#it would actually be an interesting study to see how these network would work disregarding online connections/communities

[oblivion-wonderlust]

ok so i listen to math and physics youtube videos to fall asleep right? like they all have soothing VO and music, tend to have a black background— just good sleepytime content.

anywho this friend— well i mean we’ve been taking for 2 years and live in the same city but never like met up— she tells me that this guy she was talking to on bumble turned out to be the roommate of her ex-boss’ wife or something like that and my ass instantly goes “there’s like a 12-ish percent chance of that happening” and explained the whole six degrees of separation thing (given that the average person knows 150 people, everyone on earth is only 6 degrees removed from any other person).

i think the sleepytime math videos are doing something to my brain subliminally because i used to be HORRIBLE at maths in school.

[whentherewerebicycles]

hi! i wanted to say i love reading your reflections on teaching, and in general i really look up to/am inspired by your thoughts regarding education and academia. if it's not too much to ask (completely understandable if it is, in that case please disregard!) i would love to get your advice on college related things?

i had pretty significant academic struggles throughout grade school, and ended up dropping out of college after a year. i would've graduated this may, so lately i've been considering going back and finishing my bachelor's. but i've been waffling on this decision because of 1) anxiety about having to drop out again, and 2) some confusion about what i actually want to study. i guess i'm wondering, is it worth it to start from scratch? my struggles were mostly about mental health stuff & difficulty keeping up with coursework—i loved being in the classroom, working with professors, learning from other students. i like being challenged intellectually, but if i have issues with followthrough, is there a way to work on that??? i know these are Big Questions, lol--whether they are answerable or not, cheers and thank you and i hope you are doing well these days. <3

hey! happy to give my thoughts, for what they're worth. you know your situation better than i do so the specifics may or may not be relevant, but i can give some advice just based on seeing lots of students pass through four-year programs!

i've worked with a number of students who took time away from college and came back to finish later. i took a year off myself in the middle of college for mental health reasons, though my school allowed you to take a two-semester leave of absence for any reason (so i always had the safety net of knowing i could come back without having to reapply or start over). in my experience, time away is almost always a good thing. sometimes people just really need that break from the stressors of the college environment! but more importantly, i think people benefit from having a few years' experience living and working in the world.

even though it can be intimidating to come back to college as an older student, i think older students or nontraditional students who took time off and came back tend to underestimate how much more confident and assured in themselves they'll be once they're back in the classroom. working out in the world for a while, even if it's not a job that you especially love or feel is relevant to your long-term goals, tends to help you build more trust in your own ability to get stuff done, manage responsibilities, and be an adult person in the world. in your time away, you've probably grown more than you think, and you may find that some of the things you struggled with at 18 just don't feel as daunting anymore. or they might feel daunting, but you also have more experience talking and working with other people, and you may feel more confident in seeking out & using your college's various academic success resources.

have you considered a two-year college as a possible next step? one of my advisees this year was an adult student who went to college for a year, dropped out, served in the military for four years, came back to do an associate's degree, and decided he liked school enough that he wanted to transfer to our university and finish his degree. (now he's going on to do a phd next fall!!!!) he's one of the most passionate advocates for community colleges i've ever met, and he's stayed actively involved in our local CC community & now mentors recent transfer students at our university. he's talked at length about how CCs are this amazing way for students to explore their interests without having to take on the huge price tag of a four-year degree, within a learning community that's much warmer, more responsive to student needs, and more accepting of the diverse paths that lead people to & through higher education. i wonder if you might consider taking a semester or a year of courses at your local CC, to dip your toes back in and see if you're still feeling energized by the experience.

you might find that some of the courses aren't intellectually challenging enough, but this might also be a wonderful opportunity to create the kind of learning experience you want to have. i was a full-time community college student for a year during my year away from yale, and while i'm sure i was just INSUFFERABLE in many ways, i had a prof in my Western Civ course who was really generous with his time/energy and met with me outside of class to help me figure out how to make the papers into something that i found really exciting and challenging to write. so the class kind of became what i made of it, and i got to read some stuff (dostoevsky!!!) that sent me down all kinds of interesting unexpected rabbitholes. the former CC grad i mentioned above was an extraordinarily bright student who would always go to office hours and ask his profs for more recommended readings, and he ended up becoming a TA for one of his courses and helped them redesign basically their entire intro humanities curriculum as a student advisor. so your CC experience can absolutely be what you make of it. and even if your profs can't give you that kind of support, you could practice doing it for yourself, setting little challenges for yourself either focused on the intellectual aspects ('I'm going to read and cite two scholarly sources in this paper, even though it's not required') or on developing strategies for effectively managing the workload ('I'm going to schedule a writing center appointment on Thurs, so I have to finish this paper two days before the deadline—and then I can devote my weekend study time to practicing for my Spanish test').

CC would be a slightly lower stakes environment for you to try out college again— lower-stakes both in the sense that it's cheaper (so if you decide you don't want to continue, you're not out as much money / don't feel compelled to go on to justify the debt you've taken on) and in the sense that the workload might be more manageable for you as you readjust to academic life and build systems & structures that work for you. as you probably have gathered from this blog, i am a HUGE believer in doing lower-stakes things many times over to build your own confidence and your trust in yourself, and then gradually scaling up the difficulty. by the time you reach the hard thing, you've already built up this strong image of yourself as a person who can handle challenges (and you've also had the chance to identify areas where you struggle & experiment with developing workable solutions).

if a two-year college isn't something you're especially interested in, i think it's definitely possible to start a four-year degree again. if that's the path you choose, i would strongly recommend reaching out to students in some of the degree programs you're tentatively interested in. people are almost always happy to share their ~wisdom~ (see: this ask response, lol) and most people love being asked for their thoughts on the pros and cons of something they know well. so you could get an honest sense from students of what the program is like, what the workload is like, and how useful or engaging people find the required courses for the degree. but also know that it's pretty normal to take courses all over in your first year or two (you have the advantage of having done a freshman year before, so you probably know this!), so you might just want to plan to try out a bunch of different things, with the goal of narrowing your focus by the end of your first year, or midway through your second.

i would also HIGHLY recommend spending lots of time familiarizing yourself with the resources your university has to offer. learn everything you can about the kind of mental health counseling and support they offer to students, and see if there are things you can set up in advance for yourself before you even step foot on campus. for instance, our university offers individual counseling, but they also have free groups that meet every week or two around different topics (coping with stress, students in recovery, etc) that are led by a counselor. check out your university's writing center or peer tutoring centers, too, and set up a standing appointment once a month or once a week or whatever, to bring in something you're working on—so that you know that every week, you're going to talk with someone about what's going well and what you're struggling with in your assignments.

you might also want to look into your university's services for students with disabilities office, as they can help you figure out if you are eligible for various kinds of accommodations or additional support (extra time on exams, notetaking services, recorded lectures, etc). i know you mentioned that you've dealt with academic struggles in grade school, too. if you think it's possible that there may be underlying learning differences that are affecting your academic work, it might be worth seeing if they can help you find lower-cost testing, so you can get a diagnosis that qualifies you for additional accommodations and university support.

many schools, esp large public universities, also have resource centers and mentoring programs for students from specific demographics who may benefit from additional structure and support in their early years of college. my university has a variety of resource centers and programs for students from low-income backgrounds, first-gen students, students who transferred from community college, etc. you don't have to take advantage of ALL of these resources, but proactively establishing a support network long before you need it is a really good way to set yourself up for success. and even just doing the research will probably help you feel more confident in your capacity to 'follow through', since you'll know that you're going into this with your eyes wide open AND with a detailed plan for what to do if you run into some of the same obstacles you encountered the first time around.

speaking of detailed plans: i find it helpful sometimes to do IF-THEN exercises with students when they're stressed about something on the horizon or unsure about whether they can handle some new challenge. IF-THEN is just what it sounds like: 'IF this thing I'm nervous about happens, THEN I'm going to do X, Y, or Z.' what i like about this exercise (i use it with myself too aha) is that it acknowledges that sometimes the thing you're dreading DOES happen. sometimes the professor you emailed for an extension says no. sometimes the TA doesn't understand why you're confused about the assignment. sometimes you don't have time to finish the reading before class. sometimes you overschedule yourself and you have to pull an all-nighter to finish two papers on the same night. scary things, confidence-shaking things, happen all the time, but they are rarely fatal! and there can be something really powerful about acknowledging and naming the thing you're concerned about, and then generating a few next steps you could take, should the thing you're dreading come to pass. i could see you doing something like this as you start thinking about the things that tripped you up last time, or made it difficult for you to balance the workload. if X happens, then what could you try next? giving yourself a few options means that you already have backup plans, too, which can make the whole situation less terrifying. if this happens, i might have to try this, or this, or this, and those things might not be the most fun or the easiest to do or the 'best' thing academically, but they'll get me through this difficult moment mostly in one piece, and once i'm through it i can look back on it and learn from it, or adjust the structures i've built for myself moving forward, to reduce the chance that X happens again.

PHEW!!! sorry this got so long but that is just the RISK YOU TAKE when sending me anons 😅 i hope that some of this is helpful to you, or at least sparks some useful thinking for you, even if it's not all directly applicable to your situation. i would say that if you love learning and find being in the classroom exhilarating, then you should absolutely go back to college! but that doesn't mean you have to go back right away, or that you have to go back and do it exactly the same way you did the first time. there are lots of possible paths to higher ed, and there's no particular rush—college will always be there, if it's something you decide you want now or at some future point in your life. i would also just reiterate again one of the core Themes of This Blog, which is that the brain is NEUROPLASTIC, and that humans have a truly astounding amazing capacity to change, grow, and learn new things (including new ways of getting around old obstacles or working through old challenges). just because you struggled the first time doesn't mean you are doomed to repeat that pattern. if you can spend some time thoughtfully reflecting on what you found most difficult to manage the first time through, you are better equipped to make plans, design new structures for yourself, and build the support networks that will help you thrive in college.

[suki-schiffer]

Thoughts on Rule of Wolves

A compilation of my raw initial thoughts and feelings after reading Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo, sequel to King of Scars, seventh book in the Grishaverse. I just finished reading Rule of Wolves (RoW) yesterday and wanted to get some of my unaltered thoughts and feelings on paper before they become influenced by rereads and by being exposed to others’ opinions. There’s little rhyme or reason to this, it jumps all over the place, I’m not taking the time to check spellings etc. also, spoilers.

I am probably evaluating all the Grishaverse (GV) books a little too harshly because I can’t help but compare them to the Six of Crows (SoC) series which were the first books from the GV that I read. The whole reason I picked up King of Scars (KoS) last year was because I wanted more of that joy I got from SoC, only when I started reading KoS did I realize that the GV books aren’t just set in the same universe but have intertwining plots and characters at which point I realized I’d ruined the Shadow and Bone (S&B) series for myself but I did go back and read that too even though it definitely would not have been something I would have picked up if it had no connection to the other books. The S&B series wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t my cup of tea, as it truly was a YA series with characters that were pretty one dimensional being driven by pure motives down a predictable plot. Many of these characters make a reappearance in KoS and RoW and while they have a bit more dimension to them now they are still too pure, too perfect, and my feelings about them from previous series still stuck.

I don’t like Zoya. I didn’t like her when I first read about her is SoC and I really hated her after reading S&B. Those feelings were hard to cast off when she becomes a slightly better person in KoS/RoW but the entire time I couldn’t help but think she was undeserving not just of being a main character but of being a member of the Grisha Triumvirate, of being Nikolai’s love interest, of that ridiculous amount of power, and of becoming Ravka’s queen. I felt like her “backstory” was rather forced to try to make us like her more. Like oh, how sweet, she has a secret garden with a plant for everyone she’s lost. She still came off as a bitch. I honestly still don’t know what drives her. In S&B first it’s her desire for power and beauty and the Darkling’s attentions then when her aunt is killed she joins Alina maybe for revenge? But other than Alina asking for her to be part of the Triumvirate I didn’t really know why she was in that role don’t know how or why she agreed to become Nikolai’s general, because she loved him? Or perhaps it’s because she’s still just power hungry wanting to lead the Grisha, wanting to lead the army, wanting to lead the nation?

Disregarding my feelings for Zoya, her power increase in KoS and RoW is ridiculous. How is it that she is the only Grisha (save perhaps the now dead saints) who can break down matter small enough to draw power from every order? You’re telling me that this girl manages to do this after a few weeks with Juris but people like Baghra or the Darkling who are hundreds of years old and significantly stronger and were actively trying to strengthen themselves couldn’t do this? Ilya Morozova, the Darkling’s grandfather, did all kinds of experiments, dabbling in merzost, how is it the Darkling, in all the years he spent waiting for a sun summoner, not at least dabble in the other orders in attempt to summon sun himself? If you were to rank characters by power on a scale of one to ten I would have said the Darkling was a ten but Zoya blows that scale out of the water when she becomes the dragon, a character this powerful just feels wrong. Not to mention she didn’t even really work for this power, she trains with Juris for a bit in the Fold and then makes his scales into fetters, there was no years of study and practice or meditation, no struggle, just bam! Power.

So yes, still don’t like Zoya and I think her character arc, if you will, decreased the quality of the book.

Again, I’m comparing things to SoC but in comparison RoW was rather predictable. There were definitely a few twists I didn’t see coming and a few questions that were left unanswered but with SoC I was constantly guessing at what would go wrong, what the new plan was, I was constantly on my toes. That constant guessing kept me interested, by comparison I was at times bored with this book, if I put a book down (mid-chapter even!) to scroll through Tumblr or watch Youtube videos or do something else for the sake of enjoyment before finishing that book that’s a sign it isn’t all that interesting, and that’s what I was doing with RoW.

It was just too predictable. Like oh no, the Darkling tricked you into meeting Alina and Mal, got his power back, and fled, who’d’ave guessed it? What’s this? Hanne ended up getting too much attention and might be forced to marry the prince, Rasmus, of Fjerda because of it? Ehri’s guards make another attempt on her life? Nikolai weasels his way out of marrying Ehri because his true love is Zoya, no way! Joran, this young Druskelle who is for some reason being punished by having to be Rasmus’ guard is the one who killed Matthias? Oh and why is guarding Rasmus a punishment when he could be the hope of getting Fjerda to end the war? Because he’s an abusive shit who hates feeling weak so he tries to make others feel weaker, didn’t see that one coming, nope, definitely not.

Now for a few of the things that surprised or confused me that I’m still sort of confused about. Let’s start near the beginning with the Fold suddenly, not so much as expanding as just, appearing in different places all over the world with seemingly no rhyme or reason. I didn’t really get how a pocket dimension existed within the Fold in the first place or how the saints got trapped in it but apparently breaking out of it allowed the Fold to take on a will of its own whereas it had previously been stable for hundreds of years. Also the Darkling not having any powers after leaving the Fold was confusing, I shouldn’t necessarily say “any” because he seemed to have been able to make subtle changes to Yuri’s body to make it look more like his own but I didn’t understand how his power could seemingly enter his body granting him control and consciousness but then he not have any power until he gets Mal and Alina’s blood (also wasn’t clear what he did with the blood, did he just have to touch it, did he stab all three of their hands so the blood mingled?). This just sort of felt unnecessary and that it was just a means to pull Alina et al back into the story.

In KoS it was implied that the use and existence of Jurda Parem was the reason Nikolai’s monster came back and the saints now had enough power to create miracles to entice them to the Fold and draw them into the pocket world, this theory is never mentioned again. Can you tell I’m just really confused about everything related to that pocket world?

Speaking of that interaction with Alina and co I was honestly hoping Yuri might have a bit more of a role in the story. Yuri had seemed sort of willing to let the Darkling use him as a vessel and Nikolai discovering he was still in there with the “there’s something in your beard” line didn’t clue me into the fact that there could be more to this because I assumed he was still on the Darkling’s side. But then he tries to warn Alina of what he’s about to do and I thought, oh, maybe he has second thoughts, maybe there’s going to be a fight now for control of the body and Yuri might be able to stop the Darkling from doing something sinister by fighting back at the right moment. Alas, he goes back to singing the Darkling praises. I get that Yuri is a bad guy but I still kind of felt bad for him, not enough to care about his wellbeing, at least not until the very end because as far as I’m aware Yuri was still in his body with the Darkling when the Darkling decided to have a bit of a redemption arc by condemning himself to an eternity of pain to close the Fold and keep it closed. As far as I’m concerned the Darkling deserves that fate, Yuri doesn’t.

Speaking of the Darkling taking control of another’s body another thing I was left wondering about happened in one of Nina’s earlier chapters when the new Wellmother from the convent Nina and Hanne had been at arrives at the Ice Court to accuse Hanne of worshipping the Saints instead of Djel. At the end of this chapter the Wellmother’s eyes are described as slate grey, I’ve only ever heard the Darkling’s eyes be described that way. I really thought that the Darkling was just pretending to be powerless and had actually developed a new power of taking over other’s bodies and he was just biding time by gathering intel and causing chaos this way, I thought this might have also been how he was creating the mini-Folds all over the world (look I know they had a Ravkan name that roughly translated to vampire but I’m not going back into the book to find the spelling and calling them vampires just... no). I was so concerned for Nina, here this woman is claiming to actually be part of the Ravkan spy network and that Nikolai needs her to get close to Demidov Lantsov. This order made no sense because Nikolai knew he wasn’t a Lantsov and the existence of another Lantsov doesn’t mean much, as long as the people think Nikolai is the legitimate son of the former king and queen then he outranks every other individual with Lantsov blood in terms of succession. Also if this were a legitimate request it seems like there would have been much easier and safer ways to communicate this than have someone come from across the country making false claims against Hanne that could put her under suspicion thus limiting Nina’s ability to move. I thought this was therefore some sort of trap to expose Nina, and potentially Hanne, and the fact that nothing came of it left me confused. We never see this Wellmother character again, Nina does not get exposed, when we get the Darkling’s POV in the second part of the book he mentions nothing of this encounter nor is it suggested that he actually has such a power.

I then thought perhaps if the Darkling survived and was now in Yuri’s body perhaps this was his mother, Baghra, come back to life as well. Then we get thrown a random line during one of the Darkling’s chapters where he mentions the existence of a half-sister that was also declared a saint that I don’t recall hearing about before this instance, in fact I’m pretty sure Baghra said something in the Spinning Wheel about only having one child because she didn’t want a repeat of what happened to her and her sister and that she didn’t even remember who Aleksander’s father was so if the Darkling knows of this half-sister we would assume it’s Baghra’s child. Apparently though this sister was referenced in the only GV book I haven’t read being Language of Thorns (just a side note RoW is said to be the seventh book in GV but if you include The Lives of Saints and The Language of Thorns it is actually the ninth). I could be wrong, maybe Baghra never said anything about her son being her only child, or maybe this is another case of Bardugo altering things between series. She did this with Nina’s backstory because in SoC when Matthias talks about courting her properly and having dinner with her family she said that she hadn’t seen them in years since she went to the Little Palace but in KoS and RoW she’s an orphan who grew up in an orphanage and doesn’t remember her parents. Point being, after that line I thought the Wellmother might have been the Darkling’s half-sister since she had claimed to have been a spy in Fjerda for thirteen years which would mean she’d been there since before the events of S&B, if that is true then it likely couldn’t be Baghra. I’m still hung up on this character though, for all the reasons outlined, yet the KoS series is over and she only made one appearance so maybe she just was a spy with slate grey eyes.

As mentioned previously I knew Nikolai wasn’t going to marry Ehri but I didn’t realize Genya and David were going to be the ones getting married, or maybe “renewal of vows” would be a better term. I’m perfectly content to have this come out of the blue, predictable can be boring, but then it started getting weird. I had just assumed previously that Genya and David had been married sometime between the end of the S&B series and the start of KoS as that’s when they start being referred to husband and wife (same with Nadia and Tamar) and I had no reason to believe it wasn’t the wedding they wanted. Then there’s mentions of them having a hasty wedding in Ketterdam and this just felt like yet another attempt to placate and garner hope in readers by referencing SoC. As far as I know David wasn’t in Ketterdam during the SoC series, he was the only one who stayed in Ravka, even if he was there and just wasn’t “on screen” I don’t understand why they would choose to get married then and there. And if not during the events of SoC then when? What reason did they have to both be in Ketterdam outside of the events of SoC and decide they couldn’t wait to have a proper wedding in Ravka? I was angry at this point because a similar thing was done in KoS where lines about SoC kept getting dropped and getting my hopes up that the other crows would make an appearance and they didn’t.

