#measurement is really interesting because like. the units we use are inherently tied to the fact that we are humans living on earth

[oflgtfol]

thinking about stupid star wars world building again

so what exactly is their system of measurement? the only unit i can recall hearing is a parsec, which is a real unit irl. but like, what about smaller units, like. do they use feet? meters? some fucked up fictional unit? do they use miles or kilometers? what

[aswithasunbeam]

Hi! I absolutely adore your blog and fanfics, and I've actually learned a lot from them. You're one of my favorite Hamilton blogs. As a HUGE fan of the musical who happens to be Native American (Chickasaw to be specific) I'm curious, what kind of relationship did the real A Ham have with the indigenous people of the US, if any? Also, was he really as much of an abolitionist as the show would have you believe?

Thanks so much! Great questions! Sadly, I think Hamilton’s going to disappoint you when it comes to his relationship with Native Americans. 

Policy regarding Native Americans fell more to Henry Knox and the War Department than to Hamilton at Treasury, so this isn’t a topic that tends to be touched on as frequently when studying Hamilton. Richard Harless of George Mason University wrote an article entitled “Native American Policy” for Mount Vernon in which he describes:

Washington and Knox sought to provide safe havens for native tribes while also assimilating them into American society. Washington and Knox believed that if they failed to at least make an effort to secure Indian land, their chances of convincing Native Americans to transform their hunting culture to one of farming and herding would be undermined. As the two reluctantly came to recognize, however, it was the settlers pouring into the western frontier that controlled the national agenda regarding Native Americans and their land. By 1796 even Washington had concluded that holding back the avalanche of settlers had become nearly impossible, writing that “I believe scarcely anything short of a Chinese wall, or a line troops, will restrain Land jobbers, and the encroachment of settlers upon the Indian territory.”

The Washington administrations’ policy goal of forcing Native Americans to abandon their cultures to assimilate into white society, and the inability of the federal government to stop white settlers from clashing with Native Americans and pushing them off their land were the foundations of later atrocities, such as Andrew Jackson and the infamous “Trail of Tears.” While Hamilton wasn’t at the center of crafting these policies, he did unfortunately support them.

Unlike some of his contemporaries, Hamilton didn’t subscribe to the belief that people of other races than white were somehow biologically or inherently inferior. (See, e.g. Hamilton to John Jay, 14 March 1779, in which he puts any distinction between Blacks and whites down to a “want of cultivation (for their natural faculties are probably as good as ours”.) However, his relationship with Hamilton-Oneida Academy (today Hamilton College) indicates he, like Washington, believed that Native Americans ought to be to “civilized” by encouraging them to assimilate into white society.

The Oneida Academy was originally the idea of Samuel Kirkland, a missionary who lived among the Oneidas in upstate New York. His goal was to establish a school for both white and Native American children. In 1793, he traveled to Philadelphia to meet with President Washington and Hamilton about his idea. In his diary, he recorded:

Waited on the President. He again expressed his approbation of the proposed Seminary, as well as the part of the Plan which has been adopted, for introducing and promoting agriculture among the Indians. Mr. Hamilton chearfully consents to be a trustee of the proposed Seminary, and will afford it all the aid in his power; which was requested by Good Peter and several other Indian Chiefs when at Philadelphia the last spring…. (Documentary History of Hamilton College, p.58)

Hamilton became a trustee of the school and allowed his name to be used. On the positive side, unlike the horrific boarding schools that tore children away from their families and induced trauma by forcing them to give up all their traditions and culture, Kirkland’s academy was voluntary. In fact, Hamilton College reports, “The academy… never came to serve Samuel Kirkland’s original purpose, which was to help the Oneidas adapt to a life in settled communities. In fact, few Oneidas came to attend the school, and its students were primarily the children of local white settlers.” The school was re-charted in 1812 as “Hamilton College,” offering a traditional classical education with particular focus on rhetoric and elocution, with a student body composed entirely of white men.

The Hamilton Oneida Academy was not completely without support among the Oneidas and other Native peoples, however. A letter addressed to Hamilton by the “Representatives of the Oneida Indians” on 15 January 1794 indicates that some of the Oneida hoped to use the school to strengthen ties not only between themselves and the white settlers, but also between themselves the people of other Native tribes:

Brother, attend to our words, We write to you in particular, because some of us know you. We have all heard that you are a friend of every body—Indians as well as White people. We rejoice to hear it. We always want friends among our Brothers the white people. But should the troubles which afflict the Nations over the great Waters reach this Country, we shall again, more particularly stand in need of the friendship of our Bretheren the people of the United States. No body can tell what may happen. We think it would be good, & we wish you Brother to recommend it to Congress, to advise the Senecas & Onondagos at buffaloe Creek, to send some of their Children to be educated at a School which is erected in our Neighbourhood1—where we have sent some of our Children to learn to read & write—and that provision be made for their Support. We think that such a measure would serve to strengthen & brighten the Chains of friendship with those Nations. Brother, We Salute you. This is all we have to say.

The Junto blog has a great article about Philip Schuyler’s relationship with Native Americans in New York I’d highly recommend reading if you’re interested: “Daddy” Schuyler, Hamilton, and the Dakota Access Pipeline.

As for the question of whether Hamilton was as much of an abolitionist as the show indicates, the short answer is that Hamilton was firmly anti-slavery, though he didn’t devote enough time and effort to the cause to necessarily earn the distinction of being an “abolitionist.” I wrote a more detailed post a while back on this question which you can read here.

[sarahbatistapereira]

In 2012, voters perceived little difference between themselves and the candidates on trade. But, by 2016, the voters had moved slightly right, while they perceived Mr. Trump as moving about as far right as Mrs. Clinton had moved left. As a result, the voters, in a defensive crouch, found themselves closer to Mr. Trump. On the threat posed by China, voters hardly moved between 2012 and 2016, but while they perceived both presidential candidates as being to their left in 2012, they found Mr. Trump as having moved just to their right by 2016, again placing them closer to the Republican candidate than the Democratic one. In both cases, the findings revealed a fear that American global dominance was in danger, a belief that benefited Mr. Trump and the Republican Party. “The shift toward an antitrade stance was a particularly effective strategy for capitalizing on a public experiencing status threat due to race as well as globalization,” Dr. Mutz wrote in the study. Her survey also assessed “social dominance orientation,” a common psychological measure of a person’s belief in hierarchy as necessary and inherent to a society. People who exhibited a growing belief in such group dominance were also more likely to move toward Mr. Trump, Dr. Mutz found, reflecting their hope that the status quo be protected. “It used to be a pretty good deal to be a white, Christian male in America, but things have changed and I think they do feel threatened,” Dr. Mutz said.

Niraj Chokshi, “Trump Voters Driven by Fear of Losing Status, Not Economic Anxiety, Study Finds”, The New York Times

This is all interesting (if a bit predictable), obviously. But as a longtime “fandom dynamics explains social dynamics” believer, I actually think the part I most gravitated to was this:

“Party loyalty overwhelmingly explained how most people voted, but Dr. Mutz’s statistical analysis focused on those who bucked the trend, switching their support to the Republican candidate, Mr. Trump, in 2016.“

Because I feel like, as ever, people vastly underestimate the fandom factor in how tied these two things are--which is partly what allows certain narratives like economic anxiety to seem more tangible. (Not to mention more believable to those reporting on Why This Election Could Not be Predicted, and more truthful to those who voted for Trump, who I would argue may genuinely think that is the reason why and who do not care if the stats suggest the economy was improving.) We are so accustomed to the idea that party loyalty is just a fact, a basic and unalterable building block of an election, that we don’t spend enough time analyzing just how that party loyalty came to form. Why that spirit trumps, pun fully intended, a disgust towards a bad candidate for those in the Republican party who swear that is the only reason they voted Trump. Why it is the left doesn’t have nearly the same voting power, despite the right being similarly fragmented if you really analyze the various groups. 

