#ive noticed an uptick of posts about it and most are very good it is in fact very annoying when people dismiss comics ability to be fascist | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ofbreathandflame-archive · 1 year ago

Note

Lmao I noticed that the critical thinking blog never responded to you when you ate their ass up in that reply. Your responses are always so eloquent and mature I wish I could write my thoughts out like you do💙

hahaha thank you anon you're very sweet💜

the thing is -- specifically about this issue -- the only reason i responded was because of the discussions about abuse that were being brought fourth. as you see on this blog (and if you follow me from my last blog), ive never responded under opposing posts.

but lately - i don't if its just me -- ive been seeing these uptick in concerning conversations about sexual assault and abuse. the problem often becomes that people are so hellbent on justifying their favorite character that they don't realize that their co-signing abuse. its our jobs as readers, as consumers of entertainment, to know when to cap it. when to say, "i love this character, but i don't think i like the actions taken by them." when to say - "i love this author, but i don't love the writing that went into these scenes"

and as a said, and easier way of engaging with criticism against a character you love is to acknowledge that the writing may not be very sound, but as a whole you love that character.

i also think a big part of literacy is knowing where the fiction should end. when we enjoy characters, we should enjoy their journey -- not co-sign every single behavior they commit. its one of the big reasons i very much dislike stan culture. even the most sweetest character is flawed, and its weird for people to never seriously engage with character flaws and to operate under the "this character has done nothing wrong" or the "how could you hate x"

how are we arguing a character like feyre and mor are "morally grey" and "morally ambiguous" but then shut down any serious conversation about what that means.

we can't argue that feyre deserves to have a choice, but then disregard that right to choice when we don't agree with her decision. we can't say that feyre deserves to be high lady and then actively agree with rhys's decision to not inform feyre. we can't say that mor is a good, flawed character and then constantly undermine valid criticisms for her character. we can't say that mor was a scared young girl and that every action she takes as a scared young girl is justified and then turn around and say lucien "knew what he was getting himself into." we can't be champions of consent and then disregard when cassian (and lucien) are deprived that choice, argue that "they knew what was going on"

because then not only are you shitting on the flimsy values of the actual books, you are proving that these issues mean nothing outside of how you can argue them.

and i think its concerning especially because people are seriously unwilling to actually look at the problems in this series -- to the point where they consciously (and unconsciously) refuse to engage with the issues acotar as serious.

#anti sjm #anti sjm: feyre archeron #anti sjm: morrigan #anti acosf #anti sjm: cassian #anti sjm: lucien vanserra

34 notes · View notes

radiojamming · 4 years ago

Note

Can you tell us anything more about John Hartnell's time on the Voltage?

Hell yeah, I can! I have some pictures from the log books I can post later, too. I legit sat for H O U R S reading tiny handwriting from the master’s logs. Most of the logs were lists of chores, punishments, notes on the weather, and any major events. John’s time on the Volage can be divided pretty neatly in half, between the ship’s North American tour, and its Irish Sea patrol, all between 1841-45.

The North American part was probably pretty exciting for him, considering that he’d been a shoemaker since he was thirteen years old. Compared to what his brother had been up to on the Volage (the Aden Expedition, Battle of Chuenpi, etc.), it focused less on military ventures and more on transportation and patrol. The first major thing it did was in December of 1841, when it accompanied the HMS Warspite and HMS Thalia in taking the King of Prussia, Frederick William IV to England to attend the christening of the Prince of Wales. After that, it scurried over to Plymouth to get new fittings, and then took off for the Caribbean.

A lot happened in the Caribbean, and reading through the log books (always written in very non-emotional language, but still entertaining) paints a very eclectic picture of their activities. The Volage went to Jamaica first, awaiting orders until they were ordered to go to Saint Martha to pick up... $800,000 in gold. Legit, that sat on the Volage for two months until they dropped it off in Port Royal. By then, half the crew was incredibly ill with a mix of diseases including what might have been dysentery. Amazingly, for all of John’s terrible luck, he doesn’t appear on the sick list, even as one of the lieutenant’s eventually died as well as the clerk.

