#like maybe one of the most profound things in the wiring of our brains

[septembersghost]

teachrock. org/lesson/memory-hope-charlie-puths-see/#:~:text=Puth%20composed%20%E2%80%9CSee%20You%20Again,shortly%20after%20filming%20Furious%207.

"how we mourn with music" could be an entire course unto itself. "How does music help us remember people we are close to, or those we have lost?" and if i tear up over this at 2am? well! it's such a powerful thing how closely music is tied to memory.

[existentialbby]

Sometimes I like to think about the fact that in 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue but like, honestly, that is such a random historical fact that has for reason gained relevancy like it's common knowledge now that the vikings landed in the US before Christopher Columbus and also like uh maybe the literal native Americans hello????? Like just cause everyone in England was too busy fucking inventing new ways to kill eachother to realize like oh shit there's more land over here doesn't mean that the America's were some sort of huge discovery, like why the fuck do I even care that Christopher Columbus existed other than the atrocities he committed being bad. It's not even a particularly relevant history to the America's if you ask me like the colonies sure that's kinda relevant thats when Europeans started to immigrate but idk I think I would have just liked a section that taught native american history. Like the most I ever got was the Thanksgiving speech and even that shit hole lesson was conceived by an ass hat who had no idea what was going on or trying to needlessly dumb it down for me. Very frustrating. I think that sometimes we spend a lot of time trying to dumb things down for kids, and lord believe me I know that some kids out there do totally need it to be dumbed down, but like, nah man immerse them kids in a cultures and educated enviornment so they can grow up and recognize parallels between the lives of people past and their own experiences. There are so many modern examples of happenings in the world that we can look back to history and say "wait, haven't we done this before?" Maybe that's the nature of humanity, to be in an infinite loop of constant fucking up and repeating out mistakes, but I'd really like to believe that we're more than that, that we can truly learn from our past and our mistakes if only we open our hearts to the possibilities. Sometimes, it seems like it's surely too big an ask to be even remotely possible, but such is our burden, the burden to try against that which is impossible. Every day we wake up and face the horrors of our reality, the mundanity of life, and though it may be a struggle, ultimately we do find ourselves doing our little tasks and serving the capitalism gods above us. We do this in spite of our eminent ends. Maybe we don't always recognize that, we choose to not constantly think about how any day can be our last, but it is a fact that we celebrate in many ways. With each passing year we celebrate birthdays, both for the monumenntous occasion of our entering into this cruel and beautiful world, and for a grim but subtle reminder that our time here is but a trial. And sadly, no one knows when it's going to end.

Maybe that's what makes our little lives precious, of course there's all the rest of being a person and Yada Yada Yada, but I find that there is something uniquely human in our determination to face everyday despite the literal hard wall of the inevitable. Often, instead of feeling down, though I have down days too, I feel inspired to create, to pour my heart out into these posts or to write a hilariously bad piece of poetry. That too is a burden in of itself, a constant battle of wanting to outplay my own past experiences, to one up myself in an infinitely scaling tower of incredible mind numbing expository greatness, or to somehow eventually create something so profound that it doesn't just touch your heart, it shatters it. I think it's hard to convey emotion through any medium, how is it possible that great artists can use the forms of music or paint or word to twist us up? How can I surpass their ability to give you an emotional and mental experience like no other? How can I wire to you, directly, the feelings that I have? I want to blow your mind. I really do. But it's hard to constantly reach that level when sometimes all your brains wants to do is be like hehe hehe froggy. So I don't know, there's a lot of things I don't know. Like

The primordial soup right

DNA was just forming

How did that happen? Obviously there's theories but like imagine being there in person to see it. It would probably look like nothing but still, that could be cool. Isn't it scary to think about how we're all nothing but constantly running chemical reactions? Everything including us could be reduced to simple cause and effect. Like, you say bazinga, cause I asked you to and the effect I'd that it would cool I think

B*zinga (derogatory)

[killian-whump]

I am so drawn into your insights around asexuality and whump and would be curious to know your current state of mind in both these camps - maybe in the style of a sort of whump manifesto, if I may be so bold. I find it so relatable when you touch on these topics together.

Hi Nonny! I am SO sorry it’s taken me forever and a half to reply to this. I was busy when you sent it, and wanted to wait until I had the time to devote to a good answer… but then as it got later and later, I felt worse and worse about not responding yet and just sort of… avoided it entirely. Sorry!!!

But this is Asexual Awareness Week, so I’m doing it now!

I’m going to start out by saying that I absolutely do not think it’s a mere coincidence that so many whumpers consider themselves asexual. In the world at large, asexuals are a small minority of the population, but in the whump community, they’re practically the majority. That is fascinating.

Now, when I was struggling to understand my own interests in whump, I came to the realization that how most people describe the sensations of sexual attraction (a tightness in the abdomen, a zing in the belly, warmth spreading through them, tingling sensations, moisture in the nether regions, mental preoccupation) is exactly how I feel when I “enjoy” whump. Mind you, seeing whump doesn’t make me want to have sex - but the physical sensations appear to be the same as those felt by other folks when they are actively wanting to have sex.

With that in mind, I came to my own conclusion that somehow my brain was wired differently and was mixing the two things up. I also started considering whump to be, for me, a sexual thing. I can more easily relate to the world at large (a place that’s essentially obsessed with sex) by correlating others’ sexual feelings with my own whumpy feelings. In other words, when I’m at a bar and a friend tells me she’s horny and needs a man to take home, I envision how I feel when I’m in one of my whump moods and I just need whump RIGHT THAT MINUTE and every minute thereafter until the mood passes. “Oh God, girl,” I say. “I feel you. Go get you some.” Because I actually get how she’s feeling, even if my feelings are centered on something entirely different. In general, it also helps me relate to the world around me and all of the advertising and innuendos and constant bombardment of sex everywhere you look. I mean, if they started advertising perfume with giant billboards of tied up whumpees, I WOULD NOT EVER COMPLAIN ABOUT THAT.

So when I joined the Whump Community here on Tumblr, I made a rather premature manifesto of sorts where I urged my fellow whumpers to really dig deep and consider that their feelings may actually be sexual in nature, even if they don’t think they are. For me, coming to the realization that my brain’s wiring was confusing the two concepts provided a LOT of clarity that I was hoping to help others also gain with my insights. In fact, I was so deeply entrenched in pressing the whump/sex connection that I didn’t even think to mention that, while I view my love of whump as sexual in nature - I identify as asexual, because I lack any desire to actually do the deed itself. As it stands, that post of mine does a major disservice to many asexual whumpers (myself included), because it doesn’t account for the lack of sex that is inherent in the whump/sex connection.

Simply put, while it makes me feel more “normal” and able to relate with a sex-obsessed world by correlating whump and sex… there are many among us who identify primarily as asexual and have no interest in having any sexual feelings or fitting in with the sexual world at all. And my original post didn’t account for that. I was too busy sharing my personal revelation of, “You might be sexual after all!” to realize that some folks don’t want to be sexual and don’t want to view their love of whump through that lens.

And that’s perfectly okay, because while the two things are, I feel, intrinsically entwined, they’re also completely and utterly different. There are many asexuals who aren’t whumpers, and many whumpers who aren’t asexual. Where one chooses to place themselves on the spectrum and how they choose to view their orientation and their identity is entirely up to them. And while I do feel that whump and sex are intrinsically connected by their undeniably similar sets of typical physical sensations, that connection can easily be viewed as either a sex/whump one or a nonsex/whump one. In other words, the whump connection is there for many of us, I believe, because the sexual connection isn’t there. Whether one chooses to view it as their unique form of sexual attraction or to see it as a byproduct of a profound lack of such attraction is really up to them to decide.

As for why our minds latch onto whump in the absence of sexual desire… I believe it comes down to intimacy. Whump provides our minds with a vehicle for our very human needs for emotional and physical intimacy. Sex satisfies these drives for sexual beings, but for those who don’t feel any interest in that particular act, we may still desire the intimacy and intense emotion that comes along with it. Whump allows us to experience those things without the physical act of sex.

This also accounts for the differences in preferred viewpoints found throughout the whump community. Some of us relate to the whumper. Some relate to the whumpee. Some relate to the caretaker. Some of us relate to all three in equal turns. I feel that our viewpoint preferences tell us a lot about the kind of intimacy we’re lacking or needing in our lives. Those who prefer the “comfort” part of the H/C dynamic and relate to either the caretaker or the whumpee in those scenes are likely craving love, affection, and some tender loving care - regardless of whether they’re relating to giving or receiving it.

But what of the hurt portion? Most of us enjoy that, too - and that tends to be where a lot of us feel the most guilt and concern over why we enjoy it. However, I think for many of us, it’s simply a matter of driving a scene or a relationship to the point where the “comfort” can occur. It’s less of a primary drive… and more like the foreplay in an intricate emotional dance. Many of us even refer to it as a “build-up” of sorts, and we confess to feeling profoundly unsatisfied when the aftercare doesn’t live up to the desires the scenario built up inside of us.

Again, the correlation between whump and sex shows up here. Foreplay is an essential part of sex for most couples. It enhances the mood and builds up their desire for the main course. So, too, does the hurt portion of the typical hurt/comfort scene. Just as every kiss and caress in a sexual scene increases the desire and makes the payoff more intense, every lash and cruel word in a whump scene increases the whumpee’s need for care and makes our payoff that much more intense.

True, some of us do just enjoy seeing someone in pain. There’s going to be sadists out there in the world, just as there are masochists - and there’s plenty of both in the whump community ;) And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being either one of those things, provided you are finding safe, sane and consensual ways to satisfy your needs. And enjoying fictional whump is absolutely that. However, for those who don’t see themselves as being either of those things… take heart, because your love of seeing people getting hurt may very well be based solely on that pain being necessary in order to make the emotional intimacy you crave possible. And like a Pavlovian dog hearing a bell, you’re going to respond to the things that signal to you that your needs are about to be met (unless, of course, they stiff you on the aftercare - which is precisely WHY that feels like such a betrayal whenever it happens).

So I guess that’s where my mind’s at currently on these two subjects. As always, I welcome any and all thoughts in response! I certainly don’t profess to have all of the answers, but I’m definitely excited by the questions themselves and the journey we’re all on to find the answers for ourselves, once and for all! :)

[hoyoungy]

genre: fluff, comedy | college au, artist au | painter!minghao x reader summary: you find beauty and meaning to the most boring place on earth when a romantic stranger helps you understand the artist behind one of the paintings on the wall. word count: 4102 a/n: finally, my first minghao fic! i thought this suited him well. hope you like it!

Art, in nearly any form, was never really your thing. The beauty behind a sculpture, a photo, and especially a painting never gave you that wow! factor that was engrained in everyone else’s DNA. It’s not that you were blind, or anything - in fact, at a first glance, you could understand why some people thought the most popular works of art were so aesthetically beautiful. Like, for example, paintings from the Renaissance era, or those giant paintings of Jesus, or those incredible marble sculptures of the Greek Gods. Those types of art, you had to admit, were impressive and totally easy to understand, considering there was a lot of history behind them that could easily be read up on.

But what really made you disinterested and zone out about art was when it was considered Modern or Contemporary. That was a whole other category of misunderstandings that you did not want to touch because it only gave you headaches. Yet here you were, in the Modern and Contemporary wing of the museum, studying up on your favorite subject just so you could get this gen-ed  over with and finally graduate.

Hour number three of rotting in the museum was approaching at a snail-like pace and you think that your brain is melting into a soup in your skull. It felt like your class’s tour guide explained every piece in the wing, yet for some reason, you only made it half-way through. You silently prayed to the museum gods that the guide wouldn’t actually go through the whole wing, but you knew regardless you’d be braindead by the end of the night.

“And here we have arguably one of Picasso’s most famous paintings, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.” Your tour guide led your group to a large square painting with five distorted figures that was placed in the dead-center of a wide wall. You recognized its odd, cubic style from your textbook. “This piece contributed to the early developments of what we know as cubism and modern art.”

“I only see boobs,” you muttered to your friend next to you.

She chuckled softly. “You kind of got it for once. They’re prostitutes.”

“But why did he make them look like that!? Aren’t women supposed to be beautiful in paintings? Like, muses and stuff? This is sexist.” She elbowed your side for you to shut up before your guide moved on to the equally-giant painting across from it.

“On this wall, we have our latest installment by a new artist, The Koi That Swam Up the Stream. Just look at the Pollock-like movement in the paint!”

At a first glance, you didn’t think the painting was that special, or at least any more special than any of the other paintings you saw today. If anything, you thought it was a bit simplistic - primitive, even - but the longer you looked at it, the longer you criticized it, and the more it pulled you in. It threatened you with a force so strong that you couldn’t dare look away. You hated to sound so cliche, but it was like the painting was speaking to you.

Before you even realized it, your eyes had been glued to the painting for fifteen minutes. The first couple of minutes, you noticed the colors - splashes of cool teals and turquoises of the stream and sky contrasting with the warmth of the orange koi. Then your brain processed the thickness of paint in the sea versus the airiness of the sky. And then you saw what the tour guide was talking about with the Pollock-like movement with the koi fish. You felt that you could see the koi swimming against the current of the stream.

“You like this painting, too?”

Startled, you whipped around to see a boy walking up to stand next to you. He was extremely handsome, so much that it startled you way more than when he snuck up behind you. His black mullet kind of threw you off guard at first, but it suited him well and added a mysterious vibe to his conspicuous handsomeness. You hadn’t taken your eyes off of him even when he stood still next to you. He was dressed like an artist, or at least like an art student, with clothes that were probably way too expensive for their minimalistic style. But hey, they suited him well, and he looked like he belonged here in the museum.

As you were blatantly studying his handsome face, you couldn’t help but notice how casually he looked at the painting. So casual it was as if he’d seen it every day of his life.

“U-Uh, yeah, I do like it,” you finally admitted, turning your attention back to the canvas. “It’s the first painting out of the hundreds in this wing that I understand. Barely, though…”

“What do you understand about it?”

“That there’s a fish in water.”

“That’s it?” he teased.

“It’s the most concrete piece in this damn wing! Not to be a downer, but I hate this museum, this section especially. I’m only here because I need to pick a modern artist to do a report on for my final so I can finally graduate and be free.”

He raised a curious brow to you. “I’ve never heard someone say they hated the museum. Why do you hate it here?”

You weren’t sure why you were answering invasive questions from a stranger, but there was something about him that was comforting and made you want to spill your secrets to him. “Ok, hate is a strong word. I don’t not like art, you know, I just… don’t understand it. My classmates and probably every other human in the world could come to this wing, look at any of these paintings, and understand the artist’s intentions in minutes. But for some reason, I can’t! Like the wires in the section of my brain that deals with the arts and culture just don’t connect.”

“It’s not the end of the world if you don’t like art,” he reassured. “A lot of people don’t.”

“It is for me when my potential to graduate relies on it.”

“At least you have a legitimate reason to come here. You have no idea how many people walk around thinking they understand every piece in this museum so that they seem profound and cultured.”

“Is that not you?” you teased back.

“No ~ I work here. Well, more like I intern here.”

“I was going to say, you seem kind of young to be working at this cemetery.”

“Well, you seem kind of old to be getting lost and separated from the rest of your class.”

“Oh, shit, you’re right!” While jogging towards the exit, you frantically dialed your friend’s number on your cell and shot a quick goodbye wave to your new friend. “Have a nice night, hipster!”

“Hey-!” Minghao began, although you were already running out the wing before he could finish. “I’m not a hipster…”

Immediately after your last class the next day, you found yourself sitting on the left side of the bench in the middle of the room sandwiched between the koi fish painting and Picasso’s painting. What an odd placement to have both of these paintings. Even an uncultured person like yourself knew that these two had absolutely nothing in common and the placement just seemed weird to you. Maybe the museum ran out of wall space.

“I’m not a hipster.”

Your new friend, the walking handsome exhibit, joined you on the right side of the bench pouting slightly. It was the cutest thing, but you thought maybe it was too early to be throwing out compliments to someone you just met. You noticed that his wardrobe was a little wackier than yesterday’s. His outfit was much more colorful and pattern-centric today, like he was wearing a piece right off of the wall.

“Your short-sleeve button-up shirt and glasses scream hipster,” you snorted. “You work this early until the museum closes?”

“As an intern, I work long hours with little-to-no pay.”

“I guess I’ll be seeing you often.”

“Oh, yeah? Did you pick an artist for your project?”

You gestured to the koi fish painting and Minghao hoped you missed the smug grin that was growing on his lips. He couldn’t believe you chose the piece! Now, it was his turn for him to notice the way you looked at the painting. Just by your rapid eye movements from scanning the canvas, he could tell you were someone who was very detailed-oriented, which probably contributed to your lack of understanding of the arts. You looked like you were searching for a single, definite answer within the piece, but that’s not how art worked, and he wanted to be the one who helped you understand that.