I mean, consider also:

“Losing a job or income between 2012 and 2016 did not make a person any more likely to support Mr. Trump, Dr. Mutz found. Neither did the mere perception that one’s financial situation had worsened. A person’s opinion on how trade affected personal finances had little bearing on political preferences. Neither did unemployment or the density of manufacturing jobs in one’s area.

“It wasn’t people in those areas that were switching, those folks were already voting Republican,” Dr. Mutz said.”

Fine. But how did they come to be voting Republican? How long have they been voting Republican? 

These are questions that may seem irrelevant to the broader one, but I feel like when we look at how the discourse has evolved into almost playground brawls and meta-based speculation divorced from fact or political reality, we can’t really afford not to look at the whole of it. What is the common point here, really? That the right, to put it in an oversimplified manner, is almost the party of the sad. If you feel disenfranchised, or if you feel like your way of life is under attack, the right seems there for you. Whether because it’s been a long time coming, or because you have only recently become afraid of globalization and the way it might leave you behind. 

This makes sense when the right has an excellent grasp of how to cultivate its fandom, for lack of a better term. Even if there are many different groups within it, the BNFs so to speak are all relatively the same along a spectrum. They encourage, if not outright preach, attack and destruction of the left--which as we can easily note online, a dragging of someone deemed offensive is far more immediately satisfying than pursuing actual action for many people, and an easy way to feel part of a group without doing research or having to prove one’s self. They also do this more I think than they actually spend time discussing their own personal views, which could end up contentious and could possibly remind people that they have their own little circles within the community. The right is powerful for making people feel united, like they are really and truly the majority and the minority left is just being loud about how disconnected from reality they are. 

And just like in fandom, I can’t help but feel like anyone who thinks you can disprove a strongly held and uniting feeling with simple dry canonical fact will just end up banging their head against a wall.   

[aion-rsa]

Injustice Beat Zack Snyder’s Justice League to the Punch

https://ift.tt/3vFSoXl

The release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a moment that belongs to the fans who petitioned for years to not just see a more definitive version of 2017’s Justice League but director Zack Snyder‘s complete vision for a Justice League film.

While the discourse over the quality of that vision will wage on, our own critic suggests that Snyder doesn’t quite achieve his goals for a Justice League film much less the idea of a live-action Justice League film so good that it somehow becomes hard to imagine that idea ever being done better. Perhaps some of those shortcomings can be attributed to the unique nature of his cut’s development and release, but there’s still a feeling that Snyder is chasing something he may not have the chance to catch.

What’s remarkable about his pursuit, though, is that in a strange way, we may have already seen an earlier and better version of many of Snyder’s ideas in NetherRealm Studios’ Injustice series, an incredible DC fighting game franchise that features epic superhero storytelling worthy of the big screen.

The idea that a fighting game series could surpass two cuts of a live-action Justice League film will probably sound like an exaggeration to some. Yet, the most shocking thing about the Injustice series isn’t the quality of the games, it’s the way that they superbly handled so many of the exact ideas that Snyder tried to emphasize in his three DCEU movies.

Injustice Shows a Batman/Superman Conflict Done Well

In spite of his better efforts, Zack Snyder struggles to effectively showcase a Batman/Superman conflict that is compelling for reasons beyond the prestige and power of the characters. Snyder’s Batman vs. Superman fights often come across as little more than a couple of alpha males posturing over the idea that the town just ain’t big enough for the two of them.

Injustice takes a different approach. By focusing on the idea that Batman and Superman are separated by their abilities to live with tragedy (especially after the death of Lois Lane), and their radically different philosophies regarding how to use their powers, Injustice forges a far more complicated relationship between DC’s two giants.

The Batman and Superman of Injustice 2 see different paths to similar goals. They don’t want to battle each other to prove who is best, and their inevitable battle is treated as the tragic results of all other options failing.

Injustice Effectively Portrays a Morally Ambiguous Superman

While Snyder’s portrayal of Batman tends to draw more heat, his take on Superman has been the subject of debate. He seems to be more interested in showing Superman as a figure who struggles to repress his godlike powers rather than as a beacon of hope for humanity. As a result, Snyder’s Superman more often comes across as a particularly large wrecking ball with a sour disposition. It’s not inherently wrong to portray a more morally ambiguous Superman; Snyder’s films just haven’t handled that approach especially well. 

The Injustice series features a far more interesting take on the Man of Steel. The Superman we find in Injustice still believes in being a hero, but a series of tragic events convince him that the best thing he can do for Earth is to be its unflinching mighty protector.

It’s a believable enough evolution of Superman’s mythology that becomes much darker once you see the tyrannical methods Superman is willing to employ in the name of “protection” and “justice.” He still believes himself to be a hero through it all, and the true tragedy is how we still very much want him to be that hero even as we question how far gone he is…and how far we’d go to preserve the idea of him we’ve crafted in our minds.

Injustice Balances a Huge Roster of DC Characters and Their Motivations

Both versions of the Justice League film have their ups and downs, but one problem each shares is a struggle to effectively manage the various team members and showcase them in ways that feel like they’re both getting their own stories and contributing to the larger plot. Snyder’s version is largely superior in that pursuit, but his four-hour epic still sees major characters disappear for long stretches of time and sometimes feel frustratingly interchangeable.

Injustice 2 is far from perfect when it comes to balancing all of its characters, but the game generally does a better job of managing its many heroes than Snyder’s superhero films. In a game that includes everyone from Batman and Superman to Swamp Thing and Blue Beetle, nearly every hero, villain, and major DC character is given a moment to shine as well a role in the greater narrative at play. Even when Injustice 2 becomes almost too much to keep up with, it usually finds a way to pull us back in by leaning into primary characters and storylines.

Injustice’s Villains Feel Like Properly Developed Characters

Despite Snyder’s attempts to improve Justice League’s villains, the film’s big bads — Steppenwolf and Darkseid at the forefront — rarely rise above simply being big and bad. They’re appropriate enough threats given the power levels of the heroes they’re up against, but they add little to the narrative beyond being the centerpiece for the inevitable big battle. They rarely rise above that “charging bull” description Alfred uses at one point.

This is one area where the Injustice series feels like the clearly better version of what Snyder is trying to accomplish. The first game sees The Joker and Lex Luthor (among others) mastermind a convincing plot designed to destroy the Justice League from within, while the second game employs Brainiac as the biggest new villain in a game certainly not lacking in them. The latter example is closer to the kind of bad guys that Snyder employs, but in Brainiac, we get a galactic level threat whose motivations are tied to the consequences of the hero’s actions and whose own actions genuinely left us wondering what would remain of the world that was left behind.

Injustice Successfully Sells the Theme of Unity Better Than the Justice League Films

Both cuts of Justice League film really try to sell the importance of these heroes coming together. The problem is that idea rarely goes beyond the “Megazord” philosophy which states that the only way to beat Rita Repula’s engorged creation is to join forces for the ultimate show of strength. There are few attempts to really emphasize the value and complexity of coming together, and what little efforts are made are drowned out by the spectacle.

The Injustice series handles the heroes ultimate coming together a little more effectively by showing us how the pursuit of unity is a constant battle. Even when Superman and Batman put their philosophical differences aside for a time to battle an exterior threat, there’s the lingering implication that the only thing that keeps them together is a threat that has the chance to destroy the world before they can play out their own conflict.

