#it was 60 billion right it was something insane

[randomminty]

Hi yes hello I love your octopath art very much :D

Your art style is so nice (also you draw hikari really cute hgjfjdncncnc)

THANK YOUUU i love hikari.beautiful little thing

[paranoidandroidofficial]

Ants from Up There is genuinely the best album of the 2000s [including the 2010s and 2020s] (with 1 exception)

This is the second-best album of the 2000s, beaten out only by a life-changing transcendental experience in a cd case trying to be an album (LYSFLATH by Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Listen to it. right now. it's so good.). I could ramble on for HOURS about how great AfuT is, but I wanna keep it brief, so I wanna look at it from a few angles: The album itself, its competition, why I think this beats the competition, and what could beat it.

The Album

Ants from Up There is a 2022 post-Rock album made by the British band Black Country, New Road. It's about an hour long, it has 10 songs, and it's an emotional masterpiece. I will make a more detailed review of this album someday, but here are my main pros about it, and my only con.

It only has 2 lackluster songs, and even then, one of them is an intro track, and the other is a break song and a line of demarcation to separate the great songs from when the album goes sicko mode, so I really don't have an issue with them being there.

It actually has a semi-remedy for what would normally be insane tonal whiplash with how different "Chaos Space Marine" is compared to the rest of the album, and that is by putting it as the second track, after an intro track that sounds similar in tone and energy, so that way, it feels like it and the intro are in its own little duo while the other 8 songs are their own separate thing. it doesn't completely solve the issue, but it makes it easier to put up with :)

the concorde comparison actually makes sense when you look into it. Concorde was a plane model that cost billions in the late 60s and 70s to produce, and only amounted to about 20 planes ever being made, and they only saw it through to the end because they had put so much money into it already that it would be more wasteful to quit. That's what Isaac means when he compares his relationship with a woman to Concorde; he's already sunk so much time and resources to this relationship that it would just be a waste to suddenly quit. I think it's pretty clever.

the music is so fucking good. like, no joke, this album has some of my favorite musical moments in recent memory, like the first chorus of Bread Song being in free time (basically saying "fuck time signatures, and fuck bpms" and playing without them), the insane drumming during "Snow Globes", the piano during "The Place Where He Inserted the Blade"... the everything in "Basketball Shoes". I have more to say about that last one specifically.

The lyrics are so strong. I normally am neutral towards relationship stuff in songs, since I don't truly understand the nuances and stuff of relationships, and therefore, can't really relate or get most relationship songs on first listen. If I do, they're either sledgehammer blunt, or I can tie them to something not explicitly related to relationships, or I'm completely wrong. This is sort of an exception. I say sort of an exception because while I didn't really fully get the lines on my first few listens, I was certainly able to understand the general mood of the lyrics, and that mood was unbridled pain as a result of heartbreak, and while heartbreak is something that I don't relate with at all (can't get your heart broken if you've never been in a relationship before. Haha... im such a fucking loser), and therefore, doesn't really get a reaction out of me most of the time... this was absolutely an exception, because here, you can tell that this really hurt him, and it hurt him badly. It also doesn't hurt that Isaac Wood is just an incredible songwriter in my opinion.

All of the last 3 tracks. Just everything about them. Especially Basketball Shoes. That riff during the first part, the ending of the second part, that intermission between the second and third parts... the third part in general. Isaac Wood's vocal delivery during that last part is insane. It is so fucking good. No complaints.

The only con I have with the album is that it can somewhat feel a little lop-sided. Not in the sense that 1 side is all bangers, and the other side is nothing special, but the first half of the album is still great, but that second half is the stuff of legends, and honestly, I kinda wish it were a bit more even... but if it were, then there would be an alternate timeline where I complained that the album never takes a break, because i am never truly satisfied with the media i am given and i need to bitch about something. This is mostly just a nitpick if anything, because like I said... this album's back half is the stuff of legends.

The Competition

[BTW, im only counting albums from after october 2000 to before February 2022, since the actual best album of the 2000s imo was released on October 2nd, 2000, if I remember correctly, and this album was released on February 5th, 2022.]

To Pimp a Butterfly - Kendrick Lamar: Let me get the one that'll piss off the most people out of the way first. I don't think TPAB is better than AfuT for 1 simple reason... there are skippable songs on TPAB. Now, there are 2 skippable interludes on AfuT, but the thing is, I never skip them, because Intro fits as an extended intro to Chaos Space Marine, and Mark's Theme lets me know that this is when shit gets real. On TPAB, here are the skips that I consistently skip, or consider skipping: For Free? (Interlude). I love this song, but I think it's an understandable skip. These Walls. That intro is why I skip it sometimes. Mortal Man. Once Kendrick finished reciting the full poem, that's when I just call it quits, and say the album's finished. Momma. On a bad day, the drums might get on my nerves. But that's not very often. For Sale? (Interlude). barely an interlude, but it's like an interlude in 1 sense; when i see it, my natural instincts make me press the skip button. Yeah, that might be all, and most of the time when I do stuff like listens for reviews, I don't skip these, but if I'm doing it casually, then... I might skip these! Can't say the same for AfuT, where I normally don't skip a single song! I will admit that TPAB is actually pretty close to matching AfuT.

In Rainbows - Radiohead. the only thing I can really say is that I just like AfuT more. No intricate reasonings, or any of that. Just... I like it more.

The Glow pt. 2 - The Microphones. This one is the closest one on this list. This one is very similar to AfuT lyrically, and I'd even say that The Glow matches AfuT lyrically, but AfuT easily beats out the Glow musically. I like the music on The Glow, but if given the choice between indie folk mixed with a dash of noise rock and some of the best post-rock ever committed to tape, I'm choosing the latter before you finish saying the question.

To Be Kind - Swans. Honestly... I can't really say why I like this more than To Be Kind. I guess I like Isaac Wood's voice more than Michael Gira's, but To Be Kind also has some killer music, and some great songwriting (not on the level of AfuT, but still great), so... I guess I don't really know why I prefer AfuT. I just do.

Deathconsciousness - Have a Nice Life. Simple answer... the lyrics on AfuT are just better in my opinion. The lyrics on AfuT really make you understand the pain that this breaking relationship has been causing Isaac, while the lyrics on Deathconsciousness never reach the highs that the lyrics on AfuT reach at some points... maybe except for the last verse of Earthmover, but all of Earthmover is damn near perfect.

Teens of Denial and Twin Fantasy - Car Seat Headrest. AfuT is better musically, but that's not the only reason. Teens of Denial's lyrics read like an angsty teen trying to understand his feelings and cope with them, while Twin Fantasy's lyrics are about the LGBTQ experience. Now, I understand the lyrics of Teens of Denial, since I'm currently going through the process of understanding and coping with my emotions, but I'm... not a member of the LGBTQ community, even if I support it, so I think of Twin Fantasy as just a love album so I can understand it just a little better... but AfuT's pure heartbreaking lyrics are more emotional, and just better written in my opinion, even if I respect Teens of Denial and Twin Fantasy to a similar degree.

What could beat Ants from Up There?

Now, this album is my 4th favorite album of all time, and so let's take some aspects from the albums that already have beaten it.

from (dark side of the moon), an infinitely replayable quality. While I've heard AfuT like 6 times at this point, I'm not sure if it'll hold up like dark side of the moon has, so just in case it doesn't, this is here.

from (ok computer), a dangerous level of nostalgia and personal importance. OK Computer got me into music, and the only album that's ever beaten it is literal musical perfection, so I feel like this dangerous blend of personal importance and nostalgia could be key to making the ultimate "Ants from Up There-repellant Spray".

from (lysflath), make the music sound straight out of heaven. Like, genuinely transcendental music. stuff that sounds like a sneak peek of heaven itself.

now onto the stuff that isn't on any of those albums... more balanced tracklist. make each half as equal as you can.

and lastly... have at least 1 vocal delivery that's on par with, equal to, or better than the vocal delivery on the last part of "Basketball Shoes".

Anyways, in short, Ants from up There is the best album from the past 2 decades, and BCNR have solidifed themselves as one of my favorite bands.

[mangodestroyer]

Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure my store would still be making lots of money if my wage was doubled.

Yes, I am aware that there is a fuck ton of labor that goes into running a clothing store. You have to pay the accountants, marketing team, upper management, truck drivers, customer service representatives, supervisors, and so much more. And sometimes, merchandise gets handled quite a bit. It needs to be kept neat, organized out onto the floor, go through price changes now and then, etc.

Thing is, I, a single employee, work with LOTS of merchandise everyday. Mere penny's worth of my labor goes towards a single unit, if even that. And the raw materials and labor that went into PRODUCING those clothes probably isn't as much as people think. It's pretty obvious these clothing items are being marked up at absurd prices so that you think you're getting a deal when you get a 20% off coupon or whatever.

Also, I wasn't even hired on as a service desk employee. And yet I often find myself working the till during a 4-8 hour shift. This isn't even the busiest time of the year for us, but it's really not uncommon for the place to be bustling with activity. And while working the register, I easily ring up tons of orders that are at least $50. Hell, I often find myself ringing up orders in the $150 to $300 range, with the occasional $500+ purchase. I'm also selling credit cards on top of that, which also earn the company lots of money because of the fact that these cards have a high interest rate and most people wait to pay them off when their bill arrives in the mail/online.

Not only that, but I also fill online orders sometimes. Whether that be through store pickup or through mail.

So I pretty much know how to do almost everything in the store. Aside from supervising and some operations tasks (even if I still help out with trucks and whatnot). I can do all of this fairly efficiently. ESPECIALLY since I've been working here two years. And within an hour, I can easily end up selling so much merchandise, that the money earned just from me alone ends up being far, FAR more than my weekly wage. Just in that hour.

So, yeah. How can you even justify giving the average worker a measly $12.50 an hour? Let alone one who is more experienced and efficient? With the cost of living these days, it just isn't ethical. Rent is insanely high, gas prices have gone up, and food isn't getting any cheaper. If my wage was doubled, I might actually be able to live on my own.

No, shit. Companies are greedy af. This is why I'm happy for the worker strikes and hope they do cause serious damage for the CEOs. The U.S. owns 25% of the world's wealth, so poverty shouldn't even be nearly as much of an issue as it currently is. And no one needs a billion dollars. Give me a break!

I've also become disgusted by how materialistic we are as a culture and try to cut back on frivolous purchases. I mean, I see people come here multiple times a month, buying so much dumb shit for their wardrobes that they really don't need. I once had a girl come in purchasing $400 worth of clothes. Admitting this wasn't the first time she'd done so that month. That she'll have to get a third job to support her shopping addiction when she already works 60 hours a week. Ngl, I kind of wanted to slap some sense into her right there and then. Just why??? She's already so busy, so she probably doesn't have much time to even enjoy the outfits she's wearing. And tbh, I doubt many people are giving it much thought either. And if you don't need to work more than 60 hours a week to survive, why the fuck would you? Wouldn't you rather, idk, pick up a hobby or something? Hang out with some friends? Spend some time out in the sun?

I guess capitalism isn't my thing.

[the-firebird69]

Cuz Dave didn't find us but we found his places and they had offspring in them so it kind of replaced them. And one of those places was underneath Donald Trump's bunker as Governor Dukakis. There's a huge number of people who are interested but Dave said that to me and I couldn't let it go. His family was saying a****** s*** to him too his dad got up one day well I tried over to him and said you're not even our kind and you shouldn't stay here and you just woken up and you said you're not our kind and you shouldn't stay here this is what does that mean and you didn't answer he said oh he can kick me out so get kicked out he says that's great blamed to you and they got nailed. Several cases they try and tell themselves and we had to stop them they get hurt they kept doing it and saying this and see his little monkeys cuz they're talking to him they're saying that's what we do let's stop doing it then it said you're saving the money you found out it was true tested and said wow he is one of us you tell Dave is right there and then he told George and said we talked about it he's going he said go ahead with it and he's going wow so he said what else is there so I'll try and remember but a bunch of stuff. If you buy stock and you just leave it in there eventually on the company cuz these people traded so much and it splits and he said well that's insane you did it for 10 years with that $200 trillion dollars of stock and one company. Start doing it at five other companies no like 500 and is doing it he used to have plenty of stock probably end up giving it to you cuz I can't do anything it says what's ridiculous yes it is I can't go in disguise and I can't break free that's right please and it's moving on I'm getting flat I found out something he thinks he dies and he thinks he comes back and people didn't round him one day he said I want to get out of the house and you left you'd be harassed all the time. So my husband has tons of stock and he and we have absorbed Ernie's and it was a lot 20% of most major companies and these people in clues we repeated the scam with Dee and did tons of stuff with it and finally she was paranoid and the other one wants to back and stuff. But you know won't happen now there's a lot going on but this guy pissed me off is is Jesus Christ he pissed me off and so he used his facilities and we did have to take his kids out and he said he had some really big ones most of them were right next to yours Trump and yours Dan and they were right next to bja and he was running the scam on you he's a good guy let's start doing it and it worked and we're ruining you and you don't think you're ruined now we're not in those bunkers anymore but this a****** next door didn't even look there's evidence Dave was there and there's evidence Dave was next to your bunkers and that he was ruining you and you don't even care about who's your greatest enemy and he was found out you find out you're doing him and then you set you up and now you're falling.

There's about 300 million octillion at the five points that's just as many as yesterday and the fleet is twice as big with about 60 million octillion the day is Young and they're going to keep building up and the fleet is just ridiculous and that's so huge and there's too many people and they're already flowing into Canada and they're going to try and infiltrate and they actually end up fighting corky who's there already and it is a huge fight and they're going to start rolling in from Russia more we think it might be a half billion octillion tonight. Only about 30% are clones at this time and it's getting reduced. These are huge areas that are emptying of these idiots and where infilling and we are coming out and taking over giant numbers of jobs or vacated huge companies are coming to us now because they have no employees no is he idiots that are left or going in there today was signing about 50 companies 10 of them are Fortune 500

One such company is very large we have a lot of people in it already yeah SWAT is all over the place up there

**Intel corporation but finally actually signing and taking over a roughly 70% of it and the other 30% are still in negotiations it's not like they have 30% of the stock. The giant company he owns most of it from his stock and his dad and several others that you people killed off for us including his granddaddy there's no proof at all he owns it cuz they're all pseudonyms means fake names like mine and you'll never know where we are there's a corporations are distant if anything they're real though and some people come close and they lost their stock in Intel

**Celeron and this is a giant chip company it's second to Intel thank you very much but it's growing it says that's what chips do I've had enough of this guy. No I know how it works. But this is fun. He said Dave is threatening you and insane as me so it's probably out here and then some doing it and said or whoever it is and then I went around got a shotgun and I went looking so I heard something and I saw him run and he left he said well he's leaving so I went after him without the shotgun I can run pretty fast think about 80 and I saw him try to take a right and you saw me right behind him and he left and you're just kind of walking along and he went home and I felt depressed as we had broken up. I'm going to make it up to you and it says it's not my fault and we went through it what other people do and it was a valuable thing for us and our people but you don't have to worry about it really nice when you're doing it. That's very funny guy and do it anyways but I see I'll make it up our way so I like that but we will probably think of stuff later but it will it will work for us this is a big company it's my company and I made it work and I'm making it work it's very big and I'm selling tons of chips and they were using our technique and it's really fantastic this is happy about it

**we're running a few other businesses while we're talking about it put a computer in the motorcycle but I don't think it's a great idea it never works right even for us so we'll try it though try to shield it and here it goes we got a lot of problems with you people today you idiots you're giving him trouble and he went down there with SWAT to your eatery. My husband said no and then you were there I hope it's got grabbed and they felt bad cuz I know they're just screwing around with us. But they went down to allegiant Air and they found stuff and they're pulling it out and it's illegal. And it's Trump's and there's tons of it around 5,000 lb of explosives 7,000 automatic weapons and they're trying to pull in there all the time so they're going after the Latino guy for some reason and they think you told when he did not and it might be BG. So he's in trouble. Now they're going to shut that job down and they're going to tear the building down and they're telling Trump that he's done and they're taking his businesses that's Gators and beef o Brady and other things like that all over the place they're taking over his shops and he's getting creamed there's not a lot of them left no it seems to be a ton of them but they all come here. To bother my husband it's terrific and they're here to bother the macs leadership, and other leaders so the formulated a plan to get rid of them for good and there's a lot of them doing it so very large consortium now huge numbers of people going after clones and idiots tons of people find them to be very very repulsive you can't even talk to him because they're not having a conversation with anybody so that sounds going there we're going to publish to get this out

