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arcticdementor · 3 years ago

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I was talking to Sarah yesterday and I had a revelation I think is worth sharing.

Let’s begin at the beginning. About a month ago, Instapundit posted this.

Now, I’ve been thinking of the rise and fall of civilizations lately. I can’t think why it’s been on my mind. It’s a tale as old as time—a civilization emerges, establishes a new worthwhile order, the good things brought forth by said order soften up the people maintaining it, the softening turns to decadence, and the decadence gives way to the barbarians, who clean the slate. Where would you say things are lately?

…

In short—the federal government of the United States of America has become impotent at almost all good things.

Expanded out—There is no start to its talents. It cannot maintain its borders. Since the “election” it doesn’t even try. No surprise there. It cannot maintain friendly relationships with allies—as our recent screwing of Britain on our way out of Afghanistan shows. The “leader” of the “free world” could not be bothered to pick up the phone for our closest ally. Speaking of Afghanistan, it can’t win a war. It can’t even lose gracefully. In fact it fucked up leaving so badly some people are entertaining that it intended to fuck it up, because how the fuck does somebody above the age of six not notice that pulling the military out first and the civilians out second is not even a remotely workable strategy? Resulting in leaving millions of dollars of equipment—and—excuse me, what? Millions of dollars of dollars in the desert? Fantastic.

It makes self sabotaging and idiotic choices to stymie its own domestic oil industry, while accepting a pipeline not from Canada, but one that’s a joint Russian-German venture instead. Which means the problem, contrary to any environmentalist whining, isn’t the pipeline—it’s the pipeline with a friendly country. Big surprise— its only true interest in the environment lies in international agreements that hamstring us while doing nothing to China, the world’s largest polluter. It either can’t be trusted on energy production and the environment, or is trying to get it wrong.

It can’t manage its economy. What could have been a “V” shaped recovery has been turned into an “L” shaped one. What could be contributing? Paying people to do nothing? Rampant inflation? Meanwhile all the dumbasses running the country can think of is spending several billion more dollars that don’t exist. The country has infrastructure problems for a fact, but they’ll only acknowledge that to the extent of cynically plastering the word on an “infrastructure” bill which is in fact just a far Left wishlist that largely ignores actual infrastructure, in the hopes people will be dumb enough to support it because it has the right label.

And on.

What aptitudes does it have besides taking money, trampling civil liberties, and ignoring constitutional laws at gunpoint? News flash, dummies: We don’t need peaceful protestors incarcerated without a trial. We don’t need the weight of the federal government turned to the problem of violating states rights because Texas passed a law Biden doesn’t like. We need military egresses that look like they weren’t planned by Bozo the clown and an economic plan better than something China would design for us as an attempt to permanently sink the country. Is there anyone at all in DC who can provide that? If not, is there anything useful they can do? I’ll wait.

…

This is what decadence looks like. When the government stops even attempting competence because nothing and nobody that currently exists can replace or displace them so who cares about results? When comfort and plenty have become so common, been taken for granted for so long, that the question of utility or even basic sanity isn’t even distantly considered. When it’s assumed that self-harming policies that will obviously damage the country won’t really matter because nobody has ever known a world without America and fundamentally has no idea how the present day came to be. When the country’s most educated start chasing bizarre and unimaginably stupid ideas on economics that boil down to “inflation won’t happen if you double the monetary supply by printing money, if only you just believe hard enough”. In fact, when education stops being a means to greater insight, more useful abilities, and a better life, and becomes a cult devoted to the kind of idiocy that can survive only with strenuous censorship, the tenets of the cult being treated by the indoctrinated as a collection of sacred mysteries and deeply-thought paradoxes— while to those not similarly trained it is self-obviously a collection of contradictory and self-serving lies.

Verily, decadence is here. We can infer that what comes next is the barbarians. And we have options. Mexican illegals? A heady mixture of poverty-stricken Marxists who have never known a system that wasn’t corrupt, functionally lawless, and devoted to the tenets of voting oneself rich; and outright criminals with lives like “a demon’s resumé”? Perhaps radical Muslims? By sheer numbers worldwide they’re the most likely option. The Taliban just got a huge infusion of cash and a big boost in morale. In a few short days we’ll know whether they’ve arranged a thank you gift for Zho Bi-Xen and his kleptocrat marching band to commemorate his intended pull-out date. But even if, and God I hope, they have not, we can expect an uptick in terrorism and quite shortly. Or perhaps China? The Middle Kingdom would laugh at being called barbarians, but I call genocidal communists like I see them. Mao was morally three steps below a pig and Xi has enough power to aspire to greater depths. As is I wouldn’t dream of feeding a pig Mu Shu Xi due to the great risk of poisoning the pig.

But there is a barbarian group not considered. Us.

Hang on. Before you balk, listen. Look again at what these idiots are selling as the fruits of civilization. Defenses of pedophilia and urinals as art. And more, too—sterilization and disfigurement of teenagers in the form of sex changes. Black supremacy as a panacea to made up threats of white supremacy. Books nobody reads, movies nobody watches, paintings that exist only to launder money—even the ones not made by Hunter Biden.

What good person would not be proud to be considered a barbarian by these miserable, over-decorated Faberge people? I’d be mortified if they agreed with me! So they think I’m a sexist or a racist or whatever. Fine. They do not use these words to mean the same things I mean, so it’s a pointless argument, and they are now officially beneath my explaining myself to them. When the people who are calling me names are so morally opaque that the Taliban can make devastating critiques of them just by referencing the foundational works of their own gender studies programs, I’m done caring about the names. Fine. I’m what you think is a racist. I’m what you think is a sexist. But you think a lot of very stupid things, and as the curtain continues to draw back on the carnival of madness that’s been behind the scenes the entire time it’s occurring to me that what you think and reality overlap so seldom that the only time not to ignore you is when I can ridicule you. If that is your civilization, someone hand me a pointy horned helmet.

…

Yes, this is a moment of peril, but also opportunity. See in your country what every hostile group listed above sees in it—the makings of great civilization, along other, less stupid lines. All of it guarded by weak, fat, stupid people with no will and no self-belief. Take that mindset and go forth.

Get involved in your local systems. There is an old prayer for God to make ones enemies ridiculous. Congratulations to whomever was still praying it. Your prayers have been answered. Will you tell me that you cannot defeat these people? People who lose casual debates to terrorists not on principle but on basic facts?

…

You can’t reason with them so don’t bother. Recent events have made it clear you may as well try to talk sense into a three-day-old mackerel. Just confront them with their own stupidity so that people who see the inevitable video understand what this is about, and don’t feel that you are too good to shout them out of the room. You’re the barbarian, remember? Not like the nice civilized people with their gender-queer Tik-Tokers pushing vaccine propaganda. That means you’re excused from conversations with morons. Don’t bother trying to find common ground. Look at where they’re standing! Do you want to try to find the midpoint between that and reality? Silly. Pointless. Send them back to their walled online gardens to whine to their equally stupid friends about the barbarians.

Can we take it back from the ground up? I don’t know. But hey, it’s got to be worth a shot. Join the fun! Find some friends and locate a low-hanging political event to raid. When was the last time you went to a town hall for your town? Isn’t just a part of you curious to know whether your local county commissioner starts by declaring her pronouns? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see someone like that made very uncomfortable? You can make that happen. You can probably do it within the next month. Bring a few friends! Or a few dozen. Some of the people reading this probably were afraid to do that kind of thing for fear of losing their job. The Biden economy might have freed up some of your time. What have you got to lose now? More importantly, the way things are going, are you going to lose it anyway if things continue as they are? Think on it.

#thomas kendall #sarah a hoyt

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vaguely-concerned · 5 years ago

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I rewatched the mandalorian episode 8 and boy have I got feels for you

- lol gideon’s callouts to all of them though... you have ‘hey cara remember how we blew up your entire planet and killed your fellow soldiers’ and ‘hey din djarin yeah I know who you are lol the mysterious stranger thing doesn’t work on me remember how we apparently murdered a bunch of mandalorian children in one night’ (that’s how I’m taking ‘mandalorian recruits’ anyway) and then finally there’s just ‘greef karga. you’re really old enough to know better.’

- oh bb!din doesn’t cry at any point during the whole flashback :((( bb boy. he’s of course terrified but there are no tears. I’m guessing he’s in shock/dissociated the entire time. (probably also due to having a child actor but I think it makes a lot of sense in-universe too! to put on my trauma hat for a moment he’s always read to me as a combined freeze/flight type; he either dissociates or loses himself in work. I suppose he got started early)

- the look on Papa Djarin’s (I mean I assume) face as tiny din reaches out for him and he knows he has to turn away and leave to save him :) exquisite burning agony

I still wonder so much what his parents did for a living. those red robes look almost like uniforms/religious garb to me or it might of course just be the fashion in this place, people in the background seem to be wearing similar things.

- I LOVE the mando who saves him as a kid because that’s apparently the same actor who’s in the mando suit when it’s not pedro pascal or another stuntman (brendan wayne, I think it is?) so it gives this wonderful feeling that you get now where a lot of din’s body language and general bearing comes from but there’s also just enough difference that it’s clearly another person. with din there’s always this edge of reserve and a slight stiffness no matter how relaxed he is, and this guy has the same basic steadiness as him but seems a bit more open just from these few short shots. (there might be a little bit of character design in this as well -- din’s shoulder pauldrons are naturally uh ‘higher’ than this guy’s, who has smoother/flatter and more rounded shapes, giving the feeling of shoulders just slightly raised and relaxed down respectively)

it’s nice to see the mandos as a protective force even if they have the death watch symbol there to make you go ‘?!?!?!’, there wasn’t a lot of that in clone wars but it’s an ill wind and so on I guess

- this confused jawa looking at the dead stormtroopers is everything. don’t worry you’re doing amazing sweetie

- the context for why din picks up the e-web (channeling the spirit of baze malbus, a man who also didn’t let the fact that his weapon was really meant to be mounted on a tank stop him :’) ) makes it even better: he sees that IG-11 has the baby and that he’s getting overwhelmed and he literally grabs the biggest gun he can find and goes to town to let him get away.

- “I haven’t heard that name spoken since I was a child” ooof but also what are the logistics of that? I’m wondering if it might be the ‘Djarin’ part, if that’s his family name? maybe there hasn’t been a use for that among the mandos? surely someone has needed to call him by name somehow at some point in the last 30+ years lol

- one of the reasons gideon works so well as a villain is that he can get past the beskar. he knows exactly how to kill mandalorians because he’s done it before. he’s not only a huge threat emotionally -- he wants the baby and he’s done some fucked up shit to din’s culture -- he’s also one of the few people who can nullify the physical protection of our main boi in the helmet. and that scares me. because he’s my dad and I love him.

- I’m fairly sure din is properly unconscious for almost half a minute there. (which is very very bad. always go see a doctor if you lose consciousness after hitting your head if an IG unit with appropriate training and equipment is not on hand)

- baby yoda passing out after doing one (admittedly spectacular) thing is a wholeass mood, #same buddy ilu

- din is the first person to explicitly call the baby a foundling ;____;

- poor cara she’s already lost so much and her new bro is trying to convince her to let him throw himself on any sword made available to him. (I do love that neither she nor IG-11 buy mando’s bullshit for a moment here tho lol they’re openly saying they’ll take him with them anyway while he’s listening)

- oh. oh din starting to jumble his words even as the gun remains rock steady in his hand is hitting me really hard this time. ow.

- I think the baby can sense din and IG coming (he gives a little sound right before they show up)

- when cara checks in with him in the tunnel she touches her fingers to his chest so very lightly and he almost falls over backwards sdfaksdljhf

- well he definitely is trembling while picking up that helmet from the pile. so have fun knowing that with me

it’s so messed up too because there’s not that many of them left; he’s all but guaranteed to have known every single one of them.

- this image of him on his knees in front of this pile of the empty armor of the dead feels. I don’t know how to describe it but like a repeat. like he has been here before, this isn’t the first time and it’s hitting him all over again. (considering how things have been going for the mandos recently that might very well be true too. metaphorically this is essentially what’s going on in the background of the entire show, anyway. Friends I think mando Saw Some Shit during the night of a thousand tears or a similar event)

maybe what gives me this feeling is how clearly he is in another time in some way during this part, before the armorer diagnoses him with Dad and brings him properly back. he’s trying to send them away with the baby, who’s like. basically the symbol of his will to live at this point. “I can’t leave it this way”, he can’t leave the dead behind and be alive, some part of him wants to stay with them.

you can see this from how he talks about the baby too: in the scene where he’s hurt and trying to get them to leave he consistently calls him the child or the baby (not to mention the first foundling we get!) and focuses very specifically on keeping him safe. in this triggered state the baby briefly becomes it again and he doesn’t even mention him, he just tells them to take his ship and leave. in that moment all he wants to do is fight and probably die on behalf of those who are already gone. (I think bessel van der kolk has called PTSD ‘a profound loyalty to that which is lost’ or something like that. that rings very true to me here)

the talk with the armorer is basically a very short debate between ol’ coping mechanism!din being like ‘hey I just remembered before all this I was doing my very best to work myself to an early and likely shallow grave, I should get back to that’ and Papa Wolf!din being like ‘except this is my son so we’re not doing that we’re gonna have to improvise something new on the fly here’. bless.

(all of this is so subjective and probably me reading things into it that don’t really exist so don’t quote me on any of this but his anger at greef karga sounds to me like that of a younger, emotionally rawer man too, it’s so openly hurt and... active? I guess? these days when he gets angry he seems to tend more towards getting deathly quiet. then again this is one of the most genuinely upsetting things in the whole show so it could just be that)

- hahahahahaha greef rests his hand on his gun before he follows them into the armorer’s workshop; it would seem he did not think it guaranteed either she or maybe especially mando wouldn’t try to shoot him

- the way the armorer’s voice gains a brightness/warmth when she sees the child! the mandalorian ‘protect babies’ instinct in action haha, she’s like ‘oh this is why you did this bugfuck insane thing. perfectly reasonable, keep up the good work’. the foundlings are the future is not just lip service it really is a central tenet of their culture even when it’s inconvenient

there’s this sense that... in the face of his hurt she’s basically telling him to go be alive, to raise this child, to choose surviving and healing. I think she understands him very very well, I wonder how long they’ve known each other. (she had the mould for his signet ready <3)

- he sounds so crestfallen and lost when he asks if the baby is an enemy. and then she’s just fondly like ‘no it’s your son you absolute dummy’ and he’s like ‘...yeah I know’

- I. love that in these scenes he’s hurt (and not just physically) and other people are there to carry the baby until he can pick him up at the end fully as a father would.

- I have talked about it before but I must restate how hilarious and endearing I find it that mando conscientiously leans the thing he tries to pry the boat loose with against the wall again while cara shoots the place up. one is never too busy to mind one’s manners. (this scene really showcases each of the characters too. greef: just keep fuckn pushing! mando: briefly kicks the thing with a growl then tries attacking the problem from a new angle. cara: GUN.)

- oh the absolute sweetness of how IG says “And you will live”. there’s so much emotion in his droid voice there and all of it is peaceful and affectionate. I agree with din IG don’t goooooooo don’t leave us we need an adult

I keep whispering ‘pls someone think to shield the baby’s eyes’ through my tears in this scene, he didn’t need to see that happen D:

- I really need to repeat that despite what IG-11 says, he goes ahead with his plan anyway even though mando never satisfies his ‘programming’s’ demand. droid’s got free will and a huge big heart Y___________Y anyway... droid rights in the star wars universe when (...it would be very funny if din became embroiled in that fight somehow after this, oh how the turntables)

- another continuity error: mando puts the jetpack on, then we get a shot of cara shooting and he’s standing there with it in his hands again haha. unless he realized he put it on upside down the first time around or something that seems unlikely. (he’s also lying in slightly different positions between cuts in the scene where IG-11 heals him, but that’s so small and subtle I don’t even really count it)

- the jetpack scene is a beautiful encapsulation of din’s fighting style. he flails and gets jerked around a lot. he nearly blows himself up. I don’t think he’s fully in control of anything that whole time. and yet he gets the job done yet again. a disaster, but a glorious disaster still standing at the end of it all. one simply must stan.

- a) I think din remembered how to take off better than he remembered how to land haha and b) BABY’S HAPPY LITTLE FACE WATCHING HIS DAD COME BACK DOWN c) THE BABY & MANDO MUSIC PLAYING WHEN DIN NOTICES THE BABY CLUTCHING HIS LEG *elmo surrounded by flames gif* (it’s a calmer/more grounded version of the same song that plays when they have that moment of connection right before the other mandos come to the rescue in ep 3 and also a few other times)

- baby’s joyful little trilling sound when his dad turns his head to check on him 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 and he strokes the cape with such contentment because it’s a safe familiar texture because this is his dAD (officially and legally too now, mandalorian-wise :’) im so happy)

- the unsympathetic comedy stormtroopers at the beginning could conceivably have survived (if not uh happily lol). if they become a recurring duo who show up and get more and more screwed every time I wouldn’t be mad haha

- I support these jawas in everything they do, I feel a great kinship with these lil goblins

- anyway I love this show so much and I hope season 2 is good too and knows it holds my fragile heart in its hands

#star wars #the mandalorian #meta #get ready to be rambled at haha #can I even tell how much sense I'm making anymore? no but I'm having a lot of fun #the mandalorian meta

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theliberaltony · 6 years ago

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via FiveThirtyEight

The 2020 Democratic primary is really an electoral story. Nothing the candidates say about policy on the campaign trail will become law during the campaign.1 But the language of presidential primaries is not electoral — candidates tend not to say, “people of The Left, vote for me, I’m very liberal” or, “Democrats, pick me; sure, I’m progressive, but I’m not so progressive that it ruins my appeal with Republican-leaning independents in the Midwest.”

Instead, the language of presidential primaries is largely one of policy. Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposes a tax on wealth over $50 million and defends that policy on its merits. She doesn’t say out loud the real, immediate goal of the proposal for her — wooing liberal Democratic primary voters concerned about growing income inequality.

The 2020 candidates are likely to talk a lot about policy over the next year — it’s basically how you run for president. And you should pay attention to what they say, but not for the reasons you might think. Here’s a guide to the “policy primary,” with some thoughts from academics and one-time advisers to presidential candidates.2

1. Most importantly, policy proposals matter because the winning candidate will try to implement them as president.

There is a common view that candidates just promise whatever it takes to win and then abandon all those pledges once in office. But political science research has shown over and over again that politicians, including presidents, try to implement their campaign promises, even the more outlandish ones. We just had a record-long partial government shutdown over a campaign pledge that President Trump has unsuccessfully tried to implement — the border wall.3

So, all else being equal, you can expect follow-through from whoever is elected president on many of the policies he or she put forth during the campaign.

2. Even so, pay more attention to broad goals than fine print.

During the 2008 Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both came up with proposals to vastly increase the number of Americans with health insurance. They disagreed on the how: Clinton said a comprehensive new health insurance law should require everyone to have insurance or pay a fine; Obama had no such mandate. You know how this turned out — the law now known as Obamacare included an individual mandate.4 Somewhat similarly, during the 2016 race, Trump’s campaign named 21 people that he would consider appointing to the U.S. Supreme Court. Eventual Trump nominee and now Justice Brett Kavanaugh was not among the 21.

That said, one of the 21 was Neil Gorsuch. And the overall group was full of white, male and fairly conservative legal figures — the exact kind of people Trump has appointed to the Supreme Court and lower courts as president.

“One big takeaway from my research is that the ‘policy primary’ gives us less information about the specifics of the plans that might be on the agenda than it does about what issues are likely to be at the top of the agenda,” said Philip Rocco, a political scientist professor at Marquette University who specializes in research on the policymaking process, in an e-mail message.

Looking forward, therefore, I think it’s safe to assume the Democratic candidates running on Medicare-for-all, if elected, will at the very least push for some kind of program in which uninsured Americans can enroll in a public plan along the lines of Medicare. It’s likely Warren will try to implement some kind of new tax on the very wealthy if she is elected.