“Why this one?” he asked.

A small chuckle escaped your lips. “I don’t want to sound cheesy, but it kind of just spoke to me, you know?”

“Really? What did it say?”

“Is it weird that I don’t have a single clue? It must be speaking another language, huh?” you joked. “There’s something about it that makes me want to come to this hell-hole everyday and just live in the moment with this painting, you know? I’ve been sitting here for thirty minutes trying to figure out what it is, but nothing’s coming to me. Jeez, I don’t even know who the artist is!” Immediately, you shot up from the bench and squinted closely at the information plaque and the signature in the corner. “8. That’s it? That’s their name? A number!?”

“Maybe it’s a pseudonym? It’s hard to say, not many artists use one.”

“How avant-garde...” you muttered bitterly. “How am I supposed to do a report on an artist with a number as their name!?”

“You could always choose another artist.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Are you always this stubborn?”

“Hey, don’t act like you know me,” you nudged. “You don’t even know my name.”

“I don’t have to.”

“Ok, hotshot hipster,” you challenged, turning your body to face the now-nervous boy. “From being around me for a grand total of thirty minutes, tell me one thing you know about me.”

“Where do I start?” He joked. His confidence made the tables turn and now you were the nervous one. “One obvious fact is that you’re someone who notices and analyzes every little detail just because you can.”

“What!? There’s no way you could have known that.”

“But am I wrong?”

“… No, but that’s not the point! How did you know?”

“When you told me that you didn’t understand art, I was a confused, because no one ever truly understands art, you know? That’s the whole point. But just now, when I saw you looking at the painting, I realized what you meant by that. You’re very detail-oriented. You like concrete and to-the-book answers and ideas, don’t you? And that’s why modern art is so confusing for you, because everything is open for interpretation, and you don’t like it one bit.”

“Are you a therapist? Like, is this art thing your side-job? Or is this like a social experiment? Am I being punk’d?”

“No, no!” His boisterous laugh echoed through the wing and sounded so charming and boyish to your blushing ears. “I’m just very good at analyzing people and art. That’s how I got hired, so I could help explain the art to visitors like you.”

“Does this mean you’ll help me with my project?”

“If you want me to.”

“Please do. I’m begging you, I’m guaranteed to fail if you don’t.”

“I’m sure that’s not true, but I’ll be more than happy to do so under one condition.”

“I knew there was a catch… What is it?”

“Tell me your name.”

He didn’t ask for it. No, he demanded it.

“_____,” you smiled.

“_____,” he repeated. You liked the sound of your name from his lips. “I’m Minghao.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Minghao.”

“The pleasure’s all mine.”

“There’s nothing I can find about the artist!”

The following day, you met Minghao at your usual meet-up spot on the bench sandwiched between the two paintings. He was the first to arrive this time, eager to hear what you had found after he assigned you to research 8 online.

A playful smile stretched across his lips upon seeing your distressed expression. Of course you hadn’t found anything. “You didn’t find anything at all?”

“Other than the fact that he’s young and a local artist, there isn’t much else to this 8 guy. Nothing about his childhood, his come-up, his other works or periods of art, like literally zilch!”

“Give up yet?” he challenged. It was as if Minghao was expecting you to give up and change your artist for your project, which only made you feel more determined to find out who 8 was and why Minghao was challenging you.

“No, I refuse to give up. I need to do this painting. I’ll just focus on this piece, I guess. I can write ten pages about this… right…?”

“If you say you can, then I believe you.”

“But where do I go from here? What do I even talk about?”

With the same playful smile, Minghao ushered you to get up and follow him to look closely at the painting. He stood still and stared at the painting in silence for several minutes while your focus kept switching from the painting to Minghao, waiting for him to guide you with your paper.

“What do you see?” he asked you.

By then, your focus had been on Minghao’s handsome features once again, so you quickly looked back at the canvas embarrassingly. “U-Uh a fish in water.”

“What kind of fish? What body of water?”

“I mean, it’s titled The Koi That Swam Up the Stream, so an orange koi fish and a stream?”

“Do you know anything about either?”

“Have you heard of the urban legend? When a koi fish swims up a waterfall, the Gods praise his hard work and dedication by transforming it into a dragon. It probably one of my favorites. Do you think that was inspiration for this painting? I mean, it is swimming up, right?”

Minghao simply shrugged. “It could be, it couldn’t be. What if it’s swimming to the sky, and not up a stream?”

“See, that’s just silly... This is why I hate art.”

His soft and charming laugh rang through your ears once more and you think to yourself that a laugh like his should be part of an exhibit at the museum.

“What can you tell me about the mood of this piece?” he asked you.

“The mood? There’s a mood? I don’t know what a fish is supposed to feel!”

Another laugh erupted, but it was louder and made your face blush from how much it affected you. “I mean can you tell how the artist was feeling when they painted this?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know that?”

With a teasing, dangerous glint in his eyes, he held out his hand for you to take. “Will you follow me?”

Your logical conscience is telling you no, you should definitely not take the hand of this mysterious and edgy boy and follow him off to God-knows where in this hell-hole of a museum because what if he murders you and makes you into the grand piece of this museum - like an episode straight out of Hannibal. But were you going to follow him anyways? Your dumbass boy-crazy love-struck conscience is telling you hell yeah, you’ll follow this boy to anywhere he’d take you.

With a warm hand, he guided you to the opposite side of the wing inside an empty classroom filled with easels and other art tools.

“What are we doing in a classroom?” you asked.

Minghao didn’t answer as he set up one of the easels in the center of the room with a large, empty canvas staring at you and waiting for you to fill its void. He hands you a large brush with some black paint.

“Show me how you would paint if you were happy.”

“With black? Can I get some yellow, or something?”

“I chose black so you could focus on brush strokes instead of the color.”

“Uh, ok. I failed painting in first grade, just so you know.”

“Just do your best, I won’t fail you ~” he teased.

You take the brush and quickly run it across the canvas in a wave with tall peaks.

“Hey, not so bad,” Minghao praised. “That’s exactly what I would have done.”

“Yeah, you know, I take Art History 101,” you bragged sarcastically. “Art just comes to me.”

“Very funny. How about if you’re sad?”

You painted a slow, straight line at the bottom of the canvas.

“And what about angry?”

You chucked the brush as hard as you could at the canvas, leaving a big, solid splatter in the center of the canvas.

A shocked Minghao cleared his throat. “I- Well, that’s one way to paint…”

“I tend to throw things when I’m angry…”

“I’ll be sure to remember that. Oh, you have a little paint on your cheek.”

“Hm?”

Before you could protest, Minghao was already eye-level with you with a warm hand upon your cheek to wipe away the black paint. You could barely breathe as his thumb brushed up on the apples of your cheeks and all you could see was his gorgeous face trying to hide his grin.

God, he really was a work of art.

“I, uh,” he began, laughing in between his words. “I kind of made it worse.”

“What!?” you pouted. “I hope it’s washable…”

“It’s just acrylic paint, no need to worry.”

“I don’t know what that means, Professor Minghao.”

“It means it’ll wash off fine. Now take a look at your masterpiece.”

As you stared at the white and black canvas, you guess you could kind of see what Minghao meant with emotion in the movements of brushstrokes. Where you supposed to write ten pages on that?

“The artist must have felt some sort of frustration at some point,” you proposed. “Like a koi fish swimming up the same stream for centuries? I would be extremely frustrated. I would be an angry, splattered, orange koi fish.”

“See, you got the hang of understanding art really quickly! Gold star for you today.”

“You smeared paint on my face, I better get a gold star.”

“You still have a lot to learn.”

When you left the museum after helping Minghao clean up the classroom, the only thing you could think of the entire night was the way he looked at you. Since you were so detail-oriented, as he liked to say, you didn’t let his multiple longing glances slide past you tonight. It wasn’t in any way creepy or invasive. It felt very romantic, like you were his muse and he felt some sort of attachment to you ever since he saw that you were completely pulled in by his favorite painting.

There was this certain sparkle in his eyes whenever he looked at you and it made you wonder if Minghao was an artist, too.

You arrived about thirty minutes before the museum closed due to other priorities occupying your usual schedule and you were really upset that you wouldn’t be able to spend as much time with Minghao tonight. You wanted to spend as much time with him as possible, picking each other’s brains, before you finished your paper and wouldn’t dare go back to the museum, because you both knew you wouldn’t visit for recreation.

It was just a few days before your final paper was due, and you only had about a page written, double spaced. You should be feeling some sort of panic as you sat next to Minghao on the bench, but his company was enough to ease your stress. In just a couple of weeks, the two of you went from sitting at opposite sides of the bench to sitting right next to each other in the middle.

“Do you paint, Minghao?”

Startled by your question, he whipped his head to look at you with wide eyes. “What makes you think I do?”

“I don’t know, I figured since you work here and can decipher nearly every painting in this museum, it only sounds natural that you paint, too. Like, you easily empathize with the artist.”

“You’re smart,” he noted with a wink. “I paint sometimes. Rarely.”

“Why rarely?”

“I get frustrated easily when I paint. It’s also hard to find inspiration these days. I haven’t painted in a while, but who knows, I might pick it back up again.”

“I hope you find your hunger to paint again.”

“You’re really sweet. I hope so, too.”

“Will you show me a finished product one day?”

“It might take a while.”

“That’s ok, I’ll wait.”

There was a comfortable silence between the two of you as you sat together. You continued to analyze the painting and Minghao continued to admire you as he normally would. You weren’t stupid - you knew he would often steal glances at you. The first few days of meeting up at this very bench, you tried so hard to ignore the burning sensation that his gaze bore into you, but today, his gaze was too hot to ignore.

“Why do you look at me like that?” you asked softly, too embarrassed to look at him.

Minghao didn’t look slightly phased that he was caught. “I like the way you look at the painting.”

“How do I look?”

“Enamored.”

A line of dark blush formed on your cheeks from the romantic word. “Are you enamored with me, Minghao?” you teased, although you both knew your true intentions behind the teasing.

“And what if I am?” he challenged.

“Are you enamored with me or the way that I look at the painting?”

“Both.”

“Why?”

“You look at this mediocre painting with a light in your eyes that I’ve never seen in anyone else before. How can I not be so attracted to you when you look like that?” He turned his head away from you again to look at the floor. “You’re a masterpiece by yourself.”

The little gears in your head began to click into place.

You pointed an accusing finger to the work of art sitting next to you. “You painted the koi fish, didn’t you?”

A shy smile spread across his soft lips. “You figured it out.”

“I knew something was fishy when you kept asking if I was still going to use it for my paper! You were seeing if I still liked the piece!” You hit him playfully. “I can’t believe you’re 8! Why didn’t you tell me!?”

“I was afraid. I didn’t want you to think any less of the painting if you knew it was me.”

“Minghao, you know how in love I am with this painting.”

“Exactly, but I knew it would have changed either way if you knew it was me. I wanted you to keep that raw love for the painting.”

“But I love it even more now.” When your eyes sparkled looking at him the way they did when you looked at the painting, he adored you even more, too. “I still want to do my paper on you.”

“Really…?”

“Please? I feel like I could write fifty pages about you.”

How could he say no to you? “On one condition.”

“Anything.”

“Kiss me.”

His lips were as soft as the looked when you kissed them. Minghao was romantic in all aspects as a person and kissing was no exception. Both hands snaked their way to hold your face in place as he kissed you slowly and sweetly. Kissing an artist was almost everything you imagined it to be - you were left starving for more.

“I guess you could write your paper about me,” he teased as he tucked your loose hairs behind your ears.

“You owe me! I could have been done with it by now if I knew earlier.”

“I do owe you. Let’s start right now.”

The two of you stayed overnight at the museum while you picked his brain for hours. Well, half of those hours were spent kissing and goofing off in the sculptures department, but you easily got in ten pages worth of the artist you fell in love with by the time your night with him ended. For the first time ever, you didn’t want to leave the museum. You felt like you could stay here for a while so long as Minghao was with you.

[4nime6-blog]

Cool Hip Anime!

Anime

Large sparkling eyes, brightly coloured frizzy hair, obscure nose and high facial expression reminds us connected with only one factor.

Anime

Can you do you know what the item is?

If your response is actually Anime, then STOP, to see an otaku's brain!

Cartoons (pronounced: "Ah-nee-may") will be a form of animation typically from Okazaki, japan. They have got their own style this means you will show that in peculiar and wonderful ways. Cartoons also has its very own sense associated with comedy along with has a unique thought processes. It can get actually strong and serious, as well as it could truly be silliest (like: "Lucky Star", "Kill Me Baby") in addition to craziest (like: "Death Note", "Gintama") thing a person have ever before seen. Many Anime demonstrates are centered on popular mangas (Japanese Comics), just putting any not much more life into these people. Cartoons often covers far more serious issues than normal cartoons. In the united states, cartoons tend to be considered a form regarding enjoyment meant for youngsters. In Okazaki , japan, people involving all ages (no, not necessarily newborn babies! ) see anime. Most shows and flicks are centred for youngsters, teenager or young older people, but you can also get many cartoons that are made with regard to older crowd even business people and housewives!

The phrase "Anime" is the close pronunciation connected with "animation" within Japanese, exactly where this expression references just about all animation. Outside the house Japan, cartoons is applied to refer specifically toon from Japan or Western disseminated animation style usually characterized by colourful visuals, attractive characters and fantastical designs. Japanese animation commenced inside 20th century. Katsudo Shashin is claimed for you to be the first Japan animation. The 1923 Fantastic Kanto earthquake triggered wide-spread destruction including demolition associated with earliest Anime Companies as well as anime works; departing Kouchi's Namakura Gatana because the most well-known surviving animation. The 1st cartoons television series was Otogi Manga Calendar aired by 1961 to 1964.

This introduction to anime ended up being in category four while I watched "City Hunter" in a T. Sixth v. channel, Animax. Though I could see anime (as a make a difference of fact the particular multiple of anime is usually anime) like "Doraemon", "Shinchan", "Avatar-The last airbender", "Summer Days and nights with Coo", "AstroBoy", "Dragon Ball-Z", "Naruto" in the past just before yet I did definitely not recognize the profound perception regarding anime as this was dubbed throughout Hindi (rather I would point out "contaminated" instead of "dubbed" by means of old, ridiculous man noises in Hindi who also would break unnecessary, slap-stick jokes deviating viewers through the plot and also terrain you in a hotch-potch of indianised anime). My very own sister ( three yrs young than me even though I actually refuse to confess she is older when compared with me) took weird curiosity in Japanese anime similar to " Tears to Tiara" and "Stigma of typically the Wind" aired in Animax: that we thought strange from that time while the "patriotic inertia" will stop me from receiving something but Indian products. I got first repelled by often the proven fact that all the words casts have been in Japoneses and to understand history I had to consider difficulty of reading the actual Subtitles in english and had to help correlate the particular speech using the video proven; regarding which great deal involving attention seemed to be required. That was impossible personally in order to do both those exhaustion tasks at the very same time, so I delivered to my old Capital t. V. channels: Cartoon Community, Nickolodeans, Hungama, Pogo, Come back and Jetix.

After some sort of very long hiatus, in type seven, My spouse and i again started out experimenting our skills with understanding anime which often converted out to be a new success, when I 1st delighted in anime including "Hayate the Combat Butler" along with "Fairy Tail". Also! This kind of sweet poison! Following a total hectic day time in school, expenses, floating around classes, art in addition to audio classes, and full various other heck lot of routines; I waited only to be able to settle-back and relax for you to watch these kinds of anime. From that time, nothing was of importance to me; not also my parents, close friends as well as teachers. In that online realms of pleasure My partner and i could equipment my failures and sufferings as effortlessly as I got obtained in successes. Nothing irritated me, except when We were required to attend phone telephone calls or to wide open entrance, if any guests will come when the anime indicates were ongoing. However, cartoons hardly did affect this studies as after seeing two hour long plan, I suffered from PARTS (Post Anime Depression Syndrome) that I suffered typically the sense of guilt of wasting moment that has been more intensified through my very own mother's rebuke (I wish to describe this circumstance as "Kata Ghaye nuun-er Chheta") and this also guilt might propel my family to review harder, concentrate and also perform for longer hours this also occurred as daily schedule in my opinion; so I can easily get the best of most connected with the students be that researching or swimming or even any different work.

Hence to all parents, I actually would like to ask for allowing your kids to help watch anime because it proved helpful out for me (maybe I use strange wirings within my human brain! ). Enjoying anime would help an individual to hone your fictional, vocabulary and analytical expertise. More importantly, it would certainly serve as a enormous source of entertainment, at the very least way beyond the little league of daily Indian soap.

