#there are no inherently stupid ideas it's all down to investment and execution

[denizenhardwick]

I think the reason why TFC is so "love it or hate it" right off the bat is that it takes its concept seriously and doesn't try to ease the audience into it, so if you aren't willing to suspend your disbelief and buy into that concept from page one, you're going to think it's incredibly stupid. It throws a lot of information at you immediately and expects you to suspend your disbelief and roll with it. Because above all else these books are entirely unapologetic about what they are, that's one of the series's greatest strengths, and throwing you into them like this weeds out people who probably wouldn't have a good time anyway.

[offworldcolony]

Tenet, 2020 - ★★★

Top Spot of cinema this film aint. But how do I review you Tenet? How did I feel about you? Did I like you as much as I did simply because I hadn't been to the cinema in 9 months? Is it because, in the cinema, I was able to streth my legs and be two full seats away from the public whilst also having amazing seats? My dream-cinema-going experience?

Let's find out.

First off this film is Prime Nolan, it is a quintessential, distillation of Nolan. If you squeezed him, Tenet would fall out. It certainly has one hand firmly gripping the origins of Nolan's love of the cinema format; one which moves inexorably, like time, forwards, and can change speed and be moved around or edited, like memory. This forged, early in his career something like Memento. But Tenet also has its foot firmly stamped on the expensive and loud and thrilling big-budget blockbuster, where 200 million dollars can be used to tackle complex (if a little arid and cerebral) subjects not unlike his more recent endeavours such as Inception.

Inaccurate comparisons to Bond (although this is much more like a Mission Impossible film) and to Inception aren't unwarranted, they're just slightly off. Tenet is a counterpoint, a reflection and an anti-Inception, which may, in some way, have been Nolan's intention, knowing that he calculates and enjoys building a fourth-wall shattering element to all of his movies.

What does that mean? Well, whereas Inception was a very simple puzzle told awkwardly and in a convoluted way, Tenet is an awkward and convoluted puzzle told very simply, if at all. Where Inception prided itself on the over-explanation and exposition dumps inherent in genres such as the heist-film, Tenet tells you almost nothing, (in fact when it does, I'm looking at you Shipping Container scene, it's incredibly out of place and unwanted) it wants you to play catch up, and the Hitchcockian lines between what a protagonist (cheekily called The Protagonist here) and what the audience knows are blurred, which does actually feed directly into the plot of the film. So he's using the medium here to enhance or back up the story he is telling, as usual, and that is certainly clever and welcome.

The first two-thirds (despite Nolan's usual confounding and blisteringly loud opening sequences he favours) is a genuine riot, I loved being taken on a ride without ever knowing where it was going to end up. I enjoyed pieces of the puzzle slotting into place slowly, I enjoyed Robert Pattinson very much and John David Washington who was simply exquisite.

John David Washington was a charming, steely, human actor with the poise of knowing something well, but being slightly out of his depth, which I imagine was him channelling his part on the film with Nolan as the architect from "the future" mirrored in the film, and he, the Protagonist. A bit too clever for its own good this one? yeah, maybe. But Washington cements himself as one of my favourite actors by doing very little here but doing it exceedingly well. He the most is watchable of all Nolan's protagonists so far, and I'm sure the enjoyment I had in the film hung at every turn on his ability to act like a smart, fun, deep character, completely out of his depth (or out of his time??!!??!!) Hah.

The standout fight of the movie (incidentally I would love to see if it takes place both times at the same point of the movie's runtime mirrored, just a thought) is a really cleverly conceived and executed one, it's half-Matrix, half-Jedi powered and it's a much more exciting idea than a rotating hallway. It has the potential to really start a kind of genre of it's own; it may even be the bullet-time of this generation except the scope of it is limited to films that actually have time travel as a conceit which is a shame, but Nolan could really utilise this technique many more times in a myriad of exciting ways, if he wanted to make a sequel.

Which leads me to one of my gripes I suppose, and, like this film, it's a strange fourth-wall kind of one. Because Nolan has such a singular (and wearing thin?) vision and style, doubled-down instead of evolved, over his filmography, his films have been cutting-edge and completely of their time. Unlike another artist-filmmaker like Wes Anderson who, with Grand Budapest, let himself become immersed in his own style and went full-Anderson, he was ahead of his time, and so his style has settled into be likeable and welcome now. Nolan, on the absolute precipice of now, means his style, revolutionary in the mid-late 00's, is still stuck there. His imitators have been and gone and even they have changed their styles and their films. But Nolan's style is still stuck in 2010.

Because so much of his IP is controlled by him, there's little hope for a Tenet sequel, and even less-so, one handled by a different auteur. Whereas something like The Matrix should be handled by the underground, sub-culture Wachowskis to bring a vision to it that we can't expect, nor should we, a 'franchise' like Tenet would be amazing to see handled by a different director; the conceits of a future war, inverted entropy etc. (not wanting to give too much away!) have so much scope, and yet this one and done, half-baked film will be all we ever have. Nolan needs a protege; not unlike Peter Berg to Michael Mann, DJ Caruso to Spielberg (yes both of those filmmakers aren't exactly stellar) but some young buck with ideas of their one to be taken under Nolan's wing to be able to play around within his framework. Whether we ever see Incenet or Tenception, I'd still like to see a Ryan Coogler, or a Benh Zeitlin, or a J. C. Chandor or Ava Duvernay or Damien Chazelle or even Shane Carruth take on board this franchise with the same kind of budget. With John David Washington in the Lead again, of course.

