#no context ed neal

[worrygutz]

video evidence of how fast Ed jumps from thought to thought, interrupting himself

[firawren]

Asks about my OTPs

Pick your top 10 OTPs without reading the questions, then answer the questions after you've made your list

Elizabeth and Darcy (Pride and Prejudice)

Belle and Beast (Beauty and the Beast 1991)

Anne and Wentworth (Persuasion)

Chuck and Sarah (Chuck)

Killian and Emma (Once Upon a Time)

Peeta and Katniss (The Hunger Games)

Stede and Ed (Our Flag Means Death)

Catherine and Henry (Northanger Abbey)

Snow and David (Once Upon a Time)

Leslie and Ben (Parks and Recreation)

Now here are the questions and answers!

1. Do you remember the episode/scene/chapter that you first started shipping 6? – Probably some time during the second book, when they really become a team protecting and comforting each other.

2. Have you ever read a fanfic about 2? – Haha yes, and written many!

3. Has a picture of 4 ever been your screen saver/profile picture/tumblr screen saver? – Nope!

4. If 7 were to suddenly break up today, what would your reaction be? – They kind of are broken up? It's devastating, but I hope season 2 will fix it!

5. Why is 1 so important? – Because they got me into the entire Jane Austen universe, which is one of my main interests and hobbies now.

6. Is 9 a funny ship or a serious ship? – Mostly serious, but they have their funny moments.

7. Out of all the ships listed, which ship has the most chemistry? – Elizabeth and Darcy or Chuck and Sarah.

8. Out of all your ships listed, which ship has the strongest bond? – Probably Peeta and Katniss since they went through such intense trauma together.

9. How many times have you read/watched the 10’s fandom? – 3 times, and I'll do it again.

10. Which ship has lasted the longest? – I don't know what this means. In their canon? Snow and David have been together for over 40 years by the end of the show, I think. In my heart? I've been into Belle and Beast ever since the movie came out over 31 years ago. In fandom? Elizabeth and Darcy have been going strong for over 200 years!

11. How many times, if ever, has 6 broken up? – I suppose they weren't really a couple during the period where Peeta wanted to murder Katniss lol! Plus they were fake dating and fake engaged for most of their relationship, so it's hard to tell what "broken up" means in this sort of context where they're not truly together to begin with.

12. If the world was suddenly thrust into a zombie apocalypse, which ship would make it out alive, 2 or 8? – 2, because Beast is a literal beast with claws and fangs and crap, and Belle is very smart. 8 are sweet little cuties who would get killed immediately lol!

13. Did 7 ever have to hide their relationship for any reason? – They both were kind of in denial about liking each other romantically, but that's not really the same thing. And they kind of broke up right after officially acknowledging they wanted to be together! I guess Stede was hiding his relationship when he went back to Mary.

14. Is 4 still together? – Kind of. The awful series finale makes their future murky.

15. Is 10 canon? – Yep, all of these ships are. I'm basic haha!

16. If all 10 ships were put into a couple’s Hunger Games, which couple would win? – Well Beast is the most dangerous physically, but he wouldn't want to kill anyone. So I'm going with Chuck and Sarah due to their physical training and Sarah's skill and lack of remorse over killing anyone she needs to.

17. Has anybody ever tried to sabotage 5’s ship? – Mostly Emma herself haha! I guess Neal and David kind of did, but not really actively/aggressively.

18. Which ship would you defend to the death and beyond? –  I strongly believe in all of them, but Belle and Beast are the most in need of defense because some people see them as toxic, so I'm the most prickly about defending their relationship, I guess.

19. Do you spend hours a day going through 3’s tumblr page? – Nope, they're not super popular on Tumblr. I think only 1, 5, and 7 have a strong presence on Tumblr.

20. If an evil witch descended from the sky and told you that you had to pick one of the ten ships to break up forever or else she’d break them all forever, which ship would you sink? – I guess Catherine and Henry just because they could each easily find someone else to love and be happy with and not be forever devastated by their breakup. They're not, like, soulmates, just two cute young people who happened to get thrown together.

Tagging some people if they want to do this: @loonysama, @thefamilybruno, @annaofthenorthernlights, @bad-at-names-and-faces, @thecassadilla, @keeshya6, @bethanydelleman, @thatscarletflycatcher + anyone else! (No pressure to do this as usual!)

[reallyintoscience]

Ten books to know me

Rules: 10 (non-ancient) books for people to get to know you better, or that you just really like.

I was tagged by @mathomhouse-e probably about fifteen internet years ago now. But here we are and thank you!

Who knows what "non-ancient" even means, so here's some books that feel important to me and the way I think about the world.

The Wood Wife by Terri Windling This is THE book to know me. It's about art, creation, what it's like to be a creator of art and poetry and it's also the most beautiful invocation of a supernatural world embedded in a real landscape. It made me love the desert. It has a wonderful trickster character, and found family, and stepping into your power as a creator.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson If you ask me, this is the foundational cyberpunk novel (I don't get on with Neuromancer). It changed the way I thought about writing, technology and transhumanism and it's so funny. It brings in memes in their original meaning, mythology and cyberpunk. One of the main characters is called Hiro Protagonist. It doesn't devolve into obligatory romance. (Fine and great in its place, but not when it's there in spite of the plot.) I have never liked anything else Stephenson has ever written, but THIS. This is wonderful.

The Last Herald-Mage by Mercedes Lackey Cheating: it's a trilogy. Formative Sad Gay Angst Wizards. This was such a revelation to read in the 90s, as a baby bi. A gay protagonist, actually on-page, not just subtext. Coming out and dealing with homophobia, having sex. Gay protagonist. ALSO the melodrama oh my god Vanyel. I really don't know who'd come out top in a drama-off, him or Dream. But also, Van's struggle with isolating himself to protect his feelings, and let's not forget the cool powers and the magic soulbonding horses. FORMATIVE.

A Land Fit for Heroes by Richard K. Morgan Cheating: it's a trilogy. Matured killer gay wizard-rogue. RINGIL ESKIATH OWNS MY SOUL. He wouldn't want it but too bad. He is my perfect character. He has a bloodthirsty, talking magic sword. It's probably trying to eat his soul. He has a Very Straight warrior best friend and together they have a Very Lesbian crack-addicted elf best friend. They are horrible bastards, and Ringil fucks so much and in all contexts. And the mythology is super cool. Also the politics. This is just perfect for me. (It has so so many content warnings; feel free to hit me up if you're thinking of trying it out.)

The Belgariad by David Eddings Cheating: it's a quintet. Two quintets, if you want to add in the Malloreon. I'm not sure I could go back to it now because the tropes have worn out so much and the gender politics are terrible, but I have read it so many times. This was my first high fantasy epic quest series, and the characters are so dear to me. The way that magic words in this world is refreshingly simple, and I can respect that.

Generation Loss / Cass Neary Series by Elizabeth Hand This is. So fucking good. Cass is The Last Punk Standing, an artist in a fine art street photographer sense, a nihilistic, substance abusing wonderful disaster. This series is part mystery, part grimy supernatural, part literary. It uses Cass's art skills to get her into and out of her problems. It embeds subcultures, eras and the supernatural or just the unsettling so well into the story that it doesn't really feel like an urban fantasy. Again, a lot of content warnings.

The Wicked + The Divine by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie Thiiiiiis graphic novel might still be cheating because there are ten trade books but whatever. It's everything I want a graphic novel to be and the art is fucking gorgeous. It has fandom, music, transformation, gods and monsters and it's just so so fucking cool. What if, every ninety years, twelve humans become gods from existing but not matching pantheons. The deal is they are loved and hated, they're famous for two years, and then they die. It is fantastic.

Machineries of Empire by Yoon Ha Lee Cheating... look I cheat. Whatevs. It's a series. Beautiful twisty space scifi built on a somewhat impenetrable system of math and torture to create the most interesting magic system you ever did see. (You do need a high tolerance for being thrown in the worldbuilding deep end; there will be no infodumps.) There's such wonderful politics and assassins and the best, best Magnificent Bastard ever written, and bodysharing and loyalty and an on-page uniform kink that has to be seen to be believed. It is a wonder and a glory.

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke One of these things is not the like others, but this book is so important to me. The tenderness, the deep thinking about what it means to be a creator. I have it in multiple bindings because whenever I come across it I can't resist.

Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration by David Wojnarowicz Also a bit of a departure, but Wojnarowicz is so important to me. His art, his activism, but most of all the way he made journaling part of his arts practice. The queer history here, the utter bullshit genocide of the queer community in the 80s and 90s. But the love and the joy as well. His fierce criticism of the culture he lived in. Just. He's my art hero.

The almost made it but I've run out of space: Watership Down by Richard Adams and The Administration series by Manna Francis.

Um, I don't know who did this at the time and who didn't, but if you didn't and you'd like to: @issylra, @beholdme, @ml-nolan, @4ratsinatrenchcoat, @beholdingthegaytimes

[grad604kaywee]

Object 1: Threaded Magazine

Threaded Special Ed.21: The Te Pō & Te Ao Mārama Issue

Threaded is a magazine I recently aquired through a lecturer at AUT. It has the most beautiful designed pages and works within it. Threaded magazine is an award-winning design studio from New Zealand. Their mission is to creative positive change and interact with the local communities. They love their cultural and social contexts which is prevalent in all of their work and they wish to understand these topics deeper.

By researching this magazine, I came across numerous other designers and creatives. They are connected because they were either a part of designing this magazine, they are featured within, or have some other similar connection to it. Below is a great list that mentions the locations as well, which will help me to decide who is more relevant to look into.

Featured Creatives

ĀKAU, Aotearoa

Alexis Neal, Aotearoa

Alistair McCready, Aotearoa

Curative, Aotearoa

Derek Yates, UK

Henrik Drescher, USA

James Goggin, Aotearoa

Jeremy Tankard, UK

Katie Kerr, Aotearoa

Michael Worthington, USA

Naïma Ben Ayed, UK

Shivani Parasnis, USA

Studio FM Milano, Italy

Tatiana Tavares, Aotearoa

The Panty Bag Collective, Aotearoa

Wing Yee Wu, USA

Threaded Associates

Fedrigoni Paper Spicers NZAUT - Auckland University of Technology , School of Art + Design (Te Kura Toi a Hoahoa)

Other collaborators:

Ataria Gibbons

George Hajian

David Coventon

Maree Sheehan

Tatiana Tavares

Marcos Steagall

Tepora Kauwhata

Ataria Gibbons

Kawiti Waetford

Jesse Waetford

[blackkudos]

Eldridge Cleaver

Leroy Eldridge Cleaver (August 31, 1935 – May 1, 1998) was an American writer, and political activist who became an early leader of the Black Panther Party.