Hera

Zues

These are two huge chip factory companies huge manufacturers of chips and they make other things like diodes interrupters transformers dispersing systems motherboard type things a whole bunch of things conductors semiconductors and capacitors and anything that's high tech practically resistors and they make a lot of it they don't make fiber optics and they still don't actually you think they would but they don't but both these companies make computers soup to nuts and they have different names Dell is her company and they sell you around and his company is IBM or gateway and others HP is a separate company so we're off to a Gallup now but these things are going now and we're getting to work

Olympus

Yes it's me Freya I said the above but they're having me and it's greatness we are going to win this is incredibly huge company both of them are gigantic it's like 90% of the chip industry and Trump goes berserk and yeah he's after those two companies and he gets killed

[angelbaby-fics]

Feeling a bit off today woke up with a headache and skin feeling really sensitive. I just wanted to say I hope you are doing well and celebrating the holiday season! ♡ Be safe ♡ Have a great day ♡

-♡

awww darling!! i know how insane this time of year is for real 😣 i know at least all over america right now its some crazy weather!! where i am, it went from 60 degrees to 10 degrees in one day!!!!!! all that plus the stress can make any sort of physical symptoms feel a billion times worse too because nobody wants to feel icky at the holidays!! i don't know if this is exactly relevant to your situation but its something i think about all the time around this time (and my birthday!), like every little thing feels a lot worse because being happy and feeling good right now feels so important. but remember that every day is magical!! and the date is just a number on the calendar some people made!! i dunno if all this makes sense, just some friday holiday thoughts ⛄️❄️🎄

anyways, i'm sorry you're feeling icky today but i hope you feel much better soon and if not, maybe you can use this as an excuse to get extra extra cozy!! i've got a busy busy day getting ready for christmas (i definitely underestimated how much crazier the holidays are when you're an adult lol) but i'm trying to look at everything with a positive attitude & be grateful i get to do such things like buy gifts and make food and visit my family, even if its overwhelming at times. and reminding myself that this doesn't have to be the #1 Undisputed Best Christmas Ever Of All Time, it can just be a nice christmas ❤️💚❤️💚

[littlejanesilver]

The Human Experience (now with paragraph breaks!)

I know it’s not a popular ideology to have right now, because so much we see in the news appears to speak against it, but I think humans are basically an altruistic, cooperative species— with a few caveats. So many of our problems arise out of the fundamental mismatch between the world our species evolved to live in and the world we live in today. Empathy is a natural feature of the human experience. We teach our children positive prosocial behaviours like sharing their food and caring for others who are sick or hurt. We survive and build through cooperative behaviour. Kindness is instinctual and the instinct is reinforced through proper socialization. I’ve seen it in my children before they could even speak, trying to offer a pat on the back or comfort to a crying sibling. Normal, socialized humans feel physical and mental distress in ourselves when we see others in distress and are eager to alleviate it. The thing is human altruism, like that of other primates who live and hunt in groups is usually predicated on face to face personal relationships. It makes sense to share with others in your group when you have more than enough, because someday when they have more than enough they will be more likely to share with your. In humanity the ability to cooperate has been positively selected for through million of years of evolution. It makes sense that over the comparatively long human life span, where you might live in a tribe of 60 people, you would encounter the same members of your tribe over and over again and your prosocial actions would be remembered and influence their prosocial actions towards you further down the line. Our big brains are good for remembering and keeping score. Not to mention in such an environment, you would also probably be somewhat genetically related to your tribe-mates so helping your family members and tribe-mates survive also enhances the survival of your own genes. Among surviving hunter gatherer tribes it would be consider insane for one member to horde all the food while other members of the tribe starve. A person could be excluded from the group for behaviour like that and a human without other humans in nature does not survive for long. Being exiled from one’s tribe is a fate most will do anything to prevent. Also, in the hunter gatherer world, where people are nomadic, having a huge amount of one substance doesn’t make a lot of sense, because you can only own what you can carry with you. There are also no refrigerators, so if you have more food than you need, whatever you don’t eat will rot quickly. Human life in the prehistoric world could be extremely harsh. Few infants survived and giving birth was highly precarious. But when a member of your tribe was in distress, even without modern medicines you still had something you could do and that was offer comfort, through a hug, or helping with a task or offering food. In the world we live in now the instinct to share is sometimes short-circuited. Holding resources has been facilitated by inventions like fridges and silos to keep grain. People decide to keep resources to themselves and their families, because they often don’t see or can’t relate to the people their greed is harming. Executives of large companies never have to see their employees face to face, they don’t grow up with the people they employ (who nowadays may live in another country entirely), and there is no consequence to them for causing others to experience distress. Also there are so many thousands of employees that they become theoretical to the executives, rather than real flesh and blood people they have to live with on a day to day basis who will confront you if you treat themselves shitty and treat you badly right back. Also, if say a factory in another country is mistreating its workers and the factory makes clothes for your company (as well as other companies), there are so many culprits in the problem, front he managers of the factory itself, to the country it is in that allows lax labour laws, to the many companies that have this

factory make clothes for them, to the country the company is located in that makes it more worthwhile for them to hire foreign companies to make their clothes— that the individual executive sitting in an office somewhere is so far removed and their contribution is so diffuse among the many others in the process that he or she feels no shame. More importantly, that executives social group is unlikely to include members of the exploited class, so they will never be publicly shamed or held accountable in a social setting, which, let’s face it, is what keeps most of us honest, when the temptation to take more than our share is strong. The instinct to display compassion and show care for others, is also challenged in certain ways in a modern context. The instinct to display empathy and compassion is strongest for family members and extends to other tribe-mates in a healthy human being, across all cultures and settings. If you saw a loved one crying, you would naturally go up to them and put an arm around their shoulder and ask how you could help. The distress you feel at seeing another person in distress, would reduce, once you could offer them comfort. Feeling an arm around their shoulders, experiencing comforting touch also would help elevate your loved ones feelings of distress. As much as we hate feeling pain or distress, in us and seeing it in others, experiences like this help bond us to those we love. When a friend supports you through a tough time it can cause your friendship to deepen. It feels like a blessing to be able to offer them the same strength they offered you in return at a latter date. When I a can offer a listening ear to a friend’s complaint or be able to offer a pair of arms to hold a loved one who is crying, I feel the most human. Being together in this way with others, knowing that they are feeling what you are feeling and sharing in a moment, whether listening to music or experiencing a film together is so special and so inherently human. It is hard to explain, but there is a positive feeling that comes from when one is acting in accordance with one’s animal nature. The naturalness and lack of push-back your brain is giving you— like when you have really good sex or do a refreshing (not exhausting) physical workout that pushes you a bit, or stare in wonder at something in nature— this sense of doing what you were made for— what is most natural and human feels so wonderful and liberating. I feel that when I am concocting stories sometimes, this ability to be in the moment and intensely aware of what I am doing, fully experiencing it without being distracted by other worries or things going on in my mind. The problem as I see it is that we see so much distress around us that is taking place far away, across the globe and we can see the people’s faces in pain, but we have no ability to take that pain away or even offer the basic comfort our ape ancestors could, such as an arm around the shoulder or the offer of half a fruit. We can’t give them anything. Maybe we can donate money to an earthquake fund or something, but who knows if that money will even reach them and it won’t effect that specific person you see right now, on your screen. Maybe we don’t even have enough money to give a dollar to an earthquake fund and maybe the government of the country that suffering person is living in, is causing their suffering because it refuses offers from the international community to help (see North Korea). What do people do when they are constantly faced with the reality of thousands of people suffering who we can’t do anything to help? We evolved to deal with one or two people in our tribe suffering every once and a while. We evolved to feel pain ourselves at the suffering of someone and to be able to stop that pain by offering the other person comfort. But when you can’t offer meaningful, immediate comfort to another person in a personal way either through physical means or through helpful speech, what are you left with? For some people I feel like the result is a constant low-grade

(or sometimes high grade) anxiety, traumatic stress and depression. The tidal wave of suffering feels so great you are mentally drowning in it if you are the kind of person who experiences empathy for others very strongly. You might be motivated to participate in charities and social justice causes, but all the time, the satisfaction that should come from helping people is out of reach, the anxiety and sadness at other’s distress is still there because no matter what you do, with so many people in the world now, and with news from all corners of the globe constantly in our faces at every moment of the day, you just can’t help everyone. It isn’t possible. Long ago you would only be cognizant of the problems of people in your own little tribe. Dealing with their problems would be mentally manageable and might even benefit you and the other person and strengthen your relationships. Dealing with this tidal wave of billions of people’s problems is unmanageable and hugely distressing. We were not born with the mental equipment to deal with this and it is a huge problem. Avoiding it, in certain societies, to help lessen your stress is not even possible. Everywhere you look, TV screens, radios and newspapers are blaring the death tolls of the most recent atrocity. This media diet distorts your perception, because when all you hear about are huge horrific events, the regular day to day repetitive actions that occupy most of what people are doing all over the world, like today Soorya milked a goat or Bob picked his toddler up from daycare don’t make the news. Some day, I think the world will have to reckon with the mental health problems that this constant media diet of negative and fearful imagery causes humans who have no means to influence the distressing things that are mentioned. Obviously, it is important to know what is happening in the world in some sense, to hold governments accountable when they act in ways that harm people. However part of the problem is even when we see that unfairness is happening we don’t have the tools to help stop it or a deeper understanding of why problems are occurring and how we can help is left out of the reporting. This makes people feel helpless and out of control and it doesn’t help the people who are suffering in the end. Some people are able to deal with this constant exposure to suffering that we can’t help, through selectively turning their compassion and empathy faculties on and off. As someone who can’t do this on my own, I am constantly astounded to witness other people do this. Part of me is slightly jealous of this ability while part of me is highly suspicious of it. People who can do this, I’ve noticed can also be very reckless with others emotions if they believe a relationship with that other person doesn’t forward their own goals. There is something that feels lacking to me about a human that can operate in such a ruthless capacity, but these are also people who seem able to have a lot of success because their mental processes are so efficient with regards to empathy. People can often show great love and compassion for their family and friends, but have little to no compassion for people outside the group they qualify as their “tribe.” How modern people define tribe, as people who share the same religion, community, fan base, sexuality, ethnicity or even as narrowly as their own nuclear family can vary. But I would say the majority of humans display this ability to switch their empathy on and off depending on whether someone is considered part of their tribe or not. This is also, sad to say, a very human quality. In a world where your tribe was your survival, outside tribes who might steal your resources, or kill or steal members of your tribe were far more dangerous than wild beasts you might encounter. I was bullied pretty harshly as a kid and I still maintain that the whole in-group/out-group dialectic that is such a part of human experience is one of the ugliest facets of human nature there is. Most disturbing of all, it is not contrary to human

nature, as most anti-social behaviours seem to be coded as, but is often seen as positive with no social costs in-group. A person who shows altruism and fealty to their own group can show the worst sadism and cruelty to out-group members without the corresponding social penalties they would face if they were to behave the same way in their own group. There is a reason in the Torah there are numerous directives “to love the stranger as yourself” and to “be kind to the stranger” and other lessons about hospitality to people who aren’t from your town because they might be (in Abraham’s case) angelic messengers. If everybody treated strangers and out group members the same as they treated their family members there wouldn’t be so much advice about showing hospitality to those unlike ourselves. The instinct of “stranger danger” is high in human beings and starts before we can talk. Studies done with pre-verbal human infants show that when confronted with two different strangers, one who speaks their own language and one who talks a different language, the infants shunned the foreign language speaking individual more than the person who talked their own language, even if they couldn’t talk or even fully understand that language yet themselves! The corresponding instinct of curiosity in some of us and eagerness to find out and know about something outside our own experience is thankfully, a good check to the stranger-danger feeling in some of us. Sadly, the stranger-danger instinct can get stronger as people get older and lose some of their mental flexibility and the world also changes a lot from the world they grew up in. If you aren’t mindful of that tendency of the human brain, then you can get caught up in thinking that all the changes are bad and threatening and feel fearful and angry at the world as you get older. Also, the more adverse experiences you have with other people, the more they seem to trail after you as you get older, colouring your ability to trust others and harming your interpersonal relationships if you’re not careful. While it may be more mentally healthy to only extend your empathy to members of your own group, feel like society as a whole suffers tremendously when we do this. We don’t live in isolated tribes anymore. Even if the effects are not apparent to us, our actions do effect the lives of other people, sometimes far away. We need new ways and new transparency laws to let us understand what the costs to others of the goods we purchase are, where they come from and what sort of labour conditions those goods are sourced under. We also need more alternatives to buy ethically, that are within most people’s budgets. Having the choice between ethically sourced goods that cost way more than a normal family can afford and goods sold in stores that only offer part-time jobs and starvation wages to their employees that utilize slave labour in other countries for manufacturing doesn’t really offer a choice. If you don’t have a lot of money you can’t afford to be ethical, which seems wrong. How come I can get a food item at the store and every single ingredient that went into it is listed on the back of the package, but how the item was made, where and with what sort of labour is left out? As a consumer we should be afforded the ability to make ethical purchases. There should be some sort of international independent organization with actual teeth that oversees labour practices across the world and gives companies letter grades and provides this information to the consumer with every purchase. It should be a reliable independent source for the consumer that tells us whether a purchase is helping to perpetuate positive or negative work conditions around the world. Companies that have the best conditions should be rewarded and companies that have the worst should be shut down. Getting everyone on board with the philosophy that humans are all part of one tribe is crucial to improving all our lives. If all children can be taught, from the earliest days that we are all one tribe and that

we are all deserving of love and compassion and the means of survival things will probably improve. As long as people continue to believe in in-group/out-group philosophies that see their own group as some sort of master race or chosen people and everyone else as inferior or misguided and not worthy of the same kind of empathy reserved for members of one’s own tribe— humanity will not grow. Accepting the fact that we are all animals, members of the same species and the same planet, which we have to take care of together is crucial. I’ve lived on Lake Erie and Lake Ontario for most of my life. For those who don’t know both these lakes are partially in the U.S. and partially in Canada and proved most of the water and electricity for the communities around the lakes like Toronto and Hamilton in Canada and Buffalo and Rochester in the U.S and Niagara Falls in both countries. Canada and the U.S. in the past have had different laws governing heavy industry on the lakes. But this is ridiculous, because if a company pollutes on one side of the lake, it automatically causes pollution on the other side as well. Right now countries are acting like the laws they make regarding pollution, labour, immigration and countless other things only affect their own country, when the reality couldn’t be further from the truth. We don’t live in isolated tribes anymore. Every human community is touching countless other communities. We didn’t evolve to live or think this way, but if there’s one thing we humans have mastered, it’s how to adapt. We can adapt to this new world and thinking in a new way about each other and our planet— but we have to stop seeing ourselves as isolated groups and start thinking of the big picture. In this world where our edges all touch each other, we have to be especially cognizant to live peacefully and try to do everything in our power to avoid violence wherever possible. To use a metaphor, you never know how the pollution you dump one one side of the lake will effect a baby yet to be born on the other side of the lake. If there is another choice, even if that choice is just to pause and consider what this action might achieve or to really grapple seriously with the harm it might cause, regardless of whether it is “right” or “deserved.” Make the choice to think before you act. Listen to what other people are feeling who aren’t from your in-group. Even if you don’t agree with them, how can you ever convince them, if you don’t try to understand where they are coming from? More than anything right now I think we need dialogue, not knee jerk reactions. We need nuance, deeper understanding than 150 character soundbites and the ability to listen to each other and the skill of trying to slow down our minds. It is easy to act on anger, greed or fear if you don’t see the people who your actions effect. But we have many tools in our communication arsenal for communicating how we feel to other people and trying to get them to make change. Violence should be very last resort of all the last resorts, not the go-to option. We have to act in accordance with the world we want to live in, in the future, a world that has room for all people. There is no shortage of money, food or land on this planet if we all only take what we need and share with each other. The withholding of these things from others and obscene accumulation of resources for oneself and ones family is not admirable. It is a demonstration of selfish antisocial behaviour and should be seen as such by our society. How our words and actions serve ourselves, our loved ones and the human tribe as a whole and its future existence on this Earth is worth considering.

