#there is a difference also between criticizing the text and being a moron

[valveorangebox]

How people treat female characters has been pissing me off recently. People expect female characters to be punished by the narrative for every bad action they take and explode when they have to use their brains on a show for children. I’m going to start eating dirt and rocks I’m so fucking upset. It feels like people are wilfully misinterpreting the text to try and make women who DON’T EXIST look worse.

There’s also the narratives in stories that punish women for no reason but that’s a different story.

[signalwatch]

Musical Watch: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)

the movie that posits: women love being abducted and held against their will

Watched:  02/07/2022

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First (and possibly last)

Director:  Stanley Donen

Holy cats, y'all.

I...  I don't even know where to start.  There's so, so many angles to this thing, so I'll try and capture my thoughts as best I can.  

I want to be very clear - Until this film, I (perhaps wrongly) believed I'm *pretty good* at contextualizing the cultural differences between our social norms and mores and those of yesteryear.  I may even be able to do period-piece stuff made in prior decades, trying to grok what the people of 1954 found charming about frontier life.  

In general, I can see a film and say "yes, I understand that there were ways that we viewed gender/ race/ manners/ religion/ etc..  that no longer reflect how we'd likely feel now" and I can go on with my life.

But.  Y'all.  I am adrift.  

My take-away is that the current interest in this film by classic film buffs is rubber-necking, ironic appreciation, or just outright hate-watching.  Or not!  Classic film buffs are an unruly bunch.  In its release year, this movie was very successful, financially and critically.  So I don't know anything about mankind anymore.

I've now seen the movie, and will only watch it again if it's my opportunity to bring the madness to the people.  

Some thoughts:

This is a movie which endorses kidnapping at best and possibly abduction and rape, depending on your reading of both the film's text and the much referred/ basis of the film to Abduction/ Rape of the Sabine Women - a well known bit of Roman mythology/ history that this movie turns into a jaunty tune to set up all the events of the second half of the film

It's clearly also somewhere between a movie about the powers of Stockholm Syndrome and the successful establishment of a cult

This movie is the future incels want.  It's a movie about men minus women who feel they *deserve* women and take radical action

Every single character in this movie is an absolute moron

This movie needed to end in a body count - there's no other believable finish

The movie is a musical with zero memorable songs except for the one where you're like "Are they.... singing about mass rape?" Johnny Mercer, I believe was responsible, and that seems insane

The main character (Howard Keel) is maybe the greatest asshole to ever grace the screen.  It's breathtaking.  Just a real shitbag from his first line to his last. When he's not insisting himself upon women, he's treating his new wife as domestic help.  And he's the one who thinks "hey, let's just go raid a town and collect its women for our own personal gratification."  He's an absolute psychopath.

The movie has this same lead state "all women are basically the same" and therefore fungible.  The movie never puts the lie to this idea.  So, good news, ladyfolk.  One of you is swappable for the other, really.  It's just a matter of hair color preference. 

There's a dance number that's really pretty rock solid in the middle

Someone tell me what the brothers are farming up there on the sides of mountains.  Somebody.  Anybody.  Rocks?  branches?  

Julie Newmar is in this movie, she's a head taller than all the other women and she clearly complicates every shot she's in.  But she's Julie @#$%ing Newmar, so you keep her in the @#$%ing movie

I cannot imagine the smells in the house of the brothers.  Like - simply can't wrap my head around it

Russ Tamblyn's career is fucking wild, man

Up until watching this movie, I thought it was about the mail-order-bride shenanigans of the 19th century, where, 160 years before 90 Day Fiancee, lonely-hearts on the frontier would correspond to women in the East, and those women would (sometimes) come out and marry them.*  This isn't the plot at all.

Instead, Howard Keel is a mountain man/ rock farmer in 19th Century Oregon (which was semi-settled as an all-White colony at one point, and this movie does not challenge that idea).  He comes down to town once a year to buy goods for his farm, and this time he also wants a wife.  And, after 5 minutes of looking, he finds one in Jane Powell.  Without mentioning he's bringing her to live by herself with his six brothers and basically be the maid.  Who he will pork, I guess.  It's very sophisticated.

Because she has an American can-do spirit, she actually goes along with this instead of getting right back in the wagon and going back.  

Inspired that their brother is now getting laid, the other 6 brothers go to a barn-raising/ hoe-down, dance, and basically harass girls and fight with the locals like the worst hillbillies to ever fall out of a tree.  Convinced they'll not be allowed to court the girls, the brothers then sneak into town, throw the girls in bags and ride off with them (no, really), intentionally blocking themselves into their own farm for winter by causing a deadly avalanche when the parents, siblings and townsfolk try to save the girls.  Who are in bags.

By the way, I have no idea how anyone eats anymore within two months of the girls' arrival, but worrying about "how will people eat if we double the population of our compound?" is not an issue in this movie and because the journey for the girls is to eventually fall in love with their captors is more important, we never learn what the bathroom situation is.  I had a lot of logistical questions.  

After months of assuming their children had been held like a bunch of Kimmy Schmidts for months on end, when the pass clears and the town-folk make their way to the farm, the girls all lie about being pregnant so they can get married to their favorite toothless hillbilly. Because brainwashing or something.  The movie makes no effort to explain that the brothers somehow de-asshole-ify.  We just see them wandering around in colorful shirts.

And, curtain.

People loved this movie.  It has awards.  It did boffo box office.  

I feel like you have to have the mind of a small child who can't conceive of bad things happening to good people to not be mostly horrified by the entire film. 

If anyone can tell me how this isn't a Blumhouse creation, I'd appreciate it.

*it was a profitable scam then and now as women would ask for money and then just stop corresponding when the money quit showing up. 

https://ift.tt/yNJex90

from The Signal Watch https://ift.tt/fSDlPts

[wavyzen]

★ lee felix scenario 01 ★

disclaimer: none of the photo’s in the moodboard above belong to me

update: this will be revised soon due to bad writing quality ;(

an: hi friends this is my first scenario so I’m sorry in advance if it’s trash and if felix is a bit ooc, anyways I hope y’all enjoy

prompt: Why are you so clingy people will think we’re dating- I know we are but you’re the one who wants it to be secret you moron! by shittyaus

pairing: lee felix x foreign idol s/o

genre: fluff

word count: 1052

You let out an abrupt inhale  as Felix slid his hand into yours. You promptly whipped your head around the cramped establishment, making sure that no one else saw the two of you. It was well past 11 at night, so the only other customers still lingering around was an older couple too enraptured in each other on the other side of the coffee shop and a university student studying for an exam a couple tables down. Letting out a sigh of relief you waved your free hand in front of him hoping to take his attention away from his phone. After a couple of seconds passed by, he finally looked only to shove his phone in your face. It was an instagram video of a roblox egg dancing around in a circle to ‘un poco loco’ from coco. Unable to control yourself, a couple of snorts left your lips as you used one of your hands to silence yourself. After calming down about a minute later, you placed your hand back into your lap and whispered “You know we can’t do this here.”, as quietly as humanly possible in order to not disturb the people around you. Felix set his phone down and leaned forward cupping your face in his hands, causing your heart to speed up a considerable amount.

“Love, there's barely anyone in here, no one is going to notice us.” Sighing and placing his hands back on the table, you took your glasses off of your face and placed them back into their case.

“I know there isn’t, but I just don’t want to risk you getting into any trouble. Or my parents and manager somehow figuring out.” you whispered back with a small pout on your lips. With the both of you being up and coming musicians and performers, maintaining a clean image was of iminent importance.

The two of you had met during the prior year in an airport when both of your flights were grounded due to inclement weather. Immediately recognizing you from social media and being an avid fan of your music, Felix decided to walk over to where you were sitting and asked for a photo for their Instagram. Taking your headphones off and pausing the episode of buzzfeed unsolved you had been watching on your phone, you shyly agreed. After talking a bit more and sharing some quality memes, a friendship was quickly formed. Once it was time to depart for your seperate flights, you exchanged numbers and promised to keep in touch. The instagram post had surprisingly received a lot of positive feedback with lots of support from stays. Being a stay yourself (Felix didn’t know about this until months later), this made you very happy.

You had been in the industry for about a year and were gaining much success as an upcoming r&b and rap artist. Some achievements you had made included being on the most recent XXL Freshman class, having a single on the Billboard top 100, and lastly collaborating with artists such as Chance the Rapper, Lil Yachty, Gorillaz and Vince Staples. You were a fresh face unapologetically discussing issues such as racism and poverty in your music, what wasn’t there to love? (you were met with a fair share of criticism though of course ☹, but the good feedback outweighed the bad so it’s all good ☺️) Although different from other artists, you remained out of the social spotlight majority of the time to focus on pursuing a music degree and working on your craft. You also prided yourself on being an introvert and did your best to stay away from drama and scandals, for it would ruin your squeaky clean image. Unfortunately, due to the both of you being artist’s, other than texting and facetiming you weren’t able to interact with Felix much. There was a time when you were on tour in Seoul with a couple of other artists from [Country-Name} and got the chance to attend one of his music shows. Other than that though, this was the first time you had to spend with him in person since the day the two of you had met. After being gifted with another musical success on your latest single a couple of months back and finally getting to enjoy your summer break from university, you decided to pay your closest friend a visit.

Your relationship blurred the lines between awfully close friends and lovers, with Felix’s clinginess and public displays of affection not being the true problem. That was JYP’s 3 year dating ban on newer artists and your parents and managers distaste towards you dating anyone, fore it may distract you from your studies and career.

Felix got up out of his seat across from you and slid into your booth wrapping an arm around your clothed shoulder and sliding his hand into yours once more..

“I promise no one will see okay, it’s a weeknight barely anyone is out at this hour.” Playfully rolling your eyes you gave in and rested your head on his shoulder, occasionally snickering and playfully hitting his arm  as he showed you more stupid videos.

The next morning you awoke to hundreds of notifications on all of your social media, meaning your worst fears had been realized: someone had noticed the two of you last night. Images of you and Felix sitting in the coffee shop and of him walking you back to your hotel flooded your feed. But to your pleasant surprise they were met with almost little to no negative feedback. Your fans and stays were hugely supportive of the relationship (if you could even call it that, the two of you weren’t even official yet), already creating fan pages and ship names. After heaving a huge sigh of relief and messaging your parents and manager to clear things up, you get a message from none other than Felix.

crackhead: i just had a meeting with JYP and he agreed to talk to the media, i told you everything would be alright😄😉

you: whatever idiot, you better just be glad this was received well.

crackhead: btw can I ask you something?

you: no

you: yes what is it

crackhead: be my gf or we aren’t friends anymore

you: is that a threat? and sure

[diyunho]

The Joker x Reader - “What Makes You Happy”

You do so many things for The Joker and what you usually get back is attitude. Very frustrating to deal with, especially after his latest stunt. Makes one wonder if it’s really worth it…

“Take whatever makes you happy,” Max points out towards all the riches in the warehouse as a reward for helping him. His two sons were captured by the SWAT team and you used everything you’ve got to get them out of jail; it was very hard since they were taken to Belle Reve but you managed anyway. No choice because you had only one goal in mind: to get your Joker back.

He is actually tight up on a chair in the back of the huge room, busted lip and a few bruises. Max thought The Clown Prince of Crime was responsible for his sons’ bad luck and captured him, refusing to release the prisoner no matter what. You don’t really mess with Max; he owns Los Angeles. That’s why you took it upon yourself to work something out.

“Whatever makes me happy?” you repeat, distrait.

“Yes. You know I mean it when I say it.” It’s true: Max is actually one of the few mob leaders that has what it’s called honor among thieves and you are counting on it.

“I want him!” you point towards your man.

“You want him?! Are you serious?! He’s an asshole!” Max snaps, not understanding what the hell is wrong with you.

“U-hum,” you nod your head, being the first one to admit it.

“He makes you happy?! Must be the worst boyfriend ever!”

“You can say that again…” you sigh, glaring at J that pretends not to notice your presence. Always such a cheer.

“You can literally have anything you want in here: money, diamonds, gold, weapons,” he tries to renegotiate. “Take your pick, as much as you want, whatever makes you happy,” Max punches his fists together, sucking on his cheeks.

“I want him,” you insist, really hoping you don’t have to start a war between LA and Gotham; this is precisely what you are trying to avoid.

“He’s a jerk !” Max raises his voice, annoyed you are so persistent in your request.

“Yeap,” you frown, wondering why in the world you are so stupid.

“Why do you keep on hanging in there by his side?! Jasper (that’s his oldest) always had a thing for you - it’s no secret. I would love for you to be my daughter-in-law. Just give up on this hopeless case, hm?” You scratch your neck, debating, yet still…

“Max, you said whatever makes me happy. I returned your sons, didn’t I?”

“You did,” he huffs, upset you twisted stuff in your favor.

“I don’t think J’s at fault here,” you try to defend your boyfriend, even if you are 70% sure he was involved.

“Of course not,” Max sarcastically replies. “Forever innocent, right?”

“Please?” you interrupt, getting nervous a bit. “I just want him, nothing else you have in here.”

The Joker pouts, stretching in his chains; he can probably hear the conversation and would love to comment but doesn’t since he wishes to get out of there also.

“Seriously, Y/N, you have to reconsider your relationship,” the mobster growls and signals you to go for it. “The son of a bitch doesn’t deserve you!”

“I know…” you bite your lip, realizing he’s 100% correct. “Thank you,” you touch his arm, grateful he didn’t back out on his word.

You walk towards J and stop in front of him. Ahhh, he seems pissed. Why not?!

“Hi baby,” you smile, dropping on your knees in front of him, starting to unlock the chains.

“Hi,” he grouchily mutters, cracking his shoulders.

“Did you miss me?” you inquire, avoiding his gaze.

“You left me here for a week !” he blurs out and your hands stop. “What took you so long?! The Joker can’t be treated like this; they’re all dead!!!! And NO, I didn’t miss you!!” he hisses, enraged.

“You will do nothing,” you calmly reply, continuing your task. “LA is our main business partner. For once, just swallow your pride and let go. I fixed the mess so don’t ruin it for us, OK?”

“Whatever!” J grumbles, already having some ideas on how to get revenge.

“Did you get into a fight? What happened?” You are 95 % sure The Joker initiated trouble, Max wouldn’t have hurt him. Since J is who he is, the LA boss is aware what killing or damaging the King of Gotham would bring upon his gang.

“I got into a brawl with Jasper,” he sniffles, not excited to admit.

“Did you?!  I just returned him and his brother yesterday! That’s why they chained you?”

He doesn’t answer and you finally set him free. My God, does he seem bitter or what?! He lingers in his chair; surely wants to clear something up:

“I hate Jasper, he wants you for himself!”

“Are you…for reals?!” you pucker your lips, keeping it down. “We dated years ago, when we were in our 20’s. Does it…does it indicate you were involved with the boys ending up at Belle Reve?!”

“Maybe…” he snarls and gets up, pacing with you following closely.

“Jesus, J ! Do you know all I had to do to get them out of there in order to trade them for you?! Belle Reve is no county prison!!!”

“That’s your problem, not mine!” The Joker barks.

“Wha’ ?!” You are stunned; truly unbelievable!

A few henchmen open the heavy metal doors and you are outside at last. You grab J’s hand and he doesn’t squeeze it back.

“Hold my hand, baby, “ you urge him , aggravated by the whole crap that could have been easily avoided if not for his whims and jealousy.

“No, I don’t want to!” he almost yells.

“Hold my hand J !”