In 1968, Cleaver wrote Soul on Ice, a collection of essays that, at the time of its publication, was praised by The New York Times Book Review as "brilliant and revealing". Cleaver stated in Soul on Ice: "If a man like Malcolm X could change and repudiate racism, if I myself and other former Muslims can change, if young whites can change, then there is hope for America."

Cleaver went on to become a prominent member of the Black Panthers, having the titles Minister of Information and Head of the International Section of the Panthers, while a fugitive from the United States criminal justice system in Cuba and Algeria. He became a fugitive after leading an ambush on Oakland police officers, during which two officers were wounded. Cleaver was also wounded during the ambush and Black Panther member Bobby Hutton was killed. As editor of the official Panthers' newspaper, The Black Panther, Cleaver's influence on the direction of the Party was rivaled only by founders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. Cleaver and Newton eventually fell out with each other, resulting in a split that weakened the party.

After spending seven years in exile in Cuba, Algeria, and France, Cleaver returned to the US in 1975, where he became involved in various religious groups (Unification Church and CARP) before finally joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as well as becoming a conservative Republican, appearing at Republican events.

Early life

Eldridge Cleaver was born in Wabbaseka, Arkansas; as a child he moved with his large family to Phoenix and then to Los Angeles. He was the son of Leroy Cleaver and Thelma Hattie Robinson. He had four siblings: Wilhelima Marie, Helen Grace, James Weldon, and Theophilus Henry.

As a teenager, he was involved in petty crime and spent time in youth detention centers. At the age of 18, he was convicted of a felony drug charge (marijuana, a felony at the time) and sent to the adult prison at Soledad. In 1958, he was convicted of rape and assault with intent to murder, and eventually served time in Folsom and San Quentin prisons. While in prison, he was given a copy of The Communist Manifesto. Cleaver was released on parole December 12, 1966, with a discharge date of March 20, 1971. In 1968 he was arrested on violation of parole by association with individual(s) of bad reputation, and control and possession of firearms Cleaver petitioned for habeas corpus to the Solano County Court, and was granted it along with a release of a $50,000 bail.

Black Panther Party

Cleaver was released from prison on December 12, 1966. He was writing for Ramparts magazine and organizing efforts to revitalize the Organization of Afro-American Unity. The Black Panther Party was only two months old. He then joined the Oakland-based Black Panther Party (BPP), serving as Minister of Information, or spokesperson. What initially attracted Cleaver to the Panthers, as opposed to other prominent groups, was their commitment to armed struggle.

In 1967, Cleaver, along with Marvin X, Ed Bullins, and Ethna Wyatt, formed the Black House political/cultural center in San Francisco. Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Askia Toure, Sarah Webster Fabio, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Avotcja, Reginald Lockett, Emory Douglas, Samuel Napier, Bobby Hutton, Huey Newton, and Bobby Seale were Black House regulars. The same year, he married Kathleen Neal Cleaver (divorced 1987), with whom he would have son Ahmad Maceo Eldridge (born 1969, Algeria; died 2018, Saudi Arabia) and daughter Joju Younghi (born July 31, 1970, North Korea).

Cleaver was a presidential candidate in 1968 on the ticket of the Peace and Freedom Party. Having been born on August 31, 1935, Cleaver would not have been the requisite 35 years of age until more than a year after Inauguration Day 1969. (Although the Constitution requires that the President be at least 35 years of age, it does not specify whether he need have reached that age at the time of nomination, or election, or inauguration.) Courts in both Hawaii and New York held that he could be excluded from the ballot because he could not possibly meet the Constitutional criteria. Cleaver and his running mate Judith Mage received 36,571 votes (0.05%).

In the aftermath of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, there were riots across the nation. On April 6, Cleaver and 14 other Panthers led an ambush of Oakland police officers, during which two officers were wounded. Cleaver was wounded during the ambush and 17-year-old Black Panther member Bobby Hutton was killed. They were armed with M16 rifles and shotguns. In 1980, he admitted that he had led the Panther group on a deliberate ambush of the police officers, thus provoking the shootout. Some reporters were surprised by this move, because it was in the context of an uncharacteristic speech, in which Cleaver also discredited the Black Panthers, stated "we need police as heroes", and said that he denounced civilian review boards of police shootings for the "bizarre" reason that "it is a rubber stamp for murder". Some speculated his admission could have been a pay-off to the Alameda County justice system, whose judge had only just days earlier let Eldridge Cleaver escape prison time; Cleaver was sentenced to community service after getting charged with three counts of assault against three Oakland police officers. The PBS documentary A Huey Newton Story claims that "Bobby Hutton was shot more than twelve times after he had already surrendered and stripped down to his underwear to prove he was not armed."

Charged with attempted murder after the incident, he jumped bail to flee to Cuba in late 1968. Initially treated with luxury by the Cuban government, the hospitality ended upon reports Fidel Castro had received information of the CIA infiltrating the Black Panther Party. Cleaver then decided to head to Algeria, sending word to his wife to meet him there. Elaine Klein normalized his status by getting him an invitation to attend the Pan-African Cultural festival, rendering him temporarily safe from prosecution. The festival allowed him to network with revolutionaries from all over Africa in order to discuss the perils of white supremacy and colonialism. Cleaver was outspoken in his call to violence against the United States, contributing to his mission to "position the Panthers within the revolutionary nationalist camp inside the United States and as disciples of Fanon on the world stage". Cleaver had set up an international office for the Black Panthers in Algeria. Following Timothy Leary's Weather Underground-assisted prison escape, Leary stayed with Cleaver in Algiers; however, Cleaver placed Leary under "revolutionary arrest" as a counter-revolutionary for promoting drug use.

Cleaver also cultivated an alliance with North Korea in 1969, and BPP publications began reprinting excerpts from Kim Il Sung's writings. Although leftists of the time often looked to Cuba, China, and North Vietnam for inspiration, few had paid any attention to the secretive Pyongyang regime. Bypassing US travel restrictions on North Korea, Cleaver and other BPP members made two visits to the country in 1969–1970 with the idea that the juche model could be adapted to the revolutionary liberation of African-Americans. Taken on an official tour of North Korea, Cleaver expressed admiration at "the DPRK's stable, crime-free society which provided guaranteed food, employment, and housing for all, and which had no economic or social inequalities".

Byron Vaughn Booth (former Panther Deputy Minister of Defense) claimed that, after a trip to the DPRK, Cleaver discovered his wife had been having an affair with Clinton Robert Smith Jr. Booth told the FBI he had witnessed Cleaver shoot and kill Smith with an AK47. Elaine Mokhtefi, in the London Review of Books, writes that Cleaver confessed the murder to her shortly after committing it.

Cleaver later left the DPRK, claiming that the environment was too oppressive.

In his 1978 book Soul on Fire, Cleaver made several claims regarding his exile in Algeria, including that he was supported by regular stipends from the government of North Vietnam, which the United States was then bombing. Cleaver stated that he was followed by other former criminals turned revolutionaries, many of whom (including Booth and Smith) hijacked planes to get to Algeria.

Split and new directions

Eldridge Cleaver and Huey Newton eventually fell out with each other over the necessity of armed struggle as a response to COINTELPRO and other actions by the government against the Black Panthers and other radical groups. Also Cleaver's interest in North Korea and global anti-imperialist struggle drew ire from other BPP members who felt that he was neglecting the needs of African-Americans at home in the US. Following his expulsion from the Black Panthers in 1971, the group's ties with North Korea were quickly forgotten. Cleaver advocated the escalation of armed resistance into urban guerrilla warfare, while Newton suggested the best way to respond was to put down the gun, which he felt alienated the Panthers from the rest of the black community, and focus on more pragmatic reformist activity by lobbying for increased social programs to aid African-American communities and anti-discrimination laws. Cleaver accused Newton of being an Uncle Tom for choosing to cooperate with white interests rather than overthrow them.

Cleaver left Algeria in 1972, moving to Paris, France, becoming a born again Christian during time in isolation living underground. He turned his hand to fashion design; three years later, he released codpiece-revival "virility pants" he called "the Cleavers", enthusing that they would give men "a chance to assert their masculinity".Cleaver returned to the United States in 1977 to face the unresolved attempted murder charge. By September 1978, on bail as those proceedings dragged on, he had incorporated Eldridge Cleaver Ltd, running a factory and West Hollywood shop exploiting his "Cleavers", which he claimed liberated men from "penis binding". He saw no conflict with his newfound Christianity, drawing support for his overtly sexual design from 22 Deuteronomy. The long-outstanding charge was subsequently resolved on a plea bargain reducing it to assault. A sentence of 1,200 hours' community service was imposed.

Later life

In the early 1980s, Cleaver became disillusioned with what he saw as the commercial nature of evangelical Christianity and examined alternatives, including Sun Myung Moon's campus ministry organization CARP. He later led a short-lived revivalist ministry called Eldridge Cleaver Crusades, "a hybrid synthesis of Islam and Christianity he called 'Christlam'", along with an auxiliary called the Guardians of the Sperm.

Cleaver was then later baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) on December 11, 1983, periodically attended regular services, lectured by invitation at LDS gatherings.

By the 1980s, Cleaver had become a conservative Republican. He appeared at various Republican events and spoke at a California Republican State Central Committee meeting regarding his political transformation. In 1984, he ran for election to the Berkeley City Council but lost. Undaunted, he promoted his candidacy in the Republican Party primary for the 1986 Senate race but was again defeated. The next year, his 20-year marriage to Kathleen Neal Cleaver came to an end.

In 1988, Cleaver was placed on probation for burglary and was briefly jailed later in the year after testing positive for cocaine. He entered drug rehabilitation for a stated crack cocaine addiction two years later, but was arrested for possession by Oakland and Berkeley Police in 1992 and 1994. Shortly after his final arrest, he moved to Southern California, falling into poor health.

Death

Cleaver died at age 62 on May 1, 1998, at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center in Pomona, California. He is buried at Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena, California.

Soul on Ice (1968)

[W]hen I considered myself ready enough, I crossed the tracks and sought out white prey. I did this consciously, deliberately, willfully, methodically – though looking back I see that I was in a frantic, wild and completely abandoned frame of mind. Rape was an insurrectionary act. It delighted me that I was defying and trampling upon the white man's law, upon his system of values, and that I was defiling his women...I felt I was getting revenge. From the site of the act of rape, consternation spread outwardly in concentric circles. I wanted to send waves of consternation throughout the white race.

