#or issues with library collection development and description with independent works

[ren-re-mx]

I've got one more paper to finish for tonight, had to ask to hand it in late. It shouldn't be that hard, I've got all the shit I want to say I just need to word it properly on paper.

But ffs I forgot how much my brain goes into creative mode when I'm stressed with school stuff--this is how I wrote so much fic 2012-2014. All I wanna do is write stuff for dnd characters, work on an RP with a friend, and write fic, and I've got all these creative starts in my head.

Instead, I have to focus on how trad information organization systems have built in barriers that limit the discoverability of independent media/works.

[mackenzee]

How to go to the Movies – a LibGuide for Film Enthusiasts @ Pratt

Project Description – LibGuides are a content management system used by libraries to create subject guides for their patrons. The goal of our project was to create and edit a LibGuide of our own, catered to a defined user group. After settling on an audience, we were then set to identify a range of relevant and useful print or electronic resources, limited to the Pratt Institute Libraries’ and the New York Public Library’s research collections. By virtue of these limitations, it was notably important to be aware of knowledge gaps within the bibliographic space – and work collaboratively to fill them. Above all, we were meant to keep the user in mind when building and contextualizing our LibGuide. 

Methods – Based on group discussions, we ended up catering our LibGuide for Pratt students looking to engage in community-driven film experiences. The COVID-19 pandemic had a profound impact on public spaces for film consumption and production. This was an issue we found ourselves experiencing at the time, so the topic was considered to be culturally relevant. Our LibGuide would serve as a centralized hub where film enthusiasts at Pratt could engage with film discourse and seek out specialized events or communities within New York City. Pratt students were selected as our primary user base since the resources provided were predominantly accessible to them. Our team met weekly to discuss and develop our topic, and review each other’s resources. I conducted a literature review to curate primary, secondary, and tertiary sources related to the practice and theory of homemade films; intending to draw from DIY origins by measuring the space in context with radical filmmaking and counterculture. Tabs were organized based on resource type and arranged alphabetically in an attempt to reject hierarchical presentation.

My Role –  This was a collaborative project completed with classmates Sam Irwin, Gibson Field, Peter Kaiser, and Nene Villalobos. We divided up workload based on personal interest. I took the lead in creating the DIY tab of our Libguide, and assisted with interface design. 

Check out the LibGuide here | Read our reflection here

right click to open in new tab

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Learning Outcome Achieved – Foundations of Library Science

Rationale – Providing access to information is a central component in any LIS practice. Both Library and Archival professionals may be tasked with creating online reference guides geared towards a specific collection or community. In designing this guide, I aggregated traditional and non-traditional information sources and curated a broad selection of materials pertinent to our topic. In doing so, I gained a comprehensive understanding of how information design enables or inhibits access, authorizes certain narratives, and contributes to users’ perception of cultural, social, and political dimensions. I grew to situate myself within a position of power and privilege which enlightened my approach to information collection, organization, and access.  

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Learning Outcome Achieved – User Centered Services

Rationale – Building a comprehensive LibGuide is entirely dependent on our ability to enrobe a user-centric perspective on retrieving information. Designing our resource guide included consideration of diverse user needs in terms of format and content. Working in a culturally responsive manner, I sought to amplify historically marginalized voices within the independent filmmaking industry and challenge western centrism. This practice was informed by Fiona Blackburn’s arguments around cultural competence and whiteness in libraries; where conversation and curation become influenced by cross-cultural provision. I also included multiple communication formats – books, journals, podcasts, photographs, videos, and films – to enable various learning preferences. This experience strengthened my ability to create a dynamic and multifaceted information experience that situated our users at the forefront of our work.

back

[milkboydotnet]

Kwame Nkrumah on the methods of neo-colonialism (from Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism):

Some of these methods used by neo-colonialists to slip past our guard must now be examined. The first is retention by the departing colonialists of various kinds of privileges which infringe on our sovereignty: that of setting up military bases or stationing troops in former colonies and the supplying of ‘advisers’ of one sort or another. Sometimes a number of ‘rights’ are demanded: land concessions, prospecting rights for minerals and/or oil; the ‘right’ to collect customs, to carry out administration, to issue paper money; to be exempt from customs duties and/or taxes for expatriate enterprises; and, above all, the ‘right’ to provide ‘aid’. Also demanded and granted are privileges in the cultural field; that Western information services be exclusive; and that those from socialist countries be excluded.

Even the cinema stories of fabulous Hollywood are loaded. One has only to listen to the cheers of an African audience as Hollywood’s heroes slaughter red Indians or Asiatics to understand the effectiveness of this weapon. For, in the developing continents, where the colonialist heritage has left a vast majority still illiterate, even the smallest child gets the message contained in the blood and thunder stories emanating from California. And along with murder and the Wild West goes an incessant barrage of anti-socialist propaganda, in which the trade union man, the revolutionary, or the man of dark skin is generally cast as the villain, while the policeman, the gum-shoe, the Federal agent — in a word, the CIA — type spy is ever the hero. Here, truly, is the ideological under-belly of those political murders which so often use local people as their instruments.

While Hollywood takes care of fiction, the enormous monopoly press, together with the outflow of slick, clever, expensive magazines, attends to what it chooses to call ‘news. Within separate countries, one or two news agencies control the news handouts, so that a deadly uniformity is achieved, regardless of the number of separate newspapers or magazines; while internationally, the financial preponderance of the United States is felt more and more through its foreign correspondents and offices abroad, as well as through its influence over inter-national capitalist journalism. Under this guise, a flood of anti-liberation propaganda emanates from the capital cities of the West, directed against China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Algeria, Ghana and all countries which hack out their own independent path to freedom. Prejudice is rife. For example, wherever there is armed struggle against the forces of reaction, the nationalists are referred to as rebels, terrorists, or frequently ‘communist terrorists'!

Perhaps one of the most insidious methods of the neo-colonialists is evangelism. Following the liberation movement there has been a veritable riptide of religious sects, the overwhelming majority of them American. Typical of these are Jehovah’s Witnesses who recently created trouble in certain developing countries by busily teaching their citizens not to salute the new national flags. ‘Religion’ was too thin to smother the outcry that arose against this activity, and a temporary lull followed. But the number of evangelists continues to grow.

Yet even evangelism and the cinema are only two twigs on a much bigger tree. Dating from the end of 1961, the U.S. has actively developed a huge ideological plan for invading the so-called Third World, utilising all its facilities from press and radio to Peace Corps.

During 1962 and 1963 a number of international conferences to this end were held in several places, such as Nicosia in Cyprus, San Jose in Costa Rica, and Lagos in Nigeria. Participants included the CIA, the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), the Pentagon, the International Development Agency, the Peace Corps and others. Programmes were drawn up which included the systematic use of U.S. citizens abroad in virtual intelligence activities and propaganda work. Methods of recruiting political agents and of forcing ‘alliances’ with the U.S.A. were worked out. At the centre of its programmes lay the demand for an absolute U.S. monopoly in the field of propaganda, as well as for counteracting any independent efforts by developing states in the realm of information.

The United States sought, and still seeks, with considerable success, to co-ordinate on the basis of its own strategy the propaganda activities of all Western countries. In October 1961, a conference of NATO countries was held in Rome to discuss problems of psychological warfare. It appealed for the organisation of combined ideological operations in Afro-Asian countries by all participants.

In May and June 1962 a seminar was convened by the U.S. in Vienna on ideological warfare. It adopted a secret decision to engage in a propaganda offensive against the developing countries along lines laid down by the U.S.A. It was agreed that NATO propaganda agencies would, in practice if not in the public eye, keep in close contact with U.S. Embassies in their respective countries.

Among instruments of such Western psychological warfare are numbered the intelligence agencies of Western countries headed by those of the United States ‘Invisible Government’. But most significant among them all are Moral Re-Armament QARA), the Peace Corps and the United States Information Agency (USIA).

Moral Re-Armament is an organisation founded in 1938 by the American, Frank Buchman. In the last days before the second world war, it advocated the appeasement of Hitler, often extolling Himmler, the Gestapo chief. In Africa, MRA incursions began at the end of World War II. Against the big anti-colonial upsurge that followed victory in 1945, MRA spent millions advocating collaboration between the forces oppressing the African peoples and those same peoples. It is not without significance that Moise Tshombe and Joseph Kasavubu of Congo (Leopoldville) are both MRA supporters. George Seldes, in his book One Thousand Americans, characterised MRA as a fascist organisation ‘subsidised by . . . Fascists, and with a long record of collaboration with Fascists the world over. . . .’ This description is supported by the active participation in MRA of people like General Carpentier, former commander of NATO land forces, and General Ho Ying-chin, one of Chiang Kai-shek’s top generals. To cap this, several newspapers, some of them in the Western ;vorld, have claimed that MRA is actually subsidised by the CIA.

When MRA’s influence began to fail, some new instrument to cover the ideological arena was desired. It came in the establishment of the American Peace Corps in 1961 by President John Kennedy, with Sargent Shriver, Jr., his brother-in-law, in charge. Shriver, a millionaire who made his pile in land speculation in Chicago, was also known as the friend, confidant and co-worker of the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Allen Dulles. These two had worked together in both the Office of Strategic Services, U.S. war-time intelligence agency, and in the CIA.

Shriver’s record makes a mockery of President Kennedy’s alleged instruction to Shriver to ‘keep the CIA out of the Peace Corps’. So does the fact that, although the Peace Corps is advertised as a voluntary organisation, all its members are carefully screened by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Since its creation in 1961, members of the Peace Corps have been exposed and expelled from many African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries for acts of subversion or prejudice. Indonesia, Tanzania, the Philippines, and even pro-West countries like Turkey and Iran, have complained of its activities.

However, perhaps the chief executor of U.S. psychological warfare is the United States Information Agency (USIA). Even for the wealthiest nation on earth, the U.S. lavishes an unusual amount of men, materials and money on this vehicle for its neo-colonial aims.

The USIA is staffed by some 12,000 persons to the tune of more than $130 million a year. It has more than seventy editorial staffs working on publications abroad. Of its network comprising 110 radio stations, 60 are outside the U.S. Programmes are broadcast for Africa by American stations in Morocco, Eritrea, Liberia, Crete, and Barcelona, Spain, as well as from off-shore stations on American ships. In Africa alone, the USIA transmits about thirty territorial and national radio programmes whose content glorifies the U.S. while attempting to discredit countries with an independent foreign policy.

The USIA boasts more than 120 branches in about 100 countries, 50 of which are in Africa alone. It has 250 centres in foreign countries, each of which is usually associated with a library. It employs about 200 cinemas and 8,000 projectors which draw upon its nearly 300 film libraries.

This agency is directed by a central body which operates in the name of the U.S. President, planning and coordinating its activities in close touch with the Pentagon, CIA and other Cold War agencies, including even armed forces intelligence centres.

In developing countries, the USIA actively tries to prevent expansion of national media of information so as itself to capture the market-place of ideas. It spends huge sums for publication and distribution of about sixty newspapers and magazines in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The American government backs the USIA through direct pressures on developing nations. To ensure its agency a complete monopoly in propaganda, for instance, many agreements for economic co-operation offered by the U.S. include a demand that Americans be granted preferential rights to disseminate information. At the same time, in trying to close the new nations to other sources of information, it employs other pressures. For instance, after agreeing to set up USIA information centres in their countries, both Togo and Congo (Leopoldville) originally hoped to follow a non-aligned path and permit Russian information centres as a balance. But Washington threatened to stop all aid, thereby forcing these two countries to renounce their plan.

Unbiased studies of the USIA by such authorities as Dr R. Holt of Princeton University, Retired Colonel R. Van de Velde, former intelligence agents Murril Dayer, Wilson Dizard and others, have all called attention to the close ties between this agency and U.S. Intelligence. For example, Deputy Director Donald M. Wilson was a political intelligence agent in the U.S. Army. Assistant Director for Europe, Joseph Philips, was a successful espionage agent in several Eastern European countries.

Some USIA duties further expose its nature as a top intelligence arm of the U.S. imperialists. In the first place, it is expected to analyse the situation in each country, making recommendations to its Embassy, thereby to its Government, about changes that can tip the local balance in U.S. favour. Secondly, it organises networks of monitors for radio broadcasts and telephone conversations, while recruiting informers from government offices. It also hires people to distribute U.S. propaganda. Thirdly, it collects secret information with special reference to defence and economy, as a means of eliminating its international military and economic competitors. Fourthly, it buys its way into local publications to influence their policies, of which Latin America furnishes numerous examples. It has been active in bribing public figures, for example in Kenya and Tunisia. Finally, it finances, directs and often supplies with arms all anti-neutralist forces in the developing countries, witness Tshombe in Congo (Leopoldville) and Pak Hung Ji in South Korea. In a word, with virtually unlimited finances, there seems no bounds to its inventiveness in subversion.