Read more

Movies

Why Zack Snyder’s Justice League Isn’t Canon

By Joseph Baxter

Movies

Justice League: How Christopher Nolan Helped Prevent Zack Snyder from Seeing the Whedon Cut

By David Crow

Justice League treats the idea of uniting together as little more than another example of the “getting the band together” trope. In Injustice, we see how such alliances are constantly tested and how our heroes must continuously battle threats from the inside and out to remain truly united.

Injustice’s Dark Tone Is Complemented by Effective Moments of Levity

Snyder’s DCEU superhero films aren’t devoid of humor, but so much of the humor of those films feels like the result of a realization that there hasn’t been a joke in a while so someone better put one in there. We’ve seen what happens when someone tries too hard to turn a superhero film into a comedy, but that general lack of levity in Snyder’s recent efforts means that heavy moments sometimes don’t land as well as they should because there is so little to measure them against.

The Injustice games, meanwhile, are about as dark as DC storytelling can get. They deal with death, grief, corruption, and the loss of hope. Yet, they still find room for little moments of humor or lighthearted observations that aren’t just genuinely funny but feel appropriate for their characters and the situation.

When Robin says to Batman, “So you won’t kill, but you’re fine with traumatic brain injuries,” in Injustice 2, it’s both a great joke and a sly way of showing Robin feels that Batman is being a bit hypocritical by not seeing Superman’s point of view. There are too few instances of that kind of humor in the Snyder films.

Justice League’s Fights Effectively Help Tell a Story

If the Injustice games were little more than a tournament fighter-style title, they would likely still be respected for their rosters, customization options, and mostly solid mechanics. Of course, the Injustice games go a step further by telling truly epic story.

What’s really impressive are the ways that the game splices those tournament fighter matches into the narrative. It’s not always perfect (how many times do you have to beat up Bane?), but the way that the games utilize those fights as the culmination of major plot points helps sell the importance of the narrative moments as well as what is at stake during what would otherwise be fairly standard single-player fighting game matches.

By comparison, Snyder sometimes struggles to really sell the story during large action sequences just as one of his weak points as a filmmaker is finding the “action” and intrigue in extended dialogue sequences. Action and storytelling in those films sometimes feel like separate blocks rather than two ideas that should flow together. 

Injustice Builds Off and Improves What Came Before

DC films do not need to be like MCU films to succeed, but the lack of a cohesive DCEU structure has certainly hurt previous DC films and Snyder’s work in particular. While Snyder tries to tie Man of Steel, Batman vs. Superman, and Justice League together, there are very few instances where those movies truly benefit from their association with each other. 

Injustice is an example of how the DCEU could have utilized more unified storytelling in its own way. By balancing sometimes maddening multiverse shenanigans, Injustice 2 picks up the best threads that its predecessor left dangling while also honoring that game’s story as a standalone experience that doesn’t demand a “next chapter” to work.

At the same time, Injustice 2 could easily be enjoyed as a standalone experience but works best when you’ve taken the time to familiarize yourself with the larger stories in play. It’s the kind of serialized storytelling that Snyder tries to utilize from time to time but ultimately falls short of properly mastering.

The Injustice Series Utilizes the Best of Video Games and Filmmaking

While Snyder has stated that some of his works are inspired by video games (he even said at one point that he would reward himself for making progress on Man of Steel by playing Call of Duty which…certainly fits), that comparison is more often brought up as a criticism by those trying to categorize his works as all style and no substance.

That’s a criticism that often undermines the fantastic storytelling of so many video games, but it becomes a bit more valid when you consider that Snyder’s real problem may be that he struggles to find that balance between spectacle and story that the best AAA games often achieve.

Again, you can’t say that Injustice is perfect in this pursuit, but there is something undeniably impressive about how it combines the best of game design with what we typically call “Hollywood filmmaking.” One minute, you’re customizing your gear and learning new combos in Injustice 2, and the next sees you swept off your feet by stunning cinematic sequences that advance the story through strong dialogue, exceptional cinematic design, and incredible visuals.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Snyder has succeeded in the past in terms of utilizing more video-game-like visuals and design concepts, but with his DC superhero films, he often struggles to blend film and video games in the ways that have come to define the Injustice series.

The post Injustice Beat Zack Snyder’s Justice League to the Punch appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3c1k95b

[rametarin]

If I had the ear of South America..

I would say, “Latinx is only the beginning.”

Yeah. It’s perceived as an anglo plot to colonize and imperialize the Spanish language, as it was born in the US thanks to a bunch of cultural marxist shitheads that are shamelessly trying to argue against gendered language on some futurist utopian transhumanist bullshit, white claiming it’s purely, “for diversity and inclusion of the transgendered and non-binary gendered people.”

But you aren’t going to stop or stem this tide of stupid by writing it off as some anglo plot. It just.. it won’t stop.

Here in the United States a guerilla cultural war went on. As a child I was exposed to radical feminists that took careful measures to engineer my experiences and get me to draw conclusions. That white people were evil, as individuals and as a group. That white people were destroying the world. That white people were soulless, cultureless imperialist monsters that just wanted to subvert all the innocent and harmless brown people and verifiably undeniably had enslaved everybody and everything.

That togetherness you enjoy under the label Hispanic and/or Latino? These people that formulated Latinx are working to subvert that, too. Here in the states, “I don’t see race” became controversial because the supposed progressives don’t like the egalitarian model that eliminates race and class from the equation to address if an individual is free or not based on their own personal merits, poverty level, education, etc. They DO like to ask, “Are these COMMUNITIES and MINORITY GROUPS (self identified) thriving and growing? If not, is it because the majority isn’t helping them grow at their own expense?”

In the United States, for the longest time, the narrative was that Spanish colonialism was irrelevant, at least in the US conversation about race and oppression, because, “Spanish speakers are marginalized and oppressed.” And also implied to be synonymous with being as different from white people as Asians and black Africans. So giving the Spanish the same stigma as they give, say, people descended from the English, or the French, or the Germans, was considered wrong.

But now that they’ve decided they want to cement more ties with drug cartels and guerillas across South America, the conversation and discourse has progressed. Now they want to kick up activity in Latin America to make society divisive and talk about how the black Latino is inherently oppressed by the white Latino. Rather than the discourse assume everybody south of the border is some big happy singular culture and family, it’s becoming clearer they don’t like white Spanish, and want the progressive and hip and cool kid view that white Spanish people, regardless of their origins or immigration status, are oppressors of people with different skin, solely on account of their, “privilege.”

This mentality that encouraged minority groups to militantly self-segregate and declare themselves separate cultures unto themselves, being oppressed by a white majority, is being used to sell social theories and scapegoat majorities for any and all problems being faced by a community .Exploiting the very real colorism and history of discrimination, but not for the ends of ending it, but for exploiting it to motivate division, discord and violence.

Feminism’s surface stated values and goals in and of themselves aren’t all bad. Obviously, there are backwards and exploitative or outright misogynistic views, values and social policy put in place to prevent women from living independent lives or progressing in work or business. The concept of a niche of interest that covers that WOULD be good, except it has been co-opted and platformed by these same marxist guerilla people for the purposes of selling dialectic materialistic views on what is unfair and what is unjust, and they’re harnessing that anger to create a culture that makes women feel oppressed as a class and under the auspices of what they’re learning from the Marxists.

They use and exploit this niche, this legitimate advocacy towards equality and advancement for women, the way a horror movie monster wiggles into the skin of a crewmate to characterize itself as something it is not while sabotaging the environment and exploiting the situation for its own ends. Infiltration. So female uprightedness and empowerment in and of itself is not the problem, but ‘feminism’ as a social organization is. The banner has been platformed and tained, and a lot of the literature mixed in with it is more of the same Critical Legal Theory crap that tells them certain things are true and absolute based on arbitrary theory.