While in prison, he wrote a number of philosophical and political essays, first published in Ramparts magazine and then in book form as Soul on Ice. In the essays, Cleaver traces his own development from a "supermasculine menial" to a radical black liberationist, and his essays became highly influential in the black power movement.

In the most controversial part of the book, Cleaver acknowledges committing acts of rape, stating that he initially raped black women in the ghetto "for practice" and then embarked on the serial rape of white women. He described these crimes as politically inspired, motivated by a genuine conviction that the rape of white women was "an insurrectionary act". When he began writing Soul on Ice, he unequivocally renounced rape and all his previous reasoning about it.

The essays in Soul on Ice are divided into four thematic sections: "Letters from Prison", describing Cleaver's experiences with and thoughts on crime and prisons; "Blood of the Beast", discussing race relations and promoting black liberation ideology; "Prelude to Love – Three Letters", love letters written to Cleaver's attorney, Beverly Axelrod; and "White Woman, Black Man", on gender relations, black masculinity, and sexuality.

[scientificphilosopher]

Book List 2018

I’m a couple weeks behind on this, but here’s the list of books I read in 2018. I’ve broken it down by category, though this is pretty loose since, you know, genres bleed into one another and such. You can also find reviews of some of these books here, and I always take requests for reviews as well. Follow me on Goodreads to see what I’m reading and rating. 

Let me know what you think if you’ve read any of these books or have recommendations, and, as always, please feel free to send me malicious personal attacks if I say something you disagree with.

Non-Fiction

Philosophy

Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric by Charlene Haddock Seigfried

The Pragmatic Turn by Richard J. Bernstein

Race Matters by Cornel West

Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism by Cornel West

American Philosophy: A Love Story by John Kaag

Ethics Without Ontology by Hilary Putnam

Meaning in Life and Why It Matters by Susan Wolf

The Variety of Values: Essays on Morality, Meaning, and Love by Susan Wolf

The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World by Owen J. Flanagan

Meaning in Life by Thaddeus Metz

The Human Eros: Eco-Ontology and the Aesthetics of Existence by Thomas Alexander

Naturalism and Normativity by Mario De Caro (Editor), David Macarthur (Editor)

Truth in Context: An Essay on Pluralism and Objectivity by Michael P. Lynch

Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by bell hooks

The Origin of Others by Toni Morrison

Experiments in Ethics by Kwame Anthony Appiah

Ethics in the Real World: 86 Brief Essays on Things that Matter by Peter Singer

The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir

A Very Easy Death by Simone de Beauvoir

The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers by Will Durant

Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Enlightenment by Robert Wright

A Defense of Buddhist Virtue Ethics by Jack Hamblin

Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh

The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought by Dennis C. Rasmussen

The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World by Dalai Lama XIV, Desmond Tutu, and Douglas Carlton Abrams

Reality, Art and Illusion by Alan Watts

Democracy and Social Ethics by Jane Addams

Common Sense by Thomas Paine

From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds by Daniel C. Dennett

Science

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World by Stephen Brusatte

Why Dinosaurs Matter by Kenneth Lacovara

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong

The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—And Us by Richard O. Prum

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach

She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity by Carl Zimmer

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

Caesar's Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us by Sam Kean

Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne

What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics by Adam Becker

Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli

The Physics of Time by Carlo Rovelli

Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration of the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel by Michio Kaku

The Spinning Magnet: The Force That Created the Modern World--and Could Destroy It by Alanna Mitchell

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan

Visions for the 21st Century by Carl Sagan et al.

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell

The Soul of the Night: An Astronomical Pilgrimage by Chet Raymo

The Virgin and the Mousetrap: Essays in Search of the Soul of Science by Chet Raymo

Politics/Race/Gender

The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture by Roxane Gay (editor)

Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Brittney Cooper

Women & Power: A Manifesto by Mary Beard

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

I Am Not Your Negro by James Baldwin

The Origin of Others by Toni Morrison

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

Race Matters by Cornel West

Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism by Cornel West

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

Tears We Cannot Stand: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson

What Truth Sounds Like: Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America by Michael Eric Dyson

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo

White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg

The Common Good by Robert Reich

Transgender History by Susan Stryker

Memoir

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

South of Forgiveness: A True Story of Rape and Responsibility by Thordis Elva

Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou

The Chicken Chronicles by Alice Walker

The Last Jew of Treblinka by Chil Rajchman

My Own Life by David Hume

Tough Shit: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good by Kevin Smith

Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life by Tom Robbins

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton

Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime by Ron Stallworth

Calypso by David Sedaris

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris

Ink Spots by Brian McDonald

No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters by Ursula K. Le Guin

History/Biography

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson

Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston

No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam by Reza Aslan

God: A Human History by Reza Aslan

One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by Kevin M. Kruse

The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language by Mark Forsyth

Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything by Lydia Kang 

Fiction

Literary Fiction

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

Another Country by James Baldwin

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

Blues for Mister Charlie by James Baldwin

Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville

Home by Toni Morrison

God Help the Child by Toni Morrison

The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

The Dead by James Joyce

Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

A Confederacy of Dunces by Jonh Kennedy Toole

The Dork of Cork by Chet Raymo

Genre Fiction

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green

Slice of Life by Kurt Vonnegut

2BR02B by Kurt Vonnegut

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia E. Butler

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Pure Drivel by Steve Martin

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by J.K. Rowling

Pet Sematary by Stephen King

The Green Mile by Stephen King

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams

Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams

The Bad Beginning: A Series of Unfortunate Events #1 by Lemony Snicket

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary by David Sedaris

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Worst of 2018

Every single book I read this past year had redemptive value. Even if it was total garbage, it still taught me some stuff (like how not to write a book). Even a bad book can be a good book if you let it be.

So, here’re a few books that didn’t quite hit the spot for me:

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Ink Spots by Brian McDonald

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson

Best of 2018

It was genuinely difficult to choose my top books of 2018. What a literary year it has been for me. 2018 marks the most books I’ve read in a year, and I was lucky enough to come across some real game-changers. I finally read the Harry Potter series and, boy howdy, did it ever live up to the hype. What took me so long?? But this was, more than anything, the year of James Baldwin. He has made an indelible mark on me as a reader, a writer, and a human. What a year this has been! I hope to read a fraction as much beautiful, lovely, challenging, profound prose in 2019. 

In no particular order, here are the books of 2018 that most moved me, shook me, rattled me, rolled me:

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky

Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by bell hooks

The Pragmatic Turn by Richard J. Bernstein

Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric by Charlene Haddock Seigfried

The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir

What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics by Adam Becker

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan

The Soul of the Night: An Astronomical Pilgrimage by Chet Raymo

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

Well, there you have it, folks. Here’s to many more good books in the years to come! 

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story. —Ursula K. Le Guin

[protoslacker]

The Digital Home for Duke University Professor and Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal

Mark Anthony Neal’s Website is really a treasure. Next to this post is a post about Dick Gregory. In the video Gregory talks about “when I was in show business.” I was about 14 when they were filmed in this video. At 14 I knew Gregory as a comedian from his appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, he was super famous. So Neal provides context for this video, the segments Neal posts build a mosaic, 

[kevinsworldofcomics-blog]

In my comic book reading lifetime, I’ve seen these characters as friends, allies, opponents, and blood enemies. I used to know that those last two would usually be an imaginary story, a ruse played on the villains, or else the temporary result of Red Kryptonite/mind control — emphasis on “I used to know.”

I don’t need them to be Super Friends like this...

...or sports buddies like on this Jack Burnley cover...

...but the “their methods are so different they’ll never trust each other” approach has never worked for me as the status quo.

This old issue was my first taste of the characters as “rivals” — even though it was a standard 1950s DC tale of easily solved problems & mistaken identity:

(Art by Win Mortimer) 

World’s Finest covers could always be counted on to offer glimpses into the unknown/unimaginable...

(Art by Curt Swan)

(Art by Neal Adams)

(Art by Ed Hannigan & Klaus Janson)

Then everyone lost their minds for The Dark Knight Returns. I include myself in that “everyone,” and the feud made sense in context of one particular imaginary story.

(Art by Frank Miller & Lynn Varley)

Still, issue #3 — Batman’s final confrontation with the Joker — was the highlight of the series for me, not the throwdown with Superman.

After the wild success of DKR, this dynamic seemed to creep into the “real” DC titles; suddenly, Superman was the boring “Boy Scout” to Batman’s edgy cool. No, thank you.

Two of the best at finding the middle ground between extremes were John Byrne and Mark Waid (though they’d no doubt bristle at being included in the same sentence).

From Man of Steel...

(Art by Byrne & Dick Giordano)

From Kingdom Come...

(Art by Alex Ross)

The excellent “World’s Finest” crossover between the two animated series made me feel 10 years old again in the best way.

The nadir of this concept, the absolute rock bottom for this reader/viewer was a certain movie...

Of all my problems with the story — and it’s a long list — number one would be that Batman’s entire plan is the MURDER OF SUPERMAN! Not a hoax, not a dream, not an imaginary story.

Frank Miller’s operatic conflict looks subtle in comparison.

I realized later what had been itching in the back of my mind for the whole runtime: this would’ve been a perfect Earth-3 story, because the characters as presented work beautifully as Ultraman and Owlman. Unfortunately they were dressed up as Superman and Batman.

Oh well. To end on a positive note, here are two favorite images from over the decades. First, some Neal Adams insanity...

And it’s always nice to let Darwyn Cooke have the last word (from New Frontier).

[mrmrsvegan]

I'm confused about the message of all the vegan doctors (Colin Campbell, Neal Barnard, Caldwell Esselstyn, etc). Are They saying that all fat is bad, or just animal fat in bad? Or saturated fat is bad? Can we eat nuts/seeds/avocado/coconut freely, or becuase they are high fat foods should they be limited? Is having a (whole food) higher fat vegan diet unhealthy? Thanks

T Colin Campbell;

https://nutritionstudies.org/evidence-nut-consumption-human-health/

when we judge a food by one nutrient, in this case judging nuts only because of their fat content, we may be falling into the same trap that has caused so much past misinformation.