They scurried back and forth across the Caribbean from January of 1842 until they departed for Halifax, Nova Scotia later that summer. (Land of @theiceandbones!) In all honesty, the Volage didn’t get up to much during it’s time in Halifax. They didn’t necessarily have a mission, but it does make for some really entertaining reading! There was a lot of shore leave, for instance. Here are some of the notes I wrote on my read-through between the Caribbean and Halifax (which is from ADM 54/312):

Mondays and Fridays are mandatory clothes-washing days.

8th of July 1842 - “Punished Michael Logan with 48 [!] lashes for Disobedience of Orders and Insolence”

12th of July 1842, 6pm - “Committed to the deep the Body of Samuel Marvin (AB) Deceased.” / “Departed this life William Baillie (boy) - Buried at sea on the 13th.”

18th of July 1842, 10:50 pm - “Heard the report of several Guns from the North” [in Halifax]

20th of July 1842 - Halifax Citadel visit and the burial of Robert Webb (boy), Samuel Gibbon, John Barnes, and Samuel Brummage (carpenter’s mate) on shore

Godden reports that several warm nights, sailors were permitted to use their hammocks and sleep on the beach! (I put a smiley face next to my note here!)

Most of their Halifax mooring was spent cleaning. Lots of repainting, holystoning, repairing, etc.

Multiple discharges for “uselessness” and “disgrace”.

The latter note is really interesting, considering that none other than Charles Dickens visited Halifax that same year, and made note of sailors making total idiots out of themselves on oysters and champagne. Indeed, there are plenty of punishments recorded for that summer for drunkenness, insubordination, and desertion, again sometimes up to 48 lashes. (I’ll post a picture of the log just to confirm that.) On a high note, John Hartnell wasn’t punished once! And believe me, I looked!

They did have to have some repair work done to fix a leak in October before scurrying back down south with the “Squadron”. Godden makes some pretty boring notes about looking at the United States coast (as in essentially saying, “Yep, there it is!”) before they hang tight to the coast of Mexico.

The Volage appears to have been outfitted for doing survey work, which is part of what they did for the next few months. Between that, mooring for absolutely nothing, and hanging out with slave ship hunters (I like to think they high-fived the HMS Racer at some point) their zig-zag order of ports of call are:

Barbados > Puerto Rico > Grenada > St. Vincent > Jamaica > St. Lucie > Antigua > Jamaica (long-term Port Royal mooring) > Haiti

By early 1843, the Volage was headed back home. They docked in Plymouth for a time before getting their next orders for the Admiralty for the apparently much-maligned Irish Sea duty. At this point, Captain William Dickson had a temporary replacement for the deceased Lt. Davey, but eventually, that lieutenant had to leave as well. Captain Dickson did get a note from the Admiralty that he was to get his replacement at the Cove of Cork, and according to the sudden burst of tiny handwriting at the bottom of the page on Tuesday, August 29th, 1843, Captain Dickson totally forgot about that. Literally, the note for the day is kind of falling off the page from squeezing it in, but reads: “Read the Commission of Lieut J Irving”.

Because Lieutenant John Irving hopped on board as a new replacement, thus using those sweet, sweet letters of his to describe the next few months. He was absolutely meticulous about dating his letters, and having them on hand in his memoir made it easy to line up with Godden’s notes in the master’s log, confirming everything between the two of them. This time, Irish patrol got kind of exciting.

First, here’s Irving talking about joining the Volage, saying much nicer things about Capt. Dickson considering the captain was probably going, “Oh shit right I forgot we were doing this.”

“To my great joy I found the ‘Volage’ at anchor here. I was afraid she might have gone somewhere else. I went on board direct from the steamer, and was introduced to Sir William Dickson, the Captain; rigged myself in a blue coat and a pair of epaulettes; the hands were turned up, and the Captain read my commission appointing me lieutenant of the ship to the ship’s company. There are three of us. I am the second in seniority. Our mess consists of seven--viz., three lieutenants, one master, surgeon, a lieutenant of marines. They are all very good fellows. I was three years messmate of one of them in a former ship, so am comfortable in that respect.”

