#the living lands has been established as a tough to survive in environment so i feel like getting murdered by some mutated bees

[bragganhyl]

I should give fo:nv another go

[hero-israel]

https://www.tumblr.com/her-moth/726167324355444736/from-saids-invention-memory-and-place-2000?source=share

I’ve become interested in the figure of Edward Said, a Palestinian-American academic and activist who more or less coined the terms/studies/activism/etc of Orientalism and Post-Colonialism, both terms I find deeply important and which I apply to my leftist Zionism, something I’m sure he and his followers would strongly oppose. On that topic, I’m looking into some of his anti-Zionist (though I’m sure it’s more nuanced than that) work, both to broaden my perspective and because I’m much more willing to listen to a Palestinian who lived in historical Palestine before and after Israel’s establishment as opposed to a modern Westerner. I’ll admit, he has plenty of valid critiques of Zionism and movements he associates with it, though there are of course elements I disagree with. One point he made that really bothered me however (shown in the above linked screenshot) is, while comparing European Jewish Zionists to the Crusaders (partially valid but for the most part 😬) and the medieval European imagined environment of the land Jesus lived and died in as “denatured Palestine”; “after hundreds of years of living in Europe Zionist Jews could still feel that Palestine had stood in time and was theirs, again despite millennia of history and the presence of actual inhabitants.”

I agree the terra nullius mindset many Zionists and Zionist allies had (and sometimes still have, about history or the present to justify settlements, war, and discriminational policies) was awful and a horrific and regrettable way to begin Israel, but I really hate how Said just wastes no breath lumping Jews in with powerful European Christians and maybe subtly implying an acceptance that Jews are from there but ultimately just leaving it as “Tough tiddy, you’ve been gone too long, you should’ve stayed in your diaspora forever” with so little consideration that the Jews did not fit in Europe, nor could they survive there, and they needed some place their heritage was. Obviously this is just a manifestation, perhaps inspiration, for the notion that Jews don’t deserve return from diaspora, no matter the cost, but Palestinians do, and this not only a double standard but the first one is apparently the direct cause and justification for the second. Idk, I just wish Said would be a little more considerate or something.

That's the frustrating thing about Said. The man could write, and he would often home in on a decent, poignant comment - and then he would derail it with some ridiculous rabble-rousing bullshit about how Jews were the agents of European imperialism, or how Israel is constantly hoaxing archeology. He tried to pass himself off as a victimized Palestinian refugee, when he was born a privileged American citizen and spent his formative years in Cairo.

The Tumblr post you provided shows Said's frustration that people get so caught up in symbolic mythical Jerusalem that they forget or don't care it's an actual place where people live real lives. And that's a totally fair point! Co-signed! And then he ruins it by whitewashing Jewish history. His perspective that "before the Jews came, there were ACTUAL inhabitants there" is nothing less than a purported anti-colonialist / anti-imperialist giving an implicit endorsement of the Ottoman Empire. Which is less surprising when you remember he also gave EXPLICIT endorsement of the Ottoman Empire.

He was honest enough to admit that his preferred outcome for Palestine would put Jews in danger. I co-sign that too.

[visionofnoxus]

Mister Swain I have to ask, do you happen to know what animals are native to the main portion of Noxus? I can understand if you don't but I was hoping you knew since I'm trying to make record of what animals are to be counted as invasive species due to all the territory we gained and how to handle them for both our navy fleets and our armies when they set up camp anywhere.

The general looked at the question’s maker, a small smile pulling at the corner of his lip. A proper inquiry about the empire? And with a hands on application meant for the answer? Oh it felt like Snowdown all over again. “Take a look at the map” He motioned at the near wall-sized depiction of Runeterra that dominated one side of his office. A rather direct reminder of Grand General’s responsibility. 

With that, he began.

The province of Noxus, where in Immortal Bastion is located, is arid and hostile terrain. It is a land of rock, cliffs and canyons, as well as open flatland more to the west. Precious little prospers in such a tough environment, but what does survive is either strong, smart or both. And Noxians themselves are no exception to this rule.

The most famous creatures of this province are the drake-hounds, vicious and aggressive creatures comparable in size to Freljoldian wolves. And just like their northern counterparts, these beasts are pack animals, though luckily their packs are smaller. Large number of drake-hounds in close proximity will result in violent clashes until the picking order had been established and the alpha of the group has reduced it’s pack to… Manageable levels. They possess great amount of strength and their fangs and claws can tear even armor, if given a chance to land a proper hit. The explosive violent force comes at a cost however, and the creatures are not renowned for their stamina, should the prey prove very elusive, a drake-hound will tire. The animals do combat this shortcoming with pack hunting tactics though. Should you encounter one in the wild, it is reasonable to assume two to five others be within close proximity, waiting for their chance.

Then there are the Basilisk, originally native to Shurima’s Kumungu jungles. Some have however been… Misplaced by their handlers, or their handlers flat out eaten and thus, the province of Noxus now offers these “living battering-rams” an environment which they do enjoy and prosper in. Thick scaly skin is like an armor. The creature possesses ludicrous biteforce, long claws and has a keen sense of smell. Additionally, it is capable of seeing in the dark to a point, however the cold nights of Noxus Prime make it sluggish and as such these juggernauts generally sleep at night. One would do well to remember this is not so in Shurima. A basilisk grows throughout it’s entire life as long as it is fed. The older the beast, the stronger and sturdier it becomes. Should a wild one with a taste for  humans wander close to settlements, the army is tasked with eliminating it, using their own basilisks. Interestingly, some of the more glory seeking Noxians hunt these creatures as a way to prove their valor. A personal note about basilisks: they have are remarkably good at lunging forward suddenly. Additionally, watch the tongue.

Noxus also possesses some less violent fauna, such as horses. Smaller, slightly weaker but faster than their Demacian counterparts, these equines are lightning fast, capable of outrunning both Drake-hounds and Basilisks, assuming they are given the chance and the room to do so. They feed on the tall grass that grows on the flatlands.

There are sheep living in the rocky canyons and mountains. These animals survive through their thick wool that keeps them from the elements and by displaying their excellent climbing abilities, managing to get to locations that shepherds just can’t reach even with help. The talent is no doubt invaluable, as their lack of speed denies the sheep a chance to outrun a hungry predator, such as the two mentioned above. Nature makes sure that only the most talented climbers survive, as Drake-hounds do possess surprising levels of agility when properly motivated, and Basilisk do have rather spectacular reach with their sticky tongue.

Finally, there is the Noxian Raven, also often called “Blood Raven”. The name comes from the beady ruby colored eyes and the fact that these large ebony colored birds are carnivorous. While they are generally speaking vultures, it is well known fact that they’ve flocked up and killed many people throughout times. Most often this happens when an intruder approaches their nesting grounds, inviting the entire flock of the enormous avians down upon them. Most outrageous tales tell of ravens bringing down an adult basilisk, but these stories are unconfirmed and such stories are attributed to the animal dying of natural causes. Whatever that means in case of a basilisk. A simple advice: If you see a large gathering of these midnight coloured birds, leave them alone and move along.

[weaselle]

Dead Earth 3rd installment

Ringer had killed a couple men back in Quorum, and that was the problem. Quorum was pretty rough and tumble; those men he shot were mean and tough, and he figured it made him a real bad hombre.

He was tall and slim, and he fancied himself a gunfighter, wearing a pistol in a shoulder rig and another in a holster tucked into the back of his belt. Somewhere along the way he had joined up with Daily, a big beefy man who loved to hit things with his fists, and the two of them pretty much thought they were the toughest dudes to ever live. Geo, a smallish young man, was impressed by them, and latched onto the pair.

Breen only had two other crew members: Cee W., a copilot he’d met on a night the young man was fed up with his previous employer, and Hanah, an old ship hand who kept to herself, knew how to do her job and everyone else’s too. Breen’s ship The Grabbyelle was already warming it’s engines for take off by the time Ringer, Daily, and Geo showed up, late as usual.  

“They’re on, Cap’n” Hannah’s voice sounded in Breen’s ear.

“Lift it” Breen told Cee W.. Once they were on course, he turned over control to his copilot and called a crew meeting in the galley. Hex and Jackal would be there, Cee W. would listen in on the com.

_____________________________________________________________________

Breen did a double take as he entered the galley and saw Hex. She was wearing a kind of business suit in crimson and black, with plenty of gold jewelry, somehow managing to look like both a CEO and a pirate -- the pirate effect highlighted by the nine inch blade strapped to her left thigh and a long wool coat draped over her shoulders like a cloak. Jackal was beside her in similar if less flashy garb. His large foxy ears were plainly visible through a brimmed hat with two holes for them, but looked at first glance like they might be part of it, like feathers stuck in the hatband. Wearing a vest and no jacket, he had a sort of short staff slung across his back. It was the least number of visible weapons Breen had seen on them yet.

When Ringer and Daily came in trailing Geo behind them, Hex and Jackal had their interest right away. Ringer leaned insolently against a counter eyeballing Jackal, and Daily walked over and lewdly ran his eyes up and down Hex.

“Well well, Captain, what have you brought us?” Ringer said, looking at Jackals ears, then glancing at Hex. “Pets? Are they house trained?” Jackal’s eyes narrowed a little, and one ear flicked. “What do think Daily, she got a tail hidden away behind her? Aww, what am I sayin’, you probably don’t care if she’s human or not”

“Shut up, Ringer” Daily said flatly, leaving his eyes on Hex.

“You’re out of line, Ringer” said Breen, with more confidence than he felt, “You too, Daily, back off! Don’t be rude to our clients” Daily lingered a second, then moved to sit at the table with Hannah and Geo.

“Oh clients!” said Ringer, bowing sarcastically “So sorry, I didn’t realize.”  Suddenly ignoring Hex and Jackal, he dropped into a chair and faced Breen, who also sat.  “What’s the job?”

Before he could answer, Hex said “I’ve hired this ship and its crew to retrieve something of mine. A box my uncle left me.”

“We need a whole ship for that?” said Geo skeptically “Must be a big-ass box”

“Not so big,” said Hex, as Jackal brought her a mug of black caff and sat at the table, “it’s not the size, it’s the location. I hope you all are ready for a rough time -- we’re going down to the Old World.”

Well, they didn’t like to hear that, and with good reason. The Lunar Colonies had been established close to 200 years ago, and the Earth had been considered a dead and dangerous planet for most of that time. Oh, there were things living on it, but it mostly wasn’t a fit place for people to live. Some did anyway, such were the ways of humans, to claw existence from the barest chance of survival. They lived amid the wreckage left by a combination of environmental disaster and global warfare, an apocalyptic  wilderness considered uninhabitable by most of what was left of humanity. Many of those left on the planet were either genetically altered or cybernetically augmented, the progeny of laboratory creations during the last, war-torn decades of a fully populated Earth.