This would lead to a slightly altered tone. For example, does Nolan know how silly some of these things appear when delivered po-faced? The almost child-like gesture for Tenet, the embarrassing spy-code-phrases, the bulldozer clunkiness of a handful of the very end sequences' dialogue, these things threaten to undermine the movie in ways that for some viewers, it may never recover from. Does he know that talking about time-travel in a movie has been done the same way for 30 years? He did that in Interstellar, if an explanation of something has been done in 1990, try and find a better way to explain it in your movie! He makes reference a few times to the awkwardness of the movie's premise and plotlines, but it's not enough and Branagh's villain is a key piece to that also, he's almost an unnecessary component to the movie and one that a better writer and another draft might have even excised.

But Nolan has to hang is emotional hat and stakes on something. So, in his typical way, instead of making it, you know, actually emotional, and using the vehicle of cinema, celluloid, editing, photography etc. to bolster and energise the emotionality, he just puts in a child and some blindingly stupid lines about Motherhood and another abused and erratic Female 'Lead'. In many ways I feel like the plot (and runtime) of his movies would do better to excise the emotionality completely, either make something genuinely resonant and impactful to me, or just make something epic and clever and spend the runtime exploring and wringing out of that concept, as much as you can. Especially if you're unlikely to ever make a sequel to it.

If you're talking Nolan, you have to talk about sound. His mixes have been getting progressively unusual; exposition delivered through masks or by non-native speakers, I get it when he says it's to get you to lean in and listen, I even defended it when Bane was next to unintelligible because I liked the concept of it, it was bold and creative. But now I'm exhausted. Does he have bad hearing? Does he enjoy bombarding people with a wall of sound? Michael Mann is another filmmaker with a terrible mix but at least his can be attributed to his new avant-garde, voyeuristic style. At least Zimmer is off this one as composer, the music, while still satisfying that Nolan blast of noise, was pumping and electronic, sometimes simpering in the background with backwards-sounding instruments, but I felt like it sat there nicely most of the while instead of overpowering or overbearing like Zimmer's past collabs with Nolan.

The budget of Tenet is silly for what it is, I'd love to see where it all actually went; when a movie's climax isn't as blistering and creative as the Fifth Transformers movie and on a bigger budget, some questions about accounting or at least on creative veracity in big set-pieces may be needed. The balance of explaining, found not lacking in Inception, but lacking here, is no-more emblematic than in its final battle; Blue-Team backwards, Red-Team forwards, is not enough to get invested in the mechanics and allow either for the turning off of one's brain or the engagement in the puzzle of it all. It's just a mess that doesn’t just seem hard to follow on first watch, but also seems unlikely to be something interesting to dissect or enjoy on subsequent watches, unlike some of the puzzles of Inception that were.

But it's not all bad, like I said, I really enjoyed the experience of watching it in the cinema, which is essentially Nolan's primary goal. Like his previous films, I acknowledge, accept and subsume its flaws into the overall experience of what I'm getting. I found the notion of the abused party having to actually keep the abuser alive rather than kill them a tremendously clever twist on the idea (although completely underbaked in execution) and a time travel movie using entropy and inversion is a monumentally cinematic twist on it. Some of the moments and scenes I do completely want to watch again, there's so much detail and life and character in some of the sets and some of the time and palindrome related easter eggs are intriguing, (the less obvious stuff and not the fact that a character is called Arepo and for the entire movie I was expecting that to have some kind of significance beyond just being Opera backwards!) and the moments of the film shown as the very early teasers were really cool when they actually surfaced in the film proper.

I found, much more than many movies I've seen, the videogame influences in this one; from the lead character simply being A Protagonist, to the Call of Duty multiplayer locations (warehouse, yacht, airport, destroyed crater), to the sterile and industrial hallways, to the way the action was shot, to the set-pieces and even the time-reversed mechanic felt like it could have been instigated by a button press. It reminded me of a Max Payne game or another PlayStation 2-era third-person shooter. I was reminded of the more recent game Control also; shadowy agencies and conspiracies, the fusion of brutalism and science-fiction, the villain.

So I guess this is why I liked it; It was an experience. And therefore it did it’s job. I want to watch it again, soon. Which is not always the case. It lives inside its own constructed world, tenet, I enjoy when these films come along with a narrow focus and it's own set of rules, I find that appealing, but alienating at the same time. I wanted to make a review that had some kind of mirrored structure to it, but the best you're gonna get is a palindrome for the start and the end. The most interesting thing about Tenet is, I'm still thinking about it, and the world it so finely crafted, which is separate and parallel to our own, is a world I'd happily step back into given the chance.

Nolan's worst film? Maybe not, despite being far from the Nolan oeuvre Top Spot.

source https://letterboxd.com/offworldcolony/film/tenet/

[sableaire]

Hi. I'm studying Jap Lit for 4 years. Fall term always goes fine bur when comes spring, I always fail. I'm still taking first class lessons this year. We have a jap culture community, I am the president this year. Tho everybody hate me and thinks I got the job bc I'm close to the Professor. I may not be a good student but I'm very good when it comes to bureaucracy and paper work. I know what to do, how to talk, I get shit done. I was working alone but now I have vices. 1/// ++

Dear Anon, rest assured, I received all parts of this ask. However, in hopes of respecting your privacy, I am only including the text from this one here. I hope that you don’t mind.

Before I respond, I would just like to shed some light on the approach you can expect from this response. Offline, I’m just a normal university student myself. Perhaps one day I will be a professional mediator or counselor or therapist. However, in my current form, I am unqualified to present any firm suggestions, strategies, or solutions.