Irving noted that the officers were frequently invited to parties in Cork (”I could be at parties every day if I liked;”), and Godden does say that the rest of the crew were given shore leave fairly frequently, even though they didn’t have enough officers to allow them to leave as often.

For the next four months, the Volage remained at Cork, doing patrol with several other man-of-war’s. On land, there were frequent clashes between the Protestants and the Catholics, but more importantly, there were the Repealers following Daniel O’Connell’s urging to repeal the Acts of the Union and re-establish the independent Kingdom of Ireland. Between Irving and Godden, the image of this time from the perspective of the Volage is one of a lot of bloody rumors and high tension (a Protestant curate was killed, houses were being burned down). However, O’Connell’s followers were very civil to the sailors and actually invited some of the Volage officers to visit their homes. Irving called their hospitality “quite Highland”.

The Volage was temporarily relieved of its patrol in December, and returned to Plymouth by January of 1844 for refitting and repair work after shearing off part of her keel. Godden and Irving both noted that sailors and officers were boarded on a hulk, or a non-sailing ship. Godden also noted that several sailors were permitted leave to go visiting nearby. (John Hartnell did have family in Plymouth, and Thomas Hartnell may have been visiting the area at the same time, if a pet theory of mine holds up.)

They were back in the Cove of Cork by February, with the Volage now as the flagship. During a period between February and June, the Volage frequently made trips between Cork and the town of Bantry, after further pro-Repealer agitation began to raise tensions once more. Godden’s log doesn’t say much on the subject aside from weather reports and notes on officers leaving the ship to attend parties, major gatherings in town (there’s a really interesting bit from Irving on scaring the bejeezus out of a group of paraders and stealing the Waterford city flag), and switching out officers. However, the tensions once again didn’t amount to much more than far-off reports of violence and a few observations of pissed-off “pisantry”. The Volage did return to Plymouth for Christmas before returning for a short turn in Cork, and then being paid off completely. The log for that topic shows that John Hartnell was paid off on February 1st, 1845.

As far as what life would have been like for John Hartnell on the Volage, it’s hard to say for sure since, once again, Godden’s logs are impersonal. However, he was responsible for recording all punishments, injuries, illnesses, and deaths, of which there was no lack. He also kept meticulous note of what chores were to be done on particular days, as well as drills. I noticed there was a lot of repetition in the chore schedule, and there was a slight uptick in sailors suddenly taking ill with “unknown” illnesses about two and a half years in, especially on days that had chores requiring a little more elbow grease.

But I think, as I said, this would have been very exciting for someone like John. After all, he voluntarily signed up for the Erebus four months after signing off on the Volage. Unfortunately, we don’t have any letters to or from him that might hint to how he felt during this time, so we have to take it from his actions rather than his words. I like to think he enjoyed himself.

33 notes · View notes

hoopslab · 7 years ago

Text

Impact comp of the giants: Wilt vs Shaq

I'm one that likes comps as a tool to evaluate players, but I don't remember ever doing a Shaquille O’Neal vs Wilt Chamberlain comp. If I did, I have no idea where it is so I may as well start again. At this moment I don't have a set path for the comp, so forgive me if I meander my way through this. Hopefully something good comes of it.