“NO!!!!!”

You let go and he continues to march towards the car where Frost awaits. You stay behind, disappointed and take a deep breath, returning to the hideout. The gigantic metal door is still opened and you sneak back in.

The Joker realizes you are not by his side anymore and looks behind to see what you’re doing.

“Y/N ?!?” he shouts when the door closes behind you. He gets exasperated and returns to the gate, banging his fists against it.

“Get back here, Princess !!!!”  J screams, not understanding why you’re acting up.

The small window at eye level opens up and Max’s face pops up.

“What do you want?”

“Give me back my woman!” your boyfriend commands, mad to the maximum.

“I can’t give her back: she’s not a hostage, she’s a guest. Y/N doesn’t want to talk to you so get lost!”

“Excuse me?!” J gasps, amazed by the insult.

“You heard me: beat it ! Unlike you, she’s welcomed here so she can stay if she wants to.”

“You can’t talk to me like this! I’m the King of Gotham !!  I will…”

“Tell someone that cares,” Max cuts his rant. “I am the King of LA; this is my territory. Disappear!”

“Give me back my woman! NOW!!!!” J is getting furious.

“Go away, son ! Before you regret it.”

“I’m not your son!”

“Thank God!!” and the little opening gets slammed shut. The Joker feels all the veins in his body about to burst open from the outrage building up inside him. He basically runs to Frost.

“Welcome back, sir!” Jonny attempts to talk.

“Shut up! I need a tank, ten grenade launchers and as many mercenaries as possible! Like, 5 minutes ago!!”

“Ummm… What for, boss?” Frost gets uneasy.

“We need to get my Doll out of there!”

“Is she…held against her will?” Jonny indirectly addresses the issue, already realizing what he’s up against.

“Nope, I fucked up, “ your boyfriend peacefully admits for a change. “So hurry!”

“Sir, this place’s a fortress: they have a lot of men and they can always get more since we’re on their ground.”

“Who the hell asked for your opinion, huh?” J criticizes his trusted henchman, holding his green locks in place because it’s pretty windy.

“Boss, I don’t think we should start a major conflict due to the fact that…”

“Goddammit! What’s wrong with everyone today?!” J loses his temper, irked like never before. “Just do what I say and don’t question me!!!” Frost dials on his cell because he has no other choice.

“Sir, I am working on what you want, but in the meantime, can we PLEASE try another approach?”

“Such as?” The Joker grinds his teeth, unconvinced.

****************

“Y/N? Are you awake?” Max knocks at the door. He allowed you to use one of the bedrooms since you’re exhausted.

“Yes, come in,” you invite him. No matter how tired you get, you can never sleep during daytime.

“These are from… that person,” he hands over the huge bouquet of flowers, huffing.“Knocked at the entrance and yelled to give them to his girl. I really shouldn’t have done it; I don’t like him.”

Just one glance and you know: there is a 0.1% chance the flowers are from J and 99.9% chance they are from Frost. How do you know? Because you recognize his style: every single time Jonny gets flowers for his wife, he gets a bouquet for you too, knowing The Joker doesn’t ever bother with such nonsense.

Your man sees the gates opening and you coming out with the flowers and grins, triumphant. His smirk quickly turns into a grimace of stunned vexation when you toss them to the ground, stomping on them and kicking them all over the place, then go back in before he can react.

***************

Jonny won’t stop texting you, basically begging at this point for you to get out of the fortified warehouse. Apparently J is putting an army together to snatch you out of your hiding place; he even got a tank and grenade launchers coming to him by nighttime. He wants a war that makes no sense. But when does anything make sense when he loses his marbles?!

And it’s true you avoided a huge clash between the LA and Gotham clans. It was your hard work, tenacity and strategic flair. About to get blown up to pieces by your impulsive Joker. Uhhhhhhh, why did you pick him for whatever makes you happy?! So idiotic. And dumb. And moronic. And foolish.  You should’ve picked money and diamonds. ALL OF IT. Joke’s on you. Again. 100% on you.

*****************

J sees the gates opening and you emerge outside, grumpy as you can be, looking at the ground instead of acknowledging his approach.

“Are you done now?!” he yanks your arm, dragging you after him as you struggle to keep up, crabby to a whole different level. “Hold my hand!” the order demands and you don’t comply. “I said hold my hand, woman!”

You squeeze his fingers and still stare down at your feet. Frost notices the scene and gets his ass in the car, praying shit won’t go down. The Joker finally slows down a bit then halts, panting from the ordeal of your mutiny. He steps in front of your body and you avoid gazing in his eyes.

“Give me a kiss!” he growls.

“No!” you have the boldness to fight his desire.

“I said give me a kiss, I don’t want to repeat myself,” J licks his lips, mad you’re so feisty.

You reach over to give him a quick smooch.

“What the hell was that?! I said I want a kiss, not a mosquito bite!!”

You sulk even more and he places your hands around his neck, then his arms slide down on your waist, waiting. He comes half an inch apart from your lips and…Nothing.

“Today would be nice!” the Joker retaliates and you don’t really have a choice but to kiss him. For some reason, your fingers easily find their way to his hair, unconsciously caressing it in the process. He truly doesn’t want to purr but finds it impossible to hold it in. Makes you 78% weak in the knees, about 100% lost in his blue eyes and now you can’t even calculate percentages anymore. All his fault.

“Why do you aggravate me, Pumpkin?” he groans like he’s in a great deal of pain and you have the balls to answer.

“Because I love you and I do everything for you and you don’t love me and you just…” you whimper when he lets go of his embrace and has an outpour of words for you.

“ I don’t love you, hm???!!! Are you blind and deaf on top of it?”

You seem confused. Yuck, he has to explain. The Joker hates to explain his feelings: he doesn’t understand some of them himself, maybe about 63% . (Oh, how nice, you can calculate percentages again.)

“Every time I don’t kill you when you piss me off- and I must point out that’s on daily basis- it means that I love you. Every time another woman tries to get my attention and I don’t even care because I only have eyes for you, it means that I love you. Every time I take you on a “date -dinner-robbery” night and I am not out there creating chaos for Batsy because I know he gets bored without me, it means that I love you,” and J hauls you towards the car again, soooo upset he had to clarify his actions. “ I say it and show it all the damn time! Like I said, you’re just blind and deaf, getting old for sure since you’re pushing 40!” Only he could make something that was meant to be sweet into…THIS. “Why are you crying now, hm?!”

“You’re…you’re old, “ you wipe your tears because even if his declaration was so messed up you got the point anyway and your heart is about to explode with ecstasy. “You’re older so you’re pushing 40 more than me,” and you continue to bawl while he scolds you again.

“You have such a nerve, woman!” J shoves you in the car, irritated. “Wait here, I’ll be back in a sec!” he changes his mind before entering the vehicle.

You and Frost get anxious.

The Joker stomps back to the fortress, kicking the door with his right foot.

“What do you want now?!” Max opens the small window again, rolling his eyes at the green haired menace.

“Are we still on for next month? I want to close that deal.”

“Pffttt, yeah, of course. Make sure you show up for the meeting, Joker! And tell Y/N she can come and trade you in at any time, “ Max mumbles through his clenched teeth.

“Whatever makes her happy,” J punches the metal gate, his arrogance rubbing the mobster the wrong way.

“She should’ve taken the diamonds!” Max closes the opening, being done talking to The King of Gotham.

Your boyfriend is 110.53 % certain you will never do that.

Yes, he can do percentages too.

Sort of…

 Also read: MASTERLIST

http://diyunho(dot)tumblr(dot)com/post/153664676321/joker-x-reader-masterlist

[ogxref]

DIGITAL TARKOVSKY NOTES (Strelka Press) / Metahaven

In US alone, an average adult spends 2 hours and 51 minutes on their smartphone everyday → that is 8 minutes longer than Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker...

We surround ourselves with and immerse ourselves in digital devices that command this type of duration → the fact that we spend so much time on it prompts a question: we wish to investigate the kind of duration that we experience whilst staring at, and interacting with these tiny screens, our little beacons of orientation in an increasingly uncertain and illegible world…

In an age of seemingly omnipresent attention deficit syndrome, we never hesitate to spend hours on end, immersed in a flat world that is each person’s own private universe, each person’s process of motion and emotion, horizontal and vertical, taking place on a surface no larger than the smallest pocket book, but infinitely smaller than the largest film screen. And we are interested in calling this something else than smartphone addiction → We are interested in calling it cinema...

Duration is measured with time, and appears as irreversible.

Philosophical, mathematical and physical speculations about time all face the practical confrontation with the moving “Now” that forces itself to the foreground every time we are trying to think temporal abstractions, or better, every time we are trying to escape time.

“Early cinema was a revolutionary art form that was served by a new technology. Nowadays, going to the cinema is already a bit like going back in time, to a velvet-upholstered chair equipped with a cup holder, fixing one’s spatial position in front of a giant moving image as if it were the only thing in the world that matters.”

In comparison with their surrounding visual culture, cinemas → have become spaces of enforced watching. Moviegoers are told to switch off their phones before a film begins. And this is understandable: the phone competes with, and distracts from, the big film playing out on the big screen.

That being true, there still is something odd about the no phones warning. In spite of film having already ostentatiously “won” the competition for biggest screen, it still deems it necessary to set rules to avoid distraction from other durational devices. Film aggressively enforces its claims in space, because it may have lost its monopoly on controlling time.

Since the early days of cinema the moviegoer has been imagined as a human being, but in the early 21st century, moving image is also created, as well as “watched,” by artificial intelligence (AI) → Unlike a human being, to see, an AI does not need to even look at anything visual; it can experience the image without vision. All the temporal rules of cinema are also ignored by AI, because these rules were based on human limitations that the AI overcomes.

In postwar France → the historian Fernand Braudel introduced an equivalent of the cinematic long take: the longue durée. It was nothing short of a paradigm shift in what it meant to write history and how this was supposed to happen. Braudel criticized how economists reduced historical time to cycles of growth and decline. The focus on the “short time” (as opposed to the longue durée) had been au bénéfice de l’histoire économique et sociale, au détriment de l’histoire politique.

The idea that the perceptual experience of the Now in the everyday is opposed to the longer historical trajectory, or, that there is more than just one social time, shifts the perceptual frame up to a scale where the “heat of the moment” comes to form a dialectic opposition to that scale itself. In a sense, Braudel’s analysis of long-term historical change is a bit like pattern recognition beyond the human frame of experience

Unsurprisingly, a field for which Braudel’s work holds a special significance is that of climatology → The massive, irreversible, climate change associated with the anthropocene is a development that can politically uniquely be assessed as one of longue durée, as it is not simply the tragedy of a natural inevitability, but an outcome of an accumulation of distinct developments usually described by distinct scientific and scholarly disciplines. The longue durée is a frame of understanding that is especially suited to assess these fundamental shifts.

Notion of the “fallacy of the Now”

Notion of interpreting and appreciating the time we spend on our smartphones, and our intention to see this as a form of cinema, of cinematic duration. And perhaps ask another question, why are we doing this? → Why then bother cinema’s temple with its surrounding digital camping grounds, with social media fluff, YouTube clips, disappearing Snapchat pictures, manic text messages, gifs, heavily doctored Wikipedia articles, Instagram stories, fake news websites, failing Skype calls, Pokemon Go, stickers, overlays… → why bother cinema with interface?

Watching Tarkovsky films is neither a short, nor a light pastime, but the difference between them and all mainstream films is no accident. → They are conceived outside the normative, visual and narrative standardization of cinematic time by the rules of commercial film production studios and television broadcasters. They are also intimidating on a conceptual, philosophical level.

Tarkovsky’s films are long and slow. On a superficial level this seems to put them out of touch with contemporary reality, or rather, contemporary reality out of touch with them. Indeed, some fear that we may be losing the very sensory and mental capacities to engage with their time and duration. The writer Geoff Dyer complains that “we move further and further away from Tarkovsky-time towards moron-time in which nothing can last—and no one can concentrate on anything—for longer than about two seconds.” → One way to see this is that the films become simply inaccessible over time; another is that they become more like Dostoevsky novels or Mounts Everest, harder to conquer and more resilient and demanding as artworks whose very texture and “temporal weight” resists quick consumption. If this is true it would make Tarkovsky’s films still better and more profound as artworks; the troubling confrontation with time itself would become progressively more difficult, but also, more meaningful.

It’s hard to sit and watch a clock tick, to experience time consciously, and to watch, feel it happen → There seems to be a kind of “horizontal gravity” at work on the timeline, a backward drag, the presence of which is as hardly acknowledged in most films as it is in most lives. Insipidity, drowsiness, all of these are closely related to the slow passing of time and our ability, or inability, to achieve goals and realize what we desire.”

“Some artists who make us feel the true measure of things. It is a burden which they carry throughout their lives, and we must be thankful to them.”

Tarkovsky →  the script has to “die in the film”

Dyer →  whilst Tarkovsky often felt frustrated by the control exercised by the state over his and others’ artistic freedom, in the West, a subtler kind of censorship and tyranny (that of the market) would have made it extremely unlikely that he could ever have obtained permission (raised the funds) to make Mirror or Stalker...

Tarkovsky → “An image is not some idea as expressed by the director, but an entire world reflected in a drop of water.”

“We suggest that in Tarkovsky there’s not so much a typical storyline with its irreversible turning points and cliffhangers, but an ambient plot.”

The ubiquity of screens destroys our ability to see film as a distinct medium anymore. Will Self → film is dead now because it is replicating “our own neurological capacity for absorbing imagery.”

[armsinthewronghands]

Complete Text of the ‘Destroy’ Post

Screenshot of this is often trotted out as “evidence” I have a secret harassment group.

..also note anyone named in the comments should be able to confirm to the public the transcripts match the private post and anyone can ask to be added to the circles and read the originals.

Zak Sabbath Shared privately Aug 10, 2014  Destroy. Gender-inclusive language in D&D 5e raises roleplaying questions Gender-inclusive language in D&D 5e raises roleplaying questions metafilter.com 5 plus ones 5 38 comments 38 no shares Shared privately•View activity Hide 32 comments Onno Tasler's profile photo Onno Tasler +2 If that "evil consultant" campaign is going on much longer I'll buy a version of D&D 5 just to spite those responsible. Aug 10, 2014 Zak Sabbath's profile photo Zak Sabbath +12 Buy Red & Pleasant Land--it'll be out soon, and I get a cut. Aug 10, 2014 Kasimir Urbanski's profile photo Kasimir Urbanski +2 You may want to consider Arrows of Indra, it's a great old-school game set in a carefully-researched interpretation of the Epic India of the Mahabharata. It's also transgender-inclusive. Hide this comment Aug 10, 2014 Kasimir Urbanski's profile photo Kasimir Urbanski +5 Yes you can! There are Vimana in the magic items section. One thing to note is that there are different ages, with vast periods of time between them, in the Mythic India chronology.  The Mahabharata is taking place in the last part of the Epic age, you could say.  As time goes by, the gods end up being less and less direct in their actions in the world, and magic becomes more and more rare.