One of the most recent developments in neo-colonialist strategy is the suggested establishment of a Businessmen Corps which will, like the Peace Corps, act in developing countries. In an article on ‘U.S. Intelligence and the Monopolies’ in International Affairs (Moscow, January 1965), V. Chernyavsky writes: ‘There can hardly be any doubt that this Corps is a new U.S. intelligence organisation created on the initiative of the American monopolies to use Big Business for espionage. It is by no means unusual for U.S. Intelligence to set up its own business firms which are merely thinly disguised espionage centres. For example, according to Chernyavsky, the C.I.A. has set up a firm in Taiwan known as Western Enterprises Inc. Under this cover it sends spies and saboteurs to South China. The New Asia Trading Company, a CIA firm in India, has also helped to camouflage U.S. intelligence agents operating in South-east Asia.

Such is the catalogue of neo-colonialism’s activities and methods in our time. Upon reading it, the faint-hearted might come to feel that they must give up in despair before such an array of apparent power and seemingly inexhaustible resources.

Fortunately, however, history furnishes innumerable proofs of one of its own major laws; that the budding future is always stronger than the withering past. This has been amply demonstrated during every major revolution throughout history.

[ucflibrary]

Library Technical Assistant II for UCF Curriculum Materials Center

Job Description:

Under the direct supervision of the CMC Library Technical Supervisor, provides support for the general functions of the Curriculum Materials Center Library. Responsible for processing overdues, fines and billing, as well as inventorying and ordering of departmental supplies. Assist with library instruction sessions and training and supervision of student workers. Works scheduled hours at the public service desk circulating CMC Library materials. Responsible for facility when working on evenings & weekends. Interacts with patrons by giving general campus and library information. Assists with online catalog & databases, the use of various computers programs, and other library equipment. Develops and exhibits excellent working knowledge of library policies and procedures. Interprets policies and procedures to library patrons. Handles patron complaints and refers unresolved issues to the Library Technical Supervisor. Assists in keeping the library orderly and clean. Communicates with the Main Library Circulation staff and processes overdues, fines and book bills. Inventories and reorders departmental supplies. Assists with the CMC Reserves Collection.

Additional duties of this position include but are not limited to:

Assists with the training and supervision of all student workers.

Performs office functions such as word processing and other office operations. Assists with the preservation and repair of library materials.

Maintains social media platforms.

Authors and maintains subject specific bibliographies and LibGuides to help patrons and faculty locate CMC resources.

Facilitates and participates in library instruction sessions.

Searches publisher catalogs and makes recommendations for collection development and purchase.

Performs other duties as assigned.

Work Schedule:

Daily 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM; Minimum of one evening shift of 12:00 PM - 9:00 PM per week day; Minimum of one Saturday shift of 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM per month.

Expected Salary:

$36,841

Minimum Qualifications:

High School Diploma or Equivalent and 2+ years of relevant experience.

Preferred Qualifications:

Familiarity with PreK-12 curriculum materials

Enjoys reading children's and young adult literature

Detail oriented with good organizational skills

Capability to adapt in a fast-paced environment and remain levelheaded in stressful situations

Open-minded and creative

Able to work some evenings and some Saturdays

Leadership and independent decision making

Supervisory skills

Strong customer service and presentation skills

Comfortable with acquiring news skills in emerging technology

Strong written, social, and verbal communication skills

Ability to plan and conduct programming

Application is open until November 26, 2020: https://jobs.ucf.edu/en-us/job/499589#

[youngrevolutionary]

Misplaced heroics and the tragedy of Seifer Almasy

[ This is an article published by Electric Phantasms but the website is dead. (Original link to article by Andy Astruc & Published 28 May 2014.) ]

So there’s this tall fellow with a bit of a chip on his shoulder. He’s a student at Balamb Garden — a training school of sorts for young mercenaries in a world oft shaken by civil wars — and he’s dedicated to joining the Garden’s elite fighting force: SeeD. He wears a silly coat to match his silly hair, and his weapon of choice is a Gunblade, which is exactly what it sounds like. A training session with a rival student gone wrong left him with a nasty facial scar that marks the boy Handsome Yet Dangerous. He falls in love with a beautiful girl named Rinoa and, with the help of his quirky friends, offers to help with the lady’s resistance movement. This boy travels all over the world becoming stronger, making powerful friends and enemies along the way.

Now go and kill him, hero.

The above description fits both the main character and one of the primary villains in Final Fantasy VIII, of course; Squall Leonhart and Seifer Almasy, respectively. Villain might be overstating  Seifer’s role, however, as he acts as more of an unfortunate antagonist much of the time. It would be easy to dismiss Seifer as yet another JRPG rival, a simple mirror to hold up to the protagonist and an easy way to add some home-grown emotion to a large scale battle against evil. But Seifer is more than that; he’s the main character, stymied. He is the would-be hero, but for a tragic collection of external and self-inflicted circumstances.

From the start of the game, we’re encouraged to develop a mild distaste for Seifer. The opening cinematic shows a battle between the two SeeD cadets, in which Seifer cuts Squall’s face open. Squall retaliates, which gives them delightful mirrored scarring, and it becomes apparent that this was just practice between two lunatics with boundary issues. This scene serves to set Seifer up immediately as a bad guy — although, at this point, not THE bad guy — and the difficult bug bite which Squall just can’t help scratching. His smug smile, the way he always seems to be a step ahead and his abhorrent turn as the head of the Balamb Garden Disciplinary Committee are all factors in your immediate dislike of the man. But it’s all about perspective, and, all things considered, Seifer’s bump from party leader to party pooper is mostly Squall’s fault.

Right from the word go, Squall is more of a thorn in Seifer’s side than the reverse. Their SeeD exam in Dollet ultimately succeeds because Seifer decides their mission to secure the square isn’t as important as finding out why Galbadian soldiers are so insistent on heading up a nearby mountain. While the act of defiance is presented as a reckless response to boredom, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s because of Seifer the Garden so successfully repels the invaders and learns of their nefarious plot to reactivate a powerful communications tower — a piece of information vital to future events. On their return, Squall and Zell are deemed to have passed the exam for their impressive ability to not die at the claws of an invincible spider robot; meanwhile, Seifer is reprimanded, punished and told he failed the exam thanks to his insubordination.

It isn’t limited to professional hindrance. At the graduation event, players meet Rinoa, a pretty young thing who is looking for help from the school principal, Cid. She’s also dating Seifer. Since Seifer isn’t a SeeD, Squall and friends are sent to help Rinoa’s resistance movement instead, and so begins that messy journey from hatred and indifference to the truest of true love. Nobody ever apologizes to Seifer for this whole girlfriend-stealing business, either, because he’s evil by the time it matters, and we don’t apologize to evil people.

Seifer’s clear devotion to Rinoa is obvious from his actions. No matter how irresponsible someone is, they don’t hold the president of an entire country hostage on an international television broadcast just for kicks. His extreme solution to Timber’s independence solution is a result of the Garden authorities tying his hands, and let’s remember that our hero was involved in a plot just as crazy and illegal; it just had more steps. On top of that, Seifer was acting out of genuine, selfless love and a desire to — at least in his own mind — do the right thing. His reward for such actions is a swift execution. Squall’s reaction to the death of his rival-slash-soulmate and the subsequent emotional breakdown of Rinoa is to shout at everyone like a spoiled child after a lengthy period of selfish internal monologue. Squall is the poster child for stunted emotional growth in Final Fantasy 8, a theme which touches all the younger characters in one way or another; more on that in a moment.

Seifer wasn’t actually killed, of course, as he reappears shortly afterward on a neon-lit parade float as the second-in-command of Sorceress Edea, suggesting that reports of his death — initially assumed to be a way to placate the Galbadians — were an elaborate farce set up for someone’s amusement. This moment, where Seifer becomes the enemy, is a junction point for quite a few fascinating facts about the character. Seifer is now the Sorceress’ Knight, a term which seems rather goofy and idealistic given the seriousness of the situation.

It ties into comments made by the character earlier in the game about his “romantic dream”. We’re talking about the more broad use of “romantic” here — the expression of love towards an idea rather than the pursuit of a person — and the subtext also suits the slightly derogatory second definition: “of, characterized by, or suggestive of an idealized view of reality.” The romantic dream Seifer alludes to before his betrayal turns out to be the rather specific desire to become a Sorceress’ Knight. Not only is it specific, it’s rather strange given that in modern times sorceresses are hated and feared. So why would a boy growing up in this social climate idealize evil witches? A lot of it has to do with a small detail that the game merely implies: Seifer is a huge fan of the old stories about the sorceress who successfully defended her country against invasion many, many years ago.

Searching the Balamb Garden library records shows he has checked out the none-too-subtle book The Sorceress’ Knight, but a more compelling fact was confirmed in the Final Fantasy VIII Ultimania, a book only ever published in Japan which includes plenty of information on the world and events of the game. In its pages, you can find confirmation that Seifer was also a huge fan of the film version of The Sorceress’ Knight, and presumably modeled his aspirations and demeanor around its contents. Seifer even bases his gunblade fighting stance on the knight from the film; we know this because the star of said motion picture was none other than Laguna Loire, and the player participates in the filming during a very odd time travel segment. Laguna isn’t a swordsman, of course, and his stance in the film is utter rubbish, which is yet another sad footnote in the story of Seifer and his blockaded attempts to be the hero. Mercifully, we never get to see the awkward moment when Seifer realizes his cinematic idol is actually Squall’s father.

So it would seem that Seifer is simply the product of his own reckless ambition and a tantrum-like disregard for authority. But a lack of control and choice over one’s own destiny is a strong theme across every part of FFVIII — cities are subjugated by powerful nations, children are recruited into armies, people’s minds are controlled by witches from the future — and Seifer’s destiny is no less directed than anyone else’s. In fact, the very people charged with protecting him as a child are the worst influences in his life.

All the main playable characters in the game, along with Seifer, grew up in the same orphanage. It’s not everyone’s favorite twist, and it comes across far neater than it should be given they began working together seemingly at random, but it does explain why Seifer, in particular, seems drawn to the group. That he is the only other character included in this backstory suggests we give its meaning more than a little thought with regards to his character. Around the time the memory sequence occurs, the characters write off Seifer’s unusual hatred of Squall as a product of jealousy. Squall monopolized the attention of another character, Ellone, on top of generally being the emotional wasteland we all know and love. But we learn at the end of the game that Squall’s involuntary time-traveling after defeating Ultimecia was the catalyst for creating SeeD. His appearance at the orphanage on that day, as a fully-grown man, crystallizes his destiny; from that point on, Cid and Edea treat him as the eventual savior of the universe.

This explains why he makes it into SeeD and is promoted to such a high level so quickly, it explains why he is sent on particular missions, and it answers any questions players might have had about why everyone thinks Squall is so damn special. Now imagine you are a child in the same orphanage, a child without a home or a family thanks to the war. Imagine you have something to prove, and reading about heroic knights and witches makes you feel a little less powerless. Imagine another child, very similar to you, is given preferential treatment. He gets more attention from your surrogate parents, and you have no idea why. You act up, and they still focus on him. When you’re all encouraged to join SeeD — mostly him, though — you see a chance to finally prove yourself. You work incredibly hard and fight to become the best, but that same person is still there, being given all the advantages. He graduates while you get punished; despite a total lack of social skills, he makes friends easily while you’re seen as an annoyance; when your well-meaning actions lead to everyone believing you’re dead, he moves in on your girlfriend.

Seifer is the one who works, and Squall is the one who wins. Earlier I said Seifer’s troubles were mostly Squall’s fault, but that’s not the whole story. Just as our perception of Seifer as an obnoxious fool is simply a mask for the twisting of his genuine intentions, so too is his distaste for Squall actually a distaste for what Cid and Edea did to both men.

Other Final Fantasy games have had characters that either should have been the hero (Basch from FFXII, before focus testing decided he was too old) or are more heroic (Auron from FFX, who only steps aside because he’s simply too well adjusted to get wrapped up in the melodrama of the plot), but FFVIII manages to set up a character that is certainly the hero, while setting him up to consistently make choices that contradict that. He isn’t a mirror for Squall, he’s the guy who has to sleep outside because Squall needed a bed. To his credit, Seifer remains an upbeat and forward-looking character to the very end. He never claims that the world is out to get him. It is, of course.

[dearsleyart]

ORIGINS OF ZINES RESEARCH

https://blogs.lib.unc.edu/rbc/2017/10/25/a-brief-history-of-zines/

'Zines are self-published or published by a small, independent  publisher. Self-publishing allows marginalized voices to express  themselves beyond the constraints of mainstream media, and also lets  authors take control of the process of publishing. Zines also present an  alternative to the hierarchical and commodified world of mainstream  media.

Zines are non-commercial, and are printed in small numbers,  circulating only through specific networks. They are underground  publications that tend to have niche audiences.

Zines provide a vehicle for ideas, expression, and art. They build  connections between people and within groups, and provide modes of  communication in addition to information dissemination.

There are exceptions to every rule, and though many have shared characteristics, there is no formal definition of a zine.'