Called derogatory names like “grader” “shifter” “alter” and “mutie” (slurs short for upgraded, gene-shifted, altered, and mutant) people with cybernetic or genetic enhancements were not welcome in the lunar colonies. First generation Upgraded and Gene-shifted entities had been designed for war and terror, often mimicking horror story creatures such as vampires and zombies, or housing weaponry and programing for battle and assassination. Not just people, there were many human-created animals, some of which were quite intelligent. And there were micro-organisms and nanobots still swarming the planet, as well. When a last large-scale evacuation had finally been implemented, the Planetary Evacuation and Transfer Agency had screened for and denied entry to all Enhanced Beings, a policy meant to prevent “infecting” the supposed purity of the Lunar Colonies.

“I shoulda known a couple of damn shifters would try to get us down the well” said Daily, referring to the gravity well created by the planet. “Like hell I want to go there, full of vampires and borgs and nano-mites and who knows what.”

“That box of your uncle’s must have something worth a whole lot of money in it for you to hire a ship and land on that death rock,” mused Ringer. “What’s our share?”

Hex looked at him coldly “Whatever worth that box has is only valuable to me. There’s nothing in there for you. What you get is a working ship in operation, with its dock fees paid off and plenty of food and water, and your normal crew rates.”

Ringer scowled and looked over at Breen “That right, Captain? We working for zero percent of the haul? Doesn’t seem fair, that.”

“Can’t make money on a ship with empty tanks and unpaid dock fees, Ringer. I saw a chance and I took it. You’re getting paid your crew rate. Sometime in the next few hauls maybe we’ll find something that’ll earn you a nice bonus. Meanwhile, eat up, sleep tight, do your job, and draw your normal pay.”

“I don’t like it at all,” Ringer replied “and I know Daily and Geo don’t either. How ‘bout you, Hannah? You want to go down to Old Earth? Getting old to try that kind of environment, aren’t you? And I bet you don’t like to work a run and not get a percentage”

Hannah, never impressed by Ringer and his friends, shrugged “You ever shipped out on one of those big ol’ EA astroid miners? They charge you for room and board the whole time you’re on the ship, gotta pay it out of whatever you manage to mine while you’re out in The Black. If you don’t find enough ore to pay your bill, you don’t get to leave the ship when it docks, gotta head back out on the next run and hope your luck is better. Plenty of them miners never manage to get free, spend the rest of their lives working for that EA mining corp, never see a single kuai in their bank account. This here’s not my favorite deal, but it’s a deal, and a better one than I’ve had from some. Captain says we might get something extra later on, then I expect there’s a good chance of that, he ain’t lied to us yet.”

Hannah grinned nastily at the lanky troublemaker, “As for taking a trip down the well, you don’t worry me none with that talk, Ringer, what with you never even breathed the Old World air. You might be surprised to know I actually been down there before, an’ I ain’t so old I can’t go again. What’s more, I’m twice as likely to make it back as you are yourself, and that’s facts. That there planet eats up men think they’re tough like you, just plain eats ‘em right up; why, you oughta be scared more than you are, really.”

“Scared?” Ringer was outraged. “You keep talking, grannie,” Ringer bit out, “I’ll show you who’s tough”

“Alright, that’s enough,” said Breen, “In 52 hours we’ll be landing. It’s a dangerous world, but we’re just making a pick up, and taking off. No reason for everybody to get all wound up. Now you’ve heard the job, and that’s how it is. Everybody back to work. Hex, I’d like to speak to you on the bridge at your convenience” and with that, he walked out.

Daily stood up, looking at Hex, “How ‘bout it, lady, you want to come see me in my quarters when you’re done with the captain, I’ll show you a real man.”

“That’d be nice” said Hex, “I been looking for a real man since I got here.”

“Oh yeah?” said Daily, grinning lustily.

“Yeah,” said Hex, wryly, running her eyes slowly up and down Daily “and I haven’t seen one yet” and turned her back and left.

“Fucking bitch!” Daily exclaimed and leapt up to follow, but suddenly Jackal was face to face with him, fangs bared, staff out with the tip resting against Daily’s chest, stopping him. Ringer put his hand to his gun, but Jackal said “Daily dies if you do, Ringer. Daily, you better call off your buddy if you want to live. You know what a bangstick is?”

Off to one side, Hannah chuckled. “You boys sure went knocking on the wrong door. Better go easy there, Ringer. Bangstick is a compression gun, Daily, in case you don’t know. Just a pipe with a round loaded in, usually shotgun shell -- you jab it against anything and it hits the pin, fires the round. You’re mighty close to having a big hole right through you, boy.”

“That’s exactly right,” said Jackal “and your pal Ringer there could make me nervous, with his hand on his gun like that.”

“Let’s go, Ringer,” said Daily, slowly, “this is a bad start to a fight. We can pick a better time and finish it.”

“Anytime at all, cabronés,” said Jackal, as Ringer took his hand away from his holster and Daily backed away. “You try it anytime you want”.

Daily and Ringer left.

Hannah looked at Jackal. “You remind me of some folks. You ever ship with any of the Old Fleet?”

Jackal grinned at her and winked, touched the brim of his hat and left.

Hannah whistled soundlessly and looked across the table at Geo. “Kid, I never liked those two you hang out with, but you seem okay, so I’ll give you some good advice for free. If they go after these two, you just let them go and do it without you, I’d hate to see you killed. That there was a Galloglas, or I’m Queen of the Moon.”

Geo wrinkled his brow at her. “What in the diyu is a Galloglas?”

“You ever hear of the Old Fleet?” Geo shook his head at her. “The Council of Captains?” Geo shook his head again. “Well, you know how Sol Union got started?” Geo shrugged. “Por su madré, what all are they teaching people these days?” she said, “Well okay then, listen up, I guess this here is story time.”

“Back in the day, the Old Fleet was called the Station Supply Fleet, or the Service Fleet. A handful of giant ships created to service the seven space stations.

Life on these stations was secretive even back then, and from the beginning, their smaller populations tended to have a lot of brains and be in the top of their field. Then those folks raised a few generations of children who were certainly very, very smart, even if no one has ever proved they’ve been genetically enhanced to be extra intelligent, as rumor says.

Those stations, whole little worlds unto themselves, were busy developing goods and services in their areas of specialty -- those things they still produce, like robotics, medical research and narcotics, specialized food production, entertainment. But that wasn’t all they developed while floating around out in The Black. They also developed their own ways of life.

Sort of the same way, the Service Fleet was making their own cultures too. Most of those ships were crewed by several hundred men and women on back to back between-station journeys that could take three years or more each trip, and they naturally started their own way of living.

So anyway, it wasn’t long before the stations began to have differing opinions about what the law should be on-station. Different from each other, a bit, and very different than the governments that thought they controlled them.

More and more those opinions disagreed with the opinions of Earth and the Lunar colonies, and when one of those disagreements came to a head on Station Delta, the old Space Command  found out very quickly that one of the things all the stations had in common was an opinion that attempts at military boarding and take-over of a station would not be tolerated.

The long and short of it was, the few surviving members of the Lunar Military incursion team wound up reporting that yes, the extremely intelligent people of Station Delta had, in fact, thought to engineer quite well against armed intrusion. Planetary authorities were further caught with their pants down when the seven stations of Sol System immediately unionized and seceded en mass, announcing themselves an alliance of self-governing bodies. Looking back, they had to have been planning it for a while, secretive messages going back and forth in the dark for years. Anyway, that’s how Sol Union was born.

The days-old Sol Union then gave the Supply Fleet that serviced them an offer, which was simply: join us.

Now those ships relied heavily on those stations to supply and refuel. There was no way to land them on the Moon or on Old Earth, they were designed to dock with the stations. And I imagine a lot of those ships didn’t care for being ordered around by government folks who didn’t know what life in the Fleet was like, most of who’d never even served on board any ship at all.

On each ship of the Fleet, decisions were made about the Sol Union offer. On some ships, there were votes. On other ships arguments were more pointed. Explosive, even. Two ships were lost entirely.

In the end, the Council of Captains was formed (some of whom were very new to their captaincy indeed). They defined each ship as an autonomous entity, and unanimously offered an alliance with the Sol System Union, simultaneously offering Earth and the Lunar Colonies a peace-treaty with trade agreements. Once the Sol Union signed that alliance with the Council of Captains, there wasn't really any choice for Terran or Lunar governments; the station labs produced a lot of the best goods and technology: medical equipment and vaccines, personal electronics, as well as widely enjoyed arts and entertainment- that last bit was particularly tricky for Space Command to get around. It was extremely difficult to keep the support of the citizenry when the 'enemy' was so damned popular.

But mostly it was that the ships of the Fleet were almost all of the serious space-craft humanity had made up til then. There was no space navy, nor any kind of second fleet to provide shipping. In effect, the rebel Union, while refusing to trade any of their products with Terra, had agreed to sell to the Fleet, who was offering to sell those things to the Earth and Moon. And buy goods from them to sell to Sol Union, of course. Neither Terra nor Luna could afford to refuse, and indeed, the Delta Solar Treaty worked well for all concerned. Still does.

Now, one of those ships, the captain was a woman named Reilly Galloglas. Nobody is sure how or where, but her crew started buying or building smaller ships. They spread out some. Some of them turned Pirate. Some of them started raiding Earth, scavenging and selling black market goods. Some of them even left off shipping out and worked security for a station here and there, or started a business. Mostly they’re one big family, even if distantly related. They’ll adopt long time crew members, and I’ve heard tell some people marry into the family. But they never take in or keep anybody who doesn’t live up to their standards, born in or not. And there are three things you have to know about them Galloglas folk.

First, they’re honest and honorable, even if half of ‘em are criminals and pirates. I mean they might steal all your money, but they won’t lie about it, they’ll keep any promise they make, and they’ll only kill someone who’s armed and facing them. Second, they’re a hard, dangerous, deadly folk. They don’t run from a fight, you can believe it; there’s just no back up to ‘em. And third, they are loyal as fuck. They mostly handle their own business, but gods help anyone who backshoots one, or gets one too outgunned and they have to call for reinforcements.

I only ever heard one time it happened. ‘Bout sixty years ago, the Theta Station Mining Co. had a difficulty with one, and blew her ship up while she was on station talking to them about it. They musta figured to strand her there, or something. I don’t know if they realized that little ship had her husband and kids on it, but she sure made sure they knew it by the end. Every Galloglas near got involved, and that right there is why there’s only six stations left in Sol Union. The rest of them stations looked at shrapnel left where the station had been, checked their options, and allowed as how Theta had fucked up and got what they deserved. They sorta buried the whole story and moved on quick. They surely didn’t want to push the issue with that Galloglas crew. I reckon if it came to it, they’d all of them show up, and I don’t see how there could be less than 500 of them Galloglases, maybe two or three times that number, a bunch of ‘em with their own ships, and every one a demon in a fight.”

Son,” Hannah looked into Geo’s eyes, “you take an old lady’s advice, tell your friends to lay off - them two are a lot more trouble than Ringer and Daily can handle”

“I will Hannah, thanks” said Geo. And a couple hours later, he did.

But the problem was, Ringer had killed a couple men back in rough and tumble Quorum, and he figured it made him a real tough guy.

[fantroll-purgatory]

World: Good Ole Alternia! Name: Nadira Pikoys (The Nihilist) - Nadira is taken from Nadir, meaning the lowest point or ‘rock’ bottom while Pikoys is the old english word for Pickaxe. Her first name is tied to how she’s at the very bottom of the hemospectrum with a working class job. Age: Not set - somewhere in the 6-7 sweeps ballpark though.