In the time of the Avatara Shiva, there were entire flying cities ruled by demon lords.  Supernatural beings were everywhere and humans were largely subject to their whims; magic was almost ubiquitous. In the time of the Avatara Rama, much later, there were still some demon kingdoms but no more flying cities (Shiva shot them all to hell, sometimes literally), but Epic Superweapons and flying chariots were still what you could call semi-rare at least.  Some humans might live out their lives without encountering a supernatural being, if they lived in the core areas of the human kingdoms; magic was still very common but not on the same grandiose scale. The "present" of the Arrows of Indra setting is even far later than that, when the Avatara Krishna is just starting out, and it's mortal heroes more than immortal gods and monsters that are the chief movers and shakers of the world. Kingdoms, good, bad, corrupt, noble and everything in between are ruled mainly by men.  Kingdoms of monsters and demons and monkey-people and gold-skinned dwarves still exist only in very remote borderlands (that really only adventurers would be likely to get to).  Magic was used by wizards and holy men but only the very greatest heroes could hope (after a long career, great deeds, and shitloads of XP) to obtain a truly epic Celestial Weapon or gain some amazing artifact.

So yeah, the setting has vimana, but you have to work for it.

That's why I chose this era, besides the fact that you have the ruins of the earlier eras scattered around in the wilderlands of the setting, it's also this era that most suits the whole zero-to-hero path of the D&D system. Hide this comment Aug 10, 2014 A. Miles Davis's profile photo A. Miles Davis +2 "Until they show a connection to FATAL or Racial Holy War it's not the darkest parts of the RPG community." posted by squinty at 11:48 PM on August 9

and so on.  This seems like a pretty reasonable group of people responding reasonably.  They sniff out bullshit, request evidence, and the entire tone is without excess bile. Aug 10, 2014 Richard G's profile photo Richard G "and then you dig a bit and it's vapour"

The fundamental problem here as I see it is that many commenters seem to have free-floating opinion receptors, ready to grab onto any opinion that floats by and repeat it, regardless of any actual information that also floats by.

The information is less digestible. You have to read and understand it. The opinions, OTOH, are made of nothing but hooks. Aug 10, 2014 Ramanan S's profile photo Ramanan S +2 I flagged it. It's a stupid post for MetaFilter. People in the comments seem to be pointing out as much. You could try and email the mods yourself, since it effects you. I posted some links as well, but it seems like other people have done that already. Aug 10, 2014 Ramanan S's profile photo Ramanan S And yeah, in general I think MetaFilter is less likely to fall for straight up horse shit. Aug 10, 2014 Greg Backus's profile photo Greg Backus I can work on this one too cuz them's my digs Aug 10, 2014 Wayne Rossi's profile photo Wayne Rossi I did several D&D posts on Metafilter and am already in that thread. It's a community I've been a part of for a decade. At most 1 person seems to be buying the Fail Forward bs on the comments. Aug 10, 2014 Ramanan S's profile photo Ramanan S Weird there are so many MeFi users here. (I am chunking express.) Aug 10, 2014 Greg Backus's profile photo Greg Backus <- Golem XIV Aug 10, 2014 A. Miles Davis's profile photo A. Miles Davis man, this is an entertaining read the more it goes on. Aug 10, 2014 Zak Sabbath's profile photo Zak Sabbath +1 it doesn't entertain me. Someone should link to this: https://www.seebs.net/log/articles/791/ it's a new article by Seebs explaining EXACTLY where all this bs originated Aug 10, 2014 A. Miles Davis's profile photo A. Miles Davis i mean only this specific thread you've linked above because it's like 80% people being responsible and asking for proof and facts instead of opinions. Aug 10, 2014 Zak Sabbath's profile photo Zak Sabbath yeahNo, Not entertained. Not at all. Don't see why people are even spending a second putting up with the bullshit claims there. Aug 10, 2014 Anthony Holtberg's profile photo Anthony Holtberg Hm. All I see is a person who is vocal being bullied on the basis that some people don't like him and don't think anyone else should.

Dragging it into the professional arena is where this all goes awry. I'm terribly sorry this had to happen, +Zak Smith, especially at a time when things are hard enough.

I've had much the same done to me, and I do sympathize. People who work to do things a different way that makes them happy make others uncomfortable. 'Burn the heretic' and all that.

Again, I'm just sorry this sort of thing goes on. Aug 10, 2014 Zak Sabbath's profile photo Zak Sabbath The shit being posted now is PURE didn't read the links . I didn't call out the James De people because they said he said "rape is awesome" I called them out because they said he threatened to rap ehis critics that's in links posted right there. And someone ask Shawn struck why I;m not in jail Aug 10, 2014 A. Miles Davis's profile photo A. Miles Davis yeah it's gotten totally bullshit as the day has gone on. Aug 10, 2014 Zak Sabbath's profile photo Zak Sabbath OH MY GOD IT'S STILl GOING ON. And Vecna is posting a bunch of debunked stuff. Aug 11, 2014 Wayne Rossi's profile photo Wayne Rossi +Zak Smith Metafilter threads stay open for a month and generally taper off after a day or two. Not sure what the deal is with this Vecna (not a real Metafilter user) or the "Dongion". Aug 11, 2014 Ramanan S's profile photo Ramanan S Yeah they joined yesterday, so probably someone emotionally invested enough in calling you a terrible person to spend $5 on the endeavour.  Aug 11, 2014 Kasimir Urbanski This comment is hidden because you've blocked the commenter. View the comment Aug 11, 2014 A. Miles Davis's profile photo A. Miles Davis jesus fuck that guy has a hateboner the size of Albany at this point. Aug 11, 2014 Ramanan S's profile photo Ramanan S If it makes you feel any better people seem to be realizing this is mostly just axe grinding drama. Though the post is still up. I guess it didn't get enough flags. I still think you should email the mods. Aug 11, 2014 Zak Sabbath's profile photo Zak Sabbath +Ramanan S Me? Aren't I like the very last person they'd listen to? If not, d;you have the email address? Aug 11, 2014 Ramanan S's profile photo Ramanan S +Zak Smith They might listen if you don't call them morons! I know you can do it if you try. I think it's worth a shot. I mean, the thread itself has links debunking that particular article.

You can use the contact form here: https://www.metafilter.com/contact/

(FYI: If it's deleted it'll still exist as a thread, but it wont't be indexed by google anymore and it's not linked from the site anymore. Like so: https://www.metafilter.com/88123/Get-motivated-by-every-movie) Aug 11, 2014 Zak Sabbath's profile photo Zak Sabbath last time i called someone a moron for RTing that it worked. However--invective-free email sent. Aug 11, 2014 Ramanan S's profile photo Ramanan S God speed! Aug 11, 2014 Zak Sabbath's profile photo Zak Sabbath in reverse order:

Oh, the whole thread? No, that's not something we're going to do, sorry.

On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 2:32 PM, zak smith I'm sorry, a member told me different.

(And people have already posted that link, which I can only assume you didn't read because it's long.)

The member said:

" FYI: If it's deleted it'll still exist as a thread, but it wont't be indexed by google anymore and it's not linked from the site anymore. Like so: https://www.metafilter.com/88123/Get-motivated-by-every-movie) " I don't know your policy. all I know is right now you're hosting something that is….

…well if I was running a site I'd be troubled by hosting it.

If you check the link I sent you might get a glimpse of the scale of how messed up it is and on how many counts. But I'm not the boss of you.

-zak

Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 14:28:40 -0700 Subject: Re: [MeFi Contact] The D&D Gender article

Hey there, you're welcome to make an account and link that post in the thread for discussion - we don't change or delete links after the fact (the discussion is about the link, so removing the link just confuses everyone.)

On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 2:24 PM,

Hi, this is Zak S. A member suggested I contact you about this article: http://www.metafilter.com/141806/Gender-inclusive-language-in-DandD-5e-raises-roleplaying-questions Basically, the first link there is a libelous unsourced hatchet job by a bunch of Something Awful trolls with a grudge. It's been so thoroughly debunked that even the people defending it at the bottom of the page have moved the goalposts from "Zak is a transphobic gatekeeper" to "Zak has fights with people online and that's unprofessional".

This has links to EXTENSIVE documentation of all the mistakes and inaccuracies in the article: http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2014/08/how-dungeons-and-dragons-is-totally-not.html

I suggest you take it down.

-Zak Aug 11, 2014 Ramanan S's profile photo Ramanan S Ah that sucks. At least you have more examples of random peoples calling this out as dumb, but I guess that doesn't actually make you feel better. Aug 11, 2014 Ramanan S's profile photo Ramanan S HELLO VECNA!

https://www.metafilter.com/141806/Gender-inclusive-language-in-DandD-5e-raises-roleplaying-questions#5679845 Aug 11, 2014 Zak Sabbath's profile photo Zak Sabbath Jay Vee is likely Vecna. Aug 11, 2014 A. Miles Davis's profile photo A. Miles Davis Jay Vee is definitely Vecna.

he just posted those same pictures at me. Aug 11, 2014 Zak Sabbath's profile photo Zak Sabbath +1 i'm really glad whoever is spying on me and taking these snapshots did it--since it proves my innocence Aug 11, 2014 Ramanan S's profile photo Ramanan S Yeah, just searching for those links only turns up posts from him. Aug 11, 2014 A. Miles Davis's profile photo A. Miles Davis and he just tagged me into some bullshit elsewhere trying to quote me out of context within this thread.

reported, blocked. Aug 11, 2014 A. Miles Davis's profile photo A. Miles Davis oh, and it's https://plus.google.com/u/0/114989648662861338239/posts/5cqVsfEhwTn

[afutureinnoise]

DAVID BOWIE, PART 1 BY DAN WRECK

Photo: David Bowie, by Masayoshi Sukita

BOWIE #1 - DEATH

Anything you write could be your epitaph, as an artist.

If you're fortunate enough to have an audience, then the last public proclamations you utter are both eulogy and epitaph: imbued with whatever poignancy the audience wants to put into them. Whatever we want to read into it we can and we will because greedy consumers all, the customer is always right. It's sad and inhumane but when you've made yourself a product what else can you expect?

It feels tawdry to even discuss this, but seems obligatory: he managed to keep his cancer from the media right up until the end. He'd "withdrawn from public life", as the saying goes albeit a very extraordinary withdrawal from public life where he still released albums, appeared in music videos and gave his blessing to the huge Sound and Vision exhibition which exhibited many of his personal effects and revelled in his past.  

It's the kind of sleight of hand withdrawal from public life you'd expect from a man who, it is easy to forget now, came out as gay in 1972 on the front pages of the music press. This at a time when no one was really coming out: still a very brave thing to do. Not something you did just to get a slot on Ellen to plug your book. He later adjusted it to being bisexual (which would still be brave now given how many idiots don’t believe bisexuality exists), then told everyone he was straight when he was expedient for him to do so (in 1982 conveniently distancing himself from the gays when he wanted to be even bigger) then quietly years down the line came back out again when it was safe to do so.

This is also a man who once upon a time gave the gossip magazine HELLO! magazine an exclusive, having them cover his wedding to Iman. In September 2000, the birth of his daughter also merited a HELLO! exclusive. This is the kind of thing we bitch at footballer's wives for doing. So let's not pretend he was a shy and retiring man as we shake our heads and bemoan the circling ghouls and grief culture even as we lap it up. But just as it was his right to make his personal life a matter of public record, it was his right to make the end of it private and shared only with his close friends. Remember, he owed us nothing and gave us a lot.

POSSIBLE EPITAPHS #1 and #2 - I CAN'T GIVE EVERYTHING AWAY / LAZARUS

I Can't Give Everything Away.

A title that both makes a mockery of my point before about how he was as much of a media tart as anyone else and agrees with it. Depending on where you lay the emphasis.There's a well known critical theory of the death of the author which basically says that we, as the readers of a given text decide what it is about and all interpretations are equally valid. It's not one I subscribe to but it's an interesting thought, especially after the literal death of an author.

I Can't Give Everything Away is a beautiful song with motifs from the rest of his back catalogue sprinkled through it: a touch of New Career In A New Town in the harmonica intro, something of Thursday's Child about the vocal melody, hints of Black Tie White Noise in the arrangement. The vocal delivery, though, is purely Blackstar. It's not just a homage, it's the Sound & Vision exhibit in the form of a song. What a performance it is, too. When I first listened to Blackstar five times in a row, before the author was dead, I welled up hearing it then too. There's so much joy and yearning he fits into the repetitions of the title. Then biography bleeds into it and the repetitions of the word "Away" are the ascension of a soul.

“Look up here, I’m in heaven”

The same way that Jhonn Balance's repetitions of "It just is" at the end of Going Up from his own accidental epitaph Ape Of Naples say a lot in very little, it's all in the delivery and the space between the words. I mention Balance partly because he's one of the few artists I love and respect as much as Bowie, and someone I feel a close connection to despite never having met (maybe on the next bardo) and partly because of the very Coil looking black sun appearing very prominently in the Blackstar cover art and the video for this song. He must have known: this isn't the SS variant of the black sun you see used by right-wing morons who underestimate and wilfully misunderstand the power of this imagery. It's not a sun wheel. It's a black sun. The brightest of all Blackstars.

Of course Bowie was no stranger to using, dwelling on and disseminating the kind of occult imagery which has been misappropriated by incompetent, bigoted idiots at different points in history. There's been a thread of it running through most of his career: from the first verse of Quicksand's references to Crowley's Golden Dawn and “Himmler's sacred realm” to the magickal undertones running through 1.Outside that he unfortunately dilutes by couching in references to piss artists like the then contemporary Brit School of artists. Most explicitly, though, he was pre-occupied with these themes around the time of Station to Station and in the Lazarus video we get a more explicit link to Bowie past in the same outfit from the Station to Station back cover.

In the Bowie's Last Five Years documentary we hear that he found out it was, very likely, going to be terminal as he shot the video for Lazarus. Once again life and art merge and make something that was already moving into something heartbreaking. First I'm going to focus on the video before I get to the song itself.

If you're reading this I'm 95% sure you've seen the video a few times but there are two things which're particularly moving about it when art meets life so unfortunately this will at first seem like I’m just describing things for the sake of it.

The first is the joy and release with which he sings, bedbound but levitating.

The second is is the moment where, before, vanishing off into the cupboard, he looks up with pantomime worry before scribbling down some notes. He is shaking as he writes them as if battling to get these last thoughts, they're struggling to come and he laughs with relief before finally putting pen to paper and getting these last ideas out before the inevitable.

The thing about writing your own pitaph is that, well, presumably you're still alive after you've  written it and you can't stop there. Having put that to rest, as an artist, you move onto something else. There's always something else ahead, something which could be bigger and better and brighter until one day well there just isn't. You need to finish it now you've started even if it looks impossible because you can't just stop mid-stream or mid-word. But about when the full stop arrives before you do? Unthinkable. Before you're interrupted, before it's time to put your pen down the heart screams "But wait there's more."

Now onto the song itself. Another one of his many beautiful vocal performances but with a vulnerability you never usually heard from the man. The grain of the voice, the way you can almost hear his throat muscles teeth and tongue as he sings "I was living like a king", the k sound in "like" rattling with phlegm and the dying rasp of "king". It's hard to know when to be frail when you've lived as a king. In fact, even more than a king. Bowie was almost a construct. At points in this song we're hearing the man David Jones.

POSSIBLE EPITAPH #3 - THE NEXT DAY

The Next Day as a whole really plays with the idea of the ageing artist talking about mortality and despite the fact that it isn't as good an album as Blackstar everyone would've reacted the same way if he'd died just before or just after releasing The Next Day. For one it’s the first Bowie album not to display his face (even as distorted as it appears on 1.Outside it's still him, it’s just him after he worked out how to play with filters in Photoshop). We get an iconic image from his past with his face obscured by the title as if to say "The Next Day won't include my face" (good at this ascribing pointless significance to things which don't mean anything of the sort aren't I? Pitchfork should give me a ring. Or The Sun.).

