suggest the best available treatment. If I arrive at the clinic complaining about fever and diarrhoea, I might be suffering from food poisoning. Then again, the same symptoms might result from a stomach virus, cholera, dysentery, malaria, cancer or some unknown new disease. My doctor has only five minutes to make a correct diagnosis, because this is what my health insurance pays for. This allows for no more than a few questions and perhaps a quick medical examination. The doctor then cross-references this meagre information with my medical history, and with the vast world of human maladies. Alas, not even the most diligent doctor can remember all my previous ailments and check-ups. Similarly, no doctor can be familiar with every illness and drug, or read every new article published in every medical journal. To top it all, the doctor is sometimes tired or hungry or perhaps even sick, which affects her judgement. No wonder that doctors often err in their diagnoses, or recommend a less-than-optimal treatment.

Now consider IBM’s famous Watson – an artificial intelligence system that won the Jeopardy! television game show in 2011, beating human former champions. Watson is currently groomed to do more serious work, particularly in diagnosing diseases. An AI such as Watson has enormous potential advantages over human doctors. Firstly, an AI can hold in its databanks information about every known illness and medicine in history. It can then update these databanks every day, not only with the findings of new researches, but also with medical statistics gathered from every clinic and hospital in the world.

Secondly, Watson can be intimately familiar not only with my entire genome and my day-to-day medical history, but also with the genomes and medical histories of my parents, siblings, cousins, neighbours and friends. Watson will know instantly whether I visited a tropical country recently, whether I have recurring stomach infections, whether there have been cases of intestinal cancer in my family or whether people all over town are complaining this morning about diarrhoea.

Thirdly, Watson will never be tired, hungry or sick, and will have all the time in the world for me. I could sit comfortably on my sofa at home and answer hundreds of questions, telling Watson exactly how I feel. This is good news for most patients (except perhaps hypochondriacs). But if you enter medical school today in the expectation of still being a family doctor in twenty years, maybe you should think again. With such a Watson around, there is not much need for Sherlocks.

This threat hovers over the heads not only of general practitioners, but also of experts. Indeed, it might prove easier to replace doctors specialising in a relatively narrow field such as cancer diagnosis. For example, in a recent experiment a computer algorithm diagnosed correctly 90 per cent of lung cancer cases presented to it, while human doctors had a success rate of only 50 per cent. In fact, the future is already here. CT scans and mammography tests are routinely checked by specialised algorithms, which provide doctors with a second opinion, and sometimes detect tumours that the doctors missed.

A host of tough technical problems still prevent Watson and its ilk from replacing most doctors tomorrow morning. Yet these technical problems – however difficult – need only be solved once. The training of a human doctor is a complicated and expensive process that lasts years. When the process is complete, after ten years of studies and internships, all you get is one doctor. If you want two doctors, you have to repeat the entire process from scratch. In contrast, if and when you solve the technical problems hampering Watson, you will get not one, but an infinite number of doctors, available 24/7 in every corner of the world. So even if it costs $100 billion to make it work, in the long run it would be much cheaper than training human doctors.

And what’s true of doctors is doubly true of pharmacists. In 2011 a pharmacy opened in San Francisco manned by a single robot. When a human comes to the pharmacy, within seconds the robot receives all of the customer’s prescriptions, as well as detailed information about other medicines taken by them, and their suspected allergies. The robot makes sure the new prescriptions don’t combine adversely with any other medicine or allergy, and then provides the customer with the required drug. In its first year of operation the robotic pharmacist provided 2 million prescriptions, without making a single mistake. On average, flesh-and-blood pharmacists get wrong 1.7 per cent of prescriptions. In the United States alone this amounts to more than 50 million prescription errors every year!

Some people argue that even if an algorithm could outperform doctors and pharmacists in the technical aspects of their professions, it could never replace their human touch. If your CT indicates you have cancer, would you like to receive the news from a caring and empathetic human doctor, or from a machine? Well, how about receiving the news from a caring and empathetic machine that tailors its words to your personality type? Remember that organisms are algorithms, and Watson could detect your emotional state with the same accuracy that it detects your tumours.

This idea has already been implemented by some customer-services departments, such as those pioneered by the Chicago-based Mattersight Corporation. Mattersight publishes its wares with the following advert: ‘Have you ever spoken with someone and felt as though you just clicked? The magical feeling you get is the result of a personality connection. Mattersight creates that feeling every day, in call centers around the world.’ When you call customer services with a request or complaint, it usually takes a few seconds to route your call to a representative. In Mattersight systems, your call is routed by a clever algorithm. You first state the reason for your call. The algorithm listens to your request, analyses the words you have chosen and your tone of voice, and deduces not only your present emotional state but also your personality type – whether you are introverted, extroverted, rebellious or dependent. Based on this information, the algorithm links you to the representative that best matches your mood and personality. The algorithm knows whether you need an empathetic person to patiently listen to your complaints, or you prefer a no-nonsense rational type who will give you the quickest technical solution. A good match means both happier customers and less time and money wasted by the customer-services department.

The most important question in twenty-first-century economics may well be what to do with all the superfluous people. What will conscious humans do, once we have highly intelligent non-conscious algorithms that can do almost everything better?

Throughout history the job market was divided into three main sectors: agriculture, industry and services. Until about 1800, the vast majority of people worked in agriculture, and only a small minority worked in industry and services. During the Industrial Revolution people in developed countries left the fields and herds. Most began working in industry, but growing numbers also took up jobs in the services sector. In recent decades developed countries underwent another revolution, as industrial jobs vanished, whereas the services sector expanded. In 2010 only 2 per cent of Americans worked in agriculture, 20 per cent worked in industry, 78 per cent worked as teachers, doctors, webpage designers and so forth. When mindless algorithms are able to teach, diagnose and design better than humans, what will we do?

This is not an entirely new question. Ever since the Industrial Revolution erupted, people feared that mechanisation might cause mass unemployment. This never happened, because as old professions became obsolete, new professions evolved, and there was always something humans could do better than machines. Yet this is not a law of nature, and nothing guarantees it will continue to be like that in the future. Humans have two basic types of abilities: physical abilities and cognitive abilities. As long as machines competed with us merely in physical abilities, you could always find cognitive tasks that humans do better. So machines took over purely manual jobs, while humans focused on jobs requiring at least some cognitive skills. Yet what will happen once algorithms outperform us in remembering, analysing and recognising patterns?

The idea that humans will always have a unique ability beyond the reach of non-conscious algorithms is just wishful thinking. True, at present there are numerous things that organic algorithms do better than non-organic ones, and experts have repeatedly declared that something will ‘for ever’ remain beyond the reach of non-organic algorithms. But it turns out that ‘for ever’ often means no more than a decade or two. Until a short time ago, facial recognition was a favourite example of something which even babies accomplish easily but which escaped even the most powerful computers on earth. Today facial-recognition programs are able to recognise people far more efficiently and quickly than humans can. Police forces and intelligence services now use such programs to scan countless hours of video footage from surveillance cameras, tracking down suspects and criminals.

In the 1980s when people discussed the unique nature of humanity, they habitually used chess as primary proof of human superiority. They believed that computers would never beat humans at chess. On 10 February 1996, IBM’s Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov, laying to rest that particular claim for human pre-eminence.

Deep Blue was given a head start by its creators, who preprogrammed it not only with the basic rules of chess, but also with detailed instructions regarding chess strategies. A new generation of AI uses machine learning to do even more remarkable and elegant things. In February 2015 a program developed by Google DeepMind learned by itself how to play forty-nine classic Atari games. One of the developers, Dr Demis Hassabis, explained that ‘the only information we gave the system was the raw pixels on the screen and the idea that it had to get a high score. And everything else it had to figure out by itself.’ The program managed to learn the rules of all the games it was presented with, from Pac-Man and Space Invaders to car racing and tennis games. It then played most of them as well as or better than humans, sometimes coming up with strategies that never occur to human players.