Zines were first created in the science fiction fandoms of the 1930s,  taking their name from fanzine, which is short for “fan magazine.” Long  before the advent of the Internet, zines allowed fans to create  networks, share ideas and analyses, and collaborate on writing and  artwork.The counterculture movements associated with the Beat generation of  the 1950s and 1960s saw a growth of the underground press, which played  an important role in connecting the people across the US. Although the  underground press often involved significantly more people and resources  in the production of materials, it provided a function that became a  key part of zine culture in the 1980s and beyond: giving people a voice  outside the scope of the mainstream media.Art and literary magazines of the 1960s and 1970s were based on a  similar need to circumvent the commercial art world, and were printed  cheaply and spread through small, niche networks. Many of them combined  art, politics, culture, and activism into a single eclectic publication,  redefining what a magazine could be, and influencing the rise of  activist artists’ magazines that shaped the punk and feminist scenes  later on.Presence, a collaborative poetry magazine with various contributors from the Beat generation.

The punk music scene of the 1980s expanded upon the self-published  format by creating a wide of array of constantly evolving zines  dedicated to the musical genre that were both fanzines and political  tracts. Punk zines were more than just magazines–they represented the  aesthetic and ideals of an entire subculture, a condensed version of  this cultural revolt against authoritarianism.Similarly subversive, the riot grrrl movement grew out of the punk  subculture and developed a zine culture of its own, focusing on  feminism, sex, and chaos. The Sallie Bingham collection at Duke  University’s Rubenstein Library has a large selection of zines by women  and girls created during this period. The collection’s

website

also provides a short description of the role of zines within the riot grrrl movement:

“In the 1990s, with the combination of the riot grrrl  movement’s reaction against sexism in punk culture, the rise of third  wave feminism and girl culture, and an increased interest in the  do-it-yourself lifestyle, the women’s and grrrls’ zine culture began to  thrive. Feminist practice emphasizes the sharing of personal experience  as a community-building tool, and zines proved to be the perfect medium  for reaching out to young women across the country in order to form the  ‘revolution, girl style.'”

Examples of zines can be found at the

Sloane Art Library

as well as in the Rare Book Collection. Within the Rare Book Collection, zines comprise part of the Beats Collection, the

Mexican Comic Collection

, and the Latino Comic Collection. All three collections provide diverse examples of the genre.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/88911/brief-history-zines

The first zine is often traced back to a 1930s effort by the Science Correspondence Club in Chicago. It was called

The Comet

,

and it started a long-lasting trend of sci-fi related zines. The important sci-fi zine

Fantasy Commentator

began in 1943, and ran in various iterations (though not continuously) until 2004. One of the pieces serialized in Fantasy Commentator eventually became Sam Moskowitz’s book on the history of sci-fi fandom, The Immortal Storm. The interconnectedness of zines and sci-fi is reflected in the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) Hugo award for

Best Fanzine

, first given out

in 1955

and still awarded today. (As the name of that award shows, zines were originallY

called fanzines alluding to the fans who made them. Eventually, fanzine was just shortened to zine, and the range of topics widened to include practically anything.) The relationship between zines and sci-fi deepened after 1967, when

the first Star Trek fanzine

Spockanalia,  was produced. It gained plenty of attention, and the second issue  included letters by members of the show, including writer D.C. Fontana  and actors James Doohan, DeForest Kelley, and Leonard Nimoy. (The actors  all wrote their letters in character.)

In 1968 Star Trek was reportedly going to be canceled after two seasons, but a letter-writing campaign—partly organized through fanzines - that generated over 160,000 missives was able to help get the show back on the air for another year. The technological innovations of the ‘70s made zines easier to create  than ever. In particular, the rise of copy shops allowed zine-makers to  produce their work cheaply and quickly. (Previously, zines had been  produced using mimeographs, which push ink through a stencil to make multiple prints, but the process was impractical for large-scale production.)

Steve Samiof

, one of the people behind the popular punk zine Slash, told Dazed  in an interview earlier this year that the copy shops of the '70s were  “extremely inexpensive—you could pay under $800 for 5000 copies and that  would be the actual printing cost.”

https://www.jstor.org/stable/29767022?seq=1

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02615479.2013.805194

[universallyinternetwerewolf]

Stronghold 2 Torrent For Mac Os

Stronghold 2 Free Download

Stronghold 2 Torrent For Mac Os 10.10

Experience brutal desert combat and RTS mayhem in the long-awaited sequel to Stronghold Crusader. Stronghold 2 (PC 2005) Item Preview stronghold2.jpg. TORRENT download. Download 9 Files download 8 Original. CD-ROM Software Library. CD-ROM Software Collection. The Vintage Software Collection. Uploaded by LoudLad on May.

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Computer games in the genre of real-time strategy have recently gained immense popularity. They allow you not only to independently control the game process, but also make decisions that can change the plot at any time. One of the most famous games in this genre is Stronghold Crusader. It complements the Stronghold strategy. To the game Stronghold crusader hd download torrent You can, without any restrictions, simply by going to the appropriate website on the Internet.

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Stronghold 2 Torrent For Mac Os 10.10

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Game info

Year: 2002

Genre: Simulation, Strategy

Developer: Firefly studios

Version: 1.3 Full (Last)

Interface language: English, Russian

Tablet: Sewn

Software for mac os x free download. Minimum system requirements

Operating system: Windows XP, Vista, Xnumx, Xnumx, Xnumx

Processor: Intel Pentium 4 1.6Ghz

Memory: 512Mb

Video card: 64MB video memory

Hard Drive Memory: 1Gb

Game Details:

Welcome to the “Stronghold Legends” for Mac game page. This page contains information + tools how to port Stronghold Legends (Part of the Stronghold Collection) in a few simple steps (that even a noob can understand) so you can play it on your Mac just like a normal application using Crossover. So if you haven’t Crossover yet, then sign up here and buy the program or if you want to test it first, for the 14 days trial. Or use the Porting Kit alternative.

Use this CrossTie… to install the GOG game into Crossover Make sure Crossover is installed before downloading/running the CrossTie. Or use Porting Kit.

The Stronghold HD and Stronghold Crusader HD are also available separately native for Mac!

Great news! This game is already available in the Porting Kit. Porting Kit is the new application which “ports” the game to your Mac. The video and download links in the slider are outdated and won’t work on OS X 10.11+. To fix/update it, install the game with the Porting Kit visit its page here. Or use the crosstie with the Crossover application.

Game Description: Lead as fantasy characters throughout history: King Arthur and the forces of Camelot, Siegfried and Dietrich in the German Ice Campaign, and unleash the fury of the forces of evil in Vlad Dracul’s Transylvania.

Additional Port Information: Graphical Cards Tested: NVIDIA 9400M graphics card, AMD Radeon 6770M OSX 10.7.5 and 10.8.2+ compatible?: yes Whats tested: Playing a level Does Multiplayer work?: Not tested Known Issues: None that I know of… Whats not tested: Intel graphical cards Icon: Stuart Ludwig

Instruction video Crossover

Screenshots:

[khalilhumam]

In annual meeting, a new direction for US-Australia alliance

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/in-annual-meeting-a-new-direction-for-us-australia-alliance/

In annual meeting, a new direction for US-Australia alliance

By Lindsey Ford, Ashley Townshend The Trump campaign has long enjoyed delivering an unusual musical message during the president’s rallies, frequently blaring the Rolling Stones’ classic “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Last week, the music was coming from Down Under, with Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne quietly but forcefully reminding U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the same message is true in alliance politics.  In the press conference following this year’s Australia-U.S. Ministerial (AUSMIN), Secretary Pompeo’s description of the annual meeting was deliberately hard-edged. He featured little more than a litany of shared grievances toward Beijing, expressed in characteristically Manichean terms. In the remarks that followed, Minister Payne provided a notable contrast, offering a wide-ranging assessment of the ministerial’s achievements and Indo-Pacific focus. The contrast reflects more than differing meeting priorities. Payne and Pompeo advanced starkly different visions of the alliance. The distinction is unmistakable: Whereas the Trump administration envisions a confrontational China-centric agenda, Canberra is working to bend the alliance toward a wider Indo-Pacific focus. Australia is ready and willing to share a larger piece of the Indo-Pacific security burden, but it will do so on its own terms.

He said, she said

Pompeo’s depiction of a narrow, China-focused alliance offers little role for Canberra other than to ride along with Washington in a coordinated decoupling from Beijing. But as Payne ticked through an extensive list of ministerial agreements — ranging from cooperation on COVID-19 and global health security to defense industry integration, critical minerals, and engagement with multilateral bodies — she sketched-out a far more expansive agenda for the alliance. It is one in which Australia will play a more equally balanced and multidimensional role, rather than being shoe-horned into an all-consuming great power struggle. This message of confidence and independence within the alliance also looms large in Canberra’s recently issued 2020 Defence Strategic Update. Australia, as Payne pointedly noted, not only shares common values with the United States, but also the “confidence in making decisions in our [own] interests.” Canberra’s more active and independent assertion of its interests should not be misread as an effort to create distance in the alliance. On the contrary, Australia is highly supportive of the United States’ Indo-Pacific strategy, so much so that Canberra is investing a lot of time and energy into helping Washington get it right. This is a welcome effort, and one that could help the Trump administration more finely tune its strategy to regional needs and perceptions — if it is willing to listen.

Refocusing the alliance

Last week’s meeting marked three important shifts that highlight Australia’s ongoing effort to put the alliance on a new and stronger regional footing. First, AUSMIN 2020 signalled the completion of an historic shift in the regional focus of the alliance, pivoting it away from the Middle East toward a laser-like prioritization of the Indo-Pacific. This has been a long time in the making. Although the alliance was born in 1951 as a Pacific pact, it has devoted far too much of the past two decades to strategically peripheral counter-insurgency operations in the Middle East. Neither country had a political interest in changing this setup until recently. As anxieties about China have rapidly accelerated in Canberra and Washington, both countries have attempted to pull the alliance’s gaze back on the region. Both agreed in 2018 to refocus the alliance on the Indo-Pacific, in line with the strategic priorities set out in Canberra’s 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper and Washington’s 2018 National Defense Strategy. But it is Australia that has been the more determined partner in making this goal a reality, working to rebuff ongoing requests from Washington for new Middle East commitments. Unlike last year’s AUSMIN, which turned into a quiet clash over the White House’s request for Australia to take part in a new maritime security deployment in the Strait of Hormuz, this year’s communique was the first since 9/11 to not mention Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, or Iran by name. Whatever discussions went on behind closed doors, Australia clearly made its reservations heard. Second, this year’s AUSMIN showed that Australia is also able and willing to take the lead in articulating how the alliance can best contribute in the region. While the ministerial’s China discussions featured prominently in the American media, there was little mention of what was arguably the meeting’s most significant achievement: an unprecedented suite of health security initiatives aimed at supporting the COVID-19 recovery in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Canberra appears to have spearheaded this initiative. Its effort to bend the Trump administration’s attention toward the region’s most urgent and practical needs provides a much-needed counternarrative to Washington’s “America First” agenda. Detailed in a four-page Global Health Security Statement, the United States and Australia laid out a serious agenda to “prevent, prepare and respond to the collective threat posed by infectious diseases and pandemics.” With deliverables ranging from vaccine development, to strengthening regional health systems, to advancing health security partnerships between the Australian Defence Force and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, this was an unusually detailed work plan that signals care and investment in the region’s wellbeing. Moreover, the statement was clearly prepared with international optics in mind, peppered with references to multilateral organizations — including the World Health Assembly, the Gavi Vaccine Alliance, the U.N. World Food Program, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the Pacific Islands Forum — that matter deeply to regional partners and which the Trump administration has at times dismissed. Canberra’s advocacy for these Indo-Pacific priorities can enhance the alliance’s value proposition and Washington’s image in the region at a time when both are becoming more central to strategic competition with China.

Sharpening up

Finally, AUSMIN 2020 also saw Australia preview a closer alignment between Washington and Canberra on two important foreign policy issues: China and defense. Media reports focused on one comment from the press conference — Payne’s remark that “we have no intention of injuring” the Australia-China relationship — as evidence of an ongoing divide on China policy. To be fair, Australia is as likely to annex New Zealand as it is to pursue a China policy that neatly aligns with the zero-sum narrative outlined in Pompeo’s recent Nixon library speech. But Canberra’s China policy has shifted and sharpened in significant ways over the past several years. Australia has been at the forefront of global efforts to limit China’s political interference, espionage, and disinformation campaigns. It has willingly taken on sizable risks by being the world’s first mover on banning Huawei from 5G networks and calling for an international investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 outbreak. More recently, Australia and the United States have been in virtual lockstep in condemning China’s aggression in the South China Sea, human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy. All of these priorities were noted in the AUSMIN communique. Perhaps most significant is that this year’s AUSMIN was the first to feature a prominent discussion of Taiwan. While nothing in the communique’s carefully worded text broke new policy ground, the fact that preserving “Taiwan’s important role in the Indo-Pacific” was included as an item of alliance cooperation is an important shift in Australia’s public rhetoric on this most sensitive of issues. In another sign of Canberra’s determination to deal more seriously with Beijing, Australia’s new Defence Strategic Update commits to $270 billion Australian dollars in defense investments over the next decade and refocuses the military around efforts to “shape, deter and respond” to grey zone challenges and high-end aggression. Flowing from this shift in Canberra’s approach, AUSMIN placed an emphasis on more closely integrating allied forces and capabilities in the years ahead. In addition to signing a classified “Statement of Principles on Alliance Defense Cooperation and Force Posture Priorities,” both sides agreed to restart the bilateral Force Posture Working Group. This is a significant development, albeit the start of a long process. It will not only help U.S. policymakers put meat on the bones of Congress’ new Pacific Deterrence Initiative, but could also strengthen Australia’s role as a logistics, munitions, and operating hub for the alliance, and enable a more strategic approach to allied and regional military planning. There are also a range of new defense initiatives on the table — including a possible expansion of the Marine Rotational Forces-Darwin, a new U.S. military fuel depot in Australia’s north, plans to enhance maritime operations in support of regional partners, and Canberra’s investment in long-range strike systems — that could meaningfully advance the alliance’s regional security contributions in the coming years.