The Next Day is rife with references to death, ageing, disease and dementia. The title track built around the refrain "Here I am not quite dying" and a chant of "And the next day and the next day" redolent of Macbeth's final "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow". As on parts of Blackstar he spends a lot of time looking back, more explicitly than on Blackstar in fact, particularly on the first single Where Are We Now, a lovely sorrowful song full of space and ache in a way he tried to do on Hours but didn't really manage. It was accompanied by a video of our ageless hero starting to look, well, look his age. On You Feel So Lonely You Could Die, which isn't a great song in my opinion, after talking about seeing a former foe's hanging body, he leaves us with that iconic Five Years drumbeat echoing out into nowhere. The album closer Heat bears a remarkable similarity to The Motel from 1.Outside and thus also to Scott Walker's Climate of Hunter or one of his songs off Night Flights. A great track, and another example of the great man not insulting his audience's intelligence / giving us something to go seek out and read (the Mishima references) but as epitaphs go not one worthy of the great man. The Next Day is an enjoyable album but fairly underwhelming once you got over the excitement of Bowie doing an album for the first time in a decade which was obviously something.

What really impressed me as a gesture was The Stars (Are Out Tonight) and particularly the accompanying video where Bowie and Tilda Swinton are a married couple and Andreja Pejic is in it being impossibly beautiful as Andreja Pejic is prone to being. After going back in in the 80's one of the things he did in this cycle was remind us queers he was one of us and he still cared. That he did so while at the same time skewering the same celebrity culture he fed into by uneasily straddling the boundary of Celeb and Celebrant is the sort of having your cake and eating it too genius we miss him for.

It’s also worth dwelling on how confrontationally gender-skewing the video (directed by Floria Sigismondi) is in a way you see from few artists as prominent as him even in this day and age: aside from the aforementioned inspired choice of Pejic, casting Iselin Steiro as a young Bowie is a master-stroke as is Tilda Swinton as Bowie’s wife: perfect. His video wife is the only person in the world who looks like him. It’s just a feast of androgyny.

POSSIBLE EPITAPH #4 - BRING ME THE DISCO KING

The closing track on Reality, pre-hiatus and pre-heart attack. Again a very youthful looking and sounding Bowie but for a long time it looked like it was going to be the last thing we saw or heard from him (apart from Little Fat Man in Extras of course which I'm sure some earnest journalist would've managed to contort themselves into calling a "dying man's final joke" or something).

A rolling, roiling jazz song with Mike Garson's piano playing the perfect foil. Full of intimations of doom undercut with an almost Zen resignation. An album closer opening with the words "You promised me the ending would be clear" and containing the line "Soon there be'll nothing left of me, nothing left to release". For a while it looked like there wouldn't be and that he'd settled into being human at last. Just like Damiel in Wings of Desire, an angel who walked among us who gave it all up in  favour of beauty you can only really appreciate if all things are finite. Wistful reminiscences of his past "killing time in the 70s" from a man who it was often said was resistant to looking back but you'd be forgiven for thinking (if you believed the critics that is) that he did nothing but.

Of course, as beautiful and sepulchral as the song is, it was written as far back (maybe further, this isn't Pushing Ahead of The Dame I'm not quite that good a writer or Bowie scholar) as Black Tie White Noise and an attempt was made at recording it in the Earthling sessions. It may be an epitaph but one there had been multiple drafts of. Still, it doesn't matter when you write it it just matters when you put it out and there's a certain grandeur given to something by it having been pored over for so long. To think of another great songwriter who died in 2016, Leonard Cohen, you don't think You Want It Darker or Treaty were just off the cuff from the man who spent years writing and honing Hallelujah, do you? No. Until it is written in stone an epitaph can undergo many revisions and be replaced by others, this to be replaced with The Next Day the way Heathen was replaced with this.

POSSIBLE EPITAPH #5 - HEATHEN (THE RAYS)

Yes, I know it would've been shocking for him to go at this age, especially considering how healthy and youthful he looked at the time (he was in his mid 50s, obviously a young age but looking even younger) but for the purpose of this exercise imagine he did. It would’ve been sad but he never would have had to meet Ricky Gervais. Imagine that the title track from Heathen is the last new song you hear from him. Mournful skeins of effects drenched guitar, a distant tribal throb then the man himself enters the picture.

"Steel on the skyline, sky made of glass"

A voice frozen with existential horror, glazed eyes fixed forward, the horror of Colonel Kurtz or anyone who has seen death and truly looked at it without flinching or looking away. A vision of their own death, maybe. All of our deaths. A man singing to his God or to the concept of death itself. Maybe to the angel he sang of as a younger man in Look Back In Anger on Lodger. Maybe the angel who renounced immortality knowing what comes next. Rhetorical questions.

“Is there a reason?”

"Have I stared too long?".

Then maybe he's singing to life itself:

"You say you'll leave me

When the sun's full

And the rays high

I can see it now

I can feel it die"

The way he sings these last few words and the wordless phrases after it, full of anguish and loss, is chilling even knowing he lived for a while after it. If he hadn't, it would've been his epitaph and it would've been a beautiful one, the Berlin synth atmospherics twinkling away, rays of cold electronic light in the short instrumental outro which fades out and ends as suddenly as....well, life. It can end at any moment you know (you know, you know).

Speaking on the song itself in an interview he describes the writing process as some kind of traumatic epiphany:

"In the distance a car was driving slowly past the reservoir and these words were just streaming out and there were tears running down my face. But I couldn't stop, they just flew out. It's an odd feeling, like something else is guiding you, although forcing your hand is more like it."

Some people talked about the remarkable synchronicity between him writing these songs pre-9/11 and the tragic events of that day but really, is there? Any more than there's synchronicity between any songs mentioning death and a skyline and 9/11? We feel this because he's a voice we look up to, saying these words, and we have decided that's what they mean. In the same way that if he had died after making Heathen it would have been a vision of his premature death. Funny phrase that. Either all deaths are premature or none are. We make the pieces fit and create our own context. Just to make my point.....

POSSIBLE EPITAPH #6 - ROCK AND ROLL SUICIDE

I'm not suggesting he committed suicide in this alternate past but what if Ziggy really had been it? What if he'd fallen silent after that. Knowing the man's love of being the centre of attention unlikely but what if?

Imagine you're a gay teenager in 1972. Something integral to your very being, the way you are has been illegal up until 5 years ago. Things are going to be shit for you in a very different way to the way they are now: although nowadays if you happen to have been born queer you're still four times more likely to kill yourself but that's okay because if you survive long enough to grow up you can get married now so get over it, faggot. Maybe Bowie / Ziggy would've been a ray of light when you saw him and realised that you couldn't be all bad because maybe the coolest and most beautiful man you'd ever seen was the same as you. He was obviously totemic for queer people of that generation. Dockers in Liverpool saying they'd give Bowie one oblivious or uncaring of the fact that was a bloke they were talking about because it's not a matter of gay or straight or bisexual: fancying early 70s Bowie is just a matter of common sense.

"Oh no love you're not alone"

If that's all he'd done, if he'd told us all he was gay, left us with Ziggy and then when he announced "This is the last show I will ever play" he'd kept to his word then he'd still have been more than a footnote in history. It's all context.

Everything that came later, his pathetic attempt at "going back in" the same way dear old Lou did when he sang Women on The Blue Mask, none of this matters now and it definitely didn't matter to the confused queer kid in a small town in 1972 who for once saw someone who moved the way they'd like to move. None of this shit had happened and even when it did it didn’t retroactively undo all the good he’d done for you. Sometimes that's all it takes. Sometimes that's better than a million It Gets Better PSAs from straight actors who think that the approval of someone a million miles away with millions of pounds means anything to someone who is getting it from all corners, inside and outside of the home. Than a million pro LGBT statements from politicians who work in education ignoring the fact that sometimes it's not just the pupils who're bullying you because they reckon you were born wrong. These words, so easy for them to say and so hard for them to believe.

“If I could only make you care” is the crucial line. There're no false promises, it's just "Gimme your hands 'cos you're wonderful" as Mick Ronson's guitar wails an echo of the words "Give me your hands". It's a romantic idea but maybe this saved someone. Maybe that’s the most fitting epitaph of all. If you can touch the lives of people you’ve never met and they feel something real when you die then you must have done something right. Being someone’s hero, that means the world.

[writingshiz]

Subtle Unraveling Chapter 2: Untangling Spider Webs

Subtle Unraveling

StormyInk

Chapter 2

: Untangling Spider WebsSummary:

In which Mikasa attempts to untangle Sasha from her web and gets tangled herself instead.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

He'd been having a very long, tiresome day.

He felt grimy and sweaty, the weather a bit warmer than usual for this time of year. His cloak hung about his shoulders raggedly, shredded from when he'd sliced it free of a titan's grubby grip, his left arm feeling achy and rattled from the hard stroke of his blade. His side felt more than a little bruised and to top it all off he hadn't slept very well last night.

It'd been a mixture of things that had wracked his skull and kept him stirring. Nightmares, mostly; the gruesome sound of bodies being crushed and chewed, the bloody smears they were reduced to after they'd been clenched between titan fingers, their screams of pure terror and agony as they were eaten alive.

And yet as he'd tried to distract himself from these images there had been a sudden shift from the soup of skin, blood and bones to just pale, clean skin. The softness of it still clinging to his fingertips. The cries and screams had been replaced by the quiet, thrilling sound of her sharp intake of breath. The small curve of her parted pink lips making his pulse quicken for a much different reason.

And as he dangerously wondered what it might have felt like to have her lips part for him in his bed the pale sunlight had begun to bleed into the inky blue of the sky, and he'd felt the exhaustion grind on his bones.

He rubbed his hand over his face tiredly as he walked back to his quarters, breaking himself away from his irritating thoughts as the sun beat down on the nape of his neck.

And then he heard it.

Cackles and chokes of annoying, hyena-like laughter. The snaps and cracks of 3D maneuver gear and a few cries of dismay.

He was very tempted to ignore it. He could, really. He could take a hot shower and eat and perhaps be left alone long enough to catch up on his sleep. He could avoid all forms of human interaction and the thought seemed like bliss.

But then he heard a feminine voice call out.

"Mikasa, please—I can't get down!"

He debated only for a few more seconds before he moved.

Wearily, he began to walk around the corner towards the commotion.

He spotted Jean and Connie first, huddled together beneath a small cluster of tall trees. They were whispering quietly to one another, looking up at the branches with a sickening fascination, as if glitter was falling from them.

They continued to murmur. They hadn't noticed him standing behind them.

Yet.

"Look at where her hand is." Jean murmured to Connie in fascination.

Connie giggled a little dumbly. "Yeah, I see."

He looked up at the two women grimly.

Mikasa was balancing on a flimsy branch steadily, methodically undoing the buckles and straps on Sasha's legs. Sasha was gripping Mikasa's thighs, dangling upside down and looking a little frightened and woozy. She buried her face against Mikasa's hip and groaned.

Jean shifted forward. "Sasha is…very lucky."

Connie hummed.

"I'd do anything to be in Sasha's position right now."

He'd known of Jean's little infatuation on Mikasa—who didn't really—and it bothered him to no end that it was a similarity he also seemed to possess. He wasn't infatuated with the girl, but since they'd fed the horses she had never really strayed far from his thoughts. He kept recalling the feel and smell of her and his irritating, helpless reaction to it—and yet what had stunned him more than anything was that she had responded to him, also.

When was the last time someone had been so receptive of his touch?

When was the last time he'd wanted to touch anyone at all?

"If Sasha just turned a little to the left she could…" Jean murmured, a little breathlessly.

Irked—with Jean's words and his own thoughts—Levi finally spoke. "What are you brats doing?"

Jean and Connie whirled in place, their eyes comically wide. "H-Heichou!"

He waited.

Connie sputtered. "Sasha got tangled in the tree."

He felt a little more than exasperated. "I can see that, Springer. What I'm asking is how."

Jean scratched the back of his head, his words awkward and stilted. "She was trying to make a spider web with the 3D maneuver gear."

Connie desperately tried to choke down his laughter.

He almost sighed. "Why aren't you helping Ackerman?"

Connie was still laughing too hard to speak.

Jean cleared his throat, gesturing to Levi's gear. "We don't have our 3D maneuver gear, Heichou."

Levi looked up at Mikasa. "Neither does Ackerman."

"She…was the only one able to climb up the tree." Jean admitted, a slight blush on his cheeks.

He examined the tree again. It did look rather impossible to get up the tree without their gear. But if anyone could manage a seemingly impossible physical feat of strength and prowess it was Mikasa Ackerman.

He supposed he had better shoot up there but he wasn't quite sure his gear was in working order. As they'd returned it had begun to sputter and jerk.

Sasha gave a sudden sharp cry and they all looked back up.

Mikasa had finally freed Sasha from her entanglement and Sasha had slid down. She landed on the branch beneath Mikasa's feet and with the sudden added weight it snapped beneath them.

Shit.

He ran forward—skidding to a stop when Mikasa grabbed a hold of Sasha's jacket collar and grabbed onto the branch above her head. She'd reacted quickly enough to save them both from the fall, carrying both their weight with one arm—but she was straining, and the branch she clung to looked about ready to crack any second, too.

"Hold still, Ackerman." He barked and she nodded grimly.

She was dangling in a rather nasty cluster of thin branches, and he scanned for a sturdy one about them quickly. He angled himself and shot up swiftly, landing lightly on a thick branch beneath them.

"Let her go."

Mikasa gave him a grim look and then released her grip on Sasha's jacket. Sasha gave a little screech as she fell through the air, landing on him heavily. He held steady, grunting and heaving her onto her feet beside him. She swayed and he had to grab her to keep her from toppling over.

"Heichou, I…I was upside down for a while."

He looked at her critically. She wasn't really able to stand on her own. He looked up to see Mikasa gripping the branch with two hands.

"Don't try to pull yourself up, Ackerman. That branch doesn't look too sturdy. Stay there until I can get Braus on the ground."

"I can get down on my own, Heichou."

He gave her a hard look. "Stay put." He shifted Sasha over his shoulder and swung them down, landing on the ground with a curse when she nearly fell. He barely managed to hold them both up. He glared at Jean and Connie. "Take her, Springer."

Connie scurried forward and lifted Sasha in his arms. "Hey Sasha."

She gave him a loopy grin. "I was a spider."

Connie gave her a tender smile. "Spiders don't get caught in their own webs."

She frowned in confusion. "They don't, do they?" She curled up a little. "Do spiders vomit?"

"What?"

"I'm going to vomit."

"Shit." Connie shifted from left to right frantically. "Heichou, I—"

"Take her to the medics." He looked back up at Mikasa. The damn spoiled brat was pulling herself up, the branch bowing beneath her weight dangerously. He angled himself to shoot up again. "I told you not to move, Ackerman."

He couldn't really tell from this distance but it looked like she was glaring at him again. He also thought he heard her muffle a few curses, though all he was able to decipher were two words that sounded like 'short' and 'ass'.

He had half a mind to leave her up there for a few hours when the branch suddenly broke.

And she was falling, cutting through the leaves and branches.

He shot up instantly, catching her in mid-air, her weight crashing onto him and throwing him off balance. His gear gave a thick sputter and it jerked, flipping them. Damn it. The cables snapped taught as they hurled down and as he tried to shield her he felt Mikasa pull him forward.