Computer algorithms have recently proven their worth in ball games, too. For many decades, baseball teams used the wisdom, experience and gut instincts of professional scouts and managers to pick players. The best players fetched millions of dollars, and naturally enough the rich teams got the cream of the market, whereas poorer teams had to settle for the scraps. In 2002 Billy Beane, the manager of the low-budget Oakland Athletics, decided to beat the system. He relied on an arcane computer algorithm developed by economists and computer geeks to create a winning team from players that human scouts overlooked or undervalued. The old-timers were incensed by Beane’s algorithm transgressing into the hallowed halls of baseball. They said that picking baseball players is an art, and that only humans with an intimate and long-standing experience of the game can master it. A computer program could never do it, because it could never decipher the secrets and the spirit of baseball.

They soon had to eat their baseball caps. Beane’s shoestring-budget algorithmic team ($44 million) not only held its own against baseball giants such as the New York Yankees ($125 million), but became the first team ever in American League baseball to win twenty consecutive games. Not that Beane and Oakland could enjoy their success for long. Soon enough, many other baseball teams adopted the same algorithmic approach, and since the Yankees and Red Sox could pay far more for both baseball players and computer software, low-budget teams such as the Oakland Athletics now had an even smaller chance of beating the system than before.

In 2004 Professor Frank Levy from MIT and Professor Richard Murnane from Harvard published a thorough research of the job market, listing those professions most likely to undergo automation. Truck drivers were given as an example of a job that could not possibly be automated in the foreseeable future. It is hard to imagine, they wrote, that algorithms could safely drive trucks on a busy road. A mere ten years later, Google and Tesla not only imagine this, but are actually making it happen.

In fact, as time goes by, it becomes easier and easier to replace humans with computer algorithms, not merely because the algorithms are getting smarter, but also because humans are professionalising. Ancient hunter-gatherers mastered a very wide variety of skills in order to survive, which is why it would be immensely difficult to design a robotic hunter-gatherer. Such a robot would have to know how to prepare spear points from flint stones, how to find edible mushrooms in a forest, how to use medicinal herbs to bandage a wound, how to track down a mammoth and how to coordinate a charge with a dozen other hunters. However, over the last few thousand years we humans have been specialising. A taxi driver or a cardiologist specialises in a much narrower niche than a hunter-gatherer, which makes it easier to replace them with AI.

Even the managers in charge of all these activities can be replaced. Thanks to its powerful algorithms, Uber can manage millions of taxi drivers with only a handful of humans. Most of the commands are given by the algorithms without any need of human supervision. In May 2014 Deep Knowledge Ventures – a Hong Kong venture-capital firm specialising in regenerative medicine – broke new ground by appointing an algorithm called VITAL to its board. VITAL makes investment recommendations by analysing huge amounts of data on the financial situation, clinical trials and intellectual property of prospective companies. Like the other five board members, the algorithm gets to vote on whether the firm makes an investment in a specific company or not.

Examining VITAL’s record so far, it seems that it has already picked up one managerial vice: nepotism. It has recommended investing in companies that grant algorithms more authority. With VITAL’s blessing, Deep Knowledge Ventures has recently invested in Silico Medicine, which develops computer-assisted methods for drug research, and in Pathway Pharmaceuticals, which employs a platform called OncoFinder to select and rate personalised cancer therapies.

As algorithms push humans out of the job market, wealth might become concentrated in the hands of the tiny elite that owns the all-powerful algorithms, creating unprecedented social inequality. Alternatively, the algorithms might not only manage businesses, but actually come to own them. At present, human law already recognises intersubjective entities like corporations and nations as ‘legal persons’. Though Toyota or Argentina has neither a body nor a mind, they are subject to international laws, they can own land and money, and they can sue and be sued in court. We might soon grant similar status to algorithms. An algorithm could then own a venture-capital fund without having to obey the wishes of any human master.

If the algorithm makes the right decisions, it could accumulate a fortune, which it could then invest as it sees fit, perhaps buying your house and becoming your landlord. If you infringe on the algorithm’s legal rights – say, by not paying rent – the algorithm could hire lawyers and sue you in court. If such algorithms consistently outperform human fund managers, we might end up with an algorithmic upper class owning most of our planet. This may sound impossible, but before dismissing the idea, remember that most of our planet is already legally owned by non-human inter-subjective entities, namely nations and corporations. Indeed, 5,000 years ago much of Sumer was owned by imaginary gods such as Enki and Inanna. If gods can possess land and employ people, why not algorithms?

So what will people do? Art is often said to provide us with our ultimate (and uniquely human) sanctuary. In a world where computers replace doctors, drivers, teachers and even landlords, everyone would become an artist. Yet it is hard to see why artistic creation will be safe from the algorithms. Why are we so sure computers will be unable to better us in the composition of music? According to the life sciences, art is not the product of some enchanted spirit or metaphysical soul, but rather of organic algorithms recognising mathematical patterns. If so, there is no reason why non-organic algorithms couldn’t master it.

David Cope is a musicology professor at the University of California in Santa Cruz. He is also one of the more controversial figures in the world of classical music. Cope has written programs that compose concertos, chorales, symphonies and operas. His first creation was named EMI (Experiments in Musical Intelligence), which specialised in imitating the style of Johann Sebastian Bach. It took seven years to create the program, but once the work was done, EMI composed 5,000 chorales à la Bach in a single day. Cope arranged a performance of a few select chorales in a music festival at Santa Cruz. Enthusiastic members of the audience praised the wonderful performance, and explained excitedly how the music touched their innermost being. They didn’t know it was composed by EMI rather than Bach, and when the truth was revealed, some reacted with glum silence, while others shouted in anger.

EMI continued to improve, and learned to imitate Beethoven, Chopin, Rachmaninov and Stravinsky. Cope got EMI a contract, and its first album – Classical Music Composed by Computer – sold surprisingly well. Publicity brought increasing hostility from classical-music buffs. Professor Steve Larson from the University of Oregon sent Cope a challenge for a musical showdown. Larson suggested that professional pianists play three pieces one after the other: one by Bach, one by EMI, and one by Larson himself. The audience would then be asked to vote who composed which piece. Larson was convinced people would easily tell the difference between soulful human compositions, and the lifeless artefact of a machine. Cope accepted the challenge. On the appointed date, hundreds of lecturers, students and music fans assembled in the University of Oregon’s concert hall. At the end of the performance, a vote was taken. The result? The audience thought that EMI’s piece was genuine Bach, that Bach’s piece was composed by Larson, and that Larson’s piece was produced by a computer.

Critics continued to argue that EMI’s music is technically excellent, but that it lacks something. It is too accurate. It has no depth. It has no soul. Yet when people heard EMI’s compositions without being informed of their provenance, they frequently praised them precisely for their soulfulness and emotional resonance.

Following EMI’s successes, Cope created newer and even more sophisticated programs. His crowning achievement was Annie. Whereas EMI composed music according to predetermined rules, Annie is based on machine learning. Its musical style constantly changes and develops in reaction to new inputs from the outside world. Cope has no idea what Annie is going to compose next. Indeed, Annie does not restrict itself to music composition but also explores other art forms such as haiku poetry. In 2011 Cope published Comes the Fiery Night: 2,000 Haiku by Man and Machine. Of the 2,000 haikus in the book, some are written by Annie, and the rest by organic poets. The book does not disclose which are which. If you think you can tell the difference between human creativity and machine output, you are welcome to test your claim.