But back to the wedding, running off to his workshop because he had an idea during his own wedding is totally in character for David. Him dying was just evil. Didn't even cross my mind that this was a possibility, one minute we go from Genya digging through the rubble in her wedding dress saying she can’t find him then we are at his funeral. I thought he might have been gravely injured, unconscious for a long period of time, and that he’d had an idea for an invention that would help them win the war and he’d save the day by waking up in time or something. But no. My favourite character from S&B was killed off, just like that. And it was impactful, it made me cry, the fact they had found him pen in hand, fingers stained with ink, in his wedding clothes, the fact that in his notebook he has notes about how to woo Genya and she wants him to have it in death. Beautifully written, definitely salty about it. At this point in time I don’t really see how his death furthered the plot but death in real life is like that to, it’s unexpected, without reason, sudden. And perhaps, like Matthias’ death in SoC, it will be used to later start a new plot for a new story.

Now two paragraphs ago I was lamenting the fact that the mention of Ketterdam felt forced and had the intent of fooling the readers into having hopes the other SoC cast would return but then they keep hinting at it, they talk about contacting Kaz, about travelling to Ketterdam and I’m sitting there thinking please, please, please actually have Kaz meet them, don’t just be letters or some other minor Dregs sent in his place. (!!!! <- there are no words for my excitement!)

I made an audible screech when Nikolai gave money to the beggar because I knew that was Kaz in disguise. I was so pleased to hear that it sounds like Pekka did not return to the Barrel and that Kaz bought the Emerald Palace and expanded the Crow Club. I was slightly disappointed that Inej wasn’t trailing Nikolai and Zoya too or that she wasn’t meeting with them in the Crow Club probably mainly because I just wanted to see her again but there was also a sadness that it sounds like she did decide to walk a different path than Kaz. The fact that Nina had, earlier in RoW, talked about how she hoped for Inej’s sake Kaz had fixed his hair cut by now, contributed to this because obviously she thinks they stayed together. Maybe they are together in a way but long distance relationships without any suggestion of communication technology must be hard, especially when Kaz could be taken out by another Barrel boss or Inej’s ship blown up by pirates (or the Kerch as was implied by Nikolai) and the other might not ever know of their fate and certainly wouldn’t be there to save them, so I feel that due to this they wouldn’t actively be in a relationship. However, I am proud that Inej put her dreams before Kaz’s she could have given up those dreams to stay at his side and continue to be his spider, after all, that’s what he had asked her to do he wanted her and he wanted her to stay, in the Dregs, with him. Wasn’t too thrilled that she’s used as a sort of damsel in distress. Help us Mister Brekker and in exchange I’ll give you a device that acts as an early warning system against the submarines I gave the Kerch (yes they have a different name that starts with an i and there’s a z and y and m in there somewhere but instead of me trying to spell it lets call them what they are, subs) because the Wraith will be blown up otherwise as she won’t be able to get away in time.

I don’t know if it was because this part of the story was written better or if it was just because I like these characters so much more (my darling baby boys!) but I felt like the story finally developed momentum here that it was lacking previously. I love that Wylan and Jesper are living together with Wylan’s mother and acting like an old married couple. I also like that Wylan is trying to keep Jesper away from illegal activities but is also clearly continuing to work on chemistry projects and likely explosives and that Jesper’s love of Barrel flash hasn’t been quashed, Zoya actually even compliments it in her head. I also love how, as soon as Wylan hears this illegal act can help Inej, all restraint is thrown out the window. Kaz was able to pull off so many tricks in such a short time too, I love it. First dressing as a beggar, then pretending the operation will be more difficult than it is in order to drive the price up, then pretending that due to changes in how the goods are being stored at the military base they couldn’t carry out the operation with such a small crew, meanwhile he knew the Suli were there and would connect with Zoya and show them the “backdoor” to the base. Now I completely understand how Ketterdam was built on slavery or, as they like to call it, indentures, so I can see how Suli would have built the place, I imagine some of the Suli are still in Ketterdam, why they returned to the military base that night I don’t know. Also the fact they were all wearing jackal masks, something Inej said is reserved only for holy men, Suli seers, and wearing one was akin to sacrilege if you were not a seer, implies that all these people were the rare seers which seemed a bit unlikely. The fact that Zoya has this encounter and an earlier one made me think that maybe the Suli would play a larger role in RoW than what they end up doing (because this is the last we see of them, they don’t come to fight the battles, they don’t impart secret knowledge to help Ravka win the war, Zoya doesn’t find her father or her uncles or decide to learn more about her Suli heritage).

I was very disappointed with how quickly we leave Ketterdam, Kaz, Wylan, and Jesper. I suppose we do the same thing with Alina and co at the sanatorium where there is no proper goodbye. In one chapter we finish the job/plot point and in the next the main characters have left. At the end of the day I suppose I was just glad we actually had a few scenes with the crows and not just hints, was definitely the most surprising part of the book.

The crows were a positive surprise Nina and Hanne getting together was more of a negative one for me. It was hinted at in KoS but Nina has also been said to have made eyes at a pair of shoes so I had hoped the relationship wouldn’t grow beyond flirting, I feel it just diminishes what Nina and Matthias had. She also doesn’t seem to feel any remorse for moving on so quickly and even though she’s still thinking about him, about her promise to save some mercy for his people and country, and trying to fulfill her promises, she’s also forsaking him by getting together with Hanne.

That being said I, like Nina, really did believe Rasmus had killed Hanne near the end of RoW and while I hadn’t wanted them to be together the damage to the relationship Nina and Matthias had was done and I was thinking “really, you’re going to do this to my girl Nina twice, take away the person she loves, twice, for no good reason?” So that was a surprise and I was glad that Hanne did survive but I really don’t see how she could live as Rasmus and even if she could pull it off I don’t see the Fjerdan people, military, or royalty permitting a prince to marry Mila, a widowed fishwife. Nina was saying something about using her power to get the answers from the dead which I thought was a very weird development for her powers in the first place. In KoS when Nina said that she was hearing the voices of the dead I thought it was more about she was sensing a mass grave and could tell that the bodies were women and the death unnatural. Near the end of KoS I thought perhaps there were some memories left in the brains that she could access, names and how they died. But in RoW Nina is able to reach out to the dead, identify the queen’s best friend and lady-in-waiting and ask her questions and get answers and implies she can do this with Rasmus as well. There are a lot of logistic fallacies with this. One, it implies that people don’t go to the Saints or to Djel or to any kind of afterlife when they die but that they stick around their corpses. It also implies that Nina can probably override their free will, the women and girls at the factory had “called” to her, I doubt Rasmus and the lady-in-waiting would want to share everything so freely. Finally, if Nina can communicate with the dead then how come Matthias’ voice that she heard in the beginning of KoS was just her imagination and not really him? This could also make Nina incredibly powerful, no need to torture or bribe secrets out of someone or try to steal top secret documents, just kill them with a bone dart and demand answers of their ghost.

In regards to Nina’s power I am disappointed with how little she used it in RoW. With the exception of speaking to the dead I believe she briefly controlled two of the newly dead Priest Guard to restrain the Apparat for all of maybe thirty seconds and that was it for the entire book. While Nina has always done undercover work or subterfuge, pretending to be native to find Grisha in hiding, sneaking into the Ice Court pretending to be part of the Menagerie, pretending to be Mila the translator for Leoni and Adrik, she has always come off as a warrior to me so to not see her fight at all in RoW seemed a bit out of character. There was opportunity but it wasn't seized and honestly it left me wondering what Nina actually really accomplished during RoW, she didn't free Nikolai's true father, she didn't free any Grisha or destroy Fjerda's parem or find labs and holding facilities, she didn't help win any battles, didn't actually manage to dissuade Rasmus from war. Zoya took her from the Leviathan, flew her all the way to the frontlines of the north where there was death aplenty, and then flew her all the way back without her ever doing more than cling to Zoya’s back. Surely she could have raised some of the dead just to drive the point home, no?

The one thing I did like about the final battle was that we finally got to see the Darkling be less than perfect, a theme that sort of carried through the book. He started off with no power, mind you his scheme to get it back went off without a hitch, but then he was pretty much on the run having to trade manual labour for food. Yet he had this plan and I had no reason to believe it wouldn’t work out for him, that he’d go to the frontlines, preform a miracle saving Nikolai and Ravka, and manage to get himself declared a saint for his troubles. Instead we see him just as affected by the disk bells as everyone else, we see him try to summon shadow, try to summon nichyvoya (I acknowledge that’s spelled incorrectly, I can’t be bothered to find the correct spelling) and he can’t. I thought it was glorious.

While the Darkling did end up doing some good in RoW, helping Nikolai’s monster stay alive long enough to destroy the disk bells, shutting up the Apparat (why isn’t he dead, his character is a harbinger of bad things to come and he’s a creep, how did Zoya not kill him?) in order to give Zoya a better chance of getting the throne, and finally sacrificing himself to the Thornwood to undo the damage he let loose on the world with the creation of the Fold, I didn’t feel as though he had redeemed himself and for this I was glad. There are all kinds of evil characters in GV and the Darkling likes to pretend that his reasons are pure, that he’s protecting and strengthening the Grisha, but he is a mass murderer seemingly without empathy, he happily manipulates people to get his way, puts Genya, who at the time could be considered a child, into the king’s path, then later mutilates her as punishment for letting Alina get away, all for the sake of his own cause. In the GV I hated Van Eck and Brum and Heleen much more than the Darkling, but I do think he’s the most evil of them all, in part because his unnaturally long life has meant he’s been committing evils for centuries. I’m glad that it sounds like this is the end for his character and that while in the next series Zoya wants to free him from his eternity of agony that freedom will come in the form of death.

Speaking of the potential plot of the next series, I can’t believe that without even doing any research they are able to come to the conclusion that a “heart strong enough” is the heart of Saint Feliks and they intend to send Kaz after this, what if they’re wrong? Also, they finally bring Inej into the story for Zoya’s coronation, don't know what reason she had for being there. But then we’re done dirty because Inej doesn’t get to meet Alina although she catches sight of her, and they are ready to send Inej back to Kaz with a message about finding this saint’s heart but she’s already left so they’re just going to use a plain old flyer instead! You could have at least sent our darling Inej, treasure of our hearts, back to do Kaz the honour of acquiring him a new heart. But no, brief meaningless appearance and she’s gone.

Unfortunately, it seems there was a lot of things I was displeased with in RoW. I think overall the main problem the RoW (and KoS) is that it just became too big, the characters became indistinct because they grew out of character, there were too many references to past stories and characters in attempt to please readers rather than for the sake of the story, there were too many characters and plots to keep track of in general, and due to all this I couldn’t remain suspended in disbelief. I approach this as someone who entered the GV through SoC, I picked up SoC because the story was interesting, I picked up KoS and S&B because they were set in the same universe as SoC not because I particularly wanted to read those series. I had thought I could be interested in KoS on its own because it is more complicated than a typical YA novel and Nina is one of the main characters but now having finished RoW I have to say that if the GV really was just a collection of stories set in the same universe but with no intersecting of series I would have never have read this one. Will I go back and read KoS and RoW again? Yes, of course. Will I sometimes pretend that it never existed when I reread SoC? Yes, of course. But I do think the wait and the hype was worth it even if just for the few chapters with the Dregs again, because let’s face it, that’s what I personally was waiting for.

So I wrote this as a Word document over the span of three days and it’s now over 5000 words long, completely unedited, no order, probably reads like chaos. I want to see if and how my opinion changes over time but I’ve decided to post this because I like reading and watching others react to things I like so maybe someone else out there is like me and will find this and get some enjoyment from this.

[pavit88-blog]

Is Your Attitude Blocking Your Blessings?

Why does it seem that some people are luckier than others? The "lucky" folks seem to glide through life racking up enviable opportunities and wonderful relationships. These folks also seem adept at avoiding disasters, but if they hit a pitfall, they're able to quickly turn the situation around. These folks consistently have great jobs, invitations to interesting events, satisfying long-term partnerships and good health. This is in mark contrast to the "unlucky" masses who are always schlepping along feeling that they are a day late and a dollar when it comes to snagging life's big rewards.

Successful people are not usually more talented or educated, but they have a better attitude. Let's look at my hairstylist. Some may call her lucky. She told me that she wanted to do the hair of a high-profile socialite who had just moved to Washington, DC. Unbeknownst to my hairdresser, late one Friday night--just before closing the woman's assistant called the salon asking for an appointment. Although the assistant had never been to the salon before my hairstylist told her to come in. The two women chatted, the assistant discussed that she was going to a photo shoot for a national magazine the next day. Then to the surprise of my hairstylist the assistant revealed the name of her boss, Ms. High Profile Socialite. The assistant left the shop loving her new hairdo and was appreciative to my hairstylist for being so helpful. Without much prompting she said that she would pass on my hairstylist's contact information to Ms. High-Profile Socialite. At minimum my hairstylist gained a new client who will sing her praises, resulting in more business. She however may also hit the jackpot by getting Ms. High-Profile Socialite to also become a client--resulting in her own professional reputation being raised considerably.

So was my hairdresser lucky?

Maybe....

Or perhaps she did not allow her attitude to "block her blessings."

Performance consultant, Dr. Alan Zimmerman says "I've noticed that attitude makes a huge difference in determining a person's level of success in life. In fact, attitude seems to make a bigger difference than age, sex, race, education, circumstances or any other factor. Two people can have the same background and face the same situations, but experience very different outcomes. It's all about attitude

My hairstylist's great attitude may indeed help her get Ms. High-Profile socialite as a client. She could have flat-out declined the assistant's last minute request for appointment. Or should could have reluctantly honored the request, but then been sullen to the assistant. Or should could have done a crappy job on her hair. However my hairstylist is a consummate professional who believes in serving the client. When she got the request for a last minute appointment she was accommodating. When the new client arrived she was pleasant and engaging. Most important she delivered a fabulous hairstyle.

Thomas Edison, the inventor, said, "Most people don't recognize opportunity when it comes, because it's usually dressed in overalls and looks a lot like work." How many times have you said that you said that you wanted something: A better paying job, a more nurturing relationship or even a new apartment. You miss out because the opportunity that is presented to you just doesn't seem that appealing. You find out your dream job requires you to take a temporary pay-cut while you're in a training program. The nice guy that you're introduced to isn't a snazzy dresser. You've found an apartment that you can actually afford with all the amenities that you want---but it's across town away from where all your friends live.

Many of us say that we believe in principles such as: "The Power of Intention," "manifesting" or even the Biblical, "Ask and ye shall receive," and declare that we want major change to occur in our lives YET we don't want to re-vamp our attitude to make a way for the change. We keep getting stuck because we fail to realize that without a new attitude and accompanying new actions, we can only get more of the same, dead-end job, dysfunctional relationship or mediocre apartment. Through our unwillingness to explore the possibilities sent our way, we've told the Universe--I'm not REALLY ready to do what's necessary to improve my life.

So if you are serious about having a better job (making more money) and having better relationships it's time to change your attitude. Having a bad attitude is a contributing factor in why highly qualified people get fired. Bad attitudes are also cited as key reasons why relationships fail. Although most people believe that they have a good attitude, research shows that 85% of the people studied were actually pretty negative. How can you tell whether you have a good or bad attitude? Think about what your first reaction is to any given situation--is it negative and pessimistic or is it optimistic and hopeful? If your boss says she wants to see you are you expecting to be fired or to receive a bonus? If you boyfriend doesn't call for few days do you think he's cheating or just busy?

What I mean by attitude is your preconceived notions or expectations about a person or situation. Without much, if any, information or first hand experience are you quick to decide that a person, event or thing is not your cup of tea? Attitude also involves how you interact with people--generally are you pleasant, curt or totally indifferent? Are you only nice and interested in people whom you think can do something for you? Do you forgo small talk with strangers because you don't see the point because you'll never see them again?

Attitude is a choice that you make everyday. The same way that you choice to have a bad attitude you can choose to have a good one. Now having a good attitude doesn't mean sticking your head in the sand and disregarding bad news or your internal warning bells. It does mean approaching life from the standpoint that the world is welcoming and endlessly abundant, NOT the world is hostile and everything is scarce. Whether you call it luck, good vibes or karma, pleasant people usually attract more opportunities than unpleasant people. It means truly believing that you can dramatically improve your income, quality of your relationships and your life NOW-----despite all the gloom and doom reports about the "bad" economy.

So how can you improve your attitude and your opportunities?

Survey Your Strengths: Many times our bad attitude stems from our own lack of self-love. We think that everyone around us is so much better than we are. However by taking time to identify your strengths, both large and small, you will get a better sense of how wonderful you actually are. This list will boost your morale on challenging days and it will give you confidence to take bold steps toward an improved life. Take 5 minutes or 5 days to think about all of the many things that you are good at and write them all down.

Affirm Yourself: We are our worst critics. The constant chatter in our heads that we are not enough--smart, educated, talented, young, pretty, thin, etc. places limits on what we believe that we should achieve in our lives. It's no mystery that people with low self-esteem often have less than satisfying lives. They don't believe that they deserve more and as a result they don't get life's rewards. Showing yourself self-love through affirmations may sound hokey, but if saying "I love and accept you" once a day to yourself can improve up your life why not try it. There are very few champions in any field who walk around saying, "I'm not so hot." On the contrary, many top athletes regular visualize themselves winning competitions. Boxer Muhammad Ali publicly declared himself, "The Greatest." It's not conceited to affirm to yourself that you are special and worthy--it's rejuvenating!

Broaden Your Perspective: Be open to learning new things and meeting new people. Improving your life requires that you expand your concept of who you are and who you can achieve. Surrounding yourself with new ideas and new perspectives helps you to explore and identify new opportunities for yourself. Get out of your comfort zone by trying something new. Even small changes like driving a different route to and from work or shopping at a different market may provide you with some new experiences or information. Also be open to the possibility that seemingly "bad" situations usually are opportunities for growth that lead to rewards.

Build Your Network: Stay connected to people you know and get to know new people. Be pleasant and genuinely interested in the people you encounter. Start small by just smiling at people on the street or saying hello to someone in your neighborhood or in your office. Also you never know you'll meet at the airport or even at the playground--idle chitchat can sometimes net you big contacts and big opportunities. Interacting with people in a kind manner or at least acknowledging their existence costs you very little each day. It's important to keep in mind that you never know where assistance may come from. People help people---by passing on information, tips or resumes whom they know, like and trust.

[mokatedi]

actualized alleviation.

Today I bear witness to triumph. 

The event occured whilst rushing through a task at work which involves running garments from our stores fitting room back to the customer display area. It’s often a hurried job and I regularly fall into tunnel like focus while completing the task. As I scanned the area looking to where I might put the item I clutch, my attention was grabbed by the utterance of my name.

As I looked around trying to localise the source, I saw my team member Daniel marching up the escalator, eyes filled with an intensity I seldom see, locked onto my position. 

Before I continue, it would be useful to provide some backstory to the type of relationship Daniel and I share. Daniel was a third year engineering student and had been working at this retail job casually whilst he studied. He was already working for about a year before I was hired. He is southeast asian, about 5’8 and has a subtle charisma about him.  He is soft spoken but  well socialised, holding friendly relations with most of the people from our work place. The only time we’ve met outside of work was briefly down by the river ( which divides central and south Brisbane ) after what looked like a night out drinking, playing casanova with a girlfriend.

