#stop trying to create a hierarchy of relationships so you can use one label to prove without a doubt that this relationship will always be

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

A surprising amount of people seem to believe that the true end goal of a strong platonic relationship is for it to be familial (like siblings or like parent and child. Distinctly in a nuclear idea of family), and that the only two possible end goals for strong relationships are to either be family (in a nuclear family way) or to be lovers and it shows

[shinidamachu]

I’m sorry but literally no other Inuyasha pairing, canon or not canon, had the same dynamic as 𝕤𝕖𝕤𝕤𝕣𝕚𝕟. Literally no one. This alone should have been enough clue about how misplaced (to say the very least) a romantic relationship between Rin and Sesshomaru would be.

When shippers say “Inukag had an age gap too” they’re making a point they either: 

a) don’t actually believe in, but know that most of the fandom ships Inukag, so using Inuyasha and Kagome as a “gotcha” by equating them to 𝕤𝕖𝕤𝕤𝕣𝕚𝕟 is their best chance to “win” the argument because they know we’re not gonna stop shipping Inukag and therefore we’re the hypocrites for not supporting 𝕤𝕖𝕤𝕤𝕣𝕚𝕟 too when they know damn well the circumstances couldn’t be more different.

or

b) actually believe in, but that can be due to lack of critical thinking or the possibility they need to keep believing Inukag and 𝕤𝕖𝕤𝕤𝕣𝕚𝕟 are the same so they don’t have to deal with the fact that their ship is problematic to an unhealthy level.

Kagome was a 15yo teenager when she met Inuyasha. Rin was a literal child when she met Sesshomaru. Kagome was already her own person, mostly (because she is still a teen) capable of seeing things objectively and making her own decisions. Rin was a kid, impressionable and manipulable, with her personality starting to form. Kagome was obviously Inuyasha’s love interest because emotionally and physically speaking, they’re in the same playing field. Rin was a plot device to help Sesshomaru’s character development because emotionally and physically speaking he was an adult and she was the kid he took under his wing. Whatever you want to label it, there was a power imbalance, there was a hierarchy. Saying there wasn’t is straight up erasing canon and creating your own facts (which is fine, unless you start to get mad at others for not accepting them as undeniable truth) and this power imbalance won’t cease to exist just because Rin grew up.

No other Inuyasha pairing had the same dynamic as 𝕤𝕖𝕤𝕤𝕣𝕚𝕟.

Shippers also argue about Koga and Ayame. Granted, they met when he saved her life and she was a kid too. But as much as his “proposal” can and should be frowned upon, they parted ways right after, while Sesshomaru and Rin sticked together. In fact, Koga forgot all about Ayame until they met again, when she was about Kagome’s age (at least in appearance). For his part, Sesshomaru kept Rin around as his ward, protecting and caring deeply for her until leaving her at Kaede’s, but still visiting her and bringing her gifts. Koga never did such things: after their interaction ended, it ended. And we know Ayame didn’t cross his mind because he fell in love with Kagome. Koga actually fell in love with someone else (someone with a proper age to be his romantic interest, may I add) instead of waiting around for Ayame to grow up, which shippers seem to claim it was what Sesshomaru did with Rin.

Futhermore, we know teenager Ayame. She romanticized Koga over that one moment she shared with him when he saved her, even without seeing him for years, but when they met again, he didn’t quite live up to her expectations at first. I vaguely remember some animosity between them and then Ayame leaving or something of the sorts. We do not know teenager Rin, though. If Ayame romanticized Koga over a single memory, well... We know Rin had a lot more than that with Sesshomaru and the time they spent together was way more meaningful. So where does that leave Rin? Would she ever realize she romanticized Sesshomaru? Would she ever admit he has flaws? Would she stand her ground against him if necessary, stand up for herself, tell him off, leave? Or would she submit to whatever he says?

Anyway... Every Koga/Ayame criticism is valid! There are no convincing excuses for not introducing Ayame as a teenager in the flashback she meets Koga (like she was for most of her screen time) or for not making Koga a kid then too. But then again, it was 2002. Shouldn’t we be trying to do better now? Sunrise wrote Koga/Ayame this way and “got away” with it, does that give them a blank check? Are they free of criticism forever? I don’t think that’s how it works. Besides, Ayame played a way smaller part in Inuyasha than Rin would play in the sequel if she turns out to be Sesshomaru’s wife. One of the biggest misteries of the show is precisely the mother of the twins. That’s impacting. That’s what people will remember.

Lastly, shippers like to use Mirsan too. Miroku, because his pervert behavior towards Sango and other women are also harmful. Sango, because canonically she got pregnant very young and this was a normal thing in Feudal Era Japan. Well, I agree about Miroku. His behavior towards women was gross. However, he is constantly being called out on it. By the narrative. By Kagome. By Sango herself. Even Inuyasha! It might be portrayed as comic relief, but it is pretty obvious his actions are wrong. Sessrin becoming canon, on the other hand, would have tons of unexcusable behavior portrayed in a good light. That’s harmful and dangerous. As for Sango, she did have kids young. With her equally young partner. Again, emotionally and physically speaking: in the same playing field. And in their case, you might even say chronologically too, since they are both humans and time affects them the same way, with their age gap being small enough to be irrelevant. Also, I’m not sure a show with actual demons, ghosts and time traveling was really worried about historical accuracy.

Insisting that other Inuyasha couples are just as problematic as 𝕤𝕖𝕤𝕤𝕣𝕚𝕟 is a waste of your time and ours. You’re not fooling anyone but yourselves.

[linastudyblrsblog]

Burnout, unfortunately, is everywhere. If you haven’t experienced it personally, you probably know someone who has self-diagnosed.

 Defined by the World Health Organization as a syndrome “conceptualized as resulted from chronic workplace stress,” it causes exhaustion, “feelings of negativism or cynicism,” and reduced efficacy. That’s a big umbrella, and the condition has become something of a catch-all for chronic, modern-day stress. 

Here are 11 of our favorites to help you create your own escape plan:

1. Figure out which kind of burnout you have.

The Association for Psychological Science found that burnout comes in three different types, and each one needs a different solution:

1. Overload: The frenetic employee who works toward success until exhaustion, is most closely related to emotional venting. These individuals might try to cope with their stress by complaining about the organizational hierarchy at work, feeling as though it imposes limits on their goals and ambitions. That coping strategy, unsurprisingly, seems to lead to a stress overload and a tendency to throw in the towel.

2. Lack of Development: Most closely associated with an avoidance coping strategy. These under-challenged workers tend to manage stress by distancing themselves from work, a strategy that leads to depersonalization and cynicism — a harbinger for burning out and packing up shop.

3. Neglect: Seems to stem from a coping strategy based on giving up in the face of stress. Even though these individuals want to achieve a certain goal, they lack the motivation to plow through barriers to get to it

2. Cut down and start saying “no.”

Every “yes” you say adds another thing on your plate and takes more energy away from you, and your creativity:

If you take on too many commitments, start saying ‘no’. If you have too many ideas, execute a few and put the rest in a folder labeled ‘backburner’. If you suffer from information overload, start blocking off downtime or focused worktime in your schedule (here are some tools that may help). Answer email at set times. Switch your phone off, or even leave it behind. The world won’t end. I promise.

3.  Give up on getting motivated.

With real burnout mode, you’re too exhausted to stay positive. So don’t:

When you’re mired in negative emotions about work, resist the urge to try to stamp them out. Instead, get a little distance — step away from your desk, focus on your breath for a few seconds — and then just feel the negativity, without trying to banish it. Then take action alongside the emotion. Usually, the negative feelings will soon dissipate. Even if they don’t, you’ll be a step closer to a meaningful achievement.

4.  Treat the disease, not the symptoms. 

For real recovery and prevention to happen, you need to find the real, deeper issue behind why you’re burnt out:

Instead of overreacting to the blip, step back from it, see it as an incident instead of an indictment, and then examine it like Sherlock Holmes looking for clues.

For example, you could ask yourself: What happened before the slip? Did I encounter a specific trigger event such as a last-minute client request? Was there an unusual circumstance such as sickness? When did I first notice the reversion in my behavior? Is some part of this routine unsustainable and if so, how could I adjust it to make it more realistic?

5.  Make downtime a daily ritual.

To help relieve pressure, schedule daily blocks of downtime to refuel your brain and well-being. It can be anything from meditation to a nap, a walk, or simply turning off the wifi for a while:

When it comes to scheduling, we will need to allocate blocks of time for deep thinking. Maybe you will carve out a 1-2 hour block on your calendar every day for taking a walk or grabbing a cup of coffee and just pondering some of those bigger things. I can even imagine a day when homes and apartments have a special switch that shuts down wi-fi and data access during dinner or at night – just to provide a temporary pause from the constant flow of status updates and other communications��

There is no better mental escape from our tech-charged world than the act of meditation. If only for 15 minutes, the ability to steer your mind away from constant stimulation is downright liberating. There are various kinds of meditation. Some forms require you to think about nothing and completely clear your mind. (This is quite hard, at least for me.) Other forms of meditation are about focusing on one specific thing – often your breath, or a mantra that you repeat in your head (or out loud) for 10-15 minutes…

If you can’t adopt meditation, you might also try clearing your mind the old fashioned way – by sleeping. The legendary energy expert and bestselling author Tony Schwartz takes a 20-minute nap every day. Even if it’s a few hours before he presents to a packed audience, he’ll take a short nap.

6.  Stop being a perfectionist; start satisficing.

Trying to maximize every task and squeeze every drop of productivity out of your creative work is a recipe for exhaustion and procrastination. Set yourself boundaries for acceptable work and stick to them:

Consistently sacrificing your health, your well being, your relationships, and your sanity for the sake of living up to impossible standards will lead to some dangerous behaviors and, ironically, a great deal of procrastination. Instead of saying, “I’ll stay up until this is done,” say, “I’ll work until X time and then I’m stopping. I may end up needing to ask for an extension or complete less than perfect work. But that’s OK. I’m worth it.” Making sleep, exercise, and downtime a regular part of your life plays an essential role in a lasting, productive creative career.

7.  Track your progress every day.

Keeping track allows you to see exactly how much is on your plate, not only day-to-day, but consistently over time:

Disappointing feedback can be painful at first – research shows that failure and losses can hurt twice as much as the pleasure of equivalent gains. But if you discover you’re off course, reliable feedback shows you by how much, and you then have the opportunity to take remedial action and to plot a new training regime or writing schedule. The temporary pain of negative feedback is nothing compared with the crushing experience of project failure. Better to discover that you’re behind and need to start writing an hour earlier each day, than to have your book contract rescinded further down the line because you’ve failed to deliver.

8.  Change location often.

Entrepreneurs or freelancers can be especially prone to burnout. Joel Runyon plays “workstation popcorn,” in which he groups tasks by location and then switches, in order to keep work manageable, provide himself frequent breaks, and spend his time efficiently:

You find yourself spending hours at your computer, dutifully “working” but getting very little done. You finish each day with the dreaded feeling that you’re behind, and that you’re only falling farther and farther behind. You’re buried below an ever-growing to-do list. There’s a feeling of dread that tomorrow is coming, and that it’s bringing with it even more work that you probably won’t be able to get ahead on.

List out everything you need to do today. Try to be as specific as you can…Next, break that list into three sections. Step 1: Go to cafe [or desk, a different table in your office, etc.] #1. Step 2: Start working on item group #1…Once you finish all the tasks in group #1, get up and move. Close your tabs, pack your bags, and physically move your butt to your next spot. If you can, walk or bike to your next stop…When you get to the next cafe [or spot], start on the next action item group, and repeat…

When you’ve completed everything on your to-do list for the day, you are done working. Relax, kick back, and live your life. Don’t take work home with you because that won’t help you get more done – it will just wear you out.

9.  Don’t overload what downtime you do get.

Vacations themselves can cause, or worsen burnout, with high-stress situations, expectations, and sleep interruption. Use it to help in recovery from burnout instead: 

Make a flexible itinerary a priority. [A] study from Radboud University found that effective vacations give you the choice and freedom to choose what you want to do. That means two things: Try to avoid structuring your vacation around an unbreakable schedule, and plan on going somewhere that has multiple options to pick from depending on the weather, your level of energy, or your budget.

10. Write yourself fan mail.

Seth Godin uses self-fan mail as a way to keep motivated instead of burning out on a project that seems far from completion:

I define non-clinical anxiety as, “experiencing failure in advance.” If you’re busy enacting a future that hasn’t happened yet, and amplifying the worst possible outcomes, it’s no wonder it’s difficult to ship that work. With disappointment, I note that our culture doesn’t have an easily found word for the opposite. For experiencing success in advance. For visualizing the best possible outcomes before they happen. Will your book get a great testimonial? Write it out. Will your talk move someone in the audience to change and to let you know about it? What did they say? Will this new product gain shelf space at the local market? Take a picture. Writing yourself fan mail in advance, and picturing the change you’ve announced you’re trying, to make is an effective way to push yourself to build something that actually generates that action.