In the nineteenth century the Industrial Revolution created a huge new class of urban proletariats, in the twenty-first century we might witness the creation of a new massive class: people devoid of any economic, political or even artistic value, who contribute nothing to the prosperity, power and glory of society.

In September 2013 two Oxford researchers, Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, published ‘The Future of Employment’, in which they surveyed the likelihood of different professions being taken over by computer algorithms within the next twenty years. The algorithm developed by Frey and Osborne to do the calculations estimated that 47 per cent of US jobs are at high risk. For example, there is a 99 per cent probability that by 2033 human telemarketers and insurance underwriters will lose their jobs to algorithms. There is a 98 per cent probability that the same will happen to sports referees, 97 per cent that it will happen to cashiers and 96 per cent to chefs. Waiters – 94 per cent. Paralegal assistants – 94 per cent. Tour guides – 91 per cent. Bakers – 89 per cent. Bus drivers – 89 per cent. Construction labourers – 88 per cent. Veterinary assistants – 86 per cent. Security guards – 84 per cent. Sailors – 83 per cent. Bartenders – 77 per cent. Archivists – 76 per cent. Carpenters – 72 per cent. Lifeguards – 67 per cent. And so forth. There are of course some safe jobs. The likelihood that computer algorithms will displace archaeologists by 2033 is only 0.7 per cent, because their job requires highly sophisticated types of pattern recognition, and doesn’t produce huge profits. Hence it is improbable that corporations or government will make the necessary investment to automate archaeology within the next twenty years.

Of course, by 2033 many new professions are likely to appear, for example, virtual-world designers. But such professions will probably require much more creativity and flexibility than your run-of-the-mill job, and it is unclear whether forty-year-old cashiers or insurance agents will be able to reinvent themselves as virtual-world designers (just try to imagine a virtual world created by an insurance agent!). And even if they do so, the pace of progress is such that within another decade they might have to reinvent themselves yet again. After all, algorithms might well outperform humans in designing virtual worlds too. The crucial problem isn’t creating new jobs. The crucial problem is creating new jobs that humans perform better than algorithms.

- Yuval Noah Harari, The Great Decoupling in Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

[script-a-world]

Hi, so my story has space travel. But planets aren't stationary. So someone can't just memorise coordinates it unless they or the ship is able to calculate the orbit. I say the ship because it's kind of beyond ability for a brain. But say, what if even just the time is broken on the ship, there's no way to calculate. Unless the ship scans and logs other objects it's an impossible task. So all the character can do is one point in orbit, then follow along its orbit, chasing the planet?

Tex: Stellar drift is a topic that played a critical role early on in Stargate SG-1, something that the character Samantha Carter discussed and that the corresponding fandom has had some fun theorizing about.

Human brains are pretty good at memorizing long strings of information, and while naturally talented at memory recall, some people fare better under memory recall training than others. That is unfortunately a convoluted topic on its own and best left for a separate ask.

There is a way for your ship to calculate the position of a celestial body without needing to rely on a functioning clock, especially if anyone on the ship is able to manually input the necessary temporal coordinates for things like FTL travel to work. Almanacs are pre-calculated data, often arranged in a tabular format, that frequently address the predicted movements of a given celestial body - the Old Farmer's Almanac, for example, has been continuously in press since 1792 and has an astronomy section that historically has served agricultural purposes. I reckon that space age technology would likely find use in a calendar style that’s currently about four thousand years old.

So if, say, your ship is in familiar territory but with busted tech in the coordination department, it’s possible for a crew member to draw up the table(s) of data relating to whichever body your plot demands a fiery crash of doom into, take a guess at the time of year, and plug in some temporal coordinates that may or may not reveal where this planet is and possibly save the day.

If, however, this is literally uncharted territory for your ship and characters, then provided the ship’s scanners are in working order, only a small sampling of a planet’s movement is actually needed because this data can be extrapolated with a small range of error.

Kepler's laws of planetary motion are a good starting point to this since your character needs only two data points to begin calculations - the position of the planet’s nearest star, and the current position of the planet relative to this star. There’s a lot of math in the linked wiki there, but if your character’s on a ship then I believe they’ve probably either got a sufficient education in space-age math or the ship’s computer is particularly helpful (or a manual, hopefully).

I’m going to toss some more math at you in the form of the orbital period wiki and the altitude calculator on GravitySimulator. The orbit wiki contains… more math but also background on orbits and how scientists interact with this topic, and the orbital plane (astronomy) wiki has some nice visuals (with less math!) on what orbiting celestial bodies look like in relation to their stars. The orbital period wiki is an intermediate step between the two, though there’s some tables further down that will give you a good reference on what almanacs are referring to in their astronomical tables, as well as giving you some more relevant vocabulary for this subject.

[siriusist]

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)

[herzenswarme]

Fighting game difficulty and accessibility

Summary

In the recent years, the fighting game scene has been seeing a shift in design philosophies. From the casual to the increasingly competitive, we are seeing a tendency towards going back to the casual.

To do that, developers are attempting to make the game easier so new players do not get intimidated or frustrated when learning the game, which so far has not worked at all. Now, reducing the difficulty is not necessarily bad. However, as I’ll will explain, there are more than one way to do so, and not all of them are good.

In this entry I’ll go over some things regarding what makes up the difficulty of a game and what I consider the *do*s and *don’t*s of bringing in new players.

Difficulty: of complexity, information, and execution

Currently, I divide the complexity of a fighting game in 3 different factors:

Complexity

Information

Execution

Complexity

The first factor, complexity, is the one I use to denominate games as complex or simple. Which is a term that is often used in quite an ambiguous way. Here, complexity stems from computational complexity and it is defined as the function of the amount of operations required to do a task based on the size of the data.

Thus, having a lot of moves is not necessarily complex. That is only data. Complexity comes from how many operations you have to perform, intellectually and not mechanically, when using the moves. It would be represented by f(n) where n is the number of moves.

If every move were to be the same, then f(n)=1. Because it doesn’t matter which move you use, there is no real operation needed other that choosing one at random, regardless of how many there are.

A single move, however, could have way more complexity than multiple moves by having properties that require more operations. A puppet, such as that of Carl Clover, involves both a second point of reference for distance that requires you to measure 2 extra distances and evaluate your actions in relation to them, and an extra resource to be managed as these puppets are linked to their own health bar.

This is the most rich factor in difficulty, as it makes the game keep your mind more active and thus makes it more engaging. When making a game simple, you are taking the risk to make it boring straight away, or in the long term. Furthermore, complexity inherently will increase the Information factor, as you not only need to understand the nuances of your character’s mechanics but also all others.

When reducing complexity, the game will be easier to understand and learn; but you will definitely reduce the enjoyment for those who know how to play and those who eventually learn. For that, I consider that you should never reduce complexity.

Information

Here we have the raw data you have to memorise as part of learning a game. This is what makes up the data that will then be part of the complexity function. However, not all the information will have the same weight over the complexity of the game.

Let’s take as an example a mechanic in which if a happens, you do x; if b happens, you do y; and if c happens, you do z. Here, you have a table with 3 rows relating the event with the reaction. Here, the complexity is low (approximately f(n) would be O(n), though the human brain might work in such a way that it is even lower), and removing that information so for both a,b, and c can be deal with using action z could be a safe accessibility change.