Theme/Story: Her main themes are Misfortune and Mining. Her hive is part of an apartment complex dug into a hill which is also where she mines out more apartments and precious minerals (which she sometimes keeps to herself, though this is kept hidden). She’s never gone outside of it and while there are plenty of other unfortunate trolls here she’s undoubtedly the one that got the short end of the stick. She’s struck with awful luck, if something can go wrong it will go wrong, but somehow she never seems to die - either due to some sick, twisted luck or her rustblood resilience. (I’m going to start here with my notes- Nadira has more meat to her than most trolls who are based around a gimmick, but it’s still holding her back- you’ve written a character who has issues due to circumstances, and she would likely become a very different person removed from them.) Goals: I am pretty satisfied with her design, though I do feel some stuff can be improved in general and would like a second opinion on her overall! (Me and CD had a long discussion about Nadira the other night, so I’m gonna translate what we were talking about into a review!) Strife Specibus: pickaxekind - Might as well fight with what you’re forced to do for your life, right. Fetch Modus: Boulder Modus. Items are covered in a rock (toughness depending on importance and/or size of item) which need to be physically mined to be retrieved.  Blood Color: Rust Symbol and Meaning: Her EZ symbol would be Arittarius (Void/Derse, The Astronaut), but I’m using a custom symbol which is a pickaxe with an = symbol on the handle, fit for the EZ Rust symbols while not making it too simplistic. Handle: tormentedPariah [TP] - constantly suffering and an outcast - An unfortunate individual who is different from others, which is how she feels.

You’re hit on something very interesting to me here. Pariah implies someone outcast and denied by others, and if you’re saying that’s how she views herself- you don’t just have a nihilist character, you have a character with feelings of persecution. Being Pariah’d is something other people do to you. So if that’s how she feels, what does she think she’s been pariah’d for? Does she have bitterness about this outside of just the vague floaty nihilism? 

Quirk: Uses –) as Prefix, putting her pickaxe at the forefront of her sentences. Puts : before her c’s so that they’re all sad :c and Uses … as Suffix to show how her sentences always feel unfinished.

Quirk Example: TP: –) :could you tone it down a not:ch…

Special Abilities: Psionics (mild strength, can bend earth if she’s particularly upset), Blindsight (able to see and navigate without sight, tying to her Void aspect) Lusus/Guardian: A pupp-sized mopdog which has its eyes covered and looks depressing just like Nadira. Acts as the canary in the mine for her. Interests: Geology, Nihilism, and later on in SGRUB develops a taste for self-expression through Fashion. (This is pretty bare bones, and highlights the fact that you’re over committing to gimmick. This fashion interest, though, has some possibilities… Because on Alternia being into fashion is seen as frivolous and abnormal (see Kanaya), and that being a growth moment for her… needs more foundation and scaffolding, though.)

Appearance: 

(No comments here besides that I love this design.)

Personality:

 Surrounded by misfortune and hatched in a mundane role, she’s had a pessimistic view on life since the start which isn’t leaving her anytime soon. She keeps her distance and tends to be isolated due to her lack of hobbies or things to make small talk out of. When she speaks it tends to be vague and of few words, she can’t hold conversations but she’s at peace with that just like how she is used to everything going wrong every time. An observer and despite her timidness, she is assured in her own knowledge.

(You’ve written her to fit the Classpect you’ve given her as opposed to the other way around, and it shows through here. My comment about circumstantial depression comes back here- this kind of… negative nihilism would melt away after getting into Sgrub. Because in Game, she’d be completely removed from the Alternian Caste system, which would solve, like 90% of her issues.)

Lunar Sway:

 Derse cause that’s where the pessimistic and introverted peeps tend to be and she fits that bill to the T.

(She is these things, but I would argue that she may be a Prospit character! She doesn’t seem to have the Dersite core of rebellion and restlessness. She seems to just conform to what comes her way, in fact! Remember that Karkat is also a Prospit Dreamer, and he’s a big ol’ misanthrope.)

(Negative Nihilism, like what Nadira is entirely themed around, is also considerably more Prospit in nature: The feeling that everything is hopeless because nothing has meaning is not traditionally something a constantly scheming Dersite would even care about. Dersites are gonna keep going regardless if it’s right, sensible, or meaningful. They can’t not.)

Title:

 Seer of Void, having lived a life full of hands-on work on Alternia she learns to lean back into her more passive role as a strategist and opens up more as a result when she plays SGRUB - becoming more talkative with her fellow team though she’s still vague as ever since that’s how dang void players are.

(Now here’s where a majority of what CD and I discussed. Is this character a Void player? Possibly. We’ll get to this in a bit.) (This is not a Seer. A Passive class reinforces her negative traits (isolation and not doing a ton with her life) while not teaching her anything of note, ESPECIALLY with Void as an Aspect. If you’re dead set on passive, the only one I can see working for a character like this would be Rogue- as the passive reorganization of Potential, stealing away the nothing of things, would help her use that rustblood moxie of hers for good.) (Aspectwise, she could be a Doom player because you’ve written her entirely around “universal suffering”, but frankly, that’s a boring take.) (You could continue with Void, because she has some interesting symbology around it- but she doesn’t have ANY of Void’s curiosity, any of Void’s doubt, any of void’s well of endless potential. She doesn’t create the earth- she destroys it and mines it out.) (Which leads me to an odd possibility: Time. Nadira has the potential to be a solid player Chosen By Time. If you played up her grim determination to survive regardless of what life throws at her, put some meat into her personality, and emphasized that Destruction angle, she’d have what she needs to handle the pressures of the aspect. Time is also the traditional wheelhouse of the Red (see Dave, the Megidos, and Caliborn).)

(The later Fashion interest is fun because that turns the arrow towards Void’s sister, Space. Her Land would change, of course, but the imagery of bringing in from the center, changing the meaning of where things are, and creating new life all jive well with her character. Space characters tend to have an interest and draw to Art, and her moving into becoming a fashionista and shedding her facade of grim disinterest would be very interesting. Space characters as well have a well-established motif of being isolated: Jade on an island in the middle of the sea, Kanaya in the sun in the desert, and Calliope in the darkness of nothing.)

I do want to throw my hat into the ring to agree with the Time/Space option in particular. Something space players also experience is Stagnation, either physically or more metaphorically in their social life, until they finally break out and go ham. That’s something I talked to SA about last night. A Space Player who hasn’t awakened yet usually experiences a lack of Lateral Movement that comes with that feeling of isolation. You say Nadira has never left her hivestem and that reads very “space player who doesn’t know they’re a space player yet.” Once she’s free of circumstance, she can explore herself and her environment more, adventure in ways she was never allowed to. I think it’d be good for her.

Land: 

LOGAE (

lol gay

) - Land of Geodes and Enigma. The land is filled with rare minerals to the point where there is no soil to grow anything on, leaving the poor black cat consorts with nothing to grow their crops or get safe water from. The quest is to unleash the steamy water from the core and breathe new life into the land. This is a subversion of the common becoming rare and vice-versa, coming to accept the more dull things in life because they are special in their own way.

[swipestream]

An Excerpt from DO WE NEED GOD TO BE GOOD?

In addition to science fiction and fantasy, Castalia House also publishes thought-provoking non-fiction. Here is an excerpt from anthropologist Dr. Hallpike’s conclusive demolition of evolutionary psychology, among other things, DO WE NEED GOD TO BE GOOD?

‘Evolutionary psychologists’, who claim that our human abilities and traits are very specific adaptations to the problems of pre-historic life on the savannah in East Africa, have not faced up to the fact that we know virtually nothing about what this life involved, about the social relations and organisation of our ancestors in those remote epochs, and still less about their mental capacities. If we are going to use the theory of natural selection to explain the characteristics of any species, it is obviously essential to have a detailed knowledge of their behaviour in relation to their environment. In the case of a social species it is particularly important to observe the relations between individuals, and modern studies of chimpanzees and gorillas are obvious examples of how this should be done.

But while it is reasonable to assume that our ancestors in this remote period lived in very small groups of gatherers and scavenger/hunters, and to deduce from this that we must have been an innately sociable species for a very long time, and that some of the well-established gender differences seem to be adaptations to this way of life, it is difficult to be sure about much else. Normal science proceeds from the known to the unknown, but evolutionary psychology tries to do it the other way round.

Language is central to human culture, but we do not even know when our ancestors were first able to utter sentences like ‘Shall we go hunting tomorrow?’, and it is quite possible that they only achieved this level of linguistic ability well within the last 100,000 years or so. But without language there would have been no way of referring to the future or the past, no means of conveying information, no group planning, no way of communicating group norms and ideas of sharing and cheating, and no discussion of technology and other problems of survival. We cannot even imagine what a pre-linguistic human society might have been like. It cannot be sufficiently emphasized, therefore, that our profound ignorance about early humans is quite incompatible with any informed discussion of possible adaptations.

Even in the case of the earliest Homo sapiens sapiens from around 200,000 years ago we do not know what sort of things they might have said to each other, (or if they could have said much at all), what made them laugh, or even if they laughed, what they quarrelled about or how they organised sharing within the group. Nor do we have any idea when they first had personal names, or when they could form the ideas of ‘grandfather’, or ‘mother’s brother’, or when they developed the idea of some sort of official union between adult men and women, or if they exchanged women between bands, or how hunting co-operation was organized, or what sort of leadership existed. Nor do we know when humans first had ideas of magic and symbolism, gods, ghosts, and spirits, or when or why they first performed religious rituals and disposed of the dead in a more than merely physical manner.

Ignoring these drastic limitations on our knowledge has meant that many so-called ‘adaptive explanations’ are merely pseudo-scientific ‘Just So Stories’, often made up without any anthropological knowledge, that have increasingly brought evolutionary psychology into disrepute. For example, it has been claimed (in the Proceedings of the Royal Society no less) that more than a million years ago, early humans lost their body hair because it was full of nasty parasites, and potential mates therefore preferred partners with the least amount of hair so that it was eliminated by sexual selection. Instead of body hair, humans took to wearing clothes: ‘clothes, unlike fur, can be changed and cleaned’. We know nothing whatsoever about the sexual preferences of our ancestors a million years ago, but at least we know they could not possibly have had clothes, because these have only been around for a few thousand years since the introduction of farming and weaving. Another example of an adaptive theory, recently published in New Scientist , is obviously based on the author’s experience of living in London rather than on any anthropological knowledge about hunter-gatherers. ‘The first, and most ancient function of manners is to solve the problem of how to be social without getting sick [from other people’s germs].’ No it isn’t. If there was a ‘first and most ancient function of manners’ it would have been to reduce social friction among small groups of people who have to live and get along with one another, and a hunter-gatherer band was, in any case, the environment where one had the least chance in human history of catching a disease from someone else.