Investigating nutrients in isolation, i.e., reductionism, is fine when we are exploring the mechanisms by which they work. But, for an understanding of a food’s nutritional properties, we must seek and understand context, i.e., wholism. I am distressed with too much unnecessary confusion in this field called nutrition, most of which comes from interpretations based solely on reductionist research findings, a practice great for pharmaceutical firms and other financial interests.

https://nutritionstudies.org/fat-plant-based-diets/

In the final analysis, it is about food based nutrition, not about nutrient based nutrition that really matters.

http://www.pcrm.org/health/diets/pplate/what-about-nuts-and-seeds

A low-fat diet is not a no-fat diet. There  are traces of natural oils in vegetables, beans, and fruits, and these  fats are important for health. Some people add additional sources of  healthful omega-3 (“good”) fats, such as walnuts, flaxseeds or flax oil,  or soy products. And some researchers have found health benefits to  having a small serving of nuts each day, despite the fact that nuts are  very fatty. The idea is that nuts are heart-healthy and may even prevent  arrhythmias—disorders of the heartbeat.

           PCRM’s advice is to be cautious with these foods. They can  easily impart enough fat to bring your weight loss to a halt. Rather  than using nuts and seeds as snack foods (where it is so easy to go  overboard), use them as condiments or in sauces, limiting them to about  an ounce or so (about one modest handful) each day.

[PS this is exactly the same as our WSLF group]

http://www.dresselstyn.com/site/nuts-what-about-nuts-i-hear-so-many-different-opinions/

As nuts are a rich source of saturated fats, my preference is no nuts for heart disease patients. That also eliminates peanuts and peanut butter even though peanuts are officially a legume. For those with established heart disease to add more saturated fat that is in nuts is inappropriate. For people with no heart disease who want to eat nuts and avocado and are able to achieve a cholesterol of 150 and LDL of 80 or under without cholesterol lowering drugs, some nuts and avocado are acceptable.

You can always go to the sources for their reasoned and well sourced opinions, it is most important that the doctors in the WFPB movement have treated 1000s of patients successfully over decades.  The general rule even in the nutrition community is a “handful of nuts/seeds” not meals of them.  

ED Disclaimer: if you are underweight or dealing with orthorexia, these are very healthful sources of calories and can be liberally added to meals.  I know its hard to hear health advice to the majority and be run over by a bus with it when you need to understand your circumstances are totally different.

[worrygutz]

I need the five Ed Neal fans on here to gather in a circle, I made an edit of his character Nolan

[personalcoachingcenter]

Understanding Coaching In Virtual Environment - Virtual Coaching

New Post has been published on https://personalcoachingcenter.com/understanding-coaching-in-virtual-environment-virtual-coaching/

Understanding Coaching In Virtual Environment - Virtual Coaching

By Catalin Bebia (Life Coach, ROMANIA)

It is very likely that 10-15 years ago when coaching sessions started to be conducted remotely due to the evolving nature of companies and their needs to have their employees embarked on coaching sessions, phone coaching was the option of choice. However, it is equally likely that concerns about phone coaching effectiveness were predominant among coaches. But that was what technology brought to support the pace.

Lately, when globalization has advanced more solid and collaborative working technologies were developed, online collaboration tools that are leveraging the Internet started to be widely used for coaching. Some of the coaches are even delivering more than 50% of the sessions via virtual platforms [1], but today we’re not actually hearing the same concerns as 15 years ago. We rather see opportunities than challenges.

Adapting to the “virtual world” has been a steep learning curve and a really valuable one. Client organizations can provide access to high-quality coaching for more of their people, regardless of their location. It reduces travel costs and the associated environmental impact. It also enables a better work/life balance for coaches! Just imagine starting the day early by having a session with a client from a time-zone ahead by few hours, and afterward having time to prepare the breakfast for kids and take them to school.

Opportunities come with risks also. Effectiveness is one of them, very real considering for example how many leaders are strongly performing when they are in a physical environment with employees but fail to uphold the same perception when shifting into a new environment.

As important as coaching is in a conventional environment, it becomes even more important in the virtual world. During an in-person coaching session, the coach has the luxury of seeing body language, facial expressions, and attitude, all of these help her/him understand the client, their feelings, and perspective better. In the world of virtual coaching, the coach will have to learn how to read through the lines in an email, watch for small subtle clues like email or voicemail response time, and learn each individual’s voice and tone to gather over the line how they are feeling.

The personal, one-on-one nature of a coaching session is part of what makes professional coaching an effective resource for organizations or individuals looking to improve performance. Therefore making this type of connection via the phone or a computer screen can be difficult.

“Relationships require some modicum of trust, which is enhanced from face-to-face, knee-to-knee, eye-to-eye contact,” says Dave Ulrich, the Rensis Likert Professor of Business at the University of Michigan and a partner at the Provo, Utah-based RBL Group. “Virtual coaching could work on a specific problem, but personal coaching requires a personal connection.”

Then what could be one of the key ingredients to make this work? Among a myriad of skills and competencies, trust is one of the upfront dependencies that shall be established between coach and client to ensure further effectiveness of the coaching sessions. This is especially true when you would consider that coaching is often aimed at enabling clients to move forward, which typically requires them to do steps outside of their comfort zone – “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone” said Neale Donald Walsh, author.

So, how would Trust look like in general and what would be special when applied in a virtual environment?

“The Trust Equation”, formulated by David Maister [2], provides a useful framework to consider forward.

According to the author, the Trust Equation is:

Enhancing trust would require increasing credibility, reliability, and intimacy. Reducing self-orientation increases trust.

If we would like to find simple expressions for the trust ingredients, the below review can be taken as a reference [1]:

Credibility – simply put do I believe they know of what they speak?

Reliability – do they turn up on time? Do they deliver what they say they will?

Intimacy – do I feel this person will keep what I say confidential? Do I feel safe?

Self-orientation – are they doing this in service of me? Versus are they doing it in service of themselves?

Let’s take them one by one and try to make them relevant in a virtual environment.

Credibility lies with the coach, while the coach credibility level is assessed by the client – for example, if the coach would be required to deliver the coaching session in a platform she/he is not familiar with, this would put a risk on the coach and eventually any hesitation in demonstrating confidence in using it would undermine coach’s credibility. Face to face they would be confident. Virtually they are less confident. Maybe they are worried the internet connection will fail. Perhaps they’re wondering if the background behind them is the “right one”. Their reduced confidence has little to do with their confidence to coach. The impact of how they come across may be the same.

Reliability – how often many of us, working day-in-day-out in a virtual environment, are getting into the risk of having a back-to-back appointment, with virtually no time between? Well, then this is exactly what a coach would critically miss being ready for an effective coaching session: the time required to make sure the technical setup works well, review previous notes and ensure no distractors around so that all attention is given to the client. What about technology? Just imagine how the reliability of the coach would be affected when in the middle of the coaching session a critical software update would require a restart of the computer. That’s frustrating for both coaches and the client.

Intimacy could be severely affected when the client does not have the confidence that the coaching conversation remains private. The new style of working, remotely from the office, provides a lot of flexibility regarding the place from where the coach would embark on a coaching session. A surrounding environment from the location the coach dials in however needs to provide to the client the comfort that this is a 1×1 conversation and nobody else would be exposed to it without his or her consent. From workplace flexibility and time considerations, a hotel lobby could be a fantastic option for coaches to save time between two other activities. But would the client consider this appropriate without affecting the expected/promised intimacy of the coaching concept? For sure there is a high risk to create some damage.

Last but not least is self-orientation. While for all the other trust ingredients the focus is on increasing, enhancing, magnifying their impact, self-orientation is exactly the opposite. Once in the coaching session, the client needs to feel that the coach is not distracted by outer events or thoughts. And needs to experience from the coach a conversation in which the benefits are all accounted for under the client and coach doesn’t take anything except maybe a bit more experience to the profile.

Additional tips could be considered as accelerators for trust and can be easily embedded into the coach practices:

In contracting conversations, agree on some ground rules for online engagement, what you might call technical etiquette. Do people know how to mute their mic when sneezing? Do their children know not to come running-in screaming whilst they’re on the video call? Is office or birdsong background noise – or the sway of a hand-held device going to distract?

Arrive early to prepare the virtual room. Check the documents you want to share are easy to access? How are your mic and light levels? Have a Plan B – do you have their mobile number if the Wi-Fi drops out? These technical checks can be incorporated into your standard coaching prep routine. They’re simple tips but they make for a much smoother session where you can relax into the difference of virtual coaching, stay mindful of the “frame” in which you’re interacting – whilst not making a distraction to the focus of coaching.

Remember that however comfortable you are, the client may need time and friendly support too. Allow them to play with the features and get used to the feel and flow of the platform.

There are also other additional tips to remember, depending on the platform and communication etiquette:

Virtual coaching can be done via phone, email, video conference, instant messages, project management software, and a myriad of other virtual mediums. Don’t limit yourself.

You may need to spend extra time (compared with face-to-face) working on building a good relationship with the client before diving into difficult coaching conversations.

Virtual coaching is a two-way conversation, not a one-way email.

Make time to have regular coaching sessions. You may want to consider creating a daily, weekly, or monthly schedule.

Make sure you allow ample time to discuss how the client views the situation.

Even though they can’t see you, do not multi-task during the coaching session.

Schedule a specific check-in date and time to follow up.

Ed Batista provided few additional points worth to mention [3]:

Don’t dictate the medium – this would translate that for the coaching sessions is critical to have a commonly agreed platform to develop the conversation. As mentioned earlier in the context of the Trust Equation, poor choice of the medium could harm the coach’s credibility and can undermine the client’s trust. The medium shall be dictated by the situation and by what is comfortable for both coach and client. E-mail and text messaging could augment the voice and video, as a suitable medium for follow-up or for feeding each-other with other resources, but not to be abused for anything other than basic information. Anything more complex should be reserved for live interaction.

Focus–a virtual coaching conversation is a special kind of interaction — very different from a typical conference call or online meeting, where we can often just partly tune in and still get the gist. When we’re coaching, the most important details are easy to miss. If we allow ourselves to become distracted, we’ll be less likely to notice things like a subtle change in someone’s facial expression or tone of voice, or an unusual turn of phrase that may signify something more. We may also fail to monitor our own emotional responses and instincts, which are vital sources of data. Even worse, others can sense when our attention wanders, leaving them reluctant to discuss truly important issues.