3. Rank-and-file voters probably aren’t choosing candidates based on their policy plans.

Generally, “the differences on issues [among candidates] in primaries are not huge,” said Elaine Kamarck, who was a top policy adviser to Al Gore during his 2000 presidential run. So most voters probably will not be able to assess subtle differences on policy issues among the 2020 Democratic contenders. After all, political scientists have found American voters broadly know little about politics and policy.

However, Kamarck argued that voters are often well-informed and passionate about issues that particularly affect their regions or states. So a Democratic primary candidate might do poorly in the primaries in Kentucky or West Virginia if he or she has a plan that voters in those states think will severely harm the coal industry.

4. But the policy plans tell voters about a candidate’s priorities and values — and that probably does matter electorally.

“People are not voting for a package of policy preferences, they’re voting for an individual, and the policies or issues help mark out the kind of person they are,” Mark Schmitt, who was a policy adviser on Bill Bradley’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000, said in an e-mail message.

So a candidate like Warren or Bernie Sanders with proposals to vastly increase taxes on the wealthy is communicating to voters a persona — “fighting for the little guy,” “taking on the establishment” — that might resonate with voters who are liberal or anti-establishment, even if these voters don’t really know much about, say, marginal tax rates.

Lee Drutman, a scholar at the think tank New America, concluded based on polling data that 2016 Democratic primary voters who preferred Sanders were not significantly more liberal on policy issues than those who backed Hillary Clinton. (Sanders himself certainly was to the left of Clinton.) Instead, voters’ views of the American political system and whether they thought it was fundamentally “rigged” was a strong predictor of which candidate they supported. More anti-establishment Democrats strongly preferred Sanders. That is probably, in part, because his policy proposals, like a single-payer health care system, communicated a break from the more establishment politics of Clinton.

5. Policy details matter to important groups that can offer endorsements — and those endorsements can matter electorally.

In 2016, the National Nurses Association backed Sanders over Clinton, and this wasn’t much of a surprise. The NNA has long pushed for single-payer health care, and Sanders favored that idea and Clinton did not. In making its endorsement, NAA’s leadership specifically noted Sanders’s support of single-payer and his opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an Obama-era trade agreement that Clinton did not oppose as forcefully as Sanders.

So specific issue stands do really matter to key activist groups making endorsements. And that can make an impact electorally. Unions, for example, can organize their members to back candidates. When a Democratic candidate comes out with an education policy plan, that may be an appeal to parents, but it is also likely signaling to teacher unions, a powerful, organized liberal constituency in some states.

“Activists do pay attention” to specific policy ideas and stances, said Andrew Dowdle, a political science professor at the University of Arkansas who has written extensively about the presidential nomination process.

6. Pay more attention to the “flop” than the “flip.”

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been criticized for supporting overly punitive approaches to criminal justice in the past, Cory Booker for promoting charter schools, Kirsten Gillibrand for backing conservative immigration legislation, Sanders for opposing some gun control measures earlier in his career. I could go on. The Democratic Party has moved decidedly to the left in recent years, so many of the 2020 presidential candidates have, in their past, violated some of the party’s new tenets.

Scrutinizing candidate’s past records is a big part of any nomination contest. But it may not be a particularly useful exercise in predicting what these candidates would do on policy if elected president. (Note the emphasis on policy — Bill Clinton’s philandering and Trump’s lying before entering office were fairly useful predictors of what came later.)

These candidates are politicians, after all. They probably were taking stands in the past that reflected a mix of conviction and political expediency. Biden likely believed that the “crime bill” he sponsored in 1994 (and is now slammed as helping lead to the over-incarceration of African-Americans) was good policy (it was endorsed by a lot of black political leaders too). I suspect he also thought the legislation was in the political mainstream, helping him to rise up the ranks of the Democratic Party.

David Karol, an expert on the presidential nomination process who teaches at the University of Maryland, told me these “flip-flops” by candidates are often explained by their changing constituencies. He referred specifically to Gillibrand, who was first elected in 2006 in a relatively moderate district in upstate New York before becoming the senator for the entire state, which is fairly liberal-leaning.

“It’s hard to know whether the politician ‘really’ believed in their position at Time 1 or Time 2,” Karol said.

Either way, Democratic elected officials have moved away from a tough-on-crime approach and the party’s voters are now very pro-immigration . I have no doubt a President Biden would govern on criminal justice policy more like how he sounds in 2019 than he did in 1994, and that a President Gillibrand would be more pro-immigration than Candidate Gillibrand in 2006.

The obvious example here is Trump, who took some fairly liberal stands in earlier phases of his life but has generally followed GOP orthodoxy as president, as he promised to do on many issues during his 2016 campaign.

President Ronald “Reagan’s promises on abortion were far better predictors of his policies than his more pro-choice past as California’s governor were. Al Gore was pro-gun and anti-abortion at one point in his career when it made sense for a white southern Democrat to be so. But his campaign promises were better predictors,” Seth Masket, a University of Denver political scientist who is currently writing a book about presidential primaries, said in an e-mail message.

So the bottom line: Take what the presidential candidates are saying on the campaign trail seriously and literally. But more seriously than literally.

#IFTTT #FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Perry Bacon Jr.

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badasscrossstitch · 6 years ago

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That Time I Gave a Commencement Address...

My life is so weird and awesome. I got to fly to Philadelphia and give the commencement address at the graduation ceremony for Drexel University’s Custom-Designed Major Program in the Honors College. These students CREATED THEIR OWN MAJORS. Basically, they are the coolest.

There were 14 graduates, so naturally I stitched them all the main points of my speech. Then, the school let me stand up and hand them out to students after they got their diplomas! It was basically the greatest thing ever and I had such an amazing time. What badass humans!

The whole graduation was taped and you can watch it here if you like. I start speaking around minute 27. I am also posting the transcript below.

Honestly, I can’t believe my life sometimes.

youtube

Drexel University Commencement Speech Shannon Downey

Hi. My name is Shannon Downey and you probably have no idea who I am. Maybe if I say I am also known as Badass Cross Stitch you might have heard something about me. Probably if you saw a few of my pieces of art you would say, “Oh sure I’ve seen that before. Cool.” ...and then you would wonder why on earth I’m giving your commencement address. Don’t worry. I wondered the same thing.

So here’s the 30 second version of who I am. I have crafted a pretty magical life, encompassing at least 5 life-times worth of adventure. I’ve held all sorts of rewarding jobs including middle school teacher, golf instructor, sexual assault advocate, producer, long-time entrepreneur, and director of development. I’ve traveled the world with a backpack, lived overseas and visited over 35 countries. I teach at several colleges. I am an activist by birth, an artist by chance.

The only thread that weaves all of these things together is that I am instigator. I start things. I get people excited about their potential, offer them some first steps, cheerlead them, and then move on. For years, this scared the shit out of the people who love me and really just wanted me to get a job, make some money, and live a safe life. It’s hard to know how to navigate that. I knew in my gut that the model that worked for so many would never satisfy me. It’s hard to look someone you love in the eye and say, “I want more. I want different. Trust me.” especially when you are just graduating college and everyone’s putting their hopes and expectations on you. Especially when you have $60,000 in student loans and a degree in Anthropology. (Just to be clear, I still have $40,000 in student loans)

But here YOU are. Graduating from a program that you selected because you KNEW that the boxes that most Universities provide just didn’t fit for you. You already stood up and said, “Nah….I am going to create my own degree program.” You are MY KIND OF PEOPLE.

So the first thing I want to say to you is, “I’m proud of you. Keep doing that.”

When asked to do this speech, I asked Siri to tell me the rules of commencement speeches. One must always know the rules are in order to decide if you agree with them or you are going to rewrite them.

Good news! Commencement speeches have NO RULES.

Wikipedia - everyone’s favorite ‘academic source’ - says that a commencement speech is an opportunity to share your experiences, values and advice. A platform to say amazing, unlimited things.”

Amazing unlimited things. No pressure.

Then I thought back to the commencement addresses given at my graduations and the countless other graduations I have attended. One thing stuck out...I don’t remember anything from any of them.

So, I wrote this hoping that all of you would walk away with at least one thing you remember. And one thing you are going to DO.

I’m going to assume that like most people, you all want a happy, successful, and adventurous life. I believe I have that and I believe anyone can create that for themselves. In my experience, the key to that is the fine art of avoiding stuckness.

Feeling stuck is the worst because you feel powerless. Becoming powerless is a slow, gradual, and insidious process that happens to all of us at times. Being stuck usually reveals itself in a moment. You look around and think, “Well how the hell did this happen? How did I get HERE?”

Stuck.

What I have observed is that people generally react in one or two ways when they find themselves stuck. They take drastic action or they surrender. I don’t want you to have to do either of those things. Drastic action sounds great but it almost always comes at a great cost to those you love or those that have come to depend on you. Surrender comes with the ultimate cost to you: your happiness and self-worth.

So, what is the key to avoiding stuckness? Ready?

Life-long enthusiastic action and adventure!

If you only remember one thing from this speech remember that. I feel like we are vibing so I’m going to ask you to amuse me and repeat after me...cool? Yeah good. “I will live a life of action and adventure.” Ok! Now, so your body can internalize it, “I live a life of action and adventure!” Brilliant.

How does one live a life of action and adventure you ask? Well I have 5 tenets that I would like to share with you.

These tenets are simple but they are not easy. The good news is: they can be self-taught. The bad news is: they require a lot of practice.

Ready?

#1 Get Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable

Groan...right?! “Shannon I thought you were going to tell us to say Yes more! What is this shit about being uncomfortable?” I told you they were simple but not easy.

We are humans. We are programmed to avoid feelings that would be categorized as “negative” - pain, sadness, anxiety, fear - they are uncomfortable and we train ourselves to get through the uncomfortable as quickly and easily as possible. Avoidance, self-medicating, workaholism, eating...all very common ways of avoiding those feelings.

Over time, we develop an aversion to discomfort in all its forms. It gets harder and harder to be uncomfortable because we don’t allow ourselves those experiences. But discomfort has more to teach us than “happy” feelings. Discomfort holds within it growth, understanding, adaptability, and resilience.

Get to know your discomfort. Study it and how you react to it. Give it space, examine it until understanding it’s presence is second nature to you. Intentionally put yourself in situations that make you uncomfortable. Play with discomfort and risk-taking and fearlessness until it’s a natural state of being for you. Eventually, you will find that your discomfort transforms. Suddenly, you aren’t uncomfortable...you are excited.

Recognize that sometimes avoiding the uncomfortable is unchecked privilege. It is your duty to take on discomfort in situations where your privilege allows you to walk away from it - if you so choose. That is where the key to systemic change lies.

We live in a very uncomfortable time right now. It affords us an incredible opportunity to decide how we want to show up in this world. I challenge you to use this moment, this discomfort, to figure out what you stand for. As you explore that, I guarantee the discomfort will transform and transform you in the process.

Meet discomfort with curiosity and wonder - not skepticism and avoidance. That is what adventurers do - and you are an adventurer! (See what I did there?)

#2 Make hard choices.

Making hard choices is ...hard.

We wait and avoid and overthink. We usually wait until we just can’t anymore. We wait for someone else or a new opportunity to appear in front of us. And sometimes that happens and it’s good. Sometimes it happens and it’s bad. But most of the time it never happens because without us taking action we are relying on luck to determine our fate.

And yet change is the only thing that offers us a truly new opportunity or direction. Making hard choices is the only way to ignite radical change in our lives.

But therein lies the rub...radical change is scary! Hell, non-radical change is scary! It is unpredictable, unknown, and can be overwhelming.

But resisting change creates stuckness.

By avoiding hard choices, we are trying to control life in a way that it can’t be controlled. The tighter the grip, the narrower the vision of the path...the harder you have to work to get unstuck.

What if feeling uncomfortable is the universe’s way of telling you that something needs to change? What if discomfort is not a bad a thing to avoid but an indicator to examine? It’s your body literally screaming at you that you need to shake some shit up. You need change and, therefore, you need to make choices.

There are a million paths to your success and happiness. Don’t get stuck believing you only have one true path.

When I closed my company down after ten years, I was terrified. Being an entrepreneur had become my identity. I struggled with the idea of folks thinking I had somehow failed but I knew that I just wasn’t happy doing it anymore. My body told me. My emotions told me. My productivity (or lack thereof) told me. I knew I needed to listen to my discomfort and make a hard choice. It took me 2 years to actually do it. I had to work up the courage to be fearless. And the minute I made the decision - I was rewarded with new opportunities that I couldn’t even have fathomed. It seems to be that immediate. You make a choice in a moment and you reap the rewards. It’s not easy but it sure is simple. Be afraid and do it anyway.

#3 Learn to Value Progress Over Perfection

Perfection is not real. It is a joy-thief. A brick wall to action.

There is a direct correlation between perfectionism and procrastination. When your goal is perfection (an untenable goal), nothing is ever good enough to start or launch or make public. You exist in a constant state of internal iteration, critique, and criticism. You become stuck.

I do not suffer from perfectionism. I walked around totally unaware that people imposed such pressures upon themselves and wondered why folks with great ideas didn’t just do them. I was made aware of it during a really interesting conversation with some colleagues and now I am a bit obsessed with exploring it with people.

My friend Keita is working on freeing himself from perfectionist thinking. He has a rule that if he feels like he is at 80% on something….he must put it out there or move forward on implementing it. He has a brilliant podcast that he had to force himself to go public with. Despite how uncomfortable it made him, he did it. And it’s a fantastic podcast - and I’m not just saying that because I was a guest. Keita allowed himself to be uncomfortable, made the hard choice to launch something new and value the progress he had made in preparation. And now the world is gifted with his thoughts, insights, and interviews.

While Keita’s number is 80%, mine is more like 20%. If I have what I think is a good idea, I just start and do and make. Let me be clear. More than half of those ideas are total shit. And I either chalk them up as a learning experience (which they always are). I transform them into something else that could work, I abandon them altogether, and in many cases I grow my vast collection of brilliant URLs that I’m sure someone will buy off of me someday for a fortune. I mean… IPetPuppies.com y’all. Future cash cow.

So how do you learn to value progress over perfection? I think it’s through play. I’m serious. Allow yourself to play. To be silly. Everyday! If you can foster a sense of playfulness you are far less likely to force perfection upon yourself. There is no way to play perfectly. Find whimsy. Create mischief. Remember how to be silly. If you must strive for perfection - strive to be perfect at making progress everyday.

#4 Cultivate A Diverse Community

Everything is easier when you have a community. You literally can’t get stuck if you have a strong enough community. People are collaborators, resources, supporters…they make change and risk taking easier and a heck of a lot more fun.

Now let me be clear, when I say community I do not mean followers. My digital community is just as valuable to me as my IRL community but I think of them as just that - a digital community - not followers.

Building a community requires that you be genuinely interested in your fellow humans. It requires you to ask the questions: “What do I want to give my community? What value do I create in their lives? How can I be of service and support to them?”

While you will no doubt be the recipient of wonderful things thanks to your community - the intention that creates a community is one of service not gain.

A new study just released by Cigna found that young people ages 18 to 22 are the most likely to be lonely. Almost half of respondents said that they feel that their relationships are not meaningful. Only 53% said they have meaningful in-person interactions on a daily basis.

You have to take action to make sure that does not become your stuckness because that kind of stuckness is the most damaging. You need people and people need you. Get uncomfortable and go find people. Go to events by yourself. Introduce yourself to strangers. Compliment someone. Find people and make them your friend. Everyone wants to feel connected - be brave and ignite those connections.

Real power is collective and real happiness is communal.

#5 (last one) Incorporate digital/analog balance into your everyday

Too much digital connectivity stifles creativity and leads to isolation and stuckness. I have done many personal studies on this topic and I consider myself an expert. We collectively need to be addressing the need for Digital/Analog balance. I love digital. I love social media and TV and my iPhone. But like everything in life - without balance - there is addiction and isolation.

I started stitching and making art to force myself to put down my device and disconnect. To allow myself time to think and slow down. My stitching became my meditation. It changed my life. That said, every time I finish stitching something, I grab my iPhone, take a picture, type up the things that I thought about, and post it all on Instagram! Because...Balance.

So I encourage you to find ways to disconnect a little bit each day. Walk a dog, make something with your hands (even if you suck at it), swing on a swing, go for a run, learn how to embroider and join craftivism project! Just find a way to get more analog into your digital.

-----------

That’s it. 5 simple, but not easy, things that you can teach yourself and master through practice.

#1 Get Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable #2 Make Hard Choices #3 Value Progress Over Perfection #4 Cultivate A Diverse Community and #5 Find Some Digital/Analog Balance

Take action on these ideas daily. Start small and push yourself a little more each day to avoid getting stuck. Pay attention to what makes you uncomfortable. Use that as fuel for taking risks and making choices for yourself and the future you want. Fight habits and behaviors that aren’t serving you head on. Surround yourself with amazing humans and do things to support them. Make things. Play. Be imperfect.

Live the life of action and adventure that you deserve!

Shannon

#commencement address #drexel university #honors college #2018 #shannon downey #badass cross stitch #philadelphia

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patriotsnet · 3 years ago

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Why Do Republicans Want Lower Taxes

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-want-lower-taxes/

Why Do Republicans Want Lower Taxes

Democrats Vs Republicans On Taxes

Why Do People Think Lower Taxes Help the Economy?

While Republicans believe in balancing spending cuts with tax cuts across the board, Democrats believe in cutting taxes for the middle and lower class, while raising them for the upper class. They believe in a higher marginal rate, with income tax being higher for those who make more, as opposed to the Republican views that taxes should be equal percentages for all income levels. In the 2012 Party Platform, 56% of republicans opposed raising taxes on those who earned over $250,000. This isnt to say that Republicans do not believe in focusing relief on the middle and lower classes; they do, however, believe in relief for all Americans, and not in raising taxes on the upper classes.

What Do Republicans Believe In

Do all Republicans believe the same things? Of course not. Rarely do members of a single political group agree on all issues. Even among Republicans, there are differences of opinion. As a group, they do not agree on every issue.

Some folks vote Republican because of fiscal concerns. Often, that trumps concerns they may have about social issues. Others are less interested in the fiscal position of the party. They vote they way they do because of religion. They believe Republicans are the party of morality. Some simply want less government. They believe only Republicans can solve the problem of big government. Republicans spend less . They lower taxes: some people vote for that alone.

However, the Republican Party does stand for certain things. So I’m answering with regard to the party as a whole. Call it a platform. Call them core beliefs. The vast majority of Republicans adhere to certain ideas.

So what do Republicans believe? Here are their basic tenets:

Conservatives Dont Hate Socialism They Hate Equality

They want to take away your hamburgers, former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka in February. This is what Stalin dreamt about America will never be a socialist country! The Conservative Political Action Conference audience cheered. The video played on my phone as I waved at Danny, the homeless man who begs for food every morning at the Newark Penn Station, where scores of poor people sleep in wheelchairs or lean on crutches or stand by the delis to ask for change.

These folks need more than hamburgers. They need jobs and homes. Yet, as the 2020 election season starts, Trump has branded progressives as socialists who will steal property and bring tyranny. The presidents fearmongering contrasts with the actual Green New Deal that some Democrats support but failed to pass in the GOP-controlled Senate. Its a fear driven by ideology. Republicans paint the poor as undeserving, marked by cultural or personal character flaws. Whereas Democratic Socialists believe people have the ability to run the economy and society to meet their needs. Why this difference in perception? It is because Republicans arent afraid of socialism they are afraid of equality with people they see as inferior.

Read Also: How Many Democrats And Republicans Are In The House

To Fund The $35 Trillion Budget Plan Democrats Aim To Undo Trump Tax Cuts

To Fund The $3.5 Trillion Budget Plan, Democrats Aim To Undo Trump Tax Cuts

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The 10% cuts were “across the board,” as he liked to say, implying they were of equal value to all. The dollar value of the cuts was, of course, far larger for those with larger incomes. Moreover, the tax law changes that accompanied the rate cuts made it easier for individuals and corporations to “write off” various forms of income and spending to lower their tax bills further. The tax rate for capital gains, money made from successful investing, would come down from 28% to 20%.