As such, this response will be my perspective on the details you have chosen to share with me. I know for a fact that sometimes, emotions can close a person off in their own head, and they might not be able to see a situation from a different angle. I also know that it can be hard to believe other perspectives that don’t line up with your own, so as you read on, please keep in mind that:

I am a stranger on the internet, and I have no reason to lie.

I am not so kind as to say platitudes just to make someone feel better.

I, as a person, pride myself on never saying something I don’t mean.

So please read this post with the assurance that everything that I write is something I perceive to be the truth. I hope that this will be of some help in figuring out your path. More below the cut:

Rather than chronological order, I’ll be addressing themes that I have personal experience with first, as I feel as though those are the points in which my perspective will be most valuable to you.

You mentioned that you feel as though you don’t deserve the people you have around you. You specifically mentioned a non-family individual as well, who would have no societal obligation towards you, and so they are specifically choosing to spend time with you.

I know that when your mind is constantly telling you that you’re not worth people’s time, it’s difficult to think otherwise. After all, at that point it’s your conscious mind vs. the rest of it, and the rest of it has the advantage in numbers and is shouting louder than that one conscious voice. It’s hard to talk yourself up or think of yourself as respectable or valuable.

In the past, I struggled a lot with thinking that people only stuck around with me because they were too polite to tell me to stop bothering them. I didn’t bring it up for a long time because I was afraid that they might say no and then resent me for making them lie to me. I won’t co-opt this post for that long story, but basically, I brought this up to a friend, and skipping past the middle details, at the end she told me that she’s not so nice as to waste her time with someone she didn’t enjoy being around.

And in my experience, that’s true. Other people will have other opinions of you, whether or not they coincide with your own, and the nature of people is that they will not associate with people in their free time if they don’t enjoy being around them. If someone is choosing to hang out with you, respect them, their intelligence, and their autonomy by accepting their decision as a person .

Of course, that doesn’t mean that your value rests in the opinions of others. This mindset is specifically to address the feeling that you don’t deserve people who are choosing to spend time with you.

Another point that stood out to me amongst your asks is that you “feel like a failure” - specifically, you said that you “feel” like one. Though you may not realize it, that’s an important distinction to make. Feelings are not reality - merely a perception of it. Just because you feel like a failure does not mean that you are one, and it’s an extremely good thing that you make the distinction, even if it’s unconsciously.

I’m sorry that one of your vice-executives are overstepping her boundaries. That’s inappropriate of her and unfair to you, but I can’t offer my thoughts without more specific details, in this respect. Was there a time that you were excited to be president of this community? Any feelings or grand plans that you might have had? Rather than worrying about this vice-executive’s options, if there was a time that you enjoyed the idea of the presidency - or even just the culture community as a whole - maybe try to get back in touch with those initial ideas. If there was ever an aspect of the community that made you happy, try to not lose touch with those first feelings.

Also, it’s important to remember that things like becoming president of a culture community and getting a summer trip to Japan (I’m assuming it’s related?) don’t come out of nothing. Even in instances where there is favoritism involved, putting someone in a position usually means they are investing in that person because they see some sort of potential there. It at the very least means they’re confident that the person won’t run the community into the ground.

You mentioned academic hardships and concerns regarding your future. It sounds to me as though you grew up, then, with people telling you that there’s a specific path and order to success - do well in school, get in a good college; do well in college, get a good job; do well in a job, get a good life - does that sound right? If not, I’m sorry for making an assumption. I may have been biased towards that reading because this is, again, something I struggled with in my own life.

But regardless, you seem to be someone who takes their studies seriously, which is admirable. However, I know because my own academic background was hyper-competitive (Korea, woo), this also means that every failure feels like a blow. This is especially worse if you were a successful child because adults will always compare you to yourself, as though something went wrong as you grew up, when it’s really that experiences have shaped you and the world taught you and your mind different priorities. Sometimes that priority is reducing stress, which may manifest as lack of motivation. Sometimes that priority is keeping yourself safe, which results in anxiety. All this together can make an academic failure seem like the end of the line.

However, it’s not. No matter how scary it may be to wander off the paved path - the one society tells you is safest - who doesn’t wander off into nature once or twice? Maybe it’s a forest. Maybe it’s grasslands. Maybe it’s the beach, who knows. But saying that going straight from high school to university is better than taking time, taking it at a slower more manageable pace, is about as stupid as saying that the paved path is inherently better than nature.

If you’re struggling academically, that doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with you - it means that there’s something wrong with the way you’re approaching the problem. Maybe you’re doing too much at once, or maybe you’re taking it too fast. Maybe you’re taking a more aggressive approach to academia when you should be pacing yourself for a long match. 

If you find a different strategy, you can find the solution that’s right for you. For some people, it’s finding assistance through the school, be it through extra time for assignments or delayed exams (possible if your school gives assistance for mental illnesses). For others, it might be taking a break from school for a bit and coming back later. Only you will know what’s right for you. Definitely ask around for information to seek out your options, but the final choice should be yours and yours alone.

You also mentioned a dream, and god, what a good dream. If you’ve been following me, you already know that I love languages myself, so I think wanting to be a professor in a related field is an amazing goal. However, it seems that you’re having your doubts about its feasibility.

In my view, you’re only 22 years old. It may not seem like it because we’ve only been alive for about that long, but in the grand scheme of things, 20 years old is really, really young. Assuming nothing happens, we have decades to achieve our dreams and find satisfaction in our lives.