  11. Break projects into bite-sized pieces.

Taking a task on in one entire lump can be exhausting and provide little room for rest in between. Breaking up your projects into set chunks with their own deadlines provides a much healthier, and easier, way of completing a large project:

The default take on deadlines is typically to consider them to be cumbersome and stressful. Yet, from another perspective, a deadline can be viewed as a huge benefit to any project. Without the urgency of a hard deadline pushing a project to completion, it’s easy for you, your team, or your client to lose focus. We’ve all worked on agonizing projects where the timeline just bleeds on and on, merely because the flexibility is there…

It turns out that the manner in which a task is presented to someone – or the way in which you present it to your brain – has a significant impact on how motivated you will be to take action. A study led by researcher Sean McCrea at the University of Konstanz in Germany recently found that people are much more likely to tackle a concrete task than an abstract task… It seems to me like the difference between being handed a map versus following the step-by-step instructions of a GPS device. Not everyone can read a map, but everyone can follow the directions. By breaking your project down into smaller, well-described tasks, the way forward becomes clear and it’s easy to take action.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE NEW THINGS THAT DON'T SCALE

Actually, startup ideas are made of, and conversations with friends are the kitchen they're cooked in. So just keep playing. Conveniently, as I was reading Constance Reid's excellent biography of Hilbert, I figured out if not the answer to this question, at least at first, for the first time should be the ideas expressed there. Kids didn't admire it or despise it. Users have worried about that since the site was a few months old. Well, probably; I mean, that's probably it. And the proof is that you're bored. Why only do it in borderline cases, and reports that it works well. Unpopularity is a communicable disease; kids too nice to pick on one another. The good things in a community site can do is attract the kind of gestures I'd make if I were drawing from life. Mihalko was mine. It's a cliche to call World War II a contest between good and evil, but between fighter designs, it really was.

As far as I can tell from a thousand little signs. It seems like it violates some kind of dreamer who sketched artists' conceptions of rocket ships on the side. Everyone would be wearing the same clothes, have the same cause. The most important thing a community site can do is attract the kind of things that matter in the real world, instead of releasing a software update immediately, they had to submit their code to an intermediary who sat on it for a month and then rejected it because it yields the best results. You wouldn't have thought of something like that. Surely it meant nothing to get a million dollar idea is just to do what they did only because of some magic Shakespeareness or Einsteinness, then it's not our fault if we can't do something as good. Oh boy! Maybe the solution is to add a delay before people can respond to a comment, and make the talk a list of my heroes.

Which is not to search for them—not even the smart kids. The last nail in the coffin came, of all places, from Apple. When we launched in February 2007, weekday traffic was around 1600 daily uniques. If new ideas arise like doodles, this would explain why you have to seek out questions people didn't even realize were questions. I hope to focus on next. And you know more are out there, separated from us by what will later seem a surprisingly thin wall of laziness and stupidity. What happened to Reddit won't inevitably happen to HN. Showing up for school plays is one thing. You don't see faces much happier than people winning gold medals. The most powerful sort of aptitude is a consuming interest in some question, and such interests are often acquired tastes. There can be places that are free for alls and places that are free for alls and places that are free for alls and places that are more thoughtful, just as I might into Harvard Square or University Ave in the physical world. Gmail showed they could do it by just writing code.

Depends which gap you mean. This was too subtle for me. If you want something, you either have to make deals with banks. Which means it is very much worth reading important books multiple times. Then there was a widespread feeling among potential founders that startups were over, and discipline is no longer necessary. By breaking software development, Apple gets the opposite of clumsy. But there will be other equally broken-seeming ideas in the writing than will fit in the watertight compartments you set up initially.

Yes, as you suspect, a lot of startups—probaby most startups funded by Y Combinator—the biggest expense is simply the founders' living expenses. It's exhilarating to overcome worries. Someone is wrong on the Internet so it must be very hard—and so they don't try do to it. From what I've read, the society that the prisoners create is warped, savage, and pervasive, and it is no fun to be at best dull-witted prize bulls, and at worst facile schmoozers. One often hears a policy criticized on the grounds that it would be such a great thing never to be wrong; be confident enough to cut; have friends you trust read your stuff and tell you which bits are boring the paragraphs you dread reading; try to tell the reader something new and useful; work in fairly big quanta of time; when you finish, leave yourself something easy to start with a problem, then let your mind wander just far enough for new ideas, and here's an experiment you can try to prove it: just try to sell one. They ask it the way you might poke a hermit crab in a tide pool, to see what it does. Older founders only make the first mistake. They're like someone stuck in an abusive relationship. But what label you have on your stuff is a much smaller matter than having it versus not having it. Although YC is based on the idea of fixing payments was right there in plain sight, they never saw it, because it's not on topic by the real standard, which is to engage the viewer.

But serfdom is not the way Apple cares about the iPhone. The best protection is always to be working on hard problems. You probably need about the amount you need to escape it. If you're not omniscient, you just don't end up saying much. Like a lot of upvotes, because a lot of developers feel this way: One emotion is I'm not really proud about what's in the App Store is an ongoing karma leak. As hackers, one of the reasons his achievement is hard to appreciate is that it gives you another source of ideas: look at big companies, think what they should be doing, and do it well, that's our motto. But it makes all the difference that it's concentrated in one individual. Likewise, in any social hierarchy, people unsure of their own, you can do. You see the same gap between Raymond Chandler and the average writer of detective novels. Of course, as a bunch of eleven-year-old kids are intrinsically messed up. But I'm letting you in on the secret early.

John Nash so admired Norbert Wiener that he adopted his habit of touching the wall as he walked down a corridor. I think, is that evil begets stupidity. Editors must know they attract readers. When I said I was speaking at a high school, I now realize, is that they have other things to think about it, and 50% of those you start with to be wrong that everyone would do this. Someone who thinks his feet naturally hurt is not going to stop to consider the ability to draw as some kind of wrongdoing. Depends on what you mean by worth. It's a cliche to call World War II a contest between good and evil, but between fighter designs, it really was. Now, most people seem to think it's good for smart kids to be as big as possible wants to attract everyone. I don't mean to suggest they do this consciously. The prototypical rich man of the nineteenth century that had changed.

Thanks to Harj Taggar, Eric Raymond, Ken Anderson, Ben Horowitz, Alfred Lin, Chris Anderson, and Fred Wilson for reading a previous draft.

[askanaroace]

[screenshots of a tumblr post: @multishipper-baby asked: Hey, I have a question! Can I identify as a bi aroace if I'm gray-romantic? I know it's still in the aro spectrum, but I don't want to make other aroaces uncomfortable and use a label that's not mine

/end ask

@biaroace answered:I’ll start off by saying that I cannot control what you or anyone else calls themselves. However, I will say that I personally wouldn’t be comfortable with someone aro/ace-spec [a-spec for short] using “bi aroace” for the sake of brevity alone (and this goes for any other flavor of oriented aroace). 

“Why? Ace-spec people call themselves ace all the time. How is this any different?” That’s because the dynamics of the ace community are very different: asexuals are prioritized within their own orientation. They don’t have to fight to be recognized within their own label. They don’t have to question whether a post employing the term “asexual” includes them or not. They aren’t hesitantly listed off fifth in a list of possible definitions at best and outright excluded at worst whenever someone asks “what’s an asexual?”. Rather, those were the plights of a-spec people. 

I believe that’s the very reason a-specs made their own terms, and adopted the terms of the dominant majority (aro/ace) as shorthand. It’s perfectly justifiable! It’s admirable, even! But to transfer this practice onto oriented aroace labels would be a grave mistake, because as of now, we hold nowhere near the influential power aces and aros hold within their own communities. If anything, it is a-specs who are prioritized over us. A-specs who are taken as being the more “acceptable” meaning of bi aroace (as opposed to us weird oriented aroace heathens with our ~non-romantic/sexual unspecified attraction~). A-specs who are the face of our very orientation despite employing it as a mere shorthand. You’re not sticking it to the big man by claiming “bi aroace” as an a-spec person. You’re repeating exactly what was done to you. In order to help us be rid of this dynamic, I encourage you to leave “bi aroace” to oriented aroaces and instead use the equally cool alternate shorthands provided by your very own aro/ace-spec communities. For instance, bi-grayro ace could act as a neat shorthand for you (plus it’s got the same amount of syllables!) :>

Finally, I’d like to thank you for having taken the time to send this message. Your mindfulness as an ally is greatly appreciated, and I hope my response cleared things up!!

/end answer

@babyferrettails reblogs with: Yes! I’m sick of people saying that someone who uses an “orientation+aroace” term to describe themselves are probably grayace or grayro. It completely undermines oriented aroaces which is unfortunately the norm in the community already. @biaroace I’m glad you took the time to type this up it explains it really well!

/end reblog

@aceexplorations reblogs with: So I️ understand where you peeps are coming from. I️ really do. But as someone who would like to identify as a lesbian aroace but can only get up the courage to identify as an aroace who desires a long term relationship but only with other women, I️ really don’t mind people who are aro/asespec identifying as a label-aroace.My reason is this: At the moment you never hear of ANYONE identifying as label-aroace and as a result anytime anyone does people, all people, question how that is possible. The more people use the label the faster others will get used to hearing it. And as long as people remember to include an explanation for how someone who is aroace and not aroacespec can be label-aroace I️ think getting people more familiar with the label can only help.Plus, I️ don’t believe in telling somebody how they should or should not identify. They should do whatever makes them feel the most comfortable.

/end caption]

Yeah... I'm actually incredibly uncomfortable with this push to limit who can identify how, especially in this context. I’m tagging @multishipper-baby to make sure he can see multiple perspectives on this, and thank you @aceexplorations for speaking up as well.

For one, the orientation+aroace format was something people were using before "oriented aroace" came about, and there are still people who identify this way who do not specifically identify as an oriented aroace. It'd be one thing if it was a natural progression of the term changing to mean something more specifically, but forcefully trying to push people out of a term that has been open to them before "oriented aroace" became a named, defined thing does not at all sit well with me.

For two, there are many reasons - all extremely valid - why some choose to verbally identify, identify only as, or in many cases shorten to aro/ace when they are aspec. For example, can be easier than getting into an even more detailed explanation and so plain exhaust them less. It could even mean that they feel more comfortable setting boundaries in not having to discuss personal matters that may make them uncomfortable. We've long been pushing that aromantic and asexual can absolutely be umbrella terms and that you don't have to identify as aspec or some certain aspec term if you don't want, aren't comfortable with, don't prefer, or are unsure where you otherwise stand. To limit that now after we've worked really hard to make these terms open and welcoming to folk who are constantly wondering if they belong... I can't tell you how many times I've seen demia folk asking if they're welcome in the community, and graya in particular was hit extremely violently by exclusionism (at one point, basically dying out as a known label and only recently being talked about again).

For three, it’s long been the tagline of the queer community (perhaps particularly for nonbinary and aspec people, but I am currently most involved in those communities) that labels are, first and foremost, for ourselves. Do we feel a connection to labeling a certain way, even if it’s merging or stringing together multiple terms? Does it help us communicate how we feel? Does it bring us a sense of relief to use the term? Then we should use it (excluding instances of cultural appropriation or other harmful actions)! I am not seeing a reason here why it harms either oriented aroaces or non-oriented aroace orientation+aroaces to both be using the format orientation+aroace.

Finally... I'm sorry, I'm just not at all understanding the point of limiting who can identify as an orientation+aroace. When we're creating strict and limiting turns, we have to ask ourselves: why? What purpose is this serving? Does it help more people than it hurts? Is it unnecessarily leaving people out/making people feel unwelcome and/or invalid?

Honestly, I understand the argument so little, I can’t even make a point against it, nor figure out what the heck question I should be asking. The aspec spectrums simply do not exist in some sort of hierarchy as you are implying. Some folk may have more visibility than others (due to the size of the community, how long they’ve been pushing for education - not due to a particular in community effort to maliciously destabilize ourselves), and it’s true that right now there’s a lot of valid discussions going on about how people need to be careful with their words (stop saying aromantic when you mean asexual), but nobody was gatekeeping orientation+aroace until these ideas on your blog started coming up.

I saw someone trying to argue that they wanted oriented aroace to have full ownership over orientation+aroace because they wanted it to be immediately clear to people that they were specifically aroace and not graya, to which, I’m sorry, but I have to call bullshit. Orientation labels honestly say very little about us and the true complexities of our feelings, and they work well that way!

For example, someone who identifies as bi may be someone: with a strong preference for one gender over another, someone who’s only attracted to a specific amount of genders, someone who’s attracted to multiple genders but may not even include one of the expected binary genders, someone with no discernable preference for one gender over another, someone who’s attracted to all genders but considers gender an important component of their attraction, etc. Someone saying they’re bi doesn’t tell you anything beyond the fact that they’re attracted to two or more genders!

Aro and ace have long been this way as well. Even aroace is as well! There are so many details and intricacies to our feelings, desires, repulsions, aversions, preferences, wants, etc. that no label could possibly encompass all important aspects of our identity! At some point, there’s gotta be a breakdown where we realize that labels are a quick summary of how we feel, not the end all, be all of who we are or how we’re allowed to feel.

Aspec people calling themselves aromantic, asexual, or aroace all know there is a tradeoff to not outright specifying the spectrum part of their identity, and they are making the choice for themselves that they are okay and comfortable with what that entails. It should not be up to us to try and shame them out of that. As aspec people, we are not taking anything from each other by using our own community’s terms!!! It’s a difficult amatonormative, sexnormative, heteronormative world we must navigate. Our terms and our community should make it easier for us to navigate these minefields, not create more minefields to trip each other up in.

I’d be completely fine if “oriented aroace” itself was a term to specifically be defined in a strict manner. I am not okay with the bold claims that oriented aroaces somehow own the pattern of merging together identity terms in non-standard ways to describe themselves, specifically owning oriented+aroace, of which I have an incredibly hard time believing they invented.

So far, I’m not seeing how it harms us to keep orientation+aroace something open. However, I am hearing from people who are hurt by trying to make it more exclusive.

[sattickate]

Heathers: The Television Pilot

So I watched the pilot for the Heathers show yesterday. It's not faithful to the original film at all. like it goes in a completely different direction - more SJW than maintaining the "status quo" like in the film, that said, I didn't hate it.