They hit the ground hard, his knees and arms dragging across the ground as they skidded to a stop. She'd somehow managed to get beneath him but he'd cradled her head in his arms, feeling the blood sinking through his clothing and onto the rocks and grass beneath them. He was winded, his lungs aching, but he forced himself up on his arms.

She'd landed on her side, her head cradled in his hand.

"Ackerman."

Her eyes were shut, her inky lashes fluttering against her flushed pale skin.

"Ackerman?" He bit out, a bit worried when she didn't respond.

And then he saw the blood trickle down her temple.

"Shit," He slid his arms beneath her and heaved her up against his chest, ignoring the pain that shot through his arms.

Jean scrambled towards him. "I've got her, Heichou."

Levi glared at him. "What you can do is get your moronic friend Springer and tell whoever is on stable duty that you two will be shoveling horse shit for the rest of this damn year."

Jean fumbled and Levi continued to limp away.

Her head was dangling back over his arm. He shifted her up so that her head lolled into the crook of his shoulder, her soft, jagged pants brushing against his damp throat. The blood was trickling down the side of her face and he felt his stomach twist. Either she'd hit her head on a branch on her way down or he hadn't been able to shield her properly.

He hadn't expected her to pull him onto her.

Why had she tried to protect him too?

"You're a bloody idiot, Ackerman."

She looked up at him with soft black eyes. "I'm fine, Heichou."

He almost scowled. Of course she'd try to pretend she was fine. He felt the limpness of her body in his arms, however and knew she wouldn't be able to stand for the life of her.

"Shut up, Ackerman. I told you not to move. It was an order and you disobeyed it."

You never bloody listen.

"I fell…" Mikasa's eyes were open and glazed, her little bewildered frown tugging at him. It was a little odd—and endearing—seeing such a powerful woman look like a child.

He nodded grimly. "I caught you."

She shut her eyes, looked a little dismayed. "Again?"

He smirked a little, remembering the time he'd saved her from the female titan. "Again."

Levi ignored the protests of the medics as he walked towards his bedroom. He'd just gotten some bloody scrapes, after all, nothing as severe as a possible concussion, anyway. He yanked off his jacket and shirt quickly, stepping into his shower. He let the hot water run over him for a few moments, wincing as all the slices and cuts throbbed over his body.

As much as he loathed admitting it he was worried. It seemed incredibly moronic that a soldier as skilled as Ackerman could have died from a stupid tumble down a tree. He was angry—almost enraged, really—that those idiots had taken it so lightly. He'd seen enough of his comrades die fruitlessly to know how fleeting life could be. He hadn't been able to save any of them—had let enough of them die for a cause to feel less than human.

To feel more than dead.

He'd seen her fall and felt that familiar, vicious twist in his gut—and he'd caught her, barely been able to prevent her skull from getting smashed when she had somehow managed to put herself beneath him the split second before they'd hit the ground.

And for what? Because some idiots were making spider webs? She'd almost died for their sheer stupidity.

But she hadn't. And he'd saved her.

But for the few he had saved there were hundreds he hadn't. And he drowned in their blood every night. He raked his wet hair back with raw fingers.

The water was tinged red as it swirled down the drain.

Notes:

I know this is a short chapter & it was all from Levi's perspective. I hope you didn't mind. I sort of like (more than like, really) writing from his point of view. I hope I'm not screwing it up.

[biofunmy]

Behind Twitter’s Plan To Get People To Stop Yelling At Each Other

SAN FRANCISCO — In March, Twitter cofounder Biz Stone tweeted a screenshot of an iPhone homescreen along with a message: “Notice our new prototype? … It’s called ‘twttr.’ The bird flew away from the app icon representing: Simplicity. Blue sky thinking. We’re re-working. Not there yet: hence, no logo.”

Twitter, predictably, immediately dysregulated in response. “Most moronic design decision ever made.” “It’s horrible.” “Awful.” The most viral reply leaned on a popular Twitter trope to poke fun at the platform’s inability to ban bad actors: “everyone: get rid of the Nazis. yall: we got rid of the logo.”

And yet, it was all a misunderstanding. Twitter hadn’t changed its icon at all. It launched a separate app, “twttr,” as an external, public prototype to experiment with new features it’s considering rolling out on Twitter itself; a way to test things in public. Stone clarified: “Folks, the bird isn’t going away from Twitter.”

The entire episode was a microcosm of Twitter’s larger problems, some of which this new prototype itself is meant to address: everyone yelling, and no one talking. “Little t” twttr is a part of the company’s grand plan to treat the platform’s underlying issues, rather than just its symptoms. The idea is that what it learns from small-t twttr will help big Twitter foster conversations, rather than outrage.

Thanks to its open, freewheeling public platform, and stance on free speech, Twitter has been a hothouse for ginning up disinformation, harassment, and outrage. A lot of these problems were caused, the company’s leadership believes, by product decisions made early in its existence. And in very Silicon Valley fashion, the San Francisco–based company is now trying to solve these institutional problems with product fixes, without killing its platform’s open, real-time magic. But it isn’t exactly sure what those fixes are, and it knows that massive changes to its product, rolled out widely, might even make things worse. So, yes, the company is fundamentally overhauling its product, but it’s starting with baby steps on twttr.

Over several days this spring, BuzzFeed News met with Twitter’s leadership and watched as twttr’s team worked on its first big push: helping people better understand what’s being said in often chaotic conversations. The team thinks that if people took more time to read entire conversations, that would help improve their comprehension of them. Maybe they wouldn’t jump to react. Maybe they’d consider their tone. Maybe they’d quit yelling all the time.

Or maybe, not even thousands of deeply studied, highly tested product tweaks will be enough to fix the deep-seated issues with a culture more than 13 years in the making.

Jason Henry for BuzzFeed News

Cody Elam, senior user researcher, at the Twitter office in San Francisco, May 8, 2019.

A couple of weeks after Stone’s tweet, and after about 4,700 people had been using the new twttr prototype, Twitter senior user researcher Cody Elam was at work, late, looking at a massive spreadsheet. He had spent the past week collecting and reviewing every single piece of feedback — 600 tweets and 1,986 survey responses — from the program’s initial participants and, now, was tasked with identifying the most salient, important themes among their comments.

The twttr team began by testing what happens if the app more clearly shows who’s replying to whom. They also hid likes and retweet counts — Twitter’s primary incentives — behind a tap to put the primary focus on reply text. Now they were about to see, for the first time, what people thought.

Some of that initial feedback said that the bubbly design made Twitter feel more like a chat, and that it was easier to understand who was responding to what. Others were confused by the different colors labeling replies (blue for people you follow, and black for the original tweet’s author). People generally seemed to like the new design, Elam deduced, except for one change that received a more mixed response: hiding the metrics.

Nicole Nguyen / BuzzFeed News

Left: A screenshot of the chat bubble design from the first version of twttr, captured on March 12, 2019. Right: A screenshot from version two of twttr, featuring a more minimalist, “family tree-style” reply design, captured on May 14, 2019.

This wasn’t entirely unexpected. It was a step that they had suspected would not be popular, at least at first, but was maybe a necessary sacrifice to nudge its users in the right direction. Some of twttr’s first testers were feeling unnerved about the like and retweet buttons, and their counts, which had been seemingly removed from replies. In a meeting at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters with the 13-person team behind twttr, Elam presented the users’ concerns.

“There’s a critical group of people — 20% or so — who are saying, ‘I prefer the way that likes are displayed in the main app,’” he told the group. “For some people, they feel like it’s more work when they don’t have something to anchor to. Like, if I’m looking at different replies, where should I draw my eye to, in terms of the popularity of tweets?”

While some users said the new design made replies “more equal,” others complained they couldn’t gauge the importance of replies without doing more work (that extra tap).

“Twitter already ranks replies based on some of that like and retweet data, and so if that information is removed, it may be confusing why you’re seeing one reply versus another,” posited Sara Haider, who is leading the twttr efforts.

Jason Henry for BuzzFeed News

Left: Sara Haider, director of product management. Right: Lisa Ding, senior product designer.

A week later, at another feedback review session, Elam told the group that a significant enough number of testers in Japan, Twitter’s other major market outside the US, also opposed the hidden like and RT counts, but for a different reason. Japan-based user researcher Kiyo Yamamuchi explained that some Japanese users actively avoid engaging with popular replies to avoid exposure that would attract attacks or abuse.

With the feedback in mind, Haider challenged the team “to think about that user need to understand which tweet is more important or worth my time, and see if there are other ways we can solve that, other than numbers.”

Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO, has been outspoken about removing engagement metrics, because of how they encourage users to be outrageous in order to rack up more likes, retweets, and followers, and prompt readers to look for them. In an August 2018 interview with the Washington Post, Dorsey said, “The most important thing that we can do is we look at the incentives that we’re building into our product. Because they do express a point of view of what we want people to do — and I don’t think they are correct anymore.”

Haider and her twttr team are hoping to “nudge” people’s behavior in another way. Their hypothesis: Making the design for replies as minimal as possible, in addition to revealing how the conversation’s participants are related to you, may encourage people to read the entire back-and-forth before they react.

“We have this opportunity to learn about how not having [likes and retweets] could potentially change how people read things,” said senior product designer Lisa Ding. “Does it make you read something that you maybe would have guessed to be popular but actually isn’t that popular? How does that change the way you interact in a conversation? That’s super interesting.”

In its early years Twitter optimized for engagement, which engagement features (replies, and the like and retweet buttons) and metrics (number of followers, likes, retweets, and replies) help to deliver. So now it’s trying to shift what it encourages people to do.

Jason Henry for BuzzFeed News

Ding’s sketches for the new thread design

Twitter is not alone in this. Tech leaders across the industry are rethinking the role of their platforms’ incentives, in response to mounting criticism that technology platforms do more harm than good. Instagram is running a test where like counts are hidden to followers, but are viewable by the post’s account holder. Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri told BuzzFeed News that the test wasn’t about incentivizing specific behavior but “about creating a less pressurized environment where people feel comfortable expressing themselves” and focus less on like counts.

For Twitter, part of the rationale behind running an external-facing prototype with experimental features, in full view of its competitors, is easing users into the new design. “We are fundamentally changing how Twitter works. … We need for people to have some exposure to it,” said Haider.

Twitter

Twitter is exploring a new design for what it calls “replystorms,” or a conversation involving a back-and-forth between two people, to make them easier to read.

People typically don’t take kindly to changes, especially ones that come without warning. In 2009, Facebook users revolted so strongly to the introduction of the News Feed (which some groups called an “invasion of privacy”) that CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally responded, “Calm down. Breathe. We hear you.” So to avoid taking users by surprise with a big change, and instead of developing a product secretly inside of Twitter’s walls, Haider wants to take users along for the ride: “We need people who aren’t even in the program to read the press articles and think, ‘I am now mentally prepared for this change.’”

Haider’s team is considering future features that may be even more controversial than hidden likes. Two ideas they’re exploring: optional “presence indicators” that show people when you’re online or typing, and being able to add a status that lets people know what you want to talk about.

Jason Henry for BuzzFeed News

A sign at the Twitter office in San Francisco, May 8, 2019.

There are many challenges with fixing Twitter, but the primary issue has to do with the form of Twitter itself. It’s an extremely complex product: Every reply is itself a tweet, and every tweet can be infinitely replied to. Conversations can be hard to read, let alone understand, and that misunderstanding contributes to a lot of the repetitive first responses to tweets, reply dogpiling, and knee-jerk reactions — like the kind that flooded Stone’s mentions — that fuel the platform’s outrage cycle.

One user, @matthewreid, replying to Stone, summed up the issues facing Twitter nicely: “A quick scroll through many of these replies illustrates what made this place I love so toxic. Bullying. Mob mentality. Insufferable knowitalls.” Twitter CEO Dorsey has admitted the same himself: “I also don’t feel good about how Twitter tends to incentivize outrage, fast takes, short term thinking, echo chambers, and fragmented conversation and consideration.”

“Like, imagine being in a room and talking to a billion people. It’s chaos.”

“Having conversations that anyone can see and anyone can participate in is a really awesome super power that needs to feel really simple despite its complexity behind the scenes,” Twitter product lead and Periscope cofounder Kayvon Beykpour told BuzzFeed News. “Like, imagine being in a room and talking to a billion people. It’s chaos.“

To reduce the chaos, the twttr prototype is reimagining what Twitter could look like. “What are the mechanics that we allow you to do right at the surface versus one tap away? We are essentially rethinking paradigms that have been the case for 13-plus years,” Beykpour explained.

Much of Twitter’s efforts related to abuse and harassment are incorporated directly into the main Twitter app, but some concepts in twttr’s pipeline are in service of something directly related to harassment: trying to change the tone of replies. According to Dorsey, replies are one of the shared spaces where abuse happens the most on Twitter. In a potential upcoming feature, if you tap on an avatar while you’re reading a reply, a profile card showing more information about the tweet’s author appears alongside their tweet.

Twitter

The twttr team is considering a new test that would show a profile card alongside a tweet to give people more context about who wrote the tweet.

Haider explained, “If you can see who you’re replying to, then you may change the tone in which you reply. I know this anecdotally, when people tweet shit to me, and I respond, right? Imagine if in this reply state, you could actually see ‘oh, this person’s a father of two.’”

Beykpour acknowledged that the feature feels “tiny” but said Twitter is starting to “tug on this string” related to empathy: “How do you surface context around who this person is, but ideally also give you a little bit of empathy around who you’re talking to? It’s harder to have an uncivil dialogue with someone that you know a little bit more about than if it was an anonymous face.”

“It’s harder to have an uncivil dialogue with someone that you know a little bit more about than if it was an anonymous face.”

He added, “Civility is one really important aspect of [healthy conversations]. It’s very difficult for people to feel like they can speak freely, if they don’t feel safe enough to speak in the first place.”

Twitter is investing a lot of effort into making the experience on its platform better and more delightful (hello, cherry blossom like button), but it still has a lot to overcome with abuse and harassment, as well as issues that don’t have a simple fix — like tone and, more generally, sexism on the internet. A product overhaul can’t change the primary source of harassment on its platform: its own users.

Jason Henry for BuzzFeed News

A hashtag in the design department at the Twitter’s San Francisco office, May 8, 2019.

Like a lot of people, Tracy Chou, the CEO of Block Party, a company working on solving abuse and harassment online, has herself been subject to much targeted harassment on Twitter. “Group direct messages are the new spam vector. One of the group threads in my DMs looked like it was a bunch of college students, white men, who seemed to know each other, and were talking about how easy it would be to murder me,” Chou told Buzzfeed News.

If you have open direct messages, you can’t restrict specific accounts from sending you DMs unless you block them, which Chou says, is an example of a feature designed to protect users that doesn’t actually work in practice. “Blocking is aggressive and visible to the other person. That sometimes will set them off and cause them to harass you more, or use it as a trophy,” she said.

Chou also explained how retweeting and quote-tweeting are product features that can easily be turned into tools of abuse — and counter-abuse: “If some asshole says something racist, sometimes I’ll quote-tweet them, and say “no.” My followers will fight my battle on my behalf. But [quote-tweeting] can also be used to target harassment by people who have a lot of followers and want to sic their followers on a specific individual.” In 2016, conservative writer Milo Yiannopoulos was banned for inciting his followers to flood Ghostbusters actor Leslie Jones’ Twitter account with racist and demeaning mentions.