There are many professions that aren’t aging very well. There are too many doctors, too many lawyers. As technology advances, there’s less and less need for certain professions. But language - as technology advances and different countries interconnect, there’s only ever a growing need for language! Be it to learn another language, to translate between them, to understand how they form and relate, or to conserve a dying language, there’s never an end to the need for languages and their related professions.

Everyone deserves the opportunity to do what they love, as long as that desire does not harm themselves or others. Your aspiration to be a professor is nothing but beneficial, and it’s an admirable dream. All I have to say about it is that it’s alright to slow down. You mentioned that you don’t know whether to pursue your dream or to go find a job now - they’re not mutually exclusive.

You can take time trying other jobs for now to find your financial footing, and then you can go back to school, maybe get a graduate degree. There’s no hurry, and you don’t need to become a TA in your 20s, a professor by 30s. And with the advent of the internet, you don’t need to rush to become a professor to teach either - especially if you struggle with interpersonal interactions, you could try offering tutoring or private lesson services to work with people one-on-one, or you could try teaching an online class.

This is getting kind of long, and I’m not sure how helpful I’m being, but I would just like to add that in my freshman year of college, I had a lot of reason to think about the nature of depression, unhappiness, and desire to die. I came to the tentative conclusion that people despair most when they don’t have someone to share their suffering with, to talk to about their genuine hardships and petty grievances and unhappy moments.

You mentioned that you’re tired of acting like you’re okay. Well, of course you are, if you have to keep it up all the time - I don’t blame you for being tired, and I don’t blame you for wanting it to end. However, there are ways to bring it to an end through living. I encourage you to find someone in your life whom you can drop the act around, someone who you can talk to about how you feel. I can’t say who this person should be, as I do not know the people in your life, but it’s important to have someone in your life, in the physical realm, not just online, whom you can talk to honestly about your feelings.

And that can be scary - after all, who would want to spend time with someone who just feels bad all the time, or maybe your thinking is more that people only like you because you seem like you have your life together, and once they see beyond the facade, maybe they won’t like you anymore– see, that’s the part that I can relate to, because I’ve been stuck in that spiral of thought as well.

It took time, and it took patience, and it took a lot of conscious thinking. I had to psych myself up to it, and I made a lot of contingency plans and emotional failsafes before I could bring myself to take the chance with a friend of mine. Now they know how down I can get sometimes, how irrational my fears can get, but we’re still friends, and perhaps closer for it. That initial honesty lets me be more honest with them on a daily basis, and they return the favor.

Opening up to the people around you is a sign of care and a show of trust, and the people worth your time will recognize that.

You also mentioned that you struggle more mentally and emotionally in the springtime compared to the rest of the year. This sounds to me like you may want to look into Seasonal Affective Disorder. I would definitely recommend getting a professional diagnosis, however, and even if I am wrong, a professional may be able to help you relieve those symptoms. I do not know what country you are from nor what your community’s opinion is on mental health issues, but regarding this and some past events you have mentioned, someone who has finished their study and obtained a license would be far more helpful than me.

To close, you asked me a question regarding death. I can’t really answer the question you asked me specifically because of my view on death. Ultimately, my view is that death is not something ‘deserved’ or ‘undeserved’ - it’s not a blessing nor a punishment. In my view, ‘death’ is not ‘freedom’ either. My philosophy on death is complicated, and I don’t plan to shoehorn it into this post. However, I do think this: Death is the ‘final change’ of Life.

As long you are living, change is assured - that’s the nature of life, the ups and downs. The world doesn’t stand still, and people don’t stay the same. Nothing in life is constant except that things will change. However, change just means opportunities.

Death, however, no one living knows anything of death. All we know is that it means we stop living. For as long as you’re living, both changes and opportunities are assured. We don’t know what lies beyond living, and so to me, death is ‘the loss of assured opportunities’. Death means that maybe there are no more changes, maybe there are no more opportunities. It’s a ‘maybe things won’t get worse’, but it’s also a ‘maybe things won’t ever get better’.

I wish you luck with everything, Anon, and - oh! Enjoy your trip to Japan. If you don’t feel like you deserve it, well, think of it as a lucky opportunity and enjoy it thoroughly. Does a person who wins a lottery ever truly deserve the winning ticket? No, they’re just lucky. So if you think you don’t deserve it, enjoy that trip and learn from it as if it were a sweepstakes win and make it worthwhile. 

Use the trip to give yourself time to reset. It will be a new experience, and new experiences are what stimulate change in our lives. So go, have fun, and if you don’t feel like you deserve the trip yet, go and take in the sights and the cultures. Learn and appreciate more than other people might. Heck, you’re in a culture community. I would say you deserve that trip more than some other people who would only want to go to Japan for the shopping and nothing else.

In any case, I’m sorry this is so long, Anon. I hope it was helpful in some capacity, and if anything was instead counterproductive, I apologize. Even so, I hope things improve for you soon. Please tell me how your trip to Japan goes, too!

[orchestraofoutrage-blog]

Racism and the ‘Orchestra of Outrage’: a prologue, part 1.

Racism and the Orchestra of outrage

It is the current year (surprisingly), and by any reasonable metric, you will be forced to conclude that racism in its truest form has been diminishing across our Western civilisation for some decades now. Western countries are the most economically, culturally politically and religiously diverse and open in the history of the world. Bigotry, homophobia, sectarianism, sexism and the rest of the ‘orchestra of prejudice’ has been in full remission for at least three generations, depending on where you live, and with rare exceptions.