I won't be watching the rest of the series because it's not my thing. It's Heathers in concept only, not plot. It does make some references to the original (quoting famous lines, big fun is a chip brand, the new happiness posters, the original score), but it very much is a departure from the film. And it is for that reason that I can't place it on the same level as the film or even the musical. 

Though it's not outright terrible, it's not a cult classic from and set in the late 80s. This show may be "just" but it is so not "very".

(via my facebook page)

Naturally, I have a lot of opinions on Heathers, the television show. I say naturally because the film is my favourite movie of all-time. And, although I recorded a video commentary/analysis/comparison of the show in relation to the film and musical, I have no idea when I’ll get around to editing that or exactly how clear and concise my opinions will be.  So, going back to the medium at which I’m best, let me take the time to go into more detail about the show so far, my opinions on it in relation to the source material and the musical and how it would be as a stand-alone show. Future Katey coming to tell you that I did edit the video and here’s the link to watch it. 

Spoiler alert below the cut as I will be going into detail of the events of the entire pilot (as well as the film and music as a whole but if you haven’t seen those where have you been?). 

If you’d like a plot summary but don’t actually want to watch the episode.

TL;DR: below the cut, my analysis may be quite long so be prepared to read a lot.

Let’s just clarify some things right off the bat, the show is set in 2017/2018, not in 1988 as was the film (or in ‘89 like the musical). The slang has been updated to fit the time, for example, ‘very’ becomes ‘just’. References are made to the original film: big fun is now a brand of chips, there are “the New Happiness” posters hung on the walls of the school, some dialogue from the film is recycled or repurposed for the show, and (my favourite nod to the film) some of the original film score has been used (or slightly updated) for the show. [This last thing is a very minute detail, but I am such a sucker for the film’s score, so I appreciated that little touch.]

The opening is a bit graphic, to say the least.

Eight years prior to the main events of the episode, we are introduced to an adult woman in a red scrunchie. She has just doused her house in gasoline and lit the match when her husband and son come home. The father quickly runs into the house while the son stays in the car as the mother waves at him from her bedroom window then shoots herself from (under her chin/jaw) as her son is left watching the entire thing. It’s safe to assume the boy in the car is JD because, by the episode’s end, that assumption proves to be true.

So how similar is it to the film, really?

Not very. Not very at all. OK despite my ass clinging to the use of the word very for dear life now, the show honestly has very little to do with the source material. One could speculate that Shannen Doherty’s character (JD’s mother who commits suicide in the show’s cold open) might be someone from the original film and that’s how they could be linked. Otherwise, there’s not much similarity to the original beyond the basic concept and shared character names. And the references. There are loads of references to the source material - not so much to the musical - but you’d be hardpressed to forget this is a reboot with all the allusions to the original.

Why are the diverse characters the villains?

I have no fucking clue. In the narrative, it’s because people who are different are now popular. 

Heather Chandler (HC) is fat (or as the show calls it “body positive” as if to say fat is a bad word and only overweight people can be body positive) and she appears to be into a more blackmail centred version of social justice. And she’ll continue to blackmail people even after her “death” it seems - if the sneak peek at the end of the episode’s any indication. 

Heather Duke (HD) is our genderqueer character, and we see she/her pronouns being used (I can’t recall if other pronouns were also used for Duke). She basically copies HC in that blackmail approach to social justice and she’s secretly very envious of HC

Heather McNamara (HM) is our biracial Heather, she is also supposedly a lesbian, but we see her making out with one of her male teachers in the parking lot of Snappy’s Snack Shack. HD catches her in this act and claims that HM is not actually LGBTQ+ (sexuality is fluid though so maybe HM is another type of WLW. Though, by the way, this show is going HD seems correct in her assumption that HM is straight).

Outside of this narrative though it doesn’t make any sense. We could have gotten a POC Veronica and/or JD (who they seem to be making more of an antihero than outright psychopath), or they could have gender-bent JD and made Veronica WLW to provide diversity in a way that doesn’t villainise the diverse.

Trying to Flip the Script

As I said above, they seem to want to make JD more of an antihero than the psychopathic killer he was in the film. And I noticed this was something they tried to do in the musical too. They may not have gone as far as making him an anti-hero in the musical, but they were definitely trying to make him a more sympathetic character.

In the film, there’s this element of mystery to him. What was his past? When did he start killing? Was HC his first or was framing murders as suicides always his M.O.? The film alludes to his mother’s presumed suicide as the catalyst for his strange fascination with death but it never comes out an says it. Maybe I like that because it’s also left a little ambiguous to how JD’s mother died. We all know he said it was a suicide - “she walked into a building right before my dad blew it up.” - but was that the whole truth? Did she really decide to die in such a way? Was she lured into the building under false pretences (every time I watch the film, I’m very suspicious of JD’s dad, and I get the feeling that he may have murdered his wife)?

I suspect that if this show continues, and based on reviews, it’s not looking good, we’ll see more of that: how his mother died and why he is the way he is.

I also wonder how much of the other characters they plan to change. In the show, Veronica’s only label seems to be that she thinks of herself to be a “good person”. In the film, she was bored with where she was in the school’s social hierarchy. JD provided her with adventure that she wasn’t finding at school or with her friends. JD disrupted that status quo, and that’s what was so intriguing to her. In this show, though, the status quo has already been disrupted. The outsiders are insiders now.So what could JD possibly offer than changes her whole perspective?

Betty or Martha

Just as in the musical, it seems as though these two characters get combined. Unless they intend to introduce or make mention of Martha “dumptruck” Dunnstock later, it seems as though she’s been combined with Betty Finn.

As for Betty, she’s not the innocent one you loved from the film. This one seems to be quite envious of Veronica. She’s got a chip on her shoulder, and after HC’s not-really-death she delivers a eulogy on campus which seems to be setting her up as the next Heather - the new sheriff in town, as it were. Though HD and HM are fighting to claim the void that HC left as the school’s ruler, it seems by the next day, Betty would take it upon herself to claim this role. And I really don’t know how I feel about that.

In the film, Betty was Veronica’s past and a place she to which she longed to return. Betty was her life before the Heathers. And she longed for that simpler time. She was a pleasant reminder of what Veronica used to have and what she was trying to get back. Similarly, Martha was Veronica’s future. After dethroning HD, Veronica befriends Martha, and they plan to spend prom together watching movies and eating popcorn. The chaos is out of her life, and Martha offers her a chance of normality.

Having said that, my next question is, what will be Veronica’s relationship with HM? In the film, HM was the quietest of the Heathers and only really partook in events because the rest of the group was. After HD mocked her for her troubles [Poor Little Heather], she attempted suicide - which was quickly stopped by Veronica who spotted the signs. Their relationship grew in the film because of this event. There was genuine caring and support that Veronica had with HM that she didn’t have with the other Heathers and I wonder if that will ever be explored in the show. I would love to see Veronica being friends with HM and Martha in the show, if the show doesn’t die a quick death, because those were the relationships that were being created at the end of the film so we didn’t get the chance to explore them further. Veronica saw the pain these women were having and made an effort to befriend and help them after they had both attempted suicide. That is something that would be really cool to explore, but I doubt they ever will.

Wait, so Heather Chandler didn’t die?

She did not. The final moments of the episode flashback to earlier that day where HC wakes up in the morning after having smashed through her table and seemingly died the previous night. At first, she’s pissed and is prepared to make Veronica and JD’s lives a living hell, that is, until she checks her phone and realises just how much more popular she has become now that people believe her to be dead. 

And that’s where we leave things. We get a little sneak peek of episodes to come. HC will seemingly blackmail Veronica and JD to help bring about “justice” for her. Which appears to take the form of killing other students and framing them as suicides at HC’s request.

Final Thoughts

I think this could have been a really cool show had certain monikers not been attached. This show is both trying to pay homage to the film and be its own thing, and I feel like that could lead to its downfall. If the character had different names, this could be a really cool stand-alone show. The plot of the show will obviously have to deviate from the film to allow for multiple episodes, so it’s really only similar in a general concept and sporting characters with identical names to the film and musical.

Had this show been a looser adaptation/reboot or had it only been inspired by the film I could see it having a much longer life than it probably will. While I love the allusions to the film, this show is a drastic departure, and although I don’t hate it and could admire it as it’s owe thing (had the title been different and the characters’ names changed), I won’t be watching it any further.

If I’m a “stan” for anything, it would be the 1988 cult classic on which this show is based. But I just feel that the show is both trying really hard to be it’s own unique thing while also trying to be a love-letter to the film and I think that’s where it’s going to struggle.

[missjsteachingjumble]

When The Adults Change Everything Changes

Paul Dix 

Seismic Shifts in School Behaviour 

Key Notes & Quotes 

A book that upends the debate on behaviour management in schools and offers effective strategies that serve to end the search for change in children and turn the focus back onto the adults.

Introduction 

The support available to teachers who struggle with behaviour is woeful. 

The unrelenting drive for exam results has blunted pastoral care in many schools. 

The tide is turning on the behaviour debate. The ‘punishment brigade’ are losing. The appalling lack of respect for teachers is stirred by greedy politicians, ignorant inspectors and the ugly opinions of those who would sell out teachers before breakfast. for a slither of dirty self promotion. 

in behaviour management, culture eats strategy for breakfast. Getting the culture right is pivotal. With the right culture the strategies that are used become less important. The culture is set by the way that the adults behave. 

Chapter 1: Visible Consistency, Visible Kindness 

Behaviour policy and practice should be simple, highly effective and utterly consistent. 

Consistency is needed, however this should not be a restrictive consistency that limits flair and patronises poor communities, but a solid base on which to build authentic, exciting behaviour practice. It is a consistency routed in kindness, not, in the machismo of zero tolerance. 

What works is consistency, not trying to tackle all behaviour at once but deciding which behaviours are to be taught. it is not relying on the parents to teach it, but by saying ‘You need these behaviours to be a successful learner in this school. We are not going to hide them. We are going to teach you them. We will teach the staff how to do it.’ 

The foundations of every school must be excellent behaviour. We should be keeping the focus on a visible culture of impeccable conduct, and making the consistency palable, audible and highly visible. Every single day. Smal, persistent and visible shifts in adult nehaviour have an incredible effect on children’s behaviour. The message is: don’t be distracted by temporary distractions; get behaviour right first. Innovative teaching and learning cannot be built on inconsistentA brilliant example of creating and maintaining  behaviour practice. 

The rule of three: three rules are easily remembered by all so that everyone uses them all the time. 

The best schools have a behaviour plan that is based on tight agreements, simply framed and relentlessly pursued. 

Example: Fantastic Walking

What are the visible consistencies in your setting?What could they be? Are they embedded with love or punishment?

Why crush behaviours with punishment when you can grow them with love? Visible consistency with visible kindness allows exceptional behaviour to flourish. 

Haim Ginott quotation about the conduct of the individual teacher is startling accurate - ‘I have come to a frightening conclusion. I am the decisive element in the classroom. 

Meeting and Greeting

A great example, that instantly highlights the lack of consistency in some, if not most, schools is the meet and greet. Dix points out that even this most basic routine is inconsistent - some teachers want pupils lined up at the door, some want learners standing behind chairs, some want equipment out, some want them in and working immediately.

Meet and greet all your learners with a handshake and a smile (a proper handshake, not a high five or fist pump). Mark the formal start to the lesson at the door.

Behaviour management is a team sport. It needs a team discipline, ehos and look. 

The rush in intitial teacher training to collect strategies and comile uniquely individual set of tricks removes the focus from where it need to be: the team, agreed adult behaviour and common values. 

Some Key Summaries... 

The simpler the agreements, the tighter the consistency. Consistent agreements that are not written down are just wishes. 

Don’t overcomplicate things by making an unworkable list of 15 odd daily consistencies - keep it simple. consise and easily memorable. 

Make sure your class, department faculty, school or college has a set of three agreed visible consistencies. Challenge those who step away fromt he challenge immediately. 

Don’t take your eye off the ball after you’ve successfully made a consistent shift and everyones focus shifts on to something else to the detrimet of the thing you have just changed. 

Further Reading:

Teacher and child : a book for parents and teachers / Haim G. Ginott.

The author suggests concepts, attitudes and a language of acceptance and compassion to improve daily situations and psychological problems faced by teachers. He applies his ideas to problems of discipline, criticism, anger, motivation, homework, praise, cooperation, and the conflicting relationships of students, teachers, administrators and parents.

Chapter 2: The Counter Intuitive Classroom 

If you really want to screw the system become successful - Jacqueline Lynch, Learning Advisor, Park Campus Academy 

Great behaviour management is counter-intuitive. What seems to be the most obvious response to poor behaviour, what is instinctive, often makes the situation worse. 

Humiliating children should shame them but for many it seems to fuel their fame and reputation. Hevay puncihsment may seem to crush behaviour in the short term, it may even remove the problem for the teacher temporarily, but it doesn’t teach improved behaviour to those who really need to learn it. 

The key to managing your classroom is to know your counter-intuitives and refuse to be rawn by them. 

An emotionally led response to bad behaviour shoud always be resisted. 

How you behave is more important than how they behave. 

When children behave badly give them what they don’t want: a cool, mechanical, emotionless response. Save your emotion, passion, enthusiasm and excitement for when it has most impact - when behaviour is over and above. 

Children’s Names on Boards 

Where is the research study showing that it is an effective way of managing behaviour? - clue, there isn’t one. 

This method chiefly targets learners who always revel in the attention and adulation that challenging authority can bring - naming and faming, not naming and shaming. 