Get what you need

Australians have often chafed at being viewed as the United States’ “deputy sheriff.” But Canberra is now seeking to open the door to a bigger and more mature alliance — one that will be needed as Washington grapples with the erosion of its unilateral moment and seeks to reset the terms of its own international leadership. Admittedly, there is much more to be done. Some of the missed alliance opportunities at AUSMIN 2020 included a firmer commitment to build an integrated defense industrial base or an agreement to pursue a unified approach to dealing with China’s industrial subsidies. Nonetheless, this year’s meeting suggests a major transformation is underway, one that will set the alliance on a path to better addressing Indo-Pacific priorities, adopting a China policy that is calibrated to regional realities, and establishing a credible basis for collective defense in the region. Did the United States get everything it wanted this year at AUSMIN? Likely not. But it just might have gotten what it needs.

[oliviadavid2025-blog]

How to Become a Logo Designer in 10 steps

Get started with logo design: 10-step guide

Before you embark on logo design, you must understand what a logo is and what it is supposed to do. A logo identifies a company or product via the use of a mark, flag, symbol or signature. A logo does not sell the company directly nor rarely does it describe a business. Logos derive their meaning from the quality of the thing they symbolize, not the other way around - logos are there to identity, not to explain. In a nutshell, what a logo means is more important than what it looks like.

To illustrate this concept, think of logos like people. We prefer to be called by our names - Jacob, Emily, Tyler - rather than by the confusing and forgettable description of ourselves such as 'the guy who always wears pink and has blonde hair'. In this same way, a logo should not literally describe what the business does but rather identify the business in a way that is recognisable and memorable.

It is also important to note that only after a logo becomes familiar does it function the way it is intended to do, much like how we must learn people's names to identify them. The logo identifies a business or product in its simplest form. Here are 10 vital tips you need to consider on your way to the perfect logo.

some hot logo and trends with templates you can check this link

https://www.fiverr.com/share/p303Bo

01. Learn logo 101

An effective logo is distinctive, appropriate, practical, graphic, simple in form and conveys an intended message. In its simplest form, a logo is there to identify but to do this effectively it must follow the basic principles of logo design:

A logo must be simple. A simple logo design allows for easy recognition and allows the logo to be versatile and memorable. Effective logos feature something unexpected or unique without being overdrawn.

A logo must be memorable. Following closely behind the principle of simplicity is that of memorability. An effective logo design should be memorable and this is achieved by having a simple yet appropriate logo.

A logo must be enduring. An effective logo should endure the test of time. The logo should be 'future proof', meaning that it should still be effective in 10, 20, 50+ years time.

A logo must be versatile. An effective logo should be able to work across a variety of mediums and applications.

A logo must be appropriate. How you position the logo should be appropriate for its intended purpose. For a more detailed explanation see: What makes a good logo?

02. Establish your own design process

Every designer has his or her own process, and it is rarely linear, but in general this is how the branding process is completed, which can be used as a guide to establish your own.

Design brief. Conduct a questionnaire or interview with the client to get the design brief.

Research. Conduct research focused on the industry itself, its history, and its competitors.

Reference. Conduct research into logo designs that have been successful and current styles and trends that are related to the design brief.

Sketching and conceptualising. Develop the logo design concepts around the brief and research.

Reflection. Take breaks throughout the design process. This allows your ideas to mature and lets you get renewed enthusiasm. Receive feedback.

Presentation. Choose to present only a select few logos to the client or a whole collection. Get feedback and repeat until completed.

03. Ask the right questions

A common pitfall before starting a new branding project is to fail to ask the right questions, which includes research on your behalf too. Before you begin your development, get as much information as you can from the client about their business, goals, target market, etc. If possible, try their service or product, visit their store – really get to know them and their requirements.

Some important questions you should ask your client before beginning:

How much do you plan to dedicate to this project?

Do you have a fixed deadline or timeline in mind for the project?

What are your goals and why?

What product or service does your business offer?

Who is your target audience and who is your most ideal customer?

Who are your competitors and how do you differ from them?

What was the idea behind the business name?

For further questions see: How to write a design brief.

04. Price your work accordingly

"How much?" is the single most frequently asked question and it cannot be easily answered because every company has different needs and expectations. You have to take a number of factors into consideration when designing a logo/brand identity, such as how many concepts need to be presented, how many revisions will be needed, how much research is required, how big the business is and so on.

The best approach is to draw up a customised quote for each client and to do this you should learn how to price your designs, which is another topic in itself.

Jeff Fisher, a notable designer and author, had this great point in his article How Much Should I Charge: "The major point I wish to convey here is that all designers need to work smarter in independently determining what their talent, skill and expertise are worth and charge the client accordingly without question or apology. Being smart in determining what you should charge for your work will hopefully allow you to 'work less, charge more' in the future."

05. Learn from others

By knowing what other brands have succeeded in and why they have succeeded gives you great insight and you can apply that attained knowledge to your own work.

For example, let's look at the classic Nike Swoosh (above). This logo was created by Caroline Davidson in 1971 and it's a great example of a strong, memorable logo, being effective without colour and easily scalable.

Not only is it simple, fluid and fast but it also has related symbolism; it represents the wing in the famous statue of the Greek Goddess of Victory, Nike, which is a perfect figure for a sporting apparel business. Nike is just one of many great logos, but think about other famous brands that you know and check out their logos - what makes them successful?

For more quality logos, check out Logo Of The Day or go to your local library/book store and check out some branding books. Also be sure to check out some of these logo design process case studies.

06. Make use of the resources

There are hundreds of resources available, both offline and online, that are dedicated purely to logo and brand design. Here are some of the best:

The Ultimate List of Logo Design Resources by Just Creative DesignIf you're looking for logo resources, this is the place to go.

Best Logo Design Books by Just Creative DesignLists some great logo design books.

Top 10 Logo Design Inspiration Galleries by Logo Designer BlogA list of the top 10 recommended logo design inspiration galleries.

Logo Design Tips by Steve at The Logo FactoryA great post outlining some very helpful logo design tips.

How NOT to design a logo from Web Designer DepotAn article outlining ways not to go about getting your logo designed.

Iconic Logo Designers by David AireyA mini-website of some of the world's most iconic logo designers.

45 Rules of Creating A Great Logo Design from Tanner Christensen.A fairly accurate list of 'logo design rules.' Take it as a guide only.

80 Beautiful Typefaces for Professional Design from Smashing Magazine.A thorough list of classic typefaces.

07. Choose the right font

When it comes to logos, choosing the right font can make or break the design. Font choice can often take as long as the creation of the logo mark itself, and both the font and mark should work towards the same goal(s).

Spend time researching all the various fonts that could be used for the project, narrow them down further, and then see how each gels with the logo mark, keeping in mind how the logo will used across the rest of the brand identity, in combination with other fonts and imagery.

Don't be afraid to purchase a font, modify one, or create your own. Also stay aware of font licensing issues, especially in free fonts, as they often cannot be used commercially.

For more information read How to choose the right font.

08. Avoid the clichés

Light bulbs for 'ideas', speech bubbles for 'discussion', globes for 'international', etc. These ideas are often the first things to pop into one's head when brainstorming, and for the same reason should be the first ideas discarded. How is your design going to be unique when so many other logos feature the same idea? Stay clear of these visual clichés and come up with an original idea and design.

With this said, please do not steal, copy or 'borrow' other designs. Although, this shouldn't have to be said, it happens too often. A designer sees an idea that he likes, does a quick mirror, colour swap or word change, and then calls the idea his own. Not only is this unethical, illegal and downright stupid but you're also going to get caught sooner or later. Do not use stock or clip art either — the point of a logo is to be unique and original.

09. Limit the concepts sent

Go wild exploring ideas, but don't provide your client with too many options. This means the client will have too much control over the design direction of the project, whereas the designer should be the director - unless you are hired by an agency and have already been given design direction.

If you provide 10 to 20 concepts to a client, more often than not they will choose what you consider the less superior design. A good rule of thumb is to only send one to three concepts that you personally could see working for their business. Of course, the number of concepts you send can change from project to project, but once you feel confident enough as a designer, these one to three concepts should nail the project on the head every time.

10. Deliver the correct files

Delivering the correct files to your client is one way to ensure that your client never comes back asking for revisions or different versions of a logo. It also ensures that the logo gets displayed correctly in all circumstances, which should be supported by a style guide.

You should give your client five high-quality files per logo variation - this means providing a spot-colour file, a pure CMYK file, a pure black file, a pure white knockout file and a RGB file. As a guide, these should generally be in EPS, TIFF (1500x1500 at 300DPI), and JPEG/PNG (800x800 at 72DPI) formats. You could also provide a favicon too.

A closing word

These logo design tips should help you become a better logo designer in theory. However, it's important to state that although lists such as this are a good starting point, they should not hold you back - rules are made to be broken and there is no 'right' way when it comes to logo design. Sketch, explore and create! Then repeat.

Also, it's important to remember that your logo is not your brand, nor is it your identity. Logo design, identity design and branding all have different roles that together form a perceived image for a business or product. Now that you have learned about logo design, you should learn how logos fit into the whole brand identity.

Some Creative Work and Templates Check Here

[hptposts]

Day 2.

Hix hôm nay lại là ngày thứ 7 của tuần tiếp theo.

Mình quên mât viết post hằng ngày rồi @@.

Từ hôm nay sẽ chấn chỉnh lại nha...

Công việc của hôm nay:

+ Giải 10 round của atcoder 042 -> 052

+ Giải 2 round của topcoder

Một kỹ năng quan trọng mình thấy cần nữa là ghi nhớ, mình tạm sẽ ghi những thứ cần ghi nhớ ở đây, chiến thuật sẽ trình bày luôn. Cứ theo chiến thuật mà luyện tập:

+ Ngoài ra thì mình còn muốn học thêm kỹ năng software engineer từ A-Z, ko chỉ làm công việc ở cấp thấp nhất là code nữa...:

Thu thập requirement -> Phân tích -> Tìm giải pháp, hướng tiếp cận -> thiết kế usecase -> Thiết kế kiến trúc UML, quan hệ -> TDD viết test trước -> code theo bản thiết kế.

--> Để code ko có bug, cần tìm hi���u nhiều sách và thực hành code nhiều hơn: Sách mình sẽ đọc tiếp theo về code:

- Clean code

- Code complete

- Working with legacy code

- pattern of enterprise software

- concurrency in practice

Sách về ghi nhớ:

- Mega memory.

Quy trình đọc sách:

Tóm tắt mục lục trong 1 tờ giấy a4 sơ đồ tư duy, ghi nhớ sơ đồ và các ý chính, ngữ cảnh liên quan trong nó. Xong tập vẽ lại sơ đồ 10 lần (1 lần sau 30 phút, 1 lần sau 6h, 1 lần sau 1 ngày, 1 lần 1 tuần, 1 lần tháng)

Áp dụng trong công việc thường xuyên.

0---

Ok sáng giờ mình xem lời giải của 4 contest atcoder rồi, giờ xem tiếp để tý viết code giải thử.

Cảm nghĩ: Sao thấy bài A,B của 4 contest này cực dễ ak, bài C thì có lúc dễ lúc khó, bài D thì trung bình. Chắc mấy contest đầu cho thả cửa, mấy contest sau bích luôn.

Xem lại phim Baki thôi, muốn tập võ lại thật luôn :D.

OK Table of contents đây rồi

Sách đầu tiên về code sẽ là clean code:

Clean Code TOC

The table of contents of the book Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship (Robert C. Martin, 1994). It is a good overview of the rules recommended by the book.

Contents

Clean Code

There Will Be Code

Bad Code

The Total Cost of Owning a Mess

Schools of Thought

We Are Authors

The Boy Scout Rule

Prequel and Principles

Conclusion

Bibliography

The Grand Redesign in the Sky

Attitude

The Primal Conundrum

The Art of Clean Code?

What Is Clean Code?