Manage the time–in most meetings, including phone calls and video conferences, the discussion goes right up until the end of the allotted time, at which point we rapidly conclude and move on to the next meeting. This is another way in which coaching conversations are different: It’s part of the coach’s job to track time during the conversation and stops at a point you’ve agreed on in advance. It’s hard to tell where coaching conversations will end up. They tend to be more wide-ranging than typical meetings, which makes them more meaningful and valuable. But this also means you’ll need to leave some time between the end of the session and the next event on the calendar. This enables both you and the client to reflect on the conversation and deepen the learning. Coaching conversations can also bring up strong emotions, and it’s essential to leave time to process those emotions. Even a few minutes can make a substantial difference, helping both you and the person you’re coaching get the most out of the experience.

Reflections:

There is no “I” in the “team” – how can you mirror it in coaching to mitigate self-orientation?

How can I get comfortable with my voice / my appearance in a virtual environment so that this turns into a distractor neither for the client nor me?

Is it feasible for me to have back-to-back coaching sessions in a virtual environment or is best to alternate?

Reference

The Rise and Rise of Virtual Coaching, Tim Cox and Hugh Reynolds, Management Futures, 2019

The Trusted Advisor, David H. Maister, Charles H. Green, Robert M. Galford, 2000

Tips for Coaching Someone Remotely, Ed Batista, Harvard Business Review 2015

Original source:

elink.io | See Original

[freechoicedreamer]

Body and Soul (Foreword)

AO3

Opening Theme 

"Who knows if to live is to be dead, and to be dead, to live? And we really, it may be, are dead. In fact I once heard sages say that we are now dead, and the body is our tomb…"

(Plato)

  *

Upon a comment left by a reader of the other fanfic I wrote, The Sweet Suite, where she asked about the possibility of new storylines deriving from the setting established by it, and after giving it a lot of thought, I began to glimpse new storylines and scenarios that I hadn't considered before.

Further elaborating on those initial ideas, I started to visualize a structure that would correspond to a complete season of Once Upon a Time. The basic assumption was that OUAT did not end after its seventh season. The new scenario would comprise a complete new season divided in two parts. The first part of this hypothetical eighth season, designed to be OUAT's final season, would be 'The Sweet Suite'. The second, following straightforward without any significant time jump, would be 'Body and Soul'.

The main references for developing this new story are pictured bellow. A deeper understanding of the illustration's context requires the reading of The Sweet Suite but a brief description of its three main axes is sufficient to configure the scenario for Body and Soul:

1st axis. The Charmings: David-Snow and Neal with a flying angel at the top of their heads (their connection with their Wish-counterparts, in Heaven); the Swan-Joneses: Killian-Emma and Hope; the Sweet-Joneses: Wish Killian-Wish Emma with an illuminated heart in between them (the source of new lives), and Missy-Luna (their enchanted pets); the 'Bunny-Archer' ladies: Alice-Robyn; and the 2 Jolly Rogers.

2nd axis. The OUAT book core: besides Wish Henry and Henry (respectively, king of the New Enchanted Forest and the new Author - again) with their respective partners Violet and Cinderella, and Lucy, we see Aladdin-Jasmine on a magic carpet ride, and an allegorical representation of all United Realms and its capital, Storybrooke.

3rd axis. In the foreground, the Three-Reginas: the Good Queen-Robin Hood (in her heart, where his soul is preserved); Split Regina-Wish Robin and Coralline (their adoptive daughter); and Wish Regina and Roland (who developed a mother-son bond). We also see the LWM-UR magic link: Zelena-Chad, as representative, but not the only ones, of the connection between the Land Without Magic and the United Realms. Above, still in this axis, the Magic-Mystery link: Gideon and the souls of Rumple-Belle and Wish Rump-Wish Belle surrounded by books about incantations, potions, prophecies, legends and ancient myths.

Around the axes. Flying birds and fairies (in non-wish & wish pairs), stars and icons complete the set of elements that make up OUAT's eighth season. Below, the Ocean, home to mythical beings, reigns in its mysteries - life returning to the unknown.

Thematically, the 2 Killians and 2 Emmas are at the narrative center not only to set up and unfold their own storylines but also to drive other arcs designed for the main characters (seen in the 3 axes) and for guest stars coming from the multiple realms. You’ve got to remember that as the second and last part of a hypothetical Final Season, Body and Soul is expected to be the closure of a series with an ensemble cast. Therefore the structure of each chapter resembles a rotating spotlight illuminating 6 arcs and many characters. The focus always goes back to the 2 Killians and 2 Emmas, though.

Structurally, the narrative is divided into 14 chapters (plus this foreword). While this is not a musical fanfic as The Sweet Suite, where the songs were always an intrinsic part of the narrative, here it may or may not happen. Where it does not happen: each chapter is titled in alignment with a song, an opening theme to create the atmosphere for the narrative to unfold - in this case a relatively close match between the storyline and the lyrics may occur but not necessarily. That means the 'read only' motto won't compromise the story fruition but listening to the songs will help to set up the chapter mood. Where it does happen: eventually, you will find a song link placed in the middle or at the end of a chapter, and in these cases the song is completely pertinent to the narrative, as it happened in The Sweet Suite (although, as it happened there, for those unwilling to listen to the songs it's possible to skip them with a relatively low continuity loss). As before, the song streams may be accessed by external or embedded links, both options appear close to each other.

The tone of Body and Soul, an autumn/wintertime drama, is more sober than that of The Sweet Suite, a 'sweet' spring/summertime romance. The jazzy atmosphere, marked by a more introspective mood, allows the brushstrokes to carry heavier colors on existential quests such as the afterlife and the permanence versus impermanence of life and death, among others. Even so, fundamentally, as this is supposed to be a hypothetical Once Upon a Time final season, rest assured that love and hope will always prevail through a light dreamy-fantasy narrative.

One of my constant concerns in both stories was to build a plot that was both rich in the nuances typical of a rich plot, but mainly a springboard for character development. I am a fervent advocate - and this is one of my biggest complaints about the 7 seasons of Once Upon a Time - that the plot should serve the characters and not the other way around. Modestly, mainly because I wrote with time restrictions imposed by my personal and professional commitments, and I did that in a foreign language - which considerably reduced my 'arsenal' of vocabulary and style figures, The Final Season is my proposal to fix this problem.

With The Sweet Suite and Body and Soul I feel that the challenge I'd set to myself - to write a novel-length multimedia fanfic - has been met. I did my best to review the whole text thoroughly but I apologize for eventual typo/grammar/vocabulary/continuity errors that escaped in this non beta-ed novel (please remember that English is not my native language). Besides, the task I'd given to myself - to develop an original post-canon narrative for a canon-compliant story - has been fulfilled.

The creative process of this story reminds me the feeling of creating a mandala. When I started to think of Body and Soul, I felt a strong need to see its center and to construct a circular path to it surrounding, in a spiral way towards the center, every possible storyline angle it could encompass as well as every character and scenario I could visualize. I couldn’t pretend I was not ‘seeing’ them. Initially, that was really hard because I felt myself imprisoned by so many classic fairy tales and mythologies that it was not easy neither simple to envision any embracing path towards the most inner point which, by its turn, I could not find either. However, as I started to write, original plots and arcs started to appear naturally and to be unfolded, by their own volition, towards a 'Mother Inside' center (thematically addressed, albeit rather implicitly). Suddenly, I began to free myself from the obligation of being completely loyal to classic myths and tales and/or being limited by them – I started to find the tone of originality that I sought.

In a deep sense, I could then understand Adam and Eddy in another level and kind of felt more sympathetic with them because I could feel in my own skin a sample of the freedom degree that their formula gave to them. By twisting and mixing well known characters and their original stories, they could fly away in any direction. Even so, an essential difference between their creative work and mine, here, is that they were restricted by much more practical factors, from budget constraints to actors’ unavailability (and seemingly not bothering that much in generating narrative/character’s development inconsistencies in the process). Therefore, I ended up almost feeling a bit sorry for them - but not so much, and I also know that they were well paid for doing their job. In my turn, I also found a dose of impairment: my available time to write being the most important, but I managed it given that I was really motivated to write. So, about motivation, what really moves me is the pleasure in creating – it’s so fun – and in sharing the fun, hoping that the resultant of this effort will be appreciated by others.

For many years I’ve read and enjoyed so many great CS stories that a feeling of gratitude inspired me to dedicate this series, The Final Season, to their talented and creative authors. The Final Season series is a gift to all CS writers that have been able to shine without switching off anyone's light. This is my ‘thank you’ to all of them!

That said, let’s go back to Body and Soul and get into the mood of what is to come. I propose a short break to relax and let a soothing music massage our imagination, thus preparing us to re-enter the Once Upon a Time world that has already been introduced in Part One of the Final Season. So, please, inhale and exhale deeply, calming down while listening to the song/mantra in the link below (by chanting this mantra, you become surrounded by a field of white light of protection), breathing slowly to free your minds, to open your senses and… bon voyage!

I hope you will enjoy the ride and thank you in advance if you decide to leave a constructive feedback.

Have fun, guys, take care…

Light, Peace and Love!

*

In Gurmukhi:

"Aad Guray Nameh Jugaad Guray Nameh Sat Guray Nameh Siri Guru Dayvay Nameh"

Translation:

"I bow to the Primal Wisdom. I bow to the Wisdom through the Ages. I bow to the True Wisdom. I bow to the great, unseen Wisdom"

*

[mandibierly]

Danny McBride breaks down that wild 'Vice Principals' ending

Danny McBride in the series finale of ‘Vice Principals’ (Photo: Fred Norris/HBO)

Spoiler alert! If you tell Danny McBride that you thought Lee Russell (Walton Goggins) really had been shot dead by Ms. Abbott (Edi Patterson) in the series finale of HBO’s Vice Principals, you’ll make him very happy.

“I just love hearing that you really bought it, ’cause that’s sort of what our goal was with this whole show,” he says of himself and fellow exec producers/directors Jody Hill and David Gordon Green. “We all felt like we were bored of just watching something and knowing where it’s going to go. We felt like, if we can just make something that people don’t see the end coming a mile away, we’ll have done what we were supposed to do here. … We’d adjust back and forth between super-dark-weird drama and dumb comedy — it just makes the audience kind of sit back on their heels. You never really know what’s going to come. So I think it’s kind of funny to think that when you get into that, you really do think, ‘Wow, they can kill Lee Russell ’cause they don’t give a f**k.’ We did give a s**t, but we’re just pretending that we don’t.”

Lee had figured out that it was jilted Ms. Abbott who’d shot McBride’s Neal Gamby in the Season 1 finale, and then, jealous of Gamby’s relationship with Russell, tried to frame Lee for the attempted murder by planting evidence in his car in Season 2’s Spring Break episode.