Stylistically, Wilt and Shaq are the two giants of their time. Both had the reputations as Goliaths, but there were differences. Wilt seemed to be the more skilled of the two, able to develop more finesse moves and to focus (when he chose to) on different aspects of the game. Shaq was much more athletic and explosive than he's often given credit for, especially as a younger player, and he had excellent footwork and even ball-handling ability. But, unlike Wilt, he never tried to maximize his talents that weren't in his wheelhouse. Shaq worked the paint on offense and defense, he would use moves as needed, but his goal was to dunk if he could on every possession. If he couldn't, then he would work the jump hooks or drop steps to get as easy of a shot as possible. But there were no finger rolls or other finesse displays for Shaq. Of course, one could argue that Wilt had more upside because he could do more things than Shaq (in addition to his own awesome physical size), but the flip side that's often argued around here is that Shaq made more effective use of his power than Wilt did. Is that true? Well, let's look a bit further. It's hard to compare boxscore volume numbers across this many eras, because the pace was DRAMATICALLY different and the way that the game was played was way different, as well. Wilt playing every minute of the game and racking up huge numbers in categories that he chose is worthy of attention, certainly. But it's not a 1-to-1 comp, because the environment, coaching and style of play around the 2000s era simply does not allow the same opportunity to get those numbers. And more...I'm one that believes that accumulating boxscore stats for the sake of them (as Trex alluded to) is not the goal anyway. The boxscores tell us a bit about how a player might be having his particular impact, but a) the boxscores only cover part of the game and b) it's clearly possible to load up on boxscore statistics without those boxscore stats helping the team. A decade or so ago, this phenomenon was called "empty stats", and dealt a lot with players on bad teams that wanted to put up big numbers to attract a contract. With the rise of analytics, +/- data and hyper-scouting, I don't hear the term "empty stats" nearly as often anymore. But, clearly, it can be done. One of the big arguments often used against WIlt, in fact, is that his boxscore stats footprint doesn't allign with his impact on his team's fortunes. Let's look at that a bit.

Impact footprint analysis, regular seasons

70s Fan made the argument, I think it was last thread, that Wilt was criticized for emptier stats in the regular season, but that he modified his play in the playoffs, resulting in lower boxscores but, in his opinion, better playoff results than expected. So, in light of that, I figured we should treat regular season and playoffs as separately.

Obviously there were no +/- stats in Wilt's day, and he hardly ever sat so they wouldn't have been easy to get stats anyway. However, due to trade and injury, WIlt did have a few extended absences on his given team to allow WOWY to have some data to work with. Shaq, on the other hand, missed significant numbers of games several times i his career, so he's got a WOWY footprint as well. Per ElGee's WOWY spreadsheet:

1965 Warriors: SRS w/ WIlt: -4.4; SRS improvement = +2.2 w/ Wilt (42 "missed" games)

1965 76ers: SRS w/ Wilt: 2.4; SRS improovement = +2.8 w/ Wilt (43 "missed" games)

(Note, ElGee's spreadsheet says, under sample controls, "Greer, Costello in (61)" before giving a WOWY score that was a pedestrian 2.0. I say that not to focus on the WOWY score, which I don't have the greatest handle on, but instead to point out that he did attempt to adjust for injured teammates).

1970 Lakers: SRS w/ Wilt: +3.9; SRS improvement = -0.3 w/ Wilt (he sat most of year)

1996 Magic: SRS w/ Shaq: +9.0; SRS improvement = +6.1 w/ Shaq (23 games missed)

1997 & 1998 Lakers: SRS w/ Shaq: +6.2, SRS improvement= +3.7 w/ Shaq (48 games missed)

2002 Lakers: SRS w/ Shaq: 8.9, SRS improvement +7.5 w/ Shaq (15 games missed)

Thoughts: Because of the 1965 trade in mid-season, we get to see how Wilt's presence/absence for half a season changed two different teams. This is the year that Wilt is said to have been having heart issues. However, he did play major minutes without much discernible difference in his boxscore stats. From this, Ive seen it concluded that regardless of tthe shape of his heart, the lack of apparent impact here suggests at the very least that his monster boxscore production didn't translate to much impact in that year. And that argument seems to have merit.

Ardee says that the 65 Sixers started 11 - 3 with Wilt, then injuries to other players derailed their momentum and thus may be the culprit for the only modest change in SRS that Philly experienced. So, no conclusion here, but just note it as a datapoint.