Reagan did not get everything he sought in this initial foray against high taxes and progressivity. The Senate trimmed the third year of the tax cut from 10% to 5%, and it would take a second bill, the Tax Reform Act of 1986, to pull the marginal top rate all the way down to 28%.

But Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981 constituted the strongest move away from progressivity in the income tax since the tax was initiated in the Civil War.

They were the culmination of rising anti-tax sentiment in the late 1970s, when some states adopted tax limitations by popular referendum. That spirit was kept alive in the decades to come by groups such as Americans for Tax Reform, led by activist Grover Norquist. Starting in 1986, Norquist has challenged candidates for office to sign his “taxpayer protection pledge” not to raise taxes. The great majority of Republicans have signed.

Reagan Pared Back Progressivity

Reagan was able to reverse what had been a decades-long commitment to at least the look of progressivity. He could do it in part because his 1980 election coattails enabled his party to capture control of the Senate for the first time in a quarter century. Moreover, while Democrats still had a House majority, their ranks included scores of members from Southern and Midwestern districts that had also voted for Reagan.

When the budget resolution passed in that summer of 1981, 63 House Democrats joined all 190 Republicans in backing it. And when the tax package came to its critical votes in July, dozens of Democrats sided with Reagan and the Republicans rather than their own leadership.

In 1982, Democrats added to their majority in the House and negotiated some revenue increases with the Senate and the White House. And in Reagan’s second term, momentum built quickly for a tax overhaul that would combine still lower marginal rates with new business taxes and a paring back of tax preferences and other “loopholes.” The new overhaul’s main appeal to Democrats was that it exempted far more middle- and lower-income earners from the income tax altogether.

Career anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist, here in 2018, called the Trump administration’s 2017 tax cut “Reaganite” the ultimate compliment from the founder of Americans for Tax Reform.hide caption

toggle caption

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Gop Real Estate Owners Make Out Big

Besides the laws benefits to real estate pass-throughs, real estate in general was hugely favored by the tax law, allowing property exchanges to avoid taxation, the deduction of new capital expenses in just one year versus longer depreciation schedules, and an exemption from limits on interest deductions.;

If you are a real estate developer, you never pay tax, said Ed Kleinbard, a former head of Congresss Joint Committee on Taxation.;

Members of Congress own a lot of real estate. Public Integritys review of financial disclosures found that 29 of the 47 GOP members of the committees responsible for the tax bill hold interests in real estate, including small rental businesses, LLCs, and massive real estate investment trusts , which pay dividends to investors. The tax bill allows REIT investors to deduct 20 percent from their dividends for tax purposes.;

Who We Are

The Center for Public Integrity is an independent, investigative newsroom that exposes betrayals of the public trust by powerful interests.

Its Not Easy Being Green

Democratic socialism is not a Marxist fever dream; its a call for help. Its less socialism than humanitarian aid for a people in crisis. Millions of Americans are in dead-end jobs, slipping behind on bills, deep in debt and scared of climate change.

Something is wrong with capitalism, Martin Luther King Jr. told his staff in 1966. There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. Saying the economic system causes pain means moving beyond the conservative image of the poor as flawed, personally or culturally, or the liberal image of them as unlucky victims of a more or less functioning meritocracy. To honor our human potential, capitalism must be dismantled, its pieces taken apart and recombined into a new world.

Climate change is one of the biggest existential threats to our way of life, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez said at the rollout of the Green New Deal. To combat that threat, we need to be as ambitious and innovative as possible. In its 14 pages, the plan envisions a World War II-scale mobilization of millions of workers. They will repair roads and bridges, build smart grids, upgrade industry to be zero carbon, build green public transit, remove carbon from the air, clean up waste sites, and clean up the poisoned land and waterways. When they come home, those workers can rest in new, green housing, and if sick or injured, they can go see a doctor, using a Medicare for All card.

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Most Welfare Recipients Are Makers Not Takers

The first myth, that people who receive public benefits are takers rather than makers, is flatly untrue for the vast majority of working-age recipients.

Consider Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, formerly known as food stamps, which currently serve about 42 million Americans. At least one adult in more than half of SNAP-recipient households are working. And the average SNAP subsidy is $125 per month, or $1.40 per meal hardly enough to justify quitting a job.

As for Medicaid, nearly 80 percent of adults receiving Medicaid live in families where someone works, and more than half are working themselves.

In early December, House Speaker Paul Ryan said, We have a welfare system thats trapping people in poverty and effectively paying people not to work.

Not true. Welfare officially called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families has required work as a condition of eligibility since then-President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law in 1996. And the earned income tax credit, a tax credit for low- and moderate-income workers, by definition, supports only people who work.

Workers apply for public benefits because they need assistance to make ends meet. American workers are among the most productive in the world, but over the last 40 years the bottom half of income earners have seen no income growth. As a result, since 1973, worker productivity has grown almost six times faster than wages.

Religion And The Belief In God Is Vital To A Strong Nation

Lower Taxes, Higher Revenue

Republicans are generally accepting only of the Judeo-Christian belief system. For most Republicans, religion is absolutely vital in their political beliefs and the two cannot be separated. Therefore, separation of church and state is not that important to them. In fact, they believe that much of what is wrong has been caused by too much secularism.

Those are the four basic Republican tenets: small government, local control, the power of free markets, and Christian authority. Below are other things they believe that derive from those four ideas.

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Orrin Hatch Tom Coburn And Richard Burr On Health Care

More recently, senators Orrin Hatch of Utah, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, and Richard Burr of North Carolina have headed up the Republican fight on health care. Their proposal was named the Patient Choice, Affordability, Responsibility and Empowerment Act, and is based upon the principle of providing more flexibility and purchasing power to the individual. It shares some important similarities with the Affordable Care Act, such as the requirement to allow dependent coverage through the age of 26, and the inability of insurance companies to provide lifetime limits. When the three senators released their proposal, Burr stated The American people have found out what is in ObamaCare broken promises in the form of increased health care costs, costly mandates and government bureaucracy. We can lower costs and expand access to quality coverage and care by empowering individuals and their families to make their own health care decisions, rather than empowering the government to make those decisions for them.;The group stated that their proposal is designed to be roughly budget neutral over the first 10 years, leaving the financial burden on the American people at nothing. Coburn commented that they created this proposal because Its critical we chart another path forward. Our health care system wasnt working well before ObamaCare and it is worse after ObamaCare.

What The Needy Deserve

The second myth is that low-income Americans do not deserve a helping hand.

This idea derives from our belief that the U.S. is a meritocracy where the most deserving rise to the top. Yet where a person ends up on the income ladder is tied to where they started out.

Indeed, America is not nearly as socially mobile as we like to think. Forty percent of Americans born into the bottom-income quintile the poorest 20 percent will stay there. And the same stickiness exists in the top quintile.

As for people born into the middle class, only 20 percent will ascend to the top quintile in their lifetimes.

The third myth is that government assistance is a waste of money and doesnt accomplish its goals.

In fact, poverty rates would double without the safety net, to say nothing of human suffering. Last year, the safety net lifted 38 million people, including 8 million children, out of poverty.

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An Exhaustive Lobbying Campaign

Almost immediately after Mr. Trump signed the bill, companies and their lobbyists including G.E.s Mr. Brown began a full-court pressure campaign to try to shield themselves from the BEAT and GILTI.

The Treasury Department had to figure out how to carry out the hastily written law, which lacked crucial details.

Chip Harter was the Treasury official in charge of writing the rules for the BEAT and GILTI. He had spent decades at PwC and the law firm Baker McKenzie, counseling companies on the same sorts of tax-avoidance arrangements that the new law was supposed to discourage.

Starting in January 2018, he and his colleagues found themselves in nonstop meetings roughly 10 a week at times with lobbyists for companies and industry groups.

The Organization for International Investment a powerful trade group for foreign multinationals like the Swiss food company Nestlé and the Dutch chemical maker LyondellBasell objected to a Treasury proposal that would have prevented companies from using a complex currency-accounting maneuver to avoid the BEAT.

The groups lobbyists were from PwC and Baker McKenzie, Mr. Harters former firms, according to public lobbying disclosures. One of them, Pam Olson, was the top Treasury tax official in the George W. Bush administration.

This month, the Treasury issued the final version of some of the BEAT regulations. The Organization for International Investment got what it wanted.

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How Democrats And Republicans Differ On Matters Of Wealth And Equality

A protester wears a T-shirt in support of Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who is part of … a group of Democrats looking to beat Trump in 2020. Photographer: John Taggart/Bloomberg

If youre a rich Democrat, you wake up each day with self-loathing, wondering how you can make the world more egalitarian. Please tax me more, you say to your elected officials. Until then, the next thing you do is call your financial advisor to inquire about tax shelters.

If youre a poor Republican, however, you have more in common with the Democratic Party than the traditional Wall Street, big business base of the Republican Party, according to a survey by the Voter Study Group, a two-year-old consortium made up of academics and think tank scholars from across the political spectrum. That means the mostly conservative American Enterprise Institute and Cato were also on board with professors from Stanford and Georgetown universities when conducting this study, released this month.

The fact that lower-income Republicans, largely known as the basket of deplorables, support more social spending and taxing the rich was a key takeaway from this years report, says Lee Drutman, senior fellow on the political reform program at New America, a Washington D.C.-based think tank.

Across party lines, only 37% of respondents said they supported government getting active in reducing differences in income, close to the 39% who opposed it outright. Some 24% had no opinion on the subject.

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Us House Democrats Seek To Roll Back Trump Tax Cuts For Wealthy Corporations

WASHINGTON, Sept 13 – Leading Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday proposed a substantial roll-back of former President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, including raising the top tax rate on corporations to 26.5% from the current 21%.

Democrats on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee said they will debate legislation this week that would achieve the changes as part of their broader, $3.5 trillion domestic investment plan.

In an attempt to finance the new spending, the Democratic-led committee will debate a proposal to raise $2.9 trillion in revenue over 10 years, according to a document circulated among members of the panel.

Besides increasing corporate taxes, wealthy individuals would see a jump in their income taxes as well as higher capital gains and estate taxes.

Even if the legislation as proposed passes Congress and is signed by Democratic President Joe Biden, corporate taxes would still be lower than they were before the enactment of the tax cuts pushed through by Republicans in 2017. But the top individual income tax rate would revert to its pre-2017 level.

The tax-writing Ways and Means Committee has scheduled work sessions for Tuesday and Wednesday to debate tax policy and other matters under its jurisdiction to be included in the $3.5 trillion “reconciliation” bill, which would require a simple majority to be passed in the Senate.

REPUBLICANS OPPOSED

Republican Senators Push Social Security Medicare And Medicaid Cuts After Supporting Ineffective Tax Cuts

Republicans Target Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid

getty

The economy is recovering from the depths of the pandemic in large part due to the massive relief packages that Congress passed in 2020 and 2021. Just in time for this recovery, Senate Republicans are pushing for cuts to vital programs. According to news reports, five GOP senators are proposing a commission that would come up with proposals to balance the federal budget within a decade. Given that four of the five sponsors of this idea have signed on to the tax pledge to never, ever under any circumstances raise taxes, they are looking for programs to cut. They consequently take aim mainly at cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

These targeted programs are already and will continue to prove crucial to the financial and physical health of millions of Americans that have suffered from the pandemic. Many workers, especially older ones, have lost their jobs permanently and will move into early retirement with permanently lower benefits and little or no savings outside of those benefits. Millions of Americans, again particularly among older ones, experience long-term consequences from COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel virus. Those hardest hit by pandemic will need strong, expanded retirement and health benefits, not cuts to an already basic system.

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ozgeersoy · 4 years ago

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Learning What Can’t Be Taught: Reflections on Art Education through the Story of Six Artists from China

The below text was commissioned by Art & Education and published in “School Watch” in May 2021. It builds on Learning What Can’t Be Taught, an exhibition curated by Anthony Yung and myself at Asia Art Archive Library, December 17, 2020–June 26, 2021. Thank you, Tyler Considine, for the invitation.

When Lu Yang was a second-year graduate student in the New Media Art Department at China Academy of Art in 2008, she made a series of elaborate diagrams of devices that merged machines with animal and human bodies. One of these works, BCMI Reverse Monitoring – The Ultimate Learning Terminal, shows a device designed to enhance human learning efficiency. Imagine this: you are strapped to a gray office chair with belts, your body movement reduced to a minimum. You wear a cap that collects signals from your brain, which are transmitted to a computer for analysis. The computer monitors your attention level to ensure you are in an optimal state of efficient comprehension. When your attention level decreases, the computer punishes you with high-frequency noise and electricity, and after some time, your brain adjusts itself to avoid punishment.

Lu Yang, BCMI Reverse Monitoring – The Ultimate Learning Terminal, 2008–09. Inkjet print, 111.5 × 175.5cm. Courtesy of Lu Yang.

Lu did not specify the kind of information transmitted by this device, and theoretically, it could be used for any subject. Recalling the iconic scene from Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange in which Alex, the juvenile delinquent, undergoes an extreme form of aversion therapy, Lu, like Kubrick, explores the irony of using inhumane means to make the organic mechanical, to create “good citizens” or, in her case, “good students.” In our interview, Lu recalled that her experience in the New Media Art Department (NMAD) was quite different from what her work illustrates. She joined NMAD as an undergraduate when the program was launched in 2003, and later received a full scholarship to pursue a graduate degree in the same program. Lu said that she was a “bad student” in undergrad, in the sense that she skipped classes and did not do well in exams, and when she gets invited for short-term teaching engagements nowadays she is a “bad teacher,” as her knowledge of theory and art history remains “very poor.” [1] She admitted that her strongest attribute as an educator is to find the “worst students” in the class and support them to realize their best work. Lu herself studied with artist-teachers who encouraged her to experiment with her uncommon interests in horror imagery, body modification, and alternative cultures. Lu and her teachers at NMAD, especially the artists Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi, shared an interest in questioning the boundaries of the human body, as well as power, subversion, alienation, and social control. Zhang and Geng began making works around these topics in the early 1990s, many of which are now considered canonical in contemporary art history in China for their forceful criticism of the ideological control and patriotic education promoted by the state.

Zhang Peili, Announcement no. 3 (Hygiene) (still), 1991. Video (color, silent), 36 minutes 49 seconds. Courtesy of the artist.

With the exhibition “Learning What Can’t Be Taught” at Asia Art Archive Library, we set out to discuss the major changes in art education in China from the 1950s to the 2000s through a selection of artworks, archival materials, and interviews. “Learning What Can’t Be Taught” tells a story about six artists from three generations, who were each other’s teachers and students at China Academy of Art (CAA), the first art academy in the country, established in 1928. Looking at how these artists have learned art in and outside of classrooms, we ask: What makes a “good student” or a “good teacher”? Can artistic attitude be taught or passed down from one generation to another?

In 2002, Xu Jiang, then the newly appointed president of CAA, inaugurated the New Media Art Department and made it equal in status and scale to the Chinese painting, oil painting, printmaking, and sculpture departments, the four medium-based units that had been the core of the art academy since the 1950s. China’s economy had grown significantly around the turn of the twenty-first century, and universities were encouraged to expand their enrollment, so much so that between 1999 and 2003, the school enrollment rate in higher education rose from 6.3 percent to 15.4 percent. [2] Along with this radical expansion, art education underwent reforms to its structure, curricula, and administration, which allowed space for experimentation before the current formal structures were introduced in the 2010s. In operation from 2003 to 2010, NMAD stands out as a remarkable pedagogical experiment and a pioneer in formalizing contemporary art education in the country. Led by Zhang Peili, a trailblazer of video art in China and an alumnus of CAA, NMAD produced over three hundred graduates before being folded into the new, larger School of Intermedia Art.

The graduation exhibition of NMAD in 2007. Photograph provided by Jiang Zhuyun.

“Democracy and openness are the essence of the education of NMAD,” Zhang said in 2004. [3] His emphasis on “democracy and openness” was not simply a gesture to vague ideals but a pertinent response to the rigid and “parental” style of formal art education in China. The basic pedagogical principles and institutional structure of China’s art education were established in the early 1950s following the tenets of Soviet socialist realism. In the 1980s and 1990s, Zhang Peili and most of the other teachers at NMAD progressed through a similar educational system in which skill training to the level of excellence in a particular medium was the paramount goal. The most radical change NMAD offered was to support students to learn different techniques only after they explored their creative ideas and needs. “Without a project in mind, it’s pointless to just learn skills,” Zhang told us in an interview. “We simply encouraged students to learn skills that were relevant to the work they wanted to make.” [4] This principle was criticized by several faculty members as irresponsible on the teacher’s behalf, and in hindsight, Zhang admitted that students’ self-motivation and proactivity were indispensable for the program to cultivate artists. For Zhang, art education at NMAD aimed to create a stimulating environment for those students who had already developed an interest in art: “Art served as the agent for them to engage in a dialogue [about contemporary society].” [5]

In NMAD’s agenda, “new media” did not refer to specific technologies but any creative means that differed from those in traditional academic settings. While NMAD offered classes in the application of contemporary media like video, photography, sound, and software to art, it also hosted courses about methods of artmaking that were harder to define in technological terms, such as those involving the body, performance, conceptualism, and creativity at large. In this sense, the newness in the understanding of media in the context of NMAD was not about new media technologies but rather fostering new relationships between media and artistic ideas.

A class by Wen Hui on body expressions at NMAD in 2005. Photograph provided by Jiang Zhuyun.

Another radical change Zhang Peili advocated at NMAD was to invite practicing artists from outside the academy to teach classes, then unprecedented in art education in China. Geng Jianyi, a conceptual art pioneer and an alumnus of CAA, was one such artist and went on to become one of NMAD’s core teachers. In our interview, Jiang Zhuyun, one of the first NMAD graduates and currently a teacher in CAA’s School of Intermedia Art, remembered how he was influenced by an introductory course led by Geng, who would later become a close friend and frequent collaborator. [6] Jiang shared his confusion about Geng relaying the myth of Hou Yi and the ten suns instead of speaking about visual arts in this course. In Chinese mythology, Hou Yi, the god of archery, tries to reason with the ten suns chasing each other across the sky and scorching the earth. After failing to convince them to stop—the ten suns being the ten male offspring of the emperor Jade—he shoots them one by one with arrows until there only one remains. The notion of aiming for the impossible resonated with Geng’s understanding of art education. After working as an educator over twenty years, he would reveal that eventually “art can be learned but cannot be taught.”

Jiang Zhuyun, Sound of Temperature, 2005. Video documentation of performance, 7 minutes 40 seconds. Installation view of “Learning What Can’t Be Taught,” AAA Library, 2021. Photo: Kitmin Lee.

In the early 1980s, when Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi were students in the oil painting department of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (ZAFA), the former name of CAA, they received similar encouragement to find their individual voices, even though, in Zhang’s words, theirs was a “mechanical training” that required all students meet technical and skill-based standards. This was a time of foundational change for the country, with space allowed for new information and ideas and the revival of literature and creative production following the end of the Cultural Revolution. While art academies were still dominated by the doctrines of socialist realism, some teachers and students sought to test their limitations and provoke discussions about how academies could respond to the fundamental changes in the artistic environment.

Zhang Peili, Untitled, 1983. Oil on canvas, 120 × 100cm. Collection of China Academy of Art. Courtesy of the artist and China Academy of Art.