Meaningful Names

Introduction

Use Intention-Revealing Names

Avoid Disinformation

Make Meaningful Distinctions

Use Pronounceable Names

Use Searchable Names

Avoid Encodings

Avoid Mental Mapping

Class Names

Method Names

Don’t Be Cute

Pick One Word per Concept

Don’t Pun

Use Solution Domain Names

Use Problem Domain Names

Add Meaningful Context

Don’t Add Gratuitous Context

Final Words

Hungarian Notation

Member Prefixes

Interfaces and Implementations

Functions

Small!

Do One Thing

One Level of Abstraction per Function

Switch Statements

Use Descriptive Names

Function Arguments

Have No Side Effects

Command Query Separation

Prefer Exceptions to Returning Error Codes

Don’t Repeat Yourself

Structured Programming

How Do You Write Functions Like This?

Conclusion

SetupTeardownIncluder

Bibliography

Blocks and Indenting

Sections within Functions

Reading Code from Top to Bottom: The Stepdown Rule

Common Monadic Forms

Flag Arguments

Dyadic Functions

Triads

Argument Objects

Argument Lists

Verbs and Keywords

Output Arguments

Extract Try/Catch Blocks

Error Handling Is One Thing

The Error.java Dependency Magnet

Comments

Comments Do Not Make Up for Bad Code

Explain Yourself in Code

Good Comments

Bad Comments

Bibliography

Legal Comments

Informative Comments

Explanation of Intent

Clarification

Warning of Consequences

TODO Comments

Amplification

Javadocs in Public APIs

Mumbling

Redundant Comments

Misleading Comments

Mandated Comments

Journal Comments

Noise Comments

Scary Noise

Don’t Use a Comment When You Can Use a

Function or a Variable

Position Markers

Closing Brace Comments

Attributions and Bylines

Commented-Out Code

HTML Comments

Nonlocal Information

Too Much Information

Inobvious Connection

Function Headers

Javadocs in Nonpublic Code

Example

Formatting

The Purpose of Formatting

Vertical Formatting

Team Rules

Uncle Bob’s Formatting Rules

The Newspaper Metaphor

Vertical Openness Between Concepts

Vertical Density

Vertical Distance

Vertical Ordering

Horizontal Formatting

Horizontal Openness and Density

Horizontal Alignment

Indentation

Dummy Scopes

Objects and Data Structures

Data Abstraction

Data/Object Anti-Symmetry

The Law of Demeter

Data Transfer Objects

Conclusion

Bibliography

Train Wrecks

Hybrids

Hiding Structure

Active Record

Error Handling

Use Exceptions Rather Than Return Codes

Write Your Try-Catch-Finally Statement First

Use Unchecked Exceptions

Provide Context with Exceptions

Define Exception Classes in Terms of a Caller’s Needs

Define the Normal Flow

Don’t Return Null

Don’t Pass Null

Conclusion

Bibliography

Boundaries

Using Third-Party Code

Exploring and Learning Boundaries

Learning log4j

Learning Tests Are Better Than Free

Using Code That Does Not Yet Exist

Clean Boundaries

Bibliography

Unit Tests

The Three Laws of TDD

Keeping Tests Clean

Clean Tests

One Assert per Test

F.I.R.S.T

Conclusion

Bibliography

Tests Enable the -ilities

Domain-Specific Testing Language

A Dual Standard

Single Concept per Test

Classes

Class Organization

Classes Should Be Small!

Organizing for Change

Bibliography

Encapsulation

The Single Responsibility Principle

Cohesion

Maintaining Cohesion Results in Many Small Classes

Isolating from Change

Systems

How Would You Build a City?

Separate Constructing a System from Using It

Scaling Up

Java Proxies

Pure Java AOP Frameworks

AspectJ Aspects

Test Drive the System Architecture

Optimize Decision Making

Use Standards Wisely, When They Add DemonstrableValue

Systems Need Domain-Specific Languages

Conclusion

Bibliography

Separation of Main

Factories

Dependency Injection

Cross-Cutting Concerns

Emergence

Getting Clean via Emergent Design

Simple Design Rule 1: Runs All the Tests

Simple Design Rules 2–4: Refactoring

No Duplication

Expressive

Minimal Classes and Methods

Conclusion

Bibliography

Concurrency

Why Concurrency?

Myths and Misconceptions

Challenges

Concurrency Defense Principles

Know Your Library

Know Your Execution Models

Beware Dependencies Between Synchronized Methods

Keep Synchronized Sections Small

Writing Correct Shut-Down Code Is Hard

Testing Threaded Code

Conclusion

Bibliography

Single Responsibility Principle

Corollary: Limit the Scope of Data

Corollary: Use Copies of Data

Corollary: Threads Should Be as Independent as Possible

Thread-Safe Collections

Producer-Consumer

Readers-Writers

Dining Philosophers

Treat Spurious Failures as Candidate Threading Issues

Get Your Nonthreaded Code Working First

Make Your Threaded Code Pluggable

Make Your Threaded Code Tunable

Run with More Threads Than Processors

Run on Different Platforms

Instrument Your Code to Try and Force Failures

Hand-Coded

Automated

Successive Refinement

Args Implementation

Args: The Rough Draft

String Arguments

Conclusion

How Did I Do This?

So I Stopped

On Incrementalism

JUnit Internals

The JUnit Framework

Conclusion

Refactoring SerialDate

First, Make It Work

Then Make It Right

Conclusion

Bibliography

Smells and Heuristics

Comments

Environment

Functions

General

Java

Names

Tests

Conclusion

Bibliography

Inappropriate Information

Obsolete Comment

Redundant Comment

Poorly Written Comment

Commented-Out Code

Build Requires More Than One Step

Tests Require More Than One Step

Too Many Arguments

Output Arguments

Flag Arguments

Dead Function

Multiple Languages in One Source File

Obvious Behavior Is Unimplemented

Incorrect Behavior at the Boundaries

Overridden Safeties

Duplication

Code at Wrong Level of Abstraction

Base Classes Depending on Their Derivatives

Too Much Information

Dead Code

Vertical Separation

Inconsistency

Clutter

Artificial Coupling

Feature Envy

Selector Arguments

Obscured Intent

Misplaced Responsibility

Inappropriate Static

Use Explanatory Variables

Function Names Should Say What They Do

Understand the Algorithm

Make Logical Dependencies Physical

Prefer Polymorphism to If/Else or Switch/Case

Follow Standard Conventions

Replace Magic Numbers with Named Constants

Be Precise

Structure over Convention

Encapsulate Conditionals

Avoid Negative Conditionals

Functions Should Do One Thing

Hidden Temporal Couplings

Don’t Be Arbitrary

Encapsulate Boundary Conditions

Functions Should Descend Only One Level of Abstraction

Keep Configurable Data at High Levels

Avoid Transitive Navigation

Avoid Long Import Lists by Using Wildcards

Don’t Inherit Constants

Constants versus Enums

Choose Descriptive Names

Choose Names at the Appropriate Level of Abstraction

Use Standard Nomenclature Where Possible

Unambiguous Names

Use Long Names for Long Scopes

Avoid Encodings

Names Should Describe Side-Effects.

Insufficient Tests

Use a Coverage Tool!

Don’t Skip Trivial Tests

An Ignored Test Is a Question about an Ambiguity

Test Boundary Conditions

Exhaustively Test Near Bugs

Patterns of Failure Are Revealing

Test Coverage Patterns Can Be Revealing

Tests Should Be Fast

Appendix A: Concurrency II

Client/Server Example

Possible Paths of Execution

Knowing Your Library

Dependencies Between Methods

Can Break Concurrent Code

Increasing Throughput

Deadlock

Testing Multithreaded Code

Tool Support for Testing Thread-Based Code

Conclusion

Tutorial: Full Code Examples

The Server

Adding Threading

Server Observations

Conclusion

Number of Paths

Digging Deeper

Conclusion

Executor Framework

Nonblocking Solutions

Nonthread-Safe Classes

Tolerate the Failure

Client-Based Locking

Server-Based Locking

Single-Thread Calculation of Throughput

Multithread Calculation of Throughput

Mutual Exclusion

Lock & Wait

No Preemption

Circular Wait

Breaking Mutual Exclusion

Breaking Lock & Wait

Breaking Preemption

Breaking Circular Wait

Client/Server Nonthreaded

Client/Server Using Threads

Appendix B: org.jfree.date.SerialDate

Appendix C: Cross References of Heuristics

Epilogue

----

+Code complete TOC +Software Estimation: The Art

+Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules+Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules

[anniekoh]

Getting ready for the American Association of Geographers’ annual meeting and went galumphing through the preliminary program to compile my session wishlist. The “author meets critics” format has been a favorite - these are the ones that caught my eye (in chronological order) with book descriptions and links to publishers below.

1158 Author Meets Critics: Gautam Bhan's In the Public's Interest: Evictions, Citizenship, and Inequality in Contemporary Delhi is scheduled on Wednesday, 4/5/2017, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in Gardner B, Sheraton, Third Floor

In the Public’s Interest (2016): “This book studies the recent legacy of basti “evictions” in Delhi—mass clearings of some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods—as a way to understand how the urban poor are disenfranchised in the name of “public interest” and, in the case of Delhi, by the very courts meant to empower and protect them. Studying bastis, says Gautam Bhan, provokes six clear lines of inquiry applicable to studies of urbanism across the global south.The first is the long-standing debate over urban informality and illegality: the debate’s impact on conceptions and practices of urban planning, the production of space, and the regulation of value. The second is a set of debates on “good governance,” read through their intersections with ideas of “planned development” within rapidly transforming cities. The third is the political field of urban citizenship and the possibilities of substantive rights and belonging in the city. The fourth is resistance and the ability of a city’s subaltern residents to struggle against exclusion. The two remaining inquiries both cut across and unify the first four. One of these is the role of the judiciary and the relationships between law and urbanism in cities of the global south. The other is the relationship between democracy and inequality in the city.”

1244 Author Meets Critics: Amy Trauger's We Want Land to Live: Making Political Space for Food Sovereignty is scheduled on Wednesday, 4/5/2017, from 10:00 AM - 11:40 AM in Constitution A, Sheraton, Second Floor 

We Want Land to Live (2017): “First coined by La Via Campesina (a global movement whose name means “the peasant’s way”), food sovereignty is a concept that expresses the universal right to food. Amy Trauger uses research combining ethnography, participant observation, field notes, and interviews to help us understand the material and definitional struggles surrounding the decommodification of food and the transformation of the global food system’s political-economic foundations.Trauger’s work is the first of its kind to analytically and coherently link a dialogue on food sovereignty with case studies illustrating the spatial and territorial strategies by which the movement fosters its life in the margins of the corporate food regime. She discusses community gardeners in Portugal; small-scale, independent farmers in Maine; Native American wild rice gatherers in Minnesota; seed library supporters in Pennsylvania; and permaculturists in Georgia.”

2166 Author meets Critics: Rebecca Kinney's Beautiful Wasteland: The Rise of Detroit as America's Postindustrial Frontier is scheduled on Thursday, 4/6/2017, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in Columbus 1, Marriott, First Floor

Beautiful Wasteland (2016): “What is the “new Detroit” that everyone keeps talking about? Rebecca J. Kinney reveals that the contemporary story of Detroit’s rebirth is an upcycled version of the American Dream, which has long imagined access to work, home, and upward mobility as race-neutral projects. She tackles key questions about the future of postindustrial America, and shows how the narratives of Detroit’s history are deeply steeped in material and ideological investments in whiteness.”

2404 Author-Meets-Critics: Brenda Parker's 'Masculinities and Markets: Raced and Gendered Urban Politics in Milwaukee' (2017) is scheduled on Thursday, 4/6/2017, from 1:20 PM - 3:00 PM in Room 104, Hynes, Plaza Level

Masculinities and Markets (2017): “Studies of urban neoliberalism have been surprisingly inattentive to gender. Brenda Parker begins to remedy this by looking at the effect of new urbanism, “creative class,” and welfare reform discourses on women in Milwaukee, a traditionally progressive city with a strong history of political organizing. Through a feminist partial political economy of place approach, Parker conducts
 an intersectional analysis of urban politics that simultaneously pays attention to a number of power relations. She argues that in the 1990s and 2000s, the city’s business-friendly agenda—although couched in uplifting rhetoric—strengthened existing hierarchies not only in class and race but also in gender. Taking on municipal elites’ adoption of Richard Florida’s “creative class” thesis, for example, Parker looks at the group Young Professionals of Milwaukee, exposing the way that a “creative careers” focus advances fundamentally masculine values and interests.” 

3177 Author meets the critics: The Geopolitics of Real Estate: Reconfiguring Property, Capital and Rights is scheduled on Friday, 4/7/2017, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in Harvard, Marriott, Third Floor

The Geopolitics of Real Estate (2016): “Individual foreign investment in Western nation states is a long-standing geopolitical issue. The expansion of the middle class in BRICS and Asian countries, and their increased activity in Western real estate markets as foreign investors, have introduced new and revived existing cultural and geopolitical sensitivities. In this book, Dallas Rogers develops a new history of foreign real estate investment by mapping the movement of human and financial capital over more than four centuries. The book argues the reconfiguration of Asian geopolitical power has ruptured the conceptual landscape for understanding international land and real estate relations. Drawing on assemblage theories (Latour, Deleuze and Guattari), assemblage analytical tactics (Sassen and Ong) and discursive media theories (Kittler and Foucault) a series of vignettes of land and real estate crisis are presented. The book demonstrates how foreign land claimers and global real estate professionals colonise, subvert and act beyond the governance structures of settler-societies to facilitate new types of capital circulation and accumulation around the world.”