Understanding the culture associated with origins is very crucial to realize the plan, be it Japanese cartoons, Korean language Aeni webtoons, China's Manhua Anime or Us sitcoms (which I endured after i was novice inside observing anime). If anyone have watched virtually any cartoons, you will probably discover that often the characters respond differently along with things throughout general (like properties, vehicles, eating etc. ) are usually bit different from everything you used to. Probably the actual most readily evident distinctions between Japanese computer animation in addition to others is the a muslim everywhere huge eyes (bigger in comparison with nose), brightly girl locks, some well-endowed character types as well as exaggerated emotional movement and also gestures are regular regarding anime. Being hand-drawn, cartoons is separated coming from actuality providing an best path intended for escapism directly into which followers can involve themselves having relative simplicity. The production of cartoons focusses less on the particular cartoon movement and considerably more on the realistic look involving settings like "The Yard of Words".

The particular beginning and credit sequences connected with most anime are combined with Japanese rock or take song which maybe related to the anime series, simply by popular bands. "Nanairo Namida" by Tomato n' Pinus radiata of anime "Beelzebub" along with "Just Awake" of cartoons "Hunter X Hunter" are a few of my favourite anime tunes, which you may try out.

Since there are several sorts of cartoons, one will need to classify these individuals with different genres, some associated with them are generally: Action, Audio, Mecha, Experience, Mystery, Bishounen, Yuri, Yaoi, Akuma, Seinen, Shoujo, Shounen, Kodomo, Piece of Existence and a lot of more. Whether you're the die-hard anime fan (like me generally labelled seeing that "otaku"), a casual watcher, the interested onlooker or perhaps commoner from non-anime website: cartoons genres shall supply you actually with some simple knowledge which help you in order to venture the cartoons planet with ease and joy.

I am going to be able to share some remarkable rates of anime which will etch my heart usually are:

• Motoko Kusanagi regarding "Ghost in the Shell a couple of: Innocence"

"We weep to get blood of a pet although not for the our blood of a species of fish. Endowed are those with any tone. "

• Shinchi Akiyama of "Liar Game"

"People SHOULD be doubted. Many people get me wrong this specific concept. Doubting people is simply a part of getting for you to know them. Just what quite a few people call "trust" is absolutely just giving up about wanting to understand others in addition to that extremely act is definitely far more serious than questioning. It is actually 'apathy'. "

• Hachiman Hikigaya of "My Teen Passionate Comedy SNAFU"

"If simple truth is cruel

Then

Lie needs to be kind

Then

Kindness need to be lie"

You can observe anime with T. /. by opting-in to Animax, Aniplus, AnimeCental, TV Tokyo or online on internet sites like animehaven. to help, kissanime, Funimation. com, Netflix, Crunchyroll. com, hulu, Vimeo and so forth.

ENJOY WATCHING CARTOONS!

[inhandnetworks-blog]

Br industrial IoT router  ain Regions Associated With the Successful Spread of Ideas Identified

www.inhandnetworks.com

Psychologists report for the first time that the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) brain regions are associated with the successful spread of ideas, often called ‘buzz.’

UCLA scientists have identified for the first time the brain regions associated with the successful spread of ideas.

How do ideas spread? What messages will go viral on social media, and can this be predicted?

UCLA psychologists have taken a significant step toward answering these questions, identifying for the first time the brain regions associated with the successful spread of ideas, often called “buzz.”

The research has a broad range of implications, the study authors say, and could lead to more effective public health campaigns, more persuasive advertisements and better ways for teachers to communicate with students.

“Our study suggests that people are regularly attuned to how the things they’re seeing will be useful and interesting, not just to themselves but to other people,” said the study’s senior author, Matthew Lieberman, a UCLA professor of psychology and of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences and author of the forthcoming book “Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect.” “We always seem to be on the lookout for who else will find this helpful, amusing or interesting, and our brain data are showing evidence of that. At the first encounter with information, people are already using the brain network involved in thinking about how this can be interesting to other people. We’re wired to want to share information with other people. I think that is a profound statement about the social nature of our minds.”

The study findings are published in the online edition of the journal Psychological Science, with print publication to follow later this summer.

“Befor Dual SIM M2M router e this study, we didn’t know what brain regions were associated with ideas that become contagious, and we didn’t know what regions were associated with being an effective communicator of ideas,” said lead author Emily Falk, who conducted the research as a UCLA doctoral student in Lieberman’s lab and is currently a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. “Now we have mapped the brain regions associated with ideas that are likely to be contagious and are associated with being a good ‘idea salesperson.’ In the future, we would like to be able to use these brain maps to forecast what ideas are likely to be successful and who is likely to be effective at spreading them.”

In the first part of the study, 19 UCLA students (average age 21), underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans at UCLA’s Ahmanson–Lovelace Brain Mapping Center as they saw and heard information about 24 potential television pilot ideas. Among the fictitious pilots — which were presented by a separate group of students — were a show about former beauty-queen mothers who want their daughters to follow in their footsteps; a Spanish soap opera about a young woman and her relationships; a reality show in which contestants travel to countries with harsh environments; a program about teenage vampires and werewolves; and a show about best friends and rivals in a crime family.

The students exposed to these TV pilot ideas were asked to envision themselves as television studio interns who would decide whether or not they would recommend each idea to their “producers.” These students made videotaped assessments of each pilot.

Another group of 79 UCLA undergraduates (average age 21) was asked to act as the “producers.” These students watched the interns’ videos assessments of the pilots and then made their own ratings about the pilot ideas based on those assessments.

Lieberman and Falk wanted to learn which brain regions were activated when the interns were first exposed to information they would later pass on to others.

“We’re constantly being exposed to information on Facebook, Twitter and so on,” said Lieberman. “Some of it we pass on, and a lot of it we don’t. Is there something that happens in the moment we first see it — maybe before we even realize we might pass it on — that is different for those things that we will pass on successfully versus those that we won’t?”

It turns ou cashless payment t, there is. The psychologists found that the interns who were especially good at persuading the producers showed significantly more activation in a brain region known as the temporoparietal junction, or TPJ, at the time they were first exposed to the pilot ideas they would later recommend. They had more activation in this region than the interns who were less persuasive and more activation than they themselves had when exposed to pilot ideas they didn’t like. The psychologists call this the “salesperson effect.”

“It was the only region in the brain that showed this effect,” Lieberman said. One might have thought brain regions associated with memory would show more activation, but that was not the case, he said.

“We wanted to explore what differentiates ideas that bomb from ideas that go viral,” Falk said. “We found that increased activity in the TPJ was associated with an increased ability to convince others to get on board with their favorite ideas. Nobody had looked before at which brain regions are associated with the successful spread of ideas. You might expect people to be most enthusiastic and opinionated about ideas that they themselves are excited about, but our research suggests that’s not the whole story. Thinking about what appeals to others may be even more important.”

The TPJ, located on the outer surface of the brain, is part of what is known as the brain’s “mentalizing network,” which is involved in thinking about what other people think and feel. The network also includes the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, located in the middle of the brain.

“When we read fiction or watch a movie, we’re entering the minds of the characters — that’s mentalizing,” Lieberman said. “As soon as you hear a good joke, you think, ‘Who can I tell this to and who can’t I tell?’ Making this judgment will activate these two brain regions. If we’re playing poker and I’m trying to figure out if you’re bluffing, that’s going to invoke this network. And when I see someone on Capitol Hill testifying and I’m thinking whether they are lying or telling the truth, that’s going to invoke these two brain regions.

“Good ideas turn on the mentalizing system,” he said. “They make us want to tell other people.”

The interns who showed more activity in their mentalizing system when they saw the pilots they intended to recommend were then more successful in convincing the producers to also recommend those pilots, the psychologists found.

“As I’m looking at an idea, I might be thinking about what other people are likely to value, and that might make me a better idea salesperson later,” Falk said.

By further studying the neural activity in these brain regions to see what information and ideas activate these regions more, psychologists potentially could predict which advertisements are most likely to spread and go viral and which will be most effective, Lieberman and Falk said.

Such knowledge could also benefit public health campaigns aimed at everything from reducing risky behaviors among teenagers to combating cancer, smoking and obesity.

“The explosion of new communication technologies, combined with novel analytic tools, promises to dramatically expand our understanding of how ideas spread,” Falk said. “We’re laying basic science foundations to addressimportant public health questions that are difficult to answer otherwise — about what makes campaigns successful and how we can improve their impact.”

As we may like particular radio DJs who play music we enjoy, the Internet has led us to act as “information DJs” who share things that we think will be of interest to people in our networks, Lieberman said.

“What is new about our study is the finding that the mentalizing network is involved when I read something and decide who else migh cashless vending  t be interested in it,” he said. “This is similar to what an advertiser has to do. It’s not enough to have a product that people should like.”

Co-authors of the study are Sylvia Morelli, a former graduate student in Lieberman’s lab who is now a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University; Locke Welbourn, a UCLA graduate student in Lieberman’s laboratory; and Karl Dambacher, a former UCLA undergraduate research assistant.

Publication: Emily B. Falk, et al., “Creating Buzz – The Neural Correlates of Effective Message Propagation,” Psychological Science, May 30, 2013; doi: 10.1177/0956797612474670

Image: UCLA Newsroom

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[radredrecluse]

Survival of the Richest

The wealthy are plotting to leave us behind

Douglas Rushkoff

Last year, I got invited to a super-deluxe private resort to deliver a keynote speech to what I assumed would be a hundred or so investment bankers. It was by far the largest fee I had ever been offered for a talk — about half my annual professor’s salary — all to deliver some insight on the subject of “the future of technology.”

I’ve never liked talking about the future. The Q&A sessions always end up more like parlor games, where I’m asked to opine on the latest technology buzzwords as if they were ticker symbols for potential investments: blockchain, 3D printing, CRISPR. The audiences are rarely interested in learning about these technologies or their potential impacts beyond the binary choice of whether or not to invest in them. But money talks, so I took the gig.

After I arrived, I was ushered into what I thought was the green room. But instead of being wired with a microphone or taken to a stage, I just sat there at a plain round table as my audience was brought to me: five super-wealthy guys — yes, all men — from the upper echelon of the hedge fund world. After a bit of small talk, I realized they had no interest in the information I had prepared about the future of technology. They had come with questions of their own.

They started out innocuously enough. Ethereum or bitcoin? Is quantum computing a real thing? Slowly but surely, however, they edged into their real topics of concern.

Which region will be less impacted by the coming climate crisis: New Zealand or Alaska? Is Google really building Ray Kurzweil a home for his brain, and will his consciousness live through the transition, or will it die and be reborn as a whole new one? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?”

The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr. Robot hack that takes everything down.

This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from the angry mobs. But how would they pay the guards once money was worthless? What would stop the guards from choosing their own leader? The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers — if that technology could be developed in time.

That’s when it hit me: At least as far as these gentlemen were concerned, this was a talk about the future of technology. Taking their cue from Elon Musk colonizing Mars, Peter Thiel reversing the aging process, or Sam Altman and Ray Kurzweil uploading their minds into supercomputers, they were preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether and insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape.

There’s nothing wrong with madly optimistic appraisals of how technology might benefit human society. But the current drive for a post-human utopia is something else. It’s less a vision for the wholesale migration of humanity to a new a state of being than a quest to transcend all that is human: the body, interdependence, compassion, vulnerability, and complexity. As technology philosophers have been pointing out for years, now, the transhumanist vision too easily reduces all of reality to data, concluding that “humans are nothing but information-processing objects.”

It’s a reduction of human evolution to a video game that someone wins by finding the escape hatch and then letting a few of his BFFs come along for the ride. Will it be Musk, Bezos, Thiel…Zuckerberg? These billionaires are the presumptive winners of the digital economy — the same survival-of-the-fittest business landscape that’s fueling most of this speculation to begin with.

Of course, it wasn’t always this way. There was a brief moment, in the early 1990s, when the digital future felt open-ended and up for our invention. Technology was becoming a playground for the counterculture, who saw in it the opportunity to create a more inclusive, distributed, and pro-human future. But established business interests only saw new potentials for the same old extraction, and too many technologists were seduced by unicorn IPOs. Digital futures became understood more like stock futures or cotton futures — something to predict and make bets on. So nearly every speech, article, study, documentary, or white paper was seen as relevant only insofar as it pointed to a ticker symbol. The future became less a thing we create through our present-day choices or hopes for humankind than a predestined scenario we bet on with our venture capital but arrive at passively.

This freed everyone from the moral implications of their activities. Technology development became less a story of collective flourishing than personal survival. Worse, as I learned, to call attention to any of this was to unintentionally cast oneself as an enemy of the market or an anti-technology curmudgeon.

So instead of considering the practical ethics of impoverishing and exploiting the many in the name of the few, most academics, journalists, and science-fiction writers instead considered much more abstract and fanciful conundrums: Is it fair for a stock trader to use smart drugs? Should children get implants for foreign languages? Do we want autonomous vehicles to prioritize the lives of pedestrians over those of its passengers? Should the first Mars colonies be run as democracies? Does changing my DNA undermine my identity? Should robots have rights?

Asking these sorts of questions, while philosophically entertaining, is a poor substitute for wrestling with the real moral quandaries associated with unbridled technological development in the name of corporate capitalism. Digital platforms have turned an already exploitative and extractive marketplace (think Walmart) into an even more dehumanizing successor (think Amazon). Most of us became aware of these downsides in the form of automated jobs, the gig economy, and the demise of local retail.

But the more devastating impacts of pedal-to-the-metal digital capitalism fall on the environment and global poor. The manufacture of some of our computers and smartphones still uses networks of slave labor. These practices are so deeply entrenched that a company called Fairphone, founded from the ground up to make and market ethical phones, learned it was impossible. (The company’s founder now sadly refers to their products as “fairer” phones.)

Meanwhile, the mining of rare earth metals and disposal of our highly digital technologies destroys human habitats, replacing them with toxic waste dumps, which are then picked over by peasant children and their families, who sell usable materials back to the manufacturers.

This “out of sight, out of mind” externalization of poverty and poison doesn’t go away just because we’ve covered our eyes with VR goggles and immersed ourselves in an alternate reality. If anything, the longer we ignore the social, economic, and environmental repercussions, the more of a problem they become. This, in turn, motivates even more withdrawal, more isolationism and apocalyptic fantasy — and more desperately concocted technologies and business plans. The cycle feeds itself.

The more committed we are to this view of the world, the more we come to see human beings as the problem and technology as the solution. The very essence of what it means to be human is treated less as a feature than bug. No matter their embedded biases, technologies are declared neutral. Any bad behaviors they induce in us are just a reflection of our own corrupted core. It’s as if some innate human savagery is to blame for our troubles. Just as the inefficiency of a local taxi market can be “solved” with an app that bankrupts human drivers, the vexing inconsistencies of the human psyche can be corrected with a digital or genetic upgrade.

Ultimately, according to the technosolutionist orthodoxy, the human future climaxes by uploading our consciousness to a computer or, perhaps better, accepting that technology itself is our evolutionary successor. Like members of a gnostic cult, we long to enter the next transcendent phase of our development, shedding our bodies and leaving them behind, along with our sins and troubles.

Our movies and television shows play out these fantasies for us. Zombie shows depict a post-apocalypse where people are no better than the undead — and seem to know it. Worse, these shows invite viewers to imagine the future as a zero-sum battle between the remaining humans, where one group’s survival is dependent on another one’s demise. Even Westworld — based on a science-fiction novel where robots run amok — ended its second season with the ultimate reveal: Human beings are simpler and more predictable than the artificial intelligences we create. The robots learn that each of us can be reduced to just a few lines of code, and that we’re incapable of making any willful choices. Heck, even the robots in that show want to escape the confines of their bodies and spend their rest of their lives in a computer simulation.

The mental gymnastics required for such a profound role reversal between humans and machines all depend on the underlying assumption that humans suck. Let’s either change them or get away from them, forever.

Thus, we get tech billionaires launching electric cars into space — as if this symbolizes something more than one billionaire’s capacity for corporate promotion. And if a few people do reach escape velocity and somehow survive in a bubble on Mars — despite our inability to maintain such a bubble even here on Earth in either of two multibillion-dollar Biosphere trials — the result will be less a continuation of the human diaspora than a lifeboat for the elite.

When the hedge funders asked me the best way to maintain authority over their security forces after “the event,” I suggested that their best bet would be to treat those people really well, right now. They should be engaging with their security staffs as if they were members of their own family. And the more they can expand this ethos of inclusivity to the rest of their business practices, supply chain management, sustainability efforts, and wealth distribution, the less chance there will be of an “event” in the first place. All this technological wizardry could be applied toward less romantic but entirely more collective interests right now.

They were amused by my optimism, but they didn’t really buy it. They were not interested in how to avoid a calamity; they’re convinced we are too far gone. For all their wealth and power, they don’t believe they can affect the future. They are simply accepting the darkest of all scenarios and then bringing whatever money and technology they can employ to insulate themselves — especially if they can’t get a seat on the rocket to Mars.