This may sound like fuel for the most reactionary leftist firebrands to sound off on the usual hi-explosive hysterical battle cries. Trump is literally Hitler, we know. Nazis are in every Starbucks, transphobes are on every bus, prisons are full of minorities, gay teenagers are still anxious, and college students are still offended by what is reported on the 6 o’ clock news. Yes, Trump exists, yes, racism exists. Yes, you work in a shitty job, and your peers are doing better than you by every standard you judge important. So yes, uncomfortable realities are still a reality. But the hysterical reactionaries are exactly that, hysterical, and I’ll come back to them.

But the fact here remains, and it is a virtually prima facie case on the evidence of living in or even walking through any area in the Western world, that racism is less of an influencing factor in our broad societal discourses than at any time in history. Its not controversial to state, that in real terms, the whole concept continues to becomes increasingly minimised and specialised as people get on with leading productive lives. Yet, as anyone who dwells on the internet, and many others who dwell in the outside world will know, it remains a primary bogeyman of our political rhetoric at every social level. You can still pretty effectively threaten, bully, censor and silence any discussion with an appropriately crafted accusation of racism, no matter how unfounded or unrealistic the accusation may be.

The attraction of keeping “racism” in play is many fold. I will discuss several of the reasons for that as we go forward.

First, racism is an established press magnet. You can use it to sell pretty much any story. The word and the idea are the stuff of gossip columns. Let me put it into context: once upon a time, neighbourhood gossip in the real world would revolve around the finest of lurid insinuations- that someone was committing adultery, cheating on their husband or wife with someone else in the community. But that narrative has been played out in the yellow press. It may have reached its zenith with Bill Clinton or Tiger woods. Except in the rarest cases, the press or news dont care about cheating, or fidelity, or marriage, or anything to do with fidelity or the traditional family unit, they’re far too cynical and nihilistic for one thing. But i digress. Racism is the new best scandal you can sell, and it seems to have maintained its incendiary spark, despite being squeezed and crowbarred into our discourses and news media like a jack in the box for a few decades now. We haven’t grown out of that silly thrill quite yet.

A quick google search on the word “racism” under the “news” category for today brings up a perfect list of examples of the power of the concept to sell narratives. News stories for today include Australia consider its foreign and domestic policy through a lens of racism, when considering how to uphold and maintain their social and political values when Chinese people are buying up and insinuating themselves into large sections of their economy and their education system.  This is a news story about current-year racism in its finest, purest stupidest form. Is it racist to discuss any notion that nominally broaches the issues of nationality and culture in a forthright and honest manner, when legitimate social, economic, political and civilisational traditions investments and values are at stake? Yes, it is, in fact, according to several mainstream interpretations of the concept. The international news media dont care about the Australian people or their livelihoods or the future of their civilisation, but they do care primarily about the puerile and superfluous moral outrage that can be wreaked, like a finger-wagging neighbourhood gossip who spreads trashy half-truths and basks in schadenfreude. So we can see a story like this pop up most days (no hard task for the BBC) whereby they propagate the fallacy of the reputation-ruining racist minefield and then force real people to march through it.

Essentially Australian politicians, business leaders and academics are trying to figure out how to speak out about the concerns they have without saying what they are actually thinking. The primary fear, of course, is the fear of being misrepresented, and that fear is completely justified. No one wants to lose their livelihoods or their education, or god forbid the future of their educational system because some faceless hack has decided their legitimate concerns are sinful. And make no mistake, in the absence of religion in our social discourse, racism and the rest of the outrage orchestra happily takes its own place on the podium of perdition. (If we don’t have a structured moral scaffold on which to look down upon others, then, my friend, we simply are not journalists. And yes, we can invent our own Higher Power- lets call it “social justice”.)

Further on down the daily racism banner headlines there is a story about a racism row in Swedens world cup team due to one of their players- of Assyrian ethnicity - being insulted online. This is a sports story for people who aren’t interested in sports, but who prefer the off pitch drama and political bolloxology of the racism joust. Without prejudicing the actual story and legitimate personal concerns of the player in question, anyone who has spent any time expressing opinions on certain corners of social media will have been threatened with murder and exposed to racist/sexist/bigoted abuse regardless of whether you’re responsible for getting the team you play on kicked out of the world cup in a humiliating fashion. Its not the wildest thing to experience. Go to any youtube comment section and tell someone where you’re from. Wherever it is, you’re liable to get threatened with all manner of violence. Try uploading a video, and see how that goes.

Regardless, as i said, it makes sports more interesting for people who dont care about the games. UEFA have been on their anti racism campaign for long years now, and for the most part its working, but regardless, you’ll hear about it when it occurs. We can use racism to make anything interesting to people who aren’t interested in a subject for any other reason. Entire academic disciplines rely on this strategy, and again, I will discuss the academic aspect in all the detail it deserves in good time. But it gives sports writers an additional lever arch file to add to their portfolio. They can segway from sports into politics and social policy and wherever they want from there.

The world cup has throw up another few racist nuggets of interest in the last 24 hours, regarding controversial hand signals thrown by Albanian players on the Swiss team which references politics of the former Yugoslavia and the post dissolution wars that followed. Being that these are primarily white skinned persons, directed at Serbians who are white, this is a rather more complicated political issue so naturally its received less attention from the news media. That in itself is another wonderful aspect of the stupid game of musical chairs that media pundits and journals play with the racism issue. Identical behaviour that would be classified as racist if it were directed between persons of markedly different skin tones is an entirely different issue when the colours change. This holds true regardless of the actual context of said behaviour, no matter how legimately odious or replete with violent and perverse insinuations that behaviour may reference. Its too much hard work to sell those types of narratives in the current year.