[lowsodiumlevels]

You mentioned Orxefo's ancestor last ask, and I want to know more about who they are! What are they like?

*ahem* Allow me to info dump real quick

Title: The Coercion/His Imperial Coercion

True name: Xurosis Urtala

Xurosis is/ well.....WAS a ruler along side his wife The Deceiver. (which is an ironic name because she's an absolute sweetheart....to most but rarely other fuschias)

Leading billions of trolls and sending out fleetships to colonize planets. Basically taking care of the Empire sorta stuff.

He's a show-off and loves boasting about how he's married to The Empress.

Apart from that he's a ruthless hunter. Hunting trolls spreading any sort of knowledge of The signless sending out crews to kill trolls who spoke of him. Followers of any sort that would make trolls try and overthrow the throne or start any rebellion.

(The Condesce was killed by The Deceiver.)

He's bad person all round. He's killed children,women, men, anything in or out the binary spectrum. He even killed his Moirail's son (The Prodigy) due to seeing him as a threat to the Empire. Mostly because The Prodigy was a limeblood.

Though after a time of things being fine in the Empire. Lowbloods rose up. Of course they would.

Leading both The Coercion's Matesprit and Kismesis dead.

A goldblood (The Incorruptible) had decapitated The Deceiver. And took The Coercion into his own fleetship and chained him up.

The Coercion was tortured with Electric shocks from the goldblood.

He was presumed dead after 60 days of this.

......

Hundreds....maybe thousands of sweeps later.

He woke up.

He wasn't sure how this happened. But it hurt, he couldn't move his legs at all. His body was starved and dehydrated. His right incisor and cainine tooth grew out and through his skin causing his jaw to break easily. The body felt weird, he didn't feel his heartbeat, all he felt was something shocking flowing through him. After days maybe weeks of sitting there not knowing what to do. He heard someone exploring the fleetship.

That someone being an 12 year old Orxefo.

The Coercion called out to him and Orxefo followed.

Being a Lord of Mind and dying he had reached ascension and used his new powers to monitor his Descendant. At first.

Then TC tricked Orxefo into a deal after Orxefo came to him for help after a fight broke out with Orx and Tokien resulting in Orxefo losing his tail. Now he controls Orxefo into hunting other trolls and basically continues his work. But due to his insanity he goes off making Orxefo kill innocent trolls who don't even know of the signless. And has a grudge against Shiken Tailton, who reminds him of The Incorruptible aka The one who killed his matesprit.

He wants Orxefo to be like him in every way. To be a ruthless killer.

The Coercion now is lost in fantasy of bringing the empire back to how it originally was. Wanting Orxefo to marry Arroyo (The new Empress). And wanting Shiken dead.

[babbushka]

I’m confused, I was always taught that Reagan was one of the best and most progressive presidents we ever had, granted I went to a Catholic school way back when, what did Ronny do? (In a not accusatory or snippy way)

Hello my dear anon! Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to talk about this, because while I am firmly a believer that everyone can have their own political opinions, objectively, Raegan literally ruined the country through something called Raeganomics -- and that's not just an exaggeration.

Here are some of his biggest lasting legacies that make people remember him in a negative light:

Purposeful inaction on HIV/AIDs

Purposefully widened income inequality through 'trickle-down' economics

Suppression of unions

Slashing of public assistance

Excessive corporate influence on government

Explanations under the cut (with links to articles for further reading, if you're so inclined)!

Purposeful inaction on HIV/AIDs

One of the most notable things that Raegan was responsible for was his failed response to addressing the HIV/AIDs crisis. The first case was recorded in 1981, but one of the first nationally pieces of recognition, the New York Times, posting an article about it in 1982. This was when it was first called GRID, or Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. Because it was affecting primarily gay men, the general public, and the government itself, did not feel any need to stop the disease from spreading. Literally, because it was the gay disease, the overall perception was that this was God sending a cure for the country.

Raegan said and did nothing, not about the disease, or about the deaths, or about the hate crimes that were growing more and more prevalent against queer people. So despite YEARS of begging and marching and millions of people dead -- it's not until 1985 when he even publicly acknowledges the disease that had thousands of Americans dropping dead on his watch. It's not until 1987 when the administration finally forms a committee to look into trying to cull the disease. 47,000 Americans are estimated to have been affected by AIDs by then. It's not until Ryan White, a straight white young man who contracts AIDs and dies when he is only 18 in 1990, that the disease becomes a matter of importance for the rest of the country, because suddenly they understood that disease does not discriminate. HIV/AIDs is still a disease that we deal with today, with over 1.1 million people living with AIDs today in the united states.

Purposefully widened income inequality

It is no secret that associated with the Raegan administration is something called 'Raeganomics', which, while being a very complicated economic theory, ultimately boils down to establishing a "trickle-down" economy. Where, in theory, those at the very top who hold the majority of wealth in the nation, allow that wealth to move down through the middle and lower classes by either investing it or spending it in communities.

And of course, as is well evident, that just, didn't happen. The wealthiest of the nation received large tax cuts in order to hold onto their wealth to trickle down, but instead of actually spending it, they put their money into off-shore banks and then asked for more. I could get into the why's or how's of economics, but just know this -- the tax rate used to be anywhere from 71 and 94% for the highest tax bracket, money that was used to fund this nation's infrastructure, roads and schools, maintain a healthy economy, provide public services and budgets for progressive programs.

Raegan slashed it down to 28%, and in doing so widened the income inequality gap almost immediately, something that we're still seeing today. The reason why you and your family pay more money in taxes than billionaires like Bezos and Musk is directly because of Raeganomics.

Suppression of unions

The backbone of this nation has always been fought by the Unions, which are organized groups of laborers who fight for better working conditions, safer working conditions, and good pay. The reason you have a weekend is thanks to the unions. The reason why we don't have child labor is thanks to the unions. And in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, unions were an incredibly powerful part of working society, because they ensured that workers would not and could not be exploited by the CEOs who want so desperately to exploit them. Well, thanks to Raeganomics and the tax cuts, CEOs were starting to play a much larger role in the The Raegan administration, and ultimately, Raegan sided with them to effectively put measures in place that slashed the importance or power of unions.

It first started with dismantling the Air Traffic Controller's union, then followed up with slashing taxes for the elite rich who employed the union workers. Then it continued when the recession that the tax cuts caused laid off workers in the auto industry, and still declined when he appointed a "management-sided" man named Donald Dotson to chair the National Labor Relations Board.

But what really put the nail in the coffin, was his push for something called the Right To Work law, which mean that state governments have the option to not fund or support unions, removed protections for unions, and that employees do not have to join unions if they don't want to. What happened as a result, is that companies began firing employees who threatened to unionize, turning the unions from having great PR, to being a thing of fear.

This is directly related to why minimum wage has been so low for so long. Thank Raegan for that.

Slashing of public assistance

Because of the enormous tax cuts for the ultra rich, the country fell into a deep recession, and as a result many programs were cut for the poorest of the nation. Food Stamps, the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, Federal guaranteed loan programs for higher education, Legal Assistance, etc., all took a big hit.

The reason your student loans are through the roof? Raegan. The reason unemployment benefits are near impossible to navigate? Raegan. Directly his fault.

Excessive corporate influence on government

I think one of the things that's very important to understand is that Raegan was a film actor before he went into politics and became president (sound like someone else we know?) and he was actually neither a Democrat nor a Republican -- he was a Libertarian. And what Libertarians do, is look at America like a business. Which is exactly what Raegan did, and exactly why his presidency fucked up our nation. He thought that the president was like the CEO, and that the people were employees, which, is fundamentally not how that works.

So it's with no surprise that he allowed SUPER-PACs to completely take over political parties in accepting money donated heavily by them to write the policies that shape this country. The reason why so many politicians, particularly Republicans, are in their seats of power is because of the millions or sometimes billions of dollars that CEOs fund them, to write the laws they want. That's entirely Raegan's fault, and at his encouragement.

So, from these 6 major things alone, we have a country that has been ravaged by disease, thrown into poverty and recession, killed the middle class, boosted the wealthy 1%, accrued enormous amounts of debt, and prevented economic mobility for anyone to hope to climb out of it. And that's not even mentioning his war on drugs and increase of mass incarceration for privatized prisons, his insane military budget leading a larger budget deficit, the Iran-Contra scandal, among many many other things.

As I said earlier, people are allowed to think he's a great president if they want, but factually, his actions (and inactions) have fundamentally and irreparably broken the economic landscape of our nation for the poor, working classes.

I encourage you to research further into this, if you so desire. There's a lot more than I mentioned here, I only picked what I thought to be the most famous of his failures as a president.

[neverheardnothing]

Is billions worth to watch?

man that’s the billion fucking dollar question isn’t it.

well it depends on what you’re trying to get out of it and i’ll break it down into 3 different levels. i am assuming you’re a will fan since you’re sending this to me but i guess you could also be a random person who has seen me posting in the billions tag. anyways here we go.

1. you are legitimately interested in watching a show

regardless of who is in it. basic rundown is that billions is a show about a cat and mouse game between a hedge fund ceo and a government attorney. every single character in this show is a terrible person who does terrible things to get what they want (with a few exceptions). what they want might be for “good” like stopping other shit people from doing their terrible things, but they do shit things to try to get there. that’s part of the fun and drama. there are a few characters who feel Bad when they do shit things and the moral quandary they go is another added level of fun to watch.

i, personally, do not have a fun time watching this, but have heard that the appeal of watching the show is that you get to see terrible people be terrible to each other. expect character to go out the window for insane plot reasons. don’t try to think too hard about anything that happens because the answer is almost always simply just because. since this show is on showtime, they get to say and do some very Explicit rated stuff. the opening scene of the show is a guy getting pissed on by a dominatrix. the characters get to say fuck. a lot.

basically if you want to turn your brain off and watch a ridiculous, unrealistic drama going at 100 mph, rich people flaunting their wealth, and characters saying absolutely buckshit wild things like it’s normal then go for it. it’s not a show to be in the fandom for. it’s a show to binge watch as fast as you can and think back on in several months with slight fondness like “oh yeah, billions. i watched that show in two weeks and havent thought about it since, but it was absolutely fucking insane. good times.” that’s how people should enjoy this show if they want to imo.

2. you are here for will roland but you also want to understand what happens in the plot/interested in taylor mason

then i can direct you to this VERY handy link called the taylist (made by yours truly) named after one of the deuteragonists of the show, taylor mason (asia kate dillon), who is winston’s (will roland) boss. this playlist contains (my best attempt at getting) every scene taylor is in.

taylor is one of those characters who does bad things and feels bad about it mentioned earlier and for me it’s agonizing to watch since I Care Them. asia kate dillon is a ridiculously good actor so it’s hard not to feel for taylor. they come into the show in season 2.

you don’t miss much in season 1. chuck (government attorney) tries to get well liked billionaire axe (hedge fund ceo) in trouble by proving he is trading on inside information (illegal). the drama comes in when wendy, chuck’s wife, is also the performance coach at axe capital. the season progresses. axe tells wendy something that if revealed could get him in trouble. chuck breaks into wendy’s computer and uses it as evidence. wendy and chuck separate for the time being and wendy quits working for axe. chuck and axe have a confrontation in the axe cap offices where they end up in a giant screaming match. and that’s about it.

other worthwhile characters introduced in season 1 are ben kim and dudley mafee, both analysts at axe cap. ben is your stereotypical nice and meek asian math guy but over the course of the show he starts growing a backbone. mafee is a dudebro and kinda himboish and in season 2 he is the one who hires taylor as an intern.

3. you are here for will roland

no. it is absolutely not worth the watch, at least right now, but i kind of doubt it’ll ever be. most of us here for will roland have not seen the entire show (with a few exceptions) and we’re doing just fine in our winstannery lol. if you want to be extra and go for it, that’s fine, but it’s definitely not required.

will appears in 13/60 episodes and has about half an hour of screen time. his first appearance is in 3x03 and was intended to be a one-off character (quant kid #2), but apparently wrol Killed It and hit it off with asia kate dillon so much that the writers invited him back to become a recurring character. his next scenes were written while he was on set for his initial one day shoot, and you can really tell because at least for the rest of season 3, they really continue to deliver on that good asia kate dillon and will roland acting together content.

he was in 6/7 of the episodes that have aired so far in season 5 and we’re pretty sure that he will be in the rest of the episodes, as apparently the reason he wasn’t in more of season 4 was because he was busy with be more chill. chances are pretty high for him being in a lot of season 6 as it stands now.

here’s every bit of content he’s been in.

season 3-4

season 5 episode 1

season 5 episode 2

season 5 episode 3

season 5 episode 5

season 5 episode 6

season 5 episode 7

[wrongfullythinking]

Twitter and the “Public Forum”

There is a very large looming legal question about whether or not social media sites, such as Twitter, are “Public Forums.”  Most would agree that they are not... at least... not yet.  But the question is... should they be?

First, a look into why it matters.

In a public forum, all First Amendment protections apply.  So you can say any number of very objectionable things (https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12634874511090553174) and be protected.  In a private forum, this is not so.  I can kick you out of my house for wearing an Abercrombie shirt, and you have no Free Speech/Expression reason to contest my staggeringly good decision-making.

Second, the public forum cannot be policed for any content that may be stated.  This is why if you go to reserve time at a public park, you don’t have to tell the Parks and Rec department what your event is for.  Just things like how many people, how long the event will last, etc.  This is well-established and well-backed by many years of precedent.

Finally, there is the very serious matter of personal liability.  In certain circumstances, officials can be held personally liable if their policies deliberately and knowingly infringe upon Bill of Rights protections (most often First Amendment protections).  This means that you could literally sue for the property and assets of a person.  (Also, this is why those of us who own either physical property [like a house] or intellectual property [like a book] buy “Umbrella Coverage” from insurances... I recommend State Farm, but that’s totally irrelevant and I’m not getting any kickbacks for that shill =P.)

But hang on... so if the government owns a billboard and rents it out to whomever can pay, can I rent it and post a naked lady?

You could try, and you might win!  What you can’t do is post something obscene.  And yes, whether or not a naked person is obscene is staggeringly controversial.  There’s a 3-part test from the Burger court, a host of vague terms like “average person” and “contemporary community standards,” and “lacks serious artistic/literary/political/scientific value.”  And then there are protections for children, a whole separate piece, as well as child pornography, which is always classified as obscene... except when it is not, like in the cases of naked cherubs in church windows.  So, confused yet?  We’re off topic, but I make this point to explain that even in public forums, where First Amendment rights are fiercely protected, there are still outstanding issues of content censorship.

So, is Twitter / Facebook / Tumblr a public forum?

At this point, the answer is no.  They are privately controlled by companies, not owned by the feds or states or local municipalities, and thus can make almost any policy they want.  The idea here is that the free market dictates the life or death of these platforms... and that idea tends to hold true!  Tumblr itself is a good case-in-point, because it has lost millions of dollars in value due to bad leadership decisions, and at least partially because of censorship.  There are countless examples of others... I remember when Yahoo! was the primary search engine of the internet and Xanga was the biggest blogging platform.  While you can still Yahoo, I’m not sure there are more than a few hundred people on Xanga, if it still exists in any useful format.  So, since places like this are subject to the free market, and thus can die... they should be allowed to make all the good or bad decisions they want about their content.  Or at least, that is how the theory runs.

But really... ARE they subject to the market?  Now we’re getting into the really interesting territory.  If Facebook shut down tomorrow, would it be a problem?  Maybe, but life would continue.  But if Google shut down tomorrow?  Well, millions of schoolchildren are in GoogleClassrooms right now, so that would certainly be a problem.  It would at least cause massive disruption... and Facebook shutting down would cause some disruption.  Likewise, Twitter controls so much speech that instead of publishing headlines from Newspapers, newspapers publish headlines from Twitter!  The 14-year-old looks at that line like “well, duh” and the 44-year old reads that line like “wow, we’ve come a long way,” and the 84-year-old reads that line with just a sad headshake.