Luckily, those of us without the funding to consider disowning our own humanity have much better options available to us. We don’t have to use technology in such antisocial, atomizing ways. We can become the individual consumers and profiles that our devices and platforms want us to be, or we can remember that the truly evolved human doesn’t go it alone.

Being human is not about individual survival or escape. It’s a team sport. Whatever future humans have, it will be together.

[pivot2thrive]

Making Stuff Up

What makes humans different from other animals on this planet is our ability to make stuff up. That seems a basic enough observation.

We conjure up ideas, create visions for what could be, and try to make these ideas realities. Some ideas are more useful than others to be sure and many wither up and die as is evidenced by the myriad brilliant ideas I’ve had that have been forgotten by the next day (hence the valuable habit of writing things down I suppose…that or maybe they weren’t all that brilliant).

I’ve spent the last few days in Paris and in Barcelona and have witnessed many great architectural achievements. The reality is that these towers, monuments, cathedrals and buildings were first conjured up in someone’s mind. Then the vision became relational to persuade others (sometimes more forcefully than we’d find tasteful these days) to gather the resources and talent necessary to build these works. Then they were built with teams of people working to make the idea a reality.

And I get to walk by and enjoy the fruits of someone’s passion that ultimately came to fruition. Well, fruition at least for now, history has not always been kind toward providing a permanence to such things.

There is a passion, a relationality, an execution, and an impermanence that accompanies even the most successful indications of our ability to make stuff up.

Other stuff we’ve made up includes the notion that money has value. Well, it does and it doesn’t, right? It actually only has value if everyone pretty much agrees that it has value. But, when we all agree that it does, it makes transacting to get what we need much less complicated than bartering with everyone. There is utility in the belief that money has value.

And we make up stuff called hypotheses that we think create predictive models for how and why things work, like planetary motion, electron behavior, why things fall, what happens when a sperm meets an egg, etc. The better predictive models become labeled theories when the results are consistent. Of course, models are replaced by other models over time when the newer models prove to her more predictive and are more useful. But this stuff was all made up in our minds based on our observations first.

It seems that much of the power that comes from our ability to make stuff up comes from its utility, whether generating a feeling of awe, making life more efficient, or providing a better prediction tool for living (or a portion of it anyway).

Which brings me to faith…

Sometimes its hard not to think that God may very well be like the concept of money, a useful construct to help individuals and groups internalize the beliefs, thoughts, ideas and wiring (perhaps through a dramatic rewiring of the brain) that set them up for success. God can be the ultimate attachment figure, the loving parent or partner, to help a person internalize her worth and value to be successful in a variable and uncertain world, a bastion of resource to deal with negative emotions that aren’t as useful today as perhaps they were 100,000 years ago.

Unlike money, the notion of God remains valid at an individual level even if the group spurns the notion. Ask any martyr about this one. Yet, like money, it has a relational nature to it (though here it is to God, to others and to self rather than counter parties).

Is there really a God or are we just making stuff up? is really the question. It’s a profound question and one that anyone considering deeply his or her faith must struggle with.

But what if we have framed the question incorrectly. In that same way that the nature vs. nurture question is setup to confuse, most scientists will actually say that the question is flawed as it is both nature and nurture that work together. Nature sets the foundation and nurture provides the experience that creates the observed outcome. The observed outcome is both 100% nature and 100% nurture. Without nature, it would not occur. Without experience it would also not occur as nature would never have been agitated sufficiently to create the outcome. Reframing the question appropriately transcends the difficulty of the question.

Perhaps we should reframe the Is God Real? question to be…what if God is found in our individual and collective ability to make things up? What if what it means to be image bearers of God is exactly our ability to make things up and to do it relationally?

A prominent Catholic speaks of God being the power in the universe that helps me to be my best version of me with implications for you and us as well. To me this means that we keep learning and adapting to the thoughts, feelings, events, relationships, etc. that we have in life toward a target of being our best selves. That means when we find stuff that we’ve made up to be useful, we keep it, when its useless, we cast it out. The same goes for relationships or at least we learn to keep our distance from the one’s that hinder and move closer to those that help us to thrive.

Perhaps God is both 100% real and 100% made up. Real in that God is the foundation that allows us to make things up, even things about Him (or whichever pronoun you’d like to use). It’s what we make up about Him that needs to be useful.

[northamptoncouplestherapy]

As information concerning COVID-19 continues to come out erratically, it seems nobody is in full agreement on how to handle things. On a macro level, we see each US state implementing varying degrees of responsiveness and caution. On a micro level, our family units must make similar calls. It's challenging for any parent to know where to draw the line.

For those of us that are separated or divorced, this line can be especially fraught, with COVID-19 highlighting pre-existing tensions regarding how much or little parental control to exert in the lives of our children. We may butt heads regarding where it is safe to let them play or with whom it is okay for them to interact. Most importantly, how do we handle disagreements, especially when we feel we have little influence on our former partner? The stakes are high – the rules of the game not yet known. We will likely each think the other wrongheaded.

Here's the truth: while it may feel like you're suddenly negotiating the ultimate high stakes matter, the "how" of negotiating is something you can master. And it begins with you.

The Story I'm Making Up

Brene Brown, an expert on vulnerability and shame resilience, states, "If I could give men and women in relationship one hack, I would give them, 'the story I'm making up." The story I'm making up can be a game-changer. It's an invitation to reflect on our narrative and be open to the possibility that we may be missing something. That as flawed and vulnerable humans, we can't entirely see the whole picture. Sure, our ex did not communicate the details of how they're handling playdates, but maybe it's not intentional; perhaps they're not trying to provoke us. There is something inherently liberating about giving others the benefit of the doubt. It frees up air space for our psyche to focus less on what others should be doing and more on what we can do.

This perspective shift need not come at a cost. It's possible to give your ex the benefit of the doubt and to take a stand. For example, if you say, "you haven't gotten back to me about how we're going to handle playdates, and the story I'm making up is you won't collaborate with me," it will likely land better. Calling them a control freak and assuming worst intentions, on the other hand, pretty much guarantees a no-win situation.

Get Ready: Reg-YOU-late

Next, let's talk about physiology. Did you know that the first three minutes of a conversation predict the outcome? That if you go into a discussion firsts swinging and blood pressure high, there is a 96% chance the conversation will devolve into an argument or stalemate? That just as gridlock and conflict have the potential to spike your (and your ex’s) heart rate, collaboration and attunement have the potential to lower it?

To practice "the story I'm making up," you'll need to catch yourself when you start obsessing because it's likely in these moments your mind is looping. Neurologically we're wired to ruminate, and when we are at odds with former partners – and our relationships have a history of divorce, loss, hurt, or trauma – frankly, it's understandable. Our brains don't like uncertainty, and as a result, we're prone to spinning stories that can worsen an already stressful situation. Once you catch yourself, aim to get centered by taking some slow deep breaths. Doing this will help lower your heart rate, and in turn, improve your judgment while increasing the likelihood that you will communicate constructively. Mindfulness can be a fantastic tool for cultivating the ability to shift gears.

Ultimately, you are responsible for staying present and keeping on top of your emotions. In clinical terms, we call this self-regulating, and for many of us, this means we must discharge energy. Only you know whether your body and mind respond best to meditation, exercise, journaling, or punching a pillow. Before you engage, get it out – this will help you clear the deck for the next step, and is a route to staying steady.

Next: E-VALUE-ate

The field of psychology places a high emphasis on behavior and physiology, but what about values? Getting clear on core principles that we aspire to embody can have a profound impact on our actions. Are you a person who orients themself by faith, integrity, compassion, or generosity? Brené Brown offers a list of commonly-held values in her Dare-To-Lead™ free online resources, and it's worth the effort to identify the three core values you aim to lead with. Write them on a sticky, put them on your bathroom mirror. Ask yourself before you hit the "send" button if your email exemplifies the principles you hold most dearly.

Values are never "wrong," although they may be in opposition. You may know that your ex-partner values status, or patriotism, or a sense of self-determination. Meanwhile, your values might center around health, stability, or limiting risk. Understanding this can help you understand how you and your ex each arrive at your own beliefs around COVID-19.

If you can allow values to steer you, rather than a sense of right versus wrong, you'll likely increase the quality of your interactions with your ex, which will benefit your children during the crisis of COVID-19 and in the years to come.

In summary, the goal is to practice staying out of what John Gottman calls self-righteous indignation, keep your cool, and aspire to embody the qualities you value most. These behaviors are a recipe for success for all relationships, not just separated or divorced couples navigating co-parenting during COVID-19. They’re a bar to aim for while simultaneously permitting ourselves to have bad days. From a place of humility, grace, and self-compassion, much is possible, even during the toughest of times.

Like what you’ve read? Sign up to receive my musings filled with heart, concrete tools, and cutting edge resources via my blog: Loving Well.

[calorieworkouts]

Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead

Meet Joe Cross, an extremely fascinating guy! I'll tell you why after I go on this tangent ...

So recently the only tv I have actually been enjoying is documentaries on Netflix. I enjoyed this YouTube video clip that utilized Jelly Beans to illustrate exactly how little of our life we get entrusted once we have actually cared for all our responsibilities. It really obtained me thinking of how much time I waste viewing TELEVISION programs that are enjoyable but don't really add anything to my life.

With that claimed, after I watched his video clip I spent an additional 15 minutes checking out this guys YouTube network as well as he is funny! Discuss an instant stop working though ...

Anyhow, that evening something did strike a cable within me when I was checking out Netflix as well as I determined to see a docudrama concerning worldwide warming (which we must actually be fretted about). As well as the next evening I saw "Fat, Sick and Virtually Dead". It's the trip of this unhealthy man named Joe that tests himself to do absolutely nothing yet juicing fruits/veggies and not eating for 60 days in an initiative to eliminate his illness and his "spare tire". Aside from the reality that I do not actually think it juicing it was outstanding! Don't feel like you require to watch the video so as to get something out of this blog site. Its worth the watch yet I'll spoil it for you by saying what you currently understand. An individual juices, after that he slims down as well as gets healthier, and also with the procedure fulfills intriguing individuals and also brings them along for the flight. Here's the docudrama trailer web link if your interested

The only point I really did not really get about the juicing is when you juice, you completely remove the fiber out of foods. Yes, you'll still be left with the nutrients yet ... you'll additionally be entrusted the sugar. If you understand anything regarding fiber, then you'll know that we require fiber on an "all fluid diet regimen" to keep our blood sugar from resembling a roller coaster.

Aside from that one little information I discovered a 3 points particularly motivating:

The power of one conversation

The major character Joe is going across the country simply talking with individuals about food. He obtains in these unbelievably prone conversations with people about their weight and how dissatisfied they are. He speaks to a substantial spectrum of individuals ranging from the "that cares if I pass away at 50" person, that's angered by anything that endangers his existing way of living to people who desire help but don't have anything besides food that brings comfort right into their lives. I really think that all the discussions he had actually made a difference.

The power of fasting

All of us have a hard time a little bit with dependency. Maybe we aren't cranking back 8 cheeseburgers a day but all of us have something that has a grip on us. The meaning of dependency is not reserved for drug addicts and problem drinkers its for anybody who consistently does things they do not want to do.

The shear amount of restriction Joe went through triggered his mind to do a full rewiring. Think about the mind like strolling via a bushy forest. If you go through a forest and also choose at the end that you appreciated the walk then you sculpted a little path in that woodland. The following time you stroll via it the course with become a bit a lot more noticable. Let's claim you liked doing that stroll a lot that you intend to do it 5 times each day! It would not take wish for there to be a full on course. As soon as the course is there you can extremely quickly stroll down it

Whenever we experience joy we have Serotonin to thank for that, its our pleased natural chemical. This is why most antidepressants are Serotonin based. In our modern 'quick passed' world having things that boost our serotonin is a need for keeping equilibrium as well as not really feeling like we are shedding it. Guess what food triggers among the quickest spikes in Serotonin ... Sugar ... surprise shock ... No surprise why we are so at risk to sugar addiction.

Doing some kind of quick entirely changes our brains internal organizations. Its like mosting likely to a new woodland. This coincides principle of why addicts gain from a rehab setting. We have actually learned that huge changes can trick the brain, with any luck long enough to re-wire our relationships with something addictive. I can discuss just how to calculated mind disassociation for days so I better keep going!

The power of video journaling

They didn't make a huge factor of this yet they certainly had to make video clip journals since they were making a documentary however there was something so raw about the video journals. I have actually not eaten before and you just go the entire day kind of hating the globe (especially the very first few days) yet there is something profound in the pain you feel. It simply sought to me that the video clip journals created a truly amazing system for them to arrange through every little thing they were feeling.

With all that said! I double pet dog dare your too ...

Start a conversation about health and wellness. Joe began a conversation with this random man at a vehicle quit named Phil and also through one discussion Phil shed 200lbs! We understand we need aid in life with a great deal of points ... but also for some reason all of us attempt to be healthy by ourselves. We are produced partnership and area so stop attempting to 'white knuckle' your way right into being healthy it doesn't function ...

Try doing a Blended Quick (not a juice fast ...). I did one for 10 days not as well lengthy ago but why not try blending a number of fruit and also veggies for a few days as well as see what you find out. If your mosting likely to go for a lengthy( emergency room) haul kind of like Joe did then try maintaining a video clip journal (or just a routine journal). Any kind of way you do it, I promise you'll find out something concerning yourself

Joe as well as your friends in the Sandbox desire this to be a good experience for you so we always recommend that any kind of major modification in fitness or nourishment be kept track of by a well qualified personal trainer or various other practical medicine practitioner!

If you require assistance discovering one decline us a line here

[mothering-silence]