“Lee’s flaw is that he’s a compulsive liar. It made more sense to us that that would be ultimately what would come to damage him. That his reputation is so severe, being accused of this and no one believing him [when he insists he didn’t shoot Gamby] — that’d almost be a greater way to have him have to explore himself,” McBride says. “Ultimately, at the end of the day, these guys have done so much bad stuff, but I think that’s the way it is in life: justice isn’t always served for our greatest wrongs. Sometimes it’s the small slights that we don’t even think of as a wrong that come back to bite us in the ass.”

The producers had decided Abbott was the killer before they began filming the series, though they didn’t tell Patterson and the rest of the cast until they got to Season 2. “We didn’t want everybody tipping off what was going to happen in the first season,” McBride says.

He admits it was a bit of a gamble. “What was interesting with this show was we never shot a pilot. We wrote the whole series and we just started shooting, so we never had that time to just see, is everybody going to work? Are all these actors going to pan out? Which I think is what most people use the pilot for — to test-drive the concept of the show,” he says. “But with Edi Patterson, I mean she was just so funny from the very first day that she showed up on set. She just made us so excited to see where her character was going to go. So we didn’t sway from her being the culprit. I think she’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever met before. I had just the absolute best time working with her. And honestly, when the show was over, I just kind of looked at her and was like, ‘Me and you have to do something else together again.’ So, we locked up, Edi and myself, and wrote this script together that’s a vehicle for her that I want to direct. So hopefully after this performance of hers, someone will finance that and make that movie.”

He would also love to work again with Goggins, who became a good friend. They had so many memorable scenes together, but he points to the one in the finale after the tiger that Lee had ordered for graduation attacks him. “The one that really got me the most was when he’s, like, dying for the second time because of the tiger wounds,” McBride says. “I remember him and I both were like, ‘This is what the whole entire series is about. It’s about this scene. If we can just make people take this ride for this scene, then we will have done what we needed to do with the show.’ So much so that we were actually supposed to shoot that scene one night. Then the night had kind of gone wrong, and Walt and I were both like, ‘Let’s not do it tonight. We’re not in the mindset. Let’s push it down the road a little bit.’ So we both just kind of knew that we needed to be in the right head space for that scene, and those two guys basically just acknowledging that they helped each other move past this f**ked up part in their life.”

Lee told Gamby that this last year was his favorite year of his whole life, and that he loves him. Then, he badgered Gamby into saying that he loves him, too. “That was all pretty much in the script. We probably improv-ed the least amount of any [project] we’ve done on this. I think that’s because there were so many spinning plates,” McBride says.

Yes, when Russell changed the school’s mascot to the tigers at the beginning of Season 2, it was so they could have that ending. “We started with [the idea that] these guys are out of date. Their views are out of date, the way they see the world is out of date, and it’s unfair. So the idea that the symbol that represents them in the beginning is the Native American warrior — something that is obviously insulting to so many people, something that really was out of place and out of context, it sort of makes sense. And then the idea that Lee’s ambition turns their warrior into the tiger — that’s how ambition sort of ends up eating him at the end. That was always in the DNA of [the show].”

Plus, we got to see the brilliant moment when Gamby, the ultimate disciplinarian, stopped the tiger from attacking again with the sheer force of his anger and a “f**k you.”

“He has so much rage and anger and displaced anger, this was a place for him to finally harness it, and try to use it to protect himself,” McBride says with a laugh.

Walton Goggins in the series finale of ‘Vice Principals’ (Photo: Fred Norris/HBO)

The finale ended with a flash-forward to three months later. Gamby’s still with Ms. Snodgrass (Georgia King), who’s now a published author, but he’s now the principal of a middle school. Lee, meanwhile, is the regional manager of a boutique in the mall. Gamby and Russell see each other in the food court and smile. But when Gamby looks again, Russell is gone. Does that mean they know their friendship is too toxic for them to spend time together? “I think that both of these guys [know] the importance that each of them played in their lives in this particular moment,” McBride says, “but I also think that both of them have grown enough to know that it’s probably better for the world if they don’t join forces.”

They never questioned where Lee would end up, he adds. “What’s really so funny is, ironically, when you write something like this where you explore these characters so deeply, by the end of it, your last episodes sort of end up writing themselves. You’ve set all this stuff up, and the characters sort of tell you where they need to go,” he says. “For some reason we just thought that he would take that lust of power and move into retail. He always cared about what he wore. He always had a sense for style. And it made sense that would be how he would build his empire again.”

And what’s the take-away from Gamby laying down the law for his new vice principal (Steve Little)? “Well, I think that Gamby learned a lot from Welles [Bill Murray]. I think he learned a lot more from Dr. Brown [Kimberly Hebert Gregory],” McBride says. “He is sort of using a little bit of her tactics of being open, but at the end of the day, letting people know that she shouldn’t be f**ked with.”

Maya Love and Danny McBride in the series finale of ‘Vice Principals’ (Photo: Fred Norris/HBO)

It’s a bittersweet fate for Gamby, for sure. “Weirdly, it’s one of the things that I find the most heartbreaking, when Gamby pulls up to that principal sign at a different school, because at the end of the day you know that North Jackson, and being there when his daughter was going to be there, is kind of all he ever wanted,” McBride says. “So I really look at that ending like he’s an exiled king that got booted out of his homeland. But the idea that Steve Little, who played Stevie Janowski on Eastbound, is there — [we’re] literally leaving the audience thinking that maybe all of the fun isn’t over just yet for him.”

Still, striking the right tone in the finale had to be tricky: we all know the criminal acts Russell and Gamby committed, and yet, we’ve grown to root for them. “We really set out to tell the story of the villain. In doing so, we didn’t even really want to totally redeem them, because I think true villains don’t just change overnight or become different people. So I think that there was a balance between how much justice do these guys deserve, and how much of it is just really like we’re showing this character piece?” McBride says. “Like with Tony Soprano in The Sopranos, you don’t necessarily have to see him get arrested or get killed for that to be a complete story. I think that’s sort of what we’re doing here. Do I think that being the principal of the middle school is a punishment enough for burning someone’s house down? Definitely not. But I think that in this world, it’s like we don’t really even know if this is all that’s going to happen to these guys. This is definitely a show about vice principals fighting for a job. When both of those guys are out of the running for that job, the story is sort of over, and the audience is kind of left to fill in the blanks of what happens next.”

The show was conceived as a limited series, but especially now that we’ve gotten to know the teachers so well in Season 2, maybe we could at least get a reunion special on the DVD? “I had probably the best time of my career working on the show and meeting these friends, and I love them — every one of them from Kimberly to Walton to Edi, Georgia, they’re all just incredible. I would love to work with all these guys again, and if it was in this world, if it was the right idea, I’d do it again,” McBride says. “But I think that part of what makes the story work is the idea that it isn’t designed to go on forever. We were really able to show character growth and flip the story on its ass because we didn’t have the restraints of having to make sure we maintained a formula that would be workable year after year after year. I think that’s what ultimately made the show interesting.”

As a viewer, it was satisfying to see how Gamby’s moments with the “workers” (DeShawn!), “bad kids” (yay, Robin Shandrell!), and “gold-star teachers” all built to them joining forces in the penultimate episode after Gamby and Russell’s epic brawl through the school. (McBride directed that fight in less than a day, by the way: “I just had to get creative and figure out how to shoot this in a way where I didn’t need to get in there and cover every single punch and kick,” he says. “So I was just walking around the set and came up with an idea for that tracking shot, and I just started to devise the whole fight that way — seeing these guys with the background, with the school, which is the other character of the show.”)

What was the most satisfying part for McBride in the end? “We took a year to write the whole series, and I swear to god I never had an anxiety attack ever in my life until about a week before we went down to shoot. I just woke up in the middle of the night, panicked in a straight-up anxiety attack, just because of the sheer amount of time we spent writing on this, then knowing we were about to go shoot it,” he says. “This whole thing was an adventure, and to be able to put that much energy into something, then to at the end of the day come up with something that you’re proud of, and that you’re happy with, and that you made new friends with — I think it’s the ultimate sort of pay-off because the whole thing was ultimately rewarding. It was such a fun way to make a living.”

Since he doubts we’ll get the trademark group commentary on the Season 2 Blu-ray (he hears it’s being rush-packaged for Christmas: “Maybe one day down the road Criterion will decide to release a TV show and they’ll have us do a commentary,” he jokes), can he at least answer one burning question: What did Lee do to get kicked out of gymnastics?!

“The world will never know,” McBride says with another laugh. “I know what he did, but I will never tell anyone. I will keep Lee Russell’s secret to the grave.”

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[blackkudos]

Eldridge Cleaver

Leroy Eldridge Cleaver (August 31, 1935 – May 1, 1998) was an American writer and political activist who became an early leader of the Black Panther Party. His 1968 book, Soul On Ice, is a collection of essays that, at the time of its publication, was praised by The New York Times Book Review as "brilliant and revealing".

Cleaver went on to become a prominent member of the Black Panthers, having the titles Minister of Information and Head of the International Section of the Panthers, while a fugitive from the United States criminal justice system in Cuba and Algeria. As editor of the official Panther's newspaper, The Black Panther, Cleaver's influence on the direction of the Party was rivaled only by founders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. Cleaver and Newton eventually fell out with each other, resulting in a split that weakened the party.

Cleaver wrote in Soul on Ice: "If a man like Malcolm X could change and repudiate racism, if I myself and other former Muslims can change, if young whites can change, then there is hope for America."

After spending seven years in exile in Cuba, Algeria, and France, Cleaver returned to the US in 1975, where he became involved in various religious groups (Unification Church and CARP) before finally becoming a Mormon and joining the LDS Church, as well as becoming a conservative Republican, appearing at Republican events.

Early life

Born in Wabbaseka, Arkansas, as a child, Cleaver moved with his family to Phoenix and then to Los Angeles. He was the son of Leroy Cleaver and Thelma Hattie Robinson. He had four siblings: Wilhelima Marie, Helen Grace, James Weldon, and Theophilus Henry.

As a teenager, he was involved in petty crime and spent time in youth detention centers. At the age of 18, he was convicted of a felony drug charge (marijuana, a felony at the time) and sent to the adult prison at Soledad. In 1958, he was convicted of rape and assault with intent to murder and eventually served time in Folsom and San Quentin prisons. While in prison, he was given a copy of the Communist Manifesto. Cleaver petitioned for habeas corpus to the Solano County Court and was granted it along with a release of a $50,000 bail.