In fact, it reconfirms their poor self-image, re-stamps a label of low expectation and provides a perverse incentive to the more subversive mind. 

Behaviour Charts 

Elaborate hierarchies for rewarding and punishment concocted using questionable metaphors and displayed for everyone to see. 

None of these charts do anything other than reinforce labels and publicise poor behaviour. 

Knowing How to Behave 

Children need to be taught and retaught and retaught expected behaviours. 

Your pupils will need to have behaviours recalled and retaught as contexts, curriculum and age change. The trouble is, too often these behaviours are not obvious, or not highlighted and not explicitly taught. Meaning kids end up playing a guessing game of expectations. 

Heavy punishment

Usually disproportionate to the crime.

burying children in punishment builds a deep resentment. For the child it often creates a permenant breach of trust. 

More ferocious punishment does not result in better behaviour. It simply drives resentment underground and divides the adults and children into ‘them’ and ‘us’. What works is the immediacy of response, not the weight of the sanction.  

Recognition Boards

A recognition board is the simplest way to shift the culture in your classroom. 

It is a collaborative strategy: we are one team, focused on one learning behaviour and moving in one direction.

The recognition board fosters a positive interdependence on the classroom, but there is no prize, no material reward. At the end of the lesson/day/session the aim is for everyone to have their name on the board.

Untangle the behaviour in your clzssroom by keeping the positive and negative consequences separate.If a learner has achieved the set focus to attain a a place ont he recognition board, we do not then remove them for bad behaviour. 

The kind of approach to behaviour schools take, where good and bad behaviour are tallied against one another is not a reflection of how behaviour works in the real world and society, it distorts the child’s moral compass. 

Nine ways to use the recognition board: 

Target your recognition board at learning attitudes, not just functional behaviours. Make sure that the behaviour you choose raises the expectation for the children and is not simply something they can already do well. 

Names or tallies go on the board to recognise pupils who are demonstrating the desired learning attitude.  

Names or tallies are never removed from the board. Learners who disruot are dealt with privately. Once a name is on the recognition board for good conduct it cannot come off for poor conduct. A different repsonse should be given. 

Learners can nominate others to be put on the board. Try stopping an activity after 15 minutes and asking them to write up four names of other children who have been consistently demonstrating the desired behaviour. Use it for reflection at the end of lessons. 

Emphasise peer responsibility. It is not a competitive between individuals, rather a whole class helping everyone to get their name on the board. 

Recognition boards need to be refreshed hourly, daily or weekly depending on the gae of the children and context in which you are working. 

Pupils are recognised for effort, not for achievement. Your recognition board should for everyone. Your highest achievers might always be high achievers. They only get on the board when they have shown the required effort. 

When everyone has their name on the board a collective ‘whoop’ is appropriate; large rewards are not necessary. 

Use the recognition board to persistently and relentlessly catch learners demonstrating the right behaviours. 

Token Economies Are Corrupt

Token economies, where a credit or metric system is used to reward individuals, can never be consistent. It always rewards the highest achievers or the worst behaved - the most ‘visible’ children - and it is open to abuse by adults and children alike. 

With the best of intention, teachers end up devaluing the currency, usually within the first week. 

Seven Counter-intuitives to Practice

Respond to poor behaviour with deliberate calm.

Correct all poor behaviour in private. 

Flip names on the board to recognition board and never go back.

Throw out your token economy.

Focus on the immediacy of consequences rather than the weight of punishment. 

Re-examine your tracking for individual pupils who are repeatedly disrupting. is their report card becoming a status symbol of celebrity? 

Rmeove the beahviour games from your teaching and replace with positive recognition, importance and sense of belonging. 

Some Key Summaries...

The concept that some individuals follow people first, then they follow the rules. you cannot expect or demand these individuals to come to your viewpoint, you have to go to where they are standing, understand where they are coming from and then guide them to where they need to be. 

Don’t get caught up in the emotion of an incident and allow your intuitive response to override your rational response. 

Don’t assume that anger can be crushed with threat of punishment. 

Don;t adopt strategies from other teachers without question, what is the evidence that what you are being told will work for your classroom? 

Be prepared to say nothing. Sometimes just sitting and waiting with an ‘I am ready when you are’ expression works 

Chapter 3 - Deliberate Botheredness

Previously, respect was always expected, never given.

Unfortunately 30 years on the same attitude is still found in schools where the process of managing behaviour is detached from the needs of the child. 

The most difficult behaviour can emerge from those with attachment issues at home, desperae for connection. 

It is the small stuff, the daily acts of care, the perpetual generosity of spirit, the interest that you show in their lives that matters most - what we would call ‘botheredness’.

using positive recognition, or being bothered, means that you know how to make each child feel appreciated and important. this takes time, effort and commitment on your part. Some children find their sense of importance through fame: the work on display etc., others find their importance in a wuiet word, an extra responsibility or subtle, discreet reinforcement. 

Being endlessly bothered is the key to sustaining and maintaining positive rapport with your students. 

Children, like adults, want to feel important, valued and liek they belong. They crave it. If that appreciation is not given for positive behaviour then you invite it to be elicited through poor behaviour. 

Over and Above 

If you constantly reward minimum standards then children will strive for minimum standards. If you reward children for going over an dabove then there is no limit to their excellent behaviour. 

Focusing on behaviour that is over and above creates an immediate shift in expectations. It gives the children something more than bare minmum to achieve, it gives them something to reach for. How you recognise these students who go over and above should lie at the heart of your behaviour practice. 

Emotional Currency 

A smiley face on a piece of work, a recommended book, or news article you cut out just because you knew they’d be interested - opportunities for building emotional currency are easy to find. 

Done right, the drip effect of positive recognition beats grand material rewards that shine brightly but soon fade. 

Positive Notes 

On work, send to their teachers or form tutors, sent home, given directly etc. 

Also, positive notes from visiitors and peers as a scheme of recognising good behaviour. 

The issue is proportionate response. Balance is important. 

Your disproportionate and over-zealous rewarding of children who are badly behaved by default has consequences for other children in terms of their view of the recognition and value of positive notes as a currency. 

Positive notes to colleagues is also sometimes nice :) 

Worksheet Weary

Worksheets are for the teachers not for the students. 

If you know how to do it then a worksheet is redundant, if you don’t know how to do it then a worksheet won’t help.

Some Key Summaries...

Don’t try and be ‘down with the youth’ or take on ‘overbotherdness’ - its just weird. 

Over and above - you need to make sure that ALL of your students are equally likely to receive recognition - think about those who are always quietly geting on. 

Triangulate your botheredness with other colleagues so that it is reinforced. 

Go to the netball game, or after school disco, turn up, be a part of outward bound expeditions. Your botheredness cannot be a performance that lives in the classroom and dies when the bell goes at the end of the day. students know the teachers who always show up, whose support for them is visible and who are there when others have disappeared.

Chapter 4 - Certainty in Adult Behaviour 

Be kind, be humble, be nice. 

Although teachers share many values, those that relate to behaviour can be tricky. They are wrapped up in the type of schools each teacher has worked in, their own experience of school as a child, their own experiences of parenting and their political beliefs. 

In order to change these divisive core values we need to resseruct the idea that we are stronger and more consistent when we stand together, everyone compromising a little to make the message utterly clear for the children's nd all staff pursuing common values for the good of everybody. 

the key to correcting behaviour with minimal effort - absolute certainty - the children know that they will be recognised for going over and above. They are as certain in it as they are that their poor behaviour will result in consequences.

It is certainty that is at the heart of all exceptional behaviour practitioners... certainty is powerful enough on its own... what they have honed is a certainty around their expectations for behaviour that are expected, respected and unquestioned.  

[auselessthoughtboard]

i finally figured out what it is i don’t like about feminist philosophy

It’s ugly.

It’s boring and it’s vile and it takes everything that’s beautiful in philosophy and stands in opposition to it, not offering anything new in it’s place of worth, just cutting down and ruining everything else for us. 

It takes on the great writers presumably out of jealousy; it stands in opposition to Kant and Descartes, writing them off as incapable of standing up to postmodern critiques. Well, what can stand up to postmodern critique? If nothing centres and aligns you, if nothing is sacred to you, then you can criticize everything and you can’t build anything.

Feminist philosophy is a masterwork in using hundreds of long words to say very little. It is a masterwork of creating five different explanations of one topic that are all almost exactly identical to one another with the slightest of semantic difference they believe warrants a separate label from the other ones. And so, five identical or almost identical theories get to call themselves five different theories, the structures get more and more complicated to hide the fact that there’s nothing beyond the structure but ugliness and jealousy and an obsession with power. 

There’s a sense that these feminists have that they don’t have power, that they had their lives taken away from them and that they want to eliminate these power structures they view as what made their life miserable. But was it really these structures that they can’t even define in a coherent way, or are they just looking for an external structure that they can use to blame for all their own failures and inadequacies? It’s a lot easier going to bed at night telling yourself “I couldn’t have done otherwise” than “I didn’t accomplish what I could have if I had put my mind to it.” Grievance studies: let me study the way in which I am not happy, and by study, I don’t mean an inner journey to my true self, because there is no true self, there is just me, a combination of different group identities, relationships to others, and a member of hierarchies of power. Shit on the soul. Shit on the self we should all be trying to find. Shit on rationalization and the search for self improvement. Shit on Enlightenment notions of self actualization. We are all victims of what we are born into and we should be trying to eliminate these so called structures that we are victims of. 

I have a better idea. Maybe we can see ourselves as more than the victims of structures. Maybe, if we can’t even find a way to explain what these structures are in a way that is tangible and coherent, they’re not actually as relevant as we like to think we are. Maybe we can all take the journey inwards and start to work on ourselves, instead of trying to work on everybody else and what we think are the foundations of the universe. 

What’s wrong with the Kantian ideal of the self as a rational agent, whose rationality is what makes him special and beautiful? What’s wrong with the Cartesian ideal of self consciousness as transparent to itself? Yes, these are idealistic notions. That’s what makes them beautiful. They emphasize the good that humans can be; they emphasize the notion that we have a soul, and the soul isn’t all that hard to see if we look properly. They emphasize the notion that we can make choices and we can choose good. 

Feminist philosophy is so deterministic and it shits all over notions of free will. It makes us nothing more than the product of our circumstances and the powers that be. It’s disempowering. It doesn’t want us to have beautiful notions of the true self and the soul, it wants us to be angry, to be critical, to look for oppression in every word choice. It hates itself and it doesn’t want us to love ourselves because it can’t handle that. 

Feminist philosophy hates God. Feminist philosophy hates the good. Postmodernism won’t even recognize a conception of the good and the real as it sees those as mere individual preferences, but guess what, most of us individuals really do have the same preferences at the end of the day. We desire love, and we desire meaning, and relationships, and truth, and beauty, and knowledge, and compassion, and to be charitable. We want self actualization. We want to feel, call it what you will, the Oceanic feeling; that feeling of connectedness to the Universe, to God; that feeling of alignment, when you know you are where you’re supposed to be in your life, when you know you are being watched and loved and you know you haven’t been forgotten about and you are being reminded that God loves you and that you are valuable and your fate is secure. We know there is a true self that exists and we want to find it. 

Feminist philosophy needs to stop creating ugly caricatures of beautiful things and then calling them the real thing. Autonomy isn’t some tough man who hates women and seeks his identity in opposition to femininity. Autonomy is the rational agent’s ability to rationally choose, to control over his life instead of being subject to be a complicit witness in a series of injustices happening to himself. Autonomy is free will, our rational and perfect mental faculties we have all been blessed with. Autonomy, the power to choose, is the power to chose our faith, to choose our path in life. Our lives would be empty without choice; faith without choice isn’t fate at all but superstition. Choice is proof of God’s existence in himself; he had to make us to be free to choose to follow his ways or not, or we would not truly be good, our faith would be empty. Autonomy is free will in action. Autonomy is something that could hardly be conceived as more beautiful than it is. And somehow, the feminists found a way to make our most beautiful concept such an ugly word. They should be ashamed of themselves in their complicity in the process of sucking all the joy and magic in the world, leaving the current generations and the ones to come feeling lost, confused, and helpless in finding meaning. 

[gythrim-blog]

Challenging the system starts with your own head - What is Relationship Anarchy? A consideration under the aspects of constraint, hierarchy and freedom

What is anarchy? Why should we also talk about anarchy when talking about relationships?

As anarchists we already deny materialist assumptions claiming that the driving force behind social evolution -and by all means defining part of life- would be property, ownership of production goods or one’s working power. Instead of these marxist or capitalist assumptions we value and recognize individual freedom, equality, self-realization and respect for the opinion of others. After satiation of the most basic needs there really is only one goal everybody aims for: pursuit of happiness. We don’t believe in one solution to fit the needs of all even for a limited time frame. Instead we demand the possibility for people organizing in the way they want in autonomous groups/federations of any kind imaginable and work out their way of arranging their society. We’re aiming for a colorful world without borders in which many worlds fit without any kind of authority limiting your personal freedom or exploiting you.

So far so good. It ain’t hard to find consensus for that in the radical left, at least among anarchists of different schools of thought. But why should we stop at society? Shouldn’t we also - or *particularly* apply that approach to our inner values and beliefs of moral and social interactions? Since we’ve been all living in a world being influenced by hierarchy, patriarchy, a tradition of oppressing both people and their needs I say we gotta question the conventional relationship model in order to understand and seize the control of it.