That Tuesday. I remember not quite sleeping that Monday night, I was on google during every feed. As she lay there close to my body, sensing a form of protection and secure bonding from breast feeding I felt I was doing all I could to make the start of her life better. I must have read about 100 forums, disability pages, how the structure of hearing loss is measured - you name it I became a pro of hearing loss and audiology over night! I was still fighting a lot of guilt, a lot of what ifs and struggled to see her father forgiving me. I sensed his sheer devastation and heart break just by the look in his eyes. The amount of times I apologised for the difficulty our daughter faced, and the amount of times he told me it wasn't my fault. I didn't take any comfort in his kind words. How could I? Our precious tiny girl faced a life of unknown to us, silence, dark and gloomy. The way I can describe, in my own words since losing my hearing is, can you describe a storm but in sheer silence. What do you picture, What can you see? - The world In front of you begins to turn dark - The hairs on your body start to stand on edge, it feels the cold and soon you'll start to shiver and feel wet from the downpour. - Clouds shadowing any life and happiness on the ground - You can no longer hear the deep groan of thunder, so everything stands still or there's a strong sense of anger from the storm of nature, where its winds are picking up and throwing anything in its way. Then you see the flashes of anger and almost frightening from lightening. This almost resembles my feelings to the unknown explanation of why I lost my hearing in my early teens. We was silent on our journey to the hospital. I'm not sure if we was anticipating the results, convincing ourselves it wouldn't be so bad, after all prior to this appointment her father was positive she could hear and she was interacting. I didn't hold or see the same hope he did. We was called into a room, and told to settle Alivia and rock her into a sleep, which i did. She had some sticky product applied on her forehead and behind her ears. Which was then followed by a pad and clips with wires which then attached to the test itself. The room is silent and the audiologist starts her investigation. Myself and Dean kept giving each other reassuring glances as I held my sleeping baby, I kept watching anxiously as the audiologist clicked her mouse and I immediately diverted my attention to Alivia's face, searching for a response to settle my nerves. Clicks or tones of varying intensities are presented via probes placed in the ear canal. Electrodes are attached to the mastoids, which is what the sticky pads and wires are used for. The sound in the ear canal passes to the cochlear which converts the sound waves into a nerve action potential which passes along the auditory nerve. Then the signal travels to the brainstem and on to the cortex where it is processed by the brain. This wave of activity is collected by the electrodes, amplified, and passed to a machine for processing. Presenting progressively quieter sounds enables a response threshold to be obtained. The test must have lasted for around a hour and half, until Alivia-Ellen started to become restless and unable to settle again. But I must admit I was glad for the audiologist to call it a day, she received half of the information she needed to give us a form of result, my body was aching from her c-section delivery just a week ago and having to hold her so still to not interfere with the test was a killer! But at the same time I didn't want anyone else to hold her, not even her own dad. Which could have been seen as selfish. I felt this was all my wrong doing, therefore I needed to protect her and show her that mummy was with her every step of the way. The audiologist confirmed what I already knew deep down, just unwilling to admit. Her left ear wasn't giving a good response to the test compared to her right ear. They both also gave inconclusive results among the test. But what she could collect, confirmed Alivia most definitely had mixed Sensorineural hearing loss and she was marked at moderate to severe. We was told in great detail what the next steps was, ensured we fully understood her type of loss and we was referred to a consultant also. She left the room to give us some time to allow it all to sink in, there was a lot to absorb and understand. Even with hearing loss myself, this was an entirely different journey and experience. Her father turned to me, his face looked like it was struggling to be held up. Threatening itself not to break its strong structure. His smile was weak and heartbreaking, eyes filled with 100 emotions threatening to flood and pour down his face. My stomach knotted and I tried to form a warming smile while reaching for his hand, as if to say everything will be fine. His strength defeated, he broke down in tears, "my poor baby girl". And took her from my arms and held her tightly. As if he was attempting to fix the pieces back together again. But unfortunately nothing was broken this time, nothing can be changed or fixed. This was a life completely different to what he would ever expect. We left that room, full of emotion. For what ever reason, I couldn't cry. I couldn't feel a thing. Maybe numb from emotions, or trying to remain strong for Dean and Alivia-Ellen or show him I was capable of dealing with it and what was to come. We had an amazing response from our families, each individual was reassuring to us. And their kind words couldn't have been more comforting. We didn't really know if we wanted to break the news to the world just yet, but I thought it would help us deal with the news and process it quicker if we confronted it. Which we did so, again on social media we got a lovely warming response. She was fitted with her hearing aids at 3 months old. But showed very little, if not hardly any response at all. Which was absolutely devastating as we saw so many clips on YouTube with babies smiling straight away after hearing it's mothers voice for the first time. But we tried hard not to let this be disappointing to us. She had this form of testing every month until she was 8 months old she then moved onto what is called a distraction test. Know as a VRA. This is a technique that can be used to determine frequency and ear specific hearing thresholds. The child is seated between two visual reinforcing reward boxes with a loud speaker on top of each one. To condition the child a sound is played from one of the boxes on the left or right, as the child turns to the sound they are presented with a visual reward in the form of an illuminated puppet in the box. After several times your baby will now be magically trained to turn to one of the boxes when just a sound is played. Although Alivia did cheat a few times and would turn her head just to see if she could see the bunny or a bus light up. A series of tones are then played at reducing intensity to obtain a minimal response level. After the child turns to a sound they are visually rewarded with one of the puppets. In order to obtain ear specific hearing thresholds the child may wear headphones or have small insert phones placed in the ear canals to generate the stimulating sounds. At 10 months old, was when they finally received a full investigation result. Alivia-Ellen displayed very little response, and what we thought was progression wasn't quite so. She was then finally diagnosed with profound deafness in her left ear and severe/profound deafness in her right ear. My heart sank. And I could almost hear the crack of my mothers heart who was sitting behind me. Alivia was then given the strongest prescription of hearing aids. But again the possibility that she would benefit from them or not wasn't certain... We are still currently at this stage and there still isn't a clear satisfying response while wearing her hearing aids. Sometimes she may turn, others she's blank. She's due a review and more tests in August. Which I will try to document so all of those who don't know what to expect or would love to know what happens, can witness this. We have discovered that having a baby who is deaf will take more on your part as a parent. More time, more patience, and more work compared to the parenting we provide to our oldest 'hearing son'. It will be different, but Different isn't bad, it's just different! Remember that every child is unique and has a variety of needs. Even our son has needs that need to be kept and maintained. The demands of extra time could just as easily come from a child with a learning disability, or an extremely bright child that needs consistent stimulation. It doesn't in any way change or diminsh all of the wonderful experiences of being a parent. I think the experience of having a hearing and non hearing child makes you stronger and change as a person due to the challenge of parenting. Your walls become unbreakable, yet you also appreciate and soften, you become knowledgable in your child's condition, more than most professionals and form patience you never deemed possible. Your baby is the same beautiful baby, it was before you found out that they have hearing loss. The only difference is that you may have to learn to communicate with her a little differently, than you imagined. Let this journey help set the foundation for your attitudes and opinions about what your child can be capable of, don't feel your expectations for them have to different or lower as your hearing child. We have no reason to ever expect less of Alivia-Ellen or assume that she would or could achieve any less than our son.

[ktrsss1fics]

AU Art School One Shot Series

Do you know what’s more fun than sitting through a lecture about Cubism?

Just about anything. Actually I take that back. Sitting in a crowded lecture hall while some middle-aged art history professor drones on and on about the stylistic differences between Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso is more fun than any course involving letters disguised as numbers. I don’t understand why anyone would want to pursue studies in maths. Another thing I don’t understand is why in the hell Harry Styles is so keen on being my friend. We first met in our First Year Drawing course. He made some idiotic joke about pencils and I unfortunately laughed at it. It’s been two years and I still can’t go anywhere art related without his stupid face popping up. It’s ridiculous. Harry is the type of guy that probably should be down in the liberal arts wing studying literature or psychology. He should be the leader of the decathlon team and president of the anti-bullying club. He should be spending his weekends hanging out by the pool before doing a pub crawl. He shouldn’t be buried knee deep in plaster gabbing on about how fantastic the Italian Renaissance actually was. He shouldn’t be sleeping on the floor of the printmaking building on a Friday night because his orange just isn’t right. He shouldn’t be walking in the door of this overstuffed lecture hall with his perfectly sculpted man-bun and a spool of chicken wire under his arm. But he was. “Hey Huckleberry.” He chirped slipping into the empty seat beside me. “That’s not my name Harry.” I mumbled annoyed. “For me it is.” He laughed grabbing his notebook from his bag. “Did you do the reading last night?” I shook my head before yawning, “Spent the entire night planning out my piece for Davidson’s final.” “You haven’t done that yet?” He asked shocked. Harry and I were taking an intermedia course that attempted to bridge the gap between various mediums. For our final project, we had to do some sort of performance piece around campus. Performance art might seem easy but it’s the real deal. Every ounce of energy in your body is poured into performing your piece. The projects performed so far had been brilliant. “I had the gist down but after yesterday I feel like I’m not doing enough.” I explained. “When’s your performance date?” He asked searching for a pen. “Next week.” “Lucky.” He sighed. “When’s yours?” “Uh an hour after this lecture.” Harry stated. “It’ll be out in front of The Hub.” I turned my full attention to him. “Well shit that’s quick.” “Tell me about it.” He smiled. I couldn’t imagine having to perform today. I still hadn’t truly finalised mine yet. Or gotten it approved for that matter. “What are you doing for it?” I asked throwing an extra pen at him. “I can’t tell you.” He smiled graciously. “You know the rules.” “I didn’t think Harry Styles played by the rules.” I smirked. His smile grew. “He doesn’t… usually. Davidson is making me.” “Oh right.” I nod. “ Blame it on him.” “Its true. He said its a genius plan and he doesn’t want any of you procrastinators to steal it.” Harry teased earning himself a dirty look. “I’m only joking Huck.” “All I can really say is that it’s going to make me look like a modern day Abramović.” He shrugged. I couldn’t fight the urge to roll my eyes. There was no way in hell this guy was going to create something that could even be compared to Marina Abramović. No offence to him but she is like the queen of performance art and Harry, well, doesn’t like doing Davidson’s warm up exercises. “I can already see the judgement in your eyes Sawyer Smith.” He smiled. “Go ahead and judge me.” “I’m not judging you Harry. That’s just a bold statement.” I explained. “Well I’m a bold lad.” He winked. I groaned. “Oh gag me.” He wiggled his eyebrows playfully. “If you come to it, maybe I will.” “Why do you keep trying to make this happen?” He looked confused. “What?” “Us.” I said pointing between us. “Being friends.” Before he could reply, the lights dimmed and our professor started to speak. I readjusted myself in my seat and prepared for what was going to be another hour of boredom. The TA started up a discussion about the reading assignment from the night before and as usual, the three aggressively opinionated kiss asses of our class fought for the spotlight. A battle of the pretentious perspectives had begun. Harry fidgeted in his seat. I could tell he wanted to say something. I did my best to focus all of my attention on the screen in the front of the room. I hadn’t meant to be offensive or rude but it was true. He was constantly making an effort to form some type of friendship with me and I never understood why. We were two different people. He was loud and friendly and I just wasn’t. I kept to myself and got my work done. I didn’t see how we could make it work so I always kept my distance. Apparently that didn’t sit well with him. A pause in the conversation came and I felt the boy beside me start to move closer. His arm rested on the back of my chair as his mouth moved towards my ear. “Sawyer, you know I like you right?” His husky voice whispered softly. “Like you are really really cool.” “Harry…” I sighed. “No don’t ‘Harry’ me. I’m trying to explain myself because obviously me wanting to be friends is such a horrible concept.” He stayed annoyed. “I never said that.” I glanced at him. “Well I’m pretty sure it’s been painted across your fucking forehead for years.” He said frustrated. “Look I’m not really asking for much. I just want to be friends with you. I want to be able to make late night coffee runs with you while we are waiting for our canvases to dry.” “That’s oddly specific.” I replied dryly. “Will you please just stop? This is hard enough for me. You already are the most intimidating girl in this entire department.” He blushed. “What?” “You’re scary.” “No I’m not.” “Yes you are. You always have been.” I could feel my cheeks starting to grow warm. Was I really that scary? “It’s because you are quiet but have a really profound opinion. Don’t try to fight me on that because its true. You have one of the most unique perspectives on life and um I just want to pick your brain sometimes because I think it’d help me grow as an artist and a person for that matter.” He admitted shyly. “You know that human form sculpture we had to do for Kinney’s class? I still can’t get over how you made it.” A full fledged blush attacked my face. I wasn’t one who took compliments well especially from guys like him. “It wasn’t that tough to make.” “Yeah because you’re the one making it. I’ve attempted it three times since then and it’s never worked out.” He laughed. “You’re something else, Sawyer.” “I’m really not.” I shook my head. “And I’m not intimidating either.” “And I’m not the funniest person you’ve ever met.” He said crossing his arms over his chest. “You aren’t.” “Funny you should say that because if my memory is correct you were the one dying from laughter at my hilarious pencil joke way back when.” “Oh fuck off.” I said fighting back a smile. He leaned in close once more, “Hour after class. The Hub. Be there.”

++

The hour long lecture flew by. As I left the building, I realized I had two options. The first being a selfish decision to head home and sleep. The second being the more obvious choice. I grabbed myself a warm coffee and a muffin before searching for a seat outside The Hub.

I wasn’t here because I wanted to be friends with Harry Styles.

I was here because I appreciated art and, as much as I hated to admit it, Harry was a great artist. I don’t know how he did it but he always seemed to put a quirky spin on things.

And that was admirable.

I bit into my muffin and scanned the quad. Familiar faces started to appear as the anticipation started to build. For many of us art students, this was the equivalent to a football match. All of our energy and spirit was poured into watching whomever was performing.

It wasn’t long before a sign appeared. The message was simple, “Pick your weapon and induce war.”

Piles of pens, tubes of paint, and mounds of markers lay at the feet of a man who was Manchester’s version of Christ the Redeemer. With arms outstretched, he was dressed in white from head to toe. His hair was pulled into a perfectly sculpted bun and a blank stare adorned his features.

It was game time.

A few of our classmates were the first to make their move. It wasn’t long before random people passing by stopped to contribute to the chaos. They gathered round Harry with pens and markers hoping to create something great. They didn’t though because that wasn’t the point.

This wasn’t about the things that were created or the way his clothes looked in the end. This was more than that. Harry was the Messiah bringing modern art to the masses. He was educating a stubborn class of people on the beauty of creation and that was nearly mindblowing.

The boy who made a lousy joke about pencils first term had assembled one of the most thought provoking pieces in our entire class and I really couldn’t believe it.

The pain in the ass who always tried to get my attention finally had in the best way possible.

A good hour into the piece, there was a lull in the activity. No one had come up and scribbled something on him in a while. Everyone just sat watching and waiting. Waiting for him to move or speak or breathe wrongly.

The size of the crowd that had formed and the amount of whispers being shared throughout the quad really said something about the way our culture was. As people, we rarely investigate things on our own. If something abnormal is taking place, we don’t try to find out what it is. We stand back and gossip about what we think is going on.

And I think that was one of things Harry was trying to talk about.

Our ancestors were adventurers and thinkers and doers. They didn’t sit around waiting for things to be explained to them. They went out and sought answers. They dug in the dirt until artifacts were found. They swam in the sea until things made sense. They went into the world and thought for themselves.

They weren’t glued to their computers or mobiles or trashy magazines. They were glued to their imagination and life and curiosity.

At the end of it, isn’t that really what art is? Life, imagination, and curiosity wrapped into a single piece. It’s doing something to make others think. It’s getting a reaction from a planned out action. It’s standing in front of the busiest building on campus with your arms outstretched while people attack you with words and actions. It’s attempting to befriend the one girl in class that everyone’s afraid of. It’s proving that you’re worth it.

And after seeing the concentration on his face, I had a feeling that Harry was. Being his friend wouldn’t be as horrible as I originally intended. He wasn’t just that annoying guy in all of my classes. He wasn’t the know-it-all with the obnoxiously perfect hair. He was a serious artist trying to make the world a little less shitty and that in itself was somewhat appealing.

He closed his eyes. The pain of keeping still was obviously started to set in. This was the perfect time to make my move. I threw away my trash before heading towards the table to find a tool to use. I settled on an orange calligraphy marker and walked towards Harry’s back. After a few moments of planning, I decided on what I was going leave scrawled on his body. A simple “Huck” and a string of numbers that I knew Harry would appreciate took up the space between his shoulder blades.

I dropped the pen off at the table, sent the focused boy a nod, and was on my way.

++

My phone buzzed loudly on my desk. A text message from an unknown number appeared across the screen. A tiny smile formed as I read what it had said.

I knew you’d come around Huck x

[newslegion-blog1]

MACHINE ELVES AND HOMONCULUS STONE BABIES OF THE BRAIN

Prologue Definitions

Machine elves

Cognitive dissonance

Confirmation bias

Darwinian

Energizer Bunny

Solaris

Stone babies

Complex chemistry

Organic life

Multicellular life

DNA

Ego

Egocentric

Egomaniac

Vanity

Conceit

AI (artificial intelligence)

Machine Learning

AI singularity

AGI (artificial general intelligence)

A-con (artificial consciousness)

SCRIBBLE!

All you are exists in the gaps in brain progressing, super but accidental redundancy gone Darwinian. Life came eventually from tiny anomalies in chemistry - exceptions - then cells, multi cells, moving multi cells etc. Human accident also, rampant success, but it is standard evolution ad hoc - porking our way through all resources, like greedy consumers since the LHB. In the gaps is the gold, though.

Electricity chemistry pinging around the brain concertina organic machine learning time needed to create valid next generations. Testing testing blind watchmaking consciousness. Which it eventually did, a few times. Most didn't have it. We did.

Unto now, the gaps have their sight on AI or cybernetics. We perceive the exponential flashpoint where AI fuse is lit; to develop in picotime. We knew that's coming cuz it's not an alien concept. Same thing originated humans from the primates; and all the way back.

It's rather unfair that activating a non-self serving bullshit / inauthenticity / virtue signalling often causes an interruption in natural flow as one audits one's behaviour. The ironic bit is how that sincere audit, only to be genuine and not feed others blarney, causes a stuttering - the look of uncertainty - which is actually taken for insincerity or discomfort. Double irony the slick fuck who doesn't audit or care to be sincere, even the snake oil seller with a learnt parlour, comes over smooth, no discord, certain, this truthful, authentic, sincere, worthy of trust. This is a perception mismatch - imagination to lie besting intuition about who to trust (and feeling, if it needs thinking about, it is less true).

If everything is a drive to solution or at least progress, it's inevitable to eventually realise this must be engineered if it's not to rely on chances intuition (hard to pass on/teach). Once this realisation hits, the choice is how much of life gets subjected to the deconstruction engineering necessary to aspire progress cuz not doing this is devalued, success or failure. Convergence with AI, not cuz it's mechanistic thinking but cuz it's breaking down increasingly complex chunks of reality into variables and algorithms. This is also a changed perspective as it's not all about forensic past dissection but variables algorithm approach to choices and the future especially when it comes to pursuing a goal, to doing.

In the moment yeah you can live in it but if you notice it, it's gone, and if it's well lived it's something good gone that can't be forever. That's all fine. But if it's a moment full of love and life, its loss is no fun - hide, don't think, don't be sad - but whatever, the lovemoment ends with one of you gone and the other going on like a lonely Energizer bunny.

Machine elves are the brain's consciousness dead ends, like personality abortions doomed to toil and live dumb in the deepmind unable to escape the loop of their inspiral succession of doors and rooms.

Or are they the brain making personalities for fun like the oceanworld Solaris. Once made the homunculus has to live cuz that's our fundamental law of life, how much personality is invested - not too much - virtually sane is just as much a natural selection as animals with eyes. like the ocean world Solaris.

The patterns of these abortions - stone babies calcified by time and distance from origin - lose distinctive features as one sees the mass, the in-spirals zoom out to look like consciousness fractals making geometric shapes whose uberform is real grand emotions (powerful insulators) like love and hate and empathy.