Two weeks prior, Daniel was describing the final  few weeks of his university life for he was due to graduate on the upcoming weekend. He shared with me his class grades for his final semester. “I ended up getting two sevens and a six” he said nonchalantly ( seven is the highest grade you can receive at the university he attended). Upon hearing this I lit up in excitement, patting him on his shoulder and continued to profusely congratulate him on such incredible results. He gave a laugh and was taken aback. “Man, you’re more excited than me to hear this!” he said. He went on to tell me that he was beginning to sit for interviews for different positions now that he was due to graduate. He seemed genuinely happy to share his excitement. 

I’ve read that a true friend is someone you can tell your bad news to and they won’t tell you how they’ve had it worse or immediately try and find a solution, disregarding your current sense of loss. I’ve also heard that a good friend is someone who you can tell good news to and they’ll celebrate with you as if the good things are happening to them directly. I believe it’s important to positively reinforce good behavior when you see it. Sometimes sharing positive news about your own life can be daunting, thus it’s important to reward individuals for sharing theirs. I try to abide by these principles and managed to remember it at the time Daniel told me the news of his results, and I'm glad I did.

Coming back to the event I mentioned at the beginning, Daniel storming up the escalator. I smile thinking back on it now because I have not experienced such intense energy from an individual in a long time. His eyes were locked onto me even though he had to navigate around several slow moving customers, it was as if his brain was split, one component to take care of the rudimentary and the other was completely focused on attaining his goal. After what seemed like minutes of him traveling across seven meters to my location, he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me to the side, out of scope of managers and other staff. 

I was slightly confused but mostly curious to what had sparked such intense energy in this man. He spoke to me, with such excitement “Y-y-ou know that job I applied for ?! I got it ! I got the job !!”. The words coming out of his mouth were electric. I felt a warm glow ignite inside me, which continued to swell throughout my being as I understood the meaning of this news more deeply. I felt filled with so much happiness and excitement for this tremendous news. He continued to tell me about how the interview did commence, explaining that he thought he had answered some of the questions in an unsatisfactory manner and that he had performed badly. All the worries of his interview, all the months spent studying hard, the sacrifice of time with loved ones and friends, all this suffering was completely alleviated by the news which came through a simple email just before Daniel came back from his lunch break. 

At the moment he told me this news I experienced such a pleasurable phenomena. It was as if in that moment I was standing at the epicenter of an alignment and balance in the world. Here, standing in front of me was a man who had worked hard and diligently for years in his degree, who had clearly done everything right and received transparent justification for the efforts he put in. I’m interested in how this short moment of peace allowed me to escape all the pain I was feeling, all worry and any anxieties vanished if just for a moment. Perhaps it was due to the fact that he told me first? He will tell this news to others who are much closer to him and know him more deeply, what type of effect will it have on them ? The temporary alleviation of suffering of all people within his circle of influence, cascading from person to person as the news is relayed through his network. This news means so much. The start of a career, financial stability and potentially the foundations to start a family.

Now the event has passed, I still see Daniel at work on Sundays. He refuses to completely quit his current position because he enjoys the pay rate Sunday brings. Each time I see him I am reminded of this event. I don’t think he knows the impact this news had on me, I don’t feel it is necessary for him to know. Anyhow, so many interesting things have been happening recently which I wish to write about. But for now, I will finish my tea and do some reading. 

- Mokatedi 

[olhaboyko]

Week 12 - The design document

For this assignment, our group decided to settle on an 2D adventure game with a top-down angle that more resembled Enter the gungeon than Hotline Miami. In it the player/environment will be viewed more from a side view than from above to create some sense of depth and they would be able to more in all 4 directions. This layout/game type was chosen partially due to our limited experience in making of such game, the requirement for the code aspect of the assignment and due to our own preference.

The main objective of the game is for the player character to escape a maze-like mines that have monsters crawling through them with only their AI companion providing them with light. In this situation not only the players range of sight is limited but it is also outside their control by being given to a NPC that will possibly lag behind them, forcing the player either take their time and be caution with traversing the labyrinth or to be brash and rush though the dark mines. This visual restriction is commonly used in horror games to create tension and sense of lack of control.

“[…] biologically speaking, darkness is not the normal setting for human activity, it is self-evident that the necessity to perform various activities in the dark impose a considerable strain upon man, especially since the primacy of vision over the other senses is particularly conspicuous in the human species.” (Devereux, 1949)

Moreover, horror games provide players with a sort of challenge, where they are put in an artificial simulation of a threat which would stimulate them and upon winning (surviving) they would feel a sense of accomplishment and relief.

“While frightening media may be initially aversive, people high in sensation seeking and intellect/imagination, in particular, like intellectual stimulation and challenge and expect not just negative but also positive emotions from horror consumption. They brave the initially aversive response to simulate threats and so enter a positive feedback loop by which they attain adaptive mastery through coping with virtual simulated danger.” (Clasen, Kjeldgaard-Christiansen and Johnson, 2020)

Though in comparison to many horror games where they not only remove players ability to see but also the ability to retaliate against a threat, we decided to allow the player to fight back (though we are not yet sure if it will come to fruition due to time restriction and out current skill level). The players would be able to attack and kill the monsters and pick up health items if they get hurt together with being tasked to pick up keys to unlock the exit doors of the maze. The player is in no way forced to confront or kill the enemies and can decide to avoid them all together as they hunt for the keys which would provide the player with a choice, to either play aggressively or passively.  

When it come to the topic of gameplay/player types the Four Bartle Types are always mentioned. 

For them MUDs (multi-user dungeons or MMO’s as we now call them) was used as a basis to draw inspiration from, on what were the activities that players partook the most and receive the most enjoyment out off, which in turn created the archetypes.

Above you could see the Interest Graph, on its x-axes are displayer the importance of the game world vs the other players while on its y-axes are displayed the way the player interacts (interacting with other things, acting upon other things). The 4 types are the complete extremes in this graph.

“Achievers are proud of their formal status in the game's built-in level hierarchy, and of how short a time they took to reach it.[…] Explorers are proud of their knowledge of the game's finer points, especially if new players treat them as founts of all knowledge.[…] Socialisers are proud of their friendships, their contacts and their influence.[…] Killers are proud of their reputation and of their oft-practiced fighting skills.” (Bartle, 1996)

Though this model is the most mentioned one, later on in his other work called Designing Virtual Worlds Bartle has expanded to 8 types by adding a third aspect (z-axes), implicit/explicit motivation. The type included Griefer, Networker, Politician, Friend, Opportunist, Scientist, Planner and Hacker. So, to simply put it each of the 4 types mentioned before got an implicit and explicit version to them. Griefers are implicit Killers, Politicians are explicit Killers, Scientists are explicit Explorers, Hackers are implicit Explorers, Networkers are explicit Socializers, Friends are implicit Socializers, Planners are explicit Achievers and finally Opportunists are implicit Achievers.

For out game Achiever or more specifically Planner type fits best for both the passive and active playstyles, since both playstyles require the individual to go out of their way to play that certain way. It can also be argued that Killers are more fitting to KILL enemies but due to enemies being AI and by extend being aspects of the game rather than actual adversaries, its more fitting for Achiever to defeat them. Moreover, Killers are said to be more leaning in player than game world aspect and since our game doesn’t contain any Player vs Player gameplay it simply seems like an ill fit. 

 Another small attribute that we wanted to add to the game is a number of objectives that will appear on top left of the screen, giving the player false instructions. For example, at the beginning of the game the player character will spawn in a room with objective to ‘open the door with a key’ but in reality, there is no key and the player is meant to just interact with the door to open it so to simply put they need to disobey the directions that the game provides. The reason for that function is partially due to see how the player will behave when they are given instructions that were clearly wrong and are meant to mislead them, would they continue to follow them out of instinct, still follow them but by doing the opposite of what is asked or disregard them all together and use their own judgement. 

 Interestingly enough in a publication called Principles of Social Psychology by Charles Stangor covered an experiment on Obedience, Power, and Leadership. For it they got a participant and an actor to play the roles of learner and teacher, the random draw was rigged to that the actor always could be the learner in that situation. After that the teacher together with the experiment conductor was place in a separate room from the learner so that they could not see them, and they need to read out an assortment of word associations (for example ‘blue sofa’). If the learner got them wrong, the teacher needed to administer a shock to them, increasing the volage with each consequent mistake. In actually the learner was not actually shocked but a prerecord message of their reaction still played, to see how the teacher will react.

Before the study was conducted hower the reasearcher explained the experiment to three groups of individuals (college students, middle-class adults, and psychiatrists) and asked how likely would it be for people to shock the student at max setting (450 volts) and the results were rather optimistic (1% or 2%). The results on the other hand were quite shocking. Even though the result varries after the innical shock done, 65% of the participants continued administering the punishment under the persistent preasure of the experiment conductor. 

Of course the experimen conductor replicated the experiment in a vaiety of other situation, and one thing of note is that “in replications of the study in which the experimenter’s authority was decreased, obedience also declined.” (Jhangiani and Tarry, 2014).

This experiment show just how presense of a figure of autority can increase obedince, which would be interesting to see viewd from a perspective of the game since, its autority is often challenge (searching for bugs, and attempting to clip though levels)or viewed as a mear guideline.

References

-       Bartle, R., 1996. Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDS. ] Available at: <http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm>[Accessed 15 May 2021].

-       Bartle, R., n.d. The 3D player types graph. [image] Available at: <https://sites.google.com/site/psychotropolis/articles/virtual-worlds-why-people-play> [Accessed 17 May 2021].

-       Clasen, M., Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, J. and Johnson, J., 2020. Horror, personality, and threat simulation: A survey on the psychology of scary media. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, 14(3), pp.213-230.

-       Devereux, G., 1949. A Note on Nyctophobia and Peripheral Vision. Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 13(3).

-       Devolver Digital, 2012. [image] Available at: <https://store.steampowered.com/app/219150/Hotline_Miami/> [Accessed 15 May 2021].

-       Devolver Digital, 2016. [image] Available at: <https://store.steampowered.com/app/311690/Enter_the_Gungeon/> [Accessed 15 May 2021].

-       Jhangiani, R. and Tarry, H. ed., 2014. Principles of Social Psychology. 1st ed. BCcampus Open Education.

-       Stewart, B., 2014. Personality And Play Styles: A Unified Model. [Blog] gamasutra, Available at: <https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6474/personality_and_play_styles_a_.php?print=1> [Accessed 17 May 2021].

[thebestbusinesspodcast]

Five Pillars of Good Health with Maria Whalen

Do you ensure that you are in good health? You may be eating healthy foods, exercising, taking supplements, but do you genuinely know what’s going on with your body? 

Our bodies are made up of complex and interconnected systems. The things we think can help our body may not be the case. As entrepreneurs, being in good health is important because an illness can break any business and life apart.  

In this episode, Maria Whalen joins us to talk about dangerous misconceptions we have around health. She shares the five pillars of good health that we need to focus on instead. We need to be careful with what we ingest and put on our bodies; these can change our body’s foundational systems. 

Maria also shares her journey as an entrepreneur and her experience with illnesses that led her to advocate for the good health of entrepreneurs all around the world.

If you want to learn how to take more care of your health, this episode is for you! 

Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode:

Discover the different misconceptions we have surrounding health. 

Understand the foundational pillars of good health. 

Learn what makes an entrepreneur successful and why we need to keep moving forward. 

Resources

Check out EWG to learn how to buy healthier personal care products and food! 

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Killing the Victim Before the Victim Kills You by Derek M. Watson, Larry Pinci, and Daniel L. Tocchini

Reality for a Change by Ennio Salucci

Contact Maria through the email support@intentionalnetwork.com. 

You can also follow her work on Intentional Network.

Episode Highlights

The Problem with Health Perceptions

Maria shares her hardships with illnesses and her experience with Western medicine. 

The more she studied to cure herself, the more she saw problems with the perception of health and medicine.

There is a lot of marketing hype around green smoothies and the likes. 

It's dangerous to think that you're already healthy just because you eat and drink certain things. 

Five Pillars of Good Health

Maria hopes to share ways of never becoming sick. 

No one is teaching how our body works. It is why there are a lot of misconceptions about health. 

We need to know the foundations of good health first. 

The five foundational pillars are the immune system, hormonal system, DNA, physical structure, and mental-emotional component.

Imbalance Is the Source of Sickness

Ask yourself these questions every time you are not in good health: What am I doing that’s in my body’s way? What is it I’m not giving my body that it’s asking for?

Once you identify the culprit, you can fix the source and damage. 

How can we cause an imbalance in our DNA? Tune in to Maria’s answers in the full episode. 

Is Detox Helpful? 

Maria shares cleansing and detox should be done in the right context. 

Everything needs to be in proper order, just like in business. 

Don’t take shortcuts towards good health.

The skin is the largest organ in your body, and anything you put on it goes straight to the bloodstream. 

How can we be more conscious about our food and products? Listen to the full episode to hear more.  

Learn the Way Your Body Works 

All of us experience some form of inflammation. We need to learn why this happens. 

When we want to nourish our bones, it’s not about taking more calcium. Taking calcium can actually cause more harm. 

We need to understand the physiology of our body as a system. 

The Illusion of Feeling Good 

People often disregard the foundational pillars because they already feel 'good.' 

Don’t wait until your body breaks down before you start working on your foundation.

Don’t claim to be in good health when you don’t know what’s happening beneath the surface.

When influencing your hormones, you should understand that prescriptions work differently for people. 

Tune in to the episode to hear about influencing your hormones! 

Interconnection of Systems

Your body is made up of different systems. 

You cannot isolate a single system; you will need to address the whole system. 

For example, losing weight needs to be strategic: suddenly losing weight will cause toxins typically stored in fat tissue to be released into your body.

How to Become Successful

Becoming successful takes a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. 

You also need to have a vision that’s big enough to push you through the pain of transformation. 

A lot of successful people came to be due to a sense of urgency and need. 

Common Attitude of Entrepreneurs

One important skill to master is smart networking. 

Become invested in other people’s products and events. 

Build strong relationships no matter what you get out of it. 

Make sure to provide people value before asking for anything in return. 

Get out there and do the work. Meet people outside of your usual circles. 

Balancing Work and Life

When balancing work and life, you need to look at the counterbalance. 

Make sure to recover in between the times of hard work. 

Keep yourself in check, so you don't burn out. 

Moving Forward

Keep moving and failing forward. 

Don’t dwell on yesterday’s mistakes because you need to keep moving. 

When you focus on mistakes, you’ll tend to stop and get left behind. 

About Maria

Maria Whalen is the pioneer of Invincible Wellness™, a system that gives people the power to handle almost anything when it comes to health. She is a fierce advocate for personal health freedom, sustainability, and independence in all things. Maria has helped entrepreneurs, leaders, lawyers, doctors, and all kinds of people around the world.   

Growing up, Maria suffered from several illnesses, including three autoimmune diseases, lupus among them. Western doctors and alternative health practitioners could not help her. It got to a point where Maria went in and out of comas every few weeks. Due to these painful experiences, she went on a quest to find true health and vitality. 

Maria's experience led her to become the resident expert on WAKEUPTV.COM on the Pop Network. Also, she has shared stages or worked with several big names in personal development, business, finance, and health. This list includes people like Deepak Chopra, Jack Canfield, Loral Langemeier, Les Brown, and even Queen Elizabeth’s doctor, Dr. Peter Fisher, to name a few. 

Interested in Maria’s work? Follow her on Intentional Network. You can also email her through support@intentionalnetwork.com. 

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Check out this episode!

[grainlaura2-blog]

Event company Celebrate the company's BLUE GLOBAL

Internet marketing is surely an interesting means for men and women to sell goods and services. Instead of employing conventional methods such as printing advertising and television areas, individuals can use advertising via website marketing. The recommendations on this page should allow you to implement online marketing to the own goods and services. Joints projects are an easy way to build your small business. By enrolling in up with an additional internet entrepreneur whose services or products complement your personal, you build a group of people which is more palatable to buyers since they are receiving a second time the support or merchandise. You and your partner reap the benefits of every other's consumers. To get new tips for your website, it's a smart idea to browse the rivalry. Visit the websites of other companies to find out the things they are going to do and expressing. A keyword hunt for words linked to your business might help kindle new tips about stuff you haven't thought about before. Should your online marketing techniques are exactly like other sites, your products or services will appear to be unexciting and you may get rid of potential prospects. It is crucial that you use many methods to make certain that your website will not become every other internet marketing web site. If your internet site is distinctive, you will get much more buyers.

Develop strategies to catch email messages all over your site. Increasing your organization takes continual interaction with the visitors to help build company proposal and commitment. Therefore the a lot more emails you collect, the greater number of possibilities you must drive website traffic back to your blog in the future if you are starting a new merchandise, publishing new content, or providing a sale. Share your information, understanding and information by means of on the web pr releases. This is often a good way to obtain your label available and draw people to your site. It also provides you with the look of becoming an specialist inside your preferred area. Add a handful of hyperlinks or search phrases and you might also see a rise in online search engine exposure. If you are considering shifting one thing drastic in your web site, alert your existing subscribers. There may be by no means anything at all as irritating for a buyer as visiting a favored site just to need to relearn how you can navigate it. Plan in advance for changes, and let your readers to do this also. When you use email marketing, you want to ensure your emails suit your brand. Tổ chức sự kiện chuyên nghiệp tochucsukienhcm employed in the e-mail should be the just like from your logo and your site seem. You need to make sure you incorporate your logo design inside your email. This may cause your manufacturer stay within the reader's imagination. Utilizing photos, video clips, or any other aesthetic representations is a wonderful way to record people's interest. When making an ad online, all that you should do is make someone notice your advertising and seize their curiosity for long enough to enable them to would like to click the advert. As soon as they've clicked it, you could start to acquire hostile and promote your product. Ensure it's easy for clients to unsubscribe from your e-mails. Though it may get rid of you with a few viewers, if it's easy to unsubscribe you might not shed them as buyers. If it's a headache, customers is certain to get annoyed and quit utilizing your site all together. Not only that, nevertheless they may possibly label the emails as "junk e-mail" getting the emails caught up in junk filters all over the provider. A lot of people that will read your website will study written text left to proper. Which means that their interest will be focused at the top kept area of your respective webpage the majority of the time. Ensure that the more important aspects of your web page are located in this particular quadrant. Do not placed a lot of banners and ads in your internet site. A web site packed with advertising banners is not attractive, and are repulsive for website visitors to your site. You probably will not get strikes on the banners and ads, since there are a lot of, and may look jampacked and chaotic. Add more just one or two family member banners and ads to your site. Make sure you try out your web site on a regular basis to ensure that there are actually no glitches, mistakes, or awful back links. This will be significant since consumers will likely be unwilling to acquire things from the web page should they believe that you will discover a probability that one thing goes completely wrong during the getting procedure. For those who have any well-known people with purchased your product or service it will be good in the event you received consent from them to allow every person recognize that they do that. Men and women are more inclined to acquire issues when they know that well-known many people have ordered them. Social network is a huge element of growing website visitors to your web site, therefore you ought to ensure it is easier for users to share with you your information with others on these sites. If you have a Retweet key, a +1 key or possibly a Fb Like option in your web site, then each time it can be pressed your website is achieving a greater viewers. Check out your competitor's web site often to see what they are accomplishing and how they can be performing it. You can find out anything they say or doing on their site to get suggestions of what you should be doing. Also you can observe how your organization actions up in comparison. A different way to trim down majorly on load periods on your internet site is through the use of textual content hyperlinks. Not all the internet site needs to count on a huge amount of graphics and colours at times all one needs can be a number of terms to simply click to visit get what they really want or need to see. Textual content back links also tend to do better than banner ad ads, because most people disregard individuals. Every single market place in online business is going to have its optimum period, so you must figure out how to recognize these months if you intend to become a profitable internet marketer. Some seasons do well although some do very little to nothing at all by any means. Finding out which season is the best for your company can actually be gratifying. As stated just before, website marketing is undoubtedly an exciting strategy to market goods and services. Traditional methods like printing and tv ads are no more essential, ads through online marketing works extremely well rather. Using the assistance within the write-up above, it is possible to utilize web marketing for your products and services.