It is important to not see this egalitarian undertone as the problem. It is not. The egalitarian element that is appropriated by these conspirators and guerillas is not the issue. The issue is the people that have exploited the conversation of female equality, are doing so to stick lenses over the eyes of the people with the only outlet of social organization they can see or know to do anything about it. And that’s how you get populist radical feminism as the only or biggest, loudest game in town for their organizing.

That’s how you get buzz cut self-proclaimed radfems rioting and attacking churches and other, “patriarchal organizations.” That’s how you get the same sort of woman taking the liberty of telling young girls (whom then go on to see young boys so dourly and poorly) that “society is corrupted and evil.”

It is so, so important going forwards to fight shit like Latinx in the correct way. If you make the wrong arguments, you won’t break through to your daughters or sons. They’re being told that white people (and this now includes Spanish-Latinos) are monsters. And they’re being told that men are shit. Little boys (like I was) are being cornered by their female age-group peers, their peers older sisters, aunts, mothers, other peers, that men by default are oppressive, woman-hating monsters by default and by society/culture.

You need to understand that the things these supposed progressives try to fight for, they do it solely to take the niche away from anybody else and DEFINE progressivism as what they want, and anything they do not, to be more of the same oppression by race, by sex, by religion, by culture, by money. It’s a propaganda game, and the more any of you try to preach about Jesus or the church knowing best, or ‘things are just naturally a certain way and you need to understand that,’ the more you play into their hands.

Your enemy is radical, and it is only secular on paper. But they’ll induct people to have “important conversations” with your children and community that appeal to what they only call science and logic, that are in fact only loosely that. And really just subjective opinion, philosophy. Social science. You try and appeal to religion to argue their stuff, they’ll beat you like a drum and you’ll just prove them right in the developing hearts and minds of a generation that is trying to not be stuck with the stigma of their parents or ancestors in the eyes of their friends.

This is not an enemy you can just sing a song about Jesus and Mary and defeat. These people will take and twist any real or even perceived and interpreted flaw in your society and those that suffer from the ills the most will internalize it, if what’s made to appeal to their sensibilities takes.

In America, that comes in the form of mixing racial separatism and supremacism with conflating it for the struggle for black freedom and equality. And I cannot imagine it being any different south of Mexico, whatsoever. They’ll work on the girls and tell them that to be born white-Latino is to be an oppressor, tell the girls they’re largely exempt from this because women are a marginalized and oppressed minority/demographic, and tell the misc. non-white groups across South America that they should organize against the hegemony of white people and “whiteness.”

They’ll do it while pretending their attempts and desire to spread disunity and hostility is “sticking up for the little guy.” They’ll do it while confronting overbearing actual patriarchal culture and binary gendered culture (so long as it’s white)  and write off ALL of Catholicism in South America as equal to the WORST of examples of bad Catholicism.

American conservatives continue to struggle dealing with these people because they see an opportunity to polarize and capitalize on the totalitarian nature of this polarization. They see it as a way to incentivize people to vote for more conservative, religious and similarthings, because if their alternative are literal communists and socialists, they can afford to ask for more.

Meanwhile they lose when it comes to hearts and minds of the young because their messages are just utterly worthless when as a 2-13 year old, you’re being told religious, old, white, capitalist people are oppressing everybody and destroying everything and trying to force everybody to live and society to work under the totalitarianism of religion.

When the angry political lesbian type corners you as a small child and explains that men are why women are so afraid of men, and you can’t even rebutt that it’s a feminist talking point without them talking about how that’s a Nazi/conservative propaganda view, and the young girls they’re grooming go with that interpretation of the world and events because it holds more romantic value for them, things they want to be true and things that they’ve been given just enough facts and reason to think are true, it doesn’t help when competitive arguments are either, “you’re too young to think about or talk about social issues or political discourse,” or, confirm every negative suspicion they now have with, “well they’re right, we are oppressing them, but we have every right to.”

The only way to truly beat these manipulative, lying, exploiting animals is to beat them at their own game.

They do not care about minority welfare or rights beyond their solutions on how to address any given injustice they can think of. Whether it be by making society respect the establishment of different racial communities again solely to provide financail welfare to people on the basis of race, or rules that say they’re free to discriminate against groups of people in the name of hiring and defending others. They care only about using those struggles to give the state more power over not just people, but groups, and even how communities are defined. Right down to trying to demand biological sex be marginalized in importance of terms like gender solely because less than .4% of the human population claims to not be defined by the biological sex/gender binary.

So the only way to defeat them is to address the problems in a way that route and solve them, while you still have power and the means by which to solve them the proper way. For if you don’t, the Marxist village idiots will.

[newsnigeria]

Check out New Post published on Ọmọ Oòduà

New Post has been published on http://ooduarere.com/news-from-nigeria/world-news/last-western-empire/

The last western Empire?

[this column was written for the Unz Review]

“Missing the forest for the trees” is an apt metaphor if we take a look at most commentary describing the past twenty years or so. This period has been remarkable in the number of genuinely tectonic changes the international system has undergone. It all began during what I think of as the “Kristallnacht of international law,” 30 August September 1995, when the Empire attacked the Bosnian-Serbs in a direct and total violation of all the most fundamental principles of international law. Then there was 9/11, which gave the Neocons the “right” (or so they claimed) to threaten, attack, bomb, kill, maim, kidnap, assassinate, torture, blackmail and otherwise mistreat any person, group or nation on the planet simply because “we are the indispensable nation” and “you either are with the terrorists or with us“. During these same years, we saw Europe become a third-rate US colony incapable of defending even fundamental European geopolitical interests while the USA became a third-rate colony of Israel equally incapable of defending even fundamental US geopolitical interests. Most interestingly looking back, while the US and the EU were collapsing under the weight of their own mistakes, Russia and China were clearly on the ascend; Russia mostly in military terms (see here and here) and China mostly economically. Most crucially, Russia and China gradually agreed to become symbionts which, I would argue, is even stronger and more meaningful than if these two countries were united by some kind of formal alliance: alliances can be broken (especially when a western nation is involved), but symbiotic relationships usually last forever (well, nothing lasts forever, of course, but when a lifespan is measured in decades, it is the functional equivalent of “forever”, at least in geostrategic analytical terms). The Chinese have now developed an official, special, and unique expression to characterize that relationship with Russia. They speak of a “Strategic, comprehensive partnership of coordination for the new era.”

This is the AngloZionists’ worst nightmare, and their legacy ziomedia goes to great lengths to conceal the fact that Russia and China are, for all practical purposes, strategic allies. They also try hard to convince the Russian people that China is a threat to Russia (using bogus arguments, but never-mind that). It won’t work, while some Russians have fears about China, the Kremlin knows the truth of the matter and will continue to deepen Russia’s symbiotic relationship with China further. Not only that, it now appears that Iran is gradually being let in to this alliance. We have the most official confirmation possible of that fact in words spoken by General Patrushev in Israel after his meeting with US and Israeli officials: “Iran has always been and remains our ally and partner.”

I could go on listing various signs of the collapse of the AngloZionist Empire along with signs that a new, parallel, international world order is in the process of being built before our eyes. I have done that many times in the past, and I will not repeat it all here (those interested can click here and here). I will submit that the AngloZionists have reached a terminal stage of decay in which the question of “if” is replaced by “when.” But even more interesting would be to look at the “what”: what does the collapse of the AngloZionist Empire really mean?

I rarely see this issue discussed and when it is, it is usually to provide all sorts of reassurances that the Empire will not really collapse, that it is too powerful, too rich and too big to fail and that the current political crises in the USA and Europe will simply result in a reactive transformation of the Empire once the specific problems plaguing it have been addressed. That kind of delusional nonsense is entirely out of touch with reality. And the reality of what is taking place before our eyes is much, much more dramatic and seminal than just fixing a few problems here and there and merrily keep going on.