Zhang Peili’s Untitled (1983) testifies to the creative freedom the artist strived for in his student years. This oil painting depicts a group of workers at a construction site, and although the content of the painting is in line with the proletarian struggle and hardships of everyday life and therefore apt for an education shaped around socialist realism, Zhang’s handling and artistic language diverge significantly from the principles of this orthodoxy. The painting deliberately omits details and explication: the figures don’t show any emotions and are not represented in heroic poses; some even turn their backs to the viewer; and abstract forms populate the background. Characterized by a cool, pale palette in contrast to the vibrant colors of socialist realism, a sense of estrangement and detachment emanates from the work, reflecting the artist’s interest at the time in existentialist literature. In our interview, Zhang shared his motto from the 1980s when he spoke about creating a new language within the restrictions of his education: “What matters is not what you say, but how you say it. What matters is not what you draw but how you draw it. What matters is not what you do but how you do it.” [7]

The artistic freedom that Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi benefited from in the early 1980s was exceptional and only possible thanks to a small group of artist-teachers like Zheng Shengtian and Jin Yide, who both supported their students in challenging the principles of socialist realism. The controversy surrounding the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts’ 1985 graduation exhibition is an indication of their remarkable support. Supervised by Jin Yide and Zheng Shengtian, artists of this class from the oil painting department were heavily criticized for their thesis projects, which were targeted for having “too much emphasis on individualism.” In his contribution to the September 1985 issue of the Meishu magazine, Jin Yide describes how these graduation projects prompted a reaction among faculty members: “Many students used phrases like ‘my feelings,’ ‘my passions,’ ‘my language,’ and ‘my world’ in their thesis defense sessions and graduate work statements. These words elicited strong opinions from some comrades, who believed that it was not a good sign for students to emphasize themselves too much.” [8] He then warns about the dangers of conflating issues about academic studies with political ones: “Now, with our students, we know not to equate their political ideology or discipline in the organization with artistic creation and artistic personality.” This debate is now seen as a crucial step for the development of contemporary art education in China.

From right to left: Geng Jianyi, Untitled, 1983. Pencil on paper, 39.5 × 54.5cm; Untitled, 1983. Oil on paper, 34.5 × 41.5cm; Zhang Peili, Untitled, 1983. Oil on canvas, 120 × 100cm. Courtesy of Geng Jianyi’s estate, Zhang Peili, and China Academy of Art. Installation view of “Learning What Can’t Be Taught,” AAA Library, 2021. Photo: Kitmin Lee.

The late 1970s and 1980s are often considered the beginning of contemporary art in China as artists became committed to creating transgressive and experimental works, working outside of established institutions, and questioning the existing art norms and system. In “Learning What Can’t Be Taught,” we look at how the foundations of contemporary art were built on the previous generation of artist-teachers. Despite developing their own artistic language in the 1950s and 1960s, a period that is often considered as rigid and inward-looking, Jin Yide and Zheng Shengtian passed on to their students Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi an artistic attitude to constantly search for an individual artistic language and to foster a sense of responsibility to cultivate the younger generations.

Jin Yide and Zheng Shengtian were both students at ZAFA in the 1950s, a time when China was starting to adapt to the art and art education system of the Soviet Union. Following the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship in 1950, the convergence of political interests between the two countries led to changes in artistic conventions as well. In the 1950s, the PRC took the specific idea of socialist realism that emerged in the Soviet Union in the 1930s as its norm for aesthetic standards: theories and guidelines about art education in the Soviet Union were translated into Chinese; students were sent to study at art academies in the Soviet Union; and experts from the Soviet Union were invited to teach at China’s major art schools. The most well-known and influential expert was painter Konstantin Maksimov (1913–93), who joined the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing from 1955 to 1957. The first art educator sent from Moscow, he hosted a class for a group of top artists from across China, which is now considered a critical event in the establishment of a paradigm of socialist realism in the country. Graduates of the Maksimov class were known for making some of the most acclaimed paintings in China in the 1950s and the 1960s, and they also became the most acclaimed teachers and administrators in art education. In this context, it was unusual then that Jin Yide and Zheng Shengtian would study other artistic vocabularies that diverged from the orthodox Soviet Union style, including those from Eastern Europe and Latin America, pre–Cultural Revolution influences on contemporary art in China that remain under-researched. [9]

“I always liked the art and culture of Russia and the Soviet Union but I didn’t think I had to imitate it,” Zheng Shengtian told us in an interview. “I thought I should look for my own way.” [10] One of his major sources of inspiration was “An Exhibition of Paintings and Prints of Mexico,” organized by the Mexican National Front of Plastic Arts, which toured to Beijing and Shanghai in 1956. Featuring around four hundred artworks, this exhibition was uncommonly large and featured artists that were recognized as socialist but worked in a different style than those of the Soviet Union, including los tres grandes of Mexican muralism: Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. That same year, Siqueiros visited Beijing and hosted a forum with Chinese artists where he openly criticized the socialist realism advocated by the Soviet Union as neither able to represent the progress of the contemporary world nor adequate to connect with the national characters of different countries.

From left to right: Zheng Shengtian, Nude (reproduction), 1962. Oil on canvas, 65 × 100 cm; Reading (reproduction), 1963. Oil on canvas, 100 × 65 cm. Courtesy of Zheng Shengtian. Installation view of "Learning What Can’t Be Taught," AAA Library, 2021. Photo: Kitmin Lee.

Zheng Shengtian’s paintings Nude (1962) and Reading (1963) show his experimentation with artistic languages beyond Soviet socialist realism, and the influences from Mexican muralists and his teacher Dong Xiwen (1914–73), an artist who advocated for a kind of contemporary oil painting that is connected to China’s own artistic heritage. In these works, Zheng uses strong colors and rough shapes to create a sense of flatness, but because of their unusual style, neither of these works were selected for exhibitions at the time when they were made. My Home on the Grassland, another painting of Zheng from the same period, was accepted to the 4th National Fine Art Exhibition in 1964, but it quickly prompted criticism and was removed from the exhibition and never returned to the artist. In recent years, Zheng has remade some of his paintings that were confiscated or destroyed during the 1960s and 1970s, adding his self-portraits and written memories to the paintings in a body of work he calls The Lost Paintings.

Zheng Shengtian, Lost Paintings — My Home On The Grassland (1964), 2020. Oil on canvas, 122 × 183cm. Courtesy of the artist.

Jin Yide’s paintings from the same period were not accepted in exhibitions either. Anyang (1963), Dalian (1963), Lanxi (1963), and Harbin (1963)—all landscape paintings showing diverse modernist vocabularies, which were not considered “suitable” artworks at the time—have only been shown to the public in his 2017 retrospective at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing. Kept in Jin’s studio for decades, these paintings provide an entry point for the artist’s process of looking for his voice and for considering the influences of an education that espoused the idea that art had infinite methods. From 1960 to 1962, Jin Yide participated in a class led by the Romanian artist Eugene Popa (1919–96) at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts. This class created uneasiness among faculty members as Popa advocated a form of socialist art that embraced artistic individuality, another move away from the orthodoxy of Soviet socialist realism. While graduates of the 1953–55 Maksimov class were treasured as elites and given the power to lead art education in the country, graduates of the Popa class were criticized for having acquired bourgeois ideas of modernism. Even if, in practice, Popa’s class was less influential than Maksimov’s class due to its smaller scale, it was foundational for a group of artists who were dedicated to seeking alternative artistic languages. In a similar vein, Jin would take classes from Ni Yide, a pioneer of modernist art in China, who instructed his students that there was not an ideal method that guaranteed success. Jin recalled, “This realization was more important to me than learning new skills.”

Top, from left to right: Jin Yide, Angang, 1963. Oil on paper, 54.5 × 39cm; Dalian, 1963. Oil on paper, 46.8 × 32.1cm. Bottom, from left to right: Members of the Eugen Popa Class at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, 1960. Photograph (reproduction); Ni Yide and Jin Yide, 1963. Photograph (reproduction); Jin Yide in front of his work Support Cuba, 1962. Photograph (reproduction). Courtesy of Jin Yide. Installation view of “Learning What Can’t Be Taught,” AAA Library, 2021. Photo: Kitmin Lee.

Following the end of the Cultural Revolution and the resumption of art education, Zheng Shengtian became the first academic art teacher in China to receive national funding to visit the United States. From 1980 to 1982, he taught at the University of Minnesota as a visiting professor; he also visited Mexico, Canada, and thirteen countries in Europe, including the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Austria, Germany, Norway, and Finland, among others, and eventually returned to China through the Soviet Union. He made hundreds of slides and photographs of artworks in museums during these trips and brought them back to Hangzhou in 1983, which constituted “the largest collection of international art” in China at that time. [13] “During my two-year stay in the US, I had three exhibitions that received generally favorable reviews. But an overwhelming state of confusion would reign over me when I was alone in the studio. The overseas experience had broadened my horizons: there was so much artistic terrain for me to fly over, but the traditional training I had received in the academy still kept my wings bound, leaving me in a pained struggle between ‘I would’ and ‘I could not,’” he wrote in a memoir. “I made a mental note to myself that when I resumed teaching, by no means would I trammel my students in any way.” [14]

Zheng has known well that education is crucial in providing the necessary conditions for an artist to grow but that it might also hinder an artist’s potential. Born in 1935, he is among the generation of artists who experienced the political turmoil in China in the second half of the twentieth century, when the boundaries of what is suitable for teaching and learning changed drastically. Now eighty-six years old, Zheng is still active in research, writing, and other activities to promote art and is recognized by many important contemporary artists as an influential teacher. In the interview for “Learning What Can’t Be Taught,” we asked Zheng about the moment when he felt he turned from a student to an artist. His response reveals, for us, a precious attitude for any artist and educator: “I am still waiting for this moment to come.” [15]

[1] Interview with Lu Yang, conducted by Anthony Yung, December 2020. To watch the full interview, please see this link.

[2] "School enrollment, tertiary (%gross)," World Bank Open Data, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.TER.ENRR.

[3] Zhang Peili, "Why the New Media Art Department Is Necessary," 2004.

[4] Interview with Zhang Peili, conducted by Anthony Yung, December 2020. To watch the full interview, please see this link.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Interview with Jiang Zhuyun, conducted by Anthony Yung, December 2020. To watch the full interview, please see this link.

[7] Interview with Zhang Peili.

[8] Jin Yide, "Thoughts About Supervising the Graduation Projects," Meishu, September 1985, 43-46. Translated by Anthony Yung.

[9] Winds from Fusang: Mexico and China in the Twentieth Century, Zheng Shengtian's decades-long research on the infusion of Mexican art into twentieth-century Chinese art, offers exceptional research in this field. Click here to see the catalog of this exhibition, published by USC Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, CA.

[10] Interview with Zheng Shengtian, conducted by Anthony Yung, December 2020. To watch the full interview, please see this link.

[11] Zheng Shengtian, "Winds from Fusang: Mexico and China in the Twentieth Century," in Winds from Fusang: Mexico and China in the Twentieth Century (Pasadena, CA: USC Pacific Asia Museum), 14-16.

[12] Interview with Jin Yide, conducted by Anthony Yung, December 2020. To watch the full interview, please see this link.

[13] Interview with Zheng Shengtian, conducted by Jane DeBevoise, October 2009, http://www.china1980s.org/files/interview/zstftfinalised_201102171538282951.pdf.

[14] Zheng Shengtian, "Encountering Life: Scanning Myself," 2013. Translated from Chinese to English by Zhao Han.

[15] Interview with Zheng Shengtian, conducted by Anthony Yung, December 2020.

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warofshadowstheorder · 4 years ago

Text

Chapter 27

Bledsoe felt herself becoming engulfed in the tournament. Not only was she enthralled by what she was witnessing, but between fights she would look through the program and found the bios on each fighter to be incredibly interesting. One was a Savateur from Marseille, another was a Muay Thai champion from Pattaya, there was a Greek Pancration expert, and many others. She especially found it fascinating to read how they’d come into the Order.

Some of them were former military or law enforcement in their native countries, others were born into the Monastery, and some of them were just in the right place at the right time.

Recognizing the surname from the journal entry Natasha showed her in the Order Library, Bledsoe was especially interested in the entry under “Gladiusdei, Connor Muhammad.” She was slightly confused when his fighting style was listed as “Order”. She scanned his bio and saw that he was described as being the latest in a long and distinguished line of Order servants from the Gladiusdei line, a six-time tournament winner who’d never lost a fight, and the second-youngest Knight to ever achieve Elite status. She was about to ask Tadeas for more information when Master Lee announced the next fight as Connor Gladiusdei versus Rodrigo Monte.

Bledsoe decided her questions could wait, particularly after the huge cheer that erupted from the crowd at the announcement of Connor’s name, and looked up from her program. She recognized Connor as the fighter she’d noticed earlier looking very confident and relaxed before the tournament started. He was five-feet-eleven-inches tall with dark brown hair and dark-colored eyes. His thick hair was cut short and he carried his 190 pounds in an athletic well-muscled build.

Bledsoe was slightly taken aback when she saw Connor’s face and skin. His facial features suggested that he was of Scandinavian descent while his skin tone suggested Middle Eastern heritage.

As he entered the cage, he took a moment to walk around and give a wave to the crowd. Bledsoe noticed several Gifted Ones and other young women in the crowd noticeably affected by the gesture, and she also noticed several marks on Connor’s body. She’d noticed that all the fighters had some distinctive marks, but with Connor she saw that he had every mark she’d seen on other fighters plus a few more. She quickly tapped Tadeas on the shoulder.

“What are those marks on their bodies?” she asked Tadeas urgently, not wanting either of them to miss any of the action.

“I’m surprised you waited this long to ask.” Tadeas replied confidently.

“I thought the guys just had tattoos,” Bledsoe answered slightly defensively, “but that Connor guy has every mark I’ve seen tonight plus that one at the base of his neck.”

“I forget that it’s part of your job to be observant,” Tadeas said with a tone and look of admiration that earned a slight blush from Bledsoe as their eyes met.

“A Knight’s training,” Tadeas began, “is grounded in the eighteen tenets of Ninjutsu. In order to become a Knight, you have to have a working knowledge of all of them and a mastery of at least six. When you master a tenet, you receive a corresponding mark on your body.”

Bledsoe watched as Tadeas unbuttoned the top few buttons on his shirt and pulled it down to reveal a couple of marks on his chest opposite his brand.

“Just as an example,” he said pointing to a mark, “this one is for Military Strategy.”

“So,” Bledsoe asked doing her best to control the flushed feeling coursing through her body as Monte entered the cage, “how are those marks applied? They look like tattoos.”

“They kind of are,” Tadeas answered as he buttoned his shirt back up, “a Gifted One places a small metal rod resembling a wand on whichever part of your body the mark is going to go on and then works her magic. One of the things they learn is which mark corresponds to which tenet. We get the marks in places that will be covered by any short-sleeved T-shirt so we won’t stand out in the outside world.”

Bledsoe stared at Tadeas, loving everything she learned about him, but was brought back to the cage when she heard music. She turned to see Monte, who was dressed in loose-fitting white pants, performing several impressive physical feats to the rhythm of traditional Capoeira music being played by a few musicians outside the cage.

Conner’s grin widened at the sight before him, and he even encouraged his opponent by clapping to the beat of the music for a few moments. Having already put on their gloves and receiving their instructions from Master Lee, Connor and Monte awaited only the command to start. Master Lee obliged the combatants a few moments later.

Monte performed some impressive feints and flipping moves. Connor on the other hand was moving his feet up and down to the same rhythm and following his opponent perfectly. After a few moments of moving around, Conner pounced at Monte right after he completed a particularly impressive flip and used his own momentum to bring him to the floor hard with a wrestling takedown.

The sound of Monte’s body slamming hard onto the floor of the cage brought a chorus of cheers and exclamations from the crowd. Bledsoe was surprised that the impact alone hadn’t knocked Monte unconscious. The smile on Connor’s face only widened as he further wrestled Monte to the ground, almost casually countering every attempt Monte made to get up.

Eventually, after putting on a clinic of how to keep a man grounded, Connor stood up and took a few steps back. He then motioned for Monte to get up. Monte did so and took a few moments to regain his rhythm. This time, he played the aggressor and moved quickly to where Connor stood.

Connor responded by backing away from the offensive flurry until he backed up against the fenced wall of the cage. He quickly bounced off and spun around Monte so that he was behind him before pinning Monte between himself and the cage wall. Connor let loose with a knee to Monte’s side and followed it up with a series of precision punches to the body before backing up enough to land a kick to Monte’s head, flooring him.

Rather than follow through, Connor again backed off and waited patiently for his opponent to get back to his feet. This earned a mixed reaction from the crowd, including a man with similar features to Connor seated next to the Gifted One Lin yelling out “Don’t play with your food little brother, eat it!”

The comment earned some laughs from the crowd. Monte rose to his feet, obviously staggered but no less determined to continue the fight. He again resumed his movements, this time coming less smooth and more cautious. Connor became the aggressor, and walked up to Monte. Connor wasn’t moving very fast, but he had his opponent’s movements so well telegraphed that he didn’t need speed to gain the advantage.

When he was directly in front of him, Connor effortlessly ducked under one of Monte’s moving arms and hooked his own around his neck. Connor then gripped the bicep of his other arm with his hand and wrapped his legs around Monte’s at his knees. At that point the weight of Connor’s body caused the two men to drop to the ground with Connor keeping the hold. Master Lee quickly and smoothly moved to where he was beside the two fighters. A few moments later, after Monte passed out, Master Lee called an end to the fight by tapping Connor’s shoulder until he released the hold.

Connor stood and raised his arms in triumph. Bledsoe was beside herself, Connor was hands down the most well-rounded fighter she’d ever seen. He wrestled, struck, and grappled with an ease and skill that only a few moments ago she would have thought impossible to find in a single fighter.

“I can tell that you’re impressed,” Tadeas remarked bringing Bledsoe back to the present, “I didn’t tell you about the mark at the base of Connor’s neck.” Bledsoe turned and faced Tadeas with interest.

“When a Knight masters all eighteen tenets of Ninjutsu, he receives the Elite brand at the base of his neck. It’s the Kanji symbol for Ninjutsu, being translated as ‘the art of stealth, secrecy, endurance, and perseverance.’”

Bledsoe continued to look on in amazement as Connor’s arm was raised.

“Basically,” Tadeas continued, “you just watched an artist at work.”

Bledsoe couldn’t argue with Tadeas’s last statement. She watched as Connor moved over to Monte, who had been revived by a Gifted One shortly after the fight had concluded, and shake his hand with an accompanying pat on the back. Connor’s grin never left his face, nor did it lessen, as he and Monte left the cage and sat back down with the other fighters.

Bledsoe’s eyes wandered over to the man who’d made the comment about Conner not playing with his food. He called him little brother, and she decided to ask Tadeas about him.

“Who’s that?” Bledsoe asked gesturing over to the subject of her inquiry.

“Oh,” Tadeas answered, “that’s Duncan and his wife Lin. Duncan is Connor’s older brother. He’s a Knight as well, but not an Elite.”

“I see,” Bledsoe answered, “is Connor related to Jonathan Gladiusdei?”

“Yeah,” Tadeas said surprised, “how do you know about Jonathan Gladiusdei?”

“Natasha showed me the library earlier,” Bledsoe answered, “I read Bridget Warren Gladiusdei’s account of how she joined The Order and I found it fascinating. But I was wondering what the story is behind that family?”

“I’m surprised Natasha didn’t tell you in the library,” Tadeas remarked.

“To be fair,” Bledsoe said, “I didn’t ask. I’ve had a lot of things on my mind lately.”

“That’s understandable,” Tadeas answered before continuing, “Connor is a direct descendant of Jonathan Gladiusdei. The Gladiusdeis are the closest thing to a real dynasty that the Order has. One of their ancestors was in the original group of recruits brought into the Order when it was first organized, back before people even had real last names. Ever since then, one of their descendants has always served in the Order in some capacity.”

“When the Order was a monastic group, only one son would serve it and his siblings would carry on the family line. After it was restored, there’s always been a Knight here. The family eventually chose the surname Gladiusdei. That’s Latin for…”

“Sword of God,” Bledsoe interrupted earning a surprised expression from Tadeas causing her to add, “I studied some Latin in school.”

“I’m impressed,” Tadeas stated sincerely.

“So,” Bledsoe said, “I’m curious. Since that family has been in the Monastery so long, where do their ancestors come from?”

“It changes,” Tadeas answered, “the first one to join the Order back in the day was originally from Macedonia and was serving in the Roman Legion. The family line pretty much continued from that region until after the Order went underground. The Gladiusdei who was serving at that time went into exile in Scandinavia.”