But in 1970, the Lakers also didn't experience much change in effectiveness with or without Wilt. This is now 3 different teams, three different sets of circumstances, 3 different calibers of team (weak, average and good) with Wilt having heavy extended absences for all three, without much correlation between his presence and very positive changes to his team's scoring margins.

Meanwhile, with Shaq it's the opposite. His absence made larger differences than Wilt in each case, and some of his measured impacts were significantly larger than anything we saw from Wilt. This matches well with the often-espoused argument that, for all of Wilt's boxscore dominance, Shaq just had a much bigger impact on the game.

Impact footprint analysis, playoffs

This is, clearly, a much more difficult thing to quantify for Wilt in the playoffs, because (again) there is no +/- data, and WOWY doesn't really apply for the playoffs. I thought I might start by looking at the results of Wilt's playoff teams, vs expectation. If his approach shifted to a bigger impact in the playoffs than in the regular season, I hoped I might find something there.

I can't say that I did. 1965 was actually a good year for Wilt, in this respect, because his 76ers in the playoffs did beat up on Oscar's Royals, despite those Royals having 8 more wins and an SRS more than 2 points higher. They then went on to lose a nailbiter to Russell's Celtics in 7 games, despite the Celtics having 22 more wins and an SRS almost 8 points higher. I could definitely see using this as a support of the notion that Wilt improved the 76ers more than the 2 or so SRS points suggested by ElGee's WOWY calculation.

But outside of 1965, I couldn't find much else in the way of overachieving in the postseason for Wilt's teams. He did win two titles, which is outstanding, but there wasn't a noticable uptick in the quality of those teams from the regular season that could be traced to Wilt, that I could tell. Outside of those three instances, probably the most impressive part of Wilt's postseason resume is that he often led teams that made the dynasty Celtics work in the playoffs...but the matchups weren't taking place because Wilt's teams overachieved in their match-ups with other opponents, and the Celtics matchups (though close) almost always ended in a loss. Plus, in three seasons, Wilt's team had better regular season records than the Celtics (in 1968 and 69, significantly so) and they still lost.

All told, I could be convinced that playoff Wilt was either better or worse than regular season Wilt, based on this level of analysis. Considering that regular season WIlt seemingly had clearly less impact than regular season Shaq, he needed a solid win here to change my view. Instead...

While Wilt's playoff impact is ambiguous, Shaq's is not. Especially in his LA peak, he was utterly devastating in the playoffs. Between 2000 and 2004, Shaq led his team in playoffs on/off +/- in 2000 (+32.4, 2nd on team +0.3), 2002 (+22.9, 2nd +8.4) and 2004 (+25.3, 2nd + 13.6). His playoffs on/off from 2000 - 2004 was around +20. These are HUGE numbers, the kind that have proven extremely rare in the years we have that data for (since 1997). Duncan, LeBron and Garnett are the only other players in the 2000s with multi-year playoff runs of extended length that I've seen with on/off +/- scores over 20. If you extend it to the last few years of last millenium, it's likely Jordan was close from 1997 and 1998, and I think David Robinson achieved that from 1999 - 2001. But it's very rare, and only the best-of-the-best of the last 20+ years have breathed that air.

Now, you might very fairly point out that we don't have that data for Wilt, making it hard to directly compare. And you'd be right. BUT. The data that we DO have for Wilt indicates that he wasn't having anywhere near Shaq's impact in the regular season, and there's nothing about his playoffs results that suggest that he suddenly jumped up to all-time impact levels there compared to what he was doing in the regular season.

Bottom line

Wilt accomplished some amazing things. His iron man status, both with health and minutes played, is a big advantage over Shaq, who was notorious for his weight and his attitude towards rehab and missed games. Wilt could also do a lot more things than Shaq could on the court, and neither were known as great leaders. And Wilt's boxscore achievements are noteworthy. But with that said, from what I can tell, it certainly looks like Shaq was having a SIGNIFICANTLY larger positive impact on his team's ability to win games than Wilt was. And that, to me, is the defining difference in this comp. I'm interested to see what rebuttals, if any, this post receives. But at the moment, I've got Shaq over Wilt and it's not a terribly tough decision.