One of the factors which lures us into a sense of complacency is that we have seen so many other empires in history collapse only to be replaced pretty quickly by some other, that we can’t even imagine that what is taking place right now is a much more dramatic phenomenon: the passage into gradual irrelevance of an entire civilization!

But first, let’s define our terms. For all the self-aggrandizing nonsense taught in western schools, Western civilization does not have its roots in ancient Rome or, even less so, in ancient Greece. The reality is that the Western civilization was born from the Middle-Ages in general and, especially, the 11th century which, not coincidentally, saw the following succession of moves by the Papacy:

1054: Rome separates itself from the rest of the Christian world in the so-called Great Schism

1075: Rome adopts the so-called Papal Dictation

1095: Rome launches the First Crusade

These three closely related events are of absolutely crucial importance to the history of the West. The first step the West needed was to free itself from the influence and authority of the rest of the Christian world. Once the ties between Rome and the Christian world were severed, it was only logical for Rome to decree that the Pope now has the most extravagant super-powers no other bishop before him had ever dared contemplate. Finally, this new autonomy and desire for absolute control over our planet resulted in what could be called “the first European imperialist war”: the First Crusade.

To put it succinctly: the 11th century Franks were the real progenitors of modern “Western” Europe and the 11th century marked the first imperialist “foreign war” (to use a modern term). The name of the Empire of the Franks has changed over the centuries, but not its nature, essence, or purpose. Today the true heirs of the Franks are the AngloZionists (for a truly *superb* discussion of the Frankish role in desotrying the true, ancient, Christian Roman civilization of the West, see here).

Over the next 900 years or more, many different empires replaced the Frankish Papacy, and most European countries had their “moment of glory” with colonies overseas and some kind of ideology which was, by definition and axiomatically, declared the only good (or even “the only Christian”) one, whereas the rest of the planet was living in uncivilized and generally terrible conditions which could only be mitigated by those who have *always* believed that they, their religion, their culture or their nation had some kind of messianic role in history (call it “manifest destiny” or “White man’s burden” or being a Kulturträger in quest of a richly deserved Lebensraum): the West Europeans.

It looks like most European nations had a try at being an empire and at imperialist wars. Even such modern mini-states like Holland, Portugal or Austria once were feared imperial powers. And each time one European Empire fell, there was always another one to take its place.

But today?

Who do you think could create an empire powerful enough to fill the void resulting from the collapse of the AngloZionist Empire?

The canonical answer is “China.” And I think that this is nonsense.

Empires cannot only trade. Trade alone is simply not enough to remain a viable empire. Empires also need military force, and not just any military force, but the kind of military force which makes resistance futile. The truth is that NO modern country has anywhere near the capabilities needed to replace the USA in the role of World Hegemon: not even uniting the Russian and Chinese militaries would achieve that result since these two countries do not have:

1) a worldwide network of bases (which the USA have, between 700-1000 depending on how you count)

2) a major strategic air-lift and sea-lift power projection capability

3) a network of so-called “allies” (colonial puppets, really) which will assist in any deployment of military force

But even more crucial is this: China and Russia have no desire whatsoever to become an empire again. These two countries have finally understood the eternal truth, which is that empires are like parasites who feed on the body which hosts them. Yes, not only are all empires always and inherently evil, but a good case can be made that the first victims of imperialism are always the nations which “host the empire” so to speak. Oh sure, the Chinese and the Russians want their countries to be truly free, powerful and sovereign, and they understand that this is only possible when you have a military which can deter an attack, but neither China nor Russia have any interests in policing the planet or imposing some regime change on other countries. All they really want is to be safe from the USA, that’s it.

This new reality is particularly visible in the Middle-East where countries like the United States, Israel or Saudi Arabia (this is the so-called “Axis of Kindness”) are currently only capable of deploying a military capable of massacring civilians or destroy the infrastructure of a country, but which cannot be used effectively against the two real regional powers with a modern military: Iran and Turkey.

But the most revealing litmus test was the US attempt to bully Venezuela back into submission. For all the fire and brimstone threats coming out of DC, the entire “Bolton plan(s?)” for Venezuela has/have resulted in a truly embarrassing failure: if the Sole “Hyperpower” on the planet cannot even overpower a tremendously weakened country right in its backyard, a country undergoing a major crisis, then indeed the US military should stick to the invasion of small countries like Monaco, Micronesia or maybe the Vatican (assuming the Swiss guard will not want to take a shot at the armed reps of the “indispensable nation”). The fact is that an increasing number of medium-sized “average” countries are now gradually acquiring the means to resist a US attack.

So if the writing is on the wall for the AngloZionist Empire, and if no country can replace the USA as imperial world hegemon, what does that mean?

It means the following: 1000 years of European imperialism is coming to an end!

This time around, neither Spain nor the UK nor Austria will take the place of the USA and try to become a world hegemon. In fact, there is not a single European nation which has a military even remotely capable of engaging the kind of “colony pacification” operations needed to keep your colonies in a suitable state of despair and terror. The French had their very last hurray in Algeria, the UK in the Falklands, Spain can’t even get Gibraltar back, and Holland has no real navy worth speaking about. As for central European countries, they are too busy brown-nosing the current empire to even think of becoming an empire (well, except Poland, of course, which dreams of some kind of Polish Empire between the Baltic and the Black Sea; let them, they have been dreaming about it for centuries, and they will still dream about it for many centuries to come…).

Now compare European militaries with the kind of armed forces you can find in Latin America or Asia? There is such a knee-jerk assumption of superiority in most Anglos that they completely fail to realize that medium and even small-sized countries can develop militaries sufficient enough to make an outright US invasion impossible or, at least, any occupation prohibitively expensive in terms of human lives and money (see here, here and here). This new reality also makes the typical US missile/airstrike campaign pretty useless: they will destroy a lot of buildings and bridges, they will turn the local TV stations (“propaganda outlets” in imperial terminology) into giant piles of smoking rubble and dead bodies, and they kill plenty of innocents, but that won’t result in any kind of regime change. The striking fact is that if we accept that warfare is the continuation of politics by other means, then we also have to admit, that under that definition, the US armed forces are totally useless since they cannot help the USA achieve any meaningful political goals.

The truth is that in military and economic terms, the “West” has already lost. The fact that those who understand don’t talk, and that those who talk about this (denying it, of course) have no understanding of what is taking place, makes no difference at all.

In theory, we could imagine that some kind of strong leader would come to power in the USA (the other western countries are utterly irrelevant), crush the Neocons like Putin crushed them in Russia, and prevent the brutal and sudden collapse of the Empire, but that ain’t gonna happen. If there is one thing which the past couple of decades have proven beyond reasonable doubt is that the imperial system is entirely unable to reform itself in spite of people like Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, Ross Perrot, Ron Paul, Mike Gravel or even Obama and Trump – all men who promised meaningful change and who were successfully prevented by the system of achieving anything meaningful. Thus the system is still 100% effective, at least inside the USA: it took the Neocons less than 30 days to crush Trump and all his promises of change, and now it even got Tulsi Gabbard to bow down and cave in to Neocons’ absolutely obligatory political orthodoxy and myths.

So what is likely to happen next?

Simply put, Asia will replace the Western World. But – crucially – this time around no empire will come to take the place of the AngloZionist one. Instead, a loose and informal coalition of mostly Asian countries will offer an alternative economic and civilizational model, which will be immensely attractive to the rest of the planet. As for the Empire, it will very effectively disband itself and slowly fade into irrelevance. Both US Americans and Europeans will, for the very first time in their history, have to behave like civilized people, which means that their traditional “model of development” (ransacking the entire planet and robbing everybody blind) will have to be replaced by one in which these US Americans and Europeans will have to work like everybody else to accumulate riches. This notion will absolutely horrify the current imperial ruling elites, but I wager that it will be welcomed by the majority of the people, especially when this “new” (for them) model will yield more peace and prosperity than the previous one!