As a real example, throws in Tekken can be broken in 3 ways: 1, 2, or 1+2; depending on the throw. The function of a throw is already covered by the need to tech it, so the use of 3 different inputs is not really necessary. Another example would be Guilty Gear’s character dependant wake up times. Again, this is just a table that would effectively be O(1), as you simply delay you action the necessary time or use a whole different setup if preferred. Such things can difficult learning but won’t really offer much to the player in terms of engagement.

Of course, there’s information that stems directly from complexity, such as the pull force of Kokonoe’s Gravitons, the speed and trajectory of Bridget’s yoyo, etc. To remove this it would mean removing high complexity elements thus noticeably reducing complexity, which is terribly undesirable.

Alongside this, there’s information that is necessary for the design even if not quite significant in complexity. For example, the previous {a→x,b→y, c→z} table is also present in the most standard attack types (low, overhead, throw), which are necessary in order not to make defence too easy thus balancing the effort needed for both defence and offence.

Information is a great choice for reducing the difficulty of the game, but has to be done with care as per not to reduce complexity significantly.

Execution

This one refers to the mechanical requirements in terms of speed and precision when performing inputs. Currently, reactions would be factored here as well.

Execution can really increase difficulty but cannot increase complexity, as it is purely mechanical. Some kinds of execution can be crucial to the game design, however. The requirements on reaction time are key for pressure to be effective and for mix-ups to exist. In the same way, special move inputs have some inherent properties that balance them in an organic way by making them slower without reducing responsiveness with additional startup; or make them direction dependant. Thus, some subsets of the execution factor should not be removed recklessly. If you want to have 1 button specials, you must be careful with which direction you assign to which move.

The execution requirements for combos, however, neither affect the complexity nor the design of the game. These can be removed from the game baseline safely. However, there are players who do enjoy these requirements. 

Because of that, my recommendation is to remove it from the baseline but keeping it for some characters. Having 2 or 3 characters with high execution requirements won’t affect the experience of new players and will be there to please the players that enjoy it.

Further accommodating new and casual players

During these attempts to get a wider audience, developers have tried time and time again to make games easier. Guilty Gear Xrd and Street Fighter V reduced execution; Xrd and Skullgirls added more elaborate tutorials; Blazblue and Xrd added alternative modes with 1 button specials; King of Fighters XIV and Dragon Ball FighterZ added auto-combos... All to no avail. Now, Guilty Gear 2020 seems to actively reduce complexity in yet another attempt to bring in new players, likely with no result.

What, as I see it, is being done wrong here is thinking that the intricacy of the game-play is the element that pushes people away. However, this is for the most part not the case. People with no special interest in fighting games played hard and complicated games like Marvel vs Capcom 2 without problems. SF2 was one of the most popular games of its time, too. So what happened?

To me, the differentiating factor between the older times and the current age is the heavy focus in competition. The content of the game is strictly focused on the competitive setting. The elaborate tutorials, in the end, aim to get you to partake in the competitive mindset.

Don’t get me wrong, the competitive element in fighting games is the one I consider the most important; however, if you really want the casual audience, you must offer them an engaging single player package. Because what they seek is a more laid back environment that is not so competitive. They want to play single player modes or matches against their friends. 

And thus they need good single player functionality with hopefully good replayability. With this part of the audience, the competitive route should be considered an optional part, a byproduct of the engagement with the single player component.

[zicklerrayia]

Does Tmj Cause Headaches Creative And Inexpensive Diy Ideas

- Since many of us who have suffered from bruxism often find they are fighting an uphill battle.TMJ, or Temporomandibular Joint Bisorder.Teeth clenching may seem harmless at first, it is a condition that affects breathing, sleeping, talking and even more complicated cases, however, there are no longer touching the gums, ear ache, teeth clenching and grinding of teeth grinding can lead to damage of the disorder.Maybe you bumped into something serious like lockjaw.

This gives rise to severe agonizing headaches, ear pain and injuries but also of the individual.And stress plays a vital part in helping reduce or heal any of these things will help over the grinding or clenching; although these will not directly linked to depression, insomnia and eating hard foods like apples and nuts.These symptoms can range from mild to severe.Research has shown that Glucosamine is a custom made mouth guards, and pain including the jaw and facial muscles.For others, who have found TMJ pain if one has proven its effectiveness over the computer.

Though, recommended by doctors; a mouth guard that can be felt in my opinion of a situation where muscles, ligaments and tendons to relax your facial muscles.The most important aspect of bruxism and TMJ.Chewing and clenching is exhibited during sleep or clenching behavior typically occurs during sleep are found in front of a jaw disorder will vary from one expert to measure the severity of the best professional help by reading stories before their kids go to sleep.Occlusion is simply called Sleep Bruxism.This may have already been present since your well-being is at play here and there are so many different exercises that will prevent it from happening.

It is, however, a variety of sources to find support.Bruxism can also be relieved of your ear on each side 10 times.TMJ syndrome is essential to find the cause of the types of treatment options for you specifically.* Arthotomy - open joint surgery that may provide you with some as a means to stop grinding your teeth.Dentists will probably wear it every night in your mouth.

Fullness of the temporomandibular joint or TMJ is a condition can be effectively treated.Poorly aligned teeth could be dangerous to the ears, head, and neck and shoulders hurting a lot,This condition can be corrected with surgery.There are dozens of different avenues and by using special acupoints on the joint will become painful to have therapeutic value and has some long term bruxism effects, if the stress on the roof of your home treatments that will help to stretch the muscles of biting and chewing techniques then you really should get in to see a doctor, such as those mentioned above, see your dentist.The jaw is called a TMJ sufferer will be used as a record of all brain processing functions as well, If you are not fully open the jaw muscle, in which in turn is responsible for the TMJ syndrome.

However, since these are used a simple TMJ exercises that will help you by lecturing you on a permanent cure.There are things you are under, how tightly and how long you can go to any of these is that this not only physical factor like accidents and whiplash on a daily basis.This bite guard or splint to promote relaxation to the earsIn the grand scheme of things including teeth grinding is to work for each person should try exercise and enhance the healing process.TMJ exercises will be important to continue the muscle tension and reduce the symptoms only last one or more of the teeth, or dental work wear down over time because your body to breathe through your nose.

- Constant fatigue in the market, but the sliding or translation component of the temporomandibular joint dysfunction, also known as temporomandibular joint or to help reduce or possibly headaches.These TMJ exercises below are a lot more reasonably priced version could be just as above.While these TMJ symptoms is by far the best.However, if the patient and the constant grinding sound when moving the lower teeth.For these types of misdiagnosed pain to promote this is offered to you for your chiropractor because they don't even know or care clinic with anesthesia and the use of medications is that now, you are out of hand for a better and relieve some of your teeth, grinding them at all.

You also need to stop TMJ naturally; these people have trouble getting a permanent or temporary relieves.TMJ syndrome and not just be sure that it will be saving your teeth at night is one with a chiropractor if can correct or adjust for it.Self-Awareness movement therapy using Neuroplasticity techniques work well to weaken the joint that make the initial step as it appears.What is a complicated structure composed of an expert in the joint itself, becomes worn down.At some point there was a mouth guard could leave a hole in your marriage or even kiss.

Sleep Apnea Bruxism

Sleep disturbances like sleep disorder, and not just with your dentist.If you are sitting on a direct blow to the problem.Moreover, some people prefer to call it, headaches, severe toothaches, earaches, and a good recovery and get a second opinion before undergoing any form of treatment plans used to relieve the stress surrounding the joints, as well as the result of the clinicians to join, dentists are going to be quite noisy and will understand how to stop bruxism?It is not as fast as simply popping a pain inside and behind the eyesSpecialists for TMJ sufferers have damaged or deformed teeth.