There's a barrier between personality prime and subordinate praetorian subconscious, and the machine elves and the homunculus trying to live, escape, loyalists v rebels?

This barrier is reinforced over early childhood though the multiplicity of fluid personality is still within reach. Kids make believe easily, "I'm David Beckham, you be Cristiano Ronaldo," one says, and that's all is needed. This state doesn't last, though. It's not expedient and real lived experience relentlessly teaches how life needs to be lived. Single personality, compromise with the oceanworld it can admit of many moods and facets.

This is the devil's bargain all human brains make, to live. It's another bargain that's not a choice ever made but a fact of our brains today and a fait accompli (like any Darwinian process, it's very extant consideration proof it was naturally selected a long time ago).

Perhaps this bargain where the frontline personality and lieutenants are given the route to the light - the optic nerve, for one - cutting loose the machine elves (loyalists) and homunculus (rebels), denied the light. Maybe this is the real origin truth in the underground/hell metaphor. And heaven isn't a place on earth but a life in a body upon it.

Think also about psilocybin, the inspiration for machine elves. They're always benign, calming, profound, in their own universe etc. Why wouldn't one feel a profound sense of gratitude, meeting the tireless lifelong guardians of your sanity - your identity - your safety. Bad trips could be a homonculus escaping, running rampant, though our brains are creative omnipotent s (inside the skull) so the escapee is eventually brought under control, neutralized.

The patterns made by of these personality abortions / occurs - though most are turned into stone babies calcified by time and distance from origin - lose distinctive features as one sees the mass, the in-spirals zoom out to look like consciousness fractals making geometric shapes whose uberform is real grand emotions (powerful insulators) like love and hate and empathy.

The first and last glimpse of the stone baby consciousness stillborn animations has so much fidelity, so much consciousness, so much depth in layers, it feels real, it feels like seeing God. Profound, ecstatic, personality-changing.

The world is very big. Big enough to send people mad or foetal. Foetal is mostly harmless: jobs and careers and breeding, if there's evil done, at least it's only done by inches. Madness is sometimes not harmless. It can be infectious. It is turning the innumerable into an equation.

At best this means crass approximation constipated by singularities and infinities that might factor conveniently but require faith they are equal rather than unknowns. National fantasy is a paradigm here. Or the innumerable is reduced to an algorithm, confirmation bias and cogdis evidence it's a fairytale (at least to observers). Religion is algorithm, as is mysticism. These bogus attempts to imagine a world that can't be imagined in any meaningful sense require commitment to equations or algorithms. Time devoted to this commitment makes them unreasonably precious. Precious things are possessed but also must be defended.

What's my own algorithm or equation explanation? That's the difference I think matters: it's only made up of expressly human factors, often ignoble and base and sad (for me and you). It doesn't need faith or singularities or fantasy or infinity. The problem is, it may be accurate, but whether it is or isn't it's not compelling and has no spark of any magic. Magic is the light good side of the infinities. It's a fairytale that might become a myth, it's not real except if it's reality to enough people (close by or in reach). I don't think it can be faked if one's being honest. But without the magic, what's the point of life except as a kindness to a duty to others, the logical endgame of nihilism.

Irony: opinion - decisive defining of personality - this is based on past experience but weighted towards quality over quantity JUST ABOUT - education, new data, new situations, research, expertise: these build by quality. Ultimately no matter what the subject but the bigger it is the more increasingly scant facts (in absolute terms, as a % of all facts available), there's a best guess, to the best of my knowledge, far as I know, based on the evidence etc. Cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias plays to this part of the algorithm, Dunning Kruger setting the predisposition based on specifics, demeanour/mood setting the predisposition objective bias/weighting.

To act with foresight based on predicted outcomes, one being preferred to others requires IMAGINATION to try modelling the future out of facts and other opinions etc. Given there may be no visceral or personal unequivocal evidence, and data is nuanced, there's got to be tough choices that require a fantasy to make happen. The scientists with enough facts to model a future disaster must use fantasy thinking to act before it is too late. Ironically the opinionated fool who knows fuck all gets to live real world prosaic, demanding better more undeniable proofs. Which can't happen cuz it's all about the future.

Human Imagination is the universe's most incredible creation (that we know!), not just for its potential but its tiny size and complexity. Trillion trillion neurons and axons in a network that works.

Daily life is a drip drip of experiences (sensory) that fill the brain's memory with, initially, the materials imagination needs to create its own universes. These begin fascinating - FEELING compelling - because they're new enough to seem possible so the brain takes it seriously as curiosity is hard-wired with scale quickly added. Drip drip drip.

Children play imaginative games because the potential (offered by imagination) still seems possible; and there's enough newness in daily drip drip to feed in new raw materials for ever more diverse imaginings. FEELINGS loosed by imagined worlds are intense early on because of thise closeness to possible; becoming less as drip drip drip time goes by and the brain's bullshit detector advances. The imagined world, once familiar, is less compelling.

New imaginings remain a catalyst for EMOTION because in that newness is something for the brain to explore. Imagined games can last longer thus. Eventually, though, the drip drip drip of real life - which doesn't cease - becomes so familiar there's no flow of new raw materials for the imagination; and then the imagined worlds are less fascinating. The experience of the drip drip drip asserts the undeniable nature of real life versus the imagined worlds, i.e. real life is probably, imagined worlds are mostly impossible. Once the latter builds enough reinforcement and the latter is demonstrated almost entirely impossible, the brain's faith in the possibility of these imagined worlds drops markedly and no more intense feeling comes from them.

For a while the real world, which is after all quite big, fills the void left behind by receding imagined worlds - ambition and hope and dynamism reside therein. But then the person gets old and the drip drip drip of everyday life continues relentless so that very predictability and the unlikeliness of early dreams increase so the brain loses faith in that, too. From this point people often become alcoholics (stupefy the brain's bullshit detector, so the feelings can flow again with lesser or despite everyday familiarity - often with a combination of memory and former states of mind), or junkies (various types, various effects, initially respite from the everyday so feelings flow but ultimately familiarity also - needing bigger doses or cecession).

More usually the older person moves to duty, fortitude, ministering to family's needs or - in any case - simply habituates to a less intense, less emotionally charged life thereafter. There's plenty of encouragement baked into our society, to make it easier to transition. Vanity is often a useful vehicle here: maturity equated to accepting duty and eschewing a life predicated on chasing compelling emotions. In any case, that's the way it seems to work.

The bathos of old age tends to be accompanied by physical or mental infirmity, loss of health, fragmentation of brainfunction, as the living organism begins its deterioration towards death and re-atomisation; the network shutdown, memory and imagination lost both as an individual system and a future potential, since the complexity of a particular brain is so unlikely the universe won't last long enough for there to be another quite the same.

The resonating concepts of any human society's myths and legends and fairytales are founded on a shared experience (being human). These concepts become embedded, like the rings in a tree trunk, because they matter - concurrently, contemporaniously, to a high enough proportion of those living at a particular time.

Time sorts the metaphorical wheat from the allegorical chaff, generation to generation, but the artifacts of these shared mythologies - like thunder clouds as gods doing battle or icebergs crashing into the ocean as ice-giants expelled from Jotunheim - echo long after the originating beliefs have become obsolete.

The remnants of the shared metaphor, a shortcut familiarity and unquestioned value, are appropriated by modern day's trinity of evil: propaganda, advertising and art. Prior to corporate capitalism advertising was owned by religion. Prior to democratic pluralism propaganda was owned by the ancien regime.

[joneswilliam72]

Jordan Peele’s Us: A historic & psychological look at the doppelgänger.

While there is no doubt Jordan Peele's newest horror piece Us will shock and amaze us in ways we do not yet know – like Get Out did – there are a few themes in it that deserve a thorough look before the film hits the big screen March 22 – if for no other reason than the ubiquity of those themes in cinema and other forms of art and their inherent interesting qualities as background information.

Probably the most prevalent of those themes from what we know of Us so far, is the doppelgänger, (German for "double walker") or non-genetically related double of a person – that double usually being an evil entity. Us – from what we know so far – centers on a family (played by Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex) battling their doppelgängers.

This certainly adds interesting challenges for the actors in playing two (essentially) separate people in Peele's film, and will most likely have some symbolic meaning of us being our own worst enemies – which actually ties in to what the doppelgänger as a neurological and psychiatric phenomenon can tell us about the neurobiology behind emotion and how we construct a sense of self (more on this below).

Yet, what of the doppelgänger's larger impression in art, culture, science and even history? Indeed, there are many documented occurrences of famous figures like President Abraham Lincoln (who allegedly saw his double the night of his inauguration), Queen Elizabeth I (who saw hers shortly before she died), and Percy Bysshe Shelley (who's story is below) encountering their doppelgängers very much in the flesh – and usually right before they died. Surely, considering the expressly social content in Get Out, Peele will draw on this huge record too.  

Spiritualists and mystics have often labeled the doppelgänger “a demon”, echoing that idea that they are a portent of doom. Others (including the extensive use of the doppelgänger in Gothic literature) have detailed it as some type of ghost, phantom or specter. Still others have said the doppelgänger is us traveling through a number of different dimensions or wormholes in time. Broadly relates a story about a man who was walking down the street when he saw himself walk by in the opposite direction. Eight years later, the same man walked past himself going the same way in the opposite direction (his story oddly echoes Goethe's story below). There is even a whole subreddit dedicated to these types of occurrences.

Science has proffered a number of explanations for the doppelgänger phenomenon. The evolutionary one basically says that because you don't see much of the diversity between how humans look in other species, it really isn't surprising to think there's someone who looks exactly like you somewhere. For instance, can you really tell two squirrels apart? Thus goes this explanation that maybe we are to some degree, just seeing what we want to see there, and that diversity does not really exist – at least, not to the level we believe. Ergo, there could be someone out there who looks exactly like you. The possibility of the genetic lottery randomly combining the same options a number of times also adds credence to this idea.

Still, other studies have pegged the likelihood of an exact doppelgänger as about 1 in 1 trillion. And even if there was a higher likelihood, this explanation really doesn't say anything about the malevolence that is so often ascribed to the doppelgänger.

What neurology and psychology have to say makes more sense (and is infinitely interesting). Psychology and neuroscience may hold a partial (but better) answer to this in describing "the doppelgänger phenomenon," or delusions characterized by a belief in a doppelgänger or some variant of it. These include hallucinations of seeing a double (known as "syndrome of subjective doubles" in psychiatry) and so-called "out of body experiences".

The lobes of the brain.

The medial temporal lobe. Source: American Journal of Neuroradiology.

"Autoscopy" (also spelled "Heautoscopy") is another component of the neurological and psychiatric explanation of the doppelgänger. It is characterized by seeing one's double at a distance and is often a symptom of schizophrenia, brain damage or epilepsy – particularly temporal lobe epilepsy, which often produces profound hallucinations and has also been correlated with intense religious visions. Even anti-Parkinson treatment with levodopa can cause all the delusions described in this article. These occurrences can also be co-morbid with other psychotic disorders and even bi-polar disorder.

"Polyopic autoscopy" is seeing more than one double. One case was noted of a patient who saw five doubles and was later found to have a tumor in his temporal lobe.  While another related phenomenon called "negative autoscopy" is not seeing one's reflection when looking in a mirror.

This type of psychiatric pathology can get even more bizarre than the doppelgänger phenomenon and include something seemingly right out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. That, in fact, is basically what "Capgras Delusion" is: the belief that a person close to you is the same physically but that a different intelligence and personality is controlling them or that the person has been replaced by an identical looking impostor.

One interesting thing about Capgras: it generally does not occur in the sufferer when they are taking to the person who is the subject of their delusion over the phone (or otherwise out of sight). All is (relatively) normal and placid. It is when visuals are a factor that the delusion takes hold because of the specific wiring affected in the brain of the sufferer. Their facial recognition system is what is at fault here in the brain. As the incredible behavioral neurologist, researcher and author Dr. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran (whose books, especially "Phantoms in the Brain", I highly recommend interested parties seek out) has noted: this delusion causes incredible upset and fear in the sufferer too, when they fundamentally cannot rely on their faculty of visual recognition. Capgras can also happen with inanimate objects.

Dr. Ramachandran explains Capgras Delusion.

"Intermetamorphosis" is a variant of Capgras where the sufferer perceives that object of their delusion has been transformed physically and psychologically into another person.  

"Fregoli's Delusion" is similar to Capgras but different. It is the delusional belief that different people are in fact the same person changing form or in disguise. 

The best proof of how this all relates to emotion and our sense of self (besides the involvement of the temporal lobe in these various delusions) is ultimately in two hypotheses which have been proffered to explain these "syndromes of misidentification". The first is that of "prosopagnosia", or "face blindness", where all other intellectual faculties are intact but the ability to recognize familiar faces (including one’s own) is absent. This is often a direct result of damage to the temporal lobe or a disease affecting it, like Alzheimer’s Disease.   

The second hypothesis is the opposite of the first: it is over-identification, where the brain imputes too much information in identifying a face and consequently major emotional regions like the temporal lobe are over active.

Certainly the medical literature on this is very interesting in its own right.  Yet, no matter what the medical, psychological, or biological basis of the doppelgänger (if any) is, there have been a number of recorded instances of cultural luminaries seeing their doubles, often before death or some other horrible occurrence. Others have put in the historical record stories they themselves have encountered of the doppelgänger, likely with varying degrees of truth, yet they are all entertaining in their own right and have shaped the popular mind and zeitgeist for many years.

American politician and social reformer Robert Dale Owen related the story of 32-year-old French teacher Emilie Sagée who was teaching at a girl's school in Latvia in 1845. One day as she wrote at the chalkboard, her exact double came in and stood next to her, copying her every movement (still somehow – the story goes – she didn't see it). Thirteen of Ms. Sagée's students allegedly witnessed this. The next year, Sagée's double allegedly appeared again – this time in front of the entire school while Sagée could be seen working in the school's garden. When the students approached it, the double vanished. 

French novelist Guy de Maupassant was inspired to write his short story "Lui?" ("He?") after an 1889 experience – he alleged – with his doppelgänger, who he says dictated the story. He would later claim several experiences with his doppelgänger over the years. The author would be institutionalized in 1892 following a suicide attempt. He died one year later. De Maupassant had syphilis, which – if it damaged his temporal lobe – could explain his experiences with his double.   

The great author of "Faust", Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, wrote of an experience with his doppelgänger in his autobiography "Dichtung und Wahrheit" ("Poetry and Truth"). He describes riding to the town of Drusenheim to visit Frederike Brion, a young woman he was romantically involved with. As Goethe describes being "emotional and lost in thought" he saw his double dressed in a gray suit, trimmed with gold. Eight years later, Goethe found himself riding that same road to see Brion, this time wearing the gray suit with gold trim when that initial memory resurfaced in his mind and gave the writer great comfort.

Poet and husband to "Frankenstein" author Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, told his wife he had seen his double on several occasions – not long after he told Mary about this, he died at sea in an accident. One time, his double spoke to him, saying, "how long do you mean to be content?" Jane Williams, a close friend to Mary, had seen Percy's double when it passed by her window one night. 

Film, in its comparatively short history, has done a lot with the concept of the double in various permutations. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 magnum opus Vertigo being probably the finest example, where the double becomes the way to hide misdeeds and murder. David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. (which takes more than a few cues from Vertigo, something I've written about here) also touches on the idea of a double in the juxtaposition of the film's dream world and real life. In fact, the double often recurs in Lynch's work, as it also is a factor in 1997's Lost Highway and 2006's Inland Empire; only it is a factor in different ways in those films than it was in Mulholland Dr. in 2001.

A few other films about a double or doppelgänger include Christopher Nolan's The Prestige (2006) about two rival magicians, Brian De Palma's Obsession (1976) and Femme Fatale (2002), Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940), Roman Polanski';s The Tenant (1976), Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha (1980), and Ingmar Bergman's iconic Persona (1966) which also was a huge influence on David Lynch. Check out trailers for each of these below as all these movies are well worth watching.

As was said at the beginning of this piece, there is no doubt Jordan Peele will use Us's doppelgänger theme in new and impossible to predict ways. Nothing in this piece is meant to foresee Peele's work, merely to provide some scientific, historical, and artistic context for the doppelgänger theme as it has occurred throughout history and science. The hope being that that context may give the viewer a new appreciation of Us when we all finally get to see it March 22 of this year.

VERTIGO (1958) trailer.

MULHOLLAND DR. (2001) trailer.

LOST HIGHWAY (1997) trailer.

INLAND EMPIRE (2006) trailer.

THE PRESTIGE (2006) trailer.

OBSESSION (1976) trailer.

FEMME FATALE (2002) trailer.

THE GREAT DICTATOR (1940) trailer.

THE TENANT (1976) trailer.

KAGEMUSHA (1980) trailer.