#historical #analytics #Wilt Chamberlain #Shaquille O'Neal #RealGM Top 100 #WOWY #on/off +/-

0 notes

gymviralscom · 8 years ago

Text

Women Hit the Gym Before Trump Gets In

Since the election of Donald Trump, martial-arts and defense-training classes are reporting unprecedented spikes in business from women, minorities, and LGBT clients. “>

If the election of Donald Trump has inspired you to take a self-defense class, youre far from alone. In fact people who are thinking exactly like you are already stretching the limits of New York Citys self-defense instruction facilities. In Americas cultural capital, fighting is the new crying.

Gabrielle Rubin has been practicing martial arts for 29 years. For the last nine, shes run a womens self-defense school in Manhattan called Female Awareness Self Defense. My class for this Monday was packed, she says. I usually have packed classes, but between Wednesday and Sunday is the most packed Ive seen in nine years.

Its unbelievable, she adds. Ive never seen anything like this.

After the long, quiet subway ride home from the place people expected to be when they witnessed Hillary Clinton win the presidency Nov. 8, after the days of tears and sleepless nights of speculation over just how difficult a Trump administration could make life for people who arent white and straight and men, a curious trend has emerged among some dejected liberal voters. They have decided to fight. Literally.

In New York and beyond, people concerned that in Donald Trumps America the government and law enforcement wont stand with marginalized groups are flocking to facilities that teach self-defense and fighting techniques. In many cases, demand for training for hand-to-hand combat vastly outpaces facilities ability to provide it.

New Yorker Lena Afridi, moved by Election Night, attempted to put together a self-defense workshop for people who thought learning self-defense might be a good idea, in light of recent events. The workshop she organized was met with so much demand, she says, that they had to change the workshop into a series. More than a thousand people RSVPd.

At the Center for Anti-Violence Education in Brooklyns Park Slope, Executive Director Tracy Hobson says what shes seen in the last week is the biggest spike in interest in classes since her martial arts-meets-advocacy organizations founding 42 years ago. We saw another uptick in interest after 9/11 We do think its more now than then. The size, the number of calls that were getting.

Hobson says her organization has fielded requests from upstate New York, from North Carolina, from Pennsylvania. In one case, a Muslim-American group requested self-defense training for 7,000 people. Hobson says 300 people RSVPd to a multiweek self-defense and violence de-escalation workshop the organizational periodically offers. Their facility can accommodate 25 at a time.

For the next one, Hobson says, were getting a bigger space.

Patrick Lockton, the director of the Krav Maga Institute in New York, is a bit mystified by the sudden rush at facilities in the city. Traditionally, just before Thanksgiving, its a quiet time of year, he says. Its been the busiest November, especially in the last week. Its been unbelievably busy.

KMI, with branches spread over New York plus an affiliate school in London, is the largest self-defense school in the U.S. He tells The Daily Beast that two days after the election, the number of attendees at an introductory session to learn Krav Maga, a fighting technique originally developed by the Israeli Defense Force, was double what one would normally expect around this time of year. One week later, the introductory session had swelled to triple its normal size. And the demographics of those introductory classes had changed, too. Normally, about 55-60 percent of entering students are men. Since the election, the gender balance has flipped. Lockton cant declare conclusively that current events caused the surge, but he cant think of anything else that might have done it.

Fighting techniques that rely more on aggression and less on defense are seeing an increase in interest as well. Usually each week I get about five or 10 inquiries, says Ren Dreifuss, head coach and head instructor at Radical MMA in New York. And just yesterday, I got 15.

Its huge, he adds. Huge.