Some years previously, New Scientist also published an evolutionary explanation of nightmares: ‘In the ancestral environment human life was short and full of threats’, so that ‘A dream-production mechanism that tends to select threatening events, and to simulate them over and over again in various combinations, would have been valuable for the development of threat-avoiding skills’. Since most people wake up screaming when the threat comes, however, nightmares seem a most unpromising educational tool. And as I write, yet another evolutionary knee-slapper has appeared, in Biological Reviews, this time maintaining that men’s faces and jaws are more robust than women’s because for millions of years men have engaged in fist fights. The problem here is that we know from anthropological studies that hunter-gatherers are not recorded as engaging in fist fights but in physical conflicts typically use weapons like clubs, spears, or rocks because they are so much more effective than trying to use one’s bare hands. Boxing as such is a skill that has to be deliberately taught and is only found in a small minority of societies which makes it extremely unlikely that it was an important form of human combat for millions of years.

The second problem is that if our ancestors were so closely adapted to the environment of prehistoric East Africa, this should be able to tell us a great deal about their subsequent behaviour, especially during the last 10,000 years of maximal social and cultural change. For example, we would expect humans, in their expansion all over the globe, to have chosen environments with a discernible resemblance to the savannah of East Africa, and to have avoided those that differed markedly from it, like rain-forests, deserts, the Arctic, islands in the Pacific Ocean, and high mountain ranges. We would also expect them, after millions of years of simple, egalitarian hunter-gatherer existence in small groups, to have been strongly resistant to the formation of large-scale, highly stratified societies, and again to have had great difficulty in mastering mathematics, science, and modern electronic technology, just to mention a few glaring examples of major cultural change.

Yet we know very well that in these and innumerable other respects, human habitats, social organisation, culture, technology and modes of thought have diverged in wildly different ways from the simple model of Man in his prehistoric environment, so that evolutionary psychology has no predictive value at all in these essential respects. This alone makes it very unlikely that human abilities and dispositions were ever closely adapted to particular ancestral conditions. ‘Among the multitude of animals which scamper, fly, burrow and swim around us, man is the only one who is not locked into his environment. His imagination, his reason, his emotional subtlety and toughness, make it possible for him not to accept the environment but to change it.’

Thirdly, Man’s extraordinary intellectual abilities, in particular, raise the problem that in Darwinian theory biological adaptations can only be to existing circumstances, never to those that might be encountered in the future. We did not acquire our mathematical abilities, for example, so that thousands of years later we could be good with computers. This fundamental point about human abilities was first made by A.R. Wallace, Darwin’s co-formulator of the theory of natural selection, who had extensive first-hand acquaintance with hunter-gatherers of the Amazon and south-east Asia. He noted that on the one hand their mode of life made only very limited intellectual demands on them, and did not require abstract concepts of number and geometry, space, time, music, and advanced ethical principles, yet as individuals they were potentially capable of mastering the highly demanding cognitive skills of modern industrial civilisation if they were given the chance to acquire them. Since, as noted, natural selection can only produce traits that are adapted to existing, and not future, conditions, it ‘could only have endowed savage man with a brain a little superior to that of an ape, where he actually possesses one little inferior to that of a philosopher’.

This is particularly obvious in the case of mathematics, where even today many simple cultures, especially hunter-gatherers but including some shifting cultivators may only have words for single, pair, and many. The Tauade of Papua New Guinea with whom I lived were like this, and indeed, the hunter-gatherer Piraha of South America are described as having no number words at all, not even the grammatical distinction between singular and plural. We can get a good idea why this should be so from the example of a Cree hunter from eastern Canada: he was asked in a court case involving land how many rivers there were in his hunting territory, and did not know:

The hunter knew every river in his territory individually and therefore had no need to know how many there were. Indeed, he would know each stretch of each river as an individual thing and therefore had no need to know in numerical terms how long the rivers were. The point of the story is that we count things when we are ignorant of their individual identity—this can arise when we don’t have enough experience of the objects, when there are too many of them to know individually, or when they are all the same, none of which conditions obtain very often for a hunter. If he has several knives they will be known individually by their different sizes, shapes, and specialized uses. If he has several pairs of moccasins they will be worn to different degrees, having been made at different times, and may be of different materials and design.

What needs to be emphasised here, therefore, is that our hunter-gatherer ancestors could easily have survived without the need for verbal numerals or for any counting at all, and that consequently there could have been no selective pressure for arithmetical skills to evolve in the specific conditions of the Pleistocene of East Africa. As we all know, mathematics has only flowered in the last few centuries, and among a tiny minority of people, far too brief a time-span for natural selection to have had the least effect. The mathematician Keith Devlin very reasonably concludes: ‘Whatever features of our brain enable (some of) us to do mathematics must have been present long before we had any mathematics. Those crucial features, therefore, must have evolved to fulfil some other purpose’(my emphasis). Because we have no idea what that ‘other purpose’ might have been we are obviously not going to discover the origin of the mathematical features of the human brain from anything we suppose our ancestors might have been doing in pre-history.

Mathematics is only one particularly glaring example of a whole range of advanced human thought in logic, philosophy, and science, of a type known as ‘formal operations’, which has only emerged in literate civilisations, and is never found among hunter-gatherers. This general type of thought must therefore be the result, like mathematics, of the brain using its faculties in novel ways, which therefore cannot be traced back to African prehistory.

An Excerpt from DO WE NEED GOD TO BE GOOD? published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

[yaminosonarhedgiebat]

Whew!!! Okay this will take some explaining to do.  Alright, so since the reveal of Sonic Project 2017 on July 23rd, 2016 I've been thinking about a post-apocalyptic world myself and I've watched reruns of Sonic SatAM and Sonic Underground at the time too. There is a little inspiration from the November 2016 election here in America that took place and it prompted heavily for this project to take off, but I'm trying to keep that part out, while taking some of it to create and fit this new AU. Not to mention the biggest inspiration to try my hand at an AU is non other than the lovely @Drawloverlala thank you for being such a huge inspiration and motivation, amiga. I will post individual pictures of each of the characters you see here to get a better, closer look at the details. I am still trying to come up with more designs because these aren't the only characters in this AU, just designing them isn't as easy as they look. These took a lot of time to design. And even still I'm not sure if I'm satisfied with some of them. :/ So any who, lets get to the plot of this AU! ~~~Welcome to the Sonic Resistance~~~ In a world before Sonic and the Freedom Fighters ever got a chance to band together, Dr. Ivo Robotnik, ran for President of the human population. Promising them security from the rabid Mobians and their diseases, calming they never were the best species(along with some other human races) to walk on this earth, promising to deal with the Mobian animals(yes humans too) "the safe way" by turning them into robot slaves to work for the people without having to worry about them going rogue, diseases being spread by them, or paying them for the labor, he promised them more money, more jobs, and even healthcare. Some humans loved the idea, others hated it. As controversy spread like wild fire, G.U.N was leading investigations to stop this madman from taking office, but that didn't stop Ivo from winning the election by a landslide against his opponent and rose to power. Now that the area he governed over was his legally, he sent out his troops of robots to cease his new order of power. He became a dictator, thirsty for power, cutting ties with allies, and attacking the humans and Mobians that stood in his way of destruction. He built vast factories across the lands of Planet Mobius, walls to separate the humans from the Mobian animals. Most of the locations left for the Mobian animals were very poor and hardly any food and clean water to sustain themselves. There is some light to this, for King Nigel; king of Royal Hill Zone: Mobotropolis, found a sanctuary not yet discovered or touched by the now self proclaimed Dr. Eggman, grasp. He called it Knothole and there he established his new kingdom and protect his citizens. No one knew how any of this came to be with all the warning signs and only hoped someone would stand up to that Eggman. By this time, the world was polluted and human ties were no longer trusted to their "president", who has lied to them about being safe themselves from him. Humans and Mobians captured outside their curfew hours were taken to one of his factories to be robotized out of suspicion for being part of the Resistance or are part of the Resistance. Rich folks and important Mobians were forced to pay high taxes to avoid being robotized and be the enemy to Big Brother Eggman or be affiliated to be in the Resistance. Mobians have tried and failed to bring down Eggman, humans were too afraid to do anything that would go against the dictator ruling over them. Sonic and co have grown up quite a bit since the take over and have been practicing their attacks are now ready to strike. Knowing that this is dangerous, they have to keep a watchful eye of every move they make. One false move and they are goners. Robots aren't their only concern. Due to pollution, plants and animals that drank toxic chemicals in their water near factories have mutated and have grown to be a huge problem to both the Resistance and Eggman. So they must carry weapons to attack from long ranges for some of these animals and plants due to their toxicity. With a few failed attempts and a few victories in their hands, Sonic and Co are getting better at attacking Eggman's forces in hopes to bring this dictator down. Definitely catching the attention of Dr. Eggman, making the Freedom Fighters his first priority to take down. The Resistance has now gotten its new weapons and aren't afraid to use them. Look out Eggman, the Freedom Fighters are coming for you.  Characters: Sonic The Hedgehog: Co-Leader of the Freedom Fighters, he's supersonic fast making his attacks quick and get around security cams and security bots around the cities where Eggman's factories are. He's cocky, easy going, and fiercely loyal to his friends. He is a tad bit reckless which causes a few mishaps here and there in missions in the beginning but later learns that teamwork is the way to survive on these missions. On down times when not fighting Eggman, robots or fighting for survival, he likes to hanging out by himself for a bit, or hang out with friends and have a good laugh. He sports some sets of gauntlets that shoot electricity harmful to robots and mutated plants, but a small sting on flesh. They serve for long ranges where his spin dash isn't enough to penetrate titanium metal on special robots and toxic plants. Princess Sally Acorn and Nicole: Leader of the Freedom Fighters, she is a tough Princess ready on her feet and smart as she should be for a field leader. She has an A.I best friend named Nicole the Holo-lynx, she had upgraded from a handheld to gauntlets to be easier to hack into computers and travel from one gauntlet to the Sonic's gauntlets or any other team's communicators. Sally may be royalty, but doesn't let that go to her head. She stays true to her team, and make sure everyone makes it to base safe and sound. Sally is hardworking almost staying up late at night figuring tactics and plans to make safe attacks to Eggman's defenses, but this is a downfall as she tires herself out and if the mission fails she blames herself. Lucky her team is there to tell her otherwise. She enjoys the peace that sometimes comes after a successful mission and likes to be around her friends in down times too. Sally sports some energy blade gauntlets and has a knife of the same energy to throw at enemies like plants and robots. Amy Rose: Power swinging gal, her endless supply of hammers makes this gal a danger for anyone caught in her path. She is very agile and quick on her feet. Each hammer has a purpose for the environment or situation she is in. She is still optimist despite the grim world, she has a big heart, but don't let it fool you because she is one fierce fighter. She likes to hang out with Sally and learn from her which explains her mature level of thinking and she loves to bake sweets for her team with Cream the Rabbit. She is equipped with rings that let her summon any hammer she wants, some are small enough to throw and attach to metal object and explode to a magnet hammer that sends an electric shock to whatever it magnetizes to and gets called back to her by a homing beckon in her glove. Her special everyday use hammer, the nova hammer, sends shock waves when hitting the ground hard enough or when she swings it sending shock waves through the air.     Antoine and Bunnie D' Coolette: A Soldier and kick butt cyborg bunny bring more fight and power to the team. This married couple have taken their vows til death do they part. Antoine is a very skilled swords man able to get close enough to robots and cut them down to size. His wife Bunnie, although not seen, can fly using boosters in the soles of her feet, and her arm can transform into a sonic canon and blast the enemies away. Antoine is brave when he has to be, and is mostly the tease for Sonic's pranks, he loves to spend time with his mon amour and practice his sword skills. He is reserved sometimes, but does enjoy to talk about how he will protect the kingdom from evil doers. Bunnie likes to enjoy her time with Antoine and spar with him, she is kind and honest and will always give you the truth, she enjoys playing with hair and has done dos for the Princess, the girls and some of the boys in the team. Rotor Walrus: Lead Pilot for the Twister Bi-Plane, expert mechanic and expert flier. Rotor can fix just about anything and will always have Tails pitch in to help and sometimes help him to make inventions. Rotor is lay back, and only seems to have Tails to speak techy and understand him or share in his inventions. He likes to spend time in his workshop messing with machines with Tails and coming up with some cool gear for the team to use. Miles "Tails" Prower: Co-Pilot for the Tornado Bi-Plane, expert mechanic and expert flier. He loves to tinker and build things from his imagination. He also likes to help Rotor in the shop fixing up the planes and building gears for the team to use in their missions. Even getting help creating extreme gear for each team member in case the planes can't go into small places. He can also fly just using his tails and use some gadgets to blast robots out of the sky. Cream Rabbit: Medic assistant, Cream is a bit young, but that doesn't stop her from helping out when she can. She helps Dr. Sonar out when she needs help on the field or needs something that she can't get because she is trying to keep the patient alive. Cream is sweet and innocent, she enjoys her time baking with Amy and having her hair done by Bunnie, although not drawn here, she likes to take care of her chao friend Cheese and other chao that live in the clear lakes in the forest. Dr. Sonar BTLE Hedgehog: Medic, expert healer and expert knowledge of first aid, she is the teams medic keeping them in tip top fighting shape. She gets help from her assistant Cream. Sonar is kind, very gentle, but not heed her advice and she gets strict to her patients when they need to rest, she is quick on her feet and if enemies get too close she has a supersonic scream to blast them away and rings that are shields in case she can't do a scream. Sonar likes to spend time with the team in downtimes, sometimes reading a book on medical herbs, or do a bit of arts with Amy. Sonar has a bag full of medical supplies, and medic gun that shoots syringes that knock out mutated animals in hopes to cure them back to health.  The Chaotix and Knuckles: Still designing.... Team Dark: Still designing.... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Krudzu Hybrid Hydra Piranha Fly Trap Mutation: A fly trap that got mutated by being close to the toxic swamps near chemical plant zone. It's purple toxic acid is sticky and traps you from moving while it slowly digests you. All you see is this huge plant coming at you ready to eat you. Its outside parts are toxic so touching this can harm you. Best range to attack is far from its spit and toxic body. Mutated Woodland/Sea creatures: Still designing.... Surveillance Bot: These bots are just to make sure civilians are going by curfew hours, making sure no Resistance are out trying to take out the factories and alert SWATbots in the area if it finds any. These bots look into homes making sure no one is housing Mobians from the Resistance or trying to do treason. If anyone is caught outside curfew it shoots electric cuffs(not harmful) to keep them from moving or going anywhere until SWATbots come to pick them up for questioning and or turn them to robots slaves. General Snievly Robotnik: Commander of the Robot fleets and Eggman's right hand man, he takes orders from Eggman and plans attacks based on Eggman's intel. He's harsh and sometimes doesn't like doing commands from his Uncle. He secretly plots for when he will be in the commander and chief position. Until then, hes stuck as second hand man. He hates the robot chicken because it always takes his hat revealing his baldness. Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik: Ruthless dictator of Planet Mobius. He commands every factory he has forced his feet of robots to build around the world. He has ordered some places to stay as "sanctuaries" to trap anyone that is in the Resistance for immediate roboticization. He is evil, and shows no mercy to those that plead for their lives to be spared, his hunger and thirst for power is undying and grows more over time. His recent set backs due to The Freedom Fighters has caused his world domination upsidedown and had thought nothing but to find their bases and kill them all. In stress, he likes to hold his pet chicken, Cluck, and pet it and care for it. Cluck the Robochicken: Eggman's pet Chicken. Likes to get on Snievly's nerves. And there you have it, more updates soon on this because there is a lot I want to do with this. I really hope you guys will enjoy it! I spent months for this reveal and worked really hard on this. So without further a due, enjoy my lovelies!  Sonic and Co belongs to Sega Sally and Co belongs to Archie Desings done by me Sonar belongs to me 