3501 Mapping Flexibly 3: Author Meets Critics, Jill Desimini and Charles Waldheim's Cartographic Grounds is scheduled on Friday, 4/7/2017, from 3:20 PM - 5:00 PM in Room 101, Hynes, Plaza Level

Cartographic Grounds (2016): “Mapping has been one of the most fertile areas of exploration for architecture and landscape in the past few decades. While documenting this shift in representation from the material and physical description toward the dpiction of the unseen and often immaterial, Cartographic Grounds takes a critical view toward the current use of data mapping and visualization and calls for a return to traditional cartographic to reimagine the manifestation and manipulation of the ground itself.”

4114 Author Meets Critics: Elizabeth Povinelli's Geontologies: A Requiem for Late Liberalism is scheduled on Saturday, 4/8/2017, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in Room 203, Hynes, Second Level

Geontologies (2016): Elizabeth A. Povinelli continues her project of mapping the current conditions of late liberalism by offering a bold retheorization of power. Finding Foucauldian biopolitics unable to adequately reveal contemporary mechanisms of power and governance, Povinelli describes a mode of power she calls geontopower, which operates through the regulation of the distinction between Life and Nonlife and the figures of the Desert, the Animist, and the Virus. Geontologies examines this formation of power from the perspective of Indigenous Australian maneuvers against the settler state. And it probes how our contemporary critical languages—anthropogenic climate change, plasticity, new materialism, antinormativity—often unwittingly transform their struggles against geontopower into a deeper entwinement within it. A woman who became a river, a snakelike entity who spawns the fog, plesiosaurus fossils and vast networks of rock weirs: in asking how these different forms of existence refuse incorporation into the vocabularies of Western theory Povinelli provides a revelatory new way to understand a form of power long self-evident in certain regimes of settler late liberalism but now becoming visible much further beyond.”

4124 Author Meets Critics: Iyko Day's Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism is scheduled on Saturday, 4/8/2017, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in Room 304, Hynes, Third Level

Alien Capital (2016):  Iyko Day retheorizes the history and logic of settler colonialism by examining its intersection with capitalism and the racialization of Asian immigrants to Canada and the United States. Day explores how the historical alignment of Asian bodies and labor with capital's abstract and negative dimensions became one of settler colonialism's foundational and defining features. This alignment allowed white settlers to gloss over and expunge their complicity with capitalist exploitation from their collective memory. Day reveals this process through an analysis of a diverse body of Asian North American literature and visual culture, including depictions of Chinese railroad labor in the 1880s, filmic and literary responses to Japanese internment in the 1940s, and more recent examinations of the relations between free trade, national borders, and migrant labor. In highlighting these artists' reworking and exposing of the economic modalities of Asian racialized labor, Day pushes beyond existing approaches to settler colonialism as a Native/settler binary to formulate it as a dynamic triangulation of Native, settler, and alien populations and positionalities”

[whatisonthemoonarchive]

Kwame Nkrumah on the methods of neo-colonialism (from Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism):

Some of these methods used by neo-colonialists to slip past our guard must now be examined. The first is retention by the departing colonialists of various kinds of privileges which infringe on our sovereignty: that of setting up military bases or stationing troops in former colonies and the supplying of ‘advisers’ of one sort or another. Sometimes a number of ‘rights’ are demanded: land concessions, prospecting rights for minerals and/or oil; the ‘right’ to collect customs, to carry out administration, to issue paper money; to be exempt from customs duties and/or taxes for expatriate enterprises; and, above all, the ‘right’ to provide ‘aid’. Also demanded and granted are privileges in the cultural field; that Western information services be exclusive; and that those from socialist countries be excluded.

Even the cinema stories of fabulous Hollywood are loaded. One has only to listen to the cheers of an African audience as Hollywood’s heroes slaughter red Indians or Asiatics to understand the effectiveness of this weapon. For, in the developing continents, where the colonialist heritage has left a vast majority still illiterate, even the smallest child gets the message contained in the blood and thunder stories emanating from California. And along with murder and the Wild West goes an incessant barrage of anti-socialist propaganda, in which the trade union man, the revolutionary, or the man of dark skin is generally cast as the villain, while the policeman, the gum-shoe, the Federal agent — in a word, the CIA — type spy is ever the hero. Here, truly, is the ideological under-belly of those political murders which so often use local people as their instruments.

While Hollywood takes care of fiction, the enormous monopoly press, together with the outflow of slick, clever, expensive magazines, attends to what it chooses to call ‘news. Within separate countries, one or two news agencies control the news handouts, so that a deadly uniformity is achieved, regardless of the number of separate newspapers or magazines; while internationally, the financial preponderance of the United States is felt more and more through its foreign correspondents and offices abroad, as well as through its influence over inter-national capitalist journalism. Under this guise, a flood of anti-liberation propaganda emanates from the capital cities of the West, directed against China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Algeria, Ghana and all countries which hack out their own independent path to freedom. Prejudice is rife. For example, wherever there is armed struggle against the forces of reaction, the nationalists are referred to as rebels, terrorists, or frequently ‘communist terrorists’!

Perhaps one of the most insidious methods of the neo-colonialists is evangelism. Following the liberation movement there has been a veritable riptide of religious sects, the overwhelming majority of them American. Typical of these are Jehovah’s Witnesses who recently created trouble in certain developing countries by busily teaching their citizens not to salute the new national flags. ‘Religion’ was too thin to smother the outcry that arose against this activity, and a temporary lull followed. But the number of evangelists continues to grow.

Yet even evangelism and the cinema are only two twigs on a much bigger tree. Dating from the end of 1961, the U.S. has actively developed a huge ideological plan for invading the so-called Third World, utilising all its facilities from press and radio to Peace Corps.

During 1962 and 1963 a number of international conferences to this end were held in several places, such as Nicosia in Cyprus, San Jose in Costa Rica, and Lagos in Nigeria. Participants included the CIA, the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), the Pentagon, the International Development Agency, the Peace Corps and others. Programmes were drawn up which included the systematic use of U.S. citizens abroad in virtual intelligence activities and propaganda work. Methods of recruiting political agents and of forcing ‘alliances’ with the U.S.A. were worked out. At the centre of its programmes lay the demand for an absolute U.S. monopoly in the field of propaganda, as well as for counteracting any independent efforts by developing states in the realm of information.

The United States sought, and still seeks, with considerable success, to co-ordinate on the basis of its own strategy the propaganda activities of all Western countries. In October 1961, a conference of NATO countries was held in Rome to discuss problems of psychological warfare. It appealed for the organisation of combined ideological operations in Afro-Asian countries by all participants.

In May and June 1962 a seminar was convened by the U.S. in Vienna on ideological warfare. It adopted a secret decision to engage in a propaganda offensive against the developing countries along lines laid down by the U.S.A. It was agreed that NATO propaganda agencies would, in practice if not in the public eye, keep in close contact with U.S. Embassies in their respective countries.

Among instruments of such Western psychological warfare are numbered the intelligence agencies of Western countries headed by those of the United States ‘Invisible Government’. But most significant among them all are Moral Re-Armament QARA), the Peace Corps and the United States Information Agency (USIA).

Moral Re-Armament is an organisation founded in 1938 by the American, Frank Buchman. In the last days before the second world war, it advocated the appeasement of Hitler, often extolling Himmler, the Gestapo chief. In Africa, MRA incursions began at the end of World War II. Against the big anti-colonial upsurge that followed victory in 1945, MRA spent millions advocating collaboration between the forces oppressing the African peoples and those same peoples. It is not without significance that Moise Tshombe and Joseph Kasavubu of Congo (Leopoldville) are both MRA supporters. George Seldes, in his book One Thousand Americans, characterised MRA as a fascist organisation ‘subsidised by … Fascists, and with a long record of collaboration with Fascists the world over… .’ This description is supported by the active participation in MRA of people like General Carpentier, former commander of NATO land forces, and General Ho Ying-chin, one of Chiang Kai-shek’s top generals. To cap this, several newspapers, some of them in the Western ;vorld, have claimed that MRA is actually subsidised by the CIA.

When MRA’s influence began to fail, some new instrument to cover the ideological arena was desired. It came in the establishment of the American Peace Corps in 1961 by President John Kennedy, with Sargent Shriver, Jr., his brother-in-law, in charge. Shriver, a millionaire who made his pile in land speculation in Chicago, was also known as the friend, confidant and co-worker of the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Allen Dulles. These two had worked together in both the Office of Strategic Services, U.S. war-time intelligence agency, and in the CIA.

Shriver’s record makes a mockery of President Kennedy’s alleged instruction to Shriver to ‘keep the CIA out of the Peace Corps’. So does the fact that, although the Peace Corps is advertised as a voluntary organisation, all its members are carefully screened by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Since its creation in 1961, members of the Peace Corps have been exposed and expelled from many African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries for acts of subversion or prejudice. Indonesia, Tanzania, the Philippines, and even pro-West countries like Turkey and Iran, have complained of its activities.

However, perhaps the chief executor of U.S. psychological warfare is the United States Information Agency (USIA). Even for the wealthiest nation on earth, the U.S. lavishes an unusual amount of men, materials and money on this vehicle for its neo-colonial aims.

The USIA is staffed by some 12,000 persons to the tune of more than $130 million a year. It has more than seventy editorial staffs working on publications abroad. Of its network comprising 110 radio stations, 60 are outside the U.S. Programmes are broadcast for Africa by American stations in Morocco, Eritrea, Liberia, Crete, and Barcelona, Spain, as well as from off-shore stations on American ships. In Africa alone, the USIA transmits about thirty territorial and national radio programmes whose content glorifies the U.S. while attempting to discredit countries with an independent foreign policy.

The USIA boasts more than 120 branches in about 100 countries, 50 of which are in Africa alone. It has 250 centres in foreign countries, each of which is usually associated with a library. It employs about 200 cinemas and 8,000 projectors which draw upon its nearly 300 film libraries.

This agency is directed by a central body which operates in the name of the U.S. President, planning and coordinating its activities in close touch with the Pentagon, CIA and other Cold War agencies, including even armed forces intelligence centres.

In developing countries, the USIA actively tries to prevent expansion of national media of information so as itself to capture the market-place of ideas. It spends huge sums for publication and distribution of about sixty newspapers and magazines in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The American government backs the USIA through direct pressures on developing nations. To ensure its agency a complete monopoly in propaganda, for instance, many agreements for economic co-operation offered by the U.S. include a demand that Americans be granted preferential rights to disseminate information. At the same time, in trying to close the new nations to other sources of information, it employs other pressures. For instance, after agreeing to set up USIA information centres in their countries, both Togo and Congo (Leopoldville) originally hoped to follow a non-aligned path and permit Russian information centres as a balance. But Washington threatened to stop all aid, thereby forcing these two countries to renounce their plan.

Unbiased studies of the USIA by such authorities as Dr R. Holt of Princeton University, Retired Colonel R. Van de Velde, former intelligence agents Murril Dayer, Wilson Dizard and others, have all called attention to the close ties between this agency and U.S. Intelligence. For example, Deputy Director Donald M. Wilson was a political intelligence agent in the U.S. Army. Assistant Director for Europe, Joseph Philips, was a successful espionage agent in several Eastern European countries.

Some USIA duties further expose its nature as a top intelligence arm of the U.S. imperialists. In the first place, it is expected to analyse the situation in each country, making recommendations to its Embassy, thereby to its Government, about changes that can tip the local balance in U.S. favour. Secondly, it organises networks of monitors for radio broadcasts and telephone conversations, while recruiting informers from government offices. It also hires people to distribute U.S. propaganda. Thirdly, it collects secret information with special reference to defence and economy, as a means of eliminating its international military and economic competitors. Fourthly, it buys its way into local publications to influence their policies, of which Latin America furnishes numerous examples. It has been active in bribing public figures, for example in Kenya and Tunisia. Finally, it finances, directs and often supplies with arms all anti-neutralist forces in the developing countries, witness Tshombe in Congo (Leopoldville) and Pak Hung Ji in South Korea. In a word, with virtually unlimited finances, there seems no bounds to its inventiveness in subversion.

One of the most recent developments in neo-colonialist strategy is the suggested establishment of a Businessmen Corps which will, like the Peace Corps, act in developing countries. In an article on ‘U.S. Intelligence and the Monopolies’ in International Affairs (Moscow, January 1965), V. Chernyavsky writes: ‘There can hardly be any doubt that this Corps is a new U.S. intelligence organisation created on the initiative of the American monopolies to use Big Business for espionage. It is by no means unusual for U.S. Intelligence to set up its own business firms which are merely thinly disguised espionage centres. For example, according to Chernyavsky, the C.I.A. has set up a firm in Taiwan known as Western Enterprises Inc. Under this cover it sends spies and saboteurs to South China. The New Asia Trading Company, a CIA firm in India, has also helped to camouflage U.S. intelligence agents operating in South-east Asia.