“Since the Order was restored, the Gladiusdei line has included just about every ethnic group or race you can think of at one time or another. And Connor and Duncan are the latest in that line.”

Bledsoe’s gaze followed the man she already had tremendous respect for as a fighter, and now looked at him again as the heir apparent to a valiant legacy of warriors. Noting his appearance once again, she remembered something else she wanted to ask.

“Connor looks like an interesting mix,” Bledsoe commented, “where are his parents from?”

“His father was born in the Monastery,” Tadeas answered, “his mother is a Gifted One who was discovered by a Watcher in Afghanistan.”

“Wow,” Bledsoe commented surprised, “this group really does have a far reach.”

“You have no idea,” Tadeas said with a smirk.

A few moments passed, and then Master Lee announced the next fight.

“Jung Kwak versus Dieter Helzig!”

At the announcement of Dieter’s name, Bledsoe’s interest was renewed and she decided to take Tadeas up on his earlier advice to read more about Dieter in her program.

Helzig, Dieter Joselewicz

Height: 6’5”

Weight: 295 lbs.

Born: Nuremberg, Germany

Fighting Style: Wrestling/Krav Maga

“Oh my…” Bledsoe said as she read over Dieter’s info and took another look at the imposing physical specimen she previously had only known as someone loathed by Sara, “He’s…”

“A beast,” Tadeas said with a smile as Dieter entered and put on his gloves, “I heard he’s literally ripped demons apart with his bare hands on missions.”

“I believe it,” Bledsoe said still awestruck as a solid looking Korean dressed in a white gi with a symbol she immediately recognized as associated with Taekwondo entered the cage followed by Dieter. She quickly turned to her program, wanting to know how he got to be as big as he was and in the Order.

Of all the bios she’d read at the tournament, she found Dieter’s the most interesting. She read that he was from a Jewish family that had lived in Germany since before World War I and refused to leave in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust. She read on to find out that Dieter had taken up weightlifting at a very young age, competed in a few Strongman competitions, and was poised to compete for the German Olympic weightlifting and Greco-Roman Wrestling teams.

But, he chose to serve his people and instead volunteered for the Israeli Defense Force. There, he’d served in the Sayeret Matkal and became an expert in the fighting art of Krav Maga as well as with heavy firearms and explosives. While serving, a Watcher that worked for Mossad became acquainted with him and convinced him to serve The Order. After serving in the IDF for three years and earning his Israeli citizenship, the Mossad Watcher and Dieter faked his death and Dieter was taken to The Monastery. He was a four-time tournament champion and was, not at all surprisingly to Bledsoe, undefeated.

Bledsoe couldn’t help but let her gaze wander over Dieter’s God-like body, wondering at the strange tattoo on his forearm. Her mouth remained agape and she wondered how one man could be so well proportioned. Soon however, Master Lee calling the fighters to the center brought Bledsoe’s attention back to the task at hand. She wondered how the big man would do in a fight with no real rules.

Master Lee signaled the start of the fight, and Dieter did not move an inch from where he stood. Jung stood motionless as well, but for a much different reason than Dieter. It was David versus Goliath, but this time Goliath was the Jewish hero. In a flash, Jung made the first move and quickly flew toward the giant in front of him.

Dieter crouched down in a wrestling stance as Jung performed an elaborate aerial kick. As his foot came down to deliver the full brunt of the blow, Dieter dodged it and moved to where he was directly in front of Jung. Jung only had enough time to realize that he had missed his mark before nearly 300 pounds of pure force tackled him hard to the ground.

Dieter positioned his body to where he was lying across on top of Jung and started bringing down elbows onto Jung’s head with occasional knees to his body. Jung continued fighting his best and trying valiantly to escape from the precarious position he found himself in. But every time he tried to get out, Dieter would shift his weight and move to where he needed to be in order to keep Jung pinned under the wall of muscle that rested on top of him.

“He’s done for,” Tadeas said, “everybody knows that there’s no hope when Dieter gets on top of them.”

Bledsoe continued watching only to find that what Tadeas said was absolutely true. Jung was pinned beneath Dieter and there was nothing he could do to get out of his situation. Eventually, Dieter landed an elbow that knocked him out and prompted Master Lee to stop the fight.

The crowd cheered as Dieter rose to his feet and a Gifted One tended to Jung. Bledsoe got a confused look on her face when Dieter made a kissing motion with his lips toward the Gifted Ones, but smiled when she saw Sara rolling her eyes.

“What’s with Dieter and Sara?” she asked.

“Nothing really,” Tadeas answered, “he has a crush on Sara. She’s completely uninterested, so I guess it’ll be a matter of time to see if Dieter’s persistence wins out.” Bledsoe laughed, and Tadeas enjoyed the sound of it.

“You said everybody knows that when Dieter gets on top of a guy that it’s over,” Bledsoe said to Tadeas, “does he fight in these often?”

“Every time he’s on the island during the tournament.” Tadeas answered.

“Fair enough,” Bledsoe responded figuring that if he wasn’t on the island then he was on a mission.

She turned her gaze back to the cage to see Dieter very kindly and gently help Jung to his feet after he regained consciousness. Dieter then talked with him for a moment, his concern readily apparent, and wrapped an arm around his shoulder to help him out of the cage. As she observed Dieter interacting with Jung, she wondered what it was about him that Sara loathed so much. There was one other thing about him that intrigued her.

“Is that tattoo on his forearm an Order mark?” Bledsoe asked.

“No,” Tadeas answered, “he had that before he came into the Order. Enough people here know Hebrew that it’s common knowledge the wording means ‘Never Again’. But Dieter’s really private about the significance of the number.”

Bledsoe’s gaze reverted back to the center of the cage when Master Lee resumed and announced the final fight of the first round. This would be an announcement that would send the crowd into an uproar equal to what they’d given Connor.

“Timothy Hardy and Olcán Farrell!”

Bledsoe tensed at the mention of Olcán’s name, but relaxed when she saw Tadeas stand up and cheer. She remained seated, before standing up to see over the people in front of her who had joined Tadeas in rising to their feet.

The desire to see more of the man whose eyes had been haunting her since that fateful day at the pavilion had become more than that, it was a need she had to satisfy. Her wish was granted as a young man in his early twenties was followed in by the man Bledsoe knew only by reputation, some brutal savagery in an alley in Washington, D.C., and a pair of haunting Prussian blue eyes.

At first, all Bledsoe could think about was that this was the man who made her feel helpless at the pavilion as the man she was charged to protect was killed, and the man that broke her new best friend’s heart more than ten years ago. She hated Olcán in that instant, but the smile on Tadeas’s face as he watched his blood brother enter the cage encouraged her to reconsider her opinion. She decided to read his entry in the program to learn more about him and the way others knew him.

Farrell, Olcán

Height: 5’10”

Weight: 185 lbs

Born: Waterford, Ireland

Fighting Style: Western Boxing/Order

She read on and, in addition to what she’d been told by others about him, found that he was a four-time winner of the tournament, also undefeated, and the youngest Knight in the history of the Order to achieve Elite status.

She also read that he’d completed more missions for his time in service than any other Knight in history. She noticed that the Knight Michael O’Connell was mentioned several times in different capacities. Among them were adoptive father, guardian, and boxing coach.

After she finished reading, she looked up to take in his form. If Dieter was a God incarnate, then Olcán was the Olympic ideal for a mortal. He was a very big 185 pounds, and his body was pure muscle. His physique was complemented by a look of determined focus. The other thing Bledsoe noticed were the scars that mingled with the tenet marks on his body. She particularly noticed the scar over his heart, which she immediately recognized as being from a bullet wound, and the jagged vertical one along his side.

She was snapped back to reality when she heard Olcán’s opponent exclaim in complaint “You’re kidding me! The first round and I get stuck with an Elite?!” This earned a few laughs from some of the crowd who were sitting close enough to hear him.

Just as the grin that adorned Connor’s face had never left during his fight, the determined expression stayed on Olcán’s face with the consistency of a rock formation. Master Lee brought the two fighters into the center and gave them the pre-fight talk before each nodded and drew back a few paces. Then, Master Lee raised and dropped his hand to signal the beginning of the fight.

Olcán got into a boxing stance and strode quickly and purposefully to his opponent. Tim tried not to succumb to the fear and dread running rampant inside him, but couldn’t help it at the sight in front of him. He threw a strong punch that Olcán effortlessly dodged. Olcán then landed a picture perfect right hook. Tim immediately dropped to the floor, and Master Lee promptly placed himself between the fighters. The fight had taken less than ten seconds.

The crowd broke into a huge cheer as Olcán landed the only punch of the fight, and Bledsoe was in shock. A one-punch knockout was something she’d heard about, but never personally witnessed. She watched as Olcán, his determined focus always prevalent, had his hand raised by Master Lee and helped his opponent outside the cage.

“You were really lucky,” Tadeas said sitting down as Bledsoe turned to face him.

“That I got to see a one punch knockout?” Bledsoe asked.

“No,” Tadeas answered, “I mean you’re really lucky that you had him watching over you.” Tadeas paused to let what he’d said sink in before continuing. “You had an angel on your shoulder. The only one that Hell is truly afraid of.”

Bledsoe’s opinion of Olcán was still leaning towards the negative. But she found that she was respecting him slightly. If nothing else, she knew he had a mean right hook.

“What happened to him?” Bledsoe asked Tadeas after a few moments.

“You’ll have to be a bit more specific,” Tadeas responded.

“Where did he get those scars?” Bledsoe specified.

“Here and there,” Tadeas answered. “You read the program. He’s been on a lot of missions. We’ve all received our share of battle scars. The Gifted Ones just remove them when they heal us. Olcán likes to keep his, at least the ones that can be covered by a t-shirt.”

“Why does he keep his scars?” Bledsoe asked with a mixture of confusion and interest.

“He says that keeping them reminds him of things that he needs to never forget,” Tadeas answered, “he can tell you where he got each one of them and what he learned from the experience.”

Bledsoe followed Olcán with her eyes until he took a seat and blended in with the rest of the fighters. Inside, despite what a great fight she thought it could be, she hoped that Olcán didn’t make it to the final. Master Lee came back to the center of the cage and brought both his arms up into an x-shape with both hands in fists. The crowd began to disperse, many of them moving towards the refreshment carts.

“After each round,” Tadeas said turning to Bledsoe, “there’s a thirty-minute intermission. Would you like something to eat?”

Bledsoe nodded and took Tadeas’s hand. She was already looking forward to the next round of competition, and she had a feeling it was only going to get better.

#novel #action-adventure #fantasy #historical fiction

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zecretsanta · 7 years ago

Text

Pandora's Box

To: @siggyklim

From: @chessanator

One very very smart Alice and one very very smart Lotus coming right up! I hope you like maths, and Merry Christmas!

(p.s. Please try and pretend that the prime numbers are bigger than they are. I realised half-way through writing that I didn’t have easy access to 19 industrial-grade prime numbers for fanfic-purposes)

Ao3

25th November, 2029

Alice knew that, technically speaking, Hazuki Kashiwabara fell under the purview of the ‘If I tell you, I’ll have to shoot you’ Protocol. She also didn’t much care. After the Nonary Game she had been kidnapped for and with both her daughters working for the Special Office of Internal Security, Hazuki already knew most of everything worth knowing, and knew why it was important to keep it all secret. More importantly, Hazuki was actually a really useful lady to have around. You didn’t just find her sort of genius standing by the side of the road. So Alice didn’t much care for anyone saying she wasn’t allowed to invite her friend into the Office whenever she felt like.

Of course, when an officer of the SOIS doesn’t care for something, it doesn’t actually matter.

So, one blatantly forged ID badge later, Hazuki was comfortably situated in Alice’s office, swinging the swivel-chair by the computer gently around. Alice settled for lounging on the sofa opposite. One of the key tenets of SOIS operations was matching intelligence assets to the task they were best suited for, and despite the electronic warfare training all agents went through Alice could be confident that with Hazuki at the computer there was little more she could contribute.

“So how are Nona and Ennea doing these days?” Hazuki asked. After nearly losing her two daughters a decade before, that question was always her first when she and Alice met.

“Overseas, at the moment,” Alice replied. She followed it up with her usual thin smile that said, ‘and you don’t need to know anything more.’

“‘Overseas’? Really?” Hazuki scoffed, “Wasn’t this supposed to be the office of internal security?”

Folding her arms and smirking, Alice said, “America’s internal security starts as far as possible from our borders. The earlier we catch the bastards, the safer we all are.”

“Yup, I guess so.” With that, Hazuki swung around in her chair, half way towards the keyboard. “So what’s up today, Alice? Who are we going to hack apart this time?”

Alice shrugged. “Maybe I just wanted to talk to an old friend.”

“You know, for a top secret agent of the most clandestine agency in the world, your lies are just awful. If you just wanted to chat, there are plenty of cafés around here where we could have met. About half of which are entirely staffed by patsies of yours, if you really needed to discuss something confidential.”

“That’s not true!” Alice exclaimed. She held her mock-outraged expression for a couple of seconds, then relaxed. “After Light quit his harpist job, we haven’t got any leverage on his replacement yet. That makes the number of cafés we control half-minus-one by my count, thank you.”

Hazuki chuckled lightly. Then, she continued, “Still, I know I’m right. We wouldn’t be meeting here if you didn’t need my skills. So tell me, Alice: what’s up?”

“Nothing world-ending,” Alice said, getting to the point, “Just this mafia group that’s resurfaced. The one that tried to take over the Las Vegas strip a couple of years back. We thought that we’d eradicated them back then, but it looks like we only managed to weed out all the stupid.” Annoyed as Alice was that the previous mission hadn’t been a complete success, it wasn’t a complete washout. At the very least, it had been a relatively proving ground for Light and Clover to win their spurs.

“Smart mafiosos? Rue the day.” Hazuki gestured avidly towards the computer she was sitting at and said, “Just general hacking disruption, then? Or are you after something in particular?”

Alice considered it. “We’d like to know where they are getting their money from. They couldn’t have recovered this fast without outside help.”

Hazuki grinned. “Can do.”

After five minutes of preparation, Hazuki was ready to go. Alice had done her part, aiming the computer at the closest thing the Office had to an entry-point to the gang’s computer network; now she could step back and just let Hazuki get to work. Hazuki cracked her knuckles and stretched out her back, ready to type.

Hazuki glanced at Alice.

Alice nodded.

The hacking began.

Green lines of code swept across the screen as Hazuki’s fingers swept across the keyboard. The screen flashed with one window full of data then another; Hazuki gave each only a moments glance, absorbing the information then dismissing the window in favour of the next. Each snippet of data informed the next piece of code, and without quite understanding what was going on Alice could feel them spiralling in and in towards their target. At the very least, Hazuki was grinning in anticipation.

And then the screen went blank.

“No!” Hazuki gasped. She slammed her hands onto the desk, rattling the keyboard.

Alice stared at the dark empty screen. “W-What happened?!”

“I was this close,” Hazuki hissed. She tapped the left mouse button a couple of times, bring the last few windows of data and code back onto the screen. “Look here. This group has set up their network by using a regularly updating schedule of private and public cryptography keys for an RSA system. After random intervals each computer in the network chooses a new private key, constructs the new public key, and distributes it to all the other trusted computers on the network. I had just set up a buffer-overflow past their final layer of defences, and I was this close to injecting code that would trick those computers into thinking we were part of the trusted network, when someone human noticed and scrubbed us out.”

Alice knew far more than the basics of computer security and infiltration, but even so she’d never heard of a cryptosystem complicated as that. “What’s with that? Surely that’s a bit excessive, especially compared to what this group had the last time we beat them.”

Hazuki let out a wry bitter chuckle, then said, “It’s probably worth it, if they knew we were after them. It was reasonably well-programmed, at least, and it had to have been the reason your in-house guys couldn’t break in. Even if you brought all your processing power to bear, you couldn’t break through. I found out that this was the public key just before we were kicked out –” Hazuki elegantly indicated a number – 599725548175349234588407 – at the bottom of the window she had restored “– but by the time you can get SOIS’ supercomputers into action to factorise it, they’ll have already moved onto another key.

“God help us. So even though we know it’s 599746013723 times 999 965876309, we still can’t…” Alice trailed off.

Hazuki sat there, frozen by complete disbelief.

Alice snapped her fingers in front of Hazuki’s face. “Hello? Hazuki Kashiwabara? Are you still with us?”

Hazuki murmured, “That’s… That’s not possible.”

“Thank god. I thought I was going to have to say that Seven had called you an old lady.”

Alice’s flippant comment went nowhere. Hazuki still stared at her, but her eyes showed none of the anger they should have. To be honest, Alice was rather concerned.

“Hazuki…? Lotus?”

“That’s completely impossible,” Hazuki said again. She turned back to the computer screen, furiously typed some code; she stopped and turned back to Alice only when another number had appeared on the screen. “Alice,” she said, concern filling her voice, “Can you look at this, please?”

Alice looked at the number: ‘724677698895304108732301’. “It’s 803065408993 times 902389382957,” she replied.

Hazuki pressed ‘enter’ on the keyboard; another number appeared. “And this?”

Alice didn’t need to study ‘668089868878852858021373’ for even a second. “769945710559 times 876710358947.”

Hazuki murmured again, “It’s completely impossible…” She tapped out a long string on the keyboard, then pressed enter again.

Alice stared at the number ‘90591875222471336864959701060623807145969394309’. “What the hell, Hazuki?”

“Thank goodness.” Hazuki sighed, her relief almost filling the room. “You can’t actually solve –”

“It’s obviously 324270473809 times 465783271379 times 599886421037 times 999836357587. Why are you wasting my time with simple things like this?”

“What the HELL?!”

Once Hazuki had recovered, she explained. “Alice… every single bit of computer security in the entire world depends on our inability to easily factorise primes. We can produce numbers in a couple of minutes that can’t be broken in centuries. Shouldn’t be broken in centuries. But you were doing it instantly.”

Alice shrugged. “I’ve told you. I’ve always been good at math.”

“I know. But this isn’t just ‘good-at-math’ good at math. This is ‘you could walk into any bank in the world and walk out with all their money’ good at math.” Hazuki paused, staring at Alice inquisitively. “Alice… Are you an esper?

“Huh?”

“I should have realised with Nona and Ennea,” Hazuki said, “I should have noticed the signs, when they started to get twice as good at school tests without needing to revise, and when one of them would know all the spoilers for a series that only the other had watched. If I’d noticed, maybe I could have protected them, or at least worked out why they had been taken. I decided that I would be more observant next time. So, Alice: are you an esper?”

Alice folded her arms sternly. “No. I’m not.”

At that moment, Clover leaned through the office door, her pink hair bouncing eagerly as swung on the doorframe. “Yep she is!”

“Clover!” Alice snapped.

“What? We’ve known all year: me, Light, all of us! Anyway, see you later!” Clover swung away and skipped down the corridor before Alice could reply.

Alice scowled, but she couldn’t avoid the truth. Everyone she’d demonstrated it to had been convinced that there was something extraordinary about her mathematical abilities. She hadn’t become a highly-ranked officer of SOIS by failing to look past her own biases. She took a deep breath and accepted the facts in front of her. “Interesting. I’m sure there’s some way the Office can use this.”

Hazuki nodded slightly. “You can break pretty much any encryption in the world. I’m sure your bosses will find something for you to do. But…” She trailed off, glaring at her computer screen. “Doesn’t help us much with this, though. The mafia group we were trying to hack were updating their keys too regularly. By the time I’ve given you one, you’ve factorised it, and I’ve hacked in, they’ll already have changed to another one. That’s for every single one of the 37 nodes of their network. And even if I do break through, the person who caught me last time will probably force me out again. If we could automate your ability, of course I could hack them. But…”

‘If we could automate your ability.’ Alice thought about those words, and a spark lit in her mind. She was still getting used to the idea of being an esper herself, but she was comfortably familiar with esper abilities as a concept and in practice. She had recruited Light and Clover, Nona and Ennea, and all the rest of the Nonary Game espers. She had trained them, seen them in action, carried them through their first missions. Mentoring those espers and making them useful to SOIS and the country had been the declared goal of the unit she led. But it hadn’t been the only goal.