Black Panther Party

Eldridge Cleaver was released from prison on December 12, 1966. He was writing for Ramparts magazine and organizing efforts to revitalize the Organization of Afro-American Unity. At this time, President John F. Kennedy and Malcolm X were dead. The Black Panther Party was only two months old. He then joined the Oakland-based Black Panther Party, serving as Minister of Information, or spokesperson. What initially attracted Cleaver to the Panthers, as opposed to other prominent groups, was their commitment to armed struggle.

In 1967, Eldridge Cleaver, along with Marvin X, Ed Bullins, and Ethna Wyatt, formed the Black House political/cultural center in San Francisco. Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Askia Toure, Sarah Webster Fabio, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Avotcja, Reginald Lockett, Emory Douglas, Samuel Napier, Bobby Hutton, Huey Newton, and Bobby Seale were Black House regulars. The same year, he married Kathleen Neal Cleaver (divorced 1987) with whom he would have son Ahmad Maceo Eldridge (b.1969, Algeria) and daughter Joju Younghi (b.July 31, 1970, North Korea).

Cleaver was a presidential candidate in 1968 on the ticket of the Peace and Freedom Party. Having been born on August 31, 1935, Cleaver would not have been the requisite 35 years of age until more than a year after Inauguration Day 1969. (Although the Constitution requires that the President be 35 years of age, it does not specify if he must have reached that age at the time of nomination, or election, or inauguration.) Courts in both Hawaii and New York held that he could be excluded from the ballot because he could not possibly meet the Constitutional criteria. Cleaver and his running mate Judith Mage received 36,571 votes (0.05%).

Also in 1968, Cleaver led an ambush of Oakland police officers, during which two officers were wounded. In the aftermath of the ambush, Cleaver was wounded and 17-year-old Black Panther member Bobby Hutton was killed. The eight Panthers who ambushed the police department had two objectives: to break Newton out of jail and to kill police officers. In 1980, he claimed that he had led the Panther group on a deliberate ambush of the police officers, thus provoking the shootout. The same author who broke the news of this claim doubted its veracity, because it was in the context of an uncharacteristic speech, in which Cleaver also discredited the Black Panthers, stated "we need police as heroes," and said that he denounced civilian review boards of police shootings for the "bizarre" reason that "it is a rubber stamp for murder." The author speculates that it could have been a pay off to the Alameda County justice system, whose judge had only just days earlier let Eldridge Cleaver escape prison time; Cleaver was sentenced to mere community service after getting charged with three counts of assault against three Oakland cops. The PBS documentary A Huey Newton Story finds that “Bobby Hutton was shot more than twelve times after he had already surrendered and stripped down to his underwear to prove he was not armed.”

Charged with attempted murder, he jumped bail to flee to Cuba in late 1968. In Cuba, he received red-carpet treatment. Cleaver was set up in a Havana penthouse with his own personal maid and cook. The penthouse was stocked with all the food, rum, and cigars he would need. The hospitality soon ended. Having received information that the CIA had infiltrated the Black Panther Party, Castro could no longer trust them. Cleaver then decided to head to Algeria, sending word to his wife to meet him there. Cleaver had set up an international office for the Black Panthers in Algeria. Following Timothy Leary's Weather Underground-assisted prison escape, Leary stayed with Cleaver in Algeria; however, Cleaver placed Leary under "revolutionary arrest" as a counter-revolutionary for promoting drug use.

In 1969, Cleaver also cultivated an alliance with North Korea and BPP publications began reprinting excerpts from Kim Il Sung's writings. Although leftists of the time often looked to Cuba, China, and North Vietnam for inspiration, few had paid any attention to the secretive Pyongyang regime. Bypassing US travel restrictions on North Korea, Cleaver and other BPP members made two visits to the country in 1969-70 with the idea that the juche model could be adapted to the revolutionary liberation of African-Americans. Taken on an official tour of North Korea, Cleaver expressed admiration at "the DPRK's stable, crime-free society which provided guaranteed food, employment, and housing for all, and which had no economic or social inequalities."

Byron Vaughn Booth (former Panther Deputy Minister of Defense) claimed that, after a trip to the DPRK, Cleaver discovered his wife had been having an affair with Clinton Robert Smith Jr.. Booth told the FBI he had witnessed Cleaver shoot and kill Smith with an AK47.

In his 1978 book Soul on Fire, Cleaver made several claims regarding his exile in Algeria, including that he was supported by regular stipends from the government of North Vietnam, which the United States was then bombing. Cleaver stated that he was followed by other former criminals turned revolutionaries, many of whom (including Booth and Smith) hijacked planes to get to Algeria.

Split and new directions

Eldridge Cleaver and Huey Newton eventually fell out with each other over the necessity of armed struggle as a response to COINTELPRO and other actions by the government against the Black Panthers and other radical groups. Also Cleaver's interest in North Korea and global anti-imperialist struggle drew ire from other BPP members who felt that he was neglecting the needs of African-Americans at home in the US. Following his expulsion from the Black Panthers in 1971, the group's ties with North Korea were quickly forgotten. Cleaver advocated the escalation of armed resistance into urban guerilla warfare, while Newton suggested the best way to respond was to put down the gun, which he felt alienated the Panthers from the rest of the black community, and focus on more pragmatic reformist activity by lobbying for increased social programs to aid African-American communities and anti-discrimination laws. Cleaver accused Newton of being an Uncle Tom for choosing to cooperate with white interests rather than overthrow them.

Cleaver left Algeria in 1972, moving to Paris, France, becoming a born again Christian during time in isolation living underground. He turned his hand to fashion design, three years later releasing his codpiece revival "virility pants" he called "the Cleavers", enthusing that they would give men "a chance to assert their masculinity".

Cleaver returned to the United States in 1977 to face the unresolved attempted murder charge. By September 1978, on bail as those proceedings dragged on, he had incorporated Eldridge Cleaver Ltd, running a factory and West Hollywood shop exploiting his "Cleavers", which he claimed liberated men from "penis binding". He saw no conflict with his newfound Christianity, drawing support for his overtly sexual design from 22 Deuteronomy. The long outstanding charge was subsequently resolved on a plea bargain reducing it to assault. A sentence of 1,200 hours' community service was imposed.

Later life

In the early 1980s, Cleaver became disillusioned with what he saw as the commercial nature of evangelical Christianity and examined alternatives, including Sun Myung Moon's campus ministry organization CARP, and Mormonism. He later led a short-lived revivalist ministry called Eldridge Cleaver Crusades, "a hybrid synthesis of Islam and Christianity he called 'Christlam'", along with an auxiliary called the Guardians of the Sperm.

Cleaver was then later baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) on December 11, 1983, periodically attended regular services, lectured by invitation at LDS gatherings, and was a member of the church in good standing at the time of his death in 1998.

By the 1980s, Cleaver had become a conservative Republican. He appeared at various Republican events and spoke at a California Republican State Central Committee meeting regarding his political transformation. In 1984, he ran for election to the Berkeley City Council but lost. Undaunted, he promoted his candidacy in the Republican Party primary for the 1986 Senate race but was again defeated. The next year, his 20-year marriage to Kathleen Neal Cleaver came to an end.

In 1988, Cleaver was placed on probation for burglary and was briefly jailed later in the year after testing positive for cocaine. He entered drug rehabilitation for a stated crack cocaine addiction two years later, but was arrested for possession by Oakland and Berkeley Police in 1992 and 1994. Shortly after his final arrest, he moved to Southern California, falling into poor health.

Death

Cleaver died at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center in Pomona, California, on May 1, 1998, at 6:20 am. His family asked that the hospital not reveal the cause of death, although he was known to have diabetes and prostate cancer. He is buried at Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena, California.

Soul on Ice (1968)

While in prison, he wrote a number of philosophical and political essays, first published in Ramparts magazine and then in book form as Soul on Ice. In the essays, Cleaver traces his own development from a "supermasculine menial" to a radical black liberationist, and his essays became highly influential in the black power movement.

In the most controversial part of the book, Cleaver acknowledges committing acts of rape, stating that he initially raped black women in the ghetto "for practice" and then embarked on the serial rape of white women. He described these crimes as politically inspired, motivated by a genuine conviction that the rape of white women was "an insurrectionary act". When he began writing Soul on Ice, he unequivocally renounced rape and all his previous reasoning about it.

The essays in Soul on Ice are divided into four thematic sections: "Letters from Prison", describing Cleaver's experiences with and thoughts on crime and prisons; "Blood of the Beast", discussing race relations and promoting black liberation ideology; "Prelude to Love – Three Letters", love letters written to Cleaver's attorney, Beverly Axelrod; and "White Woman, Black Man", on gender relations, black masculinity, and sexuality.

Wikipedia

[crimsondude]

Heat (1995), one of the best and worst influences on Shadowrun

Michael Mann's Heat (1995) is a Los Angeles crime epic that, if you're reading this, you've probably seen or been told to see. It is among Blade Runner and Ronin in the fan canon of Shadowrun inspirations. This is because it's an incredible movie with a well-crafted story world, and a gunfight so realistic that the Marine Corps shows it during Basic Training. Neal McCauley's (Robert De Niro's) crew is team of professional criminals, experienced in working together, are well-armed (They carry CAR-15s, Galil, H&K G33 or SR9 rifle, etc.) well-trained in their specialties and in overall combat and heist/burglary tradecraft (including hacking or using very technical methods to counter alarms and other technology), use sophisticated counterintelligence and counter-surveillance methods, and basically depicts what could easily be described as a Prime Runner team (The jobs they pull off or attempt to pull off escalate from $1.6 million to ~$4 million to over $12 million).

However ...

I was listening to the Sixth World Podcast #14 with Adam Koebel and as I replied in that episode's post (See More), I generally agreed with him. One thing that he discussed that I didn't really touch upon then that I noticed this time and want to comment on is the dichotomy between the cyberpunk fiction of a loose confederation of lone wolves and the reality of a tabletop crew being a recurring group of characters involved in a long-term campaign. The reason this matters is that First and early Second Edition were written mostly by the original developers, especially by Nigel Findley, and there was a consistent vision of the world that didn't really have anything to do with the experience of playing this game at a tabletop. Then Steve Kenson, Jon Szeto, and other second-generation authors came along; freelancers who had actually played Shadowrun (They even played by snail mail). Following them were freelancers who came up through the Internet because Shadowrun has had a consistent presence online and a close relationship with Internet fans since it was published.