Its of no surprise to anyone, that rather than deal with the actually potential life and death and complicated issues of ethnicity in parts of the world where the stakes are high, and where the word ‘racism’ remains its original ultra-violent and decidedly less nebulous rhetorical currency, we would rather discuss the netflix story, the beautiful and brave tale of social justice, whereby a netflix PR executive was sacked recently for the use of racist language.

Yes, in the almost exemplary ‘Mad Hatter tea party’ version of reality, this particular executive was fired for using the notorious N Word, in a meeting about words that should be severely restricted and censored when broadcast on their streaming network. While this may indeed have been a cover story of some kind, an excuse to oust a man who was targeted for ousting, the play on this tale is remarkably unironic in a situation seemingly tailor-designed for irony. In this version of reality, the N-Word cannot be discussed, even in the context where it is used demonstrably as a word to be censored. Whether this is the case or otherwise, this is the acceptable version of the anti racism crusade that we are being treated to by the orchestra of outrage.

There are at least four other superfluous examples of journals shoehorning racism into the headlines for outsized clicks on undersized stories which only reach the levels of attraction they do because of the self-propelling artificial hysteria of the racist epidemic shoring them up. But the main points have been highlighted.

We may quickly double back to reference the inherent implication of the earlier Australian story, which overlaps in an appropriate way with the miniature Netflix saga. In this version of reality there is no legitimate context for discussion of certain matters, even when those matters are demonstrably in your best interests and the best interests of your country and/or colleagues, as the Australians are experiencing. However, even in a putatively sterile environment, where the discussion of offensive language is the very intention of the participants, there is no ability to discuss honestly.

 The obfuscation of reconstructed standards and boundaries is unmatched except by the hysteria of the reaction when it has been decided someone oversteps.

I cant wait to get all this crap dealt with so I can get to the heart of the issue. But thats for another day. Coming soon..

[rajineezus-blog]

A Retrospective of The Walking Dead’s “Fanboy Auteur”

Frank Darabont is credited as the creator of the AMC series, “The Walking Dead” by first adapting the original comic books into serialized TV, and was the show runner up until season 2. But in an infamous skirmish between Darabont and the executive producers of the show (namely Denise Huth), Darabont voiced his gripes with its production. In his email he elicited, “F--- you all for giving me chest pains because of the staggering f---ing incompetence, blindness to the important beats, and the beyond-arrogant lack of regard for what is written being exhibited on set every day. I deserve better than a heart attack because people are too stupid to read a script and understand the words.” He continued in saying, “WHY AM I WORKING SO F----ING HARD IF YOU’RE SHOOTING EVERYTHING SOME OTHER WAY THAT DOESN’T WORK?” (Variety.com)

Arguably, this exemplifies the self-entitlement to the identity, ‘Fanboy Auteur’, a relentless ambassador for the original story and even a ‘martyr’ for the show, since he got fired soon after. Beneath the surface it seems that he is passionately defending the integrity of the text, and to an extent asserting that “any interpretation that deviates from the text represents a failure to successfully understand what the author is trying to say” (Jenkins). This implies discrepancies in interpretation by the actual producers and directors before its distribution, which would eventually trickle down and convolute the audience’s grasp of what the series truly is, or at least what Darabont thought the show should manifest into. I argue that Darabont’s actions prioritized fans’ understanding of the primary text (the comics), since he mentioned that missing beats were missing when it came time for production. After Darabont’s termination however, many people assumed the role of ‘fanboy’ interpreter and translator, but it is still debatable who claims the identity of ‘auteur’ for this series. This is important to distinguish as “the complexity of a transmedia story’s textual network has made audiences increasingly reliant on the fanboy auteur to clarify the relationship between texts” (Scott 46).

Two figureheads in this series perhaps act (or acted) as co-fanboy/fangirl auteurs: Greg Nicotero and executive producer, Denise Huth. Nicotero was the lead for the special effects makeup department until moving onto the spinoff “Fear the Walking Dead”. In this transition, Nicotero inherently preserves the duty of the fanboy auteur by “overseeing the transmedia text’s expansion and creating meaningful connections between the texts […]” (Scott 43). Essentially he maintains the franchises visual continuity. Nicotero and Huth have both been guests on the show, “The Talking Dead” and have provided insight on character motivations and deeper meanings behind certain scenes. The platform that “The Talking Dead” gives them affirms their status as these “human bibles” of knowledge for the show and its universe. This goes with saying that “The value associated with an authorial stamp of approval is also a product of fans’ investment in the author” (Scott 45).

In an interview with Huth, Chris Hardwick asks what it represented when Abraham asks Rick if he was afraid to let somebody close, in one of the episodes. She responds by admitting that she loves Rick’s honest response that it is scary to let people in. She also underlies big themes in the show that fans should dwell upon and realize (i.e. the idea that these characters are shifting their priorities to what they need to what they ‘want’, in this case love). Huth concludes her thoughts by saying “I love this relationship [between Rick and Michonne and Abraham and Sasha] because it’s a choice”. Information coming directly from executive producers in this capacity enforce the aspect of emotional investment by fans. In this example, Huth exemplifies both the analytical fan, and the all-knowing producer.

References

“Who's Steering the Mothership?” The Participatory Cultures Handbook, by Aaron Alan Delwiche et al., Routledge, 2013.