[airoasis]

Leading 121 Stephen Hawking Inspirational or Motivational Quotes

Stephen Hawking is one of the most popular physicist on the planet. The strong decision he has actually displayed in overcoming his special needs in life made him well-known. At 21 he was informed he has actually just got a year or two to live. Now he is 75 and is still alive and working. He has terrific qualities which all of us can admire and gain from him. He stands as an example for strong decision and favorable thinking. He is operating at an age at which the large bulk would have resigned, but he still at that age has made money regardless of a condition that disabled him physically. This makes him a real good example and an excellent inspiration.Quotes from Stephen Hawking,

"Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. "Aim to make sense of exactly what you see, and question what makes the universe exist."Be curious."Stephen Hawking Inspirational Estimates:1.

"Look up at the stars and not down at

your feet." Aim to understand what you see, and question exactly what makes the universe exist."Wonder."1."Look up at the stars and not down at your feet." Try to make sense of what you see, and question what makes deep space exist."Be curious. "2. "Tough life may appear, there is constantly something

you can do and be successful at."3. "People won't have time for you if you are constantly upset or grumbling. "4."Science is not just a disciple of reason however, also, one of romance and passion." 4."Science is not just a disciple of reason however, likewise, among romance and passion. "5."Science is increasingly addressing questions that utilized to be the province

of religion. "6."Intelligence is the capability to adapt to change."7."One can't anticipate

the weather condition more than a few days ahead of time."

8." We are all now linked by the Web, like neurons in a huge brain." 9. "I concern the brain as a computer system which will quit working when its elements

fail. "There is no paradise or afterlife for broken down computer systems; that is a fairy story for people scared of the dark."10. "Even if it turns out that time travel is difficult, it is very important that we comprehend why

it is impossible." 11." My recommendations to other disabled individuals would be, focus on things your impairment does not avoid you succeeding, and do not be sorry for the things it disrupts."Do not be handicapped in spirit as well as physically."12."We remain in risk of ruining ourselves by our greed and stupidity." We can not remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small

and increasingly contaminated and overcrowded world." 13."Individuals who boast about their I. "Q."are losers."14."In my school, the brightest boys did math and physics, the less bright did physics and chemistry,

and the least intense did biology."I desired to do math

and physics, however my father made me do chemistry because he believed there would be no tasks for mathematicians."15."If I needed to choose a superhero to be, I would choose Superman." He's whatever that I'm not."16."Because there is a law such as gravity, deep space can and will develop itself from absolutely nothing. "17."Our population and our usage of the finite resources of world Earth are growing greatly, together with our technical capability to change the environment for excellent or ill."

18." I believe we have an excellent possibility of surviving enough time to colonize the planetary system."19. "No one carries out research in physics with the intention of winning a reward."It is the delight of finding

something nobody knew in the past."20."Time travel utilized to be believed of as simply sci-fi

, however Einstein's general theory of relativity permits for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out."21."We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a small planet of an extremely average star."We can understand the Universe." That makes us something really unique."22."Time travel was when considered scientific heresy, and I used to avoid speaking about it for fear of being identified a'crank." '23."I was never ever top of the class at school, but my schoolmates should have seen prospective in me, because my label was' Einstein."

'24. "My objective is simple."It is a total understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all."25. "In the past, there was

active discrimination versus females in science."That has actually now gone, and although there are recurring results, these are insufficient to represent

the small numbers of women, especially in mathematics and physics. "26." Fictional time is a brand-new measurement, at right angles to ordinary, actual time." 27."If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had actually been smaller sized by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, it would have recollapsed before it reached its present size." On the other hand, if it had been higher by a part in a million, deep space would have expanded too quickly for stars and worlds to form." 28."There are too numerous mishaps that can befall life on a single planet."29." If the rate of expansion one 2nd after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, it would have recollapsed before it reached its present size."On the other hand, if it had actually been greater by a part in a million, the universe would

have actually expanded too rapidly for stars and planets to form."30." Time can behave like

another direction in space under extreme conditions."31."I was born on January 8, 1942, exactly 3 hundred years after the death of Galileo. "I approximate, however, that about 2 hundred thousand other infants were likewise born that day. "I don't know whether any of them was later on thinking about astronomy."32."A few years earlier, the city board of Monza, Italy, disallowed family pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls.".". "stating that it is harsh to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality." But how do we know we have the real, undistorted image of truth? 33. "There might be shadow galaxies, shadow stars, as well as shadow people. "34."My discovery that black

holes emit radiation raised major issues of consistency with the rest of physics."I have actually now dealt with these issues, but the answer ended up being not what I anticipated."35."Stem cell research is the key to developing cures for degenerative conditions like Parkinson's and motor nerve cell disease from which I and lots of others suffer."The fact that the cells might come from embryos is not an objection, because the embryos are going to pass away anyhow." 36."I believe it rather most likely that we are the only civilization within several hundred light years; otherwise we would have heard radio waves."37."The past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities."38."My father was a research researcher in tropical medication, so I always assumed I would be a researcher, too." I felt that medication was too vague and inexact, so I chose physics." 39. "If aliens visit us, the result would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans. "40." I have discovered even people who claim whatever is predestined, which we can do nothing to change it, look prior to they cross the roadway

." 41. "Deep space is governed by science."Science tells us that we cannot fix the formulas, directly in the abstract."42." I believe everyone should have a broad image of how deep space operates and our place in it."It is a standard human desire." And it likewise puts our concerns in perspective." 43."There is a real danger that computer systems will establish intelligence and take over."We urgently have to develop direct connections to the brain so that computers can add to human intelligence instead of remain in opposition."44."I think in universal healthcare."And I am not scared to say so." 45."

Life would be awful if it weren't amusing." 46. "To restrict our focus on terrestrial matters would be to restrict the human spirit." 47."Life in the world is at the ever-increasing danger of being eliminated by a disaster, such as sudden international nuclear war, a genetically crafted infection or other dangers we have not

yet thought about. "48. "The majority of sets of values would trigger universes that, although they might be really lovely, would contain nobody able to wonder at that appeal."49."God not just plays dice, He likewise in some cases throws the dice where they can not be seen. "50."Not just does God play dice, but.".". "he often throws

them where they can not be seen." 51."

I'm not scared of death, however I remain in no hurry to die. "I have so much I desire to do first."

52." Science anticipates that many various type of universe will be spontaneously developed from absolutely nothing."It refers possibility which we remain in."53."With genetic modification, we will have the ability to increase the complexity of our DNA, and improve the human race."It will be a sluggish process, because one will have to wait about 18 years to see the result of changes to the

genetic code. "54. "I think the brain is essentially a computer system and awareness resembles a computer system program

." It will cease to run when the computer system is turned off."In theory, it could be re-created

on a neural network, but that would be extremely challenging, as it would require all one's memories." 55."I believe the mankind does not have a future if it does not go into space."56."I believe deep space is governed by the laws of science."