And a lot of these players knew of Heat and referenced it. And beyond that, they also tended to come to Shadowrun as players or GMs in campaigns with set teams and basically running "professional" shadowrunner crews like in Heat. To be fair, Heat does not stand alone at this time in the mid-90s. Reservoir Dogs, Mission: Impossible, and Ronin are thoroughly Shadowrun movies even without knowing they are. These fans took influence from crime and noir fiction like the Donald Westlake Parker novels and similar movies that run from the 1950s-70s (Payback [1999] was the first film adaptation of Westlake's The Hunter since Lee Marvin’s Point Blank was released in 1967). Anyway, nostalgia in the 1990s was for the 1970s, just as today we are nostalgic for the 1990s. There were also very distinct themes and settings when it came to Shadowrun and especially Shadowrun online in the mid to late 1990s.

This was the era of the Professional Shadowrunner.

As it happens, this coincided with the release of a hyper-useful Shadowrun sourcebook, Fields of Fire. Fields of Fire was the intellectual precursor to adopting the attitudes and techniques we then saw in Heat because the first third to half of FoF is a treatise on being a Professional – it's about being a professional mercenary and also addressed repeatedly in the book to how to behave as a shadowrunner. It's so useful that it's a starting reference for being an adult in general because – SPOILER ALERT – "common sense" actually isn't. Plus, Tom Dowd wrote it. It's not quite Gospel, but at the time it was more like the Dark Lord on High's Letter to the Pink Mohawks.

Anyway, the Professional Shadowrunner was a mercenary and a sociopath, if not in fact then at least in effect, and any punk ethos was eliminated in favor of "realism." I should add that in the 90s, the idea of real-life mercenaries and private contractors was becoming a thing as the end of the Cold War put a lot of professionals onto the streets. So what do you do? In Ronin, you steal a case (Which is actually cover for a whole other job). The Professional Shadowrunner wasn't a Black Trenchcoat, he was a Grey Man Assassin. Black trench coats are ostentatious as Hell even here in the Pacific Northwest. The only people who wear them, except for a short time in the 90s, are men who need a coat long enough to protect their suits, which appropriately enough describes the Professional Shadowrunner sometimes.

The Professional Shadowrunner has to worry about living in the real world because once they're off the job, they're trying to be an inconspicuous as possible. These people don't squat in the Barrens, they have houses their fixer bought through cut-outs with laundered money and impeccable fake SINs. The Black Trenchcoat focuses on drama; the Professional Shadowrunner is No-Drama Obama about this shit. They over-prepare for everything. And like in Heat, when combat does go down they operate like a team of Navy SEALs — probably because according to the PCs’ backgrounds, they were Navy SEALs. Having a "legitimate" or "realistic" background to acquiring skills and learning tactics (and you could learn tactics online from field manuals and other resources) was critical to justifying basically the runner's entire existence.

This attitude towards "realism" eventually stretched into how people treated the entirety of the setting, excusing the fact that Shadowrun has MAGIC and just flat-out is not Real Life. All of this influence began coming to a head in the material following, ironically enough, Dunkelzahn's Will.

Yes, kids, the last will and testament of the first Great Dragon to be elected President of the successor to the United States was the primary catalyst to making Shadowrun more "realistic."

I should also mention that the death of Dunkelzahn and the will were also used as capstones for a period of time that was absolutely batshit within the context of the entire life of the line. In a two-year period, we got Bug City, Aztechnology Blood Magic, Harlequin's Back trying to stop the Azzies from bring the Horrors back sooner, and a ton of Earthdawn connections (Earthdawn was released in 1993, but references to the Fourth World have existed since the original Big Black Book in 1989) to sell the connection between both games, especially ED since there's never been a lack of fantasy settings for tabletop RPGs. Earthdawn's schtick was that it led to an already-popular cyberpunk and magic game set in the dark future.

With Dunkelzahn's Will in late 1996, FASA slammed the door on a lot of the more fantastical elements that had dominated the setting and metaplot. 1997 was the year of the Mob War, and 1998 was the year of the Corp Wars of 2059-60. The Corp Wars sought to address some of that lack of realism such as how Japan had experienced the Ghost Decade IRL while in Shadowrun the Japanacorps still ruled everything. So they added White Monday (the Tokyo Stock Exchange plummets), moved Yamatetsu to Russia, killed Fuchi, and replaced it with Novatech in Boston, and brought on CATCo and Wuxing – because no one foresaw China mattering at all in 1989.

And thematically, tonally, Shadowrun players were increasingly being told to reference 90s crime movies and other films about teams of clandestine or covert professional, either proprietary or freelance, and the library expanded. To contrast 1999's The Matrix; Mamet's Heist, Way of the Gun (Its combat scenes were choreographed by a Navy SEAL), and Payback (Yet another adaptation of Westlake's The Hunter). At the top of that list, however, are Heat and Ronin, and while Ronin is a better depiction of the random crew assembled for a job, Heat is the model for how to build a team of PCs who are going to run together for a long-term tabletop campaign.

I love this movie, and it's one of the only I still own a hard copy of (along with The Godfather Trilogy). It's incredibly useful for envisioning the life of shadowrunners both on the job and during their downtime, where the PCs have to balance life with their career of being professional criminals. Michael Mann created a beautiful world of the criminal underworld in Los Angeles, complete with a fixer, a Mr. Johnson, an Information Broker, Fences ("All fences are informants," Mann revealed in the 10th Anniversary DVD commentary), and the world they occupy off the clock. And, again, the downtown gunfight is fucking brilliant.

I also appreciate much of the influence, directly and indirectly, for inspiring people to add realism and depth to their characters and the world. However, I think these drives sometimes were excessive, and adding realism without appreciating the full context and world that preceded them. I'm not revealing state secrets to mention that people who would become freelancers, including myself, would even dismiss some material because it was "wrong" and not because, you know, this is a game.

[reading-writing-revolution]

“And so, we struggle to preserve the rule of law in America, the fundamental principle on which this country was based.”

Heather Cox Richardson

May 11, 2020 (Monday)

The announcement last week by the Department of Justice that it would drop criminal charges against Trump’s former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who twice pleaded guilty of lying to the FBI, has set up a conflict between the Trump administration and the rule of law.

On Thursday, Timothy Shea, interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and a protege of Attorney General William Barr, filed a motion to drop the charges against Flynn just hours after the lead career prosecutor in the case withdrew. Shea argued that the Russia investigation was not legitimate, and that therefore Flynn’s lies to the FBI were immaterial.

On Sunday, Mary McCord, who was the acting assistant Attorney General for National Security from 2016 to 2017, early on in the Russia investigation, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times accusing Barr of twisting her words to justify dropping the case against Flynn. McCord noted that both the DOJ and the FBI recognized that Flynn’s lies about his discussions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak would leave him open to blackmail from Russians. What they disagreed about was when to warn the White House that Flynn was compromised. Barr’s many quotations of her to suggest she opposed the investigation were taken out of context, she wrote; she did not “anywhere suggest that the F.B.I.’s interview of Mr. Flynn was unconstitutional, unlawful or not ‘tethered’ to any legitimate counterintelligence purpose.”

Today nearly 2000 former officials in the Justice Department called for Barr to resign from his office and for Congress to censure him. The former officials charged him with introducing “political interference in the Department’s law enforcement decisions.” "Attorney General Barr’s repeated actions to use the Department as a tool to further President Trump’s personal and political interests have undermined any claim to the deference that courts usually apply to the Department’s decisions about whether or not to prosecute a case," they wrote. “Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are not constitutional republics they are autocracies.”

In the New York Times, Georgetown law professors Neal K. Katyal and Joshua A. Geltzer warned that the dismissal of the case against Flynn was not simply about letting off a friend of the president. They noted that “this move embeds into official U.S. policy an extremist view of law enforcement as the enemy of the American people.” The Trump administration’s actions condemn fundamental U.S. institutions: the FBI and the Department of Justice. If the goal was simply to shield Flynn, they note, Trump could have pardoned him. Instead, the Trump administration is discrediting the fundamental institutions that establish the rule of law.

This ties into Trump’s push today to spread the idea of “Obamagate.” He tweeted about this repeatedly on Sunday, but he ran into trouble at his news conference on Monday, a conference that was theoretically about the coronavirus. “Obamagate” is a new conspiracy theory suggesting either that President Barack Obama has committed treason by criticizing Trump on a leaked phone call or that Obama set up Flynn as part of a grand scheme to undermine the Trump campaign, and later administration, with a bogus Russia investigation. (There is no evidence of this, of course.)

Today Philip Rucker of the Washington Post asked Trump: “In one of your Mother’s Day tweets, you appeared to accuse President Obama of ‘the biggest political crime in American history, by far’ — those were your words. What crime exactly are you accusing President Obama of committing, and do you believe the Justice Department should prosecute him?”

“Uh, Obamagate. It’s been going on for a long time,” Trump said. “It’s been going on from before I even got elected, and it’s a disgrace that it happened, and if you look at what’s gone on, and if you look at now, all this information that’s being released — and from what I understand, that’s only the beginning — some terrible things happened, and it should never be allowed to happen in our country again.”

When Rucker pressed the president to explain what, exactly, the crime was, Trump replied: “You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours.”

A number of Trump loyalists are now throwing their weight behind this “Obamagate” meme and are calling for prosecution of those members of the FBI and DOJ that investigated Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) claimed that Flynn was entrapped and called it “tyranny,” saying that those responsible “ought to be prosecuted.” When asked about holding senior Obama administration officials accountable for the investigation that ensnared Flynn, Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA) the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee told a radio station, ““Nobody more than me wants to see these people prosecuted.”

(Nunes, you will recall, did not disclose during the impeachment hearings that he had been in contact with political operative Lev Parnas, who is now under indictment for contributing Russian money to American political campaigns.)

But as Trump’s people seek to prosecute officials in the Obama administration, Trump continues to maintain that he himself cannot be subject to oversight. Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether Trump can keep his financial records secret from Congress and state prosecutors. At heart, this is a question about whether the president is above the law.

And so, we struggle to preserve the rule of law in America, the fundamental principle on which this country was based.

Meanwhile, we learned tonight that a previously undisclosed report from the White House shows that numbers of coronavirus infections around the country are rising, not falling, as Trump has said. The coronavirus situation is so bad in the Navajo Nation in the U.S. Southwest that Doctors Without Borders, the international organization best known for sending medical professionals into third-world countries and international conflict zones, had dispatched a team to the U.S.