Such is the catalogue of neo-colonialism’s activities and methods in our time. Upon reading it, the faint-hearted might come to feel that they must give up in despair before such an array of apparent power and seemingly inexhaustible resources.

Fortunately, however, history furnishes innumerable proofs of one of its own major laws; that the budding future is always stronger than the withering past. This has been amply demonstrated during every major revolution throughout history.

[gystink]

Job: New York City Library is looking for a FT Collections Manager (NYC)

Organization

The New York Public Library

Website

https://www.nypl.org/

Country

United States

Location

New York, NY

Sector

Libraries

Position Level

Experienced (Non-Manager)

Education

4-Year Degree

Position Type

Full Time Permanent

Description

Overview The special collections of the New York Public Library pass through the Library Services Center (LSC) in Long Island City as they are acquired, processed, prepared for exhibition and outgoing loan, undergo conservation treatment, and are digitized. NYPL is creating a new Collection Manager position to manage and track collections as they arrive, progress through these activities at LSC, and are transported to their permanent storage locations. The successful candidate will consolidate and refine current processes to improve tracking and readiness of materials for the Special Collections Processing unit, develop benchmarks for the performance of and implement effective storeroom management, and coordinate the development of standard collection documentation practices. Reporting to the Senior Manager, Collection Management, this position will work with partners across curatorial, preservation, digital, facilities, security, and logistics divisions, as well as donors and vendors. Candidates who are collaborative, inclusive, and can think creatively will find this opportunity one in which they can further develop an array of skills in archival science, collection management, logistics, preventive conservation, and registration. Principal Responsibilities Reporting to the Senior Manager, Collection Management, the Collection Manager will: •Manage all collections entering LSC, including receiving, storeroom management, location management, and coordinating transport of collections to permanent storage locations •Accession new special collection acquisitions •Oversee special collection acquisition logistics, collaborating with curators and coordinating with internal and external partners to efficiently transport and intake new acquisitions •Effectively manage the completion, quality control, physical organization, storage, and dissemination of collection documentation at the time of acquisition •Coordinate site visits to physically evaluate and document potential acquisitions •Coordinate shipment of special collections to LSC from Research Centers, RECAP, and other external storage locations •Liaise with Facilities, Security, and Capital Planning staff around preventive conservation and building management issues for LSC storerooms •Serve on the REACT collection emergency team. Required Education & Experience •Masters degree in Library or Archival Science, Museum Studies, Arts Administration or equivalent experience, with a concentration or experience in collection registration and management required •Broad humanities knowledge as demonstrated through academic degrees or an equivalent combination of training and experience •Three or more years experience in registration, acquisitions management, and/or managing collections required Minimum Qualifications •Familiarity with professional standards in cultural heritage collection management and registration and a strong sense of legal and ethical issues surrounding the acquisition of different types of collections required •Demonstrated knowledge of a wide range of special collection formats and their related preservation issues, including appropriate packing, shipping, and storage •Knowledge of packing methods and materials and associated vendors required. Must be able to assess and articulate risks associated with different methods •Demonstrated record of designing and managing projects and bringing them to a conclusion in a timely fashion. •Experience working collaboratively and independently with varied groups within a complex organization and rapidly changing team environment. •Experience working with fine arts shippers required, including a working knowledge about customs requirements, long-distance shipping, and insurance •Demonstrated familiarity with collection storeroom management and preventive conservation required •Attention to detail and excellent customer service required •Excellent verbal and written communications Preferred Qualifications •Experience with procedures and systems for accessioning manuscript and archival materials preferred •Experience processing and cataloging literary manuscripts and archival collections preferred All team members are expected and encouraged to embody the NYPL Core Values: •Be Helpful to patrons and colleagues •Be Resourceful in solving problems •Be Curious in all aspects of your work Work Environment •Office setting •Storage area setting •Offsite, including donor’s homes, basements, attics, storage facilities, warehouses •Public library setting Physical Duties •Must travel to four research library sites and to donor homes and warehouses in the NYC metropolitan area. These areas may include basements, attics, outbuildings, and spaces that may be dusty, dirty, or difficult to access. Some additional travel outside the NYC area may be required. •Position involves reasonable exposure to dust •Ability to lift up to 40 pounds (record cartons filled with paper and other material) repeatedly from floor to shelf/cart and climb ladders simultaneously as well as stand for long periods of time required. Hours 35 hours per week #LI-DNI

Application Instructions / Public Contact Information

https://jobs-nypl.icims.com/jobs/11260/collection-manager/job

[gwythaint]

Just released this week ( and in time for Halloween) is my latest bundle of stock art : Undead available from DrivethruRPG for $4.99.

  I have been doing a lot of work these past months for Gabor Lux’ Echoes from Fomalhaut, and in particular for his upcoming Tegel Manor inspired megadungeon, Castle Xyntillan, and the still-in-development In the Shadow of the City God

Two of his most recent items, The Nocturnal Table currently available as a pdf from Drivethrurpg and featuring work by Mathew Ray, Stefan Poag, and Peter Mullen as well as myself, along with EFF#6: The Rising Tombs which has art by myself and Stefan Poag also, both are suited for describing convoluted weird cities at night. As my own game takes place in such a place, I found this rather interesting. The random encounters in the Nocturnal Table go way beyond the old DMG city encounter tables, and into some very strange places. Otherwise boring encounters with nameless NPc’s are richly described run ins with peculiar named personages, each with a distince flavor. There has been a lot said about demonstrating an implied setting by examining the encounter tables instead of dropping in extensive exposition, for example, regarding OD&D. The Rising Tombs does this with minimal descriptions and small notes, and leaves the reader to connect the dots.  In one part of the city, in a sealed community where the swells reside, it is always night with a perpetual full moon. This is atmospheric, but there are some supporting features; The city is ruled by a powerful illusionist, and also the rich folks are near immortal and addicted to potions of longevity… or they may be vampires.  The under layers of the city evoke a bit of the depths of  Dwimmermount, without dumping pages of history up front.  There are, by way of anticipating adventurers who want to burn down the tavern, mentions of an enormous machine that extends into the depths, that might explode like a megaton warhead if tampered with, and the side note that one must wear “sacred vestments” (radiation suits) to safely enter the lower levels of a dungeon. Not only are the routes to this area from a  cheap hotel that H.H.Holmes might have built, or through the green room of a collapsing Theater haunted by a phantom… or through a temple of a rat/plague god. These are not your typical entry by sewer dungeons, and definitely not like either  my  or Hasbro’s  taverns with conduits to the underworld.  Gabor Lux, (known on forae as Melan), for all his resentment against the Sworddream style of OSR derived play, is firmly in touch with the parts of our hobby that are gonzo and rooted in Weird fiction.  It is no secret that I like that style of gaming, as I grew up reading my dad’s virtually complete Appendix N library (assembled as it was printed, in crumbling 35 cent paperbacks, most of which I have been reacquiring from used booksellers), and while a good amount of both Gabor’s and John Stater‘s products are procedurally generated, they go into some far out places that I am happy to illustrate.  That headless undead in my stock art bundle is based on one of the encounters in Nod zine, although I forget what issue.  I own copies of about eight issues I did illustrations for, but there are 26 other issues of the same grade of super detailed and strange hexcrawls.

Meanwhile, in my game, there have been some odd developments.

The group travelling with the  demon hunting celestial Kalima  have decided to try and summon her back to the world after a demonologist they were fighting banished her with a hurled Spellstone. I was thoroughly expecting that they would be glad to be rid of such a DM PC, but no plan escapes an encounter with palers unscathed. My Wuxia group has traveled into the megafauna rich land of Veroigne, nominally to collect a rice harvest for the Sahudese population back in Northport, and have encountered the odd ecosystem of the rice grower’s village.  Swarms of stirges rise out of the rice paddies, but are chased away from the workers by a sacred giant dragonfly, from whom the party received a blessing, much the way the other group in the area had their ranger blessed by the Stag of Veroigne, who was somewhere between the Forrest Spirit of Princess Mononoke, and Bambi’s father. Both groups have seen tracks of giant rabits being stalked by dire wolves.

The group that were hired to hunt a rampaging beast have instead decided to try and take over an abandoned castle, which brings me around to an issue developing around my Juniors group. They have been trying to establish themselves with real property (excepting those among them who have Social Stigma:Criminal, who cannot directly own real property in Northport) and I have been using the Base Perk as a leveled one.  Base normally gives you a place that you don’t have to pay rent that is about as good as what you might have, but with a status level of 2 levels lower than your own.  At status 0, that is not much to talk about, in this case, a peasant’s hovel or tenement row house in disrepair. I suppose in other settings it would be a back booth in a diner or a leaky basement apartment.  Making it a leveled perk lets you raise it by one status level per point invested, which means that at 3 points, it is a clean, functional status 0 home.  This group of PC’s are trying to control the housing above an entrance to the dungeon and in particular, to a magical gate.  I had originally had them invest in independent income, but that was only netting half a silver a month per point at average wealth, so I converted those points to base. The Initiate in the group has been attracting followers (not yet bought as allies) who have been doing things like basic carpentry, weeding, whitewashing…etc, that have resulted in the area being upgraded.  A lot of the things I have been thinking of here were sort of echoed in Necropraxis’ blog about Stronghold Achievements for low level characters.

I miss things like the Mansion advantage from GURPS VtM, and the leveled advantage Sanctuary, from the defunct Advanced Goblins & Grottoes setting from Otherwhere dot org, (sadly even beyond the reach of the internet wayback machine). That one let you build anything from the Batcave (large, secret, secure) to something like the airships of Girl Genius.

Undead Stock art and reviews Just released this week ( and in time for Halloween) is my latest bundle of stock art : …

[csrgood]

Sappi North America Awards 2019 Ideas That Matter Grants

 Sappi North America, Inc., a leading producer and supplier of diversified paper and packaging products, today announced the 2019 recipients of its annual Ideas that Matter grant program. Celebrating its 20th year, the program provides funding to support the production and distribution of social impact print projects with integrated campaigns.

For two decades, Sappi has championed the work of social impact designers through its Ideas that Matter grant program, the cornerstone of its corporate social responsibility platform. The company has made global contributions totaling more than $13 million to fund more than 500 projects since the program was created.

This year’s recipients demonstrate how print, combined with online and in-person activities, can play an important role in solving social issues. The winning grants include a wide range of innovative solutions that will: 

Advance sustainable food systems 

Offer tax preparation support for low-income families

Deliver legal guidelines for independent farmers

Educate employers about equity and justice in hiring

Build positive relationships between law enforcement and communities of color

“As Ideas that Matter celebrates 20 years, Sappi continues to show its commitment to supporting social good through print design,” said Patti Groh, Marketing Communications Director, Sappi North America. "As we look ahead, we’re excited to continue working with a growing group of designers focused on social impact. We learn more about the important work being done in this field each year and expect that our efforts can continue to help it flourish and influence positive change for people and communities everywhere.”

The 2019 Ideas that Matter grant recipients include:

Designer or Firm

Nonprofit Beneficiary

Project Title

Description

Liz Rose Chmela, Made by We

  Washington, DC

Farm Commons

Farm Law 101: Workbook

Sustainable farmers today need the power and resources to solve business law problems pertaining to their land. This all-in-one workbook contains hands-on materials for both new and experienced farmers to help them become more comfortable with farm law. The workbook and kit pairs in-depth information with hands-on learning techniques and will serve as a physical reference without the concerns of slow internet connection.

Michael Bierut, Pentagram

  New York, NY

Greyston Foundation

Let’s Get to Work

Greyston Foundation’s mission is to create thriving communities through the promotion of Open Hiring which encourages employment practices that do not include judgement or the questioning of personal history and past challenges of candidates. Let’s Get to Work supports this mission through compelling design and communication deployed through seminar materials, a redesigned website, and a brand book.

Karen Cheng and Selina Nguyen, University of Washington, Division of Design, School of Art + Art History + Design

  Seattle, WA

Interfaith Task Force on Homelessness (ITFH)

Aiding People Living in Vehicles: Navigating Parking in Seattle

  Currently, there are 2,147 individuals living in their vehicles in Seattle. It is critical that vehicle residents understand and obey parking laws to avoid losing their home and possessions. This project will include the design and distribution of a brochure that explains Seattle’s complex parking regulations for vehicle residents. In addition to the brochure, a one-page information sheet will explain how neighborhoods and communities can help vehicle residents.

Tanairi Rodriguez and Jonathan Frederick, Morehead Planetarium & Science Center

  Chapel Hill, NC

Morehead Planetarium & Science Center

Explora las Estrellas / Explore the Stars

Morehead’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, embodied by their tagline of “Science for All”, has a strategic goal of reaching more Latinx and Spanish speaking audiences, an underrepresented population in STEM. To support this mission Morehead plans to host a family-focused bilingual astronomy event and campaign in partnership with Latinx organizations in North Carolina’s Research Triangle area. To continue the engagement beyond the event, families will take home with them an activity kit. And, to support this initiative mailers, posters, flyers, signage and banners, t-shirts, stickers and kit will be part of their ongoing strategy.