Indeed, if the Neocons don’t blow up the entire planet in a nuclear holocaust, the USA and Europe will survive, but only after a painful transition period which could last for a decade or more. One of the factors which will immensely complicate the transition from Empire to “regular” country will be the profound and deep influence 1000 years of imperialism have had on the western cultures, especially in the completely megalomaniac United States (Professor John Marciano’s “Empire as a way of life” lecture series addresses this topic superbly – I highly recommend them!): One thousand years of brainwashing are not so easily overcome, especially on the subconscious (assumptions) level.

Finally, the current rather nasty reaction to the multi-culturalism imposed by the western ruling elites is no less pathological than this corrosive multi-culturalism in the first place. I am referring to the new theories “revisiting” WWII and finding inspiration in all things Third Reich, very much including a revival of racist/racialist theories. This is especially ridiculous (and offensive) when coming from people who try to impersonate Christians but who instead of prayers on their lips just spew 1488-like nonsense. These folks all represent precisely the kind of “opposition” the Neocons love to deal with and which they always (and I really mean *always*) end up defeating. This (pretend) opposition (useful idiots, really) will remain strong as long as it remains well funded (which it currently is). But as soon as the current megalomania (“We are the White Race! We built Athens and Rome! We are Evropa!!!”) ends with an inevitable faceplant, folks will eventually return to sanity and realize that no external scapegoat is responsible for the current state of the West. The sad truth is that the West did all this to itself (mainly due to arrogance and pride!), and the current waves of immigrants are nothing more than a 1000 years of really bad karma returning to where it came from initially. I don’t mean to suggest that folks in the West are all individually responsible for what is happening now. But I do say that all the folks in the West now live with the consequences of 1000 years of unrestrained imperialism. It will be hard, very hard, to change ways, but since that is also the only viable option, it will happen, sooner or later.

But still – there is hope. IF the Neocons don’t blow up the planet, and IF mankind is given enough time to study its history and understand where it took the wrong turn, then maybe, just maybe, there is hope.

I think that we can all find solace in the fact that no matter how ugly, stupid and evil the AngloZionist Empire is, no other empire will ever come to replace it.

In other words, should we survive the current empire (which is by no means certain!) then at least we can look forward to a planet with no empires left, only sovereign countries.

I submit that this is a future worth struggling for.

The Saker

[aminalatif]

ILFS: IL&FS debt fiasco: How the credit raters missed an epic fail

NEW DELHI: Indian authorities have spent the week containing the collateral damage from the IL&FS group struggling to service Rs 91,000 crore in debt. Next up on their agenda is figuring out why the country’s credit rating agencies didn’t see the crisis coming.

IL&FS Group is a vast conglomerate with a complex corporate structure that funds infrastructure projects across the world’s fastest-growing major economy. The financier, set up in 1987, and its listed subsidiaries have powered India’s infrastructure boom– including the Chenani-Nashri road tunnel, India’s longest–and raised billions of dollars from the country’s corporate debt market.

In July, company founder Ravi Parthasarathy stepped down, citing health reasons. In August a default within the group rattled India’s money markets, added to pressure on corporate bond yields and sparked a sell-off in the stock market. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has initiated a special audit, given the potential systemic risk the group poses to other non-bank lenders and worries about Rs 3,600 crore of repayment obligations coming due over the next six months.

The nation’s credit rating industry has come under scrutiny after the firms that assessed IL&FS, including the local partners of Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings, failed to see the financial troubles brewing at the financier. The group’s debt burden jumped 44 per cent in the year ended March 31 from 2015.

“Rating agencies need better market intelligence and surveillance rather than depending upon historical data and some structure based on past estimates.” said Nirmal Gangwal, founder of Brescon Corporate Advisors Pvt., a distressed asset turnaround specialist. “They also need to factor changes on the ground like change of leadership, cash flow management in recent past and market environment.”

GREAT UNRAVELING

The credit rating companies’ failure to foresee the great unraveling at IL&FS has left the top economic policymakers, including RBI governor Urjit Patel and finance minister Arun Jaitley, facing contagion risk to the broader financial sector.

“There is definitely a case for revisiting ratings standards and the whole rating framework,” Rajiv Kumar, financial services secretary said in an interview. “Some kind of accountability needs to be there. It has to be made more robust.”

IL&FS is a huge borrower, accounting for 2 per cent of outstanding commercial paper, 1 per cent of debentures and as much as 0.7 per cent of banking system loans. The group itself in turn acts as a key source of capital to non-bank lenders. Another worry is a stampede by individual investors out of fixed-income mutual funds that will force portfolio managers to sell other companies’ debt securities to cover redemption requests, setting off a vicious cycle.

“We have not had this kind of a systemic event of this magnitude in the bond market before in India, and so we don’t really have a precedent as to how to deal with it,” said Kunal Shah, a debt fund manager who oversees nearly $1.7 billion at Mumbai-based Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance Co.

Until July, India’s credit rating companies had investment grade ratings on billions of dollars of corporate debt raised by the IL&FS Group and its subsidiaries. The first signs of trouble came in June, when the special purpose vehicles tied to IL&FS Transportation Networks Ltd., a group subsidiary, defaulted on its debt obligations. More defaults in other parts of the empire followed in August and September.

In August, major credit rating companies such as ICRA, a unit of Moody’s, Fitch-owned India Ratings & Research and CARE began to cut their rating for the group’s parent company, Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services. More rating downgrades to default status came in September. All three rating assessors declined to comment.

PROJECT SLOWDOWN The burning question now is whether credit analysts should have seen the financial reckoning at the IL&FS group earlier. It was no secret that funding costs for companies in India surged as the interest rates in the nation’s credit markets hit multi-year highs. For IL&FS, short-term debt increased 30 per cent to Rs 1,35,60 crore in the year to March 31, according the company’s annual report.

The pace of new infrastructure projects has slowed down in India, and some of IL&FS’s own construction projects, including roads and ports, have faced cost overruns amid delays in land acquisition and approvals. Disputes over contracts have locked about Rs 9,000 crore of payments due from the government.

Indian credit ratings companies rely on the same “issuer-pays” model common in the U.S. that allows the entity issuing a financial instrument to pay credit analysts upfront to rate the underlying securities. S&P Global, Moody’s and Fitch were criticized for placing profits before investors when rating mortgage securities in the run-up to the US financial crisis in 2008.

“Where we have gone wrong in India is where regulators have written regulations that force regulated entities, such as banks, mutual funds, to use the rating,” said Professor Ajay Shah with the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy in New Delhi. “A rating company should be just a research company, which has to sink or swim based on the value that it contributes to the institutional investor.”

IL&FS group’s investment grade rating was based on the strength of the investors in the parent company, according to an official at a rating company. The lender’s investors include Life Insurance Corporation (LIC), India’s largest life insurer; State Bank of India (SBI), its largest bank; and Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC), its largest mortgage lender. Japan’s Orix Corporation is the company’s second-largest shareholder.

The central bank deserves some of the blame, the person said, because it tolerated the excessive dependence on debt used for project funding in India.

Shriram Subramanian, the founder of Mumbai-based proxy advisory firm InGovern Research Services Pvt., says Indian credit analysts aren’t skeptical enough and assume wrongly that big investors will bail out companies in a jam.

“In most cases, they take into account projections given by managements which tend to be rosy,” said Subramanian. “Rating companies have a role to play in rating the various securities, but they need to increase their sophistication by developing models that account for various scenarios.”