The laws might have been decreed by God, but God does not step in to break the laws." 57."When one's expectations are minimized to absolutely no, one actually appreciates whatever one does have." 58." Success in developing AI would be the biggest event in human history."

Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we discover the best ways to avoid the dangers."59. "We are all different." There is no such thing as a standard or ordinary human, but we share the same human spirit."60. "There is no physical law precluding particles from being arranged in manner ins which carry out even more advanced calculations than the plans of particles in human brains."

61." Some forms of motor nerve cell disease are genetically linked, however I have no indication that my kind is."No other member of my household has actually had it."But I would be in favour of

abortion if there was a high danger. "62."While physics and mathematics might tell us how the universe began, they

are not much use in anticipating human behavior since there are far too numerous formulas to solve."I'm no much better than anybody else at understanding exactly what makes individuals tick, especially ladies." 63."Numerous severely needed objectives, like blend and cancer treatment, would be achieved much sooner if we invested more."

64." Science is lovely when it makes easy explanations of phenomena or connections in between different observations."Examples include the double helix in biology and the basic equations of physics."65. "Maybe I don't have the most typical sort of motor neuron disease, which generally kills in two or three years." 66."Some researchers believe it might be possible to capture a wormhole and expand

it lots of trillions of times to make it big enough for a human or even a spaceship to go into."67."My work and my family are crucial to me. "68." Some scientists think it may be possible to capture a wormhole and enlarge it numerous trillions of times to make it big enough for a human and even a spaceship to get in."69."September 11 was terrible, it didn't threaten the survival of

the human race, like nuclear weapons do."70."Science is lovely when it makes simple explanations of phenomena or connections between various observations."Examples consist of the double helix in biology and the basic formulas of physics." 71." It is usually recognised that ladies are better than guys at languages, individual relations and multi-tasking, however less proficient at map-reading and spatial awareness." It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that females may be less good at mathematics and physics. "72." When we understand string theory,

we will know how deep space started."It will not have much effect on how we live, but it is essential to comprehend where we originate from and what we can expect to find as we explore. "73."I believe those who have a terminal disease and are in great discomfort needs to have the right to opt to end their own life, and those that assist them should be devoid of prosecution."74."I believe trojan horse ought to

count as life. "I believe it states something about human nature that the only kind of life we have developed up until now is simply damaging. "We've developed life in our own image."75."I do not think the mankind will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread out into area."76."I would like nuclear fusion to become an useful source of power."It would provide a limitless supply of energy, without contamination or international warming."77. "Women."They are a complete secret."78."Observations indicate that the universe

is expanding at an ever increasing rate. "It will broaden forever, getting emptier and darker."79."Exactly what was God doing prior to the divine creation? 80."In some cases I question if I'm as well-known for my wheelchair and specials needs as I am for my discoveries." 81."In less than a century, we have discovered a new method to think of ourselves."From sitting at the center of deep space, we now discover ourselves orbiting an average-sized sun, which is just

one of countless stars in our own Milky Method galaxy." 82."I wish to know why deep space exists, why there is something higher than absolutely nothing."83."Nothing can not exist permanently." 84."Thinkers have actually not kept up with modern-day advancements in science."Especially physics."85."Undoubtedly, since of my impairment, I need help." I have actually always attempted to conquer the limitations of my condition and lead as full a life as possible. " I have actually traveled the world, from the Antarctic to no gravity."

86." Researchers have actually become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our mission for understanding."87." I believe things can not make themselves impossible. "88."Science can raise individuals from hardship and remedy illness." That, in turn, will reduce civil unrest." 89."Although almost every theoretical physicist concurs with my prediction that a great void ought to radiance like a hot body, it would be very hard to confirm experimentally since the temperature of a macroscopic great void is so low."90. "I have actually discovered far greater interest for science in America than here in Britain."There is more enthusiasm for whatever in America."91."

There's no method to remove the observer-- us-- from our understandings of the world."92."

We must establish as quickly as possible technologies that enable a direct connection between brain and computer system, so that artificial brains contribute to

human intelligence instead of opposing it." 93." I do not have much positive to state about motor nerve cell disease, but it taught me not to pity myself because others were even worse off, and to obtain on with what I still might do."I'm better now than prior to

I established the condition."94. "There are grounds for mindful optimism that we might now be near the end ofthe search for the supreme laws of nature."95."There is no unique photo of truth."96."There are premises for cautious optimism that we might now be near completion of the search for the supreme laws of

nature."97."There is no unique picture of truth."98. "One can not actually argue with a mathematical theorem." 99." There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people scared of the dark."100. "'The Simpsons 'looks

were great enjoyable." I don't take them too seriously." I believe' The Simpsons' have treated my impairment properly."101." Nobody can withstand the idea of a crippled genius."102." I have so much that I want to do."I hate losing time." 103."I have actually questioned time all my life." 104."Exactly what I 'd actually prefer to control is not machines, but individuals. "105."The usual technique of science of building a mathematical design can not answer the concerns of why there should be a universe for the model to explain." Why does the universe go to all the trouble of existing? 106."It is no excellent getting furious if you get stuck."What I do is keep thinking about the problem however work on something else."Often it is years prior to I see the way forward." When it comes to info loss and black holes, it was 29 years." 107. "A zero-gravity flight is a first step toward area travel. "108." I am just a kid who has actually never matured."

I still keep asking these 'how 'and'why 'questions."Occasionally, I discover a response." 109."Only black holes of really low mass would discharge a significant amount of radiation

." 110."Even if there is only one possible combined theory, it is

simply a set of guidelines and formulas."What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe

for them to explain? 111."Someone informed me that each equation I consisted of in the book would halve the sales." 112. "It is not clear that intelligence has any long-lasting survival worth." 113."You cannot regulate every lab worldwide."

114." If we do find a total theory, it should remain in time understandable in broad principle by everyone."

Then we shall all, theorists, scientists, and just common

individuals have the ability to take part in the discussion of why we and the universe exist."115. "We only have to take a look at ourselves to see how smart life might become something we would not desire to meet."116. "Theology is unnecessary."117." Among physicists, I'm respected I hope." 118." I delight in all types of music-- pop, classical and opera."119." The media require superheroes in science just as in every sphere of life, but there is really a constant series of capabilities without any clear dividing line."120."All my adult life people have been assisting me."

121." We believe we have actually resolved the secret of development." Maybe we need to patent the universe and charge everybody royalties for their presence."

[flossinginthesunshine]

From Chapati to Sticky Rice

People who have spent considerable time in India have repeated to us time and time again the same line, “India will change you.”  And to neither of our surprises, this turned out to be the case. Here are few examples:

We learned quickly that every day would be a challenge, and that nothing can be taken for granted in India. Getting from A-B, finding a restaurant, finding a pharmacy, finding a bathroom, heck even walking next to each other in a crowd can be tough in Delhi. Travelling here forces you to maintain a calm and composed state of mind even in the most trying of situations. Given that timetables and stated schedules are meaningless, letting yourself get flustered at the first hiccup can be a trip ruiner.

True Statement: If you can travel in India, you can travel anywhere in the world.

We experienced sensory overload pretty much every day. I’ve never been in a place that had so many smells, sights and sounds ricocheting off each other at all hours. While we continuously felt overwhelmed by this, we soon learned to appreciate the vibrancy of the everyday chaotic routine of India.

Living healthy is incredibly easy to do when you put yourself in a healthy environment. For two months we didn’t eat meat, rarely drank alcohol and didn’t consume dairy. Restaurants aren’t marketed as “vegan” or “farm to table”... they just are. We found ourselves sleeping incredibly well, practicing yoga nearly every day and reading more than we ever had in our lives. There is a reason that India is the yoga and meditation capital of the world… it is the perfect cure for the everyday chaos of living in such a country. Our New Year's resolutions are to continue this healthy lifestyle as we continue our travels and re-enter the “real world” in April.

India constantly reminded us that the best way to get our questions answered was by talking to other people. Finding information online, if it exists at all, is often outdated and incorrect. The blogs we were reading tended to be 3-4 years old, and many of the restaurants/attractions we went out looking for had inaccurate pins on Google Maps. Instead of burying our heads in our iPhones, we were reminded of the old fashioned way of asking for help. Human-to-human interaction, to no surprise, was our lifeline when we were lost or confused (which was often). Locals were more than willing to point us in the right direction after we showed them a restaurant/guest house on on phone, and a few times they even walked us where we needed to go (without asking for anything in return) just to make sure we didn’t get lost.

Most important of all: trust your gut. If you don’t like a guesthouse, leave. If you don’t trust a taxi driver, look for another. If a menu looks questionable, the food is probably also questionable & you should keep searching. Letting your gut and intuition guide the way is the only way to survive long term travel in India. Decisions should be made from the heart and from the gut, not because a guidebook says something or Trip Advisor suggests it. The best way to experience India is through an open mind and flexible schedule. Things will go wrong, and your ability to roll with it will make or break your trip.

When we get asked about out two months in India we speak in incredibly fond and honest terms. We say “It’s crazy. You should go. You need to go. If you are able to slow down & let things happen how they may, travelling in India will simultaneously astonish you, startle you, and ultimately, change you.”

See you later India!

And just like that… exactly two months from the day we landed in Ft. Cochin, India, we hit the road for Chiang Mai, Thailand! Our 21 hour travel day looked something like this:

Alarm goes off at at 2:30, 2:35 & 2:40am in Delhi 3am taxi from Delhi guesthouse to Delhi airport 6am flight from Delhi to Calcutta 4 hour layover in Calcutta 2pm flight from Calcutta to Bangkok 8pm flight Bangkok to Chiang Mai 20 minute taxi from airport to guesthouse Bed at 11pm

^^ That is a cricket :)

From the moment we were dropped off in front of our guesthouse in Chiang Mai, we were struck by the silence that surrounded us. People weren’t honking their horns, dogs weren’t barking, construction wasn’t being done on every corner… we could even walk side by side without the fear of being run off the road. Compared to Delhi, Chiang Mai felt more like Disney World than the second biggest city in Thailand. It was refreshingly eerie.

Chiang Mai is the capital of Northern Thailand, and one of the most popular tourist destinations in the country. The charming “Old City” is a one-mile by one-mile grid, surrounded by a picturesque moat dating back to 1292. Buildings don’t rise above three stories, and there are cafes on every corner with reliably fast wifi. The developed, yet chilled out vibe of the city is what makes it one of the most frequented destinations for digital nomads and expats to settle in.

We spent our days exploring the city by pedal bike, and our nights eating street food at the market and listening to live jazz at a bar down the road from our guesthouse.

I ran a few times while in India, specifically in Goa, but gave up after being chased by dogs on more than one occasion. In Thailand I was able to run again, with the boundaries of the Old City creating a perfect four mile running path.