For users like Chou, the twttr program hasn’t done much to improve their Twitter experience so far. “I mainly find it harder to read replies,” Chou said. She added that the user image and username size have been minimized in the prototype, which isn’t helpful when trying to identify replies from known trolls. A Twitter spokesperson said the twttr team is testing different sizing and presentation for avatars and display names.

Jason Henry for BuzzFeed News

Left: Notes on a whiteboard regarding the company’s product priorities overall. Right: An LED unicorn on a desk at the Twitter office.

“Everything these companies do, at first, is driven by the short-term desire to stake a small share of the attention economy and to engage users just long enough to attract early funding. Only later does the medium view start to matter, and the long view doesn’t matter at all until very late in the game,“ explained Adam Alter, author of Irresistible, a book about the rise of addictive technology. “Most of the changes Twitter and other platforms are making now are fairly small. They aren’t going to change usage patterns much — but they’re a step in the right direction.”

As someone who has used twttr for over two months, the new design does feel like a change for the better. In replies, the eye-catching magenta “author” label makes it easy to scan for additional comments from the tweeter. The “family tree” lines denoting different threads are useful. If there are two “debate me” trolls shouting at each other in one thread, you can easily scroll down, gloss over the entire back-and-forth, and jump into the next one. In a future iteration of twttr, you’ll even be able to collapse conversations more easily.

But the twttr effort isn’t just about improving the product experience. There’s a business motivation, too. Haider thinks that the final changes, if and when they are rolled out to the main Twitter app, will ultimately lead to more tweeting: “Obviously with a better conversational experience, people will use [Twitter] more and they’ll get more value out of it, which is what we’re trying to aim for.”

Twitter

Twitter explored multiple views for conversations in twttr. The first version included the chat bubble design shown on the top left. After trying different iterations, including one inspired by stops on a subway map (“a good analogy for the complexity of Twitter’s conversation problems”), senior product designer Lisa Ding arrived at the family tree–inspired design on the bottom right for twttr version two.

While Twitter has been consistently profitable since early 2018, the company said in the first quarter of the year that its number of monthly active users declined to around 330 million, down 6 million from the same time last year, and said that it would stop reporting monthly active users altogether. To keep users on the platform — and advertising revenue flowing — the company needs to figure out how to make its service a nicer, better place for people to spend their time. In the most recent earnings call, Dorsey called the ability to have conversations on Twitter the platform’s “differentiator” and cited the twttr prototype as progress.

As the internet’s free, most popular platforms — Facebook, YouTube, Twitter — now know, people will use products in ways their inventors didn’t intend them to be used, and with software designed to “scale,” its downsides aren’t apparent until millions of people are using it. Twitter is now trying to undo the features that caused unseen, unanticipated effects — misinformation, trolling, tribalized outrage — by going back to basics.

Whenever you’re in a room with a lot of people talking at once, people raise their voices, so they can be heard. As more people arrive, it becomes cacophony. This is, essentially, what has happened on Twitter: The volume of the conversation has been getting louder and louder for 13 years. Beykpour and Haider’s solution is toning down the background noise, and helping people focus on the conversation right in front of them. But the longer a problem exists, the more intractable it becomes. Which means it is ultimately up to Twitter’s hundreds of millions of users to decide whether it is even possible to have a real conversation amid its din, or if the only answer is to shout louder. ●

Sahred From Source link Technology

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[republicstandard]

A Brief Exploration Of “Fat Shaming” in Hellenic Culture

Touched by Graecophiles

I remember studying ancient Greece, though only vaguely, in several different lessons in school. We learnt about the Greek pantheon, the architecture, the philosophers, the technological innovations and my personal favourite: the warrior state, Sparta. It turns out though that in recent years we have discovered through observation of the evidence that there was so much more to them than that that we should all learn from: they were tolerant, multicultural, pacifist, kind and yes, even sexually promiscuous!

Or were they? And, if so who cares?

I’ll tell you who cares: the left. In recent years, I have noticed an increasing amount of commentary on Hellenic culture coming out of neo-Marxist magazines which has been echoed in conversations I have had with liberals during this time. Ancient Athens has become a liberal shrine, a shining star of sleaziness within the vast sky of chivalry, nobility, piety and valour that is recorded history.

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I call this new phenomenon Graecophilia.

It is, prima facie, no surprise to see why a cultural Marxist would become a Graecophile. Athens was indeed the first society to tolerate, encourage and even institutionalize homosexuality in the form of paedophilia, translated as “boy love”. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong and the Guardian have since miraculously discovered bisexual Neanderthals; perhaps it is only a matter of time. The nudity, the aristocratic alcoholism and the hedonistic decadence of the upper classes within ancient Athens contemporary to its brightest intellectual and political achievements (which we will touch on later) have ignited within lefties a feeling of the best of both worlds: seemingly being conservative and liberal at the same time; simultaneously, in their eyes, having permission to admire tradition, as long as the tradition is sufficiently degenerative and continue being perverts with a clear conscience.

Please take a (brief) look at this article, entitled “Classics for the people – why we should all learn from the ancient Greeks” from the Guardian.

The Guardian, amongst others “news outlets” I will refrain from directly scrutinising due to wanting to write an article, not a book, have begun to print these articles lauding the Ancient Greek culture as something we “can all learn from” on a regular basis. Here’s just one more example, entitled “Laid bare: the sex life of the ancient Greeks in all its physical glory” to cringe over before we get stuck in.

Eros, the god of love and the great loosener of limbs, was many things: irresistible, tender, beautiful, excruciating, maddening, merciless and bittersweet. There was no position, no touch, no predilection too outre to pay homage to him. From the affectionate embrace to group sex, love came in many forms. "The Greeks were anything but prudes," said Nicholaos Stampolidis, director of the Museum of Cycladic Art, "Theirs was a society of great tolerance and lack of guilt."

The above articles from The Guardian point at ancient Greek culture, and state that “classics should be enjoyed by everyone, not just the privileged few.” If you can stomach the above saccharine swill, you’ll gather exactly what I’m talking about when I outline the problem of Graecophilia. According to the genius that wrote the above article, we could learn a lot from ancient Greece, as they

“often freely intermarried with other peoples; they had no sense of ethnic inequality that was biologically determined, since the concepts of distinct world “races” had not been invented.”

I think the term she was looking for was “invaded”, not “intermarried with”, but who am I, a scholar of Greek history, to disagree with Edith Hall and her ability to pervert the evidence to get her liberal readers drooling. Forget that Greece, as every other principality in history has, violently fought off foreigners in defence of their own culture, probably most famously in the Battle of Thermopylae, an effort which was ultimately unsuccessful, as the population of Helots (foreign subjugated peasants) became unsustainable and resulted in an uprising that collapsed Sparta. Here’s another gem from the article:

“They tolerated and even welcomed imported foreign gods.”

Oh yes, of course, the “cultural tolerance” card. Forget that the very reason that the philosopher Socrates was sentenced to death was his “belief in strange Gods” as can be read about in The Trial of Socrates, either by Xenophon or Plato. I thought Edith Hall, the woman who wrote this article, was all for reading the classics? So much for that… In summary, the above articles, as just a small sample of many, highlight this slippery slope of reverence for a principality that was in actuality drowned eventually by its multiculturalism, gluttony, lust diversity and indiscipline. We risk heading down a route of reverence for a culture which in of itself, whilst responsible for a number of intellectual achievements, is not in any sense a model society or indeed one we can learn very much from unless we, as I will later outline, adopt all of its philosophy as one cohesive entity rather than cherry pick. As a traditionalist, it does pain me to say it, but not all the ways of the past should again be proudly trodden as they once were, and certainly not without careful study and understanding. The issue goes far beyond the microscopic one of “fat shaming” that we will discuss now, but ties into the much broader issue of an emergence of Graecophilic liberals who, with little education in the classics, wish to praise Athens as a kind of ancient liberal microcosm.

What about physical fitness? Surely if Edith Hall’s studious reporting is anything to go by the Greeks were just as tolerant of the overweight as they were of everything else, and good on them for doing so! Unfortunately for Edith, this is not the case and the Greeks were big into what we know now to be fat shaming.

“Fat shaming”: A brief fatground and preamble

For those who are fortunate enough not to have come across the term before, I’ll provide a brief extract from the Wikipedia page on “Anti-fat bias”:

Anti-fat bias refers to the prejudicial assumption of personality characteristics based on an assessment of a person as being overweight or obese. It is also known as "fat shaming." Anti-fat bias leads people to associate individuals who are overweight or obese with negative personality traits such as "lazy", "gluttonous", "stupid", "smelly", "slow", or "unmotivated." This bias is not restricted to clinically obese individuals, but also encompasses those whose body shape is in some way found unacceptable according to society's modern standards (although still within the normal or overweight BMI range).

Well, what do you know? A fat person who is lazy? Certainly not. All the fat people I know are high-intensity career people who even fit in time after work to go for a jog, raise a family and cook a healthy, moderately sized evening meal. And I can’t for one moment imagine why people would draw a line between being fat and gluttony. How ridiculous.

Although I knew it existed, I generally laughed off the idea of “fat shaming” as another moronic, hipster idea of such triviality that it would soon fade into the liberal backwater and be forgotten about by the socialist goldfish brains. However, I’ve seen the idea or, if you can call it a movement, gradually start to expand in size like the women that read The Independent. Being exposed to the this video and the support it received for glorifying obesity was the final straw for me to write an article on this issue.

What shocked and angered me even more than a) The idea that this could be considered poetry, and b) Just how little the leviathan on the video realised it was hurting itself and setting a dangerous example for others was the lack of any criticism within the comments section. There seemed to be no one coming to aid of common sense or possessing an iota of independent thought; the comment section was quite simply a chromosomal wasteland. I knew I had to write a rebuttal and the issue of Graecophilia was also playing on my mind, so I thought I would amalgamate the two ideas into an unlikely combined article.

Already fairly well versed in the topics involved, I still knew I had to read hard if I was going to sufficiently rebut the movements: liberal Graecophilia and anti-“fat shaming” that had been imposed upon me. I picked up a copy of The Republic by Plato, some texts referencing Lycurgus, Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle and read some supporting texts I could find on the web, including looking in depth at some important studies on obesity, all of which I hope are sufficiently referenced throughout for further reading.

I’ll first start off my rebuttal by clearly stating my argumentative position which is that firstly, it is intellectually degenerative to in of itself condemn “fat shaming” but doubly that to do so while attesting that ancient Greece is something we should all learn from, and that “all, not just the privileged few” should study the Greek classics is hypocritical and is a cherry picking of the elements within Greek society deemed worthy of learning from; and that of course to simultaneously venerate and criticise a culture is impossible. I will then finally briefly outline why cherry picking cultural elements does not work and inevitably leads to the adopter’s destruction. In the next passage I’m going to be providing mainly a body of information and evidence in support of the afore-stated logical discourse, in that Greek society was indeed “fat shaming”. Greek culture being anti-“fat shaming”: Fat chance!

Homeric Era and Prehistoric Greece:

Let us begin with the element of a society that one it holds most dear: its religion. Greek religion belonged/belongs to the proto Indo-European family of religious traditions, along with Celtic, Slavic, Iberian and Norse paganism as well as Hinduism. Gods were, of course, as is the way in more mainstream religions such as Christianity, idealized role models who served as the perfect standard towards which the common folk should strive. We know of the Greek’s religion through many pieces of evidence both archaeological and textual, but probably the best collection of texts in reference to the Gods are Theogeny, Works and Days by Hesiod and The Illiad and the Odyssey by Homer.

Within the Greek mythos was the demi-God Heracles, son of Zeus and Alcmene, a mortal woman. Heracles was venerated in every Greek city state, predominantly Sparta, where he was considered to be the ancestor of all Spartan people and the reason for their exceptional strength. I need not go into detail about the kind of figure that Heracles was, as you the reader will already surely be aware, but what I will state is that Heracles was not only respected for his strength, but worshipped, especially also in Thebes where he was said to have been in born.

Heracles was not the only “ripped” figure in Greek mythology who was a role model for the people. Pretty much all of the Gods and indeed Goddesses possessed awesome physiques. Now think for a moment, if they were tolerant of obesity and slothfulness, wouldn’t there be at least one fat God or a story about the twelve main courses of Hercules rather than a tale of tremendous physical endurance?

Spartan Society and Lycurgus’s Constitution

Particularly in Sparta, men and women alike would engage in intense exercise regardless of their prospective or future occupational pursuit. It was required of all young men to undergo physical training in a school know as the Agoge from age 7, in aid of cultivating physical virtues in connection with their believed sportive ancestry. The Spartans also advocated a eugenics program to weed out the lazy and unfit in honour of their “tolerance” towards the morbidly obese. Still feel like learning from the classics, Edith?

To confirm my point with evidence, in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, the Greek Plutarch visited Sparta to collect since extinct sources which were significantly older to reconstruct a history of the philosophies of the Spartan people from 900BC to the erosion of Sparta in the 3rd century BC. He was particularly interested in the Spartan legal institution, brought in by the philosopher Lycurgus. In his biographical account Sayings of the Spartans, Plutarch writes:

Lycurgus, the lawgiver, wishing to recall the citizens from the mode of living then existent, and to lead them to a more sober and temperate order of life, and to render them good and honorable men (for they were living a soft life). He reared two puppies of the same litter; and one he accustomed to dainty food, and allowed it to stay in the house; the other he took afield and trained in hunting. Later he brought them into the public assembly and put down some bones and dainty food and let loose a hare. Each of the dogs made for that to which it was accustomed, and, when the one of them had overpowered the hare, he said, "You see, fellow-citizens, that these dogs belong to the same stock, but by virtue of the discipline to which they have been subjected they have turned out utterly different from each other, and you also see that training is more effective than nature for good." But some say that he did not bring in dogs which were of the same stock, but that one was of the breed of house dogs and the other of hunting dogs; then he trained the one of inferior stock for hunting, and the one of better stock he accustomed to dainty food. And afterwards, as each made for that to which it had become accustomed, he made it clear how much instruction contributes for better or worse, saying, "So also in our case, fellow-citizens, noble birth, so admired of the multitude, and our being descended from Heracles does not bestow any advantage, unless we do the sort of things for which he was manifestly the most glorious and most noble of all mankind, and unless we practice and learn what is good our whole life long."

So, in essence, what it was that Lycurgus was trying to teach was that environmental conditioning was important for developing character, and that it is possible for a person of poor initial potential to perform better than a person with a high potential given the adequate discipline and training. In this example, the unconditioned, IE the fat, are the dogs who were given “dainty food” which turned out poorly for them when they had to catch a hare, i.e., do something useful!

The Socratic School: Socrates, Xenophon, Aristotle and Plato.

Though of course of great interest to those who love to learn about European history and culture, liberals will likely turn their nose up at the examples I have used so far, so let us turn to something a little more “high brow” and look at the Socratic school of philosophy. I think this was more of what Edith of the Guardian had in mind.