Regulatory measures should be on the table, according to the head of a rating assessor. “The regulators should seriously consider mandatory rotation of the rating agency of an issuer just like the rotation of auditors,” Sankar Chakraborti, chief executive officer at Acuité Ratings & Research Limited, a local ratings company. “This will allay the concern that a very long association between issuer and rating agency may allow scope for complacency.”

Credit rating firms in India’s big Asia economic rival, China are also facing increasing scrutiny as authorities look to rein in risks and foreign investors have long cited inflated ratings offered by local firms as a key reason for not buying onshore corporate notes.

While penalties had previously been restricted to discreet warnings, regulators in August banned a rating company for a year from assessing bonds. China opened the door for foreign rating companies last year. Yet so far, no international raters have set up wholly-owned units in the country.

For IL&FS, rating company ICRA, flagged the group’s “elevated leverage” in March but kept its investment grade rating because of “experienced senior management team and its significant track record of operations in the infrastructure domain.”

The company’s shareholders are scheduled to meet on Saturday to vote on increasing its authorized capital, which will start its plan to “restore normalcy,” Vice Chairman and Managing Director Hari Sankaran said in a note to employees this month.

“Certain conflicts of interest inherent in the current structure prevalent in India need to be reviewed,” said Sunil Sharma, executive director & chief investment officer at Sanctum Wealth, which manages $1 billion. “Greater disclosure and access to information needs to be mandated.”

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[cloudienews-blog]

How we assembled a DIY book scanner with rates of 150 pages for every moment A pack, online discussions, and an Ikea-like manual made DIY filtering simpler than expected.

Bookshelves today are essentially not as engaging as they used to be, and there's no deficiency of individuals hoping to digitize their own particular book accumulations. Luckily, we now have simple and generally modest approaches to digitize those books. You don't need to slave away at your copier or scanner, it is possible that—we're looking at building a book scanner of your own one of a kind.

We're not discussing the various book examining administrations that have flown up over the most recent couple of years, offering book digitization at the cost of just a couple of pennies for every page. Nor are we looking at hacking off the authoritative of your book and sustaining the pages into a copier or scanner, or buying a business book scanner for upwards of $10,000 (that simply wouldn't occur for most). No, we're talking toolbelts, paint jars, bicycle brakes, and advanced cameras—doing it without anyone else's help.

For two law understudies intrigued by the legitimate and approach talks encompassing copyright and innovation, choosing to assemble a DIY Book Scanner was never only a venture to digitize our own course readings (however commonsense that may be). Rather, it gave us the chance to encounter these issues direct. Furthermore, we needed to perceive what it would take to construct one.

Tragically, we needed building foundations. Luckily... indeed, we have the Internet. We found the DIY Book Scanner Kit and the blasting group of individuals building their own book scanners. At $475 rather than a few thousand dollars, it had a craving for striking gold... in the event that we could make it work.

Daniel Reetz, originator of DIYBookScanner.org, had been making packs accessible for those hoping to fabricate their own particular gadget. Finding a requirement for a scanner himself, Reetz assembled his initially book scanner from the waste he found from dumpster plunging. He made an Instructable to share his encounters and found a different gathering of people who likewise had the requirement for a book scanner. The gathering extended from a man from Indonesia planning to safeguard books from surge harm to a gathering of architects searching for another and fascinating undertaking to start their interests. The DIY Book Scanner had unobtrusive beginnings, yet over a time of two years it developed into a development of people utilizing promptly accessible assets to make arrangements.

Because of Reetz, the group of individual DIY-ers, the liberal subsidizing from the Institute of Information Law and Policy at our New York Law School, and assistance from our coach (and Ars patron) Professor James Grimmelmann, we requested a unit and got the opportunity to work. Exactly how hard would it be able to be?

Section one: Getting started

The DIY Book Scanner Kit arrived in a 23" x 27" x 7" cardboard box and weighed around 40 pounds. Inside, we found a flawlessly sorted out heap of wooden parts and hardware.The pack incorporates laser-cut, US-developed Baltic birch parts and in addition nuts, fasteners, washers, screws, metal rollers, a LED light, pressure lines, bike brakes, links, and, amazingly, definitely no guidelines.

Without a doubt, the portrayal on the site expressed, "Most importantly, this is a beta. It's not a buyer item like you may purchase in a store. It requires that you Do Some Things Yourself!… If you're not a manufacturer or tinkerer yet, this is a decent place to begin... Getting to a total, working scanner will require some persistence on your part."

Yet at the same time, no guidelines? Having gathered just shoddy Swedish furniture some time recently, we were purchasers who expected some direction. The Web depiction of the DIY Book Scanner Kit threw us a life saver, however. "The good thing is that there is an extensive group of individuals, including me (Daniel Reetz), who will help you at www.diybookscanner.org/gathering," it said. So when the bundle came, we made a beeline for the site and found a huge group of individuals who posted about their encounters fabricating the gadget. These writeups wound up noticeably key reference guides. We likewise downloaded a duplicate of some online get together guidelines, which were strangely reminiscent of the IKEA variety:The well ordered directions are 43 pages worth of PC renderings covering each part in the unit. Rather than content, bolts call attention to where parts go. Luckily, the drawings were anything but difficult to take after. At the point when issues emerged it rapidly turned out to be second nature to counsel the group (which we managed decisively).

We began by painting each of the wooden pieces with matte dark latex paint. Since we couldn't paint at the graduate school, we pulled the unit out to Brooklyn (fitting for DIY Book Scanner upkeep) before taking care of business with the brushes.The wood ingested the paint like a wipe and dried as they say. We completed the process of painting in a couple of hours, after which we stuffed up the unit and took it back to its home in the Collaboratorium (an office in the Institute of Information Law and Policy where marvelous things keep an eye on happen).There, we got an email from Professor Grimmelmann about the arrival of Robin Sloan's new novel, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. Robin had gotten some answers concerning the book scanner we were building and needed us to convey it to the Center for Fiction for a portion of his live 24-hour webcast in three days. The discussion would happen in the keep running up to his book discharge party. The chances of finishing our venture by then were bad, but rather we chose to attempt. (How might we leave behind that open door?)

On the main day, we started collecting pieces, regularly squabbling about how profound we expected to penetrate pilot gaps. Self-question struck when screws severed or bits of wood begun to part. (Tip: Make beyond any doubt you bore the pilot gaps sufficiently profound to house a screwhead and sufficiently far from the edge of the wood to anticipate part). Parts stalled out or didn't fit together, driving us to make five separate outings to the neighborhood handyman shop for additional provisions. (Tip: Only paint the surface of the parts; don't paint the spaces where the wooden pieces fit together. Likewise ensure you have heaps of sandpaper and a document convenient, as you should sand down openings to ensure the pieces fit together well.)

Before the finish of the very first moment, we were prepared to amass the greater part of the wooden parts. On day two, we dealt with getting what we called the "camera trigger component" to work. The "camera trigger instrument" comprises of a double link bike brake lever, two links, and bits of wood that were laser-sliced to create something with an uncanny similarity to the human pointer. To collect the component, we turned to the following page of the directions and found that they held back.

Section two: Conflict

Confounded, we counseled the discussion. DIYers educated us that the directions did exclude this part due to challenges in rendering the pictures. Extraordinary. What's more, the gatherings were loaded with just ambiguous guidelines and unanswered inquiries on amassing the "camera trigger instrument." With little information of how to assemble a bike brake, we again counseled the Internet, yet we came up flat broke. We were stuck in an unfortunate situation.

Late that night, we chose to call our life saver, a companion who had involvement in "working." After tinkering with the parts and taking a gander at the moving pieces, he concocted an arrangement for gathering the system.