Naomi Usher, Studio Usher

  New York, NY

NY Sun Works

100,000 lbs of Veggies! Now What?

NY Sun Work builds innovative science labs in urban schools. Their Greenhouse Project Initiative uses hydroponic farming technology to educate students and teachers about the science of sustainability. Pounds and pounds of fresh greens are the by-product of every greenhouse classroom and during the 2019-2020 school year, students will harvest 100,000 pounds of leafy greens. Studio Usher is working with NY Sun Works to design a workbook and develop new curriculum to guide students and teachers to make the best use of this produce.

  Emily Julka

  Madison, WI

REAP Food Group

Growing Healthy Together

Growing Healthy Together is a bilingual educational campaign aimed at reducing health inequities of Wisconsin residents who face institutional and historical barriers to fresh seasonal, healthy food. To meet this challenge, this project will include a multilingual, culturally-relevant printed brochure that focuses on affordability and sustainability of seasonal Wisconsin-grown food. The intention is to strengthen connections between eaters and those who grow their food, as well as celebrate eating local as an act of community building and wellness for all. 

  Nate Bernhard and Harris Levine, Ker-twang

  Miami, FL

StreetCred at Boston Medical Center

Increasing uptake of the EITC at low-income pediatric clinics via targeted messaging and support

This campaign will use print and digital materials in the pediatrician's office to reach low-income families that are eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). These materials will address key obstacles to claiming the EITC and will include postcard flyers, engaging graphic posters, short pamphlets, and mobile-friendly digital resources.

  Jen Guibord, HUB Collective

  Portland, OR

The August Wilson Red Door Project

The Evolve Experience

Produced by the Red Door Project, The Evolve Experience is an immersive theater performance and facilitated dialogue that tackles the struggles where power, bias and race collide in the treatment of people of color by police. The production is geared for members of the criminal justice system across America. To support this initiative, HUB Collective will create a kit that includes support materials about the production, tools for engaging in the talk-back session and take-away items to help audience members engage with others on the topics of the production.

Ann Sappenfield, Fluora Studio

  New York, NY

The Edmund Niles Huyck Preserve

A Field Guide to a Field Station: Celebrating 80 Years of Research at the Huyck Preserve

The Huyck Preserve is celebrating eight decades of scientific accomplishment as well as highlighting the research culture of its field station. To mark this milestone and to ensure ongoing support of the field station's activities, this campaign includes a field guide, commemorative poster, exhibition, digital field guide and a tote bag, each of which is tailored to a specific target audience of the Preserve.

Mariana Amatullo, Bryan Boyer, Jennifer May and Andrew Shea

  New York, NY

Detroit, MI Pasadena, CA

The New School

Global LEAP: New Frontiers in Design for Social Innovation

This publication will be the first worldwide survey of design for social innovation practices with a focus on business models and impact. Part field guide and part source book, it will include case studies, reflective dialogues and short essays by leaders in social impact. Accompanying the publication is a dedicated website that fulfills the principle of accessibility and open source content. And, an educators’ guide will provide needed resources to help continue the growth and evolution of the field.

Linda Kwon

  Urbana, IL

Trauma & Resilience Initiative, Inc.

For Colored Girls Who Weather Life’s Storms

This unique project is a graphic novel with autobiographical stories from diverse women of color. The stories explore not only their personal relationships with trauma, but also the strengths, resources and supports that continue to foster resiliency and post-traumatic growth. To help promote and build awareness of the book, postcards and bookmarks will be distributed in advance to organizations, events and libraries.

Grant proposals are evaluated on effectiveness of design, plans for implementation and potential impact by an independent panel of judges who are selected annually and are recognized for their commitment to design for social impact. The 2019 judges were Sam Aquillano, Founder and Executive Director, Design Museum Foundation; George Aye, Co-Founder and Director of Innovation, Greater Good Studio; Ashleigh Axios, Creative Director, Obama White House and Executive Board Member, AIGA; Antionette Carroll, M.A., President and CEO, Founder, Creative Reaction Lab; Christine Taylor, Licensing Creative Manager, Hallmark Cards and Creative Director, PopMinded by Hallmark.

For more information about Sappi's 2019 Ideas that Matter grant recipients, please visit the website or follow the company on Facebook and Twitter. The call for entries for next year's Ideas that Matter program will be announced in April 2020.

  ENDS

About Sappi North America, Inc.

Sappi North America, Inc., headquartered in Boston, is a market leader in converting wood fiber into superior products that customers demand worldwide. The success of our four diversified businesses – high-quality Coated Printing Papers, Dissolving Wood Pulp, Packaging and Specialty Papers and Casting and Release Papers – is driven by strong customer relationships, best-in-class people and advantaged assets, products and services. Our high-quality Coated Printing Papers, including McCoy, Opus, Somerset, and Flo, are the key platform for premium magazines, catalogs, books, direct mail and high-end print advertising. We are a leading manufacturer of Dissolving Wood Pulp with our Verve brand, a sustainable fiber, which is used in a wide range of products, including textile fibers and household goods. We deliver sustainable Packaging and Specialty Papers for luxury packaging and folding carton applications with our single-ply packaging brands, Spectro and Proto, and for the food and label industries with our specialty papers, LusterPrint and LusterCote. We are also one of the world's leading suppliers of Casting and Release Papers with our Ultracast, PolyEx and Classics lines for the automotive, fashion and engineered films industries. Customers rely on Sappi for high technical, operational and market expertise; products and services delivered with consistently high quality and reliability; and, state-of-the-art and cost-competitive assets and innovative spirit.

Sappi North America is a subsidiary of Sappi Limited (JSE), a global company headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa, with more than 12,000 employees and manufacturing operations on three continents in seven countries and customers in over 150 countries.

source: https://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/42714-Sappi-North-America-Awards-2019-Ideas-That-Matter-Grants?tracking_source=rss

[terabitweb]

Original Post from FireEye Author: Carlos Garcia Prado

Adobe Flash is one of the most exploited software components of the last decade. Its complexity and ubiquity make it an obvious target for attackers. Public sources list more than one thousand CVEs being assigned to the Flash Player alone since 2005. Almost nine hundred of these vulnerabilities have a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score of nine or higher.

After more than a decade of playing cat and mouse with the attackers, Adobe is finally deprecating Flash in 2020. To the security community this move is not a surprise since all major browsers have already dropped support for Flash.

A common misconception exists that Flash is already a thing of the past; however, history has shown us that legacy technologies linger for quite a long time. If organizations do not phase Flash out in time, the security threat may grow beyond Flash’s end of life due to a lack of security patches.

As malware analysts on the FLARE team, we still see Flash exploits within malware samples. We must find a compromise between the need to analyse Flash samples and the correct amount of resources to be spent on a declining product. To this end we developed FLASHMINGO, a framework to automate the analysis of SWF files. FLASHMINGO enables analysts to triage suspicious Flash samples and investigate them further with minimal effort. It integrates into various analysis workflows as a stand-alone application or can be used as a powerful library. Users can easily extend the tool’s functionality via custom Python plug-ins.

Background: SWF and ActionScript3

Before we dive into the inner workings of FLASHMINGO, let’s learn about the Flash architecture. Flash’s SWF files are composed of chunks, called tags, implementing a specific functionality. Tags are completely independent from each other, allowing for compatibility with older versions of Flash. If a tag is not supported, the software simply ignores it. The main source of security issues revolves around SWF’s scripting language: ActionScript3 (AS3). This scripting language is compiled into bytecode and placed within a Do ActionScript ByteCode (DoABC) tag. If a SWF file contains a DoABC tag, the bytecode is extracted and executed by a proprietary stack-based virtual machine (VM), known as AVM2 in the case of AS3, shipped within Adobe’s Flash player. The design of the AVM2 was based on the Java VM and was similarly plagued by memory corruption and logical issues that allowed malicious AS3 bytecode to execute native code in the context of the Flash player. In the few cases where the root cause of past vulnerabilities was not in the AVM2, ActionScript code was still necessary to put the system in a state suitable for reliable exploitation. For example, by grooming the heap before triggering a memory corruption. For these reasons, FLASHMINGO focuses on the analysis of AS3 bytecode.

Tool Architecture

FLASHMINGO leverages the open source SWIFFAS library to do the heavy lifting of parsing Flash files. All binary data and bytecode are parsed and stored in a large object named SWFObject. This object contains all the information about the SWF relevant to our analysis: a list of tags, information about all methods, strings, constants and embedded binary data, to name a few. It is essentially a representation of the SWF file in an easily queryable format.

FLASHMINGO is a collection of plug-ins that operate on the SWFObject and extract interesting information. Figure 1 shows the relationship between FLASHMINGO, its plug-ins, and the SWFObject.

Figure 1: High level software structure

Several useful plug-ins covering a wide range of common analysis are already included with FLASHMINGO, including:

Find suspicious method names. Many samples contain method names used during development, like “run_shell” or “find_virtualprotect”. This plug-in flags samples with methods containing suspicious substrings.

Find suspicious constants. The presence of certain constant values in the bytecode may point to malicious or suspicious code. For example, code containing the constant value 0x5A4D may be shellcode searching for an MZ header.

Find suspicious loops. Malicious activity often happens within loops. This includes encoding, decoding, and heap spraying. This plug-in flags methods containing loops with interesting operations such as XOR or bitwise AND. It is a simple heuristic that effectively detects most encoding and decoding operations, and otherwise interesting code to further analyse.

Retrieve all embedded binary data.

A decompiler plug-in that uses the FFDEC Flash Decompiler. This decompiler engine, written in Java, can be used as a stand-alone library. Since FLASHMINGO is written in Python, using this plug-in requires Jython to interoperate between these two languages.

Extending FLASHMINGO With Your Own Plug-ins

FLASHMINGO is very easy to extend. Every plug-in is located in its own directory under the plug-ins directory. At start-up FLASHMINGO searches all plug-in directories for a manifest file (explained later in the post) and registers the plug-in if it is marked as active.

To accelerate development a template plug-in is provided. To add your own plug-in, copy the template directory, rename it, and edit its manifest and code. The template plug-in’s manifest, written in YAML, is shown below:

“` # This is a template for easy development name: Template active: no description: copy this to kickstart development returns: nothing

“`

The most important parameters in this file are: name and active. The name parameter is used internally by FLASHMINGO to refer to it. The active parameter is a Boolean value (yes or no) indicating whether this plug-in should be active or not. By default, all plug-ins (except the template) are active, but there may be cases where a user would want to deactivate a plug-in. The parameters description and returns are simple strings to display documentation to the user. Finally, plug-in manifests are parsed once at program start. Adding new plug-ins or enabling/disabling plug-ins requires restarting FLASHMINGO.

Now for the actual code implementing the business logic. The file plugin.py contains a class named Plugin; the only thing that is needed is to implement its run method. Each plug-in receives an instance of a SWFObject as a parameter. The code will interact with this object and return data in a custom format, defined by the user. This way, the user’s plug-ins can be written to produce data that can be directly ingested by their infrastructure.

Let’s see how easy it is to create plug-ins by walking through one that is included, named binary_data. This plugin returns all embedded data in a SWF file by default. If the user specifies an optional parameter pattern then the plug-in searches for matches of that byte sequence within the embedded data, returning a dictionary of embedded data and the offset at which the pattern was found.

First, we define the optional argument pattern to be supplied by the user (line 2 and line 4):

Afterwards, implement a custom run method and all other code needed to support it:

This is a simple but useful plugin and illustrates how to interact with FLASHMINGO. The plug-in has a logging facility accessible through the property “ml” (line 2). By default it logs to FLASHMINGO’s main logger. If unspecified, it falls back to a log file within the plug-in’s directory. Line 10 to line 16 show the custom run method, extracting information from the SWF’s embedded data with the help of the custom _inspect_binary_data method. Note the source of this binary data: it is being read from a property named “swf”. This is the SWFObject passed to the plug-in as an argument, as mentioned previously. More complex analysis can be performed on the SWF file contents interacting with this swf object. Our repository contains documentation for all available methods of a SWFObject.

Conclusion

Even though Flash is set to reach its end of life at the end of 2020 and most of the development community has moved away from it a long time ago, we predict that we’ll see Flash being used as an infection vector for a while. Legacy technologies are juicy targets for attackers due to the lack of security updates. FLASHMINGO provides malware analysts a flexible framework to quickly deal with these pesky Flash samples without getting bogged down in the intricacies of the execution environment and file format.

Find the FLASHMINGO tool on the FireEye public GitHub Repository.

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Go to Source Author: Carlos Garcia Prado FLASHMINGO: The FireEye Open Source Automatic Analysis Tool for Flash Original Post from FireEye Author: Carlos Garcia Prado Adobe Flash is one of the most exploited software components of the…