[machinevisionineverydaylife]

Training Humans

“Our images now look back at us. And we won`t always like what- or how- they see.” - Exhibit statement.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has changed the way we view the world, but more importantly, how we ourselves are viewed. Machine vision is used to capture most features the human body can display. It can recognize gait, irises, fingerprints, faces and gestures. All these features are analysed and, as this exhibit demonstrates, is then use to classify people by gender, age, race, emotional state and so forth.

“Training Humans” are a curated selection of photographs that has been used to train AI, and it is possibly the first exhibit of its kind. This photography exhibit is also unusual in its almost complete absence of “traditional artists”. Here you will find vernacular photographs from everyday life, such as family events, ID photos and birthdays. Crawford states in the exhibit book (#26) that it is essentially “accidental art” made by humans.

If you are training different kinds of AI systems, you need datasets. If a company want to build a facial recognition system, they have to train the AI to learn to see faces. Which means you need a great deal of photos of faces and identification metadata built in to optimize the system.

Different examples from selected datasets has now been extracted from its servers, and are now curated beautifully on the windows and walls of Osservatorio Fondazione Prada in Milan. The curators Trevor Paglen and Kate Crawford are giving us an impression of how easy the images of ourselves are harvested and labelled.

The first floor of the exhibit presents different examples of “early” datasets. The earliest set is from 1963 with the “A Facial Recognition Report” funded by the CIA and this was from before the term Artificial Intelligence was as widespread as it is today. Even still, they experimented with automated systems within the context of the military. A more modern dataset is the Multiple Encounter Dataset-II (MEDS-II). This set consists of mugshots of deceased criminals supplied by the FBI to the National Institute of Standards. Because the people in these photos were arrested multiple times, they wanted to learn how people age and especially how a face can change over time. The worst thing about this is that the arrested people in the photos never gave their consent for the images to be used, and the photos were done before they were convicted of any crimes. The other datasets are studying gaits, irises and how different lighting can change the appearance of a face. Generally, we find that the early datasets explores training of AI within the bigger institutions and research laboratories.

What I found interesting is the difference between the “early” sets (1990s) and sets from recent years. The U.S Department of Defense Counterdrug Technology Development Program Office developed automatic face recognition for intelligence and law enforcement personnel called the FERET set. This set consists of portraits of 1199 people. The portrayed people have put make-up on and their nicest shirt and earrings. It appears very formal and bears resemblance to portraits from anthropological expeditions (like the portraits made by Sophus Trombolt of the Sami people in the 1900s).

When you enter the second floor this tendency is gone. Except for the JAFFE set (Japanese Female Facial Expression) and Cohn-Kanade Au-Coded Expression Database, all the images in the datasets are now “found” and “collected” images. Gathered from platforms such as Flickr and Instagram, the formal appearance is now gone, and is much more intimate and personal. The modern datasets also bears another visual trait. The curators made a visual point to underline the massive shift in scale. When you see the enormous walls with miniature photographs, you become overwhelmed by the amount of data presented.

These sets consists of billions photos extracted from internet and social media. Since it became a part of everyday life, the amount of online photography has exploded. With bigger servers and better algorithms, machine vision as a technology is growing quickly and the problems and responsibility that comes with it as well. People`s private photos has been labelled, categorized and harvested without their knowledge or consent.

The curators seem eager to highlight the issues of labeling people within these massive datasets. The simple measurements and metadata are becoming problematic moral judgements. This is especially apparent in the ImageNet by Li Fei-Fei and Kai Li from Stanford and Princeton Universities “to map out the world of objects” The dataset contains 14,197,122 images organized into 21,841 categories. Paglen and Crawford chose to focus on the humans, which amounts to a million images sorted into over two thousand categories. Browsing the curated selection of people, my first impression is how absurd this appears. It is so massive and so full of error. I would be sad to find my own image up there, among the different cruel and unscientific labels such as “bad person”, “failure” and “looser”.

The last section is actually an art installation by Trevor Paglen himself. He developed “Image Roulette” in 2019 and it reveals how neural networks work and discusses the classifying of people in machine learning systems. The American girl with the red hair before me was recognised as “Irish”. I was recognised mainly as a non-smoker and my age: 25-32, gender: female emotion: fear (0,99). This would change rapidly by slightly moving your head.

“Training Humans” is both intimate and terrifying. All the precious moments and selfies people share with their loved ones ends up as data in an industrious dataset. The exhibit is showing how images of us are represented (how the machine sees us) and how we have been defragmented into binaries. Paglen and Crawford demonstrates the obvious flaws, but also how powerful machine vision can appear. Data is the new currency and big corporations utilizes machine vision technology with a complete disregard of bias within the datasets. The need to classify humans go way back, but it has hardly ever been successful in its task. Crawford wonders if AI will produce a shift in how we understand ourselves and our relationship to others, and society itself. Very few people benefit from these technologies so far, they are only subjected to it. You leave the exhibition thinking twice before uploading another selfie.

Photos and text by Linn Heidi Stokkedal 13.02.2020

[pujameditationadvice]

Emily Fletcher Meditation

An ever increasing number of nowadays we see innumerable proposals to rehearse the well established workmanship and study of contemplation. Most, if not all, praise its apparently enchanted power on the human mind through its implied advantages. These suggestions and cases have stood the trial of time-they are all around acknowledged and all around supported. For ages past the individuals who preceded us have said a lot with respect to this extraordinary blessing we as a whole gangs yet today now and again, we disregard to utilize. Why presently would we say we are again helped to remember this?We all are partaking either mindful or ignorant. in a quantum move bringing on occasion, turbulent changes in every aspect of our general public and world structures. Nobody is excluded from the impacts these fast changes bring. While all around encountered, these trans-developmental energies are exclusively novel and handled contrastingly relying upon an individual's viewpoint. With a little control and practice we can apply this endowment of contemplation to assist balance with focusing on levels, lessen mind-films which appear to play relentless to bring expanding levels of euphoria, clearness and reason into life.While the facts confirm that reflective practices are known by numerous names in essentially all societies each with different types of work on, discovering one that will work for you is very simple. The best part is that this tenderly leads us at last to an exceptional spot we regularly want and need more prominent comprehension and acknowledgment to life's riddles.Along these lines, we should quickly investigate the subject for the sole reason for figuring out how to receive numerous gainful benefits accessible through reflection. Furthermore, it is valid, the best things in life are free. So let us start to clear our brains of futile, wayward unique considerations having no avocation to control or direct our life's course. We will discover contemplation permits you in the most flawless sense, to make your own background's. (More dialog about that plausibility somewhat later). For the present, think about that during contemplation you can supplant, and get out undesirable musings with life confirming variants increasing a genuine, enduring true serenity, body and soul. Contemplation is your door offering all that and more...you can even make some enchantment in your life through this basic procedure! As you may have heard or in the event that you are now a devoted specialist, people report significant mental, physical and profound prosperity as they practice contemplation day by day. What at that point is reflection actually about? For amateurs, how might one beginning? What's more, how far would i be able to go with genuine commitment? In this article will look at a couple of regions some recorded foundation, benefits, study of the brain and propelled conceivable outcomes.History to Date As per numerous archeologists, contemplation pre dates composed records. It could be effectively imagined an individual entering a changed condition of cognizance by just looking in the psyche stilling glimmer of fire while taking no idea. The soonest reported record of reflection originates from India in their Hindu sacred texts called tantras. These records go back more than 5,000 years originating from the Indus valley and were joined with what is alluded to today as yoga. Alongside growing exchange, social trade was likewise conveyed westbound and reflection practice was before long inserted in eastern idea and otherworldly practices.With the approach of Buddha around 500 AD, numerous differing societies started to build up their own translations and specific thoughtful strategies Emily Fletcher Meditation. A few methods still being used right up 'til the present time are said to convey amazing personality over-matter forces and supernormal aptitudes that changed the expert. Today, these are dedicated people and are not really priests living in some remote mountain religious community. They are regular individuals like you and I. Obviously progressing through time, the long history of reflection is never again just credited to the Hindus and Buddhists. Not to be forgotten about, Christianity, Islam and Judaism additionally take an interest in the propagation of contemplation each with its own interpretation of the training.Notwithstanding, truly these strict beliefs don't overwhelm in their lessons and practices a culture of contemplation when contrasted with the Asian conventions. Reflection discovers its place here in our Western culture in the mid 1960's into the '70's. This was when a lot of our way of life was being tried, requesting to be re-imagined. Reflection found prolific ground in which to thrive and grow. Some could state it was the "flower child" unrest which enlivened to grasp acknowledgment of outside thoughts yet just ones that had genuine substantive worth. It was not long after that when the Western therapeutic and academic network started to lead research and concentrates on contemplation. Also, what did most investigations if not all, to differing degrees find?You got it-critical medical advantages. One of the most significant parts of contemplation is the means by which it discharges worry from our bodies. This is accomplished by overcoming any issues between our cognizant and un-cognizant selves, circumstances or non-supported musings that mature pressure become less critical and really lose their capacity. Through reflection, it doesn't take some time before you feel increasingly serene and loose about everything. What happened to cause this about phenomenal change? Studies have demonstrated that contemplation raises serotonin levels which legitimately influence our conduct and passionate demeanor. On the other hand, low degrees of serotonin lead to sadness, migraines even a sleeping disorder. All manifestations related with pressure.

[gratitudejoyandsorrow]

A Lesson In Statistics

Prompt: The creator of Hamilton was the most anticipated guest speaker at a conference you’ve been planning for months. Since you were the youngest member of the committee, you were given the task to pick up Lin-Manuel Miranda from the airport, nevermind the fact that you didn’t know a damn thing about him.

Pairing: Lin x reader

Words:  6,428 (yikes)

Tagged: @sarajanesmith42

A/N: Welp, I hope you guys like it. Thanks to @how-could-i-do-this for being awesome with giving me suggestions and editing this mess.

There was a certain buzz in the air.

Of the three years that you had been a part of the OAH – the Organization of American Historians, a society devoted to the study of American History – this was the first time you’d experienced the magnitude of the crowds that littered the streets. Even more so, it was the first time you’d seen a melting-pot of people of all ages. There were small children being ushered through the crowds by their parents, teenagers trailing behind them with their headphones in their ears, and young adults excitedly taking in the sights and sounds of Miami.

This year for the OAH conference, three of the biggest hotels in the city were gracious enough to participate. The Marriot, Kimpton, and Hotel Beaux were all walking distance to the Miami Convention Center, offering their conference rooms for the speakers and mixers that were to occur during the three-day event. On top of that, there were over twelve workshops, at least ten guest presenters, and four networking events that you had painstakingly organized with the other eight members of the board.

A quick inspection of the masses, the majority of which wore the paraphernalia for the hit musical Hamilton, confirmed your suspicions. The headliner of the event was Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator and star of the show. It was because of him that the interest of the public in American History had skyrocketed; consequently, his speech tonight was the reason behind the increase in attendees. 

Your phone pinged from the notification of the driver arriving in front of your hotel, drawing you out of your thoughts. You had been nominated by the committee to escort him from the airport, all of them claiming that you would be the perfect person for the task due to your closeness in age. You scoffed as you tucked your notebook under your arm and flagged down the black Lexus, knowing that you had been given the job because you were the youngest member of the board. Thus, you were stuck with the bitch work.

“To the airport, miss?” the driver asked, looking at you through the rearview mirror once you climbed inside.

“Yes please,” you replied.

He nodded in response and then pulled off to the main street, starting his route to the airport. You flipped open your notebook, glancing at your notes on Mr. Miranda. Though digging through a person’s past was well within your repertoire, you were reluctant to admit that amidst the craziness of the planning for the conference, the only chance you’ve had to do your research on Mr. Miranda was a quick glance at his Wikipedia page this morning.

His accolades were impressive – the Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Fellowship, especially – and though you’d never listened to the cast album of the musical, you were interested to meet the man who was solely responsible for weaving the worlds of rap, hip-hop, theater, and history together and being successful in it.

The ride to the airport was brief, and after confirming the location of his baggage carousel and promising to contact the driver once you were ready to be picked up, you made your way inside towards the baggage claim. You scanned the people that were crowded around the carousel, disregarding tourists and those dressed in regular clothes and eyeing the few men that were dressed in suits.

One, in particular, caught your eye, a flashy blue color that shone brightly among the dull décor of the airport. The man’s black hair that was pulled into a ponytail made you believe that it was Mr. Miranda; you’d Googled pictures of him to make sure you knew what he looked like – another detail that you would never admit out loud. When he turned to sit on a nearby chair after grabbing his luggage from the carousel, the hem of his slacks raised, revealing his socks. A quick glance at them – black with the portrait of Hamilton peeking through – confirmed that he was indeed the man of the hour.

You strode forward and gave him your friendliest smile when he looked up at you. “Mr. Miranda?”

He slipped his phone into his pocket. “Yes?”

“I’m happy to see you’ve arrived safely. My name is Y/N and I’ll be your escort to the conference,”  you said.

He stood and shook your hand in greeting, eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiled. “Hi, nice to meet you, Y/N. Are you driving me to the convention center?”

You blinked quickly, slightly taken back by his presence as you shook his hand. You didn’t expect his voice to be low and raspy, and the genuine warmth in his eyes made the trepidation about being with a stranger, let alone a celebrity, disappear. The pictures you saw on Google did him no justice – you found yourself appreciating the sharp slope of his nose and the bags under his eyes.  

Realizing that he was looking at you expectantly, you drew your hand back to your side. “Actually, I’ll be riding with you to the event,” you grinned, “I’m part of the OAH board – I’m in charge of introducing you during the seminar today.”

He paused, a wide smile spreading across his face, eyes shining with interest. “You are? Does that make you a historian too?”

“I am,” you answered, smirking when his smile got bigger, “I specialize in American History.”

He let out a low laugh. “They made a mistake by sending you to get me. I haven’t had a chance to geek out about history with someone in a long time – especially with someone as pretty as you are. They’d be lucky to get me out of the car.”

“I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen,” you snort, “or else I’d be removed from the board.”

“We wouldn’t want that happening,” he laughed, the sound bellowing and heartfelt. “I’m beyond ecstatic that you were the one to pick me up, but I was under the impression that Mr. Banks was the one who was going to meet me here?”

“Mr. Banks is currently hosting a forum. It was a last minute change, as one of our members got sick and couldn’t come down for the conference,” you answered.

His lips pulled down into a frown, concern flashing across his features. “I hope they feel better.”

You stared at him curiously, not expecting someone who was so popular be sympathetic to someone they didn’t know. “She’ll be fine; it was just a minor fever. Would you like me to carry your bag?” you asked, steering the conversation back to the matter at hand once you saw that it had been ten minutes since the driver dropped you off.

He waved you off when you tried reaching for his luggage. “Don’t be ridiculous, as if I’d let you do that.”

You faltered, finding it hard to see a celebrity be so… normal. “Well, if you say so,” you said reluctantly before you led him back outside. You shot the driver a quick text.

You snuck a glance at him from the corner of your eye. His hands were drumming against the handle of his rolling bag and his eyes were taking in the line of taxis that were waiting for customers. Uncomfortable with the silence, you decided to make small talk. “I’m surprised a mob didn’t greet you at the airport, Mr. Miranda.”

He laughed, a big “HA!” that made you feel silly for even talking. “Outside the world of theater, I’m pretty much a normal guy. And please, call me Lin. Mr. Miranda is my father.”

“But with all of the publicity Hamilton has gotten, I’m sure that you must have at least had a few people recognize you while you traveled,” you argued.

Lin scoffed, the smile on his lips broadening. “You’re much too kind, Y/N. I’ve only had two people interact with me today. One assumed that I was a waiter at the restaurant in the airport while the other cursed at me when I accidentally bumped into them.”

“Impossible. You should see the people that are attending the conference. For every ten people, I see at least nine of them wearing Hamilton merchandise,” you said, refusing to believe him, “statistically, that’s ninety percent of the people attending the conference because of you.”

Lin threw his head back and laughed, the sound so merry that it made you smile. When he finally composed himself, he turned to look at you, grinning from ear to ear. “Theater nerds, the whole lot of them. They have to be.”

A small honk caused the both of you to turn, interrupting your chance at a rebuttal. Recognizing the black Lexus, you led Lin to the car. The driver popped the trunk and hopped out, rushing to help Lin load his bag. Similarly, he waved the driver off, opting to introduce himself to the driver with a handshake instead. Your amusement turned to surprise when Lin opened the car door, beckoning you to go inside.

Weren’t you supposed to be the one catering to him?

Once the two of you settled in, the driver began to head back to the convention center where Lin would make his speech. The seminar was starting in forty minutes, and you’d instructed the driver to drop off Lin’s bags to the hotel where he would be staying. You shifted, placing the notebook that you had left behind back on your lap. “You’re basically a household name, Lin. Didn’t you have sixteen Grammy nominations? That’s a pretty big deal,” you continued.

He paused, regarding you intently. A flush crept up your neck, and you wondered if you had said something wrong. You fumbled with your notebook, fingers searching for the page where you wrote your notes. “Oh shit,” you cursed, reading over the page, “Hamilton had sixteen Tony nominations and won eleven. It won the Best Musical Theater Album at the Grammys.” You gave him a sheepish smile when he laughed. “Sorry.”

“Does your notebook also say that I like long walks on the beach too?” he teased.

You pressed your lips together and closed your notebook, embarrassed at being caught for not knowing a thing about him or Hamilton. “Sorry,” you apologized again, deciding to be truthful, “I’m not exactly well-versed with pop culture, or any of the arts, really. I may or may not have Googled you this morning.”

He folded his arms across his chest, smirking. “Like I said, only theater nerds know who I am.”

You inwardly let out a sigh of relief, glad that he didn’t seem offended. “I’m just an anomaly,” you replied. “I don’t really watch T.V. and I have my nose buried in history books most of the time, anyways. The first and only musical I’ve watched was Cats… it wasn’t exactly my favorite,” you confessed.

He comically pressed a hand against his heart. “Don’t disrespect AL Dubs like that,” he lightheartedly berated, “Cats is just as clever and brilliant as its composer.”

“AL Who?” you asked, confused.

“I – sorry. Andrew Lloyd Webber,” Lin chuckled, “he’s considered a God in the theater world.”

“Oh,” you mumbled, “noted.”

Lin laughed again and took a glance at his watch. “It’s alright, I promise I won’t tell him you said that. We’ve got about, what, fifteen minutes left before the seminar? I’ll give you a crash course on Broadway in the interim.”

You peered out the window, seeing the convention center only a block away. “As fun as that sounds,” you drawled, returning his smile, “we don’t have time for it. You still have to meet the rest of the committee.”

“Well I’ll make sure to find you after the talk then,” he murmured.

Your gaze dropped from his eyes, the intensity you found in them making you feel small. “There is a mixer directly after the seminar that you’re invited to,” you answered quietly, not really understanding why you felt the need to tell him.

Lin paused as the car slowed to a stop in front of the back entrance of the convention center. He gave you another long look, his eyes full of promise. “Drinks on me,” he said.

You felt your pulse quicken at his reply, dazed into silence. Luckily you were spared the chance to reply when the door opened, the sight of the smiling driver cooling the heated air between you and Lin. He climbed out of the car and you followed suit, ignoring the shiver that went down your spine when your arm accidentally brushed against his as you walked into the convention center.

The minutes before the start of the seminar passed by in a blur. Lin met all of the members of the board, including the chair, Mr. Banks. He was introduced to the other speakers that would be up on stage before him and was briefed on the program for tonight. You were not surprised to see that Lin was already on friendly terms with everyone before they took the stage.

You scanned the crowd during Mr. Bank’s opening speech, convinced that everyone had their eyes trained on Lin. You fought the urge to point out to him that there was a sea of people wearing Hamilton merchandise – proving your earlier statement correct – but resisted when the last speaker finished his presentation.