“I think I have an idea.”

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Hazuki watched as the technicians clustered around the sofa where Alice lay, fiddling with wires and waving scanning devices. It didn’t look to Hazuki like the bustling activity was actually making any progress at all, but eventually the techs decided they had completed what they had set out to accomplish and backed off, letting Alice sit up. Hazuki looked Alice over.

“Well congratulations, Alice,” she drawled, “You’re winning first prize at the next cyberpunk convention you go to.”

Alice really would have won such a prize. If the metal casing that covered the right side of her head wasn’t enough, and the flashing lights that spun around the surface didn’t seal the deal, then the fact that the wires – which sprouted in a chaotic rainbow-coloured nest above the device – also appeared to bury their way into her head would have convinced anyone that she was a technologically-enhanced agent for a clandestine government conspiracy. Correctly, as it happens.

“I have to ask: what is…” Hazuki carefully pointed at the device, making sure that her finger didn’t get caught in the tangle of wires or touch anything important. “… that?”

Alice tilted her head, testing out the weight of the thing that had been attached to it. “SOIS has been working on this for quite a while now. In fact, we’ve been developing this for… two years, now.” Alice said that last part as suggestively as possible. She hadn’t said, ‘from the moment we recruited the survivors of the Nonary Games,’ but she might as well have. “Ever since we found out that the morphogenetic field existed and that there were espers who could use it, we knew we had to employ it to protect the nation. We recruited every esper brave enough to join us, of course, but we couldn’t just leave it to chance. I wouldn’t rest if we were just leaving it to chance. So from the beginning we’ve wanted to see if we can automate esper abilities. Working with the gentlemen down at Area 51 who were researching… well, it’s classified. But this…” Alice pointed – far too calmly – at the contraption that had been wired into her brain. “This is the prototype for the device we came up with.”

Hazuki had a horrifying flash of images go through her mind; Ennea having that device clamped onto her head and Nona having that device clamped onto her head and both of them being wired into machines to be extracted from. “That sounds far too similar to what Gentarou Hongou and his Cradle goons were trying to accomplish. You wanted to put my daughters in –”

“Please,” Alice interrupted, “We weren’t planning on forcing anyone into it. Just like when Nona and Ennea joined us in the first place, it would have been entirely their choice. If we couldn’t have tested this with willing volunteers, it wouldn’t have been worth it at all.” Alice paused. “I’m rather glad I’m the one who is testing the prototype out. We hadn’t used it yet because we were concerned about the possibility of it affecting both siblings through their connection. If I’m not an esper, it shouldn’t cause me any harm, If I really am… I’ll have to learn maths from the ground up again. Probably.”

Hazuki could at least respect that her friend was willing to put own life on the line before involving anyone else. “Yup. Anyway, what are we supposed to do with this?”

“It should be wirelessly connected to that computer,” Alice explained, “You send me numbers; I’ll factorise them and send them back to you. If it works the way I imagine it will then I won’t even need to consciously think about it: it’ll just happen.”

Alice seemed perfectly comfortable having that device connected to her brain, and Hazuki trusted her friend to weigh up the benefits and risks and make the best choice. If so, then they were ready to begin. Hazuki sat down at the computer and began her usual pre-programming stretches, loosening her muscles and getting a feel for where the keyboard lay in front of her. Once her back muscles were fully exercised and supple she was ready to go.

“Let’s kick some ass.”

It really was too good to be true. In fact, it was a hacker’s dream in digital form. Hazuki barely had to do anything at all once the original program was written. The code just did the work for her. As the attack encountered each obstacle, Alice would hum to herself and numbers would fly across the screen as the encryption key was factorised to shreds. At one point the enemy sysadmin caught her like before and reformatted one hacked computer. Then another. Then a third. It didn’t matter. Hazuki had complete control over every other computer on the network, and the freed computers were reinfected with malware faster than Hazuki could blink. Overwhelmed, the enemy gave up.

Nothing could stop her.

With the hack successful, it was time to make use of the access she had. Hazuki started by scouring the databases for every picture of gang members she could find, downloading them to the SOIS servers. That would help the police find and arrest every last one of the bastards. She looked up information about the routes they used to smuggle in drugs and victims, and plotted them as best she could on a map. Then, with the obvious stuff done, Hazuki went further.

A politician who the mafia had been blackmailing: his details and proof were anonymously slipped to a local newspaper. Irregularities in the accounts of the casino the gang had laundered money through highlighted and sent to the IRS. Emails to two hit-squads edited to direct them away from their at-least-probably-more-innocent targets and at each other’s hideouts. With her all-encompassing presence on their computers, Hazuki could do to them whatever she wanted.

Finally, because it was what Alice had originally asked her to find, Hazuki went for the money. She didn’t know anything about how criminal syndicates organised their cashflow; her career before she had met Alice had only been at boringly respectable companies. But looking at it from the position she occupied, it was clear as day. One by one, the accounts were drained, frozen, and involuntarily donated to missing-children charities. After five minutes, the only trace left of all the gang’s crime-earned cash was the database of transactions that Hazuki had downloaded.

Hazuki pressed escape. The attack program ended, closing every window but the one that showed the financial documents.

“Bullseye!” Hazuki called across the room, “Alice, I did it! We won’t see those bastards anytime soon.”

When Hazuki glanced round, Alice was tapping the esper device bemusedly. “Really? It hardly felt like anything was happening on my end. Hmm… I guess they were telling the truth when they told us this was safe.”

“I guess they were,” Hazuki replied. She paused. “Still, test it out one someone else before giving my daughters one. I’m sure Clover would be an eager guinea-pig.”

“Yup!” Clover had stuck her head through the door again as she skipped back down the corridor. She stared at the protruding web of wires coming from Alice’s head. “Woah, that looks awesome! Is this the new SOIS thing? Tell me when I get mine!” Before Alice or Hazuki could give Clover a reply – sensible or otherwise – Clover had skipped away again.

Alice shrugged elegantly. “I guess so.” She stretched, then stood up from the sofa she had been resting on while the hack was in progress and walked over to Hazuki, reading the screen over her shoulder. “Those are the accounts of all those criminal’s money, then? Did you manage to find out who was funding them?”

As far as Hazuki was concerned – and she knew that Alice felt the same way – accounting was the job of people who went to work in suits, not those who could wear whatever they damn well pleased. But there were some simple macros she could set to work that might just do the job for her. She started one, searching for any name that appeared too often in the list of transactions she had taken.

To her surprise, it worked. One single name, belonging to one single organisation, appeared in the list ten times as often as anything that wasn’t one of the mafia’s own accounts. Practically every single cent the mafia had owned had at some point in its life passed through the wallet of this one particular company.

“Alice,” Hazuki murmured, “Have you ever heard of a company called Epsilon Derivatives Ltd?”

Alice frowned. “No. I’ve never heard of it. But… Something about the way it sounds famil–”

Before Alice could finish, every single klaxon in the SOIS building went off at once.

“Alert! Electronic warfare attack in progress! Electronic warfare attack in progress! Turn off all non-necessary computerised equipment until an all-clear announcement is made. Electronic warfare attack in progress!”

“No.” Alice’s voice came out as a slight determined hiss.

Hazuki didn’t need to be told once. “I’ll see what I can do.” Drawing in more of the SOIS processing and network resources than she was technically supposed to have access to, Hazuki started to explore how the attack was targeting SOIS. It was easy enough: she quickly found some malicious code that had been injected into an obscure section of the operating system. Weirdly, it would have activated the fire-prevention sprinklers the next time Light Field used his voice-controlled computer. Hazuki quickly removed it; she didn’t want to get wet.

Then she noticed another thing: pieces of malware and viruses and trojans being inserted into files across the parts of the system Hazuki could access. She scoured out each one she could directly alter, directed the antiviruses towards the ones she couldn’t, and then came back to find even more malware in the spaces she had previously cleared.

Something about the whole thing seemed disturbingly familiar.

Defending mindlessly wasn’t going to be enough. Hazuki left the antiviruses to search for malware as best they could and turned her attention to the channel of incoming attacks. The attacker was redirecting their attacks via thousands of decoy computers around the entire internet and Hazuki couldn’t work out where the attack was originating from. But it was all arriving at the same place, and Hazuki was able to intercept some of the incoming packets as they streamed. She read them.

Lines of obviously malicious code, all cryptographically signed as though it had come from inside SOIS, each one naïvely accepted by the system because of that forged verification.

Hazuki hoped that the fact that she had just used the same technique herself wasn’t the only reason she worked it out so quickly. Someone with her skills and experience should have been able to puzzle it out even from scratch. That was all academic, though; SOIS encryption had been broken, the attack was underway, and Hazuki had to get that information out as quickly and as clearly as possible.

“Alice! They’ve broken our encryption!” she called out. After a pause, she added, “Just like we did.”

“How many of our keys have been broken?” Alice asked.

Hazuki glanced at the incoming packets of malware again. One said it had come from the head of SOIS’ research department, another claimed to have come from the Vice-President, a third one had been forged to appear as if Alice herself had authorised it.

“All of them.”

Alice stayed stoic; her voice stayed level and controlled. “Their target will be the top-secret information we have stored in the databases here. Our resources, our current missions, our agents’ identities.” Nona’s and Ennea’s faces flashed before Hazuki’s eyes as Alice said that. Alice continued, “What’s our defence?”

There was no defence. “We have to unplug everything,” Hazuki replied, “Literally everything. I’d tell you what to prioritise, but if I knew what the most important things were you’d probably have to shoot me. Just… Just rip the cables out of the servers if you have to. It’s the only way.”

Alice nodded. “Okay. Stay here.” Alice darted for the door of the office, stopping only to turn and slide a small earpiece across the desk towards Hazuki. “I’m heading to the server room. Do the best you can to delay, and contact me if anything changes up here.” Then, Alice was gone.

Hazuki focused all her attention back on the computer screen. Delay. That was what she had to do. She couldn’t defend, but if she programmed as hard and as smart as she ever had before, she might just be able to slow the enemy down.

As the attacker extended their control over the SOIS network Hazuki followed, watching where their attention was directed. Alice knew what she was talking about: the databases had to be the target. Hazuki made use of that, laying false trails and setting up decoys that would appear to be the main database up until the moment they were accessed. After the first two decoys were found and quickly left behind, Hazuki filled the third with false information, constructing profiles of non-existent agents from photos of celebrities and fictitious mission reports from the most ludicrous of Alice’s bar tales.

The attacker paused there for two and a half extra seconds.

The decoy tactics had been spent. From there, the attacker headed almost directly for the true database. Hazuki threw her last-ditch attempt into the ring, obfuscating the directory pathway by breaking every last rule of data-retrieval good practice in the books. That bought maybe one more second.

The attacker reached the database.

Hazuki’s computer monitor went black. The alarms suddenly stopped. Silence fell across the office. Hazuki held her breath, not knowing what the result had been.

The silence was broken by a tinny voice coming through the earpiece on the table. Hazuki desperately scrabbled it up and clamped it to her ear. “Hello?” Hazuki asked into it. She realised at this point that Alice had never taught her about radio protocol.

Fortunately, it was Alice speaking. “Hazuki? What’s happening? How far did the opposition penetrate? Did they find anything that could compromise us?”

“I have no idea. They’d just reached the database when everything went down…”

“If it went down just now, then it was when I disconnected the rest of the servers.”

Hazuki sighed with relief.

“Hazuki. Give me your professional judgment,” Alice continued, “about how much damage has been done. Could they have extracted any sensitive information?”

Hazuki considered. She was sure that a data-dump of the system’s process history would reveal that the enemy hacker had accessed the main database. She was also sure that it had only been for a couple of milliseconds. After watching the enemy smash through every electronic defence SOIS had, it would be all too easy to ascribe an almost-infinite amount of power and ability to them. But that could only lead to paranoia. No-one human could have understood anything from the database in that miniscule amount of time. Hazuki replied. “They couldn’t. You stopped them just in time.”

“Good.” Alice paused, and the silence crackled through the radio. “There’s a lot of details for the higher-ups to sort out here… and they will want to assign blame. If it comes to a tribunal, I’ll vouch for you. You did more to protect us than anyone in our own department. If it was up to me, you’d get a medal, but… somehow I don’t think they’ll be thinking about that.” Another pause, another crackle. “Wait there. I’ll sort things out as best I can and get back to you.” The earpiece fell silent.

Hazuki slunk back into her seat. So that was it? The bad guys hadn’t broken anything too much, so all was good? No. Hazuki couldn’t just sit there passively.

She leaned back towards the computer. Without the full infrastructure of the SOIS computer system behind her she wouldn’t have a connection quite as versatile as the one she had before: a great shame. But without it she was blind, and even after she has reworked the SOIS network protocol to allow her further access it shouldn’t allow the enemy hackers any more chances to attack the SOIS system.

Besides, she was curious.

Even through the very limited connection she could muster, Hazuki could at least do something. Since she and the computer she was sitting a had been key in the defence of the SOIS network, some details of the attack were stored on the computer’s own memory rather than anywhere else. Hazuki looked up the proxy computers the attackers had used. She wasn’t going to actually hack them, of course: most of them were personal computers of innocent, if annoyingly stupid, people who had managed to allow malware in that turned them into parts of the botnet. But she could follow the signal traffic.

For a few minutes, the traffic statistics were pretty typical, for normal computer-illiterate users. But then the computers were driven into action once again. Their processing power wasn’t being aimed at SOIS this time. Instead, all the internet traffic was being sent to another target. Though that target shouldn’t have had security and encryption in anyway correlated with that of SOIS, the attacker began to break it apart after only a short pause.

For some reason, that address of the new target looked worryingly familiar. Hazuki looked it up its address from the information SOIS had available.

That IP address was labelled only by a single symbol: a bright yellow circle, with three symmetrical protruding wedges.

Hazuki grasped the earpiece, yelling into it in a panic. “Alice! Alice! They’re going–”

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

5 minutes earlier…

“No…” Alice almost couldn’t believe it. No-one had been brave or reckless or stupid enough to try to hack SOIS since computers had been invented. Still, drills had been prepared for this. First step: consult the experts.

‘Experts’ had officially meant the slowpokes down in IT in those drills, but Alice had an actual computer expert on-hand.

“They’ve broken our encryption! Just like we did!” Hazuki announced. She was already busy at work managing the attack, so Alice just asked the one most important question.

“How many of our keys have been broken?”

“All of them.”

With a co-ordinated all-out attack on SOIS like this, there was only one place the attackers could be going: the main database. Almost everything that America had declared officially Top-Secret, as well as everything that had been kept actually top-secret by not officially being declared so, was kept there. Alice explained it.

“We have to unplug everything,” Hazuki replied, “Literally everything. I’d tell you what to prioritise, but if I knew what the most important things were you’d probably have to shoot me. Just… Just rip the cables out of the servers if you have to. It’s the only way.”

Alice leapt towards the door. She stopped only to slide a radio earpiece along the desk to Hazuki, and then she was off.

The server room was three floors down from Alice’s office. Alice vaulted over the railing in the stairwell to drop the first level, but stumbled as she landed. Alice had lied somewhat to Hazuki when she had claimed to have hardly felt anything from the hacking esper device still attached to her head. Really, she had been given a throbbing headache, and it was only getting worse as she went along. If Alice wanted to ensure she reached the server room at all, she’d have to accept taking a longer time and go down the stairs normally.

Later than she would have hoped, and perhaps later than she could afford, Alice arrived at the server room. She stared at the banks of servers that ran all the way along the walls, further than Alice could see through the dimmed lights. These were what the attacker had come to steal from. These were what she had to protect.

Alice couldn’t tell which servers could access the most sensitive blocks of data just by looking at them; through the knotted forest of cables that connected them she could barely tell the different servers apart. It didn’t matter. She had to disconnect everything, and deciding where to start would waste more time than it was worth.

She started pulling out the cables from their sockets, yanking out several at a time, as many as she could grasp at once. It was too slow.

She pulled out her combat knife from her holster and switched to slicing through the wires with its brilliantly sharp edge. It was much faster than just pulling them out. It was still too slow.

Alice took a gamble. There had to be someway of disconnecting everything at once, for precisely this situation. Turning her attention away from the servers right in front of her, she sprinted down the room searching for some sort of master switch.

As Alice ran, her headache grew and grew. With her training, it was easy to force herself to ignore it. Her own personal comfort could come later, after the Office was safe. She continued to run.

Someone less alert would have missed it, or over-shot. The master switch had been buried between the servers, so that you couldn’t even see its alcove from the aisle. But Alice noticed the break in the pattern, skidded to a halt, and dived her hands in.

Alice yanked down the lever.

The lights in the server room went out completely.

The alarm died.

Alice couldn’t rest yet. She was completely in the dark – literally and figuratively – about whether she had been in time… or not. That needed to be rectified. Alice spoke into her earpiece, contacting the one she’d left for Hazuki. “Hazuki. Sit-rep?” Alice asked.

There were a few moments of silence before Hazuki replied. “Alice?”

Of course. Hazuki didn’t know what ‘sit-rep’ meant. “What’s happening? How far did the opposition penetrate? Did they find anything that could compromise us?” Alice asked, more explicitly.

“I have no idea. They’d just reached the database when everything went down…”

“If it went down just now, then it was when I disconnected the rest of the servers.” From Hazuki’s description, it had been close: very close. There was nothing on any of the servers that Alice could see that would indicate whether or not they had been accessed. Of course, they were all entirely dormant. So Alice had to ask. “Hazuki. Give me your professional judgment about how much damage has been done. Could they have extracted any sensitive information?”

Silence. Then, finally, an answer. “They couldn’t. You stopped them just in time.”

Alice slumped back against the rack of servers opposite the master switch. She had the answer she needed; she had succeeded. Now, the aftermath.

She could, at least, focus her entire mind on considering that aftermath. Her headache, which had reached its thumping migraine-like zenith as she’d found the master switch, had begun to quickly subside as she relaxed. That left room to think about the important questions.

Like the most important question of all: how had the enemy hacked SOIS with such insulting ease? Had someone been turned, blackmailed, or persuaded into giving up the encryption keys? Or merely been sloppy, and exposed them by accident? Either way, the result for that person would be the same. They’d told someone they shouldn’t had, and the consequences had been dire, and Alice or whichever of the other fully-trusted agents found them first would have to shoot them.

But what if that hadn’t been the scenario? What if…? What if…? Considering all the various possibilities was starting to bring Alice’s migraine back with a vengeance.

Alice’s radio earpiece crackled, the sound almost painful with how sensitive Alice’s headache had made her. Then Hazuki’s voice yelled desperately from it, adding worry and concern to the purely physical pain. “Alice! Alice!”

“Hazuki,” Alice said, trying her well-honed best to not show any weakness, “What is it?”

Hazuki’s reply chilled Alice to the point where she would show weakness whether she wanted to or not.

“They’re going for the nuclear codes!”

The nuclear codes. The ability, for good or more likely ill, to control and launch America’s entire nuclear arsenal. That was what the enemy was seeking. If they succeeded… everything was over.

“How are the defences holding up?” Alice asked.

“They aren’t!” came Hazuki’s tinny reply, “They’re breaking through the encryption as quickly as they did ours. I hate to say this, but there’s no way they’re doing this without the same ability to factorise primes that we were using.”

‘The same ability to factorise primes’? Alice could recognise something that very definitely wasn’t a coincidence when it was right in front of her. A resurfacing nuisance funded by a single shady source? An encryption system that practically required automatic prime-factorisation to break? A widespread co-ordinated attack on SOIS and then the nuclear infrastructure immediately after? This had been planned.

The hacking esper device must have been compromised. That was the only conclusion.

Alice tried to wrench the device from her head. That failed; it had been clamped on perfectly. She changed tack, returning her combat knife to her hand – she ignored the way her hand tremored with feelings of déjà vu – and raised it towards the side of her head. She prised the device up as far as it would go. With a single motion, she sliced through all the wires that went into her head.