One afternoon we ventured into to the beautiful countryside for a traditional Thai cooking course. We arrived at an organic farm 30 minutes from Chaing Mai, and promptly went to work pounding green curry paste, stir-frying pad thai and chopping ingredients for papaya salad. After these dishes were cooked and eaten, we escaped to a set of hammocks overlooking rice paddies to sleep off our meal. An hour later, we were awoken by the chef to begin cooking our second round of food: fresh spring rolls and mango sticky rice. It was a successfully glutenous day.

7-Eleven's are on every corner in Thailand and are the perfect place to escape the heat (the AC is always on full blast). You can find everything from soy chocolate milk to fresh mango, and even pay for bus tickets at the checkout counter. Even the most run down 7-Eleven in Thailand is more helpful than most of our hostels were in India.

Almost equal to the number of 7-Elevens in Chiang Mai are the number of Thai massage parlors. In an effort to discern the quality establishments from the ones looking to prey on backpackers, we followed the suggestion of our guesthouse owners and went to their favorite place. A Thai massage is more in line with a 60 minute full body stretch session than a traditional western relaxation massage, which is why they get mixed reviews from travelers. The masseuse takes full advantage of their feet, legs, elbows and forearms in their attempt to stretch and contort our bodies into once thought impossible positions… and we loved  it. At $6 USD for a full hour, it is no surprise that I returned a few days later for a follow up.

One afternoon we took out 40-year-old rented bikes and ventured to the only public park in the Old City. To our delight, the park was in pristine condition and full of westerners doing acro yoga, tai chi, and slacklining. We spent the next few hours doing yoga, reiki, reading, napping and admiring the acrobatics going on around us.

I’ve been getting beard trims throughout our time abroad, but the time had come for a proper haircut. We asked our guesthouse for a recommendation, and after showing us on the map where the nearest place is, they warned us not to go after 5pm because that’s when the barbers start drinking. It was 7pm... and we decided to give it a go anyway.  When we showed up the whole family was having a big feast outside the parlor, complete with several bottles of alcohol scattered on the tables. They greeted us with big smiles and welcoming “Sawadees” (hello in Thai), and we asked, “Haircut?” A woman who looked like she hadn’t been drinking (too much) jumped up and led us inside. She threw a towel over my shoulders, we exchanged less than 10 words about what I wanted, and she started clipping away. Twenty minutes later, I had a fresh haircut and beard trim. If she had been drinking, she hid it well.

Once a quiet and somewhat remote town in Northern Thailand, Pai is now properly on the backpacker trail in SE Asia and can easily be accessed from Chiang Mai by a 4 hour minivan ride than includes 762 turns (they sell shirts in Pai say “I survived the 762 turns to Pai”). Once you make it through the harrowing journey, you are greeted by a delightful town full of vegan restaurants, reggae bars & backpacker bungalows. Pai tends to get a bad rap from old timers and long term travellers because of how rapidly it has changed over the last 10 years, but to us it was an oasis. The resort -- yes we stayed at a “resort” -- where we spent the week was 12 dollars a night for a private bungalow, which included a fabulous free yoga class each morning along with free breakfast.

We hiked one afternoon with our new friends from Auckland to a waterfall just outside of town. Per a few blogs online, we learned that a dog often serves as a tour guide on this particular hike. 15-minutes into the hike, a gorgeous pup strolls out of the woods and joins our ranks. For the next three hours Winston (as we named him) guided us through two dozen river crossings and patiently waited as we took photos at the waterfall. When we were ready to turn around and head home, Winston once again took the lead and showed us the way. Thanks for everything, Winston!

In Pai we went to the 12th Annual Pai Reggae Music Festival. Their were ads all over town highlighting the event, saying the festival was on Saturday and Sunday, started at mid-day and was located on the grounds of a specific hotel just outside of town. We popped the hotel name in Google Maps, saw it was a few mile walk from our place, and opted out of taking a taxi. After a 2.5 mile walk in the hills we made it to the festival!

Just kidding. Google Maps was wrong. We were nowhere near the reggae fest. We headed back into town, and ended up teaming up with other lost souls who were also searching for this mystical festival.

After another 2 miles, we finally made it! It was 4pm, and we soon learned that the festival didn’t start until 7pm. Our first question to ticket counter… “Why does your poster say mid-day?” Their response was, “Great question.”

We headed to the nearest restaurant to grab a beer, and found out that the entire restaurant was full of festival goers who also showed up too early and were now killing time playing cards, drinking beer and swapping travel tales.

We returned at 7pm with a whole crew of new friends, and boogied until midnight. Who doesn’t love Thai men singing in English with a Rasta accent? We sure did.

Camryn found a picture on Instagram a few weeks ago of a gorgeous sunrise in an obscure corner of Northeast Thailand that we hadn’t read about in any of our guide books. We asked a few people if they had heard of this magical place called Phu Chi Fa, and no one recognized the name. Immediately, we were intrigued. After two weeks in Chiang Mai and Pai, we were craving an off-the-beaten-track adventure. We got it, no doubt.

After a quick Google search, we read a few blog posts from travellers (dating back 4-5 years) saying that this town was their favorite in all of Thailand and not be missed. Details on getting there were hard to come by, as some said they took a bus there… others said the bus was no longer running and were forced to rent a motorcycle... some hired a private taxi. We chanced it on faith, and showed up at the bus station in Chiang Rai looking wide eyed for a sign saying Phu Chi Fa. And we found it :)

After a casual 3 hour bus ride, we were dropped off in front of a police station in a tiny village that only exists so people can visit the Phu Chi Fa mountain at sunrise. We read online that English is not spoken here, so we were all prepped and ready to use our hand signals and phone calculator to aid in bargaining. After a 15-minute walk down the only street, we found a gem of a guesthouse. We dropped our bags, ate a forgettable meal at a roadside restaurant by pointing at pictures of food on the wall, and went to bed early. Tomorrow’s adventure would come in only a few hours.

Our phone alarms greeted us at 3:30, 3:35, 3:40 and 3:45 am. We were out the door at 4am heading back to the police station to catch a songthaew (like a pickup truck with benches in the back) to take us halfway up the mountain. We were dropped within a 30 minute hike up to the top of Phu Chi Fa mountain, which we eagerly scampered up by headlamp with all of our warm clothes on.

 We were one of the first to the top, however within the hour nearly 300 Thai tourists joined us. Not another westerner in sight, to our delight. 

Trying to describe the sunrise would do its beauty a disservice, so I’ll just leave you with the pictures.

After a few hours enjoying the sunrise, we were back in front of the police station eating banana pancakes waiting for our bus to depart at 9am. Our next destination was Chiang Khong, a city on the border between Thailand and Laos. We arrived at our guesthouse in Chiang Khong and expected our $6USD a night room to be somewhat of a dump, and planned on heading into Laos the next morning. To our surprise, we were greeted by a gorgeous pool and fast wi-fi. Needless to say, we stayed two nights and spent a full day relaxing poolside. Treat yourself, right?

You’ll hear all about Laos in our next post by Cam. Thanks for reading!

Best, JJ

[downtomarsartist-blog]

How To Live & Work As An Artist: My Utopia

I’m a proud Brummie, born and raised. Growing up in inner-city Birmingham, I’ve seen deprivation, poverty, riots, homelessness, the lot. But the city has nurtured me and given me so much: a home,  character, friends, mindset, work and more. Even though I’ve been somewhat enticed by the idea of living in mainland Europe, I’m still too in love with Birmingham’s potential to have let it go.

Our humble-but-mighty city has become known for its world class arts festivals: see Be Festival, International Dance Festival, City of Colours, Moseley Folk Festival and Fierce Festival, to name a few. Even the internationally renowned On The Edge festival by ASSITEJ made its way to Birmingham this year. So throwing myself into theatre land in an attempt at normalcy following the birth of my son 3 months ago, I was elated to engage in conversations with practitioners from Belgium, Spain, Holland, China, Canada and beyond in the foyer of The Birmingham REP. And I loved it. That’s exactly why I love the arts. It’s all encompassing. It has the scope to bring people from all walks of life together. As a collective, we pick things apart, we look at the world and explore meaning. We want to tell stories and provide platforms for narratives of all types. We want to see change and we tinker with this through the arts. And for a city constantly revelling in its diversity, youth and vibrancy, it seems the perfect fit.

I’ve been working as an artist in Birmingham and around London from the age of 15. Needless to say, my practice has changed quite significantly over that time, but one thing has been consistent: living and working here as an artist is challenging. And that’s putting it lightly. While I watched many of my peers move to London to try and build sustainable arts careers (many of whom resorting to floors as a better option than sticking in Brum), I saw the gaps in provision as an opportunity and stayed. It’s one of the reasons I started MAIA Creatives - I wanted to help support artists in running sustainable practices by providing commissions and enterprise skills through project management services.

Being an artist and thriving anywhere, whether that's Birmingham, London or LA is tough, but in recent conversations with an actor friend of mine, we examined the theatre landscape and saw how particularly difficult it is to remain in Birmingham. We lack a core pipeline of ongoing work and as such have to tour frequently in order to get paid. If we can get the work. In 2015, I was working on a show in London. With sky high accommodation prices in the capital and an uncertainty on when I was actually going to be paid, I couldn't afford a hotel and I was a little sceptical of some the rooms on airbnb which were in my price range. Add in to this I was 3 months pregnant at the time and the only viable option was slumming it out on my friend’s (very firm) couch. While grateful for the roof over my head, it wasn’t exactly ideal. But irregular pay and unaffordable or unsuitable accommodation and workspace isn’t new. When budgets get tighter and expectations become even more unreasonable, sometimes it costs us to work. This is what it’s like for many of us living and working as artists.

Yet, statistics show the Creative Industries are growing faster than most other industries, in that it is now generating almost £10m an hour, £84 billion, yes BILLION a year,  for the UK economy and accounting for 1.9m jobs, according to Government figures (DCMS). Jobs in the Creative Industries have increased three times faster than the UK average. In particular, jobs in performance arts are on the up, including dancers and choreographers (up by 41 per cent) and artists (up by 21 per cent). I guarantee the figures will be higher still this time next year. But this amount of growth presents some important questions about how we invest in the infrastructure for these industries and how we help sustain them.

Birmingham, a city bursting with talent, space, creative entrepreneurs and potential as well as a growing international reputation has the opportunity to be a trailblazer in how it supports artists, and creates the opportunities for them to flourish. But we have our problems. The dichotomy between emerging and established artists is vast. Different sectors within the creative industries appear to be served separately, which doesn’t exactly cater to multidisciplinary artists. Some organisations who only partially understand the value of the arts want the talent but are in no hurry to pay for it. Many cite the impact of the arts in relation to its impact on wellbeing and social cohesion but are unwilling to put in the investment with which they will for gym equipment. While this is disparity exists, there is a strong case for the financial and economic advantage of the arts which is not being formally recognised, in addition to the way the arts affect and shape our culture. Sure different types of people are catching on to performance poetry, but how does that help spoken word artists live and work here? How do we encourage our performing arts graduates to stay here? We have a monopoly on properties and land in Digbeth, our creative quarter, because of the likelihood of HS2. As a result, we see buildings and opportunities wasted. And it’s not just Digbeth. Jargon, language differences and “soft” barriers make it difficult for many of those outside of the arts to understand how creatives could benefit them.