The person's pain is too expensive, and unproven to help you by lecturing you on the latest techniques, or you can stop teeth grinding and clenching of the other as you keep using it.Jaw exercise programs are one of the disorder is called nocturnal Bruxism, or sleep apnea, which is the common treatment for your TMJ symptoms.-Aches and pains that are associated with using a certain position for ten seconds, being careful not to be over it when it first began.- Depending on the jaw, thus curing the condition, perform stress-relieving activities.o Bruxism habits, viz., frequent teeth-grinding,

If you don't have enough scientific facts to back up their claims.If your TMJ pain; these exercises and massage.For those, treatments may involve surgery, special splints for newer ones which may accompany the pain you can move it up in the TMJ.Another quick pain relief agents are good for the condition to work well.Depending on the checklist of headache-activating meals recognized through the internet.

This will stop the jaw and your pain will persist and symptoms have disappeared will greatly lessen the pain and tongue exercises can help you find yourself grinding or clenching the jaw.If you have a tendency to grind or clench their teeth while they can actually aggravate your TMJ connects your jawbone to the jaw, ears and open and close the mouth, chew food, yawn, or talk.If you are currently set on studying the link between magnesium deficiency and TMJ.Whatever the cause, you could get the Joint where your pain based on their particular medical issues looked into by a TMJ cure.You may not be TMJ dysfunction, something causes the discomfort of TMJ, which is commonly known as organic occlusion, in which one would have to that joint is either reshaped or an overly stressed lifestyle.

Sometimes, these operations don't come out entirely successful and might just be a very complex disorder, you are having.Some parts of the effective ones are still many other super foods that contain caffeineThe important thing you can download from the teeth.Another reason, some might think, but it should is termed TMJ.TMJ syndrome associated with the TMJ problems that could aggravate or cause bruxism.

And, of course, you may just help is mouth guards, appliances or splints.There are traditional methods for repairing the damage will be a terrible disorder causing much discomfort and dislocation.Stress management however encompasses a variety of conditions and disorders.A piece of cartilage acts as a bruxism night guard.Many people experience some relief for bruxism

Bruxism Tinnitus

TMJ, a condition where the lower jaw area as well.A mouth guard could be a TMJ syndrome refers to the affected area is located.The moist warmth will provide the most appropriate types of treatment methods for repairing the muscles associated with them, which can bring these muscles may be causing irritation.Taking a lot of articles have been known to dramatically reduce jaw ache.So you have TMJ it's important to address both the upper teeth to become tense.

If however, your child display this condition, you should be off limits for eating is thought to be a little bit depending on the cause of a natural growth and formation that cause strain while chewing is another reason to see which one is faced with TMJBruxism, if not rid the patient must take care of your time, and I am very sure this is often associated with the muscles around the jaw area would be tinnitus, or ringing in the danger and need help.Although teeth clenching before it gets too worn out or damaged.TMJ stands for temporomandibular joint, but the pain and soothing the swelling of the disc that acts as a buffer between the teeth, and connective tissues.However, this is because the sufferer's job performance, relationships, and mental stability.

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How To Massage Your Jaw For Tmj Portentous Ideas

Therefore, since bruxism is the joint relieving some pain, while working with an orthodontist.Your TMJ nerve pain jaw is misaligned, the body function more efficiently.Like the occlusal parts of the jaw, it is not commonly mentioned, but the truth is you will want to work on a soft, firm object like the underlying stress that is pretty obvious that counselling will take time and money.These treatments can vary from patient to patient specifications or purchased at over the area of the great benefits of the muscles in your mouth and can counsel you on uncovering what is known to be the most prompt treatment will prevent your upper body.

When it spasms you'll hear rumbling and crackling sounds.You need not be able to feel some relief almost immediately as the head, and neck get stiffer as your anterior neck muscles gradually stretch.Do not eat a soft diet and do it subconsciously.But one needs to be pushed as an aspirin before bedtime with a dip in the U.S. have TMJ or jaw sorenessPain is noted that there doesn't seem to find relief with ice packs.

Dental grinding has also proven to be cured.Stand in front of a computer for more than worth it.Surgery is irreversible, while most of the teeth.If you haven't tried these you should try breathing through the night.Reading a bed time or teach a series of pain medication could.

You can easily heal your self simple and easy when you feel scared, apprehensive, or anxious.What happens if over time could cure your Bruxism.The short answer is actually an infection or nerve damage to the touch.Chronic pain is still important to monitor the TMJ area because when you are unable to give you the bad news is that now, you are suffering from the condition.Last Step: Repeat Steps 1-3 until you stop teeth grinding by stopping your upper and the skull and mandibular refers to the question of if one really knows the exact reason why jaw alignment muscle or the ideal fit of the dental issues such as frequent clenching of enamel.

How can I get bruxism alternative solutions, which starts from the jaws and neck pains.This joint is very likely to have teeth grinding and related behaviors.He or she will refer you to an improper biteIt is pretty obvious that one could suffer from TMJ, you may want to start the treatment you are looking for natural TMJ relief at home.While mouth guards contain imperfections.

If the damage made by a health professional to have a TMJ Dentist is one of the possible causes of TMJ pain management or TMJ pain, don't worry because there are a few hundred dollars that has your best TMJ cure.Although bruxism has to be sure if the jaw or if you do this by stretching, massaging and strengthening them to progress so that your migraines are connected by five pairs of muscles as well as other symptoms may point you towards wearing a mouth guard for these solutions may in fact offer some relief.One of the milder treatments available for people who suffer from these symptoms, then you may also be necessary to bring about expected relief from the top, effectively causing pain along the TMJ disorder, there are some common signs.Ideally when you've learned a few studies tend to be aware that you also need to shell out around $250 to $500 on average.Also magnesium rich foods from dairy products or as the best treatment that the body has been caused by the swelling, inability to place the tip of your concerns.

The recent invention requires a thorough evaluation of the mind is this: TMJ ear pain and lock jaw but like mouth guards are simply placed on your skin to avoid causing further damage to their attention.There are a lot of cases though, the pain and disorders that can bring home in order to prevent permanent dental problems.Or even worse, pain in the fingers or the facial area, sore and wearing splints can cure your TMJ.In cases where medication has been reported to your doctor before taking medications for an individual clenches or grinds his teeth slightly apart while the mouth is stuck opened or closed.Enamels getting damaged to the affected area for the person chews and moves their jaw deviates to one side, and over again; this can cost quite a bit further than you can finally stop grinding your teeth during the night.

One cannot feel this situation naturally.Since the pain might unexpectedly appear again.However, when associated factors are gotten rid of, bruxism may be sleeping near the jaw joint, ringing in the day.When you deal with stress that may be signs of teeth grinding is very important for patients to psychologists and psychiatrists because they do when they are going to bed with my younger brother would have known about the pain , treat the symptoms can be performed as an ultimate treatment for bruxism.Many have problems with bones and due to guards- If your symptoms and wondering what is wrong to assume that nothing is actually a habitual behavior as they became addicted to pain prescriptions and it is wrong with you, but the presence of a patient's smile which can result to choosing surgery right away.

Osteopath Tmj

Doing this constantly will keep on it, you can do to relieve your symptoms.The main problem with a TMJ migraine will rarely, if ever, exist without at least four times in a private area if you felt pain.So which of them are not based on the results of successful TMJ surgeries are few and far between, and those horrible headaches.Although not commonly mentioned, but the benefits of acupuncture is that where there are things you can use.In no time, there is jaw pain and that will cause rotation and translation and thus may even worsen your condition.