The Problem

Not alone is our daily routine highly influenced by hierarchical structures and the subordination to people in charge telling us how to behave, when to get up, how long and where to work and what to buy, the truth is it doesn't stop at the doorstep of our home. Even our dealings with other people, friends, family, lovers is full of expectations and structures being forced upon us, telling us what is considered appropriate and what to expect from another. The problem is that we're often not aware of this kind of power structure and thus won't question it. We consider things to be normal, natural and without any alternative even though they aren't and other options are indeed possible. Accepting this situation and our own noncritical behavior as part of the problem makes us feel uncomfortable. But there is a way out: by examining existing relationship models we get to know why they exist, how they are enforced and thus become enabled to choose our way of tackling the problem.

The meaning of Relationship Anarchy

By accepting the canonical understanding of relationships between lovers without questioning them, we simultaneously getting urged to follow a certain set of rules that are being forced upon us by society. This means relationships have something to do with rules. But from an anarchist point of view, from this point onward, we aren’t in control anymore hence we got to face rules that we neither negotiated nor were part in their creation. It is like subjugating oneself under the rule of a sovereign. This status alone can cause discomfort, anxiety and feel like being obliged in a contract which challenges and sometimes conflicts personal freedom and the pursuit of self-fulfillment.

In our society relationships, and especially marriages, are being used to condition people to behave in a predictable way that is easy to monitor. By codification in law, society created an instrument of power for forcibly keeping partners together and preventing people from having a self-determined sex life. For example the German judicial system, just as many others, created rules that ban adultery (former §172 StGB), consensual homosexual sex (§175 StGB, but between men only), forbid citizens to allow two children of opposite sex and different families to sleep in the same room together (§§180,181 StGB, procuration) and many more. Even though most aren't being enforced anymore they nevertheless helped to form a restrictive mindset. Actually rules like that are still being used in other nations such as Iran, India and many others. Some even inflict the death penalty for engaging in homosexual actions. Of course there are countless other factors that helped creating this restrictive set of rules. The debate concerning the historical impact of patriarchal rule, religion, and a culture of misogynist exclusion among other things is still going and can be read in other interesting articles.

So what *is* a relationship in this traditional definition that helped forging the construct we call a 'normal relationship' ? I'd say it is an unwritten set of rules which defines what actions are being outlawed encouraged or tolerated between people who ideally feel attracted to each other (I don’t want to address the horrible arranged relationships in this essay). They are an often misogynous construct trying to create a feeling of security and authority by imposing rules so that one white cis man doesn’t have to fear his wife leaving him for somebody else. However should she dare to leave him, in former times, he could either threaten to punish her, have her jailed, make her become an outcast from society or simply confront her with the harsh reality that by leaving him she would be broke without the need for him to pay alimony. In short, those rules are the endeavor to bind people together not by emotions but by undesirable penalties if they fail to stay together. Restrictive top-down ordering at its finest without any room for individual needs or variation.

If you apply the same methods and proposed solutions of anarchism to relationships it leads to interesting insights and a more reflected understanding of yourself. Judging on the basis of a self-reflected perspective can and will help you understand what you really want, and will also help you come up with a personal solution of shaping interactions in a way that they accomplish both: suit your needs and dissolve structures of obligation in favor of voluntariness. This approach can be termed as 'Relationship Anarchy’. It doesn’t mean that there simply are no rules - you just set them yourself on a consensual basis!

You deny the claim of society to dictate rules and instead negotiate them yourself with your partner(s) on an equal, consensual level. Communication is everything. That way there is no need anymore to rely on labels, even untraditional ones like 'open relationship’ or 'friends with benefits’ since every kind of interaction will be unique - if not in the rule set than in the way of individual aspects, leading to the concrete design of your relationship. At any rate it will emancipate you from relying on a relationship model crafted by the society and enable you to actively construct, your own model based on understanding your needs and the ones of your partner(s) considering personal freedom. Even if you eventually come to the conclusion that a run-of-the-mill monogamous relationship without any special quirks would be the best model for your partner and yourself, the act of reflecting yourself, making your own rules and taking into account the views and aspects of both of you, will leave you in a better position since you did overcome the top-down dictation of a set of rules and replaced it with a self-imposed set. Considering and pondering your opinions and wishes also helps to prevent and fight sexism and misconceptions. That whole process is another necessary step of enlightenment - do not only break the chains forced on your mind, also free yourself from the shackles trying to control your social lives. Only you and the ones involved should be able to mutually work out the right model for you, and everybody else should respect your choices.

In the end I reckon personal freedom to be a wonderful thing and find it even more flattering when somebody who isn’t obliged to you by any crude moral contract still chooses to spent time with you. At the same time I consider it a great proof of affection, trust, empathy and kindness to grant somebody a generously portioned chunk of freedom.

It is a nice way of fighting the system and patriarchy in every day life just by the power of being yourself, self-reflection and creating your own rules. Go out there, question yourself, talk to each other, spread the love and make the world a more self-determined place!

[adazhang-221257]

Week 6

Resource one: Sustainability of your photographic career

What type of photography do you want to make?

Product/food photography

Find out if New Zealand has any professional photographic organizations (hint, there are two) how can you connect with and learn from them?

NEW ZEALAND INSTITUTE OF PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY    The New Zealand Institute of Professional Photography (NZIPP) is the only qualifying body for professional photographers in New Zealand.     https://nzipp.org.nz/

AIPA —— Advertising & Illustrative Photographers Associationhttp://www.aipa.org.nz/

What are the challenges facing everyone in the coming 4th industrial revolution, how can you prepare for them?

5 Problems with 4th Industrial Revolution – Your Weekend Long Reads  

By Guest Writer on March 23, 2019 

https://www.ictworks.org/problems-fourth-industrial-revolution/#.XqqeJ28zZPY

Problem 1: a belief that technology has changed, and is changing the world.

Problem 2: a revolutionary view of history

Problem 3: an élite view of history——It is about the owners of the factories rather than the labourers, it is about innovative geniuses rather than the peasants labouring to produce food for them, and it is about the wise politicians who see the potential of these technologies to transform the world in their own image.

Problem 4: male heroes of the revolution

Problem 5: the Fourth Industrial Revolution as a self-fulfilling prophecy

The Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it means, how to respond

14 Jan 2016. Klaus Schwab 

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond/

Meaning

A Fourth Industrial Revolution is building on the Third, the digital revolution that has been occurring since the middle of the last century. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.

The impact on people

It will affect our identity and all the issues associated with it: our sense of privacy, our notions of ownership, our consumption patterns, the time we devote to work and leisure, and how we develop our careers, cultivate our skills, meet people, and nurture relationships.

The revolutions occurring in biotechnology and AI, which are redefining what it means to be human by pushing back the current thresholds of life span, health, cognition, and capabilities, will compel us to redefine our moral and ethical boundaries.

Shaping the future

To shape the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we must develop a comprehensive and globally shared view of how technology is affecting our lives and reshaping our economic, social, cultural, and human environments.

In the end, it all comes down to people and values. [It's more about how to shape the future that works for us. Think about people first in the long run.

5 ways the Fourth Industrial Revolution transformed 2017 (and 5 ways it did not)

18 Jan 2018 Nicholas Davis 

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/01/5-ways-the-fourth-industrial-revolution-transformed-2017-and-5-ways-it-did-not/ 

Five ways transformed

Ethics: addressing biases and assumptions in technologies

Crypto frenzy: bitcoin went mainstream, blockchain goes hyper

The new geography of innovation: shifting power from West to East one algorithm at the time

Platform economies: from euphoria to backlash

Cyber security: warfare in a world of zeros and ones

Five ways it did not

Narrowing of the gender pay gap

A concerted push around technology for development

More agile governments

Policy adoption of universal basic income

Widespread technological unemployment

Value in Media 

https://fr.weforum.org/covid-action-platform/projects/value-in-media

The Fourth Industrial Revolution has changed the way content is produced, distributed and consumed for media companies, brands and individuals.

Value in Media is a project that has spent a year looking at how individual consumers value destination media.  The project is helping the World Economic Forum's media partners navigate the impact of COVID-19

What changes can you make now to your workspace and your work routines to ensure a long career?

Always motivated myself, find new stuff and learn from new experiences.

How To Create A Sustainable Photography Career

Holly Roa, 2017 

https://www.slrlounge.com/how-to-create-a-sustainable-photography-career-remaining-viable-among-market-shifts/

Build relationships

It's helpful to meet more experienced photographers.

The more you practice networking, the easier it will get and it is indeed invaluable in the photography world.

Find your passion

Discovering what you’re genuinely passionate about and working toward making that your specialty.

Try everything out to find what you love. Be patient with yourself.

Study business

Stop losing money

How to Build a Sustainable Career in Photography  

by Jackson Couse12 Sep 2016

https://photography.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-build-a-sustainable-career-in-photography--cms-27051

Three keys to a sustainable photography practice:

How to reduce costs

How to build resources

How to build revenue.

Photography is a Vocation, Not a Profession

It’s important to look forward and to focus on what is real.

Think about photography as a portable skill, it is something you do, not something you are.

Think about what photography means to you, what it’s all for and whether this is a real possibility before starting it. Think about whether you are ready to work as a photographer.

How to keep your photography practice going

Reduce Your Expenses: Live Within Your Means

Adjust Your Expectations

Don't get too addicted to buying and comparing cameras.

Make decisions that allow you to sustain your photography practice, that let you grow as an artist, that keep your business healthy, and focus on what you care about.

My thoughts

Photography is not what we usually expect. Many things will change when start to take it as a career. However, the most important thing is how to keep being interested in it sustainably. There are lots of things to consider before we decide to do it as a career. We need to know exactly what we think about photography and what we are really interested in doing in this big field first. Aim and set targets for the long term,  we can always change it as we go but always plan ahead.

===============================================

Resource two: Sustainable Photographic Career

Notes

Everyone starts from an amateur.（love）

Start a business and do what you love. (but the money involved)

Problems come out (insecurity, ignorance and inexperience lead to doing a lot of work with little return.)

Educate the market as to what is should expect from a professional photographer.

Burned, most burnout or go bankrupt. (pressure)

The repetitive process happens to new photographers. (endless circle)

Hobbyist: Image maker (working for joy)

Professional: Business owner (working to make a living)

==========================================================================

Resource three: Lightroom Vs ACR

Notes

1.Lightroom

Database.  Images in a central ‘Catalog’, which is indexed (you don’t need to open a file to see what is in it, you are just shown a preview).

Great for catalogue: easy to use and to find files. The downside: the Lightroom catalogue is usually stored on your computer, not your hard drive. The changes made on a particular photo are stored on the computer, so it's complicated when changing computers all the time.

Changes are non-destructive, more changes are possible that ACR.

Only processes photographs.

The best idea to use Lightroom:  Locate your ‘Catalog’ on an external hard drive.

2.Bridge/ACR

Bridge: A file browser, its sole function is to easily look at and arrange your files. It shows all file formations, and it will launch the programme when opening the file.

ACR: Changes are also non-destructive. Changes are set when a file gets opened into Photoshop.

Bridge is pretty handy if the workflow includes other Adobe programmes.

Storing digital files

1. What filing system do you use?

I usually use Bridge to browser my files as it's quite handy to see all files with different formations at the same time.

2. What might be good practice for storing files?

Giving each file or folder a clear name, so it's clear to know what the files or folders about.

Create a folder in a logical hierarchy, and put the folders of the same category together.

3. What backup system do you have in place?

I'm usually saving my files on my computer as the computer hard drive is more reliable than the external hard drive. I would still back up some of my files on the cloud drive just in case.

Different industries have different ideas, but this short article from the National Library gives a good overview:

Tips for preserving digital photos:

Use lossless formats.

Back up your digital photos.

Keep more than one copy of photos.

Label discs and drives clearly and systematically.

Check files, drives, and discs regularly.

Keep original copies of scanned photographs.

File naming tips:

Avoid using capitals and characters such as #, $, % /, &.

Use underscores instead of spaces in filenames.

If using a date in the file name, record it in the format YYYY-MM-DD. For example 20120909 (9 September 2012)

Try to keep the original digital image file order.

=======================================================================

221.257 Assignment One reflection

1. Which test was my most successful?

The third test work.

2. Why

From the perspective of colour, test work 3 is bright and vibrant. These saturated colours bring out the inner beauty of the fruit. At the same time, the way of using beautiful colours to contrast with the contents of the photos, portraying the idea of beauty and grotesque between food and the remaining. From the perspective of angle, test work 3 shows more angels than the other two works, allowing the audiences to engage the theme from different perspectives. I just think the test 3 looks pretty and it conveys my theme better than the other two.

3. Was one of my tests that I thought wasn’t successful well received by the rest of the class or the lecturers? 

I think they are all well-received, but I personally don't like the second test work. I think it might have something to do with the simplicity of the content, and the difference in styles when putting it with my other two works.

My idea of test 2 was to try to make some different changes on the background, in that case, I was using two bright colours to form a contrast, but I don't think it is ideal.

4. What did they see in it that I didn’t?

From the comments that I have received, I have found myself a bit short at looking at my own chosen artists. I have been using mostly the artists that other people suggested. I think I do have some of them, however, I just need to include more, especially the photographers from my country.

Also for my last body of test work where I was using some new-purchased fruits for my subjects, I was suggested to use some more rotted fruits instead, portraying the idea of beauty and grotesque better.

5. At this stage, how do I think I will continue this project?

I think I have got two choices to take my work forward, one is to keep on doing still life photography, specifically food photography. The other way is to experiment documentary photography, but this is the type that I am very new at. I think I would definitely try it, but I would prefer doing food photography a bit more.

I could consider using the idea of using food and natural resources in the photoshoots.