It was your turn to introduce Lin, and this time, you recited it correctly: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Pulitzer Prize winner, recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, and the creator of the eleven Tony Award-winning musical Hamilton will now share his journey to developing the life of Alexander Hamilton into a musical. He will discuss the impact of Hamilton on society –  from the growing interest of studying America’s history to the EduHam program that has helped shaped the lives of thousands of public school students.

“I’d also like to mention that he likes long walks on the beach,” you added last minute, face heating when the crowd blinked up at you soundlessly. You coughed, and behind you Lin cackled, causing your face to flush even more. “Well without further ado, I’d like to pass off the baton to the genius himself.”

After Lin’s speech, one that rightfully received the loudest applause of the night, he was immediately surrounded by the committee. There were people from the crowd that lingered, snapping pictures of him onstage, and you smiled when he peeked over to shoot them a warm smile. More colleagues approached the growing crowd around Lin, and you wondered if he was overwhelmed with the attention. Your question was answered when you heard his boisterous laughter: no, not one bit.

Eventually, the venue began to clear, and one by one the people who surrounded Lin lessened. You took another look at him, how he stood - legs slightly spread apart, arms crossed over his chest, eyes solely focused on the person he was talking to. Every now and then, he’d nod his head in agreement or rub his beard wistfully and tilt his head before he’d speak, hands animatedly moving as he shared his thoughts. As if sensing your gaze he turned towards you, a smile spreading across his face when he caught your eye.

The man who he was talking to (someone you had yet to meet) turned as well. He made a noise of recognition. “Dr. Y/L/N, it’s a pleasure,” he hummed, “I’ve yet to finish your paper, but I feel confident ins saying that it is brilliant.”

You saw a flash of surprise cross Lin’s features, but you ignored it to shake the man’s outstretched hand. “Thank you,” you answered, giving him a brief smile.

After a quick exchange of small talk, the man excused himself once he spotted Mr. Banks. You were left at the mercy of Lin’s probing eyes, and he raised his eyebrows at you curiously. “What?” you asked coolly, knowing his question.

“Doctor?”

“I’m not an actual doctor,” you said, grinning when he gave you a no-shit-why-would-you-be-here-look, “I just have a Ph.D. in History.”

“Just a Ph.D. in History,” he echoed, chortling, “and how about your paper that you published? What was it about?”

Your phone buzzed, and you glanced at the text message notification from your driver. “We’ll talk about it later,” you hummed, “our driver is here to take us to the hotel for the mixer.”

“You can tell me about it during the car ride,” he demanded, following you as you interrupted Mr. Banks who was mid-conversation with the man from earlier.

After a promise to share a round of drinks with Mr. Banks you continued on, Lin hurrying behind you. “The hotel is a minute away, Lin. I doubt I’ll have time to really explain it to you.” As an afterthought, you added, “Besides, I know you’ll enjoy the topic so much we need more than a minute to talk about it.”

He groaned. “You can’t say that and then expect me to let it go.”

You opened the car door, grinning. “Well, you’re going to have to. Get in, Lin. We have a party to attend.”

The car ride was brief, and the full minute to the hotel was spent dodging Lin’s questions about your paper. The two of you were dropped off in front of the hotel, another crowd full of Hamilton fans meeting Lin with shouts, screams, and flashes from cameras. A burly man led the two of you through the crowd, but it wasn’t him that made you feel safe– it was the warmth from Lin’s hand against the curve of your back, gently pushing you through the crowd.  You glanced up at him in wonder, your heart skipping a beat as he gave you a reassuring smile.

Once the two of you were safely in the hotel, one of the board members led you to the conference hall. The room was already teeming with people, drinks in their hands as they socialized. Music filled the air and a full-service bar was nestled in the corner, a line of people already forming. Again, Lin, being the man of the hour, was whisked away.

You spent most of the night socializing with speakers, thanking the reps for the companies that sponsored the conference, and even catching up with former classmates from your alma matter.  Every so often, you found yourself searching for Lin; from what you’d noticed, he was a socialite, so he’d have no problems whatsoever with mingling with the attendees, but you couldn’t help but worry about him.

It was 9:30 before you got a chance to sit down. You took a large sip of the cocktail the bartender placed in front of you, a fruity pink concoction that made your taste buds sing in praise at the sweet and tangy flavor.

“I’ve lost count to how many times I’ve been asked to consider writing a musical about a historical figure,” you heard Lin murmur as he slid into the barstool next to you. He lifted a hand to gain the bartender’s attention and ordered a rum and coke.

You took another swig of your drink, hiding your smile behind the glass. “We’re history nerds, Lin. What do you expect?”

“Can you imagine a musical adaptation of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar? I shudder at the thought of writing a song about the ghost of Caesar haunting Brutus.” He muttered, downing half his drink in one go.

You polished off the remaining pink liquid in your glass, weakly protesting when Lin opened up a tab to get you another. “You don’t have to,” you said, turning to face him.

He grinned, mirroring your pose, his right foot resting on the bottom rung of your stool and his elbow resting on the bar counter. You felt your face get hot at his close proximity, and the second the bartender placed your drink in front of you, you scooped it up and took a long swig.

“I want to,” he murmured, tipping back his glass to finish off his drink. He put the glass down on the counter and the bartender began to busy himself with preparing another round.

“I never got to thank you for coming to the conference,” you said, “we really appreciate what you’ve done for our community; it’s rare to see the public to be so interested in history.”

“Like I said, the ghost of Hamilton took hold of me and wouldn’t let me go until I finished telling his story,” he answered, taking his newly replenished drink and sipping it.

“You’ve somehow managed to create an intercourse between people of all different ages and history. Because of you, people know who Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr were, and are more willing to study them,” you said in-between the mouthfuls of your drink.

“Intercourse, you say?” he leaned forward, eyes gleaming.

Your breath hitched and you were suddenly aware of the clothing you were wearing. Your white button up felt too tight, the blazer you placed on top too heavy, and the stockings that you wore underneath your pencil skirt felt rough against your skin.

“You should come to my talk tomorrow morning,” you said, trying to change the subject, “I think you’ll like it.”

“Oh? You think so?” he asked, placing his empty drink on the bar counter.

You finished off your drink, your tongue darting out to savor the taste that lingered on your lips. You saw his eyes dart down to your mouth, and you noticed his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed thickly. “I’m going to be presenting my paper.”

“Am I finally allowed to know what it’s about?” he teased.

“I’ll be speaking about Jefferson’s moral beliefs and its influence on his diplomatic actions,” you replied, ignoring the sudden husky tone of your voice.

“Moral beliefs and actions,” he repeated slowly, his hand tightening on the edge of the bar. This time it was your turn to stare at his mouth when he bit his bottom lip, peering at you with hooded eyes.

“Yes,” you mumbled, trying not to squirm under his heated gaze, “I thought you’d enjoy the talk since Jefferson is one of the main characters in your musical.”

“My musical…” Lin hummed, “which you have yet to listen to. But we’ll go and remedy that right now.” He got up, looking at you expectantly.

“Hold on,” you protested when he pulled you to your feet. A girlish giggle escaped your mouth, and you felt lightheaded once your feet touched the ground. When he tugged on your arm, leading you towards the exit, you looked at him in astonishment. “We can’t just leave.”

“The event is almost over – I’m sure they won’t mind. If I promised you an intimate performance, would that tempt you to come with me?”

You didn’t know if it was the alcohol that was coursing through your system or if it was the way his lips lifted up in a mischievous smile, but you couldn’t help but let out a snort of laughter at the sheer amount of innuendos in his statement. “Are you hitting on me, Lin?”

“Earlier, yes. Right now? No. I’m not kidding, you’re about to get an exclusive performance of Hamilton by yours truly,” he answered smoothly, not even batting an eye when you sputtered in surprise at his confession of his attraction to you.

“Oh my god,” you whispered fervently when you passed a circle of people – Mr. Banks right smack dab in the middle of it. Your limbs felt stiff, but Lin kept his hand on your elbow, gently encouraging you to keep walking. “Oh my god,” you repeated again, hysterically giggling, eyes still glued to the oblivious group, “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

Lin kept his face stoic, but the instant the two of you stepped over the threshold of the conference room into the lobby, he began to laugh. He cackled, the sound so loud that it caused a few bystanders to turn and watch.

“Lin, shut up,” you gasped through your giggles, pushing him to start walking when you noticed that some of the spectators took a second look at him. “The ninety percent – don’t forget about them,” you hissed, hoping that no one had recognized him.

“The ninety –” he stopped talking mid-sentence, snickering when he realized that you were talking about the chances of his fans being in the hotel looking for him. “Well come on then, let’s get out of here.”

You pressed your lips together, fighting back a smile when he looped his arm around yours. He led you to the back of the lobby towards the doors, and when it dawned on you where exactly you were going, you were the one responsible for turning heads with your laughter. “Oh my god, you weren’t kidding about the long walks on the beach.”

“Nope,” he grinned, holding open the metal gate that led to the beach so that you could enter.

You paused, observing him. For a split second, you let your thoughts consume you. The attraction was there; you could feel it. Even when he was across the room, you didn’t miss his glances your way. His presence was irresistible, and you found yourself drawn to his magnetic personality. He was handsome, smart, and witty – it had been a long time since you were exhilarated from playful banter – but then again, you’d also only known him for a few hours. Was it a good idea to go?

“Y/N?” he prodded, voice soft, “if you don’t want to go, I’m not forcing you to.”

Fuck it.

You toed off your heels and scooped them up into your hands. “You better give me the show of a lifetime, Lin,” you muttered as you walked through the gate.

He let out a sharp bark of laughter. “I always do.”

Tears were running down your face.

Lin had taken off his blazer so that you could sit on it, and was currently dancing in front of you, singing along to “The Story of Tonight”, which was blasting from his phone. His sleeves were rolled up, tendrils of his hair loose from his ponytail. His voice strained as he drunkenly sung in a fake French accent - it had you clutching at your stomach from the force of your laughter. You fell backward, laughing even harder when you heard his voice crack.

“You’re so mean,” you heard Lin whine, stopping his mini-concert to plop down next to you, “here I am singing my heart out – I think this is my best performance ever – and you’re laughing at me.”

You let out another giggle, peering at him through watery eyes. He was failing to keep a straight face as he looked down at you, his lips twitching up in amusement. “You deserve all the awards in the world from this performance alone,” you said, sniggering.

“Is that so?” he hummed, shifting closer to you.

You looked up at him, heat creeping up your neck when you saw the tender look on his face. The teasing retort you had been constructing vanished, and you subconsciously tucked your hair behind your ears as he searched your face. “I like what I’ve listened to so far,” you mumbled.

“Good,” he hummed, smiling softly.

You tried to focus on his words, but the world seemed fuzzy and you couldn’t take your eyes away from his lips. You barely heard “screw moral beliefs and actions” over the heavy thump of your heart. His close proximity caused the air to slow and thicken, and you found yourself closing your eyes and leaning into his touch when he cupped your face.

The first brush of his lips against yours was soft, a careful touch that left the ball in your court. He didn’t push, letting you decide whether or not to continue. You hummed, a zing of electricity shooting down your spine, awakening nerves that you didn’t know existed. You pulled him closer, arms weaving around his neck as you kiss him fiercely.

He groaned, relieved, and his hands weaved through your hair as he slanted his lips against yours. You felt him move, speckles of sand lightly hitting your legs as he hovered over you. You moaned against his lips and he took the opportunity to slip his tongue inside, tasting you.

You tightened your grip around him, pulling him closer, and you drew back to let out a groan when he moved to fit himself between your legs. Your skirt was hiked up your thighs, and you pushed back the worry of being discovered as he peppered kisses down your sensitive neck, pressing his body against yours firmly.

“Lin,” you whispered in-between kisses.

His grip on your hips was forceful but you didn’t mind, lost in the feeling of his soft lips moving with yours. You savored each touch of his tongue, the way he’d grind himself against you, and the small groan he’d let out every so often.

You lost track of how long you had been kissing, mind disconnected from your body as you enjoyed his touch. He suddenly drew back and your eyes fluttered open at the absence of the warmth from his body. You sat up and watched as he reached for his phone which was buzzing from a call.

“Mr. Banks?”

Blood drained from your face at the sound of his name.

“Hi, yes. I made it to my room safely,” he lied, “Yes, I would be honored to have lunch with you tomorrow before my flight. Oh, you can hear the waves from the ocean? I, uh, opened the windows to my hotel room.”

You pressed your lips together to stifle your laughter as he winced. He said his goodbyes to Mr. Banks, and you used your fingers to comb through your hair, hoping that it didn’t look as messy as it felt. Your heart leaped up to your throat once he slipped his phone back into his pocket, regarding you tenderly.

“W-What is it?” you stuttered, feeling self-conscious.

“You’re really beautiful, you know that?” he said, shifting forward to press a quick kiss to your lips.

“You are too,” you murmured, brushing off the sand that had somehow gotten in his hair.

A small smile was on his lips. “You don’t regret anything, right?”

You watched as he stood, brushing off the sand on his pants and shirt, lips still tingling. “Of course not,” you asserted, accepting his hand, “it was really nice.”

“Just nice?” he scoffed, pretending to be offended, but once he took a glimpse of your legs that were still exposed, he became silent. He reached forward, gently sliding down the material back to its original length.

Your breath hitched. It felt so intimate.

“It was… distracting.” He muttered, and the slight redness you spotted in his cheeks made you smile.

“It must have been more than nice for you then, huh?” you teased as you grabbed his blazer from the ground.

He gave you a sad smile. “It was amazing… but short-lived.” He took his blazer from your hands and dusted it off before putting it on. “I don’t want tonight to end.”

“Unfortunately, it has to. My talk is tomorrow at 8,” you said, grabbing your heels.  "Come on, let’s walk back to the hotel. I have your keys and your room is on the same floor as mine.“

You noticed the sad look on his face but didn’t think much of it. During the walk back to the hotel, Lin seemed much more reserved. It was unusual, but you assumed that it was because the day’s events had finally caught up with him. When the two of you stepped off the elevator to your floor, you turned to him, wondering if you should ask about his sudden withdrawal.

“Your room is that way,” you said, pointing behind him. You fished out his keycard, pausing to see if he had something to say.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, inspecting the card. “My flight is tomorrow at three. I’m supposed to have lunch with Mr. Banks at noon and I know your talk is at 8 in the morning… but will you have time to see me before then?”

You pursed your lips, mentally going over your schedule for the next morning. “I’m not sure, I’m supposed to be monitoring a workshop at eleven.” You spotted the deep frown on Lin’s face, and you felt unsettled.

“Well, then I guess this is it,” he muttered, finally meeting your eyes.

“…I guess,” you finally said, struck at how his usually expressive eyes were now empty and cold. A cloud of doubt settled over you, and you began to second guess your decisions. Maybe Lin regretted everything? You crushed the business card that you had taken out earlier in your hand - the idea of giving him your number now felt stupid.

Lin hesitated, clenching his jaw before he spoke. “It’s been nice, Y/N.”

His words seemed like a slap in the face. “Likewise,” you replied, turning on your heel to walk to your room – the opposite direction of his – vision cloudy from the unshed tears of hurt from his words. Stupid, stupid, stupid. You stopped and turned, looking at him one last time. “Have a safe flight, Lin. Thanks for the special performance.”

The next morning, as you sat onstage while you waited for your turn to talk, you tried to push away your thoughts about Lin. You had woken up to room service, a platter full of fresh fruit and breakfast pastries, and a note that read “good luck”. You immediately knew who it was from, but rather than feeling thankful, it caused the anguish that you felt over the cold goodbye to strengthen. You didn’t like how you had parted ways, didn’t like how he made you feel foolish. Knowing that the two of you weren’t going to have a chance to sort through your feelings made you sad.

The call of your name made you look up from the ground, and you took a deep breath, forcing yourself to calm down and focus. With a smile, you stood and headed to the podium. The familiarity of speaking in front of a crowd caused you to feel at ease, and you smoothly began your lecture on Thomas Jefferson’s religious beliefs and how it shaped his diplomatic decisions during his presidency. The fifteen-minute talk felt brief, and you answered questions from the crowd effortlessly.

You pointed at the remaining hand raised in the middle of the crowd, smiling when you recognized the figure.

“Professor Y/N, will you be offering a class on this topic next semester?” Andrew, one of the graduate students attending your school, asked.

“Andrew is a fourth-year graduate student at NYU,” you explained to the audience, “who always seems to find a way to register for the undergraduate classes I teach.” You waited for the laughter from the crowd to die down before you answered his question. “I’m not sure, Andrew. If I can get the dean to accept the course and maybe if I have another person other than you to register for the class, maybe I will.”

Andrew beamed and sat down, satisfied with your answer. The facilitator took your place at the podium, signaling the end of the seminar, coaxing another round of applause from the crowd for your speech. When you stepped down from the stage, a few of your colleagues approached you, wanting to follow up on their questions and congratulating you on your published paper.

When the wall of people finally disappeared, you blanched at the sight of Lin standing before you.

You stood rooted to the spot, speechless.

“Why didn’t you tell me you’re a professor at NYU?” he exclaimed.

Feeling defensive and not liking his accusatory tone, you crossed your arms over your chest. “Well, you didn’t ask,” you replied haughtily, “and you were being such a jerk last night after-” you paused, lowering your voice in case the people lingering in the room were eavesdropping, “…after we kissed at the beach.”

He let out an incredulous laugh and ran a hand down his face. “I just… I kissed you knowing that I was risking being hurt by not being able to see you again. I’m so infatuated with you, it’s ridiculous. If I had known that you lived in New York, I wouldn’t have been such an ass to make the goodbye less upsetting. I’m sorry.”

When you pieced together the reasons behind his actions and his body language the night before, you sighed. It made sense. “Well, I do live in New York,” you muttered, deciding to give him a hard time, “so what are you going to do about it?”

“The first thing we’re going to do once you get back is to get you to watch Hamilton,” he said, taking a step towards you, “then we’re going to my place and I’ll cook you dinner. We’re going to stay up all night so that I can know every single thing about you. That way, I won’t make stupid assumptions again. You can go home if you want, or you can stay and we'll… sleep.”

You glared at him when he began to walk towards you, a mask of indifference on your face. When he didn’t stop, you took a step backward, eyes darting towards the people that loitered in the room. “Lin, wait,” you said nervously, feeling their prodding eyes, “You’re forgiven. Yes, I’ll watch Hamilton and yes we’ll go on dates… Lin, the whole room is wearing Hamilton merchandise – that’s a hundred percent of people that are here to see – ”

He cut you off with a kiss, and your protests vanished as your body melted against his. His hand rested on the curve of your back, pressing you closer, and you heard him sigh against your lips as you kissed him back.

He pulled back, breathing heavily. “Am I forgiven?”

“If you finally accept that you are a celebrity and that there are at least ten people in the room taking a picture of us,” you growled, “and if you explain to Mr. Banks, who looks like he’s seen a ghost right now, that I am not a sleaze that hooks up with their clients, then maybe.”

He cackled and gave you a flirty smile. “Follow that up with a walk on the beach and I will.”

“Go!” You pushed him away from you, but the smile on your lips betrayed your feigned exasperation. Your heart skipped a beat when he gave you a fond smile before rushing off to Mr. Banks, elated.

You couldn’t wait until you were back home.

[bonnissance]

critical ranting about holby under the cut (bc I am also sick of long holby text posts bc reading is hard)  

But I have Thoughts(tm) I need to air because there are many things that really really get my goat about Serena’s current story and almost all of it is due to the fact that her entire narrative arc has been constructed to give Jasmine Burrows a storyline.

To begin, I hold that this narrative arc is an example of poor storytelling. As I’ve vague discussed before, I think Elinor’s introduction+exit=the fall out of her death was very poorly constructed and executed. The pacing is wrong, the rhythm of progression is beyond clunky, and the “you fill in the blanks” between the plot points the writers are handing to the audience are too large and frequent to be of any benefit to the narrative.