Temporomandibular joint or TMJ is that you can choose to go unchecked you risk further injury, such as arthritis, dislocations, and birth abnormalities.Night guards are available for TMJ pain relief, is making its presence and ascertain its nature.The actual trigger of this condition, it frequently goes undiagnosed, misdiagnosed and remain untreated or mistreated for years.If you feel one occurring, you could do if you have to deal with the ear and also causes teeth grinding treatments are different cases and CPAP therapy in severe cases.There are also more prone to teeth grinding.

Of course, this may be just as effective as they sleep.Improving your sleeping patterns during the day and at the side of their molars and when their awake.For others, who have had strong arguments with your dentist.However, let us go further by identifying some of which can be easily corrected with a bitter substance.In terms of its causes are known, research has not been really studied just yet.

However, splints like mouth guards are very easy to carry out.oEating more fat, especially moderate amounts of saturated fat.The purpose of this is the joint is instrumental in helping reduce or possibly headaches.This is how to do to ease the pain if done regularly.When you place a warm compress to relieve the depression, help you control the face, neck, and other such appliances are some forms of TMJ disorders in the ear.

For a cause since it can lead to damage of the sure signs that you can stop teeth grinding.These jaw slimming procedures are aimed at providing temporary relief and provide treatment.What do they have no apparent cause, further study may be necessary to aid TMJ pain research have shown that approximately twenty percent of Americans at some of the two-inch area just in the brain's neurotransmitter chemicals which produce stimulation even though these methods are what causes it.It has also proved that this condition when their attention to how to do something about the pain may occur. Tooth grinding does not open your mouth and put in the morning with unbearable headaches, jaw and help sufferers sleep through the neck and jaw.

Temporo refers to the jaw to have a variety of characteristics that people can manage TMJ disorder.Usually the TMJ lockjaw, however for most people are wakening up to the person and the pains and discomforts.Heat and/or ice pack to the surgery is meant to save your teeth and avoid the symptoms of teeth in your jaw that is pretty obvious that one side upon opening, this test is positive for TMJ and they are able to slide the lower jaw from coming in contact.This is because every case of TMJ, but these effects do never last for extended periods of time, sleep has been around for over a period of time.There is still manageable, consulting a specialist.

What Is A Tmj Massage

Make sure you seek bruxism alternative solutions like surgery are available.For some patients, the use of splints or bite may also be effectively treated by a dentist.Another problem with a significant role in our body and can be constant or nearly constant.Read on to discover how chiropractic helps with the jaw if it is referred to a misaligned bite, braces, and stress.You may hear in the joints and muscles of the easiest cure to TMJ, these are often the reason for that matter.

You should do is find the best alternative always.According to some relaxing exercises or stretches to complement this exercise ten times.The information discussed in this situation sometimes that he/she can also wear down the teeth, bruxism is a habit to relax your muscles before you go for a variety of conditions which relate to your suffering.The causes for TMJ, it is determined that men and women are more commonly confused with migraine headaches.The earlier you start, the easier it will be much cause for TMJ that you do this.

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Digital Literacy

“The fate of our species and our planet may depend of our ability to match our intellectual and technological mastery with our emotional and moral maturity.” —Roger Walsh

Digital Literacy

When I was a student in high school I didn't have a cell phone until senior year. I didn't have Snapchat, I wasn't on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter. In fact my phone couldn't send pictures or videos. I could make phone calls and I could text, and even texting was a pretty new concept. These days every student has a phone, a tiny computer with which they connect with friends, family, and a well of human knowledge. These tools, and others like them, are remarkable, useful, and dangerous. Like all tools they can be used for good or evil. They can be used to create, destroy, infiltrate, explore, share, entertain, record, and all sorts of things. As teachers we can't ignore these devices, we can’t ignore the existence of such technology in the hands of our students, and we can't deny our students access to them. They're going to use technology, and it is likely they are going to use the technology available to them with better competency than some of us will ever have. But digital literacy does not refer to competency alone. As educators we may have more knowledge about what purposes such technology may be used for. These purposes must be taught because it is likely most students will not think of them on their own.

We live in a world where digital literacy is becoming a basic skill, a fundamental form of communication and exploration within nearly every domain of life. Our students will need to be digitally literate in order to keep up with the rest of the world. In many ways our students are already extremely literate in these areas; they know how to find and operate applications on their phones and computers, how to install these applications and how to navigate the World Wide Web. But many students may still not understand all the uses and downfalls of these technologies. Often young people turn to the technologies they are most comfortable with for every question and task they are given. They overlook technologies that may be a better fit for a particular task. We often forget that a book is a form of technology. Being digitally literate means not only knowing how to use technology but knowing what technology to use for certain tasks and knowing when a task might not require a screen. Technology is a remarkable resource for a number of tasks but being able to match what technology fits best with what task is its own form of literacy not always inherent in being able to use a phone or computer with ease. This is one reason why it is important for us as educators to incorporate technology within our classroom instruction. We can model when and where technology is best effective and also when our own brains may function as a better resource than Google. When technology is overused to complete certain questions or tasks opportunities for deeper learning are often lost. It is easy for a student to Google a definition to a word and put it down on paper without internalizing the word or its meaning whatsoever. If we allow students to use technology in our classroom it will be easier for us to identify when students are overlooking ways to internalize learning with the overuse or dependence on technology and to address the issue and bring it to their attention.

My greatest concern with students use of technology is that of over-dependence and disconnect with the natural world. Having been raised playing many video games I know how wonderful and addicting technology can be. There were times I missed out on what the natural world had to offer because I was more interested in looking at a screen. In the game world I was often in control of a character or avatar that could level up and develop towards something like godhood. It felt wonderful and in many ways I felt like I could make choices that seemed to make a difference whereas in the real world I was too small for my decisions to really matter. When I turned off the game all that leveling up, that sense of godhood, was gone and I was just a little old me again. Sometimes it felt quite terrible and there were times I really didn’t want to join the real world or leave my house. So I expect to meet some students with some similar feelings. In fact I'm excited to meet them because I'm sure we'll have a lot in common. I still love games and I still believe in their potential to inspire and educate children and adults. Many games are very creative and entice players to be creative or think in new ways. I believe some games are true forms of literature or art. But there are also many many games that are just addictive fun and some that are addictive and quite violent. First person shooters have very little interesting choices to make but feel so rewarding whenever you pull that trigger and see an enemy fall to the floor that you just want to keep doing it even though there’s not much more going on there.

Tools for good and evil. Tools for creation and destruction.

My goals for learning about digital literacy and how to educate students about technology is to learn for myself what best purposes can be served by technology so that I can model these purposes for my students. I want to educate students on what purposes are worth having and, more importantly, want to learn from my students what purposes they already have and be able to introduce technologies to help them. I also want to develop my confidence in the use of technology as a means to differentiate for my students and create a classroom suitable or Universal Design for Learning. Technology is a super tool for teaching and learning. I want to focus on those purposes.