So, now we’ve joined one of the most controversial points of the last 20 years... the Fannie Mae “Too Big to Fail” problem.  Basically, a set of banks and big mortgage companies (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) made a bunch of bad decisions in about 1995 - 2008.  [As an aside, whether or not Fannie Mae {technically, the “Federal National Mortgage Association”} is actually a company comes up as an issue... it originated as a government program, but is today a publicly-traded company and has been since the late 60s, though it was delisted from NYSE and is only traded off-exchange].  And the government had to step in.  You can read all about that issue at another time, the bottom line is that actually Fannie Mae has paid back more than it borrowed, but there was a ballooning of the debt ceiling by over 800 billion.  Some people care about the national debt, some don’t, and again, not the subject of this commentary.  The point is that it set a very odd precedent, whereas a company could make extremely bad decisions and then the burden would be placed on the taxpayers to fix their decision, because the company itself was a part of so many people’s lives.  Would social media fall under this guidance?  Unlikely, and I think we would all run from state-sponsored social media... but hey, what do I know.

So... get to the point.  Should they be public forums, or not?

My two cents always comes down against censorship, especially censorship by entities that don’t have my best interests at heart... so basically, everybody else.  I think that it is so easy to self-censor the internet at the personal end (for example, by installing filters and blocking services for objectionable content), that companies should not be unilaterally making these decisions, especially if those companies want to be venues for mass public communication.

Let’s go with another example... let’s say you wanted to call up your buddy and have a nice long phonesex session.  Good for you.  Or just chat with them about the latest Dr. Doe video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXgT8WXaPUY), because enthusiasm is important.  Would you be okay with Verizon telling a robot to monitor your call, and then automatically hang up if you said “penis” too much?  Or “Trump”?  Or “Black Lives Matter?”  What about “Nazi,” “Rohypnol,” “Mary Jane,” “negritos” [I’ve got your back, Mr. Cavani], “snowbunny,” or “Insane Clown Posse”?  I think most people would be upset about any of those, and they would rightfully tell Verizon that they will find another provider.  So Verizon doesn’t do that, although it could.  But Twitter does do that.  And the availability of another Twitter is in question.  Will something succeed Twitter?  Absolutely.  But right now, Twitter is under no market pressure, so it is succeeding at taking off its platform any number of conversations that it probably should not be policing.

There’s also a social-justice side of this.  So, let’s say that we all decide Twitter is a bad platform and move to something else.  And that something else costs us 10$ a month.  I wouldn’t notice this fee.  Others would.  So that’s an access issue.  Or, let’s say that some people start migrating to a new platform, and they only tell their friends about it.  That’s okay, right?  Absolutely... but imagine that college student who is trapped at home in a pandemic right now who cannot get any viewpoints outside of what her parents approved of, and previously used Twitter to explore and challenge her upbringing.  If she doesn’t get an invite to the new platform, is she just lost?

And that brings up the Pandemic.  Many, many common public forums have been shut down due to the pandemic.  This alone has caused serious controversy (see: BLM protests on crowded streets where state governors participated, while those same governors implemented executive orders enforcing 6-foot distancing in churches and stores), so the argument for Twitter censorship “but you have many other public forums!” is tough to substantiate during the COVID-era.  And this is a HUGE problem.  Historically, taking away public forums is always an early move of totalitarian regimes.  Taking away rights to assembly and speech follows soon after.  We’re now in Phase 2 there... and our governors keep assuring us it is temporary... while at the same time, encouraging Twitter to take off any viewpoints they don’t like, under the guise of “false or misleading information.”  Soon, they start moving into the schools, and that leads to...

SCIENCE!!!

So, to talk about what rigorous debate means, we need to understand a bit about Science.  And specifically, the philosophy of science, what scientific discourse looks like, and why review and critique are parts of the scientific process.

Point 1: “Scientific consensus” is hogwash.  Yes, we all agree that the Earth orbits the Sun, and the Sun itself moves, but beyond that, there isn’t much scientific consensus.  If you see an article that starts with the phrase “Expert say,” you can go ahead and close your browser window right there.  The rest is bull****.

Point 2: The limits of science are boundless.  Any specific scientific paper is, by necessity and the peer review process, very strictly bounded.  “Whether or not a vaccine is efficient” is an entirely different paper than one titled “Whether or not 80-year-olds with lung cancer should get the vaccine,” and both of those are different than “How the US should achieve herd immunity, and if it is even possible for COVID-19 before significant mutations cause current immunizations to be ineffective,” and all three of those are different from “Do we need to vaccinate our cats from COVID in order to reach herd immunity?”

Point 3: There is no “finalized” science.  The answers are never finished.  What is “cutting edge” science today is out-of-date tomorrow, barbaric and backwards by the end of the year, and grounds for an abuse lawsuit by the end of the decade.  The best examples of this are from Psych treatments.

Point 4: I get very worried when anybody starts to censor scientific content... especially those without any qualifications.  Okay, so this one is a personal sentence (note the “I”), but I’m going to go ahead and guess that Twitter robots and interns flagging posts don’t have any idea the difference between sensitivity and specificity, the background as to why the FDA has never approved an mRNA vaccine previously, the difference between statistical and clinical significance, and how to read a limitations section.  The people who are qualified to do so are peer reviewers... and in the case where those fail (which happens!), the rest of the writer’s peers.  And we do that.  Anything published is open to critique, which leads to the final point, that...

Point 5: Critique and Review are THE MOST IMPORTANT PARTS of scientific publishing.  If a piece is published without review, it is called an “opinion” and not science.  Even more worrisome than the censoring of unpopular papers is the censoring of the opinions of scientists on the papers of their peers.  Should someone publish a paper where I believe they overstretched their claims, it is a HUGE part of my job to call that out.  For an agency like Twitter to be able to say “you don’t have the right to say that they overstated their claim, because expressing a concern about a vaccine is against our Terms of Use” is a very big problem for science.

The flipside is that you get into the part where now a company can, through its policy, dictate what science gets done.  For example, lets say I wanted to examine an unpopular question... and I’m a social scientist, so there are plenty of those, but say I wanted to do something semi-controversial but apolitical.  I’ll say my research question is “How do the happiness of those in committed multi-year polyamorous relationships compare to the happiness of people in similar economic and social situations but in closed marriages where additional intimate partnerships would be viewed as grounds for relationship termination?”  There are plenty of ways I could conduct this study and I’ll spare you my methodological musings, but safe to say there are platforms who would not want me to publish my results.  And that’s fine. 

But let’s say that I did publish my results, and a commenter took to Twitter.  And their response was “I read your paper, and I see your conclusion that those in committed multi-year polyamorous relationships score no differently on a happiness scale than those in the closed marriages.  However, I disagree with your use of this scale, because it was tested on populations of retirees, and most of the people in your sample are in their late 20s or early 30s.”

That is an EXCELLENT and VALID critique.  And let’s say that Twitter was heavily into the social justice and had a policy that said “you can’t say negative things about polyamory.”  And they deleted this person’s comment.  Now, Twitter has interfered with the scientific process.  That comment IS PART of the dialogue and that dialogue is part of Science.  Yes, there are other places that those comments could be made, and not be censored... but we should not be encouraging that censorship ANYWHERE.  And Twitter has vastly overstepped the line on this point.  Random Twitter employees have no business removing professional critiques about a study, even if there are other platforms for those critiques.

Other Thoughts

1) Generally, you can’t prohibit meetings in a public forum based on prior behavior.  Thus, “X group was violent in the past” is not a reason to prohibit X group from accessing a public forum for speech.  So there’s no saying “Proud Boys were violent once, so no Proud Boys on Twitter” if it were to be declared a public forum.

2) I’m really not aware of any large precedents for taking a private company and declaring it a public forum.  That may seem redundant (obviously, if there was precedent, this wouldn’t be such a hot-button issue), but it bears specific mention.

[deanky]

#Riddlerpost

Cringe this may be btu I will make it anyways OK? In discorp I said I coudl make a whole post about random specific thigns I would want in my ideal interpretation of the Riddler and I’m a man of my word sometimes so I am going to do it. Including both major things and icnredibly dumb minor details. Putting this under cut because I seriously did not realize how long this would get LOL

His original name WAS Edward Nashton and he changed it to Nygma both because of da riddle love and to distance himself from horrible family which he does have, and I think it specifically should be spelled Nygma because he would value the extra .2 seconds it would take for someone to notice that being a pun. However even if it makes it more obvious when said in conjunction with last name he actually does NOT hate being called Eddie specifically. He loves it because it makes it so there’s 2 different ways to do the enigma thing.

He had pretty awful childhood, like realistically awful. Horrible parents bad marriage etc his mom treated him better than his dad but the difference became more narrow over time probably. :( He did not to well in school, he hoped that doing somethign really well would help & entered contest thing. I think he did cheat and feels like he deserved further horrible family thigns due to it but did not he was only a lad! 

 hated school. Did not go to college. Intelligent but not emotionally... he DOES have OCD and it is like compulsive to turn eveyrhting into funny puzzles and games and of course riddles, but it doesn’t stop him from doing ones on purpose of course, and he does like to tell really dumb jokes liek all the ones in the 60s show (BTW he should always and forever do the funny Frank Gorshin laugh). And he is fully autistic. He is so autistic. Believe this. Believe me. He gets along with other villains his like constant compulsive insertion of riddles into things that don’t or shouldn’t have them can cause strife but like everyone in Batman is TWISTED they get it they’re a jolly group terrorizing the town together. United Underworld baby. U.U. should be in every piece of Batman media BTW, unrelated.

The important thign though is! He is a tragic guy deep down he has a sad story behind him all but he is silly. Whatever the ‘present’ is like aroudn the time any actual Batman comics happen, he should be silly. All these thigns should not stop him from being silly. He is egotistical for sure but not USUALLY to the point of like, being Arkham levels of rude. But it can happen. He mostly just like... He does his FUNNYCRIMES to prove himself as being smart, but there usually isn’t even all that malice involved unless it’s like, the one BTAS episode he really wants to get revenge on a specific person. IdealRiddler not as suave as BTAS Riddler though. he most resembles him in that one scene where all the girls are like ‘ahhh so smart bro’ and he’s like “well heh guess you say that to all the geniuses!”

I don’t think he’d ever really intentionally kill anyone. He’s like - he’s not ineffective at the thigns he does but he’s not an incredibly harmful villain. That said he can put together whole insane mastermind plots but they probably won’t be things he really puts into effect a lot because he doesn’t really want or need to. He’s definitely like When is a Door-type Riddler in my head, he doesn’t know where it all went wrong he just wants to have fun and do incredibly silly crimes and it scares him so bad to see everyone else actually killing people even if the Joker was probably already doing it forever

And BTW he is fully gay he is fully homosexual and in a relationship with the Penguin. But this is important - he is completely chaste. He definitely needs to be incredibly gay that’s an integral part of his character. To me. And he does have 1 billion different increasingly silly and flashy Riddler suits like Jim Carrey style you know it and loves funny campy silyl stuff and he definitely has a huge collection of big novelty objects used in ads and like carnivals and stuff. And he is like 5′3 at most. BTW. He is short. He needs to be short OK? He needs ot be an incredibly small man. *Looking at you pleadingly as I say this*

He used to have long hair when he was young but by the time he actually is da Riddler it;s short and he is balding. he tries to hide it under his hat but you can tell you can always tell. He is not like fully shaved bald and tattooed or anything like that, but he is balding. Sometimes he has a mustache I think the only Riddler that’s had a mustache was when he was briefly portrayed by John Astin for part of Batman 1966. But I like to imagine him with a mustache. I think it works and BTW I’m insane.

Like, every single job that he’s been portrayed as having before is something he’d gone through before being da riddler, he’s worked at a carnival he’s worked on video games he’s done it all. He definitely collected all the carnival stuff. I think specifically though aside from probably having bad boss like in BTAS his V.G. work went unappreciated because it was all like, incredibly obscure thigns on ZX Spectrum or FMV games or somehting and he didn’t get to contribute that much to them because he always ended up coming up with extremely ambitious plans for developign them that would be like impossible for a game at the time. He would definitely run a really weird looking web page with all the little weird easter eggs he put into stuff showcased. OK. That’s all I can think of right now. I might add more. But for now I’m just going to smile sweetly

[ramblingqueenfangirl]

Who gave them the right!!!!!????

Freddie Mercury, an immigrant boy from Zanzibar who had arguably one of the best singing voices ever just naturally like it belonged there as much as the blood in his veins. He could write #1 worldwide hits in less than an hour and if he took longer, would write what some in the music business have called the greatest rock song of all time. Had an ear for music that is so finely honed he can hear a song once, sit at a piano and play it and most likely even improve upon it. Who only had piano lessons for just a few years in school as a kid, and sang in the school choir at 7 and never again had any training in music or anything that it entails, yet sang better than the most trained vocalist ever. Who had one of the most exotic, recognizable, and in my opinion, sexiest looks along with the charisma of a thousand stars in one man. He could play genius melodies on a piano and secretly played insanely unique and awesome rhythm guitar. He had the talent of at least ten of the best musicians the world could produce, and was generous and funny, and just an all around good person and could control an audience of hundreds of thousands with absolutely no effort who were all in sync better than the back ups in a Jane Fonda work out video, with merely one finger. Who even though was very particular and perfectionist about his music worked so hard that not one person who ever made music with him left feeling he wasn’t the best. Who didn’t know the meaning of the word moderation and lived a life filled with more fun in just 45 years than most humans that live to be 100. Would give interviews with some of the most perfect answers just off the top of his head that are still quoted by many almost 30 years after his death. Who was the most generous celebrity ever, and was loved by most of his contemporaries even when they wanted to be jealous of him. Who sang opera that he WROTE, with one of the best opera singers that has ever breathed air, and had her in awe of his ability while fighting an unknown, excruciatingly painful, and deadly disease. A pairing that came about from one short interview in the diva’s home country and started a enormous and lasting trend of rock musicians singing opera and trying to copy the success that he created on a whim, and all others have failed to live up to miserably. A man whose instinctual movements to the music that poured out of his very soul from every pore, were so graceful, odd, and completely unplanned and awesome that it made him one of the best entertainers that ever stepped onto a stage. Who found true love even with every single obstacle stacked against it and managed to have a relationship that though not perfect was so beautiful no fairy tale could match it. Who never slept alone a day in his life and even when penniless lived like the greatest star that ever lived. Who even though a small man, who weighed nothing and wasn’t extremely tall, managed to be appealing to both men and women and personified the word sexy. Who never once in his entire life lost the beat of, both a life lived completely fully every day, or the timeless and completely inspired music he created with absolutely no effort. Who was so naturally gifted that it’s hard to believe he was actually human. A man that had a long and successful career but only took one 20 minute performance to become the most legendary performer in more than a century, all while sick with a throat infection which he refused to let stop his performance of some of rock’s hardest songs ever sung. Who when he shared a stage with the most popular and beloved artists ever and with no lights or costumes, made them all look like amateurs. Who 60 percent of 1.6 billion people voted as the most iconic and great live music performance that has ever been. Who many people believe is one of the greatest singers and frontman that did and will ever exist. When he died the grief never stopped or wanrd in intensity. Who set records in music,and then over 25 years later set a movie industry record with over 900 million dollars spent to see a biopic about his life.

Brian May, not only can use his fingers to make sounds on a guitar that a guitar shouldn’t be able to make, but was so determined to learn guitar he and his father built one from left over fireplace parts. As a child, learned and studied astronomy and physics well enough to get his masters in the subjects and later a doctorate. Has the most recognizable hair of any rock and roll musician ever naturally growing from his head, and while attaining all this education, mastered the art of guitar playing at the same time. Who has a singing voice good enough to front his own band but finds the perfect band mates by complete coincidence and become sone of the best guitar players ever and played in one of the biggest rock bands ever and be a genuinely nice and kind person as well. Taught school while his band was still finding their fame and even at 70 is still one of the coolest and most recognizable musicians on the planet. Who plays the same guitar over half a century later that he built with his dad from fireplace parts and which no one can ever completely replicate and is still the most legendary guitar in music history and he still plays all over the world and who no one has ever been able to compete with that cost less than 50 British pounds to construct.