Assembling the moving parts was moderately simple: you just sort the wooden bits out, embed the brake link into a score, and secure the parts with a nut, washer, and screw. The issue was associating the wooden parts to the brake link with enough strain so that pulling on the brake lever would make the wooden trigger move. At first, we accomplished the perfect measure of pressure, yet after a few uses, link strain would go excessively slack. We cured this by wedging the brake link between two washers, a screw, and a nut. In spite of the fact that this kept the link rigid, it some of the time turned out to be excessively tight. We eventually checked the strain by putting elastic groups on the flip side of the hinge.The following day, after another excursion to the tool shop and a couple of more hours of gathering, the three of us figured out how to assemble the camera trigger instrument. We did it—wrapped up the DIY Book Scanner. Up next, the webcast.A couple of weeks after the fact, on October 26 and 27, we displayed our perfect work of art at the In re Books Conference, discussing our graduate school's DIY minute and arousing the enthusiasm of protected innovation law teachers, legal counselors, curators, and writers. Getting the DIY Book Scanner constructed and utilitarian when the meeting moved around had been our unique objective, fundamentally in light of the fact that the whole assembling was about the eventual fate of books.Chapter three: How it works

The scanner makes digitizing books about easy. Alright, it's not really easy but rather it's absolutely a great deal speedier than utilizing a printer. The book sits in the bed of the scanner, a wedge-molded stage close to the focal point of the gadget. The heaviness of the book is balanced inherent bungee-rope pulleys which make moving the book all over simple. The bed is movable so it can fit books with various estimated ties. Pulling the lever down makes the overnight boardinghouse climb toward two glass boards that are situated at 90 degree edges, leveling the pages and arranging them according to the cameras mounted on the two sides of the scanner. Pulling the lever up makes the quaint little inn move down, giving you space to swing to the following page.

When you have manufactured the scanner, you should simply bring down the book, turn the page, raise the book, snap the photos (by pushing down on the brake handle), and rehash. We could check approximately 150 pages for each moment—making speedy work of even a 400-page book.After filtering comes the less marvelous undertaking of changing over the pictures to your coveted digital book design.

[mrrolandtfranco]

Happy Maps

World Happiness Report 

Every year, the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network releases a measure of happiness for surveyed countries, then performs a statistical regression to estimate what factors might drive a sense of happiness up or down. It’s called the World Happiness Report.

It’s just amazing data. But amazing data is potentially amazinger when seen as a map!

When I look at the survey results I’m struck by the incredible disparity between Europe’s and Africa’s sense of well being. Change in latitude, change in attitude.

Here’s is a subset of the 2017 World Happiness Map, focusing on that narrow stretch of earth where the invisible equator bisects a stark contrast in happiness.

But what about the rest of the world? Here is a Story Map wherein, you might gain all sorts of enspatialized happiness understanding…

False Starts / Choropleth Rut

For the past two years I’ve struggled with how to make a map of this data, which is just begging to be mapped. But it was a tough nut to crack because I was stuck in a choropleth rut -and as a result easy prey for the ravenous MAUP monster. Countries are wildly differently sized. And some really interesting places are essentially invisible at a global scale. Here’s an example of one of my false starts…

What’s more, the Happiness Report has not just the single country happiness value to map, they also provide all sorts of insightful categories of possible drivers of happiness. Again, in my choropleth rut, all I could think to do was make a bunch of maps…

I was flailing. And then on the day of the release of the 2017 report, the sweet sweet Muse of Multivariate Symbology descended down to my shoulder, stepping lightly, and whispered…use graduated symbols, you doofus.

Multi-part Graduated Symbology

Ok, don’t know why that took me two years to realize, but finally I was on to something. I love the combination of benefits that graduated symbology maps offer: spatial patterns remain in-tact while avoiding the pitfalls of MAUP-heavy country size, and the intrinsic cognitive horsepower of mapping magnitude to visual size.

Rather than making a set of companion graduated symbol maps, one for each happiness-factor, I wondered if I could show them all the same time in some sort of chimera abomination symbol map…

Promising. Now to pick some colors. There are all sorts of innate and cultural meanings tied up with color so it can be risky to apply a handful them directly to social data (seriously, hit the brakes and go check out Rob Simmon’s tour de force on color on data visualization; I’ll wait). But, I felt like six variables was too many just to rely on an angular offset. Color would help map readers key-in to the variables. So I made some culturally-informed (I winged it) distinct hue choices.

Here is the palette I came up with for the six happiness factors. For reference, they are (left to right) Income, Trust, Health, Support, Freedom, and Giving. I like to compare the gras-scale values of visualization colors to ensure that some don’t vary too much in brightness, and I also run them through the Coblis colorblindness simulator. They sort of check out.

Here’s how they key to my symbol:

The graduated symbology would drive the visualization of how much each factor is thought to influence a countries perception of happiness, relative to all the other countries:

All together, you get a wacky beast that combines to illustrate patterns of happiness:

I love it when a plan comes together.

How to Make This in ArcGIS Pro

This is just six graduated symbol map layers shown all at once -each layer is given graduated symbology tied to one of the happiness factors.

Each layer is symbolized via a graduated symbol method, using fine standard deviations for the range breaking. This way, each countries color ring (representing some happiness factor) can be compared to other countries.

In order to avoid stacking, each layer is given an X and Y offset. I did this manually, pushing each layer in one of six directions. Note the “Offset Distance” section of the point symbol panel.

In order to get the offset spacing right, I relied on the alarmingly analog combination of 9th grade geometry memories and a whiteboard.

Then I dropped in a little hub-and-spokes graphic, and I was off to the happiness races!

ArcGIS Online Web Map

Now to blast this thing over to the internet. Back in the “Map” tab, I grouped all six layers and the hub and spoke graphic, then right-clicked the group and chose “Share As Web Layer.” This bundles it up and stores it to an ArcGIS Online account.

Then I just added it to a map with the trusty Dark Gray canvas vector basemap. I added a couple layers that show the happiness ranking at broad scales (since my mega-symbols start overlapping pretty fiercely at that scale) and played with their zoom-level visibilities.

Story Mapification

This map is fun, but it definitely bears some explanation. Story Maps are the universe’s single best method to wrap a map up into a guided narrative. Because the World Happiness Report is so interesting, and potentially complex, I felt like this map deserved to tell a story. So, I created a Cascade story map to introduce the concept, describe the happiness survey and factors, and guide readers through a tour of a global phenomenon. What could be more fun? I hope you check it out.

What’s more, I hope you try out a method like this, or, try something new if you are feeling like I was -in a choropleth rut. There are lots of different cartographic techniques to explore, and lots of fun to be had in the exploration.

Thoughts on Happiness

I wonder about the word “happiness” and the many dimensions of satisfaction and well-being it encompasses. I wonder about the cultural connotations of imagining myself being higher or lower on a ladder. I asked myself how high I imagine myself of a 10-rung ladder of my best possible life. I put myself at an 8. Life is terribly beautiful; I’m so happy -but I don’t want to estimate too high so as to assume I’m at a limit. I happened to show this map to my dad, as I am wont to do. He also put himself on the 8th rung. That made me even happier.

But, regarding the state of happiness, with an optimistic outlook…I wonder if imagining a ladder, and where we are on it, really translates to something like happiness or something even harder to know, like expectations of improvement or contentment. Many of the apparently happiest people I’ve ever met come from Sub-Saharan countries that rate themselves quite low on that ladder. Happiness is hard to pin down. But I am glad the teams at the United Nations are trying to understand it at a global scale, and what factors might influence it.

Recently I was moved to near tears when I read a short essay by my young son, Juneau. His sentiment of contentedness and satisfaction, primed with his inherent optimism and joyful energy, is a fantastic example for me.

Happy Mapping! John

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