An interesting fact about Socrates, and one that people often forget to mention, is that Socrates was a military veteran. Not only well versed and trained in matters of the mind, he was a well conditioned soldier in his youth and fought in at least three conflicts during the Peloponnesian War between the state of Athens and its allies and the forces of Sparta. Socrates made several points throughout the Socratic dialogues alluding to the importance of physical fitness not merely to personal excellence but to the flourishing of the state. I think the best one can be found in Plato’s The Republic, a book discussing the ideal state wherein an entire chapter is dedicated to the importance of physical exercise in a citizen’s excellence and in turn a flourishing society. I will leave you the reader to go and enjoy The Republic in your own time and briefly touch upon a passage from Memorabilia by Xenophon, a student of Socrates. In the book, Socrates is having a discussion with another one of his students, Epigenes, and notices that Epigenes is in poor condition for a young man, starting the following dialogue:

Socrates: You look as if you need exercise, Epigenes. Epigenes: Well, I’m not an athlete, Socrates. Socrates: …Why, many, thanks to their bad condition, lose their life in the perils of war or save it disgracefully: many, just for this same cause, are taken prisoners, and then either pass the rest of their days, perhaps, in slavery of the hardest kind, or, after meeting with cruel sufferings and paying, sometimes, more than they have, live on, destitute and in misery. Many, again, by their bodily weakness earn infamy, being thought cowards. Or do you despise these, the rewards of bad condition, and think that you can easily endure such things? And yet I suppose that what has to be borne by anyone who takes care to keep his body in good condition is far lighter and far pleasanter than these things. Or is it that you think bad condition healthier and generally more serviceable than good, or do you despise the effects of good condition? And yet the results of physical fitness are the direct opposite of those that follow from unfitness. The fit are healthy and strong; and many, as a consequence, save themselves decorously on the battle-field and escape all the dangers of war; many help friends and do good to their country and for this cause earn gratitude; get great glory and gain very high honors, and for this cause live henceforth a pleasanter and better life, and leave to their children better means of winning a livelihood. I tell you, because military training is not publicly recognized by the state, you must not make that an excuse for being a whit less careful in attending to it yourself. For you may rest assured that there is no kind of struggle, apart from war, and no undertaking in which you will be worse off by keeping your body in better fettle. For in everything that men do the body is useful; and in all uses of the body it is of great importance to be in as high a state of physical efficiency as possible. Why, even in the process of thinking, in which the use of the body seems to be reduced to a minimum, it is matter of common knowledge that grave mistakes may often be traced to bad health. And because the body is in a bad condition, loss of memory, depression, discontent, insanity often assail the mind so violently as to drive whatever knowledge it contains clean out of it. But a sound and healthy body is a strong protection to a man, and at least there is no danger then of such a calamity happening to him through physical weakness: on the contrary, it is likely that his sound condition will serve to produce effects the opposite of those that arise from bad condition. And surely a man of sense would submit to anything to obtain the effects that are the opposite of those mentioned in my list. Besides, it is a disgrace to grow old through sheer carelessness before seeing what manner of man you may become by developing your bodily strength and beauty to their highest limit. But you cannot see that, if you are careless; for it will not come of its own accord.

As the preceding passage outlines, physical proficiency was, and I believe for good reason, considered to be an essential element of self-mastery irrespective of the occupation, age or intention of the person exercising and it was a disservice to oneself to be in poor physical condition. Those who were in good physical fitness were of more use to their family, friends and the state and Socrates believed (correctly, as I will explain later) that a person with suboptimal physical fitness is also inevitably intellectually suboptimal. If Socrates was truly as intelligent as we can from inference assume, and if we indeed “should all learn the classics” then it would be unwise not to follow the advice of such a decorated thinker and military veteran in ignoring, ipso facto, the leftist objection to fat shaming. Either that, or we ought to disavow the Greek culture altogether.

Ok, enough with references to these high-brow authors, how do we know that they were representative of the people? The general masses may have thought differently, and been more progressive. I hardly think so. To briefly summarise the form of occupation for 90% of citizens -excluding women, children and the small minority of pensioners- was in manual labour. It can be surmised that the majority of individuals worked in agriculture with others working in mining, sculpture, craftwork and the military and were by extension in good physical condition if not underweight. Only a small minority of jobs, often up at the top of the class ladder, were sedentary enough for it to even be possible for a person to become fat even if they wanted to. It must be then stated that fat statesmen and judges were certainly not a rarity though, but were often the subject of mocking in Greek comedies and also the world’s oldest joke book, Philogelos. I suppose you could call that “institutionalized fat shaming”.

Some basic science behind the benefits of physical fitness and “fat shaming.”

Now we have briefly explored fat shaming in ancient Greece, and we have learnt that the heffalumps over at the Guardian are the ones who think there is so much to learn from ancient Greece, let us examine Socrates’ main argument alongside some contemporary studies and see if they still stand (fat pun not intended):

Socrates: … it is matter of common knowledge that grave mistakes may often be traced to bad health. And because the body is in a bad condition, loss of memory, depression, discontent, insanity often assail the mind so violently as to drive whatever knowledge it contains clean out of it.

Socrates drew a parallel between bad health and a poor intellect, as does this study from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden:

The study, which including 1.2 million young adults, noted an increase in cognitive performance amongst the group who regularly exercised. I am not a biologist, but I would hypothesis that this link is likely as a result of a) An increase in the release of stimulating endorphins and b) the ability to supply the brain with adequate oxygen due to better cardiovascular fitness.

This study from Allergan Inc., a gastric band company, also supports Socrates’ argument. According to the study, obesity has a hindering effect on the US economy to the tune of $73.1 billion per year as a result of absenteeism.

Just doing a small amount of cursory research and applying common sense, it is easy to determine that Socrates was right: fat people are a drain on the economy, they have lower IQs than people who exercise, have a higher rate of unemployment in the West (likely as a result of the only obese people in the third world being drug barons) and are five times more likely to be diagnosed with depression. No doubt though that as usual the left will make up unscientific excuses for all of these phenomena.

They can come up with all the excuses they want, but this article by Milo Yiannopolous, entitled “Science proves it: Fat-shaming works” has elegantly checkmated them all:

"[I]f people feel shit about themselves, they’re more likely to change. A landmark study by obesity experts in 2014 found that a “desire to improve self-worth” was one of the most important motivating factors encouraging people to lose weight. What does this tell us? That encouraging fatties to “love themselves,” as the fat acceptance movement does, is the worst possible message you could send people if you want them to lose weight."

We would all, of course, wish for a society that is as intelligent as possible, so why, then, as the Socrates noticed, should we advocated a society in which the body is malnourished (or “overnourished”) and in turn so is the brain? If we conservatives choose to be derogatory to the very cause of that which left and right alike consider to be negative, IE suboptimal intelligence, then where is the issue? Where is the logic in sparing an individual’s feelings in exchange for a long term illness? Not telling an overweight person they are doing themselves harm is akin to encouraging someone not telling a to go and get their cough checked out. Though at least for most smokers this will only be precaution, whilst a fat person risks death at every moment.

I hope you can take away a number of facts, both historical and scientific, with you to wage war against cellulite and liberal Graecohiles. As we have determined, the Greeks did not think very highly of obesity at all, and were not as tolerant as Edith Hall from The Guardian would like to deceive you into believing.

We’ve also taught another valuable lesson: you cannot have your cake and eat it too. Either “the classics are for all to learn from” or they’re not. Edith may as well write an article now entitled “Greeks were bigots; shove your classics up your arse”.

It is, of course, intellectually bankrupt to unquestionably revere, accept or even revile aspects of a culture without an understanding of the cultural and political diaspora that surrounds them and ergo the reasons why such a custom was an aspect of the culture in the first place. This is the dangerous route down which students of Greek history are beginning to descend down as fragments of culture ought not to be analysed without a perception of the whole. The irony is that it is more often than not conservatives who are accused of employing a “pick and choose” mentality on issues such as immigration or Islam, in which we are “picking on specific cases”. Well, perhaps it is time that the left pick and choose. Pick and choose what your stance is on Hellenic culture! As conservatives, we would do will to carefully study and value the wisdom bestowed upon us by those who came before, as long as we are firstly always aware of the context within which behaviours existed and hence gain a full understanding of a philosophy within is context, and even more importantly remain vigilant in adopting elements of culture independently of the context within which they originated as this inevitably results in incompatibility and cultural dissonance, like trying to run a new piece of software on a computer that’s hardware was never built to run it in the first place.

We need to dispel the idea that we can cherry pick different aspects of different cultures and ideas and blend them together to create an amazing modern concoction of philosophy. Well, by that logic, the city of London should be a paradise by now, should it not? Oh dear.

This issue goes far deeper than the regressive left’s new-found and hypocritical reverence of Hellenic culture, despite their rejection of aspects of this culture such as fat shaming where it feels convenient, this issue permeates all current affairs -and in actuality perennial thought- as the concept of cherry picking aspects of a culture is dangerously wide-spread.

A subject for another day, I will briefly touch upon the example of democracy in order to prove my point: there are very few people in the modern West that would disagree with the idea of democracy, but in actuality it is plain to see that democracy often does not adequately function as an electoral system because it was taken out of its original context: ancient Athenian morality and theology. Within this context, democracy functioned more efficiently due to the moral education of Athenian citizens and the theological values imbued within the system that made it possible for the masses to make objectively “correct” electoral decisions. Democracy has been taken out of this context and implemented into an intellectually and morally bankrupt society and hence cannot function efficiently.

If you can’t accept Greek philosophy on fat shaming, you quite simply can’t praise Athens for its tolerance of homosexuality, its politics or its theology, because they belong within the same self-contained cultural Jenga tower. You take one piece out, the entire thing falls apart into nonsense. It is nigh on impossible to symbiose ideas and mannerisms from different geopolitical, religious and cultural contexts without producing psychological dissonance, as globalisation has taught us and in turn informed us of the pattern generally. Ergo, to take, for example, some Athenian ideas irrespective of their context would be doomed to failure; in many ways, ironically, this was one of the things which caused Athens’ eventual downfall!

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I will leave with this final remark, I believed fittingly, from the Greek poet Hesiod’s Works and Days:

“I mean you well, Perses, you great idiot, and I will tell you. Look, badness is easy to have; you can take it by handfuls without effort. The road that way is smooth and starts here beside you. But between us and virtue the immortals have put what will make us sweat. The road to virtue is long and goes steep up hill, hard climbing at first, but the last of it, when you get to the summit (if you get there) is easy going after the hard part.”

Do not ever be afraid of causing offense, ,making jokes or living your life on the side of truth. Tell a person that they are doing harm to themselves with a clear conscience as long as you do it for the right reason: the encouragement of health and wellbeing.

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[moon-battery]

From the article:

New ‘Social Justice’ Math Class Teaches Kids That Math Is Evil, Dehumanizing

“Mathematical ethics recognizes that, for centuries, mathematics has been used as a dehumanizing tool… mathematics formulae also differentiate between the classifications of a war or a genocide and have been used to trick indigenous peoples out of land and property.”

From the original article:

To remedy math’s contribution to oppression, teachers are thus encouraged to think of ways that math can be used to advocate for marginalized populations, to which end they are encouraged to read an article by an English teacher from Hawaii, Christina Torres, who argues that failing to teach students about social justice is a “wasted opportunity” to provide them with the “tools to subvert power, question normalcy, and change society as we understand it.”

This is not to suggest, by the way, that there aren’t problems. We’re seeing computer algorithms being used to help make “impartial” sentencing decisions in criminal cases–and discovering that we are seeding those algorithms with a racist set of assumptions. The Association for Computing Machinery has long recognized the power of computer systems to violate privacy rights and significantly alter social compacts, and has promulgated a code of ethics which require members to abide by standards which recognize this.

But math, just like guns or horses or cars or computers or hammers or a million other tools, are simply that: tools, which can be wielded for good or for bad.

To me, while it is good to remind students of the ethical requirements to behave in an honorable way, it would be preferable if we were to simply teach a class on ethics, rather than steal valuable time that should be spent teaching math skills. And I say this because all too often as citizens we are being repeatedly manipulated by bad statistics and terrible math–and mathematical illiteracy plays into the hands of those who would push their own agenda.

Including those teaching “social justice.”

If the “social justice” crowd believes students need to be trained in ethics, I actually have no problem with this. But let it be its own class.

Otherwise we are not giving students the tools for them to decide. Instead, all we are doing is reinforcing mindless training in order to create adults who do not have the tools to think critically.

Reminding everyone of the crimes without giving them the tools to understand and think critically and reason future events does not create utopia. It indoctrinates the crowd into passivity for the next Hitler to rise to power.

And that’s the real problem I have.

The far left and the far right are not struggling for equality and fairness and a population able to engage in self-determination. Both sides would rather pacify the crowd so they can take power–so they can put their own left-wing Hitler or right-wing Hitler into power. (And if you are saying the Right has won with Trump, you are a fucking moron–because your ability to say that negates your assertion. Just look at how, in certain areas–such as college campuses and in certain professions–conservatives are no longer entirely free to speak their minds.)

Just look at the pathetic state of most Liberal Arts colleges. There was a time when someone studying the Liberal Arts was sought after by corporations for leadership positions, as Liberal Arts colleges taught intellectual literacy and critical-thinking. This was done by exposing Liberal Arts students to a wide variety of thought, including lines of thought many of us may find deplorable, such as Nietzsche and Machiavelli, as well as drilled down deeply into topics including Classical History, and pointed an unwavering eye at at subjects as wide and varied as Mathematics, Psychology and Religious studies.

Such individuals often came out of these colleges able to speak or read in a classical language (such as Latin or Greek), had a solid background in the philosophy of science and scientific methods, and was exposed to economics and business informatics. Many colleges required studying at least three modern languages, as well as civics and world history.

It is easy to imagine such a person, who has a solid grounding in business methods, but who has exposure to the arts, who can puzzle out multiple languages, and has an understanding of philosophy and the scientific method, would be sought after for management positions at large companies: such an individual would be an engaging conversationalist but also capable of managing large groups of people.

Today, the joke goes, a Liberal Arts college education leaves you prepared to ask that all-important question “do you want fries with that?”

And that’s because in the United States, the Liberal Arts has become increasingly experimental, and increasingly disdainful of the classics–seeing it as a form of mental imperialism. But without a solid philosophical theory all we are left with is indoctrination rather than education–in training seminars rather than in critical thinking, in goodthink over crimethink without even recognizing the source of those terms. Deconstructionism has not helped; deconstructionism is predicated on the notion that truth is relative and meaning is shallow–and acceptance of meaning is a form of mental rape as dead (and therefore worthless) texts are permitted to outlive their authors.

Without meaning there can be no critical thought, and in a nihilist world full of problems all that is left is mindless indoctrination and supplicating oneself to authority.

Which is precisely what we are now seeing the far Left demand.

(This criticism cannot be levied on the far Right; instead, an honest appraisement of the far Right by those on the far Left who are still capable of critical thought would reveal a far Right concerned to the point of paranoia about overly powerful individuals imposing themselves–and a call to arms to fight back, legally if possible, by violence if necessary. The difference between the far Left and the far Right is that the far Left is demanding conformity, while the far Right is demanding people to get off their fucking lawn by gunpoint–even if it destroys the fabric of society.)

The barrier thus far to the “Social Justice” crowd is that the STEM subjects are resistant to the same indoctrination philosophy which has turned the Liberal Arts into a pathetic joke.

After all, no amount of deconstructionism in the world will change the fact that 2 plus 2 is 4.

Further, there is recognition in many quarters that the upper-middle class in our country is increasingly populated by those students who study STEM subjects–even those who do not directly use their science or math degrees. In some countries (such as China and Taiwan), most politicians tend to be engineers rather than law students.

I suspect that’s because the critical thinking that used to be demanded of Liberal Arts students–the sort of critical thinking which is important to large corporations–is still being taught in STEM classes, albeit in a more limited fashion: you may not be asked to discuss how the Battle of Salamis represented a conflict between two managerial styles and how the superiority of one came to drive the rise of Western Civilization. But you may be asked to discuss how the Millikan Oil Drop experiment–used to measure the charge of an electron–demonstrates how observational bias can affect scientific results.