They reintroduced Elinor far too briefly for anyone to actually care that the character die, because, of course, the point wasn’t that Elinor died: it was that Serena Campbell’s daughter died. Following that, they left out crucial and oh so very important scenes in Serena’s story. For instance, discussing Elinor’s condition with the Doctors and Edward, their decision to turn of the ventilator, and preparing for the funeral. Nevertheless, those plot points were left out of Serena’s narrative as a deliberate decision.

So too was the choice to leave out any depiction of Serena’s grief at home. Which in itself, I shall concede, is understandable given Holby is a medial drama situated in a work place hospital and generally only includes out of hospital scenes when large concentrations of hospital employees are there at the same time such as Albie’s and work functions, etc.

However, there are exceptions to this rule, such as the trio’s house and now Dom and Issac’s domesticity. Those scenes are included because they are essential to the story those characters are telling at the time. Zosia’s early story is inherently connected to her personal life. As is Dom and Issac’s storyline necessitates the blurring of profession and personal and how Issac’s abuse alters depending on the situation. Thus, Holby has a history of included non-work place related scenes when it furthers the story they have chosen to tell.

Yet the deliberately decided against including allowing Serena to grieve in the safety and comfort of her own home, just as the arguably essential scenes above mentioned scenes were left out of scripts. In fact, that entire section of Serena’s storyline was barely even acknowledged. Now, we all know that Russell would have knocked those scenes out of the park. So leaving them out wasn’t the writers factoring in to a lack of ability on behalf of their performer. Nor do I believe they left them out because the writers were unable to write the content. On the contrary, I think Holby’s writer’s room to be more than capable of producing that type of content and doing it rather well.

It then follows that the writers made a deliberate decision to they breezed over what ought to have been a significant point of character development in favour of inserting her straight back onto the ward. To ensure that her grief and every unhealthy coping mechanism she uses to get through the day would be on full display to her colleagues, and to the audience. The writers forced Serena back onto the ward, to the same physical location of her daughter’s death, in order to deliberately blur the lines of the character’s personal tragedy with her professional existence.

They explicated unhealthy coping techniques that directly affected Serena’s behaviour towards her colleagues, and they did it without providing her with an adequate support network. 

They created an unhealthy inter-generational dynamic between Serena and Jasmine that, at times, epitomises the ‘old queers are predatory and dangerous to young women’ trope. They glazed over Serena’s panic attacks and fugue states in favour implying she’s drinking on the job. They justified the narrative shaming of Serena reaching out to the one person in the world who understood what it meant to lose their daughter: Elinor Campbell, without bothering to make it clear that problem was never Serena wanting emotional support from Edward. The problem was that she continued to try and engage with him after he made it clear he was in no way prepared to provide Serena with the care she was requesting. Once again leaving Serena without a support network as well as implying her desire for the support was unreasonable. 

They continued pushing the mentor/mentee dynamic between Jasmine and Serena to unprofessional and unhealthy levels. Now, while there is certainly examples of emotionally abusive behaviour between Serena and Jasmine, I avoid using the term “abusive” to describe their entire relationship. I don’t believe the mistreatment occurring has been sustained long enough to warrant the term. (It bears mentioning that this classification is based on my own personal experiences with emotional abuse and that I have little interest in expanding on this reasoning should anyone take issue with this statement.) Instead, I would classify this situation as incidental grooming between two people who have positioned another in an unhealthy and toxic position in their live. 

Granted, they both agreed to a mentor/mentee dynamic. However, Jasmine in no way deserves to be belittled and bullied in the work place, to have Serena use her as a project to help process her grief, or to become the focal point of Serena’s need to make sure what happened with Elinor never happens to anyone else. But nor does Serena deserve to become the source of Jasmine’s validation, to overcompensates for Jasmine’s already developed sense of unworthiness, or become a maternal care provider which Jasmine so clearly wants her to be. Both of them are using the other in horridly unhealthy ways and desperately need counselling to process their own emotional traumas. 

But once again, the writers don’t bother to make clear the actual issues in these exchanges, nor handle the fall out of these situations with the degree of seriousness issues such as these actually require. Instead, they continue to escalate things between Serena and Jasmine, which we know cumulates into Serena telling Jasmine she wishes Jasmine were dead, because this was their intention all along.

Despite the fact that Elinor was Serena’s daughter, the point of killing off her off was not to give Serena a storyline. Elinor’s death and the resulting grief, which has irrevocably changed the character at the very core, was not about Serena at all, because this entire narrative was constructed to give Jasmine Burrows a storyline.

And that fact makes me furious. 

Because Holby gave us the story of a middle aged woman discovering her same-sex attraction in a situation where her desire was mutual and returned. They gave us a story in which that character was about to embark on a healthy, fulfilling, sustainable relationship that satisfied her emotional, physical, romantic and sexual wants. They implied the character was going integrate that romantic relationship with her other filial bonds and, for the first time in possibly her whole life, have her emotional needs actually met.

Then they took that character, who in universe was finally finally about to be happy, and decided to add to the other numerous instances of suffering the writers have already put her through by killing of her daughter. Killing off her daughter in her place of work only to cut short her grieving and send her right back there to suffer in the public eye.  

And they did it to give a new and barely formed character a storyline. The fact remains that Jasmine had literally millions of plausible storylines they could have gone with; so many options that would have ended with substantial character growth. She could have stopped drinking and studied harder, she could have taken up running, gotten a boyfriend or a puppy, learnt tact and become an actual decent doctor, and the character would have grown. 

Christ, she could have stubbed her toe on the edge of a bed, sworn on the ward, and gotten a dressing down from her boss about appropriate workplace vocabulary that character growth would have carried the same weight as the storyline she’s now had to endure.

They writers have irrevocably written Serena into a corner, because that character will never be the same again and there is very little they can do with her now, without actually letting the audience see the some of the most important narrative points. Moreover, they have also cut off almost all of Jasmine’s further storylines, because unless they give her a surprise pregnant with Ollie’s baby and then she miscarries after deciding to keep it (which I wouldn’t put it past them tbqh) there’s not a lot the writers can do with her that will have the same intensity and significance as what they’ve already put her through. 

In short, the Holby writers took a queer mentally ill abuse survivor and guttered her from the inside out for the sake of another character with barely touched potential. They treated that character with a level of disrespect and disregard I’m not sure I’ve seen since The L Word drowned Jenny Schecter in her neighbour’s pool and nobody really cared. Because they gave us Serena Campbell, implied that she (along with and everyone she represents) deserves to be happy, only to turn around and burn her beyond recognition for daring to hope. And they did it because they wanted to.

[feynites]

I was gonna wait to post this until after I’d done more stuff with Tiny Uthvir, but that’s taking a while so in the meantime - here’s Raised-by-Marassal Dirthamen’s first meeting with Selene. (Or my take on it, anyway, feel free to disregard.)

When he is twenty-one, Dirthamen and his Papae take a year off to go travelling around Thedas.

It seems to Dirthamen like his Papae is looking for something, although he doesn’t actually say as much. But Marassal is a Desire Abomination, and is prone to strange preoccupations and spontaneity. And Dirthamen thinks that if someone lives for a very long time, then they probably have moments where they find themselves searching for the meaning of life, or similar such ineffable things. It’s a nice trip, anyway. A lovely vacation to lots of interesting places, mostly off the beaten path, and Dirthamen collects a lot of specimens and takes a lot of photographs, and feels wholly rejuvenated even if he still hasn’t decided what he wants to do with his life.

His Papae is very supportive on that front, though he seems less overall pleased with the end results of their vacation.

“It will all come together, somehow. We just have to figure out how…” he says.

Dirthamen nods, and after a few nights of contemplation, decides that he will go with his gut and accept his father’s offer of a start-up loan, and follow his dream of owning his own book shop.

It’s not exactly a simple matter. Online sales are more popular for books, but Dirthamen understands computers fairly well, and sets up his own little shop. Eventually he finds a network of used book sellers to join in with, and makes a deal with one of the local thrift shops and some community charities. It takes about three years for him to start actually making a profit, but slowly, bit by bit, his shop gains a reputation and he finds some very good suppliers, and online business booms as foot traffic increases. Diversifying his stock with some magic-oriented items requires a lot of licensing, and he has to pass half a dozen government mandated tests and put his name on several registries. His life seems to work better when he can managed to keep to a schedule, but it always seems far too easy to distract him or knock him off course. He has to re-take three tests because he misses them, but he manages.

He’s twenty-six, and his shop has been in business for four years, when he wakes up one morning to find that someone has thrown a brick through the window.

He has no idea what prompted it, but stores owned by mages and stores owned by elves often seem to incur this sort of reaction. Dirthamen patches up the window, and checks and is relieved to find that none of the books were damaged, at least. He files a police report, but he gets the impression that he’s not doing it right, and his father comes and fusses and calls the people responsible wretches.

It could have been an accident, though. Just the same, Dirthamen reinforces his windows with some spells to deflect blows, and saves up to get a security camera. Some of his books are quite valuable, although nearly all of the ones which are would be difficult to actually sell – unique volumes and old texts are distinctive, and easier to track than a lot of other things.

But the broken window seems to let in a rush of objections that he doesn’t really know what to make of. There are people on online forums calling his store a ‘blight on the community’. They seem to find his stock inappropriate, and his location next to an erotic bookstore somehow damning to both of them by sheer proxy. They are both very far away from the nearest school district, but Dirthamen supposes that it is true that they are also technically ‘just a bus ride away from impressionable children’. He does not suffer any more broken windows, but one of the local chapters of the chantry puts a ban on his store, and there are several attempts at defacing the front with graffiti. His security camera catches several individuals, but the police tell him not to get his hopes up, and that it ‘could be anyone’ in the footage.

There is another incident, wherein a woman decides to read several select verses from the Chant of Light while walking outside of his door. His neighbour, Zevran, who owns the erotic book shop, comes out and starts countering her with passages from Three Nights in a Chantry, which is not necessarily fit for public readings, but he does not get very far before the woman leaves.

Eventually, the furor starts to die down. Not entirely, Dirthamen doesn’t think, but he figures out how to charm his windows so that they will not let paint stick to them, which limits vandals to the side wall and back alley, and those are harder to see from the street. At Zevran’s advice, he goes to a local animal shelter to obtain a ‘shop cat’, which can ‘stare creepily off at invisible things and make certain people too uncomfortable to enter the store, at least, if they are a suspicious sort’. Dirthamen ends up coming home with a rescued pet crow instead, a bird with clipped wings and a lot of intelligence, despite her tendency to tilt her head at odd angles due to slight brain damage from an injury.

“Even better!” Zevran declares, delighted.

He starts coming over on his lunch break to feed Blackbird tiny chunks of meat.

Dirthamen is twenty-seven when the bell for his shop door rings. It is late, technically closing time, but he had forgotten to flip the sign again. He is restocking some of the shelves on the second floor, and glances down over the balcony to see who has come in.

It is a woman.

Elven, and tall. Fair-haired and long-legged, with very sharp, striking features, that he can detect even with his odd angle on her. She is dressed in a long coat and faded jeans. Her hair is pulled mostly into a messy ponytail. She looks around the shop, and something about it makes Dirthamen think of dreams, for a moment. Glassy instances that linger between perceptions, and slow time down to make all the details more noticeable. There is ink on the woman’s fingers, and on one corner of her jaw. There is something about her countenance that makes Dirthamen think of mages, and of oddities, and of long nights with lots of books and studying and shutters drawn against the sunlight.

He freezes, and feels inexplicably like he should go and get his camera.

But he doesn’t have permission to take this woman’s photograph. She’s a customer, and this is his shop, and he’s learned that’s rude. With some trial and error. The woman walks over to Blackbird, and looks faintly concerned.

“Just a moment, please!” Dirthamen calls out, and makes his way down the light staircase.

The woman freezes to the spot.

“Ah, good evening!” Dirthamen says, as he comes up behind her. “My apologies, the shop is technically closed, but I forgot to flip the sign. It’s no matter, though, I’m restocking so you can feel free to browse for a few minutes. Unless you came by to find something in specific.  I should probably go and flip the sign, though, before I forget again. One time I left it open until eleven o’clock – at night – and one of my customers became convinced that I was open late and seemed very upset to find out that it was not my regular schedule. I wouldn’t be able to afford it, though, not that many people like to buy books after seven pm, even though most readers seem to be night owl types. I tried it for a few weeks but it was just very tiring, and the few people who came mostly ended up ordering online anyway. Oh! That reminds me, we do have an online store, and you are welcome to browse our selection there. You can have books shipped right to your address, or place orders of in-store pick up. But like I said, you can also browse right now, at least until I have to go home. But were you looking for something in specific? Because if you weren’t I can make some recommendations, if you tell me your interests. We have textbooks, too, with student discounts. Most of them are used but we try to keep a wide selection. And some of them are very interesting even if you’re not a student, although I still recommend leaving the actual textbooks for the students to buy and purchasing similar books on the same subject, I can usually find something that is more specific anyway.”

The woman doesn’t turn around while Dirthamen is speaking. Instead she seems to be staring very rigidly at Blackbird. He wonders if he’s gone too fast, and decides to just head over and flip the shop sign, and give her a moment. Perhaps she is nervous of birds? Well, it’s about time to settle Blackbird in for the night anyway, so Dirthamen goes and fetches her sleeping cage from behind the counter, and then heads over with it.

When the woman finally turns to look at him, her gaze fixes on his face. Dirthamen actually makes eye-contact, for a moment, before sliding his own gaze back over to Blackbird. He can feel the customer looking at him, though, watching intently as he gets the shop bird into her cage. Blackbird flaps a little, but she knows she will get treats before bed if she behaves, and so she does. He feeds her one of her favourite snacks, carrying her back to the register and letting her munch, before he pulls the tarp fully over the cage and makes it ‘night time’ for her. Then he settles the cage into its usual spot, feeling eyes on him all the while.

He looks up again, at the sound of footsteps.

The woman walks towards him.

“Are you alright?” he asks, now. Sometimes he gets customers who aren’t in a good way. Too much lyrium, or too many drugs, or recent trauma. Sometimes all three. He glances at the woman’s arms, but he doesn’t see any needle marks or scars. Her nails are purple, he notes. A very particular purple, which gives him pause, as he glances back up at her, and reconsiders.

Is she an abomination? Like Papae?

It’s probably not a good idea to just ask that, he knows, some secrets are trickier than others.

But if she is, and she’s having troubles, then that won’t do. She comes to a halt a few steps away, and her expression wavers. One of her hands comes up to her mouth.

“It’s alright,” Dirthamen finds himself saying, though he’s not sure what he’s promising. Still, he thinks, it can be. Things can be alright, as long as there’s someone to help. As long as you know the right steps to take, and what better place to figure such things out than a book store? “Maybe if you tell me what’s wrong, we can start sorting things out? If you don’t like the shop, there’s a little café just across the street…”

The woman swallows.

“There is?” she says.

It’s the first sound she’s made since she came in. But it instantly makes Dirthamen feel a little more at ease. That’s a good voice, he thinks. Not high and false, or snide, or defensive. It seems a bit like it’s been punched out of the poor woman, though. He can almost hear his father tutting in his head, and he thinks that if he was here, he would be reaching out to pat his customer’s hand and tell her that what she needs is probably a nice sit down to just breathe for a few moments. Life can be overwhelming, but that’s usually just because it’s full of so many possibilities. Things to see, and do, and learn, and want.

Dirthamen is not as good at helping, but he can try.

He offers the woman a smile.

“Just let me lock up,” he suggests. “And I’ll buy you a coffee, and we can talk about whatever it is you’re looking for.”

She lets out a shaky breath, like something between laughing and gasping and crying. Her eyes are starting to shine.

“Are you real?” she asks him.

Dirthamen’s brow furrows. Oh, so she’s having those sorts of problems.

“Yes,” he assures her. “I’m very real. So is the crow you saw, and so are the books, and so is this shop. Do you know what street you’re on, and how you got here?”

The woman clears her throat.

“Yes,” she says. “I drove here, we’re on Archway, just near to Queen’s Street and next to an erotic book store.”

Dirthamen smiles.

“Exactly,” he confirms. He’s already closed out the till, so he just sets about checking all of his locks. He can finish restocking in the morning, he thinks.

“I’m sorry,” the woman says, after a moment. “I’m sorry, that was… I must seem very strange, right now.”

Dirthamen offers her another smile, relieved that she seems to be able to speak, now.

“Strangeness doesn’t offend me,” he assures her. “But it can be a little worrying. May I buy you a tea or a coffee, or something to eat?” He doesn’t think he would feel right about letting her drive off without making sure she’s consistently lucid.

“Yes!” the woman blurts, all in a rush, now. “Yes you can, you absolutely can, I would like that very much!”

Dirthamen blinks.

The woman slowly tilts her head back, and sucks in a long breath, and closes her eyes for a moment. Then she exhales.

“Sorry,” she says. “I mean… if it’s not too much trouble…”

“It’s not,” he assures her.

After all, this is by far the most interesting customer he’s had in a long while.

[dystopialiving]

Case Study #9: President-Elect Donald Trump

Welcome back, readers! The next subject on my list of topics was supposed to be the “Let’s Play” genre of YouTube videos, but I felt that the spirit of this blog mandated that I address this subject first.

Some Background

Throughout the course of the 2016, I toyed around with how I would approach this subject if it ever came to pass. But, like most people, I didn’t take the possibility seriously.

I didn’t honestly think that American voters would choose to be their president a man who has no military or political experience, has a spectacular record of failure and fraud in the one area of experience he did campaign on, seems to have little idea what the President actually does, is notoriously thin-skinned and petty, and has been dogged by substantial accusations of racism and sexual assault not just during his campaign, but for decades prior.

In retrospect, it should have been obvious:

However, it’s important to note that the American public didn’t actually choose Trump for president. As of this writing, Donald Trump received nearly 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, and will be the first President in US history to enter the office with a negative approval rating. That’s a big part of the problem.

The other part of the problem is that there’s not much to write about Donald Trump that hasn’t already been written. His flaws and failures received no shortage of coverage during the election cycle. Trump himself calls this ‘unfair.’ A rational person calls it ‘accurate,’ particularly when all that most sources have to do is quote the man verbatim to paint him in a negative light. Americans who voted for Trump saw this coverage and thought one of two equally troubling things:

It couldn’t possibly be true, because the media is a horrible bias machine that makes up lies to discredit a man who just wants to Make America Great Again

All of this was probably true to some degree, but it didn’t matter enough to disqualify Trump as a candidate, because he’s going to Make America Great Again

The reality, of course, is that sometimes a person is awful enough that unbiased coverage of that person will portray him negatively. Donald Trump is one such kind of awful.

While defenders and apologists of Trump have been quick to point out that economic anxiety was the primary determinant of votes in this election, the numbers say otherwise. Per a recent study from political scientists at the University of Massachusetts, racism and sexism were far better predictors of one’s proclivity to vote for Trump than economic dissatisfaction was. In other words, a big part of what’s going on is a white, male America gasping against a world in which they have to share their prosperity with people who are fundamentally unlike them.

And now, a man who spent his entire campaign alienating most Americans who don’t look or think like him is charged with leading our country.

So, rather than reiterate work that’s already been done by better writers—again, most of what there is to say about Donald Trump has already been said, and there’s not space here to touch on even half the shit that’s wrong with him—let’s look at the surrounding circumstances that led to his presidency, and how they align with the tropes we know from dystopian fiction. Given the circumstances outlined below, I’m certain that nobody who voted for Donald Trump will have their mind changed by this post. Still, it’s worth trying to understand how we got here.

The Dystopia

What’s amazing about Donald Trump’s dystopian rise is the sheer number of things that had to go wrong for him to get elected—like a goddamn Rube Goldberg machine designed by H.R. Giger.

Artist’s rendering

Practically every dystopian trope was on full display during the 2016 election. Let’s look at them one by one, and assess how each trope contributed to what, in four years, we’ll be calling “Our Second Long National Nightmare.” In isolation, any one of these tropes probably wouldn’t have resulted in a Trump presidency. Together, however, they resulted in what may end up being the most dangerous election outcome in American history.