Roger Taylor, with his baby blue eyes and long blonde hair who was too pretty to be a guy and can play drums with the best ever. He can sing in perfect range to be in harmony with his amazingly gifted lead singer while drumming at break neck speed. Who was the one who met Freddie first and introduced him to his band mate and friend Brian May and cemented one of the greatest music destinies ever. Who got more women than Casanova and could play drums and sing perfectly even when still drunk or hungover. Who has a bit of an ego, but is also humble and kind to fans. Who is the soul mate of one of the best singers that rock ever knew. Not only did they understand each other’s souls but their voices complemented each other so well only the angels in heaven could harmonize better. He could lead sing in and did, lead his own band where he played guitar yet another talent he possesses in spades. Who was made to be a rock star from the minute he decide he wanted to be. A man who could with very little time be certified as a dentist and studied biology with remarkable grades finishing his degree even though he knew he didn’t have to.

John Deacon, a man who is the definition of the word winning, in human form. A guy who on the outside seemed regular and average but was actually one of the most extraordinary musicians that ever picked up an instrument. A human disco ball who not only played bass guitar better than probably anyone but did it while dancing and writing some of the biggest selling songs of his legendary band without being able to even sing. A man who found himself near a dumpster one day and took scraps and built a custom made amp that would define the sound of his band, an amp that he himself invented and no one has been able to exactly duplicate even now. A man who got married young to the only woman he wanted and then had six children while touring and playing with one of the biggest most popular bands in history. Who can do math so well,he did, and still does, the financial business of the multimillion dollar business that his band became. A man so amazing he just left the entire music industry forever without one regret after losing the lead singer, best friend and surrogate big brother from a heart breaking disease because it just wasn’t worth it without him. A man who’s baselines are so epic and well played that his skill is hard for anyone to imitate. He was told as a prank by his fellow band mate he would need a double bass for a song and went home and learned how to play it in a matter of hours. Played not only the bass guitar with unbelievable skill and precision but any instrument. He wrote some of the most famous songs in rock that are universally loved even now more than 25 years later. He had so much integrity that even after doing the lion’s share of the writing of a song insisted his band mate who would sing the songs, take writing credits even when that singer didn’t really want to. Who was the very definition of loyalty to a lost friend who he saw as irreplaceable and refused to continue playing music without him while the others carried on. He seemed quiet, shy and unassuming but when he wanted to do something didn’t care what ANYONE thought including his band mates even during one recording session for an album picked up his stuff and went to Bali with his family on a whim leaving only a small note behind. Who came up with one of the most recognizable bass lines ever in an impromptu jam session with another artist, went out for pizza with his band mates and completely forgot said bass line then when reminded made the bass line so legendary it’s immediately recognizable from the first four notes. He wrote a song that Michael Jackson the king of pop pestered the other members to release it as a single when they were completely against it and after the single debuted became one of the best selling singles of his multi million album selling band. Who has mastered the art of being a hermit yet also being one of the coolest and most extraordinary humans that ever strapped on an instrument. Who has become the best player of hide and seek that ever was and was happy leaving it behind never once looking back.

Every single one of these guys could have been unbelievable and legendary all by themselves, but chose and found three other equally god-like humans to form a band who would become the most prolific band that ever recorded music and has multi-platinum records in every country on 6 continents in the world that are still as popular and relevant today as they were when they started 50 years ago.

WHO GAVE THEM THE RIGHT to be so amazing?!Individually, they could be Greek mythical heroes as accomplished and great as Achilles or Hercules, but when put together were more epic than any Greek mythology could even imagine, and changed the world, and music forever!

Who gave them the right?!!!!

[0poole]

The Best and Worst parts of past Pokemon games

I’ve watched ShayMay’s 7-hour analysis on Omega Ruby and as you’d expect it’s getting me to think about what are actually the best and worst parts of Pokemon in the past. I’m still glad he literally goes through the entire game going into both the good and the bad of the game, and I’m basically only bringing it up because of the sheer amount of effort put into it. Obviously the video was made before Sun and Moon came out so thankfully some of his quandaries have been solved, but still it’s interesting to see the on and off of certain things throughout the series. Most of the time it gets better as time goes on, but still, it feels like you could get an amazing Pokemon game just by piecing together the features of past games (even if you’d definitely need a few additions to get it perfect, if that’s even possible). 

To be honest I really am slowly falling out of favor with Sword and Shield, and it kind of makes me hope that Gamefreak can still get better. Even though the games sold like hotcakes, hopefully they have the heart to realize a ton of people didn’t really like the direction, even though it still isn’t “bad,” just worse than it feels like it should be. Even though bad direction can’t be remedied by other things, the fact that they are a multi-billion dollar franchise really makes it feel like they could afford to make it better, especially when past games did do what people wanted...

Since it’s the most relevant...

DLC/”Enhanced” Versions:

I will genuinely take DLC over “enhanced” versions any day. Even though you’d think a lot could be improved between the base versions and enhanced ones, that’s usually not the case. The only ones that truly changed the game were Black and White 2, since they were treated more like sequels. Even golden games like Platinum didn’t divert much, even if it is an objectively better version than Diamond and Pearl. Considering the games are now going to be a solid 60$ each, it would be even crazier to expect someone to buy the base and enhanced versions. Only paying 30$ for multiple expansions (at least two, could be more) with the content of said expansions being put out as a free update otherwise is a much better deal. The only people this hurts are the types who reasonably wait for the inevitable enhanced version and only buy that instead, since it’s always better, even if only a little. As far as I know, however, Pokemon is one of the only game franchises that releases enhanced versions of games soon after their release (as in, not years later when technology advances and they can profit off nostalgia), so really they’re just becoming more normal by doing this. 

Of course there’s the argument that there shouldn’t be any DLC or “enhanced” versions, and all the content of the game should be included in the base game. It would obviously be preferable to not pay for it, but as is painfully obvious, even the richest groups can still be money hungry. Considering they’re inevitably going to make one or the other, DLC is going to be the better choice overall because it’s much more expandable. You rarely got to see a substantial amount of content added on in the enhanced versions. If they made us pay 30$ for the Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra separately, that would be crazy. But, since it’s 30$ for both, they could easily insert more bits alongside the rest of the Expansion Pass, maybe allowing them to carry a game for multiple years under less resources on their part compared to trying to make a whole new game. That way, maybe they can devote even more resources to future generations and remakes. That’s all just speculation though. I’m kind of impatient, writing all this before the day it releases and when we get more info for the future, so basically just take this as my opinion the whole time before the DLC came out.

Honestly, though, I almost always fall into the camp of gamers completely misrepresenting the concept of DLC, saying they just cut off some of the content and made you pay extra for it. A few bad apples really soured the bunch in this case, because, even though Sword and Shield did feel kind of lacking in some places, saying the Isle of Armor or Crown Tundra would’ve been a seamless part of the game no matter what is just obviously wrong. The games felt “complete” in the sense that it is all they wanted it to be, and it has a clear start and end. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s unfinished. Again, obviously it would be better if it was free/included already, but that’s just a given. 

In a similar vein…

Remakes:

Basically, I love the usual formula for remakes. I actually really liked ORAS, and I feel like it improved on so much, making me actually like Hoenn as a region. Even though I played them closer to when they game out, RSE feel like a slog compared to modern stuff, especially with the lack of the physical/special split. I can definitely feel some nostalgia for the originals still, but 90% of the time I go back to those games looking for nostalgia, getting bored by the time I get to Rustburo, and turning it off. As mentioned by Shaymay, there’s still a ton wrong with it, but I’d much rather play them all the way through compared to the originals. I do still want to force myself through them eventually, though.

Heartgold and Soulsilver are widely considered to be the best games in the whole franchise, so I don’t have to say much. I’m not a Johto nut so I’m not the best at selling it, but I will say it feels so much more colorful and polished visually than the rest of Gen 4. 

Firered and Leafgreen have the same problems that make me dislike RSE, but Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee are the strange cases that make the future so uncertain. I liked them for what they were, but I swear God if they do that one more time it’s going to make the fanbase erupt. The Let’s Go formula worked for Kanto because a lot of the people playing Go are people who knew the original games but not the newer ones, making Let’s Go a good entry point with mostly familiar territory and slightly dumbed down gameplay. It may work again if they do a Let’s Go in Johto, but if they do it for Sinnoh, since it’s the next one on the chopping block, it’s going to fall insanely flat. Barely anyone who only loves Go also seriously wants to play through Sinnoh. There’s little nostalgia there, and the nostalgia with Sinnoh resides in everyone else who loves the games as they are/as they originally were. Plus, people say they’re some of the hardest games, so dumbing them down ruins part of the appeal more. Since remakes pretty much entirely profit off of nostalgia (and partially from people wanting to experience a region without the limitations of its origins) they really need to just, you know, remake the game. Same deal as any Pokemon game, just with better (if you’d call it that) graphics and modern sensibilities. Considering all remakes (IMO) look better than their originals, I don’t think we have to worry an insane amount about them looking as iffy as SwSh. I don’t think they look THAT bad already, but I definitely think they’re some of the ugliest in the series. 

I will say that I do still want remakes to happen. I’m a sucker for nostalgia, and I love seeing graphically enhanced versions of past regions. Also, my favorite region is up next, so I really just want to see what happens. I’m a shill so it can’t make me hate the originals more. Or, you know, maybe that just makes me a normal, reasonable person...

Graphics:

Obviously we just want texture quality, model quality, etc. But, I think there’s something to be talked about with the overall art style.

I’m not gonna lie, I was kinda into the chibi-esque models of X/Y and ORAS. It did feel like it trivialized the more serious characters, like the villains and major legendaries, as they looked too cute, so it’s probably for the best if we stick to “normal” proportions. It felt weird when I first saw Sun and Moon, but I got used to it. I always wanted to make my character look as cute as possible so the chibi style helped with that, but I have gotten some good results from Sword and Shield. 

For character customization (if it even counts as “graphics”) I think Sword and Shield really hit the nail on the head. I’m kinda biased, because Moon and Ultra Moon had a really shitty shade of purple as their designated “purple” clothing, and SwSh really got my favorite shade of it right. I do think it’s great to have one style of clothing under different, generally standardized colors. But, I definitely think we need more body types. Like, one of the main reasons I play as a girl in games like this is that the boy character doesn’t even look like me anyway, so there’s really no good reason to play either. Even if it’s just one separate character option for each gender, like a Skinny male/”Round” male/Skinny female/”Round” female I’d be fine. Obviously I’d want some character sliders at some point, like pretty much every other game with character customization does, but I can settle for one more generation. The alts could even be more shoehorned rivals like in X/Y, so they basically have the design cut out for them.

One weird graphical thing I want brought back is the little circular platform your Pokemon lands on in a battle. For some reason, I really liked that. It does make the battle feel more in tune with the overall environment without it, but sometimes the battle fields look really bland and flat without it. I’d at least want the floor to be designed in a way to look like there are devoted spots for each Pokemon to stand on, even if it’s not a separate thing like in X/Y. It just feels more satisfying. Not really a big deal though, since I’ve been able to ignore it for this long.

The big thing is animations. I am getting extremely tired of the X/Y models. That’s 3 generations so far that use them, and some of them aren’t even good. I’ll never hesitate to drive this point into the ground, but I really wish Pokemon like Xatu, Charizard, Dragonite, and Salamence are permanently floating/flying in air. If it isn’t obvious, this is the way it is because of Sky Battles in X/Y, since they didn’t want to do extra work for the Pokemon permanently suspended in air. The problem is that those four Pokemon (and probably many others) really don’t feel like they are supposed to be in the air 24/7. According to their official art and sprites, they’re all on the ground. Xatu especially was made to look super tall and stout with its geometric wings flatly put on his torso, like the totem pole it’s supposed to be. In the air, it basically just hovers with his wings out, and for some reason it looks like there’s a large gust of wind keeping it afloat. It looks really weird. Salamence is also in the same boat, since its wings are so weird and not wing-like that making it constantly fly just looks so unnatural. Mega Salamence was at least designed to look like it’s supposed to be flying, but normal Salamence really should just rest on the ground. He’s too fat to be permanently lifted by his weird wings. Charizard and Dragonite aren’t as severe, since both are clearly shown to be otherwise super capable of flight, but they do feel better on their feet. I remember watching TyranitarTube’s series on one of the Extreme Randomizer hacks of the game, and in there somehow they made a Dragonite use it’s Amie/Refresh animation of sitting still on its feet in battle. It seriously felt so much better to look at, instead of this giant, poofy dragon being carried by its comically small wings. Basically, the way you should tell whether to keep them on the ground is based on the official art/sprites. That is the way the designers intended them to be depicted, so that’s the way they should be. Some exceptions that I’m actually fine with are pretty much all the regional birds, except Unfezant. They all look pretty decent flying, since flying’s basically all they do… Even Swellow, who has the same strange gust of wind as Xatu, feels more fitting like that because it seems so much more aerodynamic. 

Apart from that, I just wish they were at least a little different. I’m not super against the muted colors they have compared to the sprites, but I wouldn’t be against more saturation. Considering how much work was put into all the different animations of the battles, Refresh, and both walking AND running animations, I unfortunately don’t think they’re going to change any time soon unless they explicitly say they’re going to change them for quality improvement. I would say the Pokemon from Gen 6 up are still pretty fine, since they were more meant for 3D.

As for battles, one of my favorite Pokemon games is, in fact, Pokemon Battle Revolution on the Wii. Not only was it super Sinnoh-focused, but it had multiple body types (even if I still look like none of them) with character customization for all, and great graphics for the time. People always look to it after citing the lacking Double Kick animation from SwSh, saying how animated the models were and how they liked the Pokemon actually running up to their target when using a physical attack. I will say that the model quality for a lot of them were still kind of iffy, and that some of the animations were a little too much. Specifically Pidgeotto, who was on one of the rental cards, was super energetic so as to seem a bit crazy, and felt a bit low-poly for the otherwise high quality of the environments and humans. However, going back to such a formula would be extremely welcome. I’m totally fine with the Pokemon not running up to their targets, but I wouldn’t be mad to see it put in, especially since the walking and running animations are already in the game. They would need to be balanced in terms of speed, though, since some of the animations in PBR felt really, really slow with that animation in there. Plus, some moves just need speed, like Quick Attack. 

In terms of the move animations themselves, I do think some of the water effects in PBR felt too realistic compared to the rest of everything. Also, people say Double Kick looked bad in SwSh (like it ever looked good), but a hell of a lot of Fighting type animations in PBR were literally just the Pokemon walking up to their target, smacking them with nondescript flashes, and that’s it. So many of them could hardly be pieced apart depending on whether they were kicks, punches, or whatever. It would’ve been better either way if they put the physical move attack animation in for Double Kick, but PBR has its fair share of shitty move animations too. Moves like Seismic Toss looked fucking insane though, and I loved it. Seismic Toss specifically is the true test of move animation quality. 

Also, it’s kinda irrelevant to anything, but I could totally get down with the Announcer from PBR returning for major battles like Gym battles or League battles. He was so much fun, even if a bit repetitive. All you need for that is a setting to turn him off, and bam. He’s a true classic.

More generally, though, I think Sword and Shield is a seriously mixed bag of graphical quality. I give the SwSh haters a lot of flack, but the one thing I 100% agree with is the texture of the trees from the Wild Area. They are god awful, even if it was in a game a decade ago. I seriously don’t know how they messed that up, since you can download better bark textures for free on the internet. Surely someone at Gamefreak could’ve done better there. If this was just a random tree in the background of some random route, then who cares, right? But no, this is practically every single tree in the Wild Area, the biggest selling point for the region and the game, where you would always spend the most time. You see so many of these trees everywhere, and they look horrible. I also hate the look of the berry trees, since they don’t seem to use the same lighting effects as everything else (just a guess though), but even apart from that the batch of lighter leaves on top of the bottom ones just looks so artificial. It looks as if they dumped a sphere of leaves on top of another sphere of leaves, like it was ice cream. Maybe some trees in the real world look like that, but sometimes it’s an artist’s job to take what sucks about reality to make it better for fiction. 