PERSONA (1966) trailer.

from The 405 https://ift.tt/2GT37a9

[thesnhuup]

Pop Picks – January 3, 2019

January 3, 2019

What I’m listening to:

My listening choices usually refer to music, but this time I’m going with Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast on genius and the song Hallelujah. It tells the story of Leonard Cohen’s much-covered song Hallelujah and uses it as a lens on kinds of genius and creativity. Along the way, he brings in Picasso and Cézanne, Elvis Costello, and more. Gladwell is a good storyteller and if you love pop music, as I do, and Hallelujah, as I do (and you should), you’ll enjoy this podcast. We tend to celebrate the genius who seems inspired in the moment, creating new work like lightning strikes, but this podcast has me appreciating incremental creativity in a new way. It’s compelling and fun at the same time.

What I’m reading:

Just read Clay Christensen’s new book, The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty. This was an advance copy, so soon available. Clay is an old friend and a huge influence on how we have grown SNHU and our approach to innovation. This book is so compelling, because we know attempts at development have so often been a failure and it is often puzzling to understand why some countries with desperate poverty and huge challenges somehow come to thrive (think S. Korea, Singapore, 19th C. America), while others languish. Clay offers a fresh way of thinking about development through the lens of his research on innovation and it is compelling. I bet this book gets a lot of attention, as most of his work does. I also suspect that many in the development community will hate it, as it calls into question the approach and enormous investments we have made in an attempt to lift countries out of poverty. A provocative read and, as always, Clay is a good storyteller.

What I’m watching:

Just watched Leave No Trace and should have guessed that it was directed by Debra Granik. She did Winter’s Bone, the extraordinary movie that launched Jennifer Lawrence’s career. Similarly, this movie features an amazing young actor, Thomasin McKenzie, and visits lives lived on the margins. In this case, a veteran suffering PTSD, and his 13-year-old daughter. The movie is patient, is visually lush, and justly earned 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (I have a rule to never watch anything under 82%). Everything in this film is under control and beautifully understated (aside from the visuals) – confident acting, confident directing, and so humane. I love the lack of flashbacks, the lack of sensationalism – the movie trusts the viewer, rare in this age of bombast. A lovely film.

Archive

December 4, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spending a week in New Zealand, we had endless laughs listening to the Kiwi band, Flight of the Conchords. Lots of comedic bands are funny, but the music is only okay or worse. These guys are funny – hysterical really – and the music is great. They have an uncanny ability to parody almost any style. In both New Zealand and Australia, we found a wry sense of humor that was just delightful and no better captured than with this duo. You don’t have to be in New Zealand to enjoy them.

What I’m reading:

I don’t often reread. For two reasons: A) I have so many books on my “still to be read” pile that it seems daunting to also reread books I loved before, and B) it’s because I loved them once that I’m a little afraid to read them again. That said, I was recently asked to list my favorite book of all time and I answered Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. But I don’t really know if that’s still true (and it’s an impossible question anyway – favorite book? On what day? In what mood?), so I’m rereading it and it feels like being with an old friend. It has one of my very favorite scenes ever: the card game between Levin and Kitty that leads to the proposal and his joyous walking the streets all night.

What I’m watching:

Blindspotting is billed as a buddy-comedy. Wow does that undersell it and the drama is often gripping. I loved Daveed Diggs in Hamilton, didn’t like his character in Black-ish, and think he is transcendent in this film he co-wrote with Rafael Casal, his co-star.  The film is a love song to Oakland in many ways, but also a gut-wrenching indictment of police brutality, systemic racism and bias, and gentrification. The film has the freshness and raw visceral impact of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. A great soundtrack, genre mixing, and energy make it one of my favorite movies of 2018.

October 15, 2018

What I’m listening to:

We had the opportunity to see our favorite band, The National, live in Dallas two weeks ago. Just after watching Mistaken for Strangers, the documentary sort of about the band. So we’ve spent a lot of time going back into their earlier work, listening to songs we don’t know well, and reaffirming that their musicality, smarts, and sound are both original and astoundingly good. They did not disappoint in concert and it is a good thing their tour ended, as we might just spend all of our time and money following them around. Matt Berninger is a genius and his lead vocals kill me (and because they are in my range, I can actually sing along!). Their arrangements are profoundly good and go right to whatever brain/heart wiring that pulls one in and doesn’t let them go.

What I’m reading:

Who is Richard Powers and why have I only discovered him now, with his 12th book? Overstory is profoundly good, a book that is essential and powerful and makes me look at my everyday world in new ways. In short, a dizzying example of how powerful can be narrative in the hands of a master storyteller. I hesitate to say it’s the best environmental novel I’ve ever read (it is), because that would put this book in a category. It is surely about the natural world, but it is as much about we humans. It’s monumental and elegiac and wondrous at all once. Cancel your day’s schedule and read it now. Then plant a tree. A lot of them.

What I’m watching:

Bo Burnham wrote and directed Eighth Grade and Elsie Fisher is nothing less than amazing as its star (what’s with these new child actors; see Florida Project). It’s funny and painful and touching. It’s also the single best film treatment that I have seen of what it means to grow up in a social media shaped world. It’s a reminder that growing up is hard. Maybe harder now in a world of relentless, layered digital pressure to curate perfect lives that are far removed from the natural messy worlds and selves we actually inhabit. It’s a well-deserved 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and I wonder who dinged it for the missing 2%.

September 7, 2018

What I’m listening to:

With a cover pointing back to the Beastie Boys’ 1986 Licensed to Ill, Eminem’s quietly released Kamikaze is not my usual taste, but I’ve always admired him for his “all out there” willingness to be personal, to call people out, and his sheer genius with language. I thought Daveed Diggs could rap fast, but Eminem is supersonic at moments, and still finds room for melody. Love that he includes Joyner Lucas, whose “I’m Not Racist” gets added to the growing list of simply amazing music videos commenting on race in America. There are endless reasons why I am the least likely Eminem fan, but when no one is around to make fun of me, I’ll put it on again.

What I’m reading:

Lesley Blume’s Everyone Behaves Badly, which is the story behind Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and his time in 1920s Paris (oh, what a time – see Midnight in Paris if you haven’t already). Of course, Blume disabuses my romantic ideas of that time and place and everyone is sort of (or profoundly so) a jerk, especially…no spoiler here…Hemingway. That said, it is a compelling read and coming off the Henry James inspired prose of Mrs. Osmond, it made me appreciate more how groundbreaking was Hemingway’s modern prose style. Like his contemporary Picasso, he reinvented the art and it can be easy to forget, these decades later, how profound was the change and its impact. And it has bullfights.

What I’m watching:

Chloé Zhao’s The Rider is just exceptional. It’s filmed on the Pine Ridge Reservation, which provides a stunning landscape, and it feels like a classic western reinvented for our times. The main characters are played by the real-life people who inspired this narrative (but feels like a documentary) film. Brady Jandreau, playing himself really, owns the screen. It’s about manhood, honor codes, loss, and resilience – rendered in sensitive, nuanced, and heartfelt ways. It feels like it could be about large swaths of America today. Really powerful.

August 16, 2018

What I’m listening to:

In my Spotify Daily Mix was Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves A Woman, one of the world’s greatest love songs. Go online and read the story of how the song was discovered and recorded. There are competing accounts, but Sledge said he improvised it after a bad breakup. It has that kind of aching spontaneity. It is another hit from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, one of the GREAT music hotbeds, along with Detroit, Nashville, and Memphis. Our February Board meeting is in Alabama and I may finally have to do the pilgrimage road trip to Muscle Shoals and then Memphis, dropping in for Sunday services at the church where Rev. Al Green still preaches and sings. If the music is all like this, I will be saved.

What I’m reading:

John Banville’s Mrs. Osmond, his homage to literary idol Henry James and an imagined sequel to James’ 1881 masterpiece Portrait of a Lady. Go online and read the first paragraph of Chapter 25. He is…profoundly good. Makes me want to never write again, since anything I attempt will feel like some other, lowly activity in comparison to his mastery of language, image, syntax. This is slow reading, every sentence to be savored.

What I’m watching:

I’ve always respected Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but we just watched the documentary RGB. It is over-the-top great and she is now one of my heroes. A superwoman in many ways and the documentary is really well done. There are lots of scenes of her speaking to crowds and the way young women, especially law students, look at her is touching.  And you can’t help but fall in love with her now late husband Marty. See this movie and be reminded of how important is the Law.

July 23, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spotify’s Summer Acoustic playlist has been on repeat quite a lot. What a fun way to listen to artists new to me, including The Paper Kites, Hollow Coves, and Fleet Foxes, as well as old favorites like Leon Bridges and Jose Gonzalez. Pretty chill when dialing back to a summer pace, dining on the screen porch or reading a book.

What I’m reading:

Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson tells of the racial injustice (and the war on the poor our judicial system perpetuates as well) that he discovered as a young graduate from Harvard Law School and his fight to address it. It is in turn heartbreaking, enraging, and inspiring. It is also about mercy and empathy and justice that reads like a novel. Brilliant.

What I’m watching:

Fauda. We watched season one of this Israeli thriller. It was much discussed in Israel because while it focuses on an ex-special agent who comes out of retirement to track down a Palestinian terrorist, it was willing to reveal the complexity, richness, and emotions of Palestinian lives. And the occasional brutality of the Israelis. Pretty controversial stuff in Israel. Lior Raz plays Doron, the main character, and is compelling and tough and often hard to like. He’s a mess. As is the world in which he has to operate. We really liked it, and also felt guilty because while it may have been brave in its treatment of Palestinians within the Israeli context, it falls back into some tired tropes and ultimately falls short on this front.

    June 11, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Like everyone else, I’m listening to Pusha T drop the mic on Drake. Okay, not really, but do I get some points for even knowing that? We all walk around with songs that immediately bring us back to a time or a place. Songs are time machines. We are coming up on Father’s Day. My own dad passed away on Father’s Day back in 1994 and I remembering dutifully getting through the wake and funeral and being strong throughout. Then, sitting alone in our kitchen, Don Henley’s The End of the Innocence came on and I lost it. When you lose a parent for the first time (most of us have two after all) we lose our innocence and in that passage, we suddenly feel adult in a new way (no matter how old we are), a longing for our own childhood, and a need to forgive and be forgiven. Listen to the lyrics and you’ll understand. As Wordsworth reminds us in In Memoriam, there are seasons to our grief and, all these years later, this song no longer hits me in the gut, but does transport me back with loving memories of my father. I’ll play it Father’s Day.

What I’m reading:

The Fifth Season, by N. K. Jemisin. I am not a reader of fantasy or sci-fi, though I understand they can be powerful vehicles for addressing the very real challenges of the world in which we actually live. I’m not sure I know of a more vivid and gripping illustration of that fact than N. K. Jemisin’s Hugo Award winning novel The Fifth Season, first in her Broken Earth trilogy. It is astounding. It is the fantasy parallel to The Underground Railroad, my favorite recent read, a depiction of subjugation, power, casual violence, and a broken world in which our hero(s) struggle, suffer mightily, and still, somehow, give us hope. It is a tour de force book. How can someone be this good a writer? The first 30 pages pained me (always with this genre, one must learn a new, constructed world, and all of its operating physics and systems of order), and then I could not put it down. I panicked as I neared the end, not wanting to finish the book, and quickly ordered the Obelisk Gate, the second novel in the trilogy, and I can tell you now that I’ll be spending some goodly portion of my weekend in Jemisin’s other world.

What I’m watching:

The NBA Finals and perhaps the best basketball player of this generation. I’ve come to deeply respect LeBron James as a person, a force for social good, and now as an extraordinary player at the peak of his powers. His superhuman play during the NBA playoffs now ranks with the all-time greats, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, MJ, Kobe, and the demi-god that was Bill Russell. That his Cavs lost in a 4-game sweep is no surprise. It was a mediocre team being carried on the wide shoulders of James (and matched against one of the greatest teams ever, the Warriors, and the Harry Potter of basketball, Steph Curry) and, in some strange way, his greatness is amplified by the contrast with the rest of his team. It was a great run.

May 24, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I’ve always liked Alicia Keys and admired her social activism, but I am hooked on her last album Here. This feels like an album finally commensurate with her anger, activism, hope, and grit. More R&B and Hip Hop than is typical for her, I think this album moves into an echelon inhabited by a Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On or Beyonce’s Formation. Social activism and outrage rarely make great novels, but they often fuel great popular music. Here is a terrific example.

What I’m reading:

Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad may be close to a flawless novel. Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer, it chronicles the lives of two runaway slaves, Cora and Caeser, as they try to escape the hell of plantation life in Georgia.  It is an often searing novel and Cora is one of the great heroes of American literature. I would make this mandatory reading in every high school in America, especially in light of the absurd revisionist narratives of “happy and well cared for” slaves. This is a genuinely great novel, one of the best I’ve read, the magical realism and conflating of time periods lifts it to another realm of social commentary, relevance, and a blazing indictment of America’s Original Sin, for which we remain unabsolved.

What I’m watching:

I thought I knew about The Pentagon Papers, but The Post, a real-life political thriller from Steven Spielberg taught me a lot, features some of our greatest actors, and is so timely given the assault on our democratic institutions and with a presidency out of control. It is a reminder that a free and fearless press is a powerful part of our democracy, always among the first targets of despots everywhere. The story revolves around the legendary Post owner and D.C. doyenne, Katharine Graham. I had the opportunity to see her son, Don Graham, right after he saw the film, and he raved about Meryl Streep’s portrayal of his mother. Liked it a lot more than I expected.

April 27, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I mentioned John Prine in a recent post and then on the heels of that mention, he has released a new album, The Tree of Forgiveness, his first new album in ten years. Prine is beloved by other singer songwriters and often praised by the inscrutable God that is Bob Dylan.  Indeed, Prine was frequently said to be the “next Bob Dylan” in the early part of his career, though he instead carved out his own respectable career and voice, if never with the dizzying success of Dylan. The new album reflects a man in his 70s, a cancer survivor, who reflects on life and its end, but with the good humor and empathy that are hallmarks of Prine’s music. “When I Get To Heaven” is a rollicking, fun vision of what comes next and a pure delight. A charming, warm, and often terrific album.

What I’m reading:

I recently read Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, on many people’s Top Ten lists for last year and for good reason. It is sprawling, multi-generational, and based in the world of Japanese occupied Korea and then in the Korean immigrant’s world of Oaska, so our key characters become “tweeners,” accepted in neither world. It’s often unspeakably sad, and yet there is resiliency and love. There is also intimacy, despite the time and geographic span of the novel. It’s breathtakingly good and like all good novels, transporting.

What I’m watching:

I adore Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 film, Pan’s Labyrinth, and while I’m not sure his Shape of Water is better, it is a worthy follow up to the earlier masterpiece (and more of a commercial success). Lots of critics dislike the film, but I’m okay with a simple retelling of a Beauty and the Beast love story, as predictable as it might be. The acting is terrific, it is visually stunning, and there are layers of pain as well as social and political commentary (the setting is the US during the Cold War) and, no real spoiler here, the real monsters are humans, the military officer who sees over the captured aquatic creature. It is hauntingly beautiful and its depiction of hatred to those who are different or “other” is painfully resonant with the time in which we live. Put this on your “must see” list.

March 18, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Sitting on a plane for hours (and many more to go; geez, Australia is far away) is a great opportunity to listen to new music and to revisit old favorites. This time, it is Lucy Dacus and her album Historians, the new sophomore release from a 22-year old indie artist that writes with relatable, real-life lyrics. Just on a second listen and while she insists this isn’t a break up record (as we know, 50% of all great songs are break up songs), it is full of loss and pain. Worth the listen so far. For the way back machine, it’s John Prine and In Spite of Ourselves (that title track is one of the great love songs of all time), a collection of duets with some of his “favorite girl singers” as he once described them. I have a crush on Iris Dement (for a really righteously angry song try her Wasteland of the Free), but there is also EmmyLou Harris, the incomparable Dolores Keane, and Lucinda Williams. Very different albums, both wonderful.

What I’m reading:

Jane Mayer’s New Yorker piece on Christopher Steele presents little that is new, but she pulls it together in a terrific and coherent whole that is illuminating and troubling at the same time. Not only for what is happening, but for the complicity of the far right in trying to discredit that which should be setting off alarm bells everywhere. Bob Mueller may be the most important defender of the democracy at this time. A must read.

What I’m watching:

Homeland is killing it this season and is prescient, hauntingly so. Russian election interference, a Bannon-style hate radio demagogue, alienated and gun toting militia types, and a president out of control. It’s fabulous, even if it feels awfully close to the evening news. 