Richonne Fan. “Denise Huth on Rick and Abe Conversation Episode 6.15.” Online video clip. Youtube. Youtube, 1 April 2016. Web. 18 February 2018

Maddaus, Gene. “Frank Darabont's Rage Boils Over: The 'Walking Dead' Emails.” Variety, 13 July 2017, variety.com/2017/tv/news/frank-darabont-walking-dead-emails-rage-boils-over-1202494598/.

"The Walking Dead (TV Series 2010– )." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2018.

[allies-of-allies]

Run after the information, Not the IT

I . T .-'IT'-is costly. Every single Chief executive officer, CFO, COO-virtually every director at every level of each and every organization around the world sees that irrefutable reality. It's normally a serious lines product in most firm budget.

For that IT dept, handling the business specialised capability suggests primary getting a merchandise that matches regardless of what have to have the organization has come up with (and sometimes the odd whim of the sole manager), then this invest in, setting up, education, and maintenance of the hardware components, software program, systems, and directories which are with the resource. Then you get to keep worrying about interfaces between the applications, reports, security (the two external and internal), as well as amazing, irrepressible, eccentric, and typically devastation practices in the users despite you've presented full last part-to-finish training about the cool product.

Then anybody changes their head and you get to do it all over for a second time.

I personally trust any urban place need to have a personal asylum for IT staff. This area must occur filled with regions for the briefly insane to execute individual and violent deterioration of computing devices, provide you with them a create of punching luggage built to resemble ignorant (not stupid, just unlikely) organization officers, plus an even more stomping terrain loaded with dummies designed to resemble an assortment of knuckle-headed end users. Plus a unique host to heck for online hackers...

Such a establishment could be loaded to potential at all times.

The madness doesn't halt with the IT dept. For other enterprise professionals, IT changes signifies several hours or days of training, down time and loss in productivity that accompanies IT challenges, problems, or process upgrades.

For sales people, an IT glitch could mean lost possibility, loss in profits, together with a less than stellar picture of the provider that can be in a customer's brain for a long time. Salesmen may in no way conquer an undesirable shopper encounter created by was unsuccessful IT. The saying "your computer is your friend" is simply not commonly spoken concerning sales agents.

But IT is a necessary bad, isn't it? What enterprise could purpose without this?

Nicely, it can be important. Even an resourceful young male or female going into the workforce the very first time mowing gardens requires a means for buyers to reach him/her, methods to manage a routine, possibly even a method to path who may have paid off their charge.

But can it must be satanic?

Imagine if the wicked-ness arrives because we're looking to resolve the incorrect disadvantage in the IT? We're aiming to power a circular peg to a sq . hole, imagining It could clear up our difficulty without the need of really pinpointing what the catch is? We purchase computers, networks, communications, and many types of things you can do another thing-take and take care of info. A basic simple fact that we inherently all know but gloss about-it isn't the IT that's essential, it's what's traversing that it really.

It's concerning the details. Those people modest bits and bytes that define characters that make up details elements that coalesce into information that delivers us knowledge that even more transforms into knowledge that can be used and acted when.

It's regarding the info. Nevertheless we run after the knowhow traveling the info.

But hold on (you say)! We now have our databases. That's aspect of the IT. That's the place our details are placed. We must have the IT to access our information. It's OUR details.

Perfectly, absolutely yes... type of.

Yet not actually. Your small business does store data in to the directories connected with your organization, usually in a proprietary database which can be aspect and parcel with the application you've ordered. Most-or at a minimum a great deal-of the data is replicated in other methods, some inner in your firm, but most clearly in certain other outward strategy. And starting a data bank is hard operate, what with getting things uncovered, parsed, moved into your correct career fields, approved, and the like. It takes time as well as manpower which means money spent.

As well as how simple would it be to get it back again from that data base one time you've wanted to start working on another neat IT product or service? The quantity of IT administrators operate an get out of method concurrently they're establishing their investment technique? If you opt for a exclusive solution, do you realize what facts protection under the law one has and just how you'll get rid of that product whenever the time is offered? Mainly because it will. (Moreover, the correct answer is often 'no'-it's hard enough to acquire the solution all set while revealing your vendor and business control that you're actually organizing (and shelling out resources on) its demise.)

Alright, so who may have the information (exactly where can be your data bank essentially positioned and who controls it? Having entry? Who possesses it (don't make an presumption here))? How might it be provided lower back allowing you to transfer it towards a competitor's system? Must you invest in a amazing (meaning, overpriced) method to draw out the info? Who handles challenges? Who preserves the documentation over time so you essentially know what that repository appears to be and exactly what each one element means that (since that changes way too)? This edges over the geeky but X may well not continually and for good imply X, or perhaps now its X 2. Probably X is already alpha-numeric whilst it began as numeric only. This information is completely essential-what improved when? With out that documents, you have not a way of understanding when your info is comprehensive, whether its actually appropriate or maybe its been damaged.

Really enjoy your data base executives.

So, back in who genuinely has the info. Regardless of whether your imminently clever IT director provides the bases dealt with in terms of database acquisition and everything, does one really unique the details features?

No. You own the intelligence which comes while using the information, or any subsequent storage containers and retrieval of this cleverness, but the truth is don't really are able to decide the details factors that make up that cleverness.

For example, the US Interpersonal Security and safety number. The US Administration holds it-its design and guidelines, as well as the information allocated each specific. Your business has no say with the subject. It will, yet, supply in a variety of methods. Some IT products use all nine personas-with or without the dashes-although some only maintain your previous 4, 6, or 7. Other places have very own detection quantities that look absolutely nothing like the US SSN. What to do now?