On the other hand, I think locations like Motostoke look genuinely amazing. The brick textures are pretty good (compared to the tree), and all the colors and shapes of the place look really good. Also, when they go into full-on cutscene mode, the models, scenery, and everything else really shine. Obviously I’m not the king of all visual media, but it’s just weird to see that. It’s hard to compare to past games, because everything else was either 2D or on the 3DS, which wasn’t as powerful. Even though the Wii is definitely less powerful than the Switch, it doesn’t really count since there’s infinitely less content to worry about in PBR. Much more of the work could’ve gone into the graphics. Really, there doesn’t feel like there’s any excuse unless crunching is involved on the business side of things, which I really hope isn’t an issue for their sake. I would honestly love to see them announce that they’re taking a year or two off to devote themselves fully to a new generation, instead of trying to keep a yearly schedule. Something something Miyamoto quote something something.

Stylistically, it’s also a mixed bag, but at least this time it’s all just subjective. It feels like a lot of the game is meant to be somewhat blobbed together in some ways, like its a painting meant to be looked at from afar. It feels like there aren’t major outlines for things. Specifically with the Pokemon, they don’t have that outline they’ve had for the 2 generations before. It’s never been a big deal, and I really hate how low quality the outline made the models feel, so I don’t really know which style I want. Even though it’s still decent, I feel like most 3D models made to have a super notable outline on them look a little funky sometimes with it, so I don’t know if I want that, but without it they just don’t feel as solid. I really just don’t know there. 

Music:

It feels like, even if a franchise is kinda iffy, the music is still consistently top tier. Like, no one thinks Sonic games have objectively bad music, even if they don’t like it. If they do, they’re just wrong. Pokemon’s the same, so thankfully this isn’t a test of which past game had the highest quality music. I do think the Wild Battle theme in SwSh does feel like it has a weird melody, but that is super outclassed by universally acclaimed bangers like the Slumbering Weald, and the battle themes of Marnie, Bede, Oleana, and the Battle Tower. Those aren’t just the best the generation has to offer, they’re seriously amazing themes. 

Back in Gen 7, we have the Kahuna Battle, all themes of Team Skull and the Aether Foundation, Lillie’s theme, the Ultra Beasts (which might be more contentious but I like it) and Hau’oli City at night. In Gen 6, I at least liked the themes of Laverre City, Team Flare, and ESPECIALLY the Xerneas/Yveltal battle theme. Don’t even get me started about Pokemon Battle Revolution. I could go on and on, but I at least want to spotlight ORAS here because they knocked it out of the park with Archie and Maxie’s battle theme. It was the perfect drop, because the intro felt super muted and boring, and I was afraid they completely snubbed it, but the drop completely blew me away, and absolutely perfected the theme with the crazy trumpets Hoenn is known for. Also, Zinnia’s theme is amazing, as well as many other themes that are just improvements over the originals. The one thing I’m semi-iffy on is the Regi theme, an amazing theme for my favorite trio, but I never think anyone really makes it feel as lumbering and deep as it should, considering what it’s supposed to represent. The beat is arranged as it should, but it never feels punchy enough for me. 

I’m really just praising the music here. Frankly, I see no reason to think the music is getting any worse.

Difficulty/EXP Share:

They’re basically the same thing, at least according to Gamefreak.

I always keep the EXP share on, but I do think that making it a permanent addition to the game was a major mistake. As explained in Shaymay’s video, it actually increases the overall experience you gain in battle, at least before. That seems absurd to make a permanent addition (although they likely changed it in SwSh because of that). I honestly just use it because I’m not into a challenge in games, but it should definitely be optional, if for no other reason than to be a bootleg difficulty slider. However, What about the difference between the Gen 6+ version and previous versions?

I think it’s easy. Make it like pre-Gen 6, but give you multiple shares. So, if you want to train up two underleveled Pokemon, make it so you don’t have to swap it between them. That way, if you really want to just spread the EXP thin, you can give one to everyone you have, and that’s that. Also, I think it should perfectly split the EXP, not adding anything onto it. If everyone on your team has one and you get 120 EXP, that’s 20 EXP for everyone. Of course, I do actually love the mechanic of being able to switch the share holder in to give them a disproportionately larger amount of EXP compared to everyone else. It just doubles the effectiveness of switch training, and makes it better for when you want to train them up but specifically not the higher level Pokemon you’re using to fight.

Some part of me wants to keep my precious easy mode in, but then I realize… Just make actual difficulty differences. Just give us a choice. Even if it’s just a “How well do you know the Pokemon world?” with a “I know all about it/I’m a bit unsure” text box in the beginning. In the harder variant, tutorials will be skipped automatically, trainers will have higher AI, and better teams. However, I don’t think higher levels is a perfect foil, because that can just be beat with grinding, and grinding is boring. Also, I’d have to guess the main reason why Gamefreak didn’t do this in the first place is that trading Pokemon would differ a bit between difficulties with different level curves, although apart from it just sounding like a bad thing I’m struggling to think of a genuine reason why it is. But, for the sake of playing, grinding sucks. It’s not fun, and I honestly think you shouldn’t just bump up levels and call it difficulty, because you don’t actually need skill to beat a higher level, just a better level and maybe RNG. But, if you actually had to effectively train a team of more than six, with Pokemon you swap out depending on your opponent, you would actually need to think of how you play the game. I think the main reason Pokemon games are so easy is that you can basically choose whatever you want and do almost whatever and still win. Some fights, as far as my playstyle goes, are still decently challenging because I just choose what Pokemon I like and not as much what’s good (unless something genuinely just sucks), and those battles, even though I would probably get annoyed at losing over and over, feel so much more rewarding to beat. And, of course, that’s only like a few major fights. I’ve never had any real trouble with trainers. I only think I’ve had a bit of trouble with the elite trainers in Let’s Go because I always try to use my lowest level Pokemon first to level them up, and keep my team at completely even levels. If I always just switched in the foil to my opponent, which I inevitably had, I would almost never lose a single Pokemon, mostly because of the “switch” battle setting.

But of course that begs the question of Pokemon being balanced for children and inexperienced players. I know way too much about this game, so obviously it’s a piece of cake for me no matter what, and what I want is supposedly what would frustrate everyone else. But… again, just put in the choice. People can choose whether they want to be challenged, or if they just want to play Pokemon, and if they choose wrong that’s on them, not anyone else. They could just reset the game and try again on an easier difficulty. It’s crazy to have to vouch for this, since it’s a staple in pretty much every other game in existence. Even in my casual state, I want to play a harder Pokemon. I want to test myself. Online competition is a bit much for me, but the AI is too little. Even in me replaying Pearl right now, I’m trying to use weirder and weaker Pokemon than I usually use for difficulty, and even that game was mostly a cakewalk. I’m only stuck at the Elite Four because I was somehow super underleveled. In the generation where I experience the AI switching out the most, they still just do that at random and keep in certain Pokemon that get completely walled by what I have out, only for me to stall them to death. AI definitely should switch out (and I honestly can’t remember it happening once since Gen 5, if even then) so if anything, just give them a more solid switching ability. Considering we have the opportunity to switch in whatever we want when they are about to send out something, they really need to take advantage of the power of switching.

Gyms are a big piece of difficulty that falls apart 90% of the time. The gym puzzles are rarely hard, with only a few notable exceptions requiring major thought, like the Circhester, Snowbelle, Snowpoint, and Sootopolis gyms. See a pattern? Why the heck to Ice types/themes get the worst resistances yet the best gym puzzles? Otherwise, if you’re not just fighting trainers (which you were going to do anyway) you’re bashing your head against a wall until something sticks. The Trials of SM/USUM were universally a joke, and were it not for the Totem fight they would’ve actually made me mad by how easy they are, considering they had the opportunity to revamp the whole system and knock it out of the park.

As for the Gym Leader, assuming we have to stick with the idea that they can only use one type still, they really have to cover their bases. Like, a Water gym leader would really have to have Flying type moves or Pokemon to counteract the easy Grass weakness, or something. You can’t get to the top with just one single type and nothing else. I do kind of think a master with no specific type speciality should only be reserved for the Champion, since it makes them more special, and because it seems like any old trainer can become one if they beat the last one, meaning it’s illogical for too many of them to have one special type. I can appreciate the choice philosophies of the Gyms like Raihan and Volkner, and Flint of the Elite Four, where they do specialize in one type, but they have a lot of different Pokemon involved who only have moves of that type. It still feels consistent, but also more varied. Also, I love the 1v2 dynamic of Totem fight. Not only does it blatantly put you at a disadvantage, but since the battles aren’t explicitly type based, they can put together some seriously unique strategies, like the Sunny Day Castform partner to the Totem Lurantis. It’s literally the most basic plan you can formulate, but it sure as hell made that one of the hardest early boss fights in the series, at least for me. It was pretty good stuff. Too bad other bosses like the Ultra Necrozma fight was just kind of cheap, with a +1 to all stats and super high level… Better than nothing though.

Versions:

I get that it’s a staple of the franchise, but I really hate version exclusives/differences. They’re just dumb. Specifically the differences of Black 2 and White 2 pissed me off the most, because guess what? They did have difficulty options! But… they were version exclusive. Like White Kyurem more than Black Kyurem? Or, maybe Reuniclus is your favorite Pokemon? (not bitter) Well, too bad. You’re only allowed the expressly easier mode of the game, which you only unlock after beating it normally????? That’s just stupid. I’d sort of be okay with it if you unlocked easy mode after normal mode, then unlocking hard mode after beating easy mode (like how I thought it was before I looked it up), but limiting stuff like that is just ridiculous. I mean, it’s dumb to have to unlock an easy mode after beating the normal game to begin with. I’m honestly considering trying to beat easy mode without evolving any Pokemon though. Self-imposed difficulty is fun sometimes, but yeah…

Also, the differences of Sun and Moon also are dumb. Like playing in the day, but like Lunala more? Maybe Purple is your all-time favorite color and you want to wear it? Well, too bad. Go ahead and flip your 3DS’s internal clock around, messing up all other time based games you play. It’s a gimmick that transcends Mega Evolution, Z-Moves, and Dynamax.

Now, there’s a completely new problem: Some people bought the wrong expansion pass for their game. Because there were two versions, people literally just wasted money on absolutely nothing. To be fair, those people are blind idiots, but still. I really just want one version. Please.

The whole semi-in-grouping that happens when the version exclusive Pokemon are first revealed is kinda fun, but 90% of the time people have to settle for a few Pokemon they like and a few they don’t. For example, I bought Sword specifically because I like Zacian more, and the legendaries would be much harder to come by than other version exclusives. In the meanwhile, I preferred practically every other version exclusive over Sword’s, including but not limited to my boy Reuniclus. I don’t use old Pokemon in newer generations anyway, but it still sucks to have to choose like that.

It was obviously meant to give people much more to look for, since they physically can’t get some Pokemon, and have them interact with others to get them. The only problem is that we just have the Internet now. It doesn’t help to just ask someone online for a trade for a version exclusive. It’s just an extra stepping stone that really isn’t that fun to deal with.

I was originally going to say that the games/console cost more so less people would buy them, but considering SwSh absolutely knocked it out of the park, overselling even the highest selling games from the past, that’s clearly not an issue. My sister even bought Let’s Go Pikachu after buying Let’s Go Eevee for herself, since we both initially got Eevee. Thankfully she seems relatively into buying the games now, so we can coordinate and get different versions. That’s how I was able to complete my Pokedex for the first time in Sword (although obviously there’s less Pokemon to find). I think she even bought a separate Sword version for herself too… Is this what the average consumer is like?

Honestly all of this is just sort of subjective because really it’s not a big deal, but it would be so much less of a deal and make the games much more perfect and reasonable story wise if they just used one version. For example, Circhester is clearly an Ice-themed location, but in Sword you face a Rock gym leader, instead of the Ice one. And, the opposite is true in Stow-on-side, because Sword has the more logical gym with the boxing gloves punching you around and the tough city that feels as Fighting as Fighting could be without being a literal dojo. But, in Shield you face some Ghost kid. To be fair, I do like that version exclusivity is bleeding into some of the characters too, so if there is to be version exclusives at all let there be version exclusive characters, but it would just feel so much better to have it all sorted into one place. Also, to consider past installments, Ho-oh is clearly more important to the overall plot of the world than Lugia is, as shown by Ho-oh always being an important, mystical lore figure in the Anime and such, while Lugia is just like “Wow, there’s Lugia! So powerful!” Thankfully the plot didn’t entirely revolve around them, but it could’ve if they just focused on Ho-oh. 

Story:

Pokemon has definitely had its fair share of dumb stories, which is excusable because it’s not actually the focus of the game, but it doesn’t hurt to have.

You obviously can’t talk story without talking about Black and White. Also, you really can’t talk a Pokemon story without talking about the evil Team in each game, because they’re basically the entire motor for plot. Still, though, Team Plasma is easily the best Team in the franchise for story purposes. The biggest thing is that they seem like the most reasonable team, making them seem like people who are just so into their ideals that it looks like a cult. Also, in B2W2, they actually split up into the friendly division of Plasma, where they actually carry out their goals of wanting Pokemon to be happy and free, while Neo-Plasma does all the Team Rocket-level shenanigans that mess everything up. Not only is it just reasonable, but it answers a question that comes with the overall concept of the franchise: How can Pokemon want to battle for the sake of humans, etc? It doesn’t make sense, and naturally someone in the world would take that to the extreme when they realized it. It also makes sense why the grunts are so hellbent on wreaking havoc around Unova, because they are each led to truly believe what they are doing is right for the world. Other villains like Archie and Cyrus are just like “humans are bad, let’s destroy them” which is like a lite version of this idea, but it feels almost too supervillain-y to take seriously, and the grunts just feel like henchmen. Plasma feels just real enough, with somewhat level-headed people like N making it seem like they’re almost not crazy. 

People always say Team Rocket is the best, but even though their motives are so simple enough so as to seem real and good story-wise, they do feel like they don’t really add anything to the overall idea of Pokemon. At the time it was just “Pokemon are strong so bad people can use strong Pokemon for bad” which makes sense, but really doesn’t feel like it extends beyond that. Don’t get me wrong, I would say they’re objectively second best (because subjectively Galactic is my #1) but I do think Plasma is better.

Since they’re the most recent, Team Yell is the most nothing out of this list. That only makes them second worst, above Team Flare, who felt like they were trying to do something big but fell flat. Team Yell as the resident “evil Team” feels weird, because they do almost nothing. They are only similar to Skull on the surface, that being all rough-and-tumble teenager types, as underneath them being a toxic fanbase is somewhat interesting, but they, again… just felt like nothing. The plot wasn’t even close by to them, like with Skull was, being tied in with the Aether Foundation. They’re just there to be goons and go away. At least they did lead to the first Dark type gym leader, but again… their leader is a Gym leader. We would’ve seen him no matter what he did, so it feels less interesting. I do want the Team to actually do something.

The problem is that, since Plasma already did good, how do you do something that’s original but still good? To be honest, I want it to involve Foundations, like a morally good alternative archetype to the evil Team. Our first run-in with a Foundation was led astray by a crazy leader, but it seems like they’re still good overall, so I at least want to see more of them. Maybe instead of the Team searching for world domination by using the box legendary, maybe you and the Foundation have to search for the box legendary so they can help you defeat the Team, who may or may not have the third/another legendary on their side, and you have to prove yourself to it to get it to trust you. Sort of like Sword and Shield, but more involved. Zacian and Zamazenta just sort of appear when things go bad, and that’s it. You just hear stories about them before that. That’s at least better structure-wise, although the motives and themes would still have to be dealt with. There are so many possibilities there it’s hard to choose. 

One thing, though: I definitely believe that Pokemon was never even close to an open world game, and people thinking the new games are too linear compared to the old ones just have rose tinted glasses on. Kanto had bad crossing over, where you’d sometimes find yourself severely overleveled when interacting with a story event, and beyond that all other games were pretty linear too, with only a few slight special, optional areas that aren’t involved with the plot. Of course, I still think the game would benefit from being open world. Some games don’t have to be open world, and that makes them feel sort of empty, but Pokemon as an idea is exactly perfect for that. They were toying with the idea a bit with the Wild Area, and I do think if they really went crazy with that idea it could be fun. Everyone always wants to compare it to Breath of the Wild, but I do love how seamless everything is in that game. Even with the enemies popping up out of the grass/flying down from the air/just romping in a set area like Pokemon would. Gym leaders could just use different teams based on how many badges you have, like how they imply it works in that Pokemon Origins series. Then, you might be able to scale up the Pokemon you can find too that way, like with the Wild Area. BotW’s story was very light, but if you just either use a quest system/map markers you can still manage a decent story in an open world. Plus, Pokemon has a ton of side quests anyways, like all the ghost quests they always seem to put in. You can literally “get” the quest, get distracted, and completely forget you were even doing any sort of quest because they don’t remind you in any way. Side quests could even get you extra doses of EXP for your team, giving them a use.