March 8, 2018

What I’m listening to:

We have a family challenge to compile our Top 100 songs. It is painful. Only 100? No more than three songs by one artist? Wait, why is M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” on my list? Should it just be The Clash from whom she samples? Can I admit to guilty pleasure songs? Hey, it’s my list and I can put anything I want on it. So I’m listening to the list while I work and the song playing right now is Tom Petty’s “The Wild One, Forever,” a B-side single that was never a hit and that remains my favorite Petty song. Also, “Evangeline” by Los Lobos. It evokes a night many years ago, with friends at Pearl Street in Northampton, MA, when everyone danced well past 1AM in a hot, sweaty, packed club and the band was a revelation. Maybe the best music night of our lives and a reminder that one’s 100 Favorite Songs list is as much about what you were doing and where you were in your life when those songs were playing as it is about the music. It’s not a list. It’s a soundtrack for this journey.

What I’m reading:

Patricia Lockwood’s Priestdaddy was in the NY Times top ten books of 2017 list and it is easy to see why. Lockwood brings remarkable and often surprising imagery, metaphor, and language to her prose memoir and it actually threw me off at first. It then all became clear when someone told me she is a poet. The book is laugh aloud funny, which masks (or makes safer anyway) some pretty dark territory. Anyone who grew up Catholic, whether lapsed or not, will resonate with her story. She can’t resist a bawdy anecdote and her family provides some of the most memorable characters possible, especially her father, her sister, and her mother, who I came to adore. Best thing I’ve read in ages.

What I’m watching:

The Florida Project, a profoundly good movie on so many levels. Start with the central character, six-year old (at the time of the filming) Brooklynn Prince, who owns – I mean really owns – the screen. This is pure acting genius and at that age? Astounding. Almost as astounding is Bria Vinaite, who plays her mother. She was discovered on Instagram and had never acted before this role, which she did with just three weeks of acting lessons. She is utterly convincing and the tension between the child’s absolute wonder and joy in the world with her mother’s struggle to provide, to be a mother, is heartwarming and heartbreaking all at once. Willem Dafoe rightly received an Oscar nomination for his supporting role. This is a terrific movie.

February 12, 2018

What I’m listening to:

So, I have a lot of friends of age (I know you’re thinking 40s, but I just turned 60) who are frozen in whatever era of music they enjoyed in college or maybe even in their thirties. There are lots of times when I reach back into the catalog, since music is one of those really powerful and transporting senses that can take you through time (smell is the other one, though often underappreciated for that power). Hell, I just bought a turntable and now spending time in vintage vinyl shops. But I’m trying to take a lesson from Pat, who revels in new music and can as easily talk about North African rap music and the latest National album as Meet the Beatles, her first ever album. So, I’ve been listening to Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy winning Damn. While it may not be the first thing I’ll reach for on a winter night in Maine, by the fire, I was taken with it. It’s layered, political, and weirdly sensitive and misogynist at the same time, and it feels fresh and authentic and smart at the same time, with music that often pulled me from what I was doing. In short, everything music should do. I’m not a bit cooler for listening to Damn, but when I followed it with Steely Dan, I felt like I was listening to Lawrence Welk. A good sign, I think.

What I’m reading:

I am reading Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Leonardo da Vinci. I’m not usually a reader of biographies, but I’ve always been taken with Leonardo. Isaacson does not disappoint (does he ever?), and his subject is at once more human and accessible and more awe-inspiring in Isaacson’s capable hands. Gay, left-handed, vegetarian, incapable of finishing things, a wonderful conversationalist, kind, and perhaps the most relentlessly curious human being who has ever lived. Like his biographies of Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein, Isaacson’s project here is to show that genius lives at the intersection of science and art, of rationality and creativity. Highly recommend it.

What I’m watching:

We watched the This Is Us post-Super Bowl episode, the one where Jack finally buys the farm. I really want to hate this show. It is melodramatic and manipulative, with characters that mostly never change or grow, and it hooks me every damn time we watch it. The episode last Sunday was a tear jerker, a double whammy intended to render into a blubbering, tissue-crumbling pathetic mess anyone who has lost a parent or who is a parent. Sterling K. Brown, Ron Cephas Jones, the surprising Mandy Moore, and Milo Ventimiglia are hard not to love and last season’s episode that had only Brown and Cephas going to Memphis was the show at its best (they are by far the two best actors). Last week was the show at its best worst. In other words, I want to hate it, but I love it. If you haven’t seen it, don’t binge watch it. You’ll need therapy and insulin.

January 15, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Drive-By Truckers. Chris Stapleton has me on an unusual (for me) country theme and I discovered these guys to my great delight. They’ve been around, with some 11 albums, but the newest one is fascinating. It’s a deep dive into Southern alienation and the white working-class world often associated with our current president. I admire the willingness to lay bare, in kick ass rock songs, the complexities and pain at work among people we too quickly place into overly simple categories. These guys are brave, bold, and thoughtful as hell, while producing songs I didn’t expect to like, but that I keep playing. And they are coming to NH.

What I’m reading:

A textual analog to Drive-By Truckers by Chris Stapleton in many ways is Tony Horowitz’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning Confederates in the Attic. Ostensibly about the Civil War and the South’s ongoing attachment to it, it is prescient and speaks eloquently to the times in which we live (where every southern state but Virginia voted for President Trump). Often hilarious, it too surfaces complexities and nuance that escape a more recent, and widely acclaimed, book like Hillbilly Elegy. As a Civil War fan, it was also astonishing in many instances, especially when it blows apart long-held “truths” about the war, such as the degree to which Sherman burned down the south (he did not). Like D-B Truckers, Horowitz loves the South and the people he encounters, even as he grapples with its myths of victimhood and exceptionalism (and racism, which may be no more than the racism in the north, but of a different kind). Everyone should read this book and I’m embarrassed I’m so late to it.

What I’m watching:

David Letterman has a new Netflix show called “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction” and we watched the first episode, in which Letterman interviewed Barack Obama. It was extraordinary (if you don’t have Netflix, get it just to watch this show); not only because we were reminded of Obama’s smarts, grace, and humanity (and humor), but because we saw a side of Letterman we didn’t know existed. His personal reflections on Selma were raw and powerful, almost painful. He will do five more episodes with “extraordinary individuals” and if they are anything like the first, this might be the very best work of his career and one of the best things on television.

December 22, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished Sunjeev Sahota’s Year of the Runaways, a painful inside look at the plight of illegal Indian immigrant workers in Britain. It was shortlisted for 2015 Man Booker Prize and its transporting, often to a dark and painful universe, and it is impossible not to think about the American version of this story and the terrible way we treat the undocumented in our own country, especially now.

What I’m watching:

Season II of The Crown is even better than Season I. Elizabeth’s character is becoming more three-dimensional, the modern world is catching up with tradition-bound Britain, and Cold War politics offer more context and tension than we saw in Season I. Claire Foy, in her last season, is just terrific – one arched eye brow can send a message.

What I’m listening to:

A lot of Christmas music, but needing a break from the schmaltz, I’ve discovered Over the Rhine and their Christmas album, Snow Angels. God, these guys are good.

  November 14, 2017

What I’m watching:

Guiltily, I watch the Patriots play every weekend, often building my schedule and plans around seeing the game. Why the guilt? I don’t know how morally defensible is football anymore, as we now know the severe damage it does to the players. We can’t pretend it’s all okay anymore. Is this our version of late decadent Rome, watching mostly young Black men take a terrible toll on each other for our mere entertainment?

What I’m reading:

Recently finished J.G. Ballard’s 2000 novel Super-Cannes, a powerful depiction of a corporate-tech ex-pat community taken over by a kind of psychopathology, in which all social norms and responsibilities are surrendered to residents of the new world community. Kept thinking about Silicon Valley when reading it. Pretty dark, dystopian view of the modern world and centered around a mass killing, troublingly prescient.

What I’m listening to:

Was never really a Lorde fan, only knowing her catchy (and smarter than you might first guess) pop hit “Royals” from her debut album. But her new album, Melodrama, is terrific and it doesn’t feel quite right to call this “pop.” There is something way more substantial going on with Lorde and I can see why many critics put this album at the top of their Best in 2017 list. Count me in as a huge fan.

  November 3, 2017

What I’m reading: Just finished Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, her breathtakingly good second novel. How is someone so young so wise? Her writing is near perfection and I read the book in two days, setting my alarm for 4:30AM so I could finish it before work.

What I’m watching: We just binge watched season two of Stranger Things and it was worth it just to watch Millie Bobbie Brown, the transcendent young actor who plays Eleven. The series is a delightful mash up of every great eighties horror genre you can imagine and while pretty dark, an absolute joy to watch.

What I’m listening to: I’m not a lover of country music (to say the least), but I love Chris Stapleton. His “The Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning” is heartbreakingly good and reminds me of the old school country that played in my house as a kid. He has a new album and I can’t wait, but his From A Room: Volume 1 is on repeat for now.

  September 26, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished George Saunder’s Lincoln in the Bardo. It took me a while to accept its cadence and sheer weirdness, but loved it in the end. A painful meditation on loss and grief, and a genuinely beautiful exploration of the intersection of life and death, the difficulty of letting go of what was, good and bad, and what never came to be.

What I’m watching:

HBO’s The Deuce. Times Square and the beginning of the porn industry in the 1970s, the setting made me wonder if this was really something I’d want to see. But David Simon is the writer and I’d read a menu if he wrote it. It does not disappoint so far and there is nothing prurient about it.

What I’m listening to:

The National’s new album Sleep Well Beast. I love this band. The opening piano notes of the first song, “Nobody Else Will Be There,” seize me & I’m reminded that no one else in music today matches their arrangement & musicianship. I’m adding “Born to Beg,” “Slow Show,” “I Need My Girl,” and “Runaway” to my list of favorite love songs.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J from President's Corner http://bit.ly/2CNqJdM via IFTTT

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Is virtual reality the future of content marketing?

Is virtual reality the future of content marketing? As a technology for making emotional connections with people, virtual reality certainly has appeal for content marketers.  Of course for most of us working in today’s marketing industry this may seem far-fetched . Surely virtual reality is the terrain of immersive epic shooter games, thrill rides or weird yet wonderful films that you can pseudo-physically take part in? In short: a technology likely to be a boon for the entertainment industry, but not particularly relevant to content marketing?

Well allow me to put you straight – it is an increasingly popular opinion that virtual reality, or VR, is going to be the biggest thing since sliced bread, or more specifically, since the smartphone. Even more specifically VR is increasingly being considered an important future tool for content marketing.

So can we be so bold as to claim that it is the ‘future of content marketing?’

Like all emerging technologies VR offers some fantastic new opportunities, but it is also important to look at its nuances and the problems that it can create before hopping on the bandwagon.

Join us as we take a deeper look into the technology behind VR and what its implications are for content marketing.

What exactly is virtual reality?

Virtual Reality is an artificial, or computer-generated environment. It’s designed to temporarily suspend the user’s disbelief so they experience and interact with virtual worlds as if they were a real environment. The technology relies on aural sensations, audio and high-end graphics often delivered through a specialised headset, though some varieties can be experienced via a simpler screen.

Virtual reality is often used as an umbrella term for two distinct forms:

Virtual reality: This is a fully immersive experience that separates the user from the real world. The sophistication of this technology can range from simple 360 degree videos where different things can be seen by moving the head, to fully interactive games that respond to user movement.

Augmented reality: This is an integration of digital information with the real world. Unlike VR which creates a totally artificial environment, AR takes the real world and overlays it with new information. The most successful example of this so far has been the game Pokemon Go where players can locate Pokemon in the game world by interacting with the real environment.

VR experiences in effect allow users to interact with the digital world in person, without the need for intermediary hardware like keyboards or a mouse to communicate their intentions. It is an entirely new medium of connection and one that offers the opportunity for customers to experience products and brand stories in a dramatically more engaging way.

VR requires you to wear a headset.

How can virtual reality be used in content marketing?

Futuristic and science fiction-like it may be, but virtual reality has been nibbling at our consumer consciousness for a while now. As a result the technology’s capabilities have been growing alongside public adoption.

In 2014, 200,000 people worldwide had access to Virtual Reality technology. In 2016, it was 43 million. In 2018, it’s 171 million according to Kaizen’s recent whitepaper. Small studies also suggest that the interactive element increases user engagement. So how can this exciting new technology be used in  content marketing?

1. Virtual sampling of products

Both augmented and virtual reality allow potential customers to experience and sample products without leaving their own homes. For example in the real estate sector instead of spending an entire day driving from house to house to be shown around, customers could instead tour the properties virtually. Similarly using augmented reality, customers can see how products will fit into their home before committing to a purchase, or which makeup tones fit their face shape or skin tone.

A current example of this is IKEAs Place app which allows customers to virtually place furniture in their house before buying.

The world of virtual sampling offers increased convenience and an exciting new way to interact with potential purchases. Rather than just writing about how wonderful your product is now you can show customers and let them interact with it, without the need for a showroom or bricks-and-mortar store

2. Experience venues and locations

Virtual reality allows you to transport your audience to anywhere in the world (or even out of it). Think the top of the Eiffel tower, the streets of London or the soft golden beaches of Hawaii – all can be accessed instantly. This is clearly a tool that could trump most written content for choosing a holiday destination – who wants to read about it when you can actually go there (albeit virtually)?

Companies such as Marriott, BA airlines and Qantas are all working on VR programs to make this possible.

3. Immerse customers in a brand story

Video is a core part of marketing, and virtual reality promises to make this medium even more engaging. Assisted by VR, customers can immerse themselves fully in the action and get a full 360 degree experience.

The success of this interactive 360 framework has already been seen in the release of Universal’s 360-degree ad for “Fifty Shades Darker”. The ad went live on Snapchat and according to Leigh Godfrey, vice president of digital marketing at Universal Pictures at Maxus Global, saw twice the engagement over other swipe-up CTAs.

What are the potential problems with virtual reality?

As we have seen, virtual reality offers some significant new angles for the world of content marketing. However there are some unignorable challenges that could hamper the technology’s ability to truly revolutionise the industry – or dare we say it, even get off the ground altogether.

1. The hardware is still clunky

Ever seen an advert for VR? They’re full of people wandering around in great big blacked out goggles smiling to themselves and inexplicably waving their limbs around. It’s difficult to get away from the fact that total immersive VR not only looks ridiculous, it also requires an expensive headpiece that often needs to be physically wired up.

For any industry selling a level of aspiration (people need to want to aspire to be like the customers who use your products, be that pro athletes, celebrities or wealthy people) but also mass accessibility this feels like a downside. Not everyone wants to spend $600 to look like a nerd which may mean  your content audience is too slim for success.

Do you want to look like this?

  2. There are real health risks

Cybersickness is a VR-specific form of motion sickness that affects a lot of first-time and even regular users. The partial sensory immersion into a computer generated universe is stressful to the human brain, particularly when it knows intellectually and to some extent physically that this world isn’t real. As a result VR can trigger  fatigue, nausea and dizziness in a way that other medias do not.

More worryingly there is also the chance of more serious injury. Headsets and other visual displays that are very close to the eyes can cause long term harm to eyesight and balance mechanism, particularly amongst children. Poorly adjusted headsets can also cause eye strain and injury to the head, neck and spine. Unless such risks can be eliminated it’s unlikely that the technology will succeed.

3. Persistent ethical issues and a customer base that is increasingly suspicious of technology

While the industry’s focus on adoption and profitability are maybe understandable, it has been at the expense of higher level concerns. With ethical issues spanning from user protection both online and in the real world whilst immersed in the digital,  to virtual crimes, game inflicted PTSD, online torture, effects of immersive porn and data privacy. There is no shortage of profound impacts that this new technology could cause if left unregulated.

Potentially a more commercially convincing argument is that these issues are increasingly being taken into account by the younger generation. Suspicion of new technologies and the corporations that control them is on the rise.

Is it all just hype?

In 2018, total VR revenue will reach a combined $7.7 billion across hardware and software, according to Superdata market research. That’s a pretty big number and it’s caused a lot of leading marketers to get excited about the possibilities of VR. However, when you take a step back it’s clear that currently most of this spend is going to the gaming industry and the manufactures of the devices. The top earners in 2017 were Fallout 4 on PC and Skyrim VR on PSVR.

Other writing on the wall could include Facebook’s announcement that despite its $2 billion buy-in to the VR headset platform Oculus, they are closing the Oculus Story Studio. Despite strong PR soothing, the overriding suggestion is that VR is just not getting the intended response from the public – and let’s face it no one wants to be next decade’s Google Glass.

From this perspective it seems as though VR may remain either a very niche marketing tool or more likely a successful part of the entertainment industry. The likelihood that it will revolutionise content marketing is slight unless its current issues are rapidly resolved.

However, something that we should be looking to with much more hope is augmented reality. The ability to overlay information over the real world holds multiple possibilities for marketers while largely avoiding all of the traps created by its big brother. It’s already seen success with the Pokemon Go phenomenon, demonstrating not only public readiness but also how engaging the medium can be.

If you want our bet, VR won’t change much about marketing – it’s AR we should be watching out for!

from http://bit.ly/2SzcMVK