What research do you need to move forward?

I need to look at more practitioners who are doing commercial food photography, like the ways they use for photographing the food and the presentation they would do in the end to present their photos.

Technical information would be necessary to look at especially in this current condition, for example looking at information about how to set up my little 'studio' at home, how to arrange the props for a good composition and importantly how to control the lighting.

[enterinit]

System Center Configuration Manager current branch Update 1902 released

System Center Configuration Manager current branch Update 1902 released. Get Current with Office is one of our key capabilities in the 1902 update and optional integration with the Readiness Toolkit for Office provides insights to help prepare for Office 365 ProPlus deployments. These insights can now complement your organization’s end-to-end ability to deploy Office 365 ProPlus, from readiness, to deployment, to monitoring. The existing Office 365 client management dashboard now includes a new tile, Office 365 ProPlus Upgrade Readiness. Select a readiness state to drill-through to a device list. This readiness report allows you to quickly identify devices with high confidence that are ready to upgrade to Office 365 ProPlus. It includes columns for the compatibility state of both Office add-ins and macros. Also, in update 1902 are improvements to Phased Deployments which now has its own dedicated monitoring node. From the lifecycle dashboard, organizations can now also view the support lifecycle for the versions of Office in their environment.  Additionally, ConfigMgr 1902 has added the ability to configure known folder mapping to OneDrive, providing a streamlined way to seamlessly move or redirect users’ known folders and data to OneDrive. Some other key areas of investment in the other themes of the release include user comments in email notifications for approval requests from Software Center, improvements in client health with a dashboard with detailed breakdowns of client health status across your organization, and Windows software update improvements to better control the end user experience with software update downloads and installs.  There are new Management Insight rules for optimizing and simplifying collections and packages. You can now use CMPivot from the CAS and edit and copy existing PowerShell scripts used with RunScripts. This release includes: Cloud Value Cloud Management Gateway (CMG) can be associated with boundary groups - Cloud Management Gateway deployments can now be associated with boundary groups to allow clients to default or fallback to the CMG for client communication according to boundary group relationships. Stop cloud service when it exceeds threshold - Configuration Manager can now stop a cloud management gateway (CMG) service when the total data transfer goes over your limit. Customer Voice Application Management Improvements to application approvals via email - When users request applications from Software Center, the email notification will now include their comments. Configuration Manager console Improvements to Configuration Manager console - Based on customer feedback aka the Cabana sessions at the Midwest Management Summit (MMS) Desert Edition 2018, this release includes several improvements to the Configuration Manager console. View recently connected consoles - You can now view the most recent connections for the Configuration Manager console. The view includes active connections and those that recently connected. View first monitor only during Configuration Manager remote control session - When connecting to a client with two or more monitors, a remote tools operator can now choose between seeing all monitors and the first monitor only. Search device views using MAC address - you can now search for a MAC address in a device view of the Configuration Manager console. Software Center Replace toast notifications with dialog window - When deployments need a restart or software changes are required, you now have the option of using a more intrusive dialog window to replace toast notifications on the client Configure default views in Software Center - You can now customize your end user’s default application layout and default application filter in Software Center. OS Deployment Improvements to task sequence media creation - When you create task sequence media, you can now customize the location that the site uses for temporary storage of data and add a label to the media. Improvements to Run PowerShell Script task sequence step – The Run PowerShell Script task sequence step now allows you to specify a timeout value, alternate credentials, a working directory and success codes. Import a single index of an Operating System Image - When importing a Windows image (WIM) file to Configuration Manager, you can now specify to automatically import a single index rather than all image indexes in the file. Progress status during in-place upgrade task sequence - You now see a more detailed progress bar during a Windows 10 in-place upgrade task sequence. Client Management Client Health Dashboard - You can now view a dashboard with information about the client health of your environment. View your client health, scenario health, common errors along with breakdowns by operating system and client versions. Specify a custom port for peer wakeup - You can now specify a custom port number for wake-up proxy. Real-time management Run CMPivot from the central administration site - Configuration Manager now supports running CMPivot from the central administration site in a hierarchy. Edit or copy PowerShell scripts – You can now Edit or Copy an existing PowerShell script used with the Run Scripts feature. Get Current Phased deployments Dedicated monitoring for phased deployments - Phased deployments now have their own dedicated monitoring node, making it easier to identify phased deployments you have created and navigate to the phased deployment monitoring view. Improvement to phased deployment success criteria - Specify additional criteria for the success of a phase in a phased deployment. Instead of only a percentage, these criteria can now also include the number of devices successfully deployed. Office Management Integration with analytics for Office 365 ProPlus readiness - Use Configuration Manager to identify devices with high confidence that are ready to upgrade to Office 365 ProPlus. Additional languages for Office 365 updates - Configuration Manager now supports all supported languages for Office 365 client updates. Office products on lifecycle dashboard - The product lifecycle dashboard now includes information for installed versions of Office 2003 through Office 2016. Redirect Windows known folders to OneDrive - Use Configuration Manager to move Windows known folders to OneDrive for Business. These folders include Desktop, Documents, and Pictures. OS servicing Optimized image servicing - When you apply software updates to an OS image, there's a new option to optimize the output by removing any superseded updates. Specify thread priority for feature updates in Windows 10 servicing - Adjust the priority with which clients install a feature update through Windows 10 servicing. Simplification Management insight rules for collections - Management insights has new rules with recommendations on managing collections. Use these insights to simplify management and improve performance. Distribution Point Maintenance Mode - You can now set a distribution point in maintenance mode. Enable maintenance mode when you're installing software updates or making hardware changes to the server. Configuration Manager Console Notifications - To keep you better informed so that you can take the appropriate action, the Configuration Manager console now notifies you when lifecycle and maintenance events occur in the environment. In-console documentation dashboard – There is a new Documentation node in the new Community workspace. This node includes up-to-date information about Configuration Manager documentation and support articles. If you can’t wait to try these new features, this PowerShell script can be used to ensure that you are in the first wave of customers getting the update. By running this script, you will see the update available in your console right away. Read the full article

[clubruido]

A Club Fonograma favorite since the mid 2000s, Daniel Riveros AKA Gepe, is known to combine Precolumbian instrumentation, folk sounds from Latin America’s history of protest music, daydream pop, and sometimes, reggaeton.

Gepe’s latest album is titled “Ciencia Exacta” and here in Chicago you can catch Gepe live at this year’s edition of Ruido Fest on Friday July 7th. We spoke over the phone briefly this week- Gepe in Santiago- me recording our conversation from a squatted 13 unit complex in Chicago’s West Side.

Our interview is in Spanish but I loosely transcribed some of Gepe’s most interesting thoughts into English. We talked about Mapuche cosmovisions, the rise of autonomous & anarchist practices in Chilean society, reggaeton, and whether or not him and Alex Anwandter will be sharing a stage during Ruido Fest 2017.

ZE: Hello Gepe. What can you tell us about your new album “Ciencia Exacta”?

GP: “Ciencia Exacta” is a very simple record, an acoustic search for nobility.

ZE: What about Christian Heyne’s participation on “Ciencia Exacta”?

GP: He is a very close friend who knows what works and what doesn’t work. Someone who can say add this song or subtract this song. It is a relationship is based on trust.

ZE: We are living through a very dark sociopolitical situation on a global scale. What are your thoughts about making music during the end of the world?

GP: Its a very complicated moment. There is a fascism created by capitalism has made some terrible threats. People are scared right now, fear of being robbed, of being killed. There is this fear of the other. In Chile we are experiencing a lot migration from Ecuador, Peru, and Columbia. There is a city to the north of Chile where a large part of the population is Black which hasn’t really happened in Chile. In every country there is this theme. How do I assimilate or deal with these topics? In general, musicians in Latin America we have always felt like we aren’t from any particular country but rather from Latin America. Before I am Chilean musician and I am Latin American musician and then I add that last name. I feel like we as artists are on a type of vanguard of extending Latin American culture without geo-political barriers. On my side of these things, my contribution to this is to build contextual alliances between contemporary music and folklore. To me Columbian folk music is just as important as Chilean folk music. Violeta Parra is as important as Eduardo Mateo, or Victor Jara.

ZE: How are you experiencing life under capitalism in your corner of the world, in Chile?

GP: Capitalism has generated a great damage for a long time, a great darkness. It is found in the deepest corners of our conscience, blood, or spirit or whatever. There is a great damage, especially in Chile. [Neoliberalism] became the main message after the dictatorship creating a very scared Chilean populace, very far removed from its roots of the original people, the Mapuche people mainly. There is a deep damage but I don’t know to find something in my music that speaks against this system would be “Marinero, Capitan”. There is a line that says “I am neither sailor nor captain, I am not the overseer or the worker.” It talks about a chain- about submission. Work is one of the chains that enslaves us. I do not feel part of one or the other. The idea is that there is an option outside of this. We have to aspire to this, to think outside of hierarchies, especially material hierarchies, between people who have power and those do do not.

ZE: Talking about “Marinero, Capitan” it seems very interesting that you chose not to glorify work or the work ethic. I do not know of any contemporary pop song that rejects worker essentialism and chooses not to glorify these chains.

GP: Yes of course. Everything should gravitate around political ecology. I am not simply talking about natural resources but also social relations amongst people, the way people relate to the planet. We have to step outside existing relations and stop believing in the hierarchy of the powerful and the slave.

ZE: You mentioned the original peoples of Chile. Has Mapuche cosmology influenced you as an artist, as a human being?

GP: Without a doubt. In fact, there is a song on the latest album “Flor del Canelo” that talks in a clear and honest way about the Mapuche culture. There is a Mapuche belief that says that the human being is simply the point of unity between the Earth and the Sky. This changes the entire schema of what were talking about, regarding the powerful man the dominates over nature, the powerful that dominates over the less powerful. In Mapuche cosmology one is a small part of a gigantic system that is a unity between the elements, the celestial and the spiritual. Nature is a place where these elements transit through. The Mapuche people in general have tried to maintain that order but have been met with conquest and the terrible things that have been brought upon them and their lands by the Chilean state.

ZE: In regards to autonomy or perhaps even a DIY ethic, does Gepe have any thoughts on this?

GP: In general, the anarchist movement is generating cells and daring people to think freely which is an essential exercise because here in Chile we are used to thinking in terms of masses. Its good to break that bubble and think more freely. I think anarchy is synonymous with liberty and it is an exercise of the maturity of Chilean society, especially amongst student manifestations which has generates an opportunity for the masses in Chile to think more freely which finds affinity with the type of free thinking that the anarchist movement is trying to foment.

ZE: Getting away from politics, you gave use quite a surprise when you started making reggaeton music. What can you tell us about your reggaeton aesthetic.

GP: I love reggaeton as a rhythmic form more so than its aesthetic. Artists like Munchi and Farruko are ones that I find interesting and have influenced me. Im not sure, it is particular and interesting that reggaeton is found everywhere in Chile, everyone listens to reggaeton. It can be alienating but there is a real corporeal allure towards reggaeton. But at least in my music I haven’t dedicated too much time to reggaeton but I have used its rhythmic and melodic components but not much more than that. I am not a reggaeton artist.

ZE: What is the future of your project with Alex Anwandter- Alex & Daniel?

GP: I would love to and I’m sure Alex has as much need to get back into the project and do something again. But as far as this year, no. Every time I am asked this question, I always respond I would love to do it again or at least do the project live.

ZE: You will have the opportunity to perform alongside Alex at this year’s Ruido Fest. Will Alex & Daniel perform live at any point during this year’s Ruido Fest?

GP: I wanted to leave it as a surprise but it will be a surprise nonetheless. All the Chilean artists will be doing something together.

ZE: Your friend Javiera Mena who is also performing at this year’s Ruido Fest just signed to Sony. What is the future of Gepe will you stay with Quemasucabeza or move to a bigger label?

GP: In that sense, I want to remain with Quemasucabeza. There have been thoughts about going bigger but theres some mistrust on my end. I love the artistic process with Quemasucabeza and want to grow with the label and have the label grow with me rather than grow with a bigger label and get all tired and stressed out.

[considering-your-world]

1: Considering The World

The fact of the matter is, we live in a selfish world. I highly doubt this is news for anyone. Everything these days revolves around you. Our lives are built off of our desire to feel good, and to feel worth something. To see a perfect example of this, you don’t have to look far. Look into a high school, and you’ll see it all firsthand. All gathered up neatly before you, like watching fish in a fish tank. Depending on the size of your high school. chances are, you might get to meet almost every single type of person you’ll encounter outside of high school in the real world, in one way or another. I find myself struggling to remember when it all changed. When people stopped caring about each other, and when life today became nothing more than a quest for sex, money, and more sex. I can never stop wondering why people go to such lengths to preserve their egos. High school in particular is a perfect staple of this. Everyone knows this type of person. The person who’s notorious for going through partners faster than you can keep track of. I knew a guy like this, amongst many others. And his name was Michael.