The Gimmick:

I don’t want every generation to have a gimmick. Ideas are severely limited in that front, and when everyone’s special, no one is. 

Mega Evolution was kinda cool, as it improved on old Pokemon without making them another part of an evolutionary chain. Also, it lets some Pokemon get different forms with entirely different strategies to them (even if they’re version exclusive…) But, as someone who plays Pokemon for the monster designs themselves, I actually kinda don’t like it. No, not because Mega designs are bad, but because they completely trump the designs they evolve from. For example, Mawile isn’t just “Mawile” anymore. It’s more of a “Not-mega Mawile.” It feels so much less complete now that it has a form on top of it that isn’t permanent. Same goes for starters like Sceptile, who feels kind of boring compared to its Mega. It always sucks when a Pokemon you like evolves into something you don’t like (Popplio for me) and you have to deal with the fact that, even if you like a Pokemon, you aren’t supposed to keep it like that, and it’s brought down because of it. I mean, I guess this is all just personal. Obviously it’s easy to like an early evolution, but it feels so much better to like a final evolution. Since Megas are both temporary in battle, not available outside of battle, and limited to the very late game usually, liking a Mega feels kinda pointless for in-game purposes, where you interact with your Pokemon the most. Plus, for Pokemon like Mawile, you’re using an “incomplete” Pokemon for as long as you don’t have the right Mega stone. It’s obviously fine when all your other Pokemon are incomplete as well, but yeah… Just kinda sucks sometimes. Plus, anything achieved by Mega Evolutions could just as easily be achieved by normal evolutions. The only issue is Pokemon like Beedrill not being able to evolve again, and Pokemon like the starters or legendaries who are already too good to get another stage. I feel like weak, 3rd stage Pokemon like Beedrill deserve that kind of treatment the most, but no one else. If they can evolve normally, evolve them normally, and if they’re already too good, just let them be.

Then there’s Z-moves, which solves one problem of Mega-Evolution: All Pokemon can get involved. No matter what, your Pokemon can unleash super cool but sometimes questionably named moves. And, apart from new animations, the special Z-moves aren’t so insanely preferable to the normal ones. It’s cool, but if every Pokemon gets to use them, it kinda gets old after a while. Also, it’s a one-time use, so if you fuck it up it’s wasted. It’s definitely not perfect, but I will say I love the special Z-move animations, mainly because it’s not just Pokemon doing stock animations for a quick little attack. They animated that Pokemon specifically for this attack, which is basically a cutscene, and it always looks better. It is a bit strange, though, that even though Z-moves are seemingly named after Zygarde, it doesn’t even get a special Z-move of its own. That dude really got the shaft when it comes to 3rd legend attention...

Now we have Dynamax and Gigantamax. I just want to say that, when it first was revealed that you can turn your Pokemon into Kaiju I was extremely hyped. More hyped than I had any right to be. Considering nothing else, Dynamax definitely is the winner in terms of visual concept. Not only does it just look cool, but I love how Gym stadiums are designed specifically to accommodate them. It’s a nice touch of worldbuilding (even though it’s basically necessary). Unfortunately… It’s easily the Jack of all trades, master of none in terms of gameplay. It’s like Mega Evolution in how you change the appearance and power of your Pokemon, and it’s like Z-moves because they have super powerful moves with special effects. Sounds alright I guess, but I really just wish they kept the previous two gimmicks instead of just making a new one that checks them both off. Also, Gigantamax actually annoys me. They try to make it seem like your Pokemon changes, but the vast majority of them either look worse or hardly change at all. Specifically, Copperaja looks like an absolute joke, even though normal Copperaja is one of my favorites of the region. But, ones like Hatterene, Corviknight, Garbodor, and Grimmsnarl hardly look any different at all. Even Appultun and Flapple have the exact same Gigantamax. Who cares? Even their moves have almost exactly the same animations as their type’s counterparts, with a slightly different particle effect. It’s so much less interesting than they make it seem, and it has all the problems of liking Megas over their base, but worse, since they’re more temporary and only allowed in certain areas. Plus, Gigantamax isn’t even a thing possible with all members of a single species. Obviously now they’re introducing a way to change that, but at that point why not just do it Mega style? It’s not even that much better, but there’s so much more work in it. It’s like less rare shinies. It did bring about a decent event in the games, those being the Max Raid Battles, which both have good rewards and good challenge to them. I don’t have friends so they suck for me, but with friends it looks awesome.

I feel like the worst part is that they probably are just going to retcon these gimmicks in the future, like they did with the Pokedex. It makes sense, but each thing was made to be such a massive deal in their respective regions, it feels lame that they’re just gone now. 

But, oh my god. You have no idea. Regional Variants are the best thing to happen to Pokemon since, I dunno, whatever. They’re amazing, and something that should never leave the franchise ever. Like a Kantonian form more than an Alolan form? Sure. It’s still there with all its power, it just has a different style in this region. That is not only biologically logical, but it brings back interest in a Pokemon without outclassing the classics. Plus, now it feels like every single Pokemon has a possibility to shine that is both permanent and preserving of the original. I just can’t get enough of it. Then Sword and Shield introduced the idea of Regional Evolutions, which can be both plain evolutions and split evolutions from the normal form like with Cofagrigus and Runerigus, meaning the possibilities are endless. Then, even further, regional LEGENDARIES. It doesn’t make sense lore-wise but who cares, the new birds look awesome as all hell and I actually like them now. It’s so perfect, I don’t want anything more than this in future games. I would kill for some Sinnoh variants of post-gen 4 Pokemon in the remakes. Hell, I hope Sinnoh gets revamped with a ton of different options across the later generations so it feels significantly different from the originals. 

As for things like Primal Reversion, I honestly don’t even know. It’s even less significant than Gigantamax, but since it has more interesting lore I’m sort of fine with it. I do hope they use it for other legends too, especially since Palkia and Dialga are just asking for it, with their respective orbs, and Dialga already having the “Primal” title elsewhere. And yes, I know he’s called “Dark Dialga” in Japanese. 

If I may be so bold, I think a neat gimmick that can be both unique, interesting, and completely alter the strategies of battle, would be some sort of temporary type inversion. That is, everything going out of and coming into the inverted Pokemon will have reverse effectiveness. It’s like the fringe little Inverse battle you can go through in X/Y, but turned into a mechanic that’s inserted into normal battles. Visually, it would give the Pokemon a negative look, as in inverting their colors and shading. I don’t see how this could single out certain Pokemon in a special way, like with a form change or anything, but maybe there could be one specific Pokemon that has an ability that does something special when it inverts. Maybe items could be made for a special use too. I was sort of half-using it for a fan region I’m half-devoted to that will likely not be a full fledged idea, but I do like it.

Roadblocks/HMs:

I’m entirely fine with the way things are now, where you just get the HMs as key items you use whenever you want, but I can sympathize with the small contingent of people who like using their Pokemon to traverse the world, instead of anything else. I definitely think anyone who prefers HMs beyond that reason is an absolute lunatic, but I think there is some sort of a point to be made, and I think a combo of Let's Go and Sun and Moon have the answer. It is so much more fun to ride your Pokemon around than it is to get a bike (and put on some seriously ugly clothing, mind you), and I think Let's Go with giving you the option to ride your Pokemon instead of using a bike is seriously fun. I used a Rapidash almost exclusively for that purpose in my run of that game. Who the hell wouldn’t want to ride a Rapidash, assuming you weren’t going to catch fire? Plus, it’s YOUR Rapidash. Ride Pokemon in Sun and Moon were still pretty good, because they served functions you wouldn’t normally expect from HMs, like Tauros being both your bike replacement and Rock Smash, while Stoutland is a dowsing rod. It does get a bit weird when you “ride” a Machamp just so it can push rocks for you, but it’s better than forcing you to teach one of your team members a normal type move at the very end of the game since you absolutely need it to move on, and having to keep it until you can fly back to the move deleter. Honestly, if you could just delete HMs on the fly, they would be so much more acceptable. Still would be worse than what we have now tho.

Basically, I think Pokemon should have inherent HM abilities in them. That is, every single Tauros you catch can smash rocks, and every single Machamp you catch can push rocks. Each Pokemon would either be capable or incapable of a task, and you only need that species to go through it. That way, you’re both using your own Pokemon, while also not limiting their moves. It also makes it easy to tell why birds like Starly shouldn’t be able to carry you and fly you around, while birds like Staraptor can. I also think any road blocks using Rock Smash or Cut should be entirely optional, and for secrets only. In order to make Fly a limited option, maybe only fully evolved Fly-logical Pokemon can use it, so you can’t just fly somewhere in the early game. But, another thing: if you can fly early, so what? It’s not like you get extra options, you only can go back to places you’ve already been to. Even though it doesn’t make sense logically, it’s a very fair piece of game design that really doesn’t have a super obvious reason why it’s limited to the middle few gyms. If you have a strong bird that can pick you up, you obviously worked enough to get some convenience. 

But then, what would be a roadblock to keep you from going too far? A horde of dancing men? Honestly, that’s just one of those things fixed by my open world idea. Maybe some areas can be super strong so as to tell you that you shouldn’t be there, and maybe implement the idea of the Wild Area where you can’t catch the strong-looking Pokemon, but apart from that make most of the world scale up with you. Surely some areas would be slightly higher leveled then the rest, though, for the sake of variety. The Wild area does get a bit stale when literally everything you encounter is exactly lvl 60. Obviously there could be some pointless story-focused roadblocks that only clear when you progress, because that is how it is in real life. You can’t just walk into some business’ office unless you have business there. Of course, you can’t exactly walk into random strangers’ houses either, but still. 

I do want to praise ORAS again because the Soar feature with the Latis was extremely cool. It was like Ride Pokemon but using the objectively coolest possible HM to control. If they sort of nerfed the Fly mechanic and made it so you did have to ride your Pokemon and fly them there like the Latis I wouldn't mind that at all. Although, surely some other people would...

Other Bits:

- I still think that, even though having every Pokemon in the game would be great, I think if it can improve the game elsewhere I wouldn’t mind them saving some space. The problem is that Sword and Shield really wasn’t the best way to suggest it would vastly improve anything. I’ve gone on ad nauseam elsewhere about that so bleh

- I love seeing Pokemon in the overworld. I do think it would benefit from the Let’s Go treatment, where you can at least see if a Pokemon is shiny or not. Either way, it gives them so much more personality, like how some charge head-first at you while some walk up and casually examine you.

- I don’t really care too much about Pokemon following you to be honest. It would obviously be preferred over the alternative, but I’m not gonna riot if it doesn’t happen. It did give a lot of personality I didn’t expect in Lets Go, like Bellsprout being so darn speedy.

- I could probably make a whole nother giant rant about the overall designs of Pokemon but needless to say I’m fine with it overall. I do sort of wish they’d do something else with the starters though, since I haven’t genuinely loved a starter since Gen 4. Honestly Chesnaught was pretty close, but I still get the urge to replace him with something more interesting. Outside of them, though, I think things are going good. Some are duds, but some are bangers like Corvinight, Grimmsnarl, Hatterene, Frosmoth, and a bunch of others which I could easily list but this is supposed to be succinct comments so

- There definitely has to be some sort of endgame content, but everyone already knows that. Seriously though, what if the colosseums from PBR become the replacement Battle Frontier? That would be dope. Although the normal Battle Frontier would be fine too, I guess…

- PBR PBR PBR. PBR is great for it’s realistic sizes of Pokemon. If you’re going to use full-size models of humans, the Pokemon should match. Or, at least make it a little more true to reality. Yes, Wailord is too damn small.

[youmightaswell]

Die!

What I did during my pandemic non-vacation

Right before the pandemic hit, my work was slow. My client stable was dwindling and so I set  the goal of finally compiling all my personal essays from the last 20 years into a book I'd call "The Unbearable Heaviness of Being". And then, serendipitously a  more literal unbearable heaviness of being hit.

Still, one would think a pandemic would be the ideal time to start that book. Maybe even start the "Letters from the Inside" book about my serial killer writing project for the last 10 years, or even my own memoir. I had nothing but time. I had to stay inside anyway. Nothing else was pressing, and I am usually especially creative during times of stress and hardship.

But lo!  I am also a procrastinator when it comes to a writing assignment -- even a self-inflicted one.  

So over the last three months I found every excuse not to write those long-form pieces. It seems like all I did was bathe, eat, eat some more, and lay around in bed, most often talking to the dog in guise of actually talking to myself. I spent an inordinate amount to time figuring out how to handle my grooming at home now that my external fleet of professionals were no longer available. Day after day I wore sweats or pjs (careful to change from day ones to night ones once the nightly New Year’s Eve-type cheering started, a new type of closing bell.) The one day I felt invigorated and optimistic enough to put on jeans I had to peel them off by mid-day unsure of how I ever wore such a tortuous garment. 

I felt comfort when I saw reassuring messages on Instagram -- which along with Facebook and Twitter, I spent an inordinate amount of time on -- saying that it was just fine not to produce anything during this quarantine. That is was an unprecedented time and one that was highly stressful so it is fine to do whatever you want to keep calm and keep on...  I did just that, or at least it seemed so. I felt like a sloth, eating carbs and sugar -- things for the last two years I carefully avoided. I texted exes, fought with feral Trump supporters, washed dry-clean only clothes. You know, indulged in the wildest of vices.

The shelter-in-place mandate will come to a close soon. Being in NYC, probably it will take longer than most areas to dissolve, but still the streets are getting a bit more crowded, and people seem to be back in my NYC apartment building, once again, hogging the dryers (which I then have to neurotically wipe down with disinfectant wipes.)

So I initially felt a bit down at what a failure I've been to do something productive during this time.

As a result, I decided to take inventory of my last three months. ***

- I applied for PPP (dealing with Chase bank for two months having  to re-apply three different times at their ever-changing directives, only to be told they couldn't verify my income and therefore I was turned down). I applied for EIDL,got $1000 payment and then was told that because inadvertently answered a question wrong -- these applications are super hard--I was denied and now they were only allowing re-applications of agricultural industry workers. Then I applied for freelancer unemployment, twice, only to not be able to get through, not be able to revise my PUA application and am still waiting to hear something, anything.  As such with  EIDL, PPP, SBA, WHO and all other pandemic-related acronyms, I now have a great fear -- PTSD, if you will -- of acronyms in general. No good can come from them. 

- I washed my hands -- and my dog’s paws -- a billion times. I also did way too much laundry because in times of stress and lack of control, my OCD (another scary acronym!) gets rampant and doing finite tasks makes me feel more in charge. I saged my apartment weekly, casting out negative energy and viruses and calling upon all good things to enter instead. The only entrance was made by my super who yelled at me for mentioning him in an article I wrote about my doorman who passed away from Covid-19. Still, I disinfected doorknobs, elevator buttons, and even the container of wipes, multiple times as if trying to free a genie in a bottle, to no avail.

- I tended to all sorts of medical tests for myself and my dog, culminating in standing a long line to get the Covid-19 antibody tests. (Sadly I was negative.) 

-I binged watched (Dead to Me) and cringe watched (White Lines), valuing a good hate-watch more than quality programming. 

- I read about 10 books, a few that have stayed with me in the best way possible, such as "My Dark Vanessa" and "Excavation".

- I listened to the full true-horror podcast "Let's Not Meet" - because sometimes the only way to quell true-horror is with true-horror. Hair of the dog sort of thing.

- I tracked down ARCs (one of the nicer acronyms) of books that will come out later this year so I could read them without any preconceived notions about them. 

- I finally watched the backlog of hoarded movies I had borrowed from the NYPL: The best of which was "Giant", a classic 3.5 hour saga.