Misinformation/post-truth

In George Orwell’s 1984, the totalitarian regime of Oceania depicted therein is engaged in a perpetual propaganda campaign against truth. Readers of the book likely recall the iconic line, “We have always been at war with Eastasia.” In the context of the novel, the line is disseminated as propaganda by Big Brother, the shadowy head of the totalitarian state. Midway through the novel, the state is engaged in Hate Week, an event designed to drum up patriotic fervor. Prior to this point, Oceania has been engaged in a perpetual war with Eurasia, but midway through a Hate Week speech, the target changes to Eastasia. The population buys into it immediately. In the totalitarian regime of Oceania, the facts don’t matter—only the galvanizing effects they have against an external enemy.

That is Donald Trump’s campaign to a T.

Fact-checking Donald Trump is a bit like banging your head against a wall. To date, Politifact has ranked nearly 70% of his statements as somewhere between “mostly false” and “pants on fire.” For reference, that number is 26% for Barack Obama. But again, that doesn’t seem to matter, because a large part of the conservative electorate seems convinced that facts are biased against them. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence from multiple sources that their party members are less honest, the broad conclusion that Republicans draw is not that they need to try harder to back up their statements with facts, it’s that the fact-checkers are secret liberals trying to ruin their reputations—see accusations about PolitiFact, Snopes, and FactCheck.Org for example.

(As an aside, engaging in mental gymnastics to avoid drawing the most likely conclusion is certainly not new or unique to Republicans in 2016. If you’re interested in a similar rabbit hole on the fallibility of the human mind and the unwillingness to admit it, I’d recommend reading up the recent Shazaam spat that has swept across sections of the internet.)

Beyond the outright fabrications, everything about Donald Trump’s broader popularity among a conservative base is backwards. From a party that until very recently championed moral absolutes and raged against concepts like cultural relativism, we now have pundit after pundit claiming that facts don’t matter. Hell, here’s Newt Gingrich, a Republican stalwart, openly stating at the RNC that it doesn’t matter that violent crime is down, because what matters more is that people feel unsafe:

“We care the most about feelings. We have always cared the most about feelings.”

This pattern of blatantly dumping facts (but still kicking and screaming when being called out on it) carries over into another truth-related issue that has sprung up in 2016 and is poised to become an even bigger problem in the future: Fake news. Fake news (more accurately called hoax news) is, very specifically, news that has been deliberately fabricated to generate clicks, usually in pursuit of ad revenue. It is not a small problem. On Facebook, where somewhere between 20% and 50% of Americans get news regularly, fake news articles actually outperformed real news articles leading up to the election. Those fake stories overwhelmingly skewed in favor of Trump, and included such obvious falsehoods as Pope Francis endorsing Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton selling weapons to ISIS. This conservative bent to hoax news stories led Facebook to pull back from plans to develop an algorithm to weed out these stories from users’ news feeds, for fear of a backlash from conservative users.

Not that long ago, this would be taken, as would the aforementioned fact checking, as clear evidence that the right has a truth problem. But again—all of this has been said already, and it doesn’t seem to matter. Instead, as a whole other layer to the shit sandwich that is our post-truth dystopia, the idea of fake news itself has now been appropriated as an attack against legitimate media. Case in point, Sean Hannity of Fox News (a person either duped by or deliberately spreading fake news) has taken to labeling stories he doesn’t care for as “liberal fake news,” such as the recent (bipartisan, verified) reports that Russian hacking was directed at swinging the 2016 election. And he’s not alone—You can read more on the phenomenon here. Given this reality, the introduction of the terminology of fake news seems to have backfired. It’s become ammunition for the very people spreading it to fight back.

What makes the specter of fake news ultimately more frightening than a totalitarian anti-truth propaganda campaign is how decentralized it is. While some fake news clearly has an ideological bent (and director of National Intelligence James Clapper suggests that Russian interference played a role in its dissemination), the reality is that much of it was created simply, as is becoming a common theme on this blog, to turn a profit. This interview in the Washington Post with perennial hoaxer Paul Horner illustrates the fact that because incendiary fake news stories are clicked and shared far more often than the real thing, there’s a genuine living to me made from AdSense and Facebook traffic—On the order of $10,000 per month, in Horner’s case. Horner insists what he’s doing is satire (a dubious claim at best), but seems to be beginning to understand the negative consequences of his actions. Coupled with the fact that young people seem increasingly unable to distinguish real news from fake news, the post-truth reality is poised to become far worse before it gets better.

While a disregard for traditional media and the dissemination of falsehoods were part of the problem, much of the blame rests on traditional media outlets themselves, in particular network newscasts, for a failure to report substantially on policy during the election. Leading up to the election, evening network newscasts had dedicated just 32 minutes of coverage to policy—That’s not an average. That’s a total. This lack of policy coverage almost certainly contributed to the trend among voters to vote against the candidate they disliked rather than for the candidate they liked. They were voting for a person, not a set of policies.

Of course, media is a market. This change in coverage was ultimately brought on by the public’s thirst for entertainment over education. Regardless, it’s only in an environment that so substantially devalues facts and evidence that a candidate like Donald Trump can succeed. Only in this environment can voters seeking to push back against the liberal coastal elite take a look at this asshole and think he’s on their side:

A working man’s man if ever I did see one.

Beyond the problem of active disinformation, comparing rhetoric around Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008 to Trump's campaign in 2016 yields so much cognitive dissonance that it’s a wonder more Republicans’ heads haven’t exploded. Republicans went from insisting that Obama was unqualified to be President due to a lack of experience to lauding a man who has never held any political or military position. They went from throwing a shit fit about Obama (a man who by all accounts is a practicing, if liberal Christian with a substantial understanding of scripture) not being Christian enough to hold the Presidency to supporting a man who transparently only cares about Christianity to the extent to which it earned him votes. Seriously—In his speech at Liberty University, he referred to Second Corinthians as “Two Corinthians, and at the Family Leadership Summit, he stated that he’s never bothered asking God for forgiveness. The right raged against the moral bankruptcy of Obama, a family man apparently absent of any personal scandal, then threw their weight behind a thrice-married unrepentant adulterer, philanderer, braggart, and supporter of the pornography industry.

Any case that the Republican party is one of values, morals, or principles has gone out the window with their support of Trump, and it’s seemingly no big deal. None of it matters as long as their team wins. Yet again, this has been covered widely, but it doesn’t seem to matter.

The caste system

The problem of fake news and the distrust of media would certainly be less severe were it not for another dystopian reality we now face: our increasing division and segmentation. There are a number of ways to frame this: echo chambers, cyberbalkanization, the splinternet, or even a new caste system. This level of division is present in many dystopian works, including 1984, Brave New World, Animal Farm, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Iron Heel, and others. However, while most dystopian fiction sees populations divided into castes based on power, the divisions we see now are based on ideology. Furthermore, rather than being enforced top-down by some totalitarian regime, these divisions have been self-driven through recent advances in technology.

The promise of the internet was that it would connect us like never before. Divisions of geography, race, class, and even language would melt away. What’s happened instead is that we’ve mostly chosen to interact and organize with people who think the way that we do. Conspiracy theories, hate groups, and other fringe movements have seen their popularity explode in the age of the internet. People who hold absurd or reprehensible ideas that would have been normalized out in polite society can now opt to find kindred spirits across the globe. This is how we end up with Neo-Nazi groups like the “Alt Right” holding openly racist victory rallies rife with the type of language and imagery this country fought a war against just a few generations back.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that ideological divisions have been reinforced by the tech companies who run our social networks. Facebook in particular is an egregious offender, though it’s hard to argue with their actions given their endgame of generating advertising revenue. In short, because Facebook’s business model is based on time spent on the site and pay-per-click advertising, its News Feed algorithm is designed to show you the kind of content you’re most likely to engage with. Invariably, that’s content that you’re already inclined to agree with. Coupled with the fact that Facebook’s massive data machine probably has your political views nailed based on your behavior, you’re likely to only see your side of the political debate. It’s essentially a tech-enhanced form of confirmation bias, and its presence is obvious as soon as you consider the alternative would look like:

In this divided environment, fake news and misinformation thrives. If you only encounter one set of news sources or one ideological perspective, you’ll never naturally come upon any information that contradicts the what you’ve been fed by unscrupulous sources. These divisions, by the way, also played a substantial role in why journalists were unable to predict Trump’s victory: They simply lived their online lives in a different ideological sphere than his most ardent supporters.

The central problem is that humans have never really overcome our evolutionary proclivity for tribalism. Fundamentally, we don’t like dealing with people who are different from us. It takes significant effort and discomfort to expose ourselves to and tolerate those outside our established tribe, however we define that. Advertisers and tech companies know this, and they are exploiting it for profit.

Bureaucracy

Bureaucracies turn up in a number of dystopian works, often the product of totalitarian regimes. However, the best example of this type of dystopia in isolation is Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. In Brazil, there’s no Big Brother figure—The entire dystopia stems from a reliance on bureaucracy and overly-complex, poorly-maintained machines. The characters in the film see their lives irreparably destroyed as the bureaucratic inertia of the state machine, spurred a clerical error, employs catastrophic means to reach its built-in ends.

It’s a real laugh-riot.

In the 2016 election, two equally harmful pieces of bureaucracy came together to pave the way for President Trump.

The Electoral College is one such piece of dystopian bureaucracy, and to understand why, we need to explore its origins. Electoral College was, in part, designed to mitigate fears that the founders had about direct democracy—i.e. a system in which every citizen has direct input in the government’s actions. Electoral College votes are allocated based on a state’s total population, rather than its population of eligible or registered voters. While may seem like a middling distinction, it’s anything but. Consider the historical context of the Constitutional Convention, when the Electoral College was established. You likely learned about the Three-Fifths Compromise at one point or another in your educational history—and I can find few more egregious examples in history of a dehumanizing bureaucracy than an agreement to assign fractional personhood to an entire category of human beings. For the Electoral College, it’s important to understand what effect the Three-Fifths Compromise actually had. Because slaves were fractionally counted toward a state’s total population even though they were without franchise, slave-holding states ended up with disproportionately more representation in the Federal Government relative to their population of eligible voters.

Without the Electoral College, the candidate who received the most votes would be elected President—which is absolutely how Presidential elections should work, particularly in a country that loves to toot its own horn over how great freedom and democracy supposedly are. Instead, we have a heavily bureaucratized system that doesn’t actually incentivize voting—i.e. it doesn’t matter how many people in a given state are registered to vote or choose to vote in a given election; that state receives the same number of electoral votes regardless. The powers that be know this, and those interested in preserving the status quo have taken concrete measures to exploit it in the form of a second piece of bureaucracy.

Since the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, 17 Republican-led state legislatures moved to implement measures deliberately designed to suppress voter turnout among poor and minority populations—In particular, voter identification laws, restricting polling locations and hours, and limits on early voting. Ostensibly, these laws require voters to jump through additional hoops to mitigate the problem of voter fraud. However, all evidence suggests that voter fraud is extraordinarily rare, and for a good reason—It’s an extremely ineffective way to swing the vote.

In reality, these bureaucratic hurdles are disproportionately difficult and expensive to navigate for the poor, the elderly, and people of color, and deliberately so. This isn’t some wild conspiracy theory, by the way. Republicans have openly admitted that voter suppression among likely Democratic voters is the ultimate aim of voter ID laws.

It’s the Three Fifths Compromise all over again: States get to continue to pull representative power at the federal level from their sizable populations, even in the face of actively restricting the franchise of many within their borders.

Fortunately, some of these restrictions have recently been struck down by courts at various levels, but much of the harm has already been done.

The vilification of the other

A recurring theme in dystopias is the creation and vilification of an enemy from outside. 1984 has both the aforementioned Hate Week and the Two-Minutes Hate, a daily period of propaganda spewing vitriol at the enemies of the party. The Black Mirror Episode “Men Against Fire” provides a more recent example of this trope.

Donald Trump’s campaign was built on the vilification of many groups, including Muslims, journalists, Hollywood, refugees, undocumented immigrants, and other racial minorities. Hate groups latched onto this, leading to Trump’s unprecedented level of support among white supremacists.

During his presidency, Donald Trump’s Twitter feed will be his Two-Minutes Hate. Here’s just the most recent example in a long line of insults against those who disagree with Trump:

(full story here)

Disregarding the fact that Trump may just have spent so much time around washed-up has beens while hosting Celebrity Apprentice that he doesn’t recognize talent when it slaps him in the face, this is the tone that we can expect from him. If someone speaks out against him in the slightest, it doesn’t matter how well-respected or successful that person is—He��ll call them sad, a failure, a loser, or some other (often laughably incorrect) insult.

This goes beyond propaganda. Trump’s tweets have actually mobilized direct threats and action among his followers against his selected targets, such as in the case of United Steelworkers Local 1999 president Chuck Jones. Jones, a man otherwise entirely outside of the public spotlight, was interviewed on CNN following Trump’s claims that he’d personally kept more than 1,000 jobs at Indiana’s Carrier Corporation from being outsourced to Mexico. Jones, as a source close to the situation, explained that Trump’s claims were an exaggeration, as 350 of those jobs were already staying in the US before Trump got involved. In response, Trump lashed out on Twitter, and Jones received a deluge of threatening calls and messages from Trump’s supporters.

It’s not an overstatement to say that this level of harassment will have a chilling effect on individuals’ willingness to exercise their right to free speech. Beyond that, Donald Trump’s equal willingness to make enemies from within and without will have a genuine impact on our unity as a country. Following 9/11, then-president George W. Bush famously drew a line in the sand: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Trump is poised to take things one step further—There’s no “us” in a Trump presidency, only “me.” Donald Trump is so petty and so thin-skinned, so absolutely thirsty for praise and approval, that we can expect lines to be drawn based not on principle, but personal allegiance to Trump himself.

More broadly, the tone Donald Trump has set in his campaign spells disaster for many minority groups in this country. In the wake of his election, reports of hate crimes in the US skyrocketed—higher even than they were in the wake of 9/11.

Authoritarianism/totalitarianism

Let’s just run down a quick list of the un-democratic, hyper-authoritarian, borderline fascist shit that Donald Trump said or promised to do in recent months:

Advocated violence against protestors at his rallies

Advocated for jailing his political opponents

Promised to build a giant, high-tech security wall along the nearly 2,000 mile border we share with a friendly country

Threatened to crush freedom of the press for those who cover him unfavorably

Threatened to reject the results of the election if he lost

Supported a complete ban on all Muslim immigration

Demanded every Obama appointee vacate their office by inauguration day, even absent a Senate-confirmed replacement

Moved to purge civil servants from the Department of Energy who worked on climate-related initiatives

Against two Supreme Court rulings protecting the act as free speech, advocated for jail time for those who burn the American flag in protest

This is by no means an exhaustive list, and the man’s not even in office yet.

Redeeming Qualities

In the immediate aftermath of the election, some people took on the “wait and see” perspective on a Trump presidency, cautioning that it might not be all bad—absent any evidence to support that position, and disregarding the real harm his candidacy had already done. Well, we’ve waited a few weeks, and if Donald Trump will have redeeming qualities as a President, we haven’t seen them. The decisions he’s made since his election have been so colossally bad that you couldn’t make them up if you tried. He’s been skipping intelligence briefings because he’s “a smart person” (reminder: smart people don’t feel the need to regularly tell people they’re smart), and he’s stacked his cabinet and administration with picks so extraordinarily awful that many of them stand for the exact opposite of what their positions are supposed to accomplish. Let’s look at just a few:

Rick Perry for Secretary of Energy—When Rick Perry was running for the Republican Nomination in 2012, he explained that he wanted to eliminate three departments on day one: Education, Commerce, and, uh... a third that he forgot. That blunder more or less killed his chances at the presidency, but had he been diligent enough to remember this very basic policy point of his own campaign, he was supposed to name the Department of Energy. Now, he’ll be leading it. Awesome. Oh, and don’t forget that the Department of Energy is responsible for the design, testing and production of all nuclear weapons.

Jeff Sessions for Attorney General—Jeff Sessions was denied a federal judgeship in the 1980s for being too racist. If you’re too racist for 1986, you’re way too fucking racist for 2017. Oh, and if you live in one of the states that has legalized recreational or medical marijuana, be ready to kiss that goodbye, because Sessions loathes the stuff. If there’s one idea that summarizes Sessions, it’s this, straight from his mouth, regarding the KKK: "[they] were OK until I found out they smoked pot.”

Scott Pruitt for head of the EPA—As Attorney General in Oklahoma, Scott Pruitt has sued the EPA over and over in attempts to block the safeguards that limit air and water pollution, i.e. the main thing the EPA does. Pruitt has taken nearly a quarter of a million dollars in donations from the fossil fuel industry over the years, and co-authored an op-ed in which he claimed that “Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind,” which they absolutely do not—it’s pretty much a 100% consensus among those with the most knowledge of climate science. But again, who gives a shit about facts anymore? Pruitt is not the only climate change denier in the cabinet.

Andy Puzder for Secretary of Labor—I’d be remiss not to address this one, because (and I’m not making this up) readers of this blog already know this dickhead from Case Study #7. He’s the asshole CEO of Carls Jr. and Hardees who wants to replace his workers with robots because he hates the idea of paying them a living wage. That’s definitely a man we want in charge of federal wages and hour standards.

Some of these picks must still be confirmed by the (Republican-controlled) senate, though in a troubling development, many of them have failed to complete the ethics reviews typically required to tease out conflicts of interest. This is particularly important given that Trump has assembled the richest cabinet in US history, many with substantial foreign business ties. I’d like to think that the working class folks who voted for Trump are mildly peeved about this, but, to beat a dead horse, none of this is new information. Yet, people are carrying on like this administration won’t be the Michael Jordan of fuck-ups and disappointments.

Just kidding, that title is already held by Darko Milicic [note: I don’t know shit about sports and I have no idea if this joke lands].

If there’s a single silver lining about Trump himself, it’s that he is in no way a man of his word (see, again, his consistent record of dishonesty), so he may decide not to pursue many of the horrible causes he’s championed in his candidacy. Most recently, he ditched both formally and practically the “drain the swamp” concept that characterized the latter part of his campaign—all it takes is a quick look at his picks to see that he probably never cared about it in the first place beyond its value as a tagline to bring in votes.

If there’s a silver lining about Trump’s election, it’s that it’s a wakeup call. Progress is not inevitable. The government will not always have your best interests at heart. The US is not immune from the tide of authoritarianism, and only direct action will stop it.

Can We Fix It?

Donald Trump will be President. There’s no changing that, though we shouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t complete a full four-year term, for any number of reasons including impeachment or simply giving up. What we can change is the tide that swept him into office, because absent serious action, Trump will not be the last of his kind. Change starts with education in four crucial areas: Civics, history, pluralism, and critical thinking. By education, I don’t mean formal training in an academic environment (though it certainly wouldn’t hurt)—I mean direct, personal interaction with the kinds of people and experiences that create personal growth.

I have to believe that if we as citizens had a better understanding of what the President does (and, perhaps more critically, can’t do), we wouldn’t be stuck with Trump. Hell, if Trump had a better understanding of what the President actually has to do on a daily basis, he probably would have dropped out before the election. Democracy needs to be more than just background noise—it needs to be an active pursuit. It’s not something you engage with every four years (or even every two). Healthy democracy requires regular involvement at local, state and national levels. Know your representatives and communicate with them. Volunteer for or donate to worthy organizations. Get involved in a campaign for a candidate that you believe in. Sign petitions. Protest.

I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that as the generation that fought against fascism in World War II has started to shuffle off this mortal coil, we as a country have renewed our own flirtation with authoritarianism. Absent that direct link to warn us off this path, we have moved down it yet again, and a poor education in history is partially to blame. It’s not enough to know about the historical reality of the rise of fascism in Europe—we need to know why it happened in order to stem its tide here and now. America also seems reluctant to revisit its own historical failures: slavery, internment, racism and segregation come to mind as topics that we need to be reminded of to understand why we need to continue to actively reject policies that limit the rights and freedoms of others. America is by no means perfect, and it is only by reminding ourselves of that fact that we can turn away from our darker instincts.