We’ve seen the public investment arts festivals have brought into the city by way of cultural tourists and participants en masse. Press coverage goes bananas when hundreds, even thousands flock to festival locations. Birmingham wears the festival badge of honour with pride but do we know what costs are being paid at the expense of the artists who create this PR dream? What would it look like if our city invested in the infrastructure behind festivals in the same way? What if we didn’t have to slum it out because support doesn't extend to accommodation or workspace? How much more collective impact could we make? How much more cultural and financial investment could we generate if we were truly seen as an inviting, amenable, inclusive city? How much simpler would it be to live and work as artists? We no longer want to sleep on our friend’s couches in order to work.

Now that I'm a mom (mom not mum where I'm from), living and working sustainably as an artist is even more crucial. Babies are expensive. I can’t afford to take much time off as maternity allowance doesn’t cover the expenses my family need to LIVE. Imagine. I’m paid on a project-to-project basis so need to line things up for myself as soon as possible just to stay afloat. For self-employed, ‘erratic’ workers like myself, this is the norm. But having an extra mouth to feed makes the need for solutions even more urgent.

I think it's time for something different from the city I love: something that will take true collaboration, support, investment and real community spirit. It will take artists, citizens, organisations, partners, venues, local council and real people power.

We’re building a hotel. An artist led hotel right here in Birmingham. Inspired by Green Rooms London it will be one that combines accommodation for touring artists and cultural visitors with work & rehearsal space and a community hub, plus an incubator for innovative emerging and multidisciplinary artists. One that will differ, largely in its flexibility and multipurpose use from traditional venues and artist live/work spaces. One that will reinvest back into the local community. One that will have its own community garden, with which we could grow our own produce and provide a food programme for the homeless and those in need. One that will provide training for marginalised young people in hospitality, business management, arts and construction. One that many could call a home from home.

This might not sound like a revolution but this is just the start. This is the line in the sand when Birmingham as a city stands up and starts supporting the artists which enrich our lives in so many, intangible ways.

There are countless other things I want to change about the arts, but I am passionate in the belief that this step to support touring artists, to create a space for local artists to grow and to become a centre point for those interested and excited by the role arts can play in the city will be fundamental. Once we nail this, we can start the conversations with greater force which pressure commissioners to pay their artists EVERY time on time, with a deposit paid in advance. We can start talking about how childcare, mortgages, pensions and so many other facets of modern life are completely out of step with life as an artist. We can start discussing why the arts is still too insular and start presenting opportunities for all to engage, work, train and benefit from the arts, including young people, the homeless and marginalised, underrepresented communities without diversity being a buzzword or a tick box on an evaluation form.

As artists we are used to surviving in difficult environments; our creativity by nature means we are able to adapt and change and find opportunities. But what sort of city would we be if we created the conditions for artists to not just survive but to actually thrive? What are the long term health and social implications of a city where art is truly recognised as force for good? These are the questions we need to ask of ourselves, of our commissioners, of our sponsors and of the audiences we entertain.

I’m about to tour a play around the country shortly, whilst also working on another: kids are expensive, remember. It’s going to be extra special since I have the pleasure of bringing my son along with me this time. By the time I’m back, we’ll be shoulders deep in all things ‘art hotel’ and I want to be able to start telling fellow artists from Belgium, Spain, Holland, China or Canada that the next time they are in Birmingham, we have the perfect place for them to stay. One which doesn't involve sleeping on a floor or a couch.

[viscomyear1]

Words for Book

Story for book

1. We live in a noisy world, and much of that noise is made by humans. Traffic, machinery, electronics—it’s a constant barrage of sound. How does our noise affect the animals around us? Unlike us, they can’t put in some earplugs, close a window or turn off the stereo. Recent studies are showing that our increasingly loud world is having negative effects on a range of animals, across a variety of habitats.

2.’Wait!’ I hear you say. ‘Natural landscapes aren’t always quiet either.’That’s true, nature can be noisy—from bird calls to wild winds, thunder and animal migrations, the natural environment creates and uses noise in a complex information network. Most animals, however, have specially adapted to the natural noises in their environment—they are aware of them, understand them and know how to use and interpret them.

The population and diversity of certain bird populations has been shown to decline or change when exposed to continuous noise generated by urban environments, such as roads, cities and industrial sites.

Several species have begun to adjust their vocal calls in an attempt to be heard above the din. Male great tits (Parus major) for example, have been noted to change the frequency of their call in order to be heard over anthropogenic noise. Female great tits prefer lower frequency calls when selecting a mate, but these frequencies are harder to hear over urban noise. Males who sing at higher frequencies are less attractive to females, but females may still mate with them if there are no lower-frequency singers available. Males are therefore placed in a difficult position—sing at a lower frequency and not be heard, or sing at a higher frequency and potentially be dismissed!

3. There are other effects too. A 2013 study by researchers at Boise State University created a ‘phantom road’ using a series of electronic speakers placed in the woods which played the sounds of a busy highway at regular intervals. The phantom road was situated near an important stop for migratory birds, where they would traditionally rest and fatten up before undertaking the journey ahead. For four days the team turned on the speakers playing the faux traffic noise. The results showed that during the periods of noise, birds stopping to rest in the area declined by more than one-quarter. When the speakers were off, the numbers bounced back. The researchers concluded that noise can change an animal’s most basic stay-or-go assessments of habitat, and ‘prompt more than the usual number of birds on thousand-mile marathons to skip a chance to rest and refuel’.

4. Birds are not the only animals affected by noise. A study published in 2010 found that noise pollution—specifically traffic noise—decreased the foraging efficiency of an acoustic predator, the greater mouse-eared bat (Myotis myotis). Successful foraging bouts decreased and search times increased dramatically with proximity to the highway. As the animals being hunted by the bats are themselves predators, the study noted that ‘the noise impact on the bats’ foraging performance will have complex effects on the food web and ultimately on the ecosystem stability’. Noise pollution could potentially interfere with other acoustic predators, such as owls, in a similar fashion.

5. Noise pollution can also kill off your sex life—at least if you’re a frog. A study conducted in Melbourne, Australia, by Dr Kirsten Parris and colleagues found that, for some highly vocal frog species, noise pollution is correlated with an increase in the frequency of their calls. This increase partially compensates for the loss of communication distance in noise-traffic areas experienced by these frogs. The mating call of male pobblebonk frogs could historically be heard up to 800 metres away by interested females. At very noisy sites, this is reduced to just 14 metres. If male frogs alter their call to a higher frequency to be heard, the females may not like what they hear. Female frogs of some species prefer lower-pitched calls, which often indicate larger and/or more experienced males. Once again for the male frogs, it’s a tough call—to not be heard, or to be heard and rejected!

The researchers concluded that ‘road noise can alter key survival behaviours’ and that ‘these findings highlight that the presence of animals in a location is no guarantee of population and ecological integrity’. So while noise pollution may not necessarily drive animals away from a site, it may alter their established behaviours and be having a less-obvious negative effect on their physical wellbeing.

6. Many cetaceans—marine mammals such as whales, dolphins and porpoises—live in a world largely defined by acoustic information. They use sound to communicate, and to navigate and monitor their surroundings, creating a picture of the world around them with 3D clarity. By emitting pulses of active sonar clicks they can echolocate food sources and pinpoint features in the environment around them down to millimetres. Their ‘songs’ and clicks can communicate with animals hundreds of kilometres away.

In the open ocean some species are even able to hear sounds thousands of kilometres away, from waves breaking on the shore to cracking ice. They use this information to help navigate and guide their migrations.

With the ability to hear being so important to these mammals, it is important to take note of the increasing studies showing that acoustic pollution from the human world can harm these animals in several ways.

7. Other incidences of beached whales show signs of physical trauma such as bleeding around the ears, brain and other tissues, as well as air bubbles in their organs. Known as barotrauma, this can occur from the sudden change in pressure caused by a sound. These symptoms are akin to ‘the bends’, an illness which can also affect human divers when they surface too quickly from deep water. Some scientists also speculate that mid-frequency sonar blasts may prompt certain species to quickly alter their dive patterns, resulting in debilitating or even fatal injuries.

While standings are an immediately obvious sign of some sort of distress or confusion, there are other, more subtle, ways that noise pollution can affect these mammals. A range of cetaceans have displayed changes in behaviour. For example noise has been shown to reduce humpback whale communication, with less ‘song’ during periods of noise, even when the origin of the noise is 200 kilometres away. Both right and blue whales have been found to increase the level of vocalisations when exposed to sound sources in their vocal range. In effect, they need to ‘shout’ to allow themselves to be heard. Chronic stress in baleen whales has been associated with low-frequency shipping noise, while other whale species have been shown to avoid important habitats (key breeding and/or feeding grounds) as they purposely evade areas of high noise. They can also experience lower respiration rates resulting in shorter dive periods. Whales off the coast of Western Australia have been recorded changing course and speed to avoid close contact with active seismic surveys.

8. It’s not only the larger animals that are being affected. Squid and other cephalopods have also shown negative responses to noise pollution. Even short exposure to low-frequency, low-intensity sounds―such as those produced by offshore oil drilling and commercial fishing―can disturb the balance systems of squid, octopuses and cuttlefish. A study conducted in 2011 collected 87 wild cephalopods across four species and exposed them to short bursts of low-intensity, low frequency sound for a period of two hours. The animals were then dissected to examine their statocysts (the organ responsible for their maintaining balance in the water). The results were disconcerting: every octopus, squid and cuttlefish had damage to its statocyst, including ruptured and missing hair, swollen nerve cells and even legions and holes in the statocyst’s sensory surface.

9. Even fish larvae are being affected. Recent studies have shown that larval fish and invertebrates are moving away from their traditional habitats. Interestingly, many are settling instead in places that have (low-frequency) noise caused by shipping. This movement has flow-on effects for the ecosystems that depend on these larvae.

Other species, such as hermit crabs, have been shown to be less responsive to visual predators when in high-noise environments. The authors of one study proposed a ‘distracted prey hypothesis’ to explain the finding, and noted that it demonstrates the potential for noise pollution to affect behaviours that are stimulated by non-auditory information.

So … what are we doing about it?

In response to the growing evidence regarding noise pollution and its effect on animals, some changes are being made.

10.

ON LAND

Some of the ways noise in which pollution from traffic can be reduced are by developing quieter roads and cars; installing noise-reduction barriers around major traffic areas; lowering speed limits; educating drivers; and implementing relevant legislation to progressively reduce noise. Other strategies include the use of better materials; improved site planning; and the undertaking of detailed environmental assessments before construction on houses and industrial sites is permitted, with follow-up assessments after construction is completed.

IN THE SEA

Scientists are working to better understand where and how noise pollution is generated, and where it is causing the most problems. They are working with industry and government on solutions including, currently, establishing ‘quiet areas’ for marine species and reducing noise levels in critical habitats; developing greener technology, including quieter ships, hulls shapes and machinery; and advocating for national regulation relating to the amount of noise (by all sources) that can be released into the ocean.

https://www.science.org.au/curious/earth-environment/noise-pollution-and-environment

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