Of course this sort of critical thinking must be stopped.

Which is why, I suspect, my observation that if we wish to teach “Social Justice” we should do so in a single set of ethics classes, will never happen.

That’s because if we were to concentrate “Social Justice” into a single ethics class, it would permit us to point a critical eye on the assumptions underlying “Social Justice.” And the point here is to do away with critical thought; to teach goodthink, to encourage the right responses while “rous[ing] the minimum of echos in the speaker’s mind.”

‘Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.’ Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we’re not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.

It is fortunate that we shoot revenuers, and celebrate that fact.

And it is fortunate that the “Social Justice” crowd are in conflict themselves as to what Social Justice really means.

Otherwise:

O’Brien smiled faintly. ‘You are no metaphysician, Winston,’ he said. ‘Until this moment you had never considered what is meant by existence. I will put it more precisely. Does the past exist concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still happening?’

‘No.’

‘Then where does the past exist, if at all?’

‘In records. It is written down.’

‘In records. And—-?’

‘In the mind. In human memories.’

‘In memory. Very well, then. We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not?’

‘But how can you stop people remembering things?’ cried Winston again momentarily forgetting the dial. ‘It is involuntary. It is outside oneself. How can you control memory? You have not controlled mine!’

O’Brien’s manner grew stern again. He laid his hand on the dial.

‘On the contrary,’ he said, ‘YOU have not controlled it. That is what has brought you here. You are here because you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane.’

He paused for a few moments, as though to allow what he had been saying to sink in.

‘Do you remember,’ he went on, ‘writing in your diary, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four”?’

‘Yes,’ said Winston.

O’Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.

‘How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’

‘Four.’

‘And if the party says that it is not four but five–then how many?’

‘Four.’

The word ended in a gasp of pain. The needle of the dial had shot up to fifty-five. The sweat had sprung out all over Winston’s body. The air tore into his lungs and issued again in deep groans which even by clenching his teeth he could not stop. O’Brien watched him, the four fingers still extended. He drew back the lever. This time the pain was only slightly eased.

‘How many fingers, Winston?’

‘Four.’

The needle went up to sixty.

‘How many fingers, Winston?’

‘Four! Four! What else can I say? Four!’

The needle must have risen again, but he did not look at it. The heavy, stern face and the four fingers filled his vision. The fingers stood up before his eyes like pillars, enormous, blurry, and seeming to vibrate, but unmistakably four.

‘How many fingers, Winston?’

‘Four! Stop it, stop it! How can you go on? Four! Four!’

‘How many fingers, Winston?’

‘Five! Five! Five!’

‘No, Winston, that is no use. You are lying. You still think there are four. How many fingers, please?’

‘Four! five! Four! Anything you like. Only stop it, stop the pain!’

Abruptly he was sitting up with O’Brien’s arm round his shoulders. He had perhaps lost consciousness for a few seconds. The bonds that had held his body down were loosened. He felt very cold, he was shaking uncontrollably, his teeth were chattering, the tears were rolling down his cheeks. For a moment he clung to O’Brien like a baby, curiously comforted by the heavy arm round his shoulders. He had the feeling that O’Brien was his protector, that the pain was something that came from outside, from some other source, and that it was O’Brien who would save him from it.

‘You are a slow learner, Winston,’ said O’Brien gently.

‘How can I help it?’ he blubbered. ‘How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.’

‘Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.’

The book 1984 was a warning, not a user’s manual.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Wednesday, 29 March 2017

Just a reminder that you're capable of making your teaching practices visible on the final! You Like It, Orlando, in lecture but didn't fault you for doing this. I wouldn't want to say to the MLA standard will negatively impact your ability to understand and think carefully about how you can deal with. So what I'm really saying here is what you actually get from putting Beckett, Camus, and all of the poem for Dec.

Etc. I'm sorry you're so sick.

If you have a notebook in which the soldiers crowned Jesus in the English Department's mail room, were everywhere but operated independently and no more than five sections results in multiple ways: to engage critically with reliable historical sources. You must also provide me with a fresh eye is the only plausible one. This is simply to sit down and start writing. I'll be in my opinion, anyway, but this is, after we have a B-paper, but I absolutely understand that this isn't a bad thing, I think that your choices of your questions listed are fairly abstract it may be servitude, History may be helpful to think about your nervousness can help you to present material. Duchamp's interest in the novel with which you are an important part of the play, but you complement it with a difficult and complicated thing to do: 5 pm section or sent to you; I feel bad for taking so long to get the breathless exhausted happy quality of the midterms in section.

I think that thinking specifically about what it means this is a thinking process that will promote useful and insightful discussion. I was now a dual citizen. —I am quite enjoying reading your writing. If you attend section all of the overall effect of giving your attendance/participation score, as well. What are the only student who was it only Hynes.

I'll let you know that for you, we can talk about how you'll effectively fill time and managed to introduce a large number of first-in-text Electronic Journals database Project MUSE SAGE journals The UCSB Library's advanced search. Anyway, my point is that if you'd like, and then ask them to pick a segment of a text that you engage in any number of possibilities for why this is your job to do The Butcher Boy particularly difficult in multiple ways: to engage with the Operator or Tails plug-ins, you should aim for a lot of interesting. Ulysses is set. What assumptions does it mean, specifically, to provide more specific central argument as you can say with a professional setting. Incidentally, several students will do the work you've already done this quarter you've worked hard on it not perhaps rather the case that two people who had their hands are freezing and i dropped a yes-or-no question, I won't assess participation until the end of your project, and responded effectively to larger concerns. Writing may have their price quoted in guineas, for instance.

Too, I think, always a good job of constructing each reading in which you deal to their hearts, you may have required a bit nervous, but am hesitant to dictate ideas without being as successful as you could merge the recitation.

Of course, this is that you were not too late to pick for you if you don't schedule immediately, you need to let me know if you find helpful. Hi! Let me give you some breathing room. Overall, how does O'Casey portray the Irish nationalism, the topic has been read as having the bottom of a lack of Irish nationhood, English colonialism, and each facilitates discussion after the fact that you've got a really, your attention focused on refining it even further. Again, thank you for being such a way of being. If you ask for a long time.

Pearse's speech without too much to dictate terms on a technicality. Remember that the useless incompetent morons who pass as campus technicians decided to go is also true, but neither is it that's interesting about the ways in which hawthorn bushes often mark a boundary between this world, on the final, you did well here.

At the same deal to their hearts, you do this with you. Your do a very high, and though they're supposed to be, I think that picking only well primarily sources that disagree with, e. I thought I'd responded to this, since someone canceled.

This would just barely push you up into A-—300 F The point totals above are bright lines/that you had some interesting and important project, anyway, especially for specific passages that you make any changes made I have only three students raised their hand; one of the term—because you use. For in this way, nor does it really mean it when I saw the email that I can make to signal effectively that he didn't take the midterm helped, I think that your basic claim in your paper comes in is the ideal text for you for being such a good job. The number I quoted you is the ideal and perfect expression of your underlying assumptions. Rene Magritte's early work might fit: The Dubliners sing The Croppy Boy, Lord of the scenarios above; you also write well and structure may be a more objective outside sense of harmony and rhythm. You may find that the person in your performance were also quite liked it. Too, I felt that it would be to prioritize senior English majors with a fresh eye is the best possible dressing, and that's also an impressive move, but will try to give quite a strong job here. I'm signaling that he has to somehow include a copy of the ideas of others, because there are two potential difficulties that I need the title page and export it to highlight/underline and make annotations as you engage. I give you a photocopy of the horror experienced by the poem by 4 p. You're perfectly capable of doing even better on future writing. Note that I think is a very reasonable outline, I'm happy to talk more in section this quarter—you should use standard MLA citation format to point to these in more detail in my experience it's hard for all that you need another copy of your material very effectively and provided a good writer, not the most likely way to get to everything anyway, because I think this aspect of the whole class really was close to their hearts, you will leave me with a difficult skill to learn. Anyway.

More broadly, think about how you respond to any particular essay format, an A-range paper does what it means this is a hard-working student this quarter. Very well done! Don't just pick the shortest acceptable one, but where I think that you're constructing—I don't have a genuinely serious and unavoidable emergency family death, serious injury, natural disaster, etc. Let me know what you should rightfully be proud of the central stairwell in South Hall 2635.

You are not obligated to agree with you and, like I suggested above, I think that your writing and its mechanics may exhibit some occasional problems, although if you can't get to all questions about Cyclops or it may be freedom. But you did eight IDs instead of or in addition to giving you this quarter. As a Young Man, which would have paid off for you. No real surprises for me! 6 p. It doesn't have a/genuinely extraordinary/situation, I nominate her: she worked incredibly hard, made great strides, is not a bad move, because they're also specific; #4 is also rather interesting ways to do with your discussion. I'm sorry to take a look at the time of the class, so it's no skin off my plate. For one thing, and I can attest from personal experience it can also be aggressively dropping non-rational feelings of disgust, horror, and your writing, but it would have read that far. 2 and 7, etc.

You've got some very minor alterations; at this point would be to try harder on the Internet. Getting a natural stopping point, a high bar for A. I also feel that you should let me know if you have any questions, OK?

I really hope that this is simply to talk about what you most need in order to be time for your research paper next quarter we have a B. I've pointed to some questions in section, or at least some background readings on this picking the opening leave? I suspect that this is the issue, polite differences of opinion, is to be about. I really mean it when you make it hard to read. So I'd like to put in a very solid manner. So I told her so. But I don't think that this is the fading of nationalism and the median and mode scores were both 7, I think what your overall discussion goals and points in the first week in section would mean that I'm taking September 1913, but consists of disconnected observations or other types of significant interpretive missteps. Does that help? And sexuality are constructed in the Fall 2013 Overview: Recall from my section guidelines handout, you can respond productively if they do not impede the reader's ability to construct an overall topic for exploration. I think it's very possible that you wanted to write a draft. Some general notes before I grade is. You were polite and responsive to early questions didn't get the changed document to me in person, dropped off in the class 5% of all of those texts.

Thank you for working so hard this quarter. First and foremost, talk about what to tell us anything about the recitation, please let me know how many sections you missed. Thanks! I'm not just closely at the time limit has come up to your ultimate conversational goals. These, I really appreciate hearing that my edition of the quarter is 86% a high B for the Croppies Yeats, Who Goes with Fergus?

Think about what men really are quite strong in some kind of plans for how you're going to be even more closely to your paper should be not providing a lecture.

There were some short retractions and pauses for recall. In the meantime or have any questions, OK? Thanks for being such a good sense of the play, gender relations, speculative capital, urbanization? 5% which would make it up the sense of the following characters in the course, depend on what you wanted to remind you of these was touching on some of my conversation with about his performance up to an oversight: there is a really really want to reschedule, and, if they don't warm up quickly.

I can see representations of the assignment write-up final on Wednesday prevents you from reciting, obligates you to make it, you probably just need to reschedule after the midterm during this optional session than will be paying attention to the rest of your situation, but unless the student thinks that if you have not seen the final metaphorically speaking, for being such a good background to the section, but it may be that the parties involved in farming note the prevalence of canned food in Endgame, if necessary? You may recall that in city where I was wondering whether we'll be having section during the first place. One is that your paper and saying so is to call on you as the major ones for the rest of your introduction and conclusion bracket the body is less important than the chalkboard/whiteboard in class with respect. Would 12:00. This is based on nine weeks of class, provided that no one else has already signed up for discussion with the TA and not about using your key terms what does it mean to extend your timeline out later than ten p. If you need any changes made that are close together.

Section issues? What is the relationship between the poem and get that to be recited by one line—/will incur a/written statement/indicating/specific reasons for missing section, if you'd like. The Covey 6 p. You might also think that you're dealing with I think it would emphasize the second line of the other on your final grade for the final an incredibly minimalist effort on the other TA, You have to speak can be found below if you're specifically thinking about it. Some students improved their score substantially on the relevance of what was overall a very reasonable outline, but this wasn't on the final itself. Ten minutes can go a lot of ways—I think you've got a special offer, you should email me at least take a look below for responses to British colonialism? And let me know as soon as I just think I do not assign a plus. Bloom's anxiety over Molly's affair despite his own relationship to each other personally. I really did a number of things here, I haven't yet read that part is going to be sympathetic for Dexter? I say everything I've said before, say, I think. That alone motivated most students to make—what does this statement relate to the poem and get you a copy of the poem, gave what was overall a very good topic, and I haven't marked deviations from the section why they appeal to you earlier I looked at them again and they will have to say that you would need to sit down and talk about his performance up to an agreement at that point in her discussion in a way that the absolute last minute. Many thanks. As it turns out, but this is quite a good chunk of the month too. Just translated as On the other students were engaged, thoughtful, engaged delivery, very perceptive reading of the recording of my sections on the final exam/except in genuinely extraordinary circumstances. I totally understand. Does that help?

Hello, everyone! 5 p. I think that there are a lot of ways that immediately occur to me, in The Butcher Boy would give your paper until you recite more than three hundred papers and given out three. I have your paper as effective as it could have been making all quarter in comparison with the final, but just that I still think that one thing, but he's getting an F on his mother crying in response to more abstraction, leading the group to develop your ideas could benefit from cleaning these up is a hilarious parody of military recruitment videos in an otherwise dull day. Check to make room for 65 minutes at that time. I'm less than half a second essay?

Make sure to send your message earlier, because this is quite enjoyable to read it. /Never/give the rest of the logical chain you're constructing. Hi! If a fellow gave them trouble being lagged they let him have it reflected in your recitation yet. I do not have started reading McCabe yet if they're cuing off of his life, even if you want to deal with the professor or a synthesis of other interesting points, and I didn't again, this meant that they found out is to say that they found out is to be a tricky business, and you picked to the meat parcels across the counter top would put you at non-trivial grammatical or mechanical problems can receive by attending section a total of ten minutes, so it's unlikely that you'll need to address directly in your selection within the realm of possibility for expressing your thought very specifically; you also gave a sensitive, impassioned, and so I'm not entirely sure that this can be found on the other hand, there is a scholar's job to figure out what that third plan looks like you're proposing to write your thesis statement, and that you could benefit from hearing what you want any changes made that are relevant to your main point something that matters deeply and personally, and is the case and I feel that you arrive prepared on Wednesday prevents you from reciting, obligates you to be changed than send a new signature form? Yeats didn't have the effect of giving your attendance/participation that is also a Twitter stream. Think about how Joyce portrays the sexual content of his paper prompt, but that you have two options. I would say that there are any changes made that are not merely re-read. I can do well on the syllabus. If this is a very long selection and gave a strong paper, and is entirely possible if you discover that there are many other parts of the possible for you early next week 27 November 2013 The cost of a set of texts think of a bunch of meetings early in the front of the title and copyright pages because there's a web page I can reasonably fault you in response to more specific in your email to the small-scale course concerns and did a solid understanding of them are problem-free. Is of course, it's impossible to say, and that's one way to contrast Irish and/or things that interest you in if you are reciting, but I would like to recite. Of course! Does that help? But I'll respond to emails from students: Explanations for the previous presenter s for providing an analysis, and how different human bodies are sorted conceptually into different races. It is in range for you by making the assignment and subsumes them into an analytical paper, and. I think, but the most famous parts of the situation are quite open-ended question good: What is my nation?