An education in pluralism is actually quite simple to accomplish, if uncomfortable to experience for some. It boils down to this: Talk with people who do not share your beliefs or background. Meet your neighbors. Read news sources that you violently disagree with. Visit parts of your town that you don’t normally venture into. At the same time, be vigilant: While it’s always worth hearing another side of the story, it’s important to remember that not all viewpoints are equally valid, and not every idea deserves a platform. That kind of false equivalency is part of what got us here in the first place.

This is where critical thinking comes in. I can’t believe that we need to keep revisiting the old adage of “you can’t believe everything you read on the internet,” but here we are. We as a country need to do a much better job of understanding how to properly evaluate the strength of our sources. Healthy skepticism is essential, and we can’t be shy about fact-checking claims—especially those that would confirm our existing biases. The C.R.A.P. test is a good place to start when evaluating sources, and it never hurts to find a secondary or tertiary source that backs up your findings. However, I’m not optimistic that we can ultimately overcome the stronger forces at play here. Confirmation bias has been a problem as long as humans have had access to external information, and we continue to organize ourselves into tribes regardless of the level of interconnectivity available to us. Can we really expect people to voluntarily confront uncomfortable truths in order to move towards a more objective picture of reality? Furthermore, given the profit motive that drives social media’s segmentation of its users, I’m not sure if there’s any way to break out of an ideological echo chamber besides entirely disengaging from Facebook and Twitter. At minimum, if those platforms are our primary means of social contact, that needs to change.

Aside from the issue of education, there are plenty of fixes we should work towards, though it’s unclear how easy any of them would be to accomplish. Ideally, the Electoral College should be done away with entirely, but a similarly amenable solution exists in allocating electors based on total votes cast, rather than total population. That change would have the effect of disincentivizing the kind of voter suppression efforts that have become increasingly common in recent years—making it harder for residents to register as voters means your state loses electoral power (For the record, I’ve run the numbers on this scenario, and it looks like Trump would still have come out on top).

Perhaps the most important things we can do, however, is stand up for one another and push back against the tone that Trump has set. If you’re fortunate enough not to belong to one of the groups that Trump and his followers have targeted, take a moment to familiarize yourself with the kinds of attacks many people are already facing. As this kind of oppression and intimidation grows, it’s up to everyone who witnesses it to speak out against it, firmly and directly. Be prepared for direct confrontation, and be prepared to push back against the tide of post-truth nonsense. Racism, xenophobia, homophobia, sexism, and unsubstantiated bullshit deserve to be called out.

Finally, if you support a progressive cause, don’t count on the government to have your back. Individual behavior will become increasingly important as the regulatory ground gained in recent years begins to roll back. In other words, it’s time to put your money (literally and metaphorically) where your mouth is.

Here’s a quick exercise—whether you’re liberal or conservative, take a moment to reflect on your values (political and otherwise) and write them down. I’m guessing most of us have a pretty similar list: Freedom, limited government, justice, equality, family, truth, faith, peace. We may have different ideas of how each of those values looks in execution, but we can probably all recognize that, based on everything he’s said and done, Donald Trump’s list of values does not align with our own:

And so, the time comes for us to live out our values, openly and aggressively. Want to stop climate change? Better start driving less and eating less meat. Can’t stand big banks? Better move your money to a local credit union. Want to push back against racial injustice? Join one of the many social movements working to keep those in power accountable. Give of your time and of your resources to those causes that align with your values.

The road ahead will not be an easy one, but what we do in the next four years will be critical in determining our future as a country. Donald Trump would have you believe that he has a mandate, when in reality, he won the election on a bureaucratic technicality. The same people who have spent years blocking Barack Obama at every turn will now pivot and try to appeal to unity.

Don’t buy it for a minute. Trump’s ideas are un-American, and they are beneath the ideals that this country was founded on—even if we’ve failed many times to live up to those ideals throughout our history. It’s up to every citizen to push back against fear and ignorance. This is not a question of right versus left. It’s a question of right versus wrong.

America will likely never be a utopia—We are only as good as our worst instincts. But if we recommit ourselves to our living our common values, and stand firm against the authoritarian, spiteful, dishonest and divisive tide of Trump, we can return to a path that leads us toward the pursuit of our ideals.

And don’t forget to mark your calendars: Midterm elections are November 6th, 2018.

Up next: The “Let’s Play” YouTube genre

[selfmeditationlove]

Reflection's Beneficial Magic

Reflection in the Mind

An ever increasing number of nowadays we see innumerable suggestions to rehearse the deep rooted workmanship and study of reflection. Most, if not all, praise its apparently mysterious force on the human mind through its implied benefits. These proposals and cases have stood the trial of time-they are all around acknowledged and very much legitimized. For ages past the individuals who preceded us have said a lot with respect to this incredible blessing we as a whole groups yet today once in a while, we disregard to utilize. Why currently would we say we are again helped to remember this?

We all are taking an interest either mindful or uninformed. in a quantum move bringing now and again, wild changes in every aspect of our general public and world structures. Nobody is absolved from the impacts these fast changes bring. While generally encountered, these trans-developmental energies are exclusively extraordinary and handled distinctively relying upon an individual's viewpoint. With a little order and practice we can apply this endowment of reflection to assist balance with focusing on levels, decrease mind-films which appear to play constant to bring expanding levels of euphoria, lucidity and reason into life.

While the facts demonstrate that thoughtful practices are known by numerous names in for all intents and purposes all societies each with different types of work on, discovering one that will work for you is very simple. The best part is that this tenderly leads us eventually to an exceptional spot we regularly want and need more noteworthy comprehension and acknowledgment to life's riddles.

Along these lines, we should quickly investigate the subject for the sole motivation behind figuring out how to receive numerous valuable benefits accessible through reflection. Plus, it is valid, the best things in life are free. So let us start to free our brains from futile, wayward conceptual considerations having no support to control or direct our life's bearing. We will discover reflection permits you in the most perfect sense, to make your own background's. (More conversation about that probability somewhat later). For the time being, consider that during contemplation you can supplant, and get out undesirable musings with life attesting forms increasing a genuine, enduring true serenity, body and soul. Reflection is your entryway offering all that and more...you can even make some enchantment in your life through this basic procedure!

As you may have heard or in the event that you are as of now a committed expert, people report significant mental, physical and profound prosperity as they practice contemplation day by day. What at that point is contemplation actually about? For novices, how might one beginning? Furthermore, how far would i be able to go with earnest commitment? Right now going to inspect a couple of zones some recorded foundation, benefits, study of the brain and propelled potential outcomes.

History to Date

As indicated by numerous archeologists, contemplation pre dates set up accounts. It could be effortlessly imagined an individual entering a modified condition of cognizance by just looking in the brain stilling glint of fire while taking no idea. The most punctual archived record of contemplation originates from India in their Hindu sacred writings called tantras. These records go back more than 5,000 years originating from the Indus valley and were joined with what is alluded to today as yoga. Alongside growing exchange, social trade was additionally conveyed westbound and reflection practice was before long installed in eastern idea and profound practices.

With the approach of Buddha around 500 AD, numerous differing societies started to build up their own understandings and particular thoughtful strategies. A few procedures still being used right up 'til the present time are said to convey inconceivable psyche over-matter forces and supernormal abilities that changed the expert. Today, these are sincere people and are not really priests living in some remote mountain religious community. They are regular individuals like you and I. Obviously progressing through time, the long history of contemplation is never again just credited to the Hindus and Buddhists. Not to be forgotten about, Christianity, Islam and Judaism likewise take part in the propagation of contemplation each with its own interpretation of the training.

Notwithstanding, generally these strict beliefs don't command in their lessons and practices a culture of contemplation when contrasted with the Asian conventions. Reflection discovers its place here in our Western culture in the mid 1960's into the '70's. This was when quite a bit of our way of life was being tried, requesting to be reclassified. Contemplation discovered rich ground in which to prosper and extend. Some could state it was the "flower child" insurgency which motivated to grasp acknowledgment of outside thoughts however just ones that had genuine substantive worth. It was not long after that when the Western clinical and academic network started to lead research and studies on reflection. Also, what did most examinations if not all, to shifting degrees find?

You got it-noteworthy medical advantages. One of the most significant parts of reflection is the means by which it discharges worry from our bodies. This is accomplished by overcoming any issues between our cognizant and un-cognizant selves, circumstances or non-supported contemplations that age pressure become less critical and really lose their capacity. Through contemplation, it doesn't take some time before you feel progressively tranquil and loose about everything. What happened to cause this about marvelous change? Studies have demonstrated that reflection raises serotonin levels which straightforwardly influence our conduct and passionate demeanor. On the other hand, low degrees of serotonin lead to melancholy, cerebral pains even sleep deprivation. All indications related with pressure.

Today, our western development with all our "propelled" information has re-certified the old information and comprehension of reflection's restorative capacity to help ease mental and physical infirmities. What's more, this was only the earliest stages of disclosure or will we say re-revelation of boundless forces accessible inside every one of us. Today, intercession without question is a generally therapeutically acknowledged type of all encompassing recuperating utilized around the world. Reflection could be summarized as a characteristic component inside every one of us that empowers the soul inside, the higher, genuine self to connect the correspondence hole into our physical angles establishing us in unrestricted love.

Resurrection through Breath

Past all the clinical network declarations lies a huge fragment of the populace looking for extra advantages while rehearsing reflection. By what means can what shows up at first just to be a physical demonstration, impact our actual inward being so significantly by basically clearing our cognizant musings and concentrating on our breath? Well the mystery truly is in our breath. At the point when you first beginning a reflective practice at face esteem, it shows up extremely simple. However, at an early stage many are effortlessly disappointed in light of the fact that they have actually never genuinely endeavored to calm their musings while conscious. Effectively exploring the psychological brain field of what evidently seems, by all accounts, to be constant floods of considerations springing up can from the outset be an overwhelming undertaking. Be admonished this is a typical event and very ordinary and there is an answer. It's amusing entirely acknowledgment sets in that you truly resemble two people inside a solitary physical body. What's more, that isn't a long way from reality.

I, in the same way as other who reflect discovered from the get-go one key to effectively get past this psychological hindrance is to recognize the idea. Continue to then expel it completely or consent to return to the idea after the reflection meeting and return the brain's concentration to your relaxing. I have utilized this technique to extraordinary achievement moving beyond the self images guardian job which it frequently plays.

You may discover this strategy supportive too if not, find what brings your concentration back without diverting considerations. Once more, breathing's job is of most extreme significance right now since it is the door connecting the physical body with the profound body. The objective here is the thing that I allude to as the demise of musings through concentrating on your breath. Getting increasingly delicate of taking no idea alongside remaining present at the time by the basic demonstration being deliberately mindful of your breathing, an astonishing internal resurrection starts. Next, we characterize some great essential strides for all contemplation rehearses.

Reflection 101

Odds are a major part of your life you have accidentally experienced minutes in a simply thoughtful state. The chances are that when this happened, you ended up outside in nature. In nature we all the more effectively discover reverberation with a more profound all the more genuine part of ourselves which frequently wakes up in the indigenous habitat.

Maybe it happened while unwinding on a sea shore viewing the sleep inducing like waves tediously washing shorewards or perhaps seeing the imperceptible breeze stir leaves on a tree as warming daylight washed your face. On the off chance that you recall during these minutes, you found a totally loosened up feeling inundate your whole existence since you were liberated from diverting considerations. This is what being in "the occasion" is about. It seems as though your brain tunes into the higher common frequencies of life which generally, are practically non-existent inside structures and such. However, with center, appropriate expectations and procedures we can get away from these impediments forced in man-made situations. Obviously reflection can be extraordinarily upgraded when it is commonsense in normal environment.

The entire idea of reflection takes on different personalities depending what a person's goal is while playing out a picked contemplation. Some may need physical or mental alleviation, others, answers or headings for a superior life. In any case, decisions are unmistakably individualized. Discover yours since this goes far in helping you along the way supported with an interesting, customized reason. Characterize it for you! To start a contemplation, a couple of basic standards are all around acknowledged.

[maditationsolutions-blog]

Meditation's Beneficial Magic

An ever increasing number of nowadays we see incalculable suggestions to rehearse the well established workmanship and study of contemplation. Most, if not all, praise its apparently enchanted force on the human mind through its implied benefits. These proposals and cases have stood the trial of time-they are generally acknowledged and very much supported. For ages past the individuals who preceded us have said a lot with respect to this extraordinary blessing we as a whole forces however today at times, we disregard to utilize. Why currently would we say we are again helped to remember this?

We all are taking an interest either mindful or uninformed. in a quantum move bringing now and again, wild changes in every aspect of our general public and world structures. Nobody is absolved from the impacts these quick changes bring. While all around encountered, these trans-developmental energies are exclusively novel and handled distinctively relying upon an individual's viewpoint. With a little order and practice we can apply this endowment of meditation to assist balance with focusing on levels, diminish mind-films which appear to play relentless to bring expanding levels of bliss, lucidity and reason into life.

While the facts confirm that thoughtful practices are known by numerous names in essentially all societies each with different types of work on, discovering one that will work for you is very simple. The best part is that this delicately drives us at last to an extraordinary spot we frequently want and need more noteworthy comprehension and acknowledgment to life's secrets.

Thus, how about we quickly investigate the subject for the sole reason for figuring out how to receive numerous advantageous benefits accessible through contemplation. Furthermore, it is valid, the best things in life are free. So let us start to free our brains from futile, wayward unique musings having no legitimization to control or direct our life's bearing. We will discover contemplation permits you in the most perfect sense, to make your own background's. (More conversation about that plausibility somewhat later). For the time being, consider that during meditation you can supplant, and get out undesirable contemplations with life attesting forms increasing a genuine, enduring significant serenity, body and soul. Contemplation is your portal offering all that and more...you can even make some enchantment in your life through this basic procedure!

As you may have heard or on the off chance that you are now a devoted expert, people report significant mental, physical and profound prosperity as they practice meditation day by day. What at that point is contemplation actually about? For fledglings, how might one beginning? What's more, how far would i be able to go with earnest devotion? Right now going to look at a couple of regions some chronicled foundation, benefits, study of the brain and propelled potential outcomes.

History to Date

As indicated by numerous archeologists, meditation pre dates set up accounts. It could be effortlessly imagined an individual entering a modified condition of cognizance by just looking in the brain stilling glint of fire while taking no idea. The most punctual archived record of meditation originates from India in their Hindu sacred writings called tantras. These records go back more than 5,000 years originating from the Indus valley and were joined with what is alluded to today as yoga. Alongside growing exchange, social trade was additionally conveyed westbound and meditation practice was before long implanted in eastern idea and profound practices.

With the approach of Buddha around 500 AD, numerous assorted societies started to build up their own understandings and particular reflective systems. A few systems still being used right up 'til the present time are said to convey unfathomable psyche over-matter forces and supernormal aptitudes that changed the professional. Today, these are faithful people and are not really priests living in some remote mountain religious community. They are regular individuals like you and I. Obviously progressing through time, the long history of meditation is never again just ascribed to the Hindus and Buddhists. Not to be forgotten about, Christianity, Islam and Judaism additionally take an interest in the propagation of contemplation each with its own interpretation of the training.

Be that as it may, verifiably these strict religions don't rule in their lessons and practices a culture of meditation when contrasted with the Asian customs. meditation discovers its place here in our Western culture in the mid 1960's into the '70's. This was when a lot of our way of life was being tried, requesting to be re-imagined. meditation discovered ripe ground in which to prosper and extend. Some could state it was the "flower child" insurgency which propelled to grasp acknowledgment of outside thoughts yet just ones that had genuine substantive worth. It was not long after that when the Western clinical and academic network started to lead research and concentrates on meditation. Furthermore, what did most examinations if not all, to fluctuating degrees find?

You got it-critical medical advantages. One of the most significant parts of contemplation is the means by which it discharges worry from our bodies. This is accomplished by overcoming any issues between our cognizant and un-cognizant selves, circumstances or non-advocated musings that mature pressure become less noteworthy and really lose their capacity. Through meditation, it doesn't take some time before you feel increasingly serene and loose about everything. What happened to cause this almost inexplicable change? Studies have demonstrated that meditation raises serotonin levels which legitimately influence our conduct and passionate disposition. Then again, low degrees of serotonin lead to despondency, migraines even a sleeping disorder. All side effects related with pressure.

Today, our western human progress with all our "propelled" information has re-attested the old information and comprehension of contemplation's remedial capacity to help ease mental and physical afflictions. What's more, this was only the early stages of disclosure or will we say re-revelation of boundless forces accessible inside every one of us. Today, intercession without question is an all around restoratively acknowledged type of all encompassing recuperating utilized around the world. Contemplation could be summarized as a characteristic instrument inside every one of us that empowers the soul inside, the higher, genuine self to connect the correspondence hole into our physical perspectives establishing us in unequivocal love.

Resurrection through Breath

Past all the clinical network declarations lies a tremendous fragment of the populace looking for extra advantages while rehearsing contemplation. By what means can what shows up at first just to be a physical demonstration, impact our actual inward being so significantly by essentially clearing our cognizant considerations and concentrating on our breath? Well the mystery truly is in our breath. At the point when you first beginning a thoughtful practice at face esteem, it shows up extremely simple. However, from the get-go many are effortlessly disappointed in light of the fact that they have actually never really endeavored to calm their contemplations while wakeful. Effectively exploring the psychological brain field of what evidently seems, by all accounts, to be constant surges of musings springing up can from the start be an overwhelming errand. Be admonished this is a typical event and very ordinary and there is an answer. It's entertaining quite acknowledgment sets in that you truly resemble two people inside a solitary physical body. What's more, that isn't a long way from reality.

I, in the same way as other who reflect discovered at an early stage one key to effectively get past this psychological hindrance is to recognize the idea. Continue to then expel it altogether or consent to return to the idea after the meditation meeting and return the psyche's concentration to your relaxing. I have utilized this strategy to incredible achievement moving beyond the inner selves guard job which it frequently plays.

You may discover this strategy accommodating also if not, find what brings your concentration back without diverting musings. Once more, breathing's job is of most extreme significance right now since it is the door spanning the physical body with the otherworldly body. The objective here is the thing that I allude to as the passing of musings through concentrating on your breath. Getting increasingly touchy of taking no idea alongside remaining present at the time by the straightforward demonstration being intentionally mindful of your breathing, an astounding internal resurrection starts. Next, we characterize some great essential strides for all contemplation rehearses.

meditation 101

Odds are a major part of your life you have unwittingly experienced minutes in an absolutely thoughtful state. The chances are that when this happened, you wound up outside in nature. In nature we all the more effectively discover reverberation with a more profound all the more genuine part of ourselves which regularly wakes up in the common habitat.

Maybe it happened while unwinding on a sea shore viewing the mesmerizing like waves drearily washing shorewards or potentially seeing the undetectable breeze stir leaves on a tree as warming daylight washed your face. On the off chance that you recall during these minutes, you found a totally loosened up feeling inundate your general existence since you were liberated from diverting considerations. This is what being in "the occasion" is about. It seems as though your brain tunes into the higher characteristic frequencies of life which generally, are for all intents and purposes non-existent inside structures and such. However, with center, appropriate goals and procedures we can get away from these constraints forced in man-made situations. Obviously contemplation can be significantly upgraded when it is functional in characteristic environment.

The entire idea of meditation takes on different characters depending what a person's aim is while playing out a picked contemplation. Some may need physical or mental alleviation, others, answers or bearings for a superior life. In any case, decisions are plainly individualized. Discover yours since this goes far in helping you along the way supported with an exceptional, customized reason. Characterize it for you! To start a meditation, a couple of straightforward guidelines are generally acknowledged. These by and large are-

1) Break away from interruptions. Mood killer the outside electrical/mechanical interruptions like telephones, PCs, TV's and so forth. A tranquil, quiet serene spot is liked. From the start, submit 10 minutes or more with no interference.

2) Posture is significant in