- I read countless magazines and most things I read were drivel, but then I curated the best essays and realized they all seemingly dealt with food, which makes total sense during a pandemic when we all reverted back into hunter gatherers.    “Fuck the Bread. The Bread is Over,” the NYT’s written by restaurant owner/chef of Prune, and the essay by art critic Jerry Saltz about his peculiar eating habits were the best.  While they all seemingly dealt with food and eating, they really don't deal with that at all.  They definitely appeased my appetite for touching writing.  

- And I did some touching writing of my own. I wrote an essay about the death by Covid-19 of my favorite doorman to much notice. It was the article I’ve written that has gotten shared the most online, I think, ever! More importantly, it touched his family in a way that seems significant, his daughter reaching out to me with this message: 

- Related: I organized a GoFundMe for the aforementioned late doorman’s family and raised over $7,000 in just one week! I got our whole complex and neighborhood to participate, and I believe it helped us collectively mourn. 

- Related, I helped a dear friend with dealing with heartbreaking news that her elderly mother had contracted Covid-19. She called me the night she found out to weigh options. Sadly her mother passed. I had a tree planted in her mother’s honor. 

- I signed up with Postcrossing and sent postcards to people all over the world and have gotten a ton back. In times of isolation it helps to feel connected in some way. 

- In that same vein, I participated Oregon Humanities’ “Dear Stranger” project - in which one writes a letter to a stranger and sends it to the organization and they exchange it with other stranger’s letter and mail that one to you. Interestingly I wrote my letter on an old map. The letter I got in return was by a female freelance writer of my same age, also written on an old map. More serendipity! More connection without ever leaving the apartment. 

- I saw a segment on NY1 talking about how this pandemic and isolation is taking its toll on seniors and one NYC nursing home that was requesting cards and letters to cheer them up. It was the catalyst for me to start a new project I call: “Letters from the Inside... of the Senior Center” - in which I researched and compiled a list of nursing homes around the country who accept letters of cheer to their seniors. I now have a list of about 800 names. I’ve sent about 75 cards/postcards myself so far, and have enlisted friends, neighbors, and others to send cards as well. My goal is to get each senior at least one card or letter. 

- I had a milestone birthday with little fanfare. My dog, Biggie, turned three. 

- I finally finished annotating each chapter of “Blind Eye,” the best-selling book about serial killer Michael Swango, who I have written to for 10+ years as part of the aforementioned “Letters from the Inside” project I created. I sent him questions on each chapter. 

- Related: After 10 long years of corresponding, on my birthday we started what has now turned out to be weekly calls. His prison has finally allowed them. Last call I told him that he has not answered my last few letters. He told me to yell at him, remind him, and push him to get on it. I quipped that it was probably not in my best interest to antagonize someone who murdered 60+ people. True horror, indeed. 

- The CNN docu-series about him in which I appear as an expert was postponed but will air later this summer. 

- Speaking of true horrors, I had a woman threaten to spit on me when I requested she leash her dog -- who had tried to attack Biggie. (Odd foreshadowing for the recent Amy Cooper debacle.) 

- I lost my long-time nurse (I get immuno-therapy infusions twice a month and have for years for an immune disorder) because she was fired by her nursing company. After having to deal with an inadequate string of nurses I lobbied to get my nurse hired at my pharmacy’s nursing division so now she can be my nurse again. She is thrilled she has a job; I am thrilled I have my old friend back each month. 

- I feel in love with Cuomo.

***

After sitting down and taking this inventory, I am amazed at how much I have actually done in such a short period of time. It seems insane that I was feeling so bad and slothlike for being so unproductive, when in retrospect, I actually accomplished a lot. 

I guess what I can take away from this long stretch of isolation is this: We can’t see how far we are traveling without looking back on our journey. While something -- particularly traumatic or stressful -- is happening, it is easy to feel static, frozen and worse, uncreative. But feelings aren’t facts. 

Just because I didn’t write my book, I did lots of creative things with my time. I was tangibly helpful to others without even noticing it when I was doing it. I felt like I was faltering and failing, but in looking back at that list above, I really wasn’t. I may have even excelled. 

And now, I think I need to lay down. 

[homebodiesblog-blog]

All the Masks You Should Hoard Instead of the Ones Hospital Workers Need

I’ve said it before (in my head): Now’s the perfect time to master your skin. To make it your bitch! 

...Or to just do something nice and relaxing for it, and for yourself. Whatever.

Especially because home-all-day air is different than out-and-about air and your skin might be freaking out (mine is). Also stress causes bad skin. But you knew that. You may be homeschooling, but you’re not an idiot. Here are some face masks I’ve tested and loved. Wear one to the grocery store; you won’t look any stupider than all the other j-holes running errands in surgical masks. And at the end of this all? You’ll be hotter than them. Or dead. With them. For Hydration: Jet Lag Mask, Summer Fridays, $48

Know how you grease a pan with Crisco before baking a cake? This is like that, but the pan is your face, and the oven is your bed, and the mask is the Crisco. It’s a thicc, buttery cream that you slather on and, if you’re genpop, leave on for 10 mins then sponge off with a damp towel. If you are advanced-ly dry, craggy, depressed, underemployed, have a crush on the person 1 row below you and 2 squares to the left in the Zoom conference, or simply like to give every experience your all, rub in what’s left after your 10-min steep, and sleep. When you wake up, you’ll be plumper, softer—ahhhh—fresh-baked face. How lovely to be alive at all. For Exfoliation and Glow: PHAT Glow Facial Mask, OLEHENRIKSEN, $50

Everything about this is what we all need right at this very moment. 1) A transformation. 2) A facial. 3) The word “PHAT” in all caps to reenter our collective lexicon. 4) Nordic birch sap. This is one of the best masks I’ve ever used. I’ve always been a little ????? when a product promises “glow” (more on that another time; maybe next pandemic), but this product really does make your skin light up from within. Like someone bought an electric pillar candle from HomeGoods and shoved it into your skull. It’s refreshing, tightening, softening, plumping, and the eeeensiest bit tingling (in a way that feels effective, not stupid). Throw away all your scrubs, use this twice a week instead (it feels and looks like buttercream frosting!), then follow up with a serum. Oh! And don’t waste the glow this leaves behind by using it at night. Best served w/ coffee and your morning mantra (don’t die don’t die don’t die). For Detoxing: Matcha Magic Super-Antioxidant Mask, Boscia, $38

Things right now are feeling really toxifying. Even if you don’t care about masks, or you have perfect face, or you have a million more important things to do, you should use this mask. It’s just a generally good thing, like drinking more water, or waking up thankful, or pigeon pose. It’s refreshing, clarifying, de-puffing and cleansing, and has all the pore-evicting properties of your favorite clay. Plus, it has acne-fighting capabilities (see above; we all have zits now). See? It’s a nice mask. And sometimes, that’s all you need. (Oh, and imagine if you refrigerated it!) For Tired Eyes: Bright Eye Firming Mask, Joanna Vargas, $60

How you know you know me is if I have talked to you about this mask before. That is how exceptional it is. And listen, even I (eye, haha) used to think eye masks were superfluous. It takes a lot of stupidity for me to draw the line at something, like, Chernobyl-level stupidity, so that’s saying quite a bit. Then I got a set of eye masks in a Birchbox and now I crave them like candy. Then I tried this hilariously expensive iteration and now I’ll never draw the line anywhere on anything ever again. Basically? These little futuristic jelly half moons suck all the sad, saggy, grey puff out of the skin under your eyes in minutes, leaving behind the taut, bright freshness of a tween star soccer player who’s also good at debate. (You know the bitch.) There’s not a lot that these dudes can’t fix—you can cry, or get drunk, or cry drunk, or vomit, or nap, then apply a pair, and it’s like it never happened, poof, Zoom time! I’m sorry they cost so much money, but that’s what your stimulus check is for.  For Problems: Blue Tansy Mask, Herbivore, $48

I’m sorry that you have problems. I do too. This mask will hardly solve any of them, but it can solve a few: It’s the single most effective acne-clearing and skin smoothing mask I’ve ever used, and I’ve used a billion or so, because I have almost no other hobbies. I’m biased because I think everything this label makes is pure ecstasy (works great, looks great, responsible ingredients, reasonable prices), but ethics aside, buy this. It’s a gluey other-worldly blue gel-paste that dries on your face to a plastic wrap-like coating that makes you look like a VERY HOT AVATAR. Once it’s dry you may feel nauseous. I can’t explain this. But it really happens to me? I kind of love it, because it feels so absolutely over-the-top and insane. Anyway, 30 minutes later, you rinse it off with warm water and the pads of your fingers, and if you do this every other day for a week, you will, I repeat, you will have better skin. Your zits will be smaller or more gone, your redness will be tamed, all your little bumps will be smoothed. Problem, solved. Paging Dr. Fauci! 

[kemetic-dreams]

In 2011, Eric Ries made a big splash in Silicon Valley with his book “The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses.” He defines “startup” rather loosely (“an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty”) and encourages organizations of all sizes to avoid creating elaborate business plans and instead work “to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust…” This is almost precisely the same argument made by NYU economist William Easterly in his controversial 2007 bestseller, “The White Man’s Burden: Why West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good,” which is a direct assault on traditional development economics, the very field he has dedicated his life to. For the past half century, he argues, development economics has been beholden to a “legend”, a legend he once very much believed in: That poverty traps constrain impoverished nations and these poverty traps can be overcome with a “Big Push” – massive Western foreign aid packages and tops-down plans for eradicating poverty, disease, and illiteracy, while promoting various forms of economic growth. This attempt at a big fix – massive programs of aid with lofty goals but little accountability – has been the world of classically trained development economists, who he derisively dubs “The Planners.” They think they have the answers, he says, and rhetorically they have the advantage because they promise great things, such as “the end of poverty.” Reality, however, is much different according Easterly. There are no easy answers. “The only Big Plan is to discontinue the Big Plans,” he says. “The only Big Answer is that there is no Big Answer.” The promises of the Planners, such as his professional rival Jeffrey Sachs, “shows all the pretensions of utopian social engineering,” he writes rather caustically. Yet they flourish in a world without feedback or accountability, and where big plans and big promises play well with politicians and celebrities. Nobody (especially those with no direction connection to the problems) wants to promote small but achievable objectives. They want “to do something” – and do it big. Easterly claims that the West, perhaps innocently and unintentionally, has written itself into the hero role in saving the uncivilized world. Indeed, he writes, “…the development expert…is the heir to the missionary and the colonial officer.” In contrast to the Planners, the author encourages those who want to help to “think small”: the little answers that work and that can make a material, if not revolutionary, difference on the lives of the impoverished. He calls these people, mostly locally-based activists, “The Searchers.” They possess an entrepreneurial and experimentation mindset, and naturally embrace the iterative testing model promoted by Ries in “The Lean Start Up.” They get regular feedback from the poor they serve and are held accountable for their work. They don’t promise to solve world hunger, but they often make incremental yet substantive impact where they work. “The dynamism of the poor at the bottom,” he writes, “has much more potential than plans at the top.” The book is broken into four parts, each of varying interest and value. The first part, “Why planners cannot bring prosperity” is dedicated to undermining the theory of the “Big Push,” which Easterly writes is demonstrably false. He claims that “Statistically, countries with high aid are no more likely to take off than are those with low aid – contrary to the Big Push idea.” Likewise, attempts to promote free markets from the top down, as is often the case with IMF and World Bank-led structural reforms, ambitious schemes to promote capitalist growth that Easterly admittedly once believed in wholeheartedly, are doomed to failure. The same goes for top down efforts to promote democracy, although he sees democracy as important because it can supply the two things most important for meaningful reform: feedback and accountability. In Part two, “Acting out the burden,” Easterly accentuates “The tragedy of poverty is that the poorest people in the world have no money or political power to motivate Searchers to address their desperate needs, while the rich can use their money and power through well-developed markets and accountable bureaucracies to address theirs.” He highlights the insanity of the international development industry, which he likes to repeat has pumped $2.3 trillion (yes, “trillion”) into the developing world since the end of World War II – and for what? He says. He cites Tanzania as a typical case study in development economics absurdity, as that country was forced to produce 2,400 reports and host over 1,000 donor visits in a single year. The author hammers home on his two main themes of feedback and accountability, noting what little input the poor actually have on the aid that they receive and that the Planners at the top are usually divorced from reality on the ground. Easterly writes that development aid is a classic “principle/agent” relationship, where the principle is a rich donor country and the agent is the aid agency. The actual target, the poor, are nowhere in the system of response. The principle wants to see big results, and yet is in no position to check on the work and achievements. The agents are thus cloaked in a sort of invisibility – and it’s under this invisibility, the author claims, that the Planners take over. The Planners thrive in the dark, Easterly says; the Searchers in direct light. The Planners benefit from the fact that there are so many aid agencies, all with very similar missions, all supposedly coordinating efforts, yet no single entity is ultimately accountable for achieving results. The smaller and more focused an NGO’s mandate, the better. Or, as Easterly complains, “If the aid business were not so beguiled by utopian visions, it could address a more realistic set of problems for which it had evidence of a workable solution.” If the aid agencies have failed because their mandates are too broad, what about the IMF, which has the relatively narrow mission of promoting “trade and currency stability”? Easterly argues that the IMF suffers from poor data, a misplaced one-size-fits-all approach, and is all too willing to forgive loans. What should be done? Simple, Easterly says, focus the IMF on emerging markets only and reserve the true bottom billion for aid agencies, thus removing the politically unpopular conditionality that has marked IMF interventions over the past several decades. Part 3, “The White Man’s Army,” is lengthy and the least insightful in the book. Easterly’s core message, as told through vignettes about Pakistan, the Congo, Sudan, India, and Palestine/Israel is that Western meddling with the Rest has been damaging, whether it was colonialism, de-colonialism or well-intentioned aid intervention. He further argues that US efforts to restructure societies via military force, either directly or through proxies, has all the hallmarks of utopian planner mentality, as suggested by case studies on Nicaragua, Angola and Haiti. In other words, neo-conservatives are the Right wing on “The Planner continuum”, with idealists like Sachs on the Left. In Part 4, “The Future,” Easterly argues that 60 years of Planners in control of the economic development agenda is enough. It is time to drop the utopian goals of eradicating poverty and transforming governments. “The Big Goals of the Big Plan distract everyone’s attention…” he writes. “The rich-country public has to live with making poor people’s lives better in a few concrete ways that aid agencies can actually achieve.” Even worse, he writes, “The Planners’ response to failure of previous interventions [has been] to do even more intensive and comprehensive interventions.” It is time to empower the Searchers, those who probe and experiment their way to success with modest efforts to make individuals better off, even if only marginally. As far as the aid agencies are concerned, Easterly recommends: 1) end the system of collective responsibility for multiple goals; 2) and instead encourage individual accountability for individual tasks; 3) promote aid agencies to specialize rather than having many all pursue significant goals; and 4) employ independent auditors of aid activities. The central theme developed by the author throughout this book is that aid agencies need to be constantly experimenting and searching for modest interventions that work. And they must employ more on-the-ground learning with deeply embedded staff. Thus, Easterly encourages the idea of “development vouchers” that would empower local communities to get the aid they most need from the agencies that are most effective. Theoretically, those agencies that either don’t deliver value and/or don’t deliver as promised would be put out of business. It’s a compelling idea that Easterly nevertheless stresses is no panacea. Easterly writes with a certain punch, which I’m sure ruffled more than a few feathers not only with his arguments but with his style, which can be cynical and snarky. For instance, when looking to catalog the redeeming benefits of U.S. interventions over the past several decades, he cites an “Explosion of Vietnamese restaurants in the United States” for Vietnam, “Black Hawk Down was a great book and movie” for Somalia, and “Salvadoran refugees became cheap housekeepers of desperate housewives” for El Salvador. He goes on to characterize U.S. Angolan ally Jonas Savimbi as “to democracy what Paris Hilton is to chastity.” Amusing commentary, for sure, although perhaps a bit misguided given the gravity of the subject matter. In closing, Easterly makes a compelling case to “go small” with development efforts and always seek feedback and accountability. He may not be on the Christmas card list of Bono and Angelina Jolie, but I’m afraid he is much more insightful and directionally correct than their hero, Jeffrey Sachs.