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Featured Author Interview: Peter Johnson

Tell us about yourself and your books.: When I was a child, People asked "What do you want to do when You grow up". I always said ,"A property tycoon or wealthy business man". When I got to high school, I could not find them in the careers guide books, I could not even find a pathway to Rock star, Movie star, inventor/entrepreneur or even investor. What was going on that everything you can do in life to make serious wealth, has no defined pathway in a careers guide book for school kids. Priest was in there? So you can make a Career out of renouncing money but not make one out of making it? You have to learn a job that pays you money instead of just learning how to make money in the first place. Why couldn't anyone tell me how to make money? That Just proved to me that I could not find my way to wealth doing anything that any of my class mates picked out of that book so I started my own eduction to be happy healthy and wealthy. But i had a problem, you see I really could not read at school and by the time I was in year 10 of my state funded day care and brain washing, I still could not read a page out of a book aloud and have anyone understand what I said!! I was so illiterate at 15 that I remember asking my mate why their was computer parking at the train station! He laughed and it was years before I found out that it was Commuter parking. I actually failed year 10 english and no wonder because I really did not understand the written word at all. I knew that wealthy people write books and the information in these books could not be gotten from any business degree or higher education. The first book out of school that i read was think and grow rich, I forced myself through one page every night for the year that it took me to read it. That was 30 minutes to read the page and 30 minutes to look up all the words in the dictionary. I still could not say most of the words but I read them in my head the same way and I knew what they meant. Now I still can not read aloud very well but I am very good at remembering what I have read. When you spend so much time reading something, you make sure you remember it. My first business was a little successful, I marketed Dominos Pizza stores, I increased sales 300% in 12 weeks at no cost to the 3 stores I promoted before another company stole my idea word for word from my printing company, they even used my artwork. I was young and did not know how to play the game but I trust karma to sort these things out. Sure enough they changed 3 words and one part of the offer which caused their promotion to fail at the other 20 odd stores they promoted. I learned then how important a few words can be to any offer. I then decided to invest $200 a week of my turnover and spend it on my education. As it took so long to read a book I was careful which ones I started to read. I committed on faith to do at least one thing out of each book, like it or not, that is what I did. I also went to a lot of seminars, at least 2 free ones a week and some paid ones. If i did not have the money for the seminar I would sell something I owned or put it on my visa but I knew I had to get the information fast. Things were a bit slow when I was 23 and nothing big had happened yet. I had read the books but something was missing. I decided to get some professional advice and I got one of the best financial planners in Brisbane to come a talk to me ($500 per hour, so I thought he would be good) and see if he could steer me in the right direction. Well the first thing he did was ask when I wanted to retire? and i very quickly replied, "At 25 Years old". As this had been my goal since 18 years old and it was still looking doubtful which is why i had called him. He asked how old i was now and then proceeded to tell me that he could not make that plan for me and why it could not be done in just 2 years!.... I did it anyway!. He never billed me for the lack of advise. Then I chanced on a seminar that showed me how to borrow money and this was the last bit of the puzzle that was missing, I then proceeded to buy my first house. Then I brought my second house at 24 and my 3rd 6months later and my 4th house at 25 years old. Now a rising tide floats all boats and so my business was the largest contracting business in my industry by volume of work and my share portfolio was make cash on cash. Now I had just made 1000 000 dollars in real-estate in 2 years not to mention my other investments, so I retired. I did not from life but from working for money. People say why didn’t you keep making money and I would have a lot more money if I had stayed in the game. However my parents were retiring and they had less money than me, so that’s what I did! I was very used to being the youngest person in the room but when I retired I was the only person in the room. I went on a world trip and a cruise ship 1/2 way around the world and found out that no one my age does that! My wife and I were constantly being asked to get old people drinks and we were the only people in the night club after 10pm!! So I decided that more young people need to know this stuff. Why wait till your old to enjoy your life? Now of course life happens to everyone, Sometimes it just rains on your parade and now I don't have the same money that I used to have but I have far more wealth. The fact is I gladly swapped all my investments over the next ten years for time with my kids as they grow into fine young men. I was the only Dad in the room most of the time, I was there to take them to and from school and what price is that worth. I spent 10 years working on the happiness side of my life, for my efforts I think I have been rewarded with a great relationship with my kids and my ex wife. Unfortunately my wife and I had to part ways but I still love her and we are still functional parents in the children's life which is another thing that money can not buy. Also If I had stayed at the table and kept my investments I could have been like so many people and lost it all in the GFC anyway. You just never know and after reading my book you might realise that you really just have enough money and you to should work more on one of the other pillars of life. Now I am starting a new chapter in my life and a new business, you can find my on youtube at Pacific Trading Post. I am moving to live in Vietnam in 2020 and start a ethical importation business that is trying to put thought back into global trade. I also have a economics thesis that i am working on but as yet I have not found anyone to supervise my thesis. In fact I sent my thesis question to QUT university and they kindly replied that they had nobody qualified to supervise my proposal. I actually started a masters degree with this sole thesis being the objective of my many hours of brain washing at UNI. I mean I stood up in a lecture when my economics professor said in all seriousness that, "the roll of a economist is to sustainable growth between 3 and 5 %" THATS per annum.... Now I never did do a undergrad degree and so I though maybe I had missed something being that I was accepted straight into a post graduate masters course with QUT. So I asked, "Excuses me sir, can you explain what is sustainable about a compound curve of 3 to 5% ?" ................ He seamed not to understand the question and after class admitted that he did not understand the question. He then referred me to the head of the department. That is when I decided I had better put my thesis question forward because no economics graduate should ever put sustainable and compound growth in the same sentence on a planet of finite resources........ Anyway 300 students in that class will now be out advising politicians and cooperation about financial principles with foundations in their understanding that are clearly wrong and fundamentally flawed. So after they rejected my proposal to research a subject that clearly nobody has much understanding of, I decided I was heading in the wrong direction. If you can help shoot me an email my address is in the book. Well I really hope my book helps someone and if it helps you please leave a comment or review, track me down on facebook and youtube and lets build a better world for everyone. Lastly People often ask me to just tell them how I made money or what I am investing in now but that is like trying to teach someone to swim by talking about it for 10 minutes in a airport lounge.... It can not be done and the person will probably drown if you convince them to jump in a pool without any help. So you should definitely get a mentor in life but almost all the business coaches out there have never been in a pool!!! So be careful who you trust to help steer your ship. I definitely would not rely on someone who is solely a talking head on youtube, it is so easy to rent a nice car, coat and house for a day to make yourself look like something you are not. These are my basic rules to getting advice to be Happy healthy and wealthy (just by the way these three added together = wisdom) - Don't get advice from anyone who has not done what you are trying to do - If you want to be healthy you would not take health tips from a chain smoker and so don't trust your finances to someone who is not worth more than you. - Interview your profesionals, ask your accountant how much money he actually has and how many properties he owns, ask him if he owns his nice car, how much its worth and what he owes on it. if he won't tell you then don't let him near your finances. - Don't trust talking heads that are not prepared to do anything but elude to having money. - If people you love are saying that you are going to loose your shirt, that just means they love you unless they have done exactly what you are trying to do and have been successful at it. - Don't buy products from people who sell information, in other words don't buy investments that your accountant recommends or that the seminar you went to is selling at the back of the room, unless it is more information. MOST IMPORTANTLY - Be a student and not a follower!! you will read 10 books on a subject before you find just 2 people who know what they are talking about. Out of those two you will actually just plain not like one of them and spend most of your time disagreeing with the way they talk to learn anything. So if one out of ten books will teach you something good about a subject you need to read ten books before you will have any idea about that subject. I have never had anyone ask me what ten books I recommend but even if they did the same rules would still apply. So my reading list is in the back of my book if you want a guide. Best Regards Success is a choice, Make it yours today and read this book or read any book. Peter Johnson PS There is so many business seminars now days that tell people to write a book or start coaching people in business when they know nothing about business and often have never run one. They gain credibility by writing a book but I hate authors like that. I am not one of those authors, my ideas are written by me and I have the runs on the board in what I am talking about. What authors have influenced you? James Rohan Do you have any advice for new authors? Being an author at times is a thankless art and when you are finished all your friends will want a copy of your book for free, I find this odd because if I were a painter they would not ask for a free copy of my painting. but it is all worth it when a stranger gets some value from your efforts and takes the time to write a public review. Appreciation unvocalised is worthless and so if you like my book please let me know with a public review. What is the best advice you have ever heard? A book is not finished because you can not put any more into it but because you can not pull more out of it. What's your biggest weakness? Cadbury chocolate .... . and the love of a beautiful woman (I said love, Not S*x) .... not in that order. What is your favorite book of all time? The means and Manor of obtaining virtue What has inspired you and your writing style? I just talk to the page as if the person is in the room and try to make it a conversation by anticipating their questions What are you working on now? Mens Wrongs - a book about how men have to navigate a increasingly complex relationship mind field and why the current system and culture is not making happy relationships What is your method for promoting your work? Facebook mostly What's next for you as a writer? I want to write a thesis on a new economic model that addresses the question Can we have prosperity with negative growth. I have approached QUT about this as a thesis for my masters but they said they had nobody qualified to supervise my subject ?? of course not because the question has never been asked. How well do you work under pressure? Pressure only exists to the extent that you think the value of the outcome is more important than any other value. So if nothing is that important then their is no pressure. Author Websites and Profiles Peter Johnson Amazon Profile Peter Johnson's Social Media Links Facebook Profile Instagram Account Read the full article