Just how long is actually a 'name' and who extends to determine what it really resembles (no system I'm aware about could grab the image Prince made use of for a time)? How long can a name be? What exceptional figures are made it possible for? What number of labels can a person have (primary/final/mid or 6-7 labels, Aliases, Beforehand Referred To As)?

Inside locations, some will say the administration manages a great deal of the opposite individually recognizable facts (often abbreviated to "PII") with the nation (most likely the US among them). There could be also some foreign consortium that trust they 'own' records associated with their subject of expertise (but I wager there's other consortium which would disagree with this spot).

We could go on. The idea is that none of us 'owns' a facts element, at least nothing at all that's arranged internationally, and that's a difficulty.

Why?

For the reason that we have been world-wide beings life as people in a global natural environment. No male (or land) happens to be an tropical island. Details moves around our world in the velocity of consideration as a result of social media marketing and interconnected solutions. It's perpetual-once a 'thought' is out there, it's available on the market completely since somewhere it's been caught by an IT 'system'.

Info is available from almost anywhere and then we can find out one thing about nearly anything with some vital cerebral vascular accidents (despite the fact that we have now no way of knowing the veracity of the items we find).

So, goods has gone out there in various varieties, most of it really is perfect, some of it isn't, and you also demand particular equipment to get most of it.

Just how can we realize whatever we know? Actually, I feel this period could eventually be referred to as the 2nd Darker Age range because we don't figure out what we recognize and possess not a chance to grab (into perpetuity) our information. Or trail of e-mail, remarks, memos, and so forth that instructs how you came to that information, why we created that final decision, why that specific pathway was picked, for example.

Personal computers, computers, cellular phones include an abundance of info that is part of someone or usually, an organization or group. When that machine will go to the truly great Recycling Container from the Sky, often through a fried harddrive which will make the info it contains hard to get at, all that details are lost. Reduce to black color.

I attended a lecture one time regardless in 1900 our information was increasing almost every 50 yrs. In 1950 it was actually each and every 25 yrs, in 1998 (as soon as i observed this) it absolutely was just about every 10 years, and also by 2020 it might be almost every 72 times. Say what? Just how do we take that? How can we recognize everything you know when it's all caught in disparate databases, disparate tools, in numerous develops?

How that is known do we cope with all of this records/data/know-how/intelligence?

We require help. We need the laptops or computers that will help us. Like in, Synthetic Intelligence (AI). AI might help us seems sensible of everything, excluding the 'all of it' is dispersed and parsed all over the world without having any standard kind or organizational construction.

So-can you imagine if we discontinued operating the IT and as a substitute drove the details (which can be whatever we want anyways)? Just imagine we have control over our info, controlled it, and standardized it all over the world?

Envision it-information element X looks like this, indicates this, is utilized by this nomenclature, owned (operated) with that firm and (perhaps) even up-to-date this way. It may do what ever it sought for it so long as it didn't affect the shape from the element!

It wouldn't matter just what it resource we employed-any fitted our demands and budget-due to the fact our data was remain-on their own and controlled such as Borg-collective. IT can not change the shape or concept of the data. Resistance is futile. Companies wouldn't need to shell out huge amounts of money determining and documenting their data source given that it may be standardized. They will only need to identify the info things they're serious about. A provider having a new IT device wouldn't need to customize their device for each and every shopper-your data sessions can be conventional (believe Products and services Focused Architecture on steroids).

Omg! But exactly how? How would be begin locking downward data?

It can get a worldwide endeavor, quite possibly a specific thing below the United Nations.

Presume there is a group that had good care of anything affiliated with Individually Recognizable Material, yet another for knowledge, one more for health and fitness, another for data processing, etcetera and many others etc...

It's imagination-boggling. There'd ought to a team in order to choose which crew a bit of facts ought to be brought to for managing (is 'checking account' part of bank, bookkeeping, private, or business facts?)

There will be disputes.

It's been attempted in advance of naturally, on smaller scales by small companies. None are actually thriving predominantly since the group of people didn't basically individual the info. You can't handle what you don't very own.

I disagree on this site, nevertheless, that it must be no more dependent on option. When we are to keep away from becoming that Secondary Dimly lit Age groups, we have to try to get power over our records and it must be a standard endeavor.

Start small, imagine significant, step rapidly...

Why not focus on a team devoted to individual qualities? Identify these factors. Create the information framework. Outline the equipment to reach, up-date, and terminate that details. Then switch from there.

Think about a society where by firms or individuals can purchase any IT solution off the shelf-minus the recent bureaucracy affiliated with key buys-should they want, with no matter what features they would like, considering that the data it makes use of is widely organised. It might preserve vast amounts of money (right after the Fantastic Info Shape with the Heavens was set up anyways).

Consider a entire world in which information and facts are outside of the IT operating it. You could have a databases however you can't affect the system or interpretation. Some aspects may very well be un-updateable with the exception of by an authorized party (e.g., provider facts like birth date) along with a get good at variant taken at what ever amount considered suitable-maybe nationwide then synchronized along with a community-huge repository. You possibly can coalesce the details into data and knowledge that (could possibly) come to be a different part of data and caught it its own appropriate but you will NOT up-date the 'truth' files element.

Indeed, I understand-get two aspirin and think it by means of... it would hurt the gray issue. It's better to chase the IT than receive a take care of on the files, this is why we go that way. But we will need to begin.

Content Resource: http://EzineArticles.com/9766302