Blinding pain ran into her brain. The device fell away from her, but she could barely see it; she couldn’t hear it at all as it clattered on the floor. It was a miracle that she stayed standing, and conscious.

The pain was worth it, though. Without the device, the enemy’s attack wouldn’t be able to continue.

Alice almost heard something coming through her earpiece. Hazuki? She sounded concerned about… something. Alice couldn’t hear what, and couldn’t pay attention to it, anyway. The headache consumed her mind. It wasn’t the pain from violently removing the device, though that was still there. It was the same headache as before. The very same headache that had formed when she and Hazuki had first tried using Alice’s new-found esper abilities. Through that headache, and from that headache, Alice realised.

It wasn’t the esper device that the enemy had targeted, though that had tried to make it appear that way to anyone who noticed the first layer of their scheme. It was Alice herself. That was their true trap.

Alice couldn’t stop this just by removing some equipment. She raced out of the server room and stumbled in the direction of the medical bay. Now that she had learned what to focus on, she could see the prime numbers flying through her mind: 324143286479 and 803205935663 and 867527277251 and 902450929507 and 599770933939 and 465836618921 and 324330453487 and 999999999899 and 770009701301 and… Alice knew that these numbers were her side’s numbers, but she couldn’t help but factorise them anyway.

She’d never been so violated: not even the year before when she and Clover had been captured and then unceremoniously released because they were no longer needed. How the hell were those bastards doing this to her? Subverting a piece of hardware like the device that she had used was worrying, given that SOIS security should have prevented it, but at least she understood how that could happen.

A phrase rose out of Alice’s recollection, from something she had read in a speculative report. The veracity and trustworthiness of that intelligence had been considered incredibly dubious at the time, but it had been as good as information got about Alice’s greatest and most hated enemy. So when the phrase ‘Mind Hack’ returned to her mind, she gave it more credence this time around.

God, no. Fuck no! Alice wasn’t going to let Brother and Free the Soul and their damn Myrmidons do whatever they liked with her mind. Alice might have fallen into the trap they had set by funding the mafia, and she might have taken until then to unravel it, but it would end right there.

Alice burst into the medical bay. She found the stocks of Soporil Beta quickly. No need to measure out the dose: with Alice’s resistance it would need to be the entire vial or nothing. She slotted it into the injection gun.

The one thing that Brother needed to complete his plan and take control of the country’s nukes was Alice’s esper abilities. The one thing Alice could take from him was her own consciousness. Alice gladly took the injection gun and shot it into her own leg.

Blackness descended over Alice’s sight, but she could taste her victory. It tasted… bittersweet.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

25th December, 2029

Hazuki made sure that she was there when Alice was allowed to return to the land of the conscious. She’d learned over the past month that if you were bold enough and unique enough, SOIS employees just accepted that you were supposed to be there. And when looking like the perfect model of a SOIS agent wasn’t enough, the still-technically-fake ID card that Alice had given her was.

Alice still lay on the bed. Thick, many-times wrapped bandages replaced the device in covering her head. Just cutting the device out like that had been utterly ridiculous, and they said that it was a miracle that Alice had survived it. But Hazuki’s friend was tough to the core, so Hazuki hadn’t been entirely surprised when the doctors had told her that not only was Alice still alive but she hadn’t even suffered any brain damage.

Those doctors now crowded around, examining the monitor of her brain activity and the IV line that dripped in more Soporil, second by second. That was just like every other time Hazuki had visited. But this time the anaesthetist began to fiddle with the intake, preparing to reduce the level and gradually wake Alice up. Holding up the value on the IV line, she glanced at Hazuki expectantly.

Hazuki took her position: a computer that had been set up in the medical bay specifically for this moment. This wasn’t anything like the jury-rigged construction Hazuki had used after the main servers had gone down during the attack on that day. This computer had been tailor-made, completely separate from the main SOIS network – which would be deactivated again, in any case, until they knew it was safe – containing an excessive armament of malware to aim at anyone who decided to make it a target, and with its own hard shut-down switch in case it was hacked.

Hazuki returned the anaesthetist’s glance, and nodded.

The IV slowed, dripped, dripped, dripped, and then stopped. Alice began to stir, her eyelids flickering and her breathing growing stronger. The head doctor leaned over, checking her vital signs.

Alice’s eyes snapped open. She reached up and twisted the doctor’s hand away from her, sitting up in one smooth motion. “Where am I?!” she demanded to know. Before she could be given an answer she looked around the room, her head and eyes moving in measured precise jolts. “Not our radiation shelter,” she muttered, “And you don’t look like you’re all cultists. So I guess the world hasn’t ended; thank goodness.”

“It hadn’t ended last time I checked,” Hazuki said, “I can look again, if you want.”

“Hazuki!” Alice gasped, before regaining her composure. She stared at Hazuki’s computer, a slight frown of concern forming. “Is it safe for me to be conscious? Is there any chance of the Myrmidons trying to use my abilities to break encryption again?”

Hazuki checked the monitor of her computer. None of the decoy computers that hackers had used previously had activated, and more importantly there was no suspicious extra traffic at either SOIS or the nuclear codes or anywhere else that SOIS considered sensitive.

“I don’t think so,” Hazuki replied. She paused, appreciated the sceptical look on Alice’s face, then explained, “It must have taken them all year to assemble the botnet and the processing power they needed to attempt this. When we did, we were able to track down all the computers they had infected and get them cleaned out. Plus, when they got desperate and overextended themselves…” Hazuki swivelled the monitor to show Alice a particularly pleasant video she had saved. On screen, Ennea, Nona, Clover and Light escorted a half-dozen handcuffed blonde-haired identical complete monsters into SOIS’ cells. “The Myrmidons had one shot at this. Thanks to you, that one shot failed.”

“Good,” Alice stated. Now more relaxed she looked around the medbay again, this time noticing the lines of tinsel that lined the walls, far enough away from anything that needed to be kept sterile. “So, already Christmas? What present did you get for me?”

“It’s a secret. If I told you, I’d have to shoot you.” Hazuki laughed.

Alice scowled. “So it’s not Brother’s head on a platter? With extra salt, for his wounds? No?” Alice leapt out of her bed. She stumbled slightly, testing muscles that hadn’t been exercised for a month. But then she was standing tall and proud, just as Hazuki had always known her, before striding towards the door. “I guess we’d better get started, then! Come on, Hazuki. Let’s kick some ass.”

Hazuki carefully shut down her computer, then stood up. It had been a long dread-filled month, but she could still smile.

“That’s right, Alice. Let’s kick some ass.”

#zero escape #9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors #virtue's last reward #siggyklim #chessanator #suicide mention #zecret santa 2017 #submission

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patriotsnet · 3 years ago

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Why Do Republicans Want Lower Taxes

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-want-lower-taxes/

Why Do Republicans Want Lower Taxes

Democrats Vs Republicans On Taxes

Why Do People Think Lower Taxes Help the Economy?

What Do Republicans Believe In

So what do Republicans believe? Here are their basic tenets:

Conservatives Dont Hate Socialism They Hate Equality

Read Also: How Many Democrats And Republicans Are In The House

To Fund The $35 Trillion Budget Plan Democrats Aim To Undo Trump Tax Cuts

To Fund The $3.5 Trillion Budget Plan, Democrats Aim To Undo Trump Tax Cuts

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But Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981 constituted the strongest move away from progressivity in the income tax since the tax was initiated in the Civil War.

Reagan Pared Back Progressivity

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Gop Real Estate Owners Make Out Big

If you are a real estate developer, you never pay tax, said Ed Kleinbard, a former head of Congresss Joint Committee on Taxation.;

Who We Are

The Center for Public Integrity is an independent, investigative newsroom that exposes betrayals of the public trust by powerful interests.

Its Not Easy Being Green

Recommended Reading: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

Most Welfare Recipients Are Makers Not Takers

The first myth, that people who receive public benefits are takers rather than makers, is flatly untrue for the vast majority of working-age recipients.

As for Medicaid, nearly 80 percent of adults receiving Medicaid live in families where someone works, and more than half are working themselves.

In early December, House Speaker Paul Ryan said, We have a welfare system thats trapping people in poverty and effectively paying people not to work.

Religion And The Belief In God Is Vital To A Strong Nation

Lower Taxes, Higher Revenue

Those are the four basic Republican tenets: small government, local control, the power of free markets, and Christian authority. Below are other things they believe that derive from those four ideas.

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Orrin Hatch Tom Coburn And Richard Burr On Health Care

What The Needy Deserve

The second myth is that low-income Americans do not deserve a helping hand.

This idea derives from our belief that the U.S. is a meritocracy where the most deserving rise to the top. Yet where a person ends up on the income ladder is tied to where they started out.

As for people born into the middle class, only 20 percent will ascend to the top quintile in their lifetimes.

The third myth is that government assistance is a waste of money and doesnt accomplish its goals.

In fact, poverty rates would double without the safety net, to say nothing of human suffering. Last year, the safety net lifted 38 million people, including 8 million children, out of poverty.

Don’t Miss: Did Trump Say Republicans Are Stupid

An Exhaustive Lobbying Campaign

Almost immediately after Mr. Trump signed the bill, companies and their lobbyists including G.E.s Mr. Brown began a full-court pressure campaign to try to shield themselves from the BEAT and GILTI.

The Treasury Department had to figure out how to carry out the hastily written law, which lacked crucial details.

Starting in January 2018, he and his colleagues found themselves in nonstop meetings roughly 10 a week at times with lobbyists for companies and industry groups.

This month, the Treasury issued the final version of some of the BEAT regulations. The Organization for International Investment got what it wanted.

Recommended Reading: Snopes Trump Republican Dumb

How Democrats And Republicans Differ On Matters Of Wealth And Equality

A protester wears a T-shirt in support of Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who is part of … a group of Democrats looking to beat Trump in 2020. Photographer: John Taggart/Bloomberg

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Us House Democrats Seek To Roll Back Trump Tax Cuts For Wealthy Corporations

Democrats on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee said they will debate legislation this week that would achieve the changes as part of their broader, $3.5 trillion domestic investment plan.

Besides increasing corporate taxes, wealthy individuals would see a jump in their income taxes as well as higher capital gains and estate taxes.

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Republicans Target Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid

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ruminativerabbi · 4 years ago

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Remembering John Lewis

So much has happened since I stopped writing in July that it’s going to take a few weeks to work through the backlog of things regarding which I’d like to express myself. Still, I have to start somewhere. And where I’d like to start this fourteenth year of weekly e-letters and blog posts is with the death of John Lewis, someone for whom I’ve always had the greatest respect. And I’d like particularly to take note of the most remarkable, piece of writing he left behind when he left the world behind for the World of Truth—a letter he wished to be read in the wake of his death.

Much has been written since his passing of his life, and particularly his status as one of the thirteen original “Freedom Riders” in the early 1960s, so I won’t write in that direction here. Nor do I specifically wish to review his lifetime of work for the civil rights of black, and all, Americans—in the course of the years leading up to his election to Congress in 1986 and of his almost thirty-five years as a member of the Georgia congressional delegation. (For readers interested in his early years, I can still recommend his autobiography, Walking with the Wind, which I read when it came out in 1998 and found very interesting and moving. In later years, he wrote three graphic novels collectively entitled March, which books resume his earlier story and bring it up to 2016, and which I am hoping to read this year.) Instead, I’d like to focus on the remarkable 750 words he left behind as a letter from the grave.

The notion of speaking to the people who survive you on this earth and offering them some final wisdom, some final instructions, or some final words of comfort is not a new idea. The Bible itself presents three specific instances of people transcending their own lifetimes to address a future from which they themselves will be absent. Those three instances are quite different, but each is telling in their own right.

A very moving speech preserved at 2 Samuel 23, for example, contains such a deathbed letter from King David to his own descendants and is basically a sermon about how the future kings of Israel will need to devote themselves to the pursuit of justice and fidelity to God if they are to succeed at governing the nation. (It also bears saying that an entirely different set of deathbed instructions from David appears just a few chapters later, at 1 Kings 2, one in which he basically provides his son and successor Solomon with a hit list of people David himself didn’t get around to making pay for their various acts of perfidy and whom he specifically did not wish to imagine dying peacefully of old age. I suppose you could argue that one is his deathbed letter for the nation and the other, some final specifics for his successor. But I prefer to imagine these two texts as representative of the tension we all feel when we contemplate our legacy, wanting to rise above the details—and the pettiness those details tend to bring in their wake—but also being eager not to leave unaddressed issues we have somehow failed effectively to deal with in the course of our years on earth.)

The second example is Jacob’s deathbed speech, the one in which he promises to reveal what will happen in the end of days, then proceeds one by one to discuss his sons’ best and worst character traits. The clear message—that the future of anyone at all will be a function far more meaningfully of who that person is than of what other people have done to or for that individual—is a profound lesson and one we would still do well to take to heart, even today.

And the third is Moses’s own speech to the nation from the edge of his life, one in which he addresses the tribes of Israel (or at least most of them) serially and makes more or less the same point each time, that the future will never be a function of their will to succeed, nor will it rest with their military power or with their wealth, but will instead be a function of the degree to which they submit to the rule of Heaven and live lives of fidelity to God.

Each is about the future. Each denies the fantasy that we are somehow pawns in a game none of us understands and cannot therefore really affect the future. And each, offering an alternative point of view, can be summarized in one sentence: the future will be a function of our success in the pursuit of justice (David), the future will be a function of our success in living lives of virtue and decency (Jacob), and the future will be a function our success in remaining faithful to God. And it was those texts in the back of my mind that I sat own to read the letter that John Lewis wrote to the American people from the other side of his personal abyss, from Sheol.

It’s a short letter, complete in 747 words. Framed as his personal call for a national recommitment to the basic tenets of the civil rights in the wake of George Floyd’s death, it is also a kind of interesting philosophical statement about the nature of nations and the relationship of citizens to the larger polities to which they belong. We are citizens of a participatory democracy, he notes, one in which we are all called upon to vote for the people who will represent us in Congress and in the White House. But the real role, Lewis then goes on to say, is not merely to vote—although voting should surely be seen as an almost sacred obligation and not “just” a right or an option—but to find a way to stake out your place on the national agenda of ideas so that you personally become part of the specific agenda that you wish to see addressed by the nation and by its elected leaders. Democracy, he writes, is an act, not a state…”and every generation must do its part of help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world at peace with itself.”

And then he goes to draw a remarkable picture. He talks vertically and horizontally at once, imagining the citizenry as an aggregate of individuals linked intellectually and even morally to the past through the process of internalizing the lessons of history. (The idea is to make the link between generations past and present sufficiently real and meaningful to permit our ancestors speak through us to our descendants—who will obviously also be their own descendants—and thus to grant them standing in the world by allowing ourselves to see the world through their eyes.) But he also talks about reaching out horizontally and feeling a kinship with the other nations of the world, feeling tied to them through a sense of common humanity and shared destiny, and through the sense that, in the end, what binds the peoples of the world together will always be more profound than what separates us. From that sense of being part of the larger world and being part of the ongoing history of a people and a place will come the freedom to speak out, to act boldly, to play a personal role in the redemption of the nation’s soul.

From there, he moves on to call to address those reading his words directly. “I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart,” he wrote, “and stand up for what you truly believe.” In other words, he says that the problem facing the nation is not people being unfaithful to the political programs of others, but being unresponsive to their own finer angels, to the promptings of their own moral hearts, to the agenda of ideas that constitutes their personal contribution to the nation’s internal debate regarding its future. And he reminds his readers that although his was always the way of peace, love, and nonviolence, a commitment to nonviolence doesn’t necessarily mean avoiding what he calls “good trouble, necessary trouble” at all costs: sometimes people who insist on speaking out end up irritating people who don’t wish to hear what they have to say and there are consequences, including unpleasant ones, to be borne.

I was very moved by that idea. Our nation is in a state, it seems, of ongoing, endless turmoil. We move from one crisis to another, barely having the time to catch our collective breath between one event and the next. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed—and particularly as the presidential campaign hits up and the rhetoric becomes even more inflammatory. So to receive this letter from a true civil rights icon—and, at that, one that came from the grave—reminding us to take a deep breath, calling upon us to seek strength in history and comfort in the knowledge that in addition to being citizens of our own country we are also part of the family of humankind, encouraging us to admire people who speak out forcefully and clearly regarding the things they believe, and urging us to feel challenged by such people to join their ranks and to speak out for the things we believe no less forcefully and clearly—that was a remarkable experience. Generally speaking, the dead don’t come to their own shivas to comfort the bereaved they personally have left behind. But this thing, John Lewis too managed to accomplish.

I felt energized and comforted by his word and I encourage you to read them too. Click here and you’ll see what I mean. When people ask what makes America different, part of the answer lies in its cultivation of leaders like John Lewis, citizens who freely put their money where their mouth is, who don’t mind paying with a bit of “good trouble” for the right to speak out, and who manage to remain faithful to a personal agenda—in this case, one related to the search for justice for all—in the course of an entire lifetime. Yehi zikhro varukh—may his memory be a blessing for us all.

#John Lewis

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thegaitguys · 7 years ago

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You won't read this. So send it to a colleague who will.

Beating a point to near-death. Consider this our Thursday Rant.

Yes, we won't let this go, and, you should not either.

We highlight the word ADAPTIVE below, because it is the key to all of this.

"The observed postural responses could be viewed as an ADAPTIVE process to cope with an unilateral alteration in the hip neuromuscular function induced by the fatiguing exercise for controlling bipedal stance. The increase in CoP displacements observed under the non-fatigued leg in the fatigue condition could reflect enhanced exploratory "testing of the ground" movements with sensors of the non-fatigued leg's feet, providing supplementary somatosensory inputs to the central nervous system to preserve/facilitate postural control in condition of altered neuromuscular function of the dominant leg's hip abductors induced by the fatiguing exercise."-*Vuillerme N1, Sporbert C, Pinsault N.

When one prescribes or chooses a corrective exercise for a client, one based sheerly on what is visualized as an "apparently" faulty movement pattern or aberrant screen, one is making many assumptions. Assumptions that are likely not entirely correct (we are being kind, most assumptions made based on partial fragmented information are incorrect to a high degree).

Here is comes again, . . . . what you SEE and TEST in your client's movement is not what is wrong with them most of the time. What you see is how your client is ADAPTING to the variables they can engage, avoiding the ones that are painful or perceived as unstable, or finding ways around immobility and as the article as quote above suggests. This was a basic tenet of Karel Lewit's and Janda's work to not focusing on the area of pain, rather to seek out the root cause, we are just saying it in a different manner.

Continuing, we also adapt around fatigue which can take place even in everyday tasks and how we move around our world, yes, even in our gait. Yes, you are seeing a client's best attempts, ones that are likely deeply rooted and now their new norm, their baseline to base all other patterns off of. Their attempts can be based off of immobility, instability (true or functional), lack of skill, proprioceptive deficits, fatigue (lack of baseline endurance), lack of strength or power. For some clients, forget challenging screens that really test them, heck, we find some athletes do not even have the requisite baseline endurance or strength in a few primary fundamental patterns of which they have built more robust patterns atop of. We all to often read about "robustness" of a skill and pattern and interpret it as a good thing. Robustness can also be build atop of a bad pattern of movement, atop of poor stability patterns.

Thus, asking a client to change that ADAPTIVE norm, based off of what you visualize, based on the working parts available to them, without rooting out the cause, is asking them to compensate around their new norm base of compensation. When done this way, we are merely giving our client armor to their dysfunction, faulty robustness if you will. We are in fact moving further from the remedy. To correctly play this multi-layered game of helping people, one has to examine the client, not just put them through screens and assessments that show us (and them) what they can and cannot do.