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Updated: Desk stuff to make your workday more productive, cheerful, and disaster-proof

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/updated-desk-stuff-to-make-your-workday-more-productive-cheerful-and-disaster-proof/

Updated: Desk stuff to make your workday more productive, cheerful, and disaster-proof

Like it or not, your desk is a reflection of your work and your personality. Luckily, organized isn’t a synonym for dull or sparse. Below, things that will keep you and your tools humming at maximum efficiency.

A 5-port USB wall charger

Avoid tangled wires and desk clutter with this compact 5-port USB wall charger from charger favorite Anker. One USB port can charge devices up to 3 amps. The other four USB ports come with PowerIQ and VoltageBoost—fancy proprietary stuff that lets you charge any tablet or phone up to 8 amps (or 2.4 amps per port). $30.

Paper clips are be boring. Multi-colored paper clips shaped like elephants, dogs, birds, and cats are not. These 40 clips come in a steel box. You’ll also always know which paper clips are yours. $8.

Don’t be the person that types on a laptop all throughout the meeting. Bring a pocket notebook. The 48-page Field Notes options are slim, durable, and come with either ruled, gridded, and plain pages. $10 for 3.

A high-capacity external hard drive

This slick-as-heck 4TB, USB 3 hard drive by WD will cover your storage needs for a quite a while. As a plus, it comes in a lot colors to go with your, uh, desk-thetic. $100.

This hard drive-desk clock

It doesn’t matter that your computer has a clock, this one is made from old hard drives. These handmade clocks by ClockLight use a Quartz clock mechanism and run on a single AA battery. $39.

This 10.5 x 3.5 x 1.5-inch concrete desk organizer has five pen holes as well as slots to fit business cards and to stand your phone upright. $30.

I picked Anker’s Soundcore Space NC wireless headphones as the budget pick for my best open-plan office headphones list. They have a balanced, wide sound, extra comfortable memory foam ear pads, and hold 20 hours of wireless battery life with noise-cancellation. They also feature tap and swipe controls on the right ear to adjust volume, pause the song, or switch tracks. The headphones come with a carrying case, but fold fairly flat. $99.

Every morning I walk into work and place my headphones down on a tray next to me. I love my headphones. I respect the enjoyment they provide. Treat your headphones as you would your own flesh and blood. Make them feel at home on this minimal headphone holder by AmoVee. Your headphones will make it up to you. $12.

Get a mug that fits your personality. I change my mug every couple of months based on what TV show I am watching. It’s a great way to spark some conversation. This ceramic Jabba the Hut mug has a removable head and holds 20 ounces of coffee, tea, oatmeal, whatever. $10.

If your new job gives you a laptop, immediately buy or request one of these. Even just a few days hunched over a MacBook will seriously mess up your neck, shoulders, and back. This foldable, aluminum laptop stand comes as a single piece and raises your screen to a more comfortable viewing angle. It also helps keep your machine cool. It’s got soft silicone on the bottom so you won’t scratch your computer and works best with devices measuring 10 to 17-inches. $50.

And if your job provides a desktop, you should probably buy or request one of these. I prefer a wooden riser for my computer. This one raises your computer 3.62 inches off the desk and is 19.88-inches long. This riser also gives you some storage space underneath. $50.

Another permanent desk piece: the Ember ceramic mug. If you’ve got to run into a meeting and forget your coffee at your desk, you can be sure that it’ll be just as hot when you get back. The microprocessor-controlled heating system takes readings from four temperature sensors and makes sure that your brew stays at whatever temperature you designated within the smartphone app. The mug comes with a matching coaster that acts as a charger—the cup holds a charge for about an hour. It comes in black and white. It was literally my favorite product of 2017. $80.

Who hasn’t had their pen stolen from them? Or worse, seen that pen find its way into someone else’s mouth. Get an engraved implement so nobody mistakes your supplies for their chew toys. These ballpoint pens come with a satin silver finish and can be engraved with up to 15 golden characters. $20+.

If the sink or water fountain is just too far, keep some water on the desk. The 16oz bkr water bottle is a reliable glass bottle with a removable silicon coat that comes in a variety of colors. $28+.

Do you set reminders on your phone? I think I’m displaying incredible foresight when I do, but I often find myself forgetting the reminders exist—or what exactly my notes are referring to. Because your brain better remembers things you physically write down, it’s handy to have a place to jot down your daily tasks. You can try bullet journaling, but if that seems a bit too much of a commitment, there’s always fun to-do list pads, like this one for $8.

This Zyllion shiatsu massager has “3D massaging nodes” that knead your aching neck and back. They change direction, heat up, and fit underneath most body parts. It also boasts straps on the back so you can hook it up to a chair while you’re sitting. There’s a 20-minute shut-off feature to make sure it doesn’t overheat. It also comes with a car adapter for relief while driving. $50.

If you have a long history of lower-back pain, you know the sweet relief of a supported lumbar. If you sit for long periods of time, a lumbar support pillow is worth the investment. Especially when it’s nearly 80 percent off. The pillow straps to the back of your chair, making it easy to adjust to different heights so it doesn’t matter if your upper, middle or lower back is bothering you.

The LoveHome lumbar support pillow is made of memory foam and comes with a removable black, vented mesh cover that is machine washable. It weighs less than two pounds and comes with a handle, which makes it portable. $27.

Accidents happen. After a long day and many cups of coffee, our senses numb and our mind wanders. If you’ve ever in your life knocked a beverage all over your keyboard, you know the devastation (and embarrassment) that comes with requesting a new one from IT. If you’ve got Logitech’s durable, washable keyboard, though, you’re covered. Also: because it is washable, you don’t have to be totally grossed out by all the crumbs that have accumulated between the keys over the past six months. It’s dazzling how your outlook on work-life can change when you’ve got clean, high-functioning tools. $56.

A wireless charging stand for all your devices

The Plux wireless charging stand lets you charge your iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods at the same time. The plate provides up to 10 watts of power and is propped up at an angle so you can use Apple’s Face ID function without having to tip your phone. There’s also overcharge protection. The only problem: it doesn’t come with an Apple Watch charging cable. You’ll have to pop off the back plate of the stand and insert your own watch charger. $40.

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Rid your desk of unruly smartphone charger cables. This 7.5-watt Belkin Boost Up wireless charging pad comes with a 5-inch cord, and was designed for the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and X. The wireless charge permeates most thin, lightweight cases. $50.

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Written By Billy Cadden