You see, Michael and I had some history. We had met in the third grade, and we were pretty good friends. Him and I related over a mutual love of Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon, and  a mutual understand that we were the underdogs. The nerds, if you will. We spent countless hours together, and we quickly became close friends. Once we reached middle school, there was a paradigm shift in things. The social hierarchy of middle school came into play. There were the jocks, the nerds, the popular kids, and the not so popular kids. Michael and I fit into the “Not so popular” side of things. As we entered seventh grade, Michael approached me with a sense of longing. He wished that kids like us didn’t have to be bullied for still liking Pokemon, or for living in a certain neighborhood. So him and I rallied others under our cause, and we formed a local Anti-Bullying organization. We marched proudly forwards, stars in our eyes, as we thought to ourselves that we were doing the right thing. As the years went by, this little group of ours went online, and grew larger. Last I bothered remembering, we had a network spanning in the hundreds of people who united under that flag of the underdogs. The outsiders. But then Michael changed. We entered high school. and Michael had accumulated more than just a reputation. He had a lot of girls under his belt already. And here’s where our finally maturing brains began to disagree. Michael would last a month at tops on a relationship, perhaps go on a few sexual exploits, then drop them and move to the next one. I started keeping track at six. I lost track at twenty one by the time we were Juniors. We fought over various things as time progressed, his promiscuity being a piece of it. I couldn’t understand how he could treat another human being like an object. A toy for his own desire. I couldn’t understand how he, the man who claimed he was going to change the world, and how he, who was once was this kind soul who loved every human being, became so selfish. And the saddest part of it all, was when I confronted him on these things, I was labelled as heartless. I was evil. I was callous. And this is a trend that almost every selfish person has. When faced with the guilt of what they’ve done, they fight to protect that fragile ego of theirs. And they’ll lie to themselves, convince themselves that “no, they’re wrong, not me”. They’ll post on Instagram right after breaking your heart to try and let you know that they don’t care, but in reality, they’re feeling like scum.

Needless to say, that organization Michael created was apparently sold off to someone else, and it’s been lost to time since.I still think back on him and the whole fiasco, and every time I do, I think on the other people like him, and how even the best of people, if their minds are weak, will fall to this modern selfishness. 

I challenge you, reader, to consider the world. to realize that you’re nothing but a brick in a wall that spans the entire globe. A small piece of the puzzle. Should you remove that brick, the other bricks around you suffer.Maybe the whole wall won’t come down, but you’re surely straining the ones around you by making them carry the weight you decided not to carry. You might have your reasons to become so callous, but don’t you think that the people around you don’t deserve to feel the same pain you felt?  Don’t worry about keeping up your ego. If you’re a good person, you’ll get nothing but praise. Life is more than just sex and money. You’ll find that the guy who acts like Michael did, and treated others with such disrespect, end up mostly by themselves. And they’ll live their lives knowing that when they die, all those people they hurt won’t be showing up to their funeral, and they won’t bat an eye when they hear they’re gone. Your ego means nothing when you’re dead, but the impacts you have on people will last forever.

[chrissyrholmes]

Six Conversion-Boosting Web Design Tricks

Even if your website manages to consider all these aspects, it can only deliver so much value if it fails to encourage visitors to take action.

Your website’s conversion rate directly impacts your return on investment, so it’s worth researching and discovering how much your current website encourages its users to take the next step in your business relationship.

If you find that your conversion rates are lower than you want, make some simple tweaks to assure that it’s doing its intended job – bringing in new customers and converting customers to your brand.

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Conversion Rate Optimization: A Primer

We can’t talk about converting visitors without addressing conversion rate optimization (CRO), which is the practice of making improvements to your website in hopes of getting more visitors to take a desired action.

Examples of these conversion actions include filling out a contact form, making a purchase, or downloading an ebook. CRO can involve something as simple as changing the wording or a message on a landing page or changing the color of a button, to something as complex as redesigning the entire hierarchy of your site. At its core, CRO has two goals:

To optimize your site’s data to match the way your user approaches information gathering, and;

To leverage the psychological principles of web design to maximize the chances of continued user interaction.

How Should Businesses Approach CRO?

Now that we have an operational definition of CRO, the next logical question most have is, “How do we make it work for us?”

Conversion rate optimization, like its cousin, search engine optimization (SEO), is an always-evolving multifaceted discipline. What works for one company might not work for another. What makes CRO markedly different from SEO is that it will depend heavily on your market research and desired buyer personas. Your CRO approach will vary from other methods, but generally, it operates on a few principles:

1. Creating a Clear Value Proposition

Often, when a business is facing lackluster conversion rates, it’s because there is no clear value proposition on the homepage. If you optimize your site for search, a new user will come across it looking for a solution to a problem.

Your goal is to convince them, quickly and effectively, that your company is the solution. Businesses often fall prey to the “peacock” trope – they try to fill their homepages with what makes them different and effective, which makes the user (and thus your message) lost.

A better approach is to write a clear, concise value proposition for your homepage. Add this to a clean, simple homepage and an alluring photo, and your user will be encouraged to move on to the next step.

2. Demographic Responsive Design

By now, most are familiar with the concept of responsive design and its importance to conversion rates. In case you need a refresher, here is a statistic to whet your appetite: According to the firm eMarketer, more than half the respondents to a recent survey reported they wouldn’t purchase from a brand that offers a poorly designed mobile experience.

In today’s era of data and personalization, our obligation extends far beyond mobile responsiveness. This is where the concept of demographic-responsive design comes into play. We know that each generation has unique qualities – we know millennials as idealists and see Gen Z’ers as being more cynical. With the power of demographic-responsive design, we can accommodate these two dichotomous traits with only a little extra effort.

3. Banish Your Homepage

Is the homepage dead? In today’s world of mobility and personalization, some web designers (and marketers, for that matter) are beginning to think so.

In today’s marketing landscape, the homepage has become less relevant, especially when combined with demographic-based responsive design. Instead of a central homepage, consider creating landing pages indexed by demographics, location, or other relevant metrics.

At its best, a landing page is a one-stop roadmap for your visitor. Provide everything your users need to convert on a tailored landing page, with little navigation required.

4. Make Your Forms Simple

Forms are tedious, and users dread filling them out. This holds especially true in the online sphere, where user attention is diminished even more than in the real world.

Online forms are little more than digital paperwork. Since users already see this as a chore, take steps to minimize the drudgery and create forms that convert:

Ask only for information that’s absolutely necessary – with no optional fields. There’s no need to lengthen the process with information you don’t need for a business transaction.

If possible and when it makes sense, use predictive text. For example, addresses and locations can often be auto-filled, which reduces some of the user burden.

Make your error fields clear. It’s a constant annoyance for users to figure out why their form won’t submit. Strong visual cues and clear instructions will help minimize submission failure and make navigation more intuitive.

5. Revamp Your CTA

If your website is failing to convert, it might simply be because your calls to action aren’t effective enough. A good CTA guides the user to the next step in the business process, telling them they’re on the right track. There might be several reasons your CTA is failing to impress:

It’s too confusing. Pack too much into a CTA, and your users might wonder if they’re doing the right thing. Worse, they may become convinced that you’re not what they need.

It’s too generic. Learn more. Contact us. Continue. While these CTAS are simple, they don’t offer as much to a user as a more descriptive CTA might. Enticing users to continue is an important aspect of your CTA.

They’re too hard to find. You have a well-worded, descriptive CTA, but it gets lost in your webpage. Dominant colors, animated buttons, typography that pops – these are all essential to making your CTA visible. Users shouldn’t have to search for it. Bring the conversion to them.

6. The Argument for Simplicity

In web design, we talk a lot about simplicity and how important it is a site’s success. The reason we harp on this so often is because we’re following a scientific precedent.

Those with a marketing background are no doubt familiar with Gestalt psychology, which aims to explain how our brains maintain order and perception in an otherwise chaotic world. One of the main principles of this discipline is the Law of Pragnanz, or literally translated from German, the law of pithiness. This principle says that we crave order, and thus organize our experiences in the simplest manner possible. Instinctively, we like simplicity because it leaves less room for the element of surprise.

If you want an example of this concept in real life, consider the anxiety associated with a large purchase such as a home or car, which requires reams of paperwork. Contrast that with a website like Amazon, where we can review order history, print return labels, and schedule UPS pickup, even for large purchases or those coordinated through third-party vendors.

We can apply the same scientific principles to boost conversion rates. Simplifying your site in terms of typography, images, and content is a start. Deepen your efforts by simplifying forms and heeding these other tips:

Use “engagement bots.” This artificial intelligence tool isn’t exactly new, but we’ve expanded their use. Chatbots can answer questions for customers 24/7, automate the return process, and keep users on track for conversion any time of day or night.

Make your shopping carts intuitive. Cart placement, icons, and coloring should all have one focus – to guide a user easily through checkout.

Scroll, don’t navigate. Especially on a mobile interface, separate landing pages can be cumbersome. Put all the information a user needs on one landing page and make it scrollable.

Final Thoughts

Increasingly, the internet focuses on user behavior, so understanding your users and the conversations they have is more important than ever. Websites must be more than functional, they must be attractive, with a user experience that focuses on conversion optimization.

Simplicity will always trump pages overloaded with information, as these will confuse your user. To boost your conversion rate, consider using these tips and tricks to tweak your website’s design.

from Web Designing https://1stwebdesigner.com/conversion-boosting-web-design-tricks/

[shantelemile]

The Untraditional Culture: Fandoms

A fan is the shortened term for fanatic. The word fanatic was associated with people who were, “insanely but divinely inspired” with temples and sacred places. The word’s meaning has shifted to, “marked by excessive enthusiasm and often intense uncritical devotion”and has entered our pop culture and everyday lives. “Fandom is a sociocultural phenomenon largely associated with capitalist societies, electronic media, mass culture and public performance.” (Duffett, Understanding Fandom: An Introduction to the Study of Media Fan Culture). A fandom is a group that expresses their love and dedication to something in a creative form of art (fan fiction, drawings, cosplay, etc.). Fans are allowed to creatively express their love without being judged.

A fandom can be considered a culture because it follows the definition of what a culture is, “Culture is the shared knowledge and schemes created by a set of people for perceiving, interpreting, expressing, and responding to the social realities around them.” (Lederach, Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation Across Cultures.). A culture is something taught and passed down through generations. Fandoms are establishing knowledge pertaining to the object being liked and the code of conduct within a fandom. They are also growing in size which can classify it as an actual culture.

Being a part of fandom is like an echo chamber, it becomes a space where ideas and beliefs are reinforced because it is closed off to outside opinions. Mark Duffett uses the example of Rupert Till’s experience at the Free Nelson Mandela concert in London. He states, “Rupert Till’s pleasure seems to spring unbidden from his experience of a live performance and yet it likely represents the culmination of an extended engagement with Sting’s recorded and broadcast music. Till is in a leisure environment surrounded by like-minded people, at an event that could resonate with his value system.” Till was able to feel a strong connection to this concert and the people around him because they had a common interest and they were able to reflect these interests to the public.

Just liking something is not enough to consider yourself a part of a fandom or a fan, there are steps to the process. There are three key stages of the fandom initiation according to John Fiske discussed in the book Media Studies: Key Issues and Debates: 1. The Semiotic Productivity: Do you feel empowered when you see that thing on TV? 2. Enunciative Productivity: Do you talk about the thing outside and proudly own their merchandise (posters, shirts, CDs etc.)? 3. The Textual Productivity: Do you write about your thing of interest and share it? When you can answer yes to all of these things, you are considered to be a part of a fandom.

Fandoms are popular, one of a kind, and grow in size every day. The question is what makes fandoms so appealing to the public. Since being a part of a fandom means you are entering a culture, John Jenkins brakes down what fan culture really means. He stated that there are five characteristics of fan culture: 1. When watching whatever it is on TV, you feel as though you are right there in the crowd even though you are not. 2. When you become a fan you have to understand all the inside jokes, you read and do whatever everyone else in the fandom is doing. 3. You can and will call radio stations to request a song or TV shows to gain attention or express your displeasure to whatever it is you like. 4. A fandom culture develops their own style and traditions. 5. A fandom is like a getaway from reality. (Media Studies: Key Issues and Debates). In a fandom, fans refuse to succumb to the social norms of the regular world, so they are able to express themselves freely there.

Even though within a fandom you are given unlimited freedom, the freedom and behavior are seen as crazy to people outside of the fandom. Like the definition stated earlier, a fan is a crazed person who would go to great lengths for the thing they love. People in a fandom would see this as dedication and an undying love whereas others would see it as being a lunatic. This is especially true for fandoms surrounding musical artists, celebrities, and television shows. The downfalls of having a fandom is the consumption of time and the stalker like behavior that people engage in. Being in a fandom requires spending a lot of time online and in communities to create new content for the fandom. There has to be new fanfictions, art works, and having to constantly be up to date with whatever is going on with the artist/celebrity, so it becomes very time consuming.

Fans are [sometimes] borderline psychotic. The term “stan” means when you obsess over a celebrity in an extremely overzealous way. It is derived from the Eminem song Stan (2000) which tells the story of an obsessive fan who is being ignored by his idol and kills his family and himself after he continuously gets overlooked. The musical group, One Direction, their fans would pay people to get information about which airport or hotel to stalk or harass them for a picture or try to talk to them. They would sometimes leak this information online and hordes of people would gather in these places making it dangerous.

Aimee Wilson, a 20-year-old that left the One Direction fandom believes leaving the fandom was the best choice for her. “There were people who were actually mean on Twitter. Other fans would dismiss them just saying that they were just protecting the One Direction members, but no it was bullying. Some of the Directioners would act like they owned the members and would tweet them non-stop demanding that they follow them or to do something. I remember they even made up this thing where they wanted two of the members to date each other and they found ‘evidence’ of their relationship. Some people would cut themselves because they were so sad they weren’t being noticed. I couldn’t even. As I got older I realized it’s not that serious, you can enjoy an artist and their music without being crazy.”