There is an awful lot of armchair doctoring going on out there, thankfully it all comes from a good place in the heart's of many good folk. We have so many people come in to see us who have problems and a list of corrective exercises that have been prescribed to them, exercises that clearly have been based off of correcting what is seen in their screens and movements. We discuss their workout patterns, their activities, and hear about how they are attempting to build up their bodies for the apparent good. But all to often, with a client in front of us in pain, we hear the clues that the problem is being exercised around. Meaning, building robustness on top of a dysfunctional base somewhere in their system. Many of these people have been given these exercises as part of their corrective work and strengthening programs at their place (gym, box, trainer, coach etc). Many times there was no in depth hands on examination coupled with screens and gait to root out the cause of why they are moving the aberrant way that they are. We all must commit ourselves to a complete process for our clients. Screens and tests and exercises are not enough. Please read yesterdays post if you have not already, we make our point once again in a video case.

To close this post, we fully acknowledge regularly that we are on the same bus to the same temple of higher wisdom as everyone else that reads these kinds of posts. We write to share, but we write to learn, to dive deeper into our thoughts, to challenge our biases and rooted assumptions through thought experiments, challenging thoughts and old ways that get us into troubled automated patterns of approaching all things. Again, we write to learn. And, part of that learning is accepting our limitations and hearing from others who are wiser in other areas than us, so, please comment and add insight below if you wish. Debates are good, for us all. Pull up a chair, grab a pint, join us around the hearth for some gab.

Shawn Allen, . . . the other gait guy. www.doctorallen.co & www.shawnallen.net

"One of the few ways I can almost be certain I'll understand something is by sitting down and writing about it. Because by forcing yourself to write about it and putting it down in words, you can't avoid having to come to grips with it. You might be wrong, but you have to think about it very intensely to write about it. So I use writing as a learning tool. " - Hunter S. Thompson

*Postural adaptation to unilateral hip muscle fatigue during human bipedal standing.

Gait Posture. 2009 Jul;30(1):122-5. doi: 10.1016/j.gaitpost.2009.03.004. Epub 2009 Apr 28.

Vuillerme N1, Sporbert C, Pinsault N.

#gait #gait problems #gait analysis #fatigue #stability #corrective exercises #thegaitguys #Dr Shawn Allen #COP #COM #posture

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writers-for-consumer-rights · 4 years ago

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How do the biggest corporations earn such massive profits? They’d like you to think it’s the result of delivering a superior product or service. But one part of that story is years of wage theft from their employees.

A policy resource center focused on government and corporate accountability, recently carried out a year-long investigation into wage theft by large employers, compiling information from collective action lawsuits brought by groups of ripped-off workers, as well as actions brought by the department of labor and state-specific regulatory agencies. The results, brought together in a report released this week titled Grand Theft Paycheck: the Large Corporations Shortchanging their Workers’ Wages, are eye-opening: 4,220 cases since the turn of the millennium with penalties totaling $9.2 billion.

You might think wage theft is a crime only small or fly-by-night businesses commit. In reality, just about every well-known corporate name made its way onto the list of nearly five hundred companies that have racked up penalties worth more than $1 million. Bringing up the rear is Southwest Airlines with one case worth $1 million. At the very top (by far) is Walmart, with a staggering $1.4 billion worth of settlements and fines from only thirty-six cases.

No industry is exempt. There’s freight and logistics (FedEx, second behind WalMart in total penalties with $502 million); pharmaceuticals (Novartis); health services (Tenet Healthcare); telecommunications (AT&T, Comcast; Verizon); food and restaurants (McDonald’s, Starbucks, Coca-Cola); tech (Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet), even amusement parks (Six Flags). Arguably best represented is the finance sector, with five of the top twelve violators being banks and insurance companies. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and JP Morgan Chase (third, fourth, and fifth respectively) have alone paid out around $746 million in penalties.

Maybe the most striking aspect of the report is how profitable the worst offenders are. Ten of the twelve most penalized have profits totaling in the billions — sometimes tens of billions — with an average CEO pay of around $16 million. According to the report, the very largest corporations — those listed in the Fortune 500, Fortune Global 500, or Forbes’ list of biggest companies — accounted for half the total cases, and 74 percent of the penalties. Of the list of Fortune 500 companies, 303 have at least one wage theft case, states the report.

What exactly did the wage theft entail? Of the cases where the offenses were detailed, few involved obvious violations like paying less than the minimum wage or confiscating tips. The most common offense by far was not paying workers for overtime, followed by wrongly classifying workers to exempt them from basic labor standards, and failing to give workers meal or rest breaks. One common violation involves requiring hourly workers to do tasks either before clocking in or after clocking out.

The report found 127 confidential settlements whose details are hidden from the public. Meanwhile, only eight states provided data and more than half of the private lawsuits examined came from California, thanks to that state’s relatively strong labor standards.

Indeed, an earlier nine-month investigation by Politico found that the enforcement of wage laws around the country is heavily under-resourced and sometimes nonexistent, with workers usually not even able to get back the money they’re owed. By one estimate, workers in Colorado alone are deprived of $749.5 million a year in wages. This may only get worse, with Trump’s labor department trying out a pilot program where offenders are made to simply give back the money they owe without paying any kind of penalty.

The report puts forward some solutions to the wage theft problem, from beefing up regulators’ resources to go after offenders to taking a cue from California and strengthening state laws against wage theft. But, it notes, given the government’s vulnerability to corporate capture, under-resourcing, and hostile politicians, one solution stands above all others: making it easier for workers to unionize.

“Collective bargaining and collective worker power are the most effective way to stop wage theft,” it states. So, let’s be on the lookout for corporate thief. The next person they steal from could be you.

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dxmedstudent · 7 years ago

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hello dr. dx (i hope u dont mind me calling u that), i've noticed that in a lot of medical tv shows/movies there's always an ep where the patient/their families refuse medical help bc of their religion (Jehovah's witness seems to always be the reason) and the doctors portrayed almost always just gives up. im curious about how you and other docs go about this in the real world. i understand u have to respect the pts. wishes but do u just give up after informing them of all the consequences?

Hello! I’m fine with you calling me Dr Dx, even Dx is fine. Unless we’re in hospital and you’re my patient, then I’m pretty much another normal person * :) Medical ethics is a really interesting subject; like many of us, I could probably wax lyrical about it all day and still have things to say. It’s sometimes clear cut, and sometimes it’s less than evident what the ‘best’ way forward is. But what’s important is knowing what the laws are, within the country we are working in. I’ll start with something important. People usually (almost always wrongly) quote the Hippocratic oath, which is archaic and technically legally irrelevant. But that’s not the only ethical code we have. More simply, and importantly, we have four basic pillars in medical ethics; four rules that fundammentally govern how we act:

Autonomy – we must respect the patient's right to make their own decision.

Beneficence – we must 'do good' for our patients.

Non-Maleficence – we must aim to 'do no harm'

Justice – we must treat people fairly and equitably.

So it’s built into the basic rules of doctoring that we have to respect the patient’s right to choose what happens to their body and their health. In the UK, the laws are clear regarding whether a patient is capable of making this choice; that is, whether they are competent. Every adult is presumed competent unless we have reason to suspect otherwise, in which case we assess their competence. Teenagers can be found to be Gillick/Frasier competent if they are mature enough to understand the decision, but that’s a more complex issue. Exactly where the line is for whether a patient is competent can be complex. But to summarise the essence of competence, it’s something like this: that the patient has the ability to take in the relevant information, retain that information long enough to decide, process it and weigh it up, come to a decision and communicate that decision to us. It’s absolutely vital for us to realise this: the decision that the patient has come to does not need to be rational to us; patients, if the are competent, have the right to make a ‘bad’ decision. We as a society don’t go around interfering with everyone’s lives when they are making a decision that may be regrettable, and that holds true for medicine as well. Someone like a Jehovah’s Witness (and I’ve treated a few) has firmly held beliefs about which treatments they will consider, and which they won’t. It’s absolutely fine for us to discuss the potential options with them (including alternatives to blood products), and the risks of refusing treatment we think is medically necessary. To be fair, most Jehovah’s witnesses are very, very informed about this already, because it’s one of their core beliefs. So quite often, they already know everything there is to know. And it’s important to realise that they aren’t acting out of ignorance, but out of beliefs. Ignorance of medical science is something you can potentially change, if you take time to build up their trust and discuss things together. But beliefs are a different matter; it’s unlikely that I or anyone else will change how they feel about something that was never based on fact to begin with. Now, I can attempt to inform a patient who just doesn’t know enough to make a decision, and I can work with a patient to clear up any misapprehensions they may have about treatment options. But I probably will not be causing any massive changes in peoples’ idealogies. I’m not out to convert people to a different religion or make them stop believing in what they already practice; I have to respect that this is a part of them, and support them with this in mind. The conversations we have with each patient is different, and so are the pressures acting on them. So with some patients you can barely touch on a topic at all because their mind is decided, whereas with other patients it is much easier to have an indepth discussion about a difficult topic. But there’s only so much talking we can do before the clinician has to accept that the patient has made their choice. I don’t watch many medical dramas (heh, you can have such a thing as too much medicine, I usually flick the channel onto somehting else as if something awful came on, whenever I happen upon a medical program on TV these days!), but perhaps they aren’t quite doing these kinds of interaction justice when they portray the topic. I guess that happens because TV likes to show medicine as being dramatic, with constant life-and-death decisions and people butting heads over everything, and egos blazing on all sides. But in real life, everything is much more slow-paced, most decisions aren’t imminently life threatening, most people are more mellow and eveything is generally a lot less exciting. I dare say nobody would watch an average doctor’s shift on TV if it wasn’t jazzed up a bit. From where I’m standing, I don’t see it as ‘giving up’ if I respect that my patient with particular beliefs will choose to go along with them. The rules are there for a reason, and I must follow them, but it’s more than that; I have to respect the free will of the patient to choose for themselves. I have to respect them as an individual capable of reasoned thought and free will, even if I disagree with their choice. Although it’s sometimes uncomfortable when patients choose what we would consider to be a bad course of action (most frequently, self-discharging when we think they still need treatment, please don’t do this), it’s part of our job to support their right to decide. And it’s just as much a vital part of doctoring, being one of the 4 core tenets of our care. If I think someone will die as a direct result of refusing treatment, I’d be pretty negligent to not make that clear, and it’s never fun to have to go the ‘you know, if you continue with this, you may die, and I have to make you sign this paperwork to demonstrate that you understand that I’m telling you that you may die, because you may die’ route. It’s never a path we like walking down, because we like treating people, and we like fast solutions, and we like to know that we’ve done our best, sorted someone out and they are now safe. That is literally all I want from every patient interaction, for them to be stable, safe and be getting better. In the end, doctors are simple people at heart. We want to make things better and keep people safe. But, in the end, I have to respect their right to decide, if they have capacity. It doesn’t matter if someone decides to refuse treatment A because of their beliefs, or because they think it won’t work, or because they prefer holy water and homeopathy, or because they just don’t like me and think I’m stupid. As long as they are competent (i.e. mentally there enough to be able to decide), then it’s their call. Now, sometimes people aren’t competent to decide. In which case, in the UK we treat them either according to the mental capacity act (if the illness is physical) or the mental health act (if the illness and treatment is mental health related). We can treat people in their best interests (i.e. to save their life) knowing that they cannot make a decision at this point in time, because their ability to do so is significantly impaired. This might be due to something physical like an infection causing them to be delirious, or something mental like an acute episode of mania. If they can’t make the decision because they lack capacity, we act in their best interests, with the aim of restoring their ability and capacity. We try to be the least restrictive or invasive that we can be, and to act purely with their interests in mind. And if the patent is a kid, things get more complex. If doctors believe a kid needs lifesaving treatment and the parents refuse (whatever the grounds), odds are that the doctors and hospital will probably have to take the family to court and treat the child in their best interests, regardless of the beliefs and reasonsings of the parent. Because, although we’re allowed to make rash or silly decisions about ourselves, we aren’t necessarily allowed to do this for our children. Because our children are not chattel, and have their own inviolable rights to life and to treatment. So if a child is involved, things get a lot more complicated, tend to go to court, and the doctors will err on the side of actively treating the child wherever possible. That’s where things can get really complex and bitter. Nobody wants these kinds of situation to arise, and it can be hugely stressful for everyone involved. But for the most part, it’s not as dramatic as TV will have you believe. For the most part, even patients with strongly held beliefs who refuse treatments are generally cooperative and able to make a plan for their present and future care. It adds another layer of complexity to our work, but we don’t sit there every day stressing about what might happen if a Jehovah’s Witness came in. It’s just a situation we have to address every once in a while. * in hospital, I’m just a normal person with a stethoscope and too many things to do...

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cobblecord · 5 years ago

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A Call for More User Control Over the Streaming UX

Will Streaming Heed the Lessons that Cable Didn’t?

We all know that streaming has come a long way over the last 20 years and OTT video usage continues to increase. However, there are some glaring consumer pain points that should be addressed sooner rather than later. If not, percolating dissatisfaction could bubble up and undermine the considerable ‘user good-will’ that streaming services have generally been afforded. It's time for streaming services to start giving consumers more control over their user experience before it comes back to haunt them.

Consider what’s happening to the Traditional TV Providers, that didn’t heed the call for more consumer-centric approach, until it was too late – and obviously, pushed people into the awaiting arms of OTT. Clearly, the user interfaces and smart use of data on the part of the online streaming giants is far superior to that of the Traditional Pay-TV world. But the increasingly frequent lament we all hear is that users (or viewers) spend more time searching for something to watch than actually watching. And the new OTT launches from Apple, Disney, WarnerMedia, NBC, etc. on the horizon promise to amplify the problem.

If you don’t believe me, just take a look at the results of a recent PwC survey that showed almost 90% of consumers are dissatisfied with content discovery and recommendations. That certainly doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement for the multitude of content recommendation AIs many streaming services have put so much stock in.

Now that streaming has become fully mainstream and the embarrassment of content riches continues to explode, giving users the option to take (at least some of) the reins seems like a logical next step in the industry’s evolution.

Lean Back or Look Forward?

During the early development of video streaming app ecosystem, most of the players decided that the overarching UX approach should give users some straightforward controls (like add to watchlist, basic search and very simple filtering), but largely reinforced the ‘lean back’ nature of video viewing, particularly with apps created for the TV screen.

The assumption was that viewers would want to be served up content while they sit back and passively receive it, essentially recreating the traditional TV viewing experience. Netflix has practically spun its programming recommendations and auto-play features into a veritable product-design art form. Of course, they’ve done quite well with that approach to date.

But the streaming landscape has changed dramatically over the last few years, and the new flood of content choices has made the lean-back model a source of increasing frustration rather than assistance. The endless rows of scrolling content artwork, the seemingly arbitrary arrays of content categories and obscure micro-genres, the limited and confining search and filtering functions, and the infernal auto-play trailers (my personal pet peeve) are really starting to grate on the nerves of streamers.

And of course, the more people stream, the more of an annoyance it becomes. This sad state of affairs is especially irritating to the self-determined millennial generation, who value freedom, control, flexibility and ultra-customization above all else.

Borrowing from the Past to Shape the Future

In a perfect world, relevant content would be easily discovered and displayed to the right person at the right time across the countless walled-gardens of apps. That’s surely a goal to work toward, but there are various corporate conflicts and technical hurdles that have slowed its progress (which is another story for another day).

In the meantime, I’m suggesting to simply give users more control within each individual app or service as an incremental way to improve streaming’s overall experience. Addressing the ‘content fatigue’ issue quickly is key to keeping OTT’s momentum going.

I believe that this is a product-design challenge more than a technology one. We need a shift within the very product-driven culture of Streaming Tech to a more user-empowered approach – specifically when it comes to the content selection and curation process.

Many long-standing online companies have been perfecting the use of interactive customization and filtering tools for decades. In fact, they are some of the basic tenets of the internet and e-commerce. The streaming world could easily borrow from some of the tried and true, ‘lean-forward’ techniques of these businesses, such as online retail, publishing and travel. Granted, translating these concepts to the TV screen using the clunky remote control as a navigation device surely doesn’t lend itself to ease of use. But it’s not an insurmountable hurdle.

Imagine if you could harness the multiple-criteria filtering capabilities of Zappos, the self-curation controls of Flipboard and the sorting capabilities of Expedia to help you determine exactly what you’d like to watch on an average Saturday night. Here are a few ways to start the ball rolling toward more user-empowered Streaming UX.

Customizable Home Screen Displays - The ability for a user to organize and personalize the home screen of an app/streaming service to their taste. For instance:

-- Want to always see New Releases in the top row? And Nature Documentaries below that because that happens to be your thing? And so on… -- Users should be able to arrange the content rows that are displayed and at what levels.

-- Don’t want to see the Recommended Rom-Com row, just because you watched that one Hugh Grant movie six months ago? -- Let users easily remove certain categories or micro-genres from the display to create a more focused, less cluttered screen.

Ramp Up the Filters & Sorting Capabilities – Think about how much time could be saved if you were able to punch in multiple criteria to surface exactly what you were in the mood to watch. Then sort the results by various components. And those controls were front and center (or at least easy to find). For instance:

-- Want to see Comedies made in the 90’s? And drill down to those starring Sandra Bullock. Then sort by director? -- Those options should be a few clicks away.

Some services have attempted to address this with predictive or related search functionality, which I’ve found to be middling at best, and way off-base, at worst. Amazon borrows from their e-commerce roots to allow for multi-layer filtering of video on their desktop and mobile experiences, but they haven’t carried it over to their TV app.

Features Checklists - Giving people the ability to turn certain features on or off within an app should be as easy as subscribing or unsubscribing to an e-newsletter. For instance:

-- Want to disable auto-play trailers (or at least have the option to mute their volume), stop next episode auto-plays completely, turn on credits-skipping and closed captions for all titles in one fell swoop? -- Imagine if each streaming service had an easy-to-use personalization screen or module that allowed you to check or uncheck a few boxes to enable or disable these options, just like you would with parental controls.

Some services do allow for a degree of feature control on an asset basis. For example, on Netflix you can skip credits and intros while you’re binging an individual show. Others have enabled very lightweight customization buried deep within the user profile sections on their websites or mobile apps. But so much more could be done.

Emerging platform aggregators (like Apple and Roku) may have plans to enable some feature control on a platform level, which could be helpful. However, most subscribers watch streaming services across multiple platforms and devices, so giving users more control on a service level is a better solution.

Of course, a major counter-argument to user-empowered streaming UX is that streaming services need to promote and curate their best titles. They’ve invested millions (even billions) into original titles and high-stakes libraries to drive awareness, trial, retention and increasingly important brand equity. I totally get it and I believe that they absolutely should (and must) highlight their best wares.

But the right to showcase top content and the option of user personalization are not necessarily mutually exclusive. There is enough screen real estate to go around, if smartly engineered and cleverly carved up. I’m sure that there are ways to solve for it, given all the smart technical, product and creative talent there is in the industry.

And let’s not forget that this type of customer-centric thinking will actually help the streaming services in the long run. Personalization contributes to customer stickiness and higher retention rates, which will become increasingly important as new high-profile players enter the space and the streaming wars begin in earnest.

Nothing But Choice

OTT is on its way to becoming the dominant way of watching video, and the last thing we need is to stall or jeopardize its progress by not helping users get a handle on, what is essentially, too much of a good thing – content.

At core, OTT streaming is about customer choice and empowerment. It’s about options and personalization. It’s about transparency and control. What it’s definitely NOT about is expecting newly liberated consumers to go back to the type of one-way relationship that Traditional Pay TV Providers forced on them for many years, when there were no other choices.

Now, for better or worse, there is nothing but choice (I, for one, think it’s for better). Services that focus on giving users the tools to navigate this newfound choice will be the ones that have an advantage that will translate into streamers’ hearts and minds. And most importantly, into happy, loyal subscribers.

By: Virginia Juliano

Virginia Juliano is the Founder & CEO of CobbleCord (www.CobbleCord.com), a disruptive startup that helps people cobble together personalized bundles of both free and paid streaming services. Its patented process uses customer content, device, internet and price preferences to craft a custom list of services for each user, empowering them to find the best streaming solution to fit their needs and get the most from streaming.

For this article and many other insightful pieces on the #OTT space, get a FREE digital subscription to OTT Executive Magazine and instantly download the Spring 2019 Issue: https://OTTexec.com/magazine.

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