Many martial-arts and self-defense schools contacted by The Daily Beast say that women, Muslim Americans, and LGBTQ individuals account for an uncharacteristic portion of the latest barrage. This could be due to increased instances of hate crimes targeting specific groups that happen to typically align with the other side of the aisle than President-elect Trump and his supporters. The FBI recently released statistics that showed a 6 percent increase in hate crimes last year, mostly due to an escalation in incidents against Muslims. Its definitely the level ofI wouldnt say paranoia, but I would say cautiousness, says Dreifuss.

Radical MMA is in the planning stages of putting together a special seminar for members of groups that could be targeted by hate crimes in a cultural climate where the mainstream has deemed the attitude behind them more acceptable. In hate crimes, the patterns of attack can be very different [than non-hate crime attacks], says Dreifuss. If youre a member of the LGBTQ community, youre probably going to be approached by more than one person, its usually two on one or three on one. They triangulate you. They back you into some sort of corner and they bum rush you. They trap you first, they corner you first.

Get The Beast In Your Inbox!

Daily DigestStart and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast.

Cheat SheetA speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't).

By clicking "Subscribe," you agree to have read the TermsofUse and PrivacyPolicy

Thank You!

You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason

The number of Muslim-American, LGBTQ, and womens groups that has contacted Brooklyns Center for Anti-Violence Education has far surpassed the facilitys capabilities. Executive Director Tracy Hobson notes theres a desperation in some of their requests. They need self-defense training, and they need it now. The organization has called on per-diem employees to help address their increased needs, but those can only go so far.

In other parts of the country, the cause-effect relationship between President-elect Trumps #MAGA nation and a flocking to self-defense instruction is less cut and dry. For example, in Southfield, Michigan, a middle-class suburb of Detroit, more people than usual have filled classes at Dallo Martial Arts. But Nick Cavellino, who holds the title of Sihing (which loosely translated means big brother in the art) at the facility, says people arent heading his way because theyre worried Donald Trumps minions are going to personally victimize them. Some people are interested in self-defense because of all the riots and stuff, he says.

And in Chicago, Jeff Horvitzs Krav Academy Inc. has seen an increase in membership due to local crimeassaults, robberies, and sexual assaults in gentrified neighborhoods like Wicker Park. Im getting a lot more interesting calls from more women. Im getting more calls from people from India, which is unusual. Im getting calls from women who are joggers and women who work late at night, he says.

Panic over what a Donald Trump administration would actually do to already-marginalized groups isnt confined to New York City, where it seems the masses are unwittingly fashioning themselves into an army of hand-to-hand combat experts.

Amelia Dorn, director of IMPACT Personal Safety of Colorado in Denver, has also noticed a marked acceleration in people interested in enrolling in self-defense classes. Were getting this week as many as wed get in a month or two, she says.

Dorn believes that the elections outcome indicated to many of her students that they cant trust the government to look out for their needs. I think that there is the sense that while the judicial and legal system were less than helpful [to sexual-abuse survivors] a couple weeks ago, now it feels so permissive, it seems to excuse the behavior of misogynists These women feel now that trusting the people in power is not even a choice. Reporting it to the police is not even a choice. If something happens to them, they feel like half the world is going to think that theyre ridiculous and blame them.

For those concerned about Donald Trump, the real battle over the next four years will be fought in the Supreme Court confirmation process, in local and state governments, in Washington backrooms that would be filled with smoke 20 years ago but now are filled with the ghosts of bygone senators flatulence. And a real revolution, if it were to come to that, wouldnt be fought through grappling. So why engage in physical training in the wake of existential trauma?

Southfield, Michigans Nick Cavallino believes theres catharsis in the art of physical engagement. Chicagos Jeff Horvitz says Krav Maga teaches practitioners not to hesitate in responding to violence. Brooklyns Tracy Hobson believes that while self-defense cant defend anybody against the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, it can encourage people to remain engaged in society as human beings, to leave their houses, to be a part of a world that suddenly feels hostile.

I do think it helps people build their confidence right now, she says. We see this with survivors. Self-defense helps them get their confidence, helps them move in the world with their whole selves. And I think thats not to be underplayed.