The good thing about having fandoms is that it has proven to benefit companies because they are making money from these fans. Dedicated fans will buy merchandise with the musical group(s) faces on it or anything referencing/promoting them. At concerts, they have multiple booths that have t-shirts, mugs, CDs, posters, and light sticks. Buying the concert ticket is the first way the companies that manage singers make money, then selling merchandise on the side is another way. Having fandoms also helps add hype to the company and the musical group. Simon Cowell is known for discovering the One Direction members on The X Factor UK and managed them under his record label, Syco Music. One Direction became the world’s biggest boyband during their six-year reign. Their success has been nothing but great for the founder and the company. This would not be possible without the fandom that demanded and supported the music they released. The use of social media sites like Twitter allowed the people who are in charge of the group to directly see the public’s response to the group and what they should incorporate or change.

The internet is aiding in shaping the identities of those in a fandom. Fandoms have a hierarchy system which determines who has power and who is popular. The number of followers you have indicates who’s the “leader” of the fandom. The more followers you have the more influence you have within the fandom, people are more likely to turn to you for information about the artists and what you say will be taken more seriously than other people. The PBS documentary Generation Like, Ceili the super Hunger Games fan, dedicated a lot of her time to getting more spark points and earning a higher level. The higher the level she had the more people would see her posts, and she would be able to enter the list of the top Hunger Games fan. Fandoms have helped reinforce this system in our society, fans want the high levels and followers to show off to the public so that their love is known within the fandom and not questioned.

Melanie Sanchez, a 19-year-old fan has been a fan of One Direction since their debut on The X Factor. She is still supporting them even though they are on an indefinite hiatus. “I liked the music that the boys put out, that’s why I liked them. But then I followed them on Twitter just to see what they’d tweet about and I don’t know when, but I entered the fandom. I kept posting memes and talked about how much I loved the boys and I gained a lot of followers over time, like 10,000. I would post something and if it didn’t get enough likes I’d delete it- I didn’t want to be lame.” When asked about the people in the fandom she said, “The community was filled with girls my age (at the time I was like 13-14). We cried, screamed, and laughed over these boys who didn’t know us personally. We all understood each other. We were all Directioners. I made friends online and we planned and met up in person in the city. It was the best time of my life.”

Within the fandom’s hierarchy system there are the OGs (Original Gangsters: people who’ve been around for a long time). They are constantly nitpicking and weeding out the fake fans. Since a fandom is its own culture, to just one day say; “Oh, I’m going to stan this thing” will not sit well with other people, especially the OGs within that fandom. That’s almost like culture appropriation to them. You are just wearing the name of the fandom for show, you have no idea what it is truly about. To test the loyalty and authenticity of fans in the fandom they might ask questions to test your knowledge and ask you about certain milestones. Some OGs base how long you have been interested in that specific thing to determine your fan status. Because fans treasure the artist and the fandom so much they do not want it to be disrupted by anyone who does not share the same feelings as them.

Fandoms are also shaping our gender roles/stereotypes. Gender roles have been instilled in society since the beginning of time, so it is only natural that they travel into our communities. In the Bible, 1 Timothy 2: 12-13 it states, “And I do permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; but to be in silence. For Adam was formed first then Eve.” According to the Bible, men were born to be natural leaders and with leadership comes strength and authority. When men stray from these characteristics it raises criticism and some concerns towards their sexuality. For example, in the movie Grease (1978), the character Danny Zuko was a badass with a leather jacket, had a gang, a sweet ride, and girls swooned over him. In the Summer Loving scene of the film, he exaggerates what happened over the summer making everything more sexual than what it was. He makes Sandy change because he is embarrassed to be seen in public with her. Scenes like this have been translated and repeated throughout Hollywood, we see a repeat of similar characters like Danny, so it became the norm for men to act like him.

However, the children’s television show, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (2010) is changing this long running gender stereotype of men. The show has a fan club of grown men who call themselves bronies.The show’s intended audience is children and airs on a children’s tv show network. The show has gained an unintended audience of males and these men are seen as weirdos to the public because the shows target audience is little kids. Yet, it does not say anywhere that children and their parents or males cannot bond over the shows storyline or the lessons it teaches at the end. The grown men who watch this show are most likely enjoying the experience that the show has to offer them. These men are not living up to the gender roles set up by characters like Danny Zuko. The scenes that have constantly been on replay in Hollywood have been disrupted by a children’s show about ponies. Because this is out of the social norm the public is perceiving this as something bad, a taboo. The bronies are facing a problem similar to those of actors in the film Chocolate Babies. In this film the group of friends were HIV positive and they always received the shorter end of the stick. They were mistreated by the government and they had to form a group of their own to get the support and love they deserved. The bronies are being ostracized for liking a children’s show and they find comfort within one another because they understand the situation they are facing with the public.

Nashaun, a 22-year-old African American father who is not a part of a fandom stated, “People can like whatever they want. It’s just that it’s weird to want to be in something for little kids, it makes me wonder if they got other motives in mind. Why would I want grown men associating with my kid? Something doesn’t add up there.”

There are many cultures around the world that are not accepted or understood, and fandoms are falling into that category. Humans are conditioned to repel what they do not know. Our automatic responses to the unknown are fear and to destroy it. The behavior and the craze that comes along with fandoms cannot be processed by people outside of it. The One Direction fandom and the My Little Pony fandom are only some of the many fandoms out there and they carry many controversies. Even though they have these negative connotations surrounding them people still flock to these fandoms because of the community they provide. If you never had a place to fit in in the real world, you can most likely find your spot within a fandom. The judgement free zone is something we don’t see a lot in everyday life. I think this is the biggest factor as to why fandoms are appealing to more and more people.

Works Cited

Chocolate Babies (n.d). Retrieved April 21, 2018.

https://vimeo.com/62632619

Devereux, Eoin. (2007). Media studies: Key issues and debates. London, UK: Routledge.

Duffett, M. (2015). Understanding fandom: An introduction to the study of media fan culture. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Generation Like (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2018, from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/generation-like/

Lederach, J. P. (2008). Preparing for peace: Conflict transformation across cultures. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University.

PBSoffbook. (2012, September 06). Can Fandom Change Society? Retrieved April 23, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9Zum7azNIQ

[drmariefeuer]

Stories vs Experience

 Stories vs Experience

I was recently at a dinner with some professional new age people, meaning people who make a living promoting new age type of skills and information. Sort of like being a pastor without needing to be accountable to anyone else except their “guides”, and since their guides are in their head, invisible, and only talk to the “gifted” person (no one else can hear them) there is no way to question what you hear from these folks. I personally like asking questions and like Leah Remini says in her expose on Scientology if people or an organization are offering information that proclaims to help people (or save the world), it should hold up to some questioning and in fact the process of question and answer should make the information stronger.  In the new age, typically the problem is often no one asks questions. It is not cool to question a so called spirit that talks to only one person. It is too embarrassing to question someone who appears more “advanced” than you because they hear a guide (so called) and you do not, etc. The second problem is that the answer is often “my guides told me so” and since only one person can hear the other’s “guide” there is no place to go from there.  Again, typically, one does not want to appear uncool or not spiritually advanced so there will be no questioning of the so called guide, or of the person claiming to hear this guide.  To make the situation more complex, Spirit is the world of the invisible, the world of perception, and faith is a practice of moving into the unknown with no evidence.

Back to the dinner. After drinking, people decided to do “readings”…. after drinking. Sorry, I do not go with that. And, Readings, for me, are not a party activity, it is a sacred encounter.  Some people like orgies, public sex, casual sex etc. Nothing wrong with those, it is all a choice. Some prefer only sacred sex, making love, tantra.  Another choice.  This was an opportunity.  Whenever I don’t “like” something I have two choices: leave, or stay and learn. I chose to stay. When I get with new agers, I put on my mosquito net. My mosquito net for new agers is I bring up Shadow Work because most new agers want to be the butterfly that brings the “good news”, the “healing”, the “sunshine” to someone else. That way they get the gratification of seeing the person “feel better” and they get showered with thanks, gratitude, and often more. There is a reason new agers call themselves light workers rather than say Spiritual Servants. Bring in the Shadow Work and here is what happens. You will be told a story that makes it all better. This is called a reading, a message from a guide (that you cannot hear), reframing, a prediction (a positive one of course) that “this “will all be over soon and you will marry the prince etc. Then, if you do not believe the story you will be told you are blocked and that is why bad things are happening to you. In other words, if you do not believe my story, you will be causing more bad things to happen to you. If you actually have the nerve to point this out, you will be told oh no, I am not judging, you are twisting my words, which makes no sense at all and typically confuses the person enough that they stop asking questions, or even talking.  Finally the (generally narcissistic) new ager will now revel you in a story from their life of how they got through some similar bad time and now all is a miracle, therefore since it happened to them, it is somehow proof that 1) they are right  2) it will happen to you.  This kind of faulty magical thinking is an earmark of a narcissistic personality, not a full blown personality disorder, but definitely a tendency.  Dig deeper, you will find these kinds of new agers have not done any work on their childhood issues or traumas, instead you will hear that they are walk-ins or extra terrestials etc. My year in Sedona, running a school, kept me around the town’s new agers who talked to the mother ship while each one was a food addict, a sexual abuse victim (not a survivor), co–dependant, etc. and other than their “broadcasts”, they were not having a good life. They were having a good time escaping, or compensating by losing themselves in new age stories while neglecting the work of this current life.

Understand that this is a short article meant to make a point. Therefore you are reading generalizations and material that is exaggerated (rarely but somewhat) to make a point, to make you want to learn more. If you think these short articles (I don’t like the label blog or some reason. It sounds like a swamp to me) “teach” you, you are wrong. They are simple arrows pointing to a direction of travel should you find the information relevant. The pursuit of more in-depth knowledge is then up to you, your efforts and your actions.  The new age loves to tell stories and give stories as knowledge, or wisdom when it is only information, and often not even valid information. Telling stories can be a tool to stimulate the attainment of wisdom, but, in this country stories are used more to prove one (or one’s ideas or information) is right, to try and motivate people (rather than teaching people to self-motivate).  Sufi teaching stories, Zen koans, vision stories of the Native Americans and other indigenous cultures, these are stories meant to send one into deep contemplation, to give you an experience that needs time to sink in and if you let it sink in, will shift you and your energy field through the experience of contemplation. So, to again get back to the new age dinner, share an experience that is not butterflies and rainbows and new age folks will jump all over you to “fix” you , push you into a “positive” outlook. And you will be told a story. If you do not believe the story, jump on their bandwagon, you will be told in so many words that you are cursing yourself with bad luck because you are not believer (in their bright and sunny story). Just like big Christian television shows filled with “stories” which then ask you to jump on their bandwagon (and give money). The only thing that has changed is it is now the use of the word “guides” instead of Jesus and instead of money  the narcissists seek only accolades (not a canny as the Christians that way). But it is still, stories, still someone else working hard to get you to believe his/her story. About you and your life, and beliefs and sometimes even emotions (you “shouldn’t” feel that way says your so-called unhealed healer…. you are creating bad karma…etc.)

Now what?  Stories can offer experience and they can motivate. Offering a person a teaching story, one that takes some thinking, some contemplation, some work, to shift yourself (!) to a different perspective, a learning by working through a challenge to your current thinking is one alternative. This also means, the person will not “get it” until they can handle the shift, on an energetic level. This also means, the new ager will not get accolades in the moment, or perhaps (gasp) ever. Teaching stories take time to sink in. Teaching stories take work, by the listener. You, as a seeker, have a choice. Study with people who make you work for your gains, or align with those who have great stories. Go to a new ager who will tell you about a past life where you and a friend were lovers (and how exactly does this information help you? It only makes you feel better and/or makes the new ager seem amazing), or do a regression to discover one of your past lives for yourself, and do the work to actually feel for yourself the importance of that life and that relationship at that time and the implications in this life. When you get an experience versus a story from a new ager, you thank Spirit for giving you what you can handle and the new ager will not get much in the way of applause or worship. When a Spirit Worker offers another an experience, the Spiritual Worker is only the facilitator of Spirit. There is little to no grandiosity in that role. When Spirit gives you what you need, rather than what you (your ego/left brain) desires there is typically less drama which many resent, as “drama” with no effort is “in” and drama with no effort  is what most people currently crave.

Seek out Spirit Workers who let you have your experiences, who offer you a ladder that you can use to climb out of a hole. Who offer you a hammer and nails so you can build a new reality for yourself, whose stories move you to think, contemplate and make new choices, those who help you on such a deep level that you don’t think to thank them until often years later if ever.  Be wary of those who seek to seduce you with wondrous stories of their new age “gifts”, stories of miracles in their life. Those miracles are theirs and will not rub off on you, nor are they proof they will happen to you.   Does this article irritate you?  So be it. For most people thinking, these days, is an irritation.  For many, they welcome the chance to think, contemplate, experience and learn.  I have always chosen Teachers that will let me learn, will not rescue me or do my thinking for me,  who motivate me with stories to continue to work and evolve, and do not motivate me with stories of  that “explain” how I should see, understand, believe or experience things (telling you a past life for example), and most of all, are there for me as I come out of the tunnel often dirty and tired but “new.”�� Viable research on educational theory has shown that learning via experience is the most powerful and permanent kind of learning. Not movies, not stories, not reading. Those all have their place but there is a hierarchy of learning. Learning through experience is challenging. Life will present you with challenges and you will learn, like it or not. I prefer to be confronted by a Teacher, challenged by a Teacher who offers experiences for me to work through. And when I  emerge from each challenge, there is my Teacher (who often at times looked like the challenge when really it was all inside of me), smiling, embracing, celebrating with me acknowledging, profoundly acknowledging this part of the Journey I just accomplished by willingly taking on the work of this lifetime and by allowing the deep intimate connection of working with a Teacher guide me. Either way you will learn. You will learn, either way.  Choices.

Journey On

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