#there is no substantive difference between small and little that would require the use of both

[colourmeastonished]

hey, uhhh, is describing something as 'small little' an american thing or what?? I keep coming across it in like,, published edited works as well as online and it throws me off every time

[thewildyosho]

Danganronpa 3. Talent runs in the blood (English version). Episode 1. Blood brothers

(Although I commented earlier that I would upload the episodes in February, I have decided to start today and upload one episode each successive Sunday until I finish with all of them. Thanks for reading! I hope that, although they are a bit long episodes, it will be entertaining and generate a deep despair in your souls)

- HIROYUKI. All my life I have been normal. But it's not something I'm proud of, because I've met many people like me in my life: with dreams, aspirations, worries and the desire to live. Everything was going well, normal, until I arrived at the most famous academy in Japan; its name is: Hope’s Peak Academy, or should I say "its name was"?

 They say that as soon as you get there your life changes completely, and I can assure you of that. But in my case it didn't change in the same way as the talented students: they were the ones who would achieve success and fame one day. Unfortunately for me, my life changed for the worse from the very beginning.

 Now being normal wasn't the "normal" thing... Ironic, isn't it? Talent, which was supposed to be essential to fix this world, was slowly destroying it. Hmmm... What if it wasn't talent what was causing the chaos that was about to come? What if it was really arrogance and despotism the ones that were responsible The Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event in Human History?

 ×º°"˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜"°º×

  ×º°"˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜"°º×

 - HIROYUKI. My family and I lived far from Hope’s Peak Academy; the only way to get there in time was by car or train. When I was 15 years old I managed to finish my high school studies with good grades, the result of my effort and passion for studying, for learning new things.

 (In Hiroyuki's class the bell has just rung indicating the end of the class. All the students get up from their seats and leave the classroom)

 - PROFESSOR. Hiroyuki, can I talk to you before you leave?

 - HIROYUKI. Of course. (He approaches to his teacher)

 - PROFESSOR. Congratulations, Hiroyuki. I have been reviewing your academic results and I have to say that they are excellent in comparison with the average, I congratulate you.

 - HIROYUKI. (With great happiness) Thank you very much, teacher!

 - PROFESSOR. Do you already know in which centre you will study your last courses before University? (Hiroyuki nods)

                                            ˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜

 - HIROYUKI. The moment my parents found out that Hope’s Peak Academy had opened a Reserve Course for untalented students, they started saving money to try and get me admitted there. Reserve Courses were about the same length as the Main Courses, but there were so many applications that every half year a new Reserve Course started so that more students could be admitted.

  (In Hiroyuki's house, his father is showing him pictures of the Academy through a computer)

 - TADASHI. "The Academy also has a large campus where students can be in contact with nature and rest after classes". Do you like it, son?

 - HIROYUKI. I think it's very good.

 - TADASHI. Well, with a little bit of luck you will surely enter the next course. All thanks to your effort and work, you see?

 - HIROYUKI. (Smiles) Thank you very much.

 - TADASHI. Hopefully you will be admitted and then you may become as successful as your brother.

 - HIROYUKI. (Swallows) Y-yes...

 - HIROYUKI. I felt at that moment how a dagger was being stuck in my heart... The dagger of talent. At that time I didn't get along particularly well with my brother Kichiro; talent made the difference between us like day and night. While he had practically everything figured out in life, I was the fighter, the one who had to work hard and pray for miracles in order to achieve a future that was at least stable.

 ˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜

 - HIROYUKI. My brother was two years older than me and was already in his last year of high school at that Academy. In order to graduate, he had to pass several practical exams before spring started. He had the title of Ultimate Scriptwriter.

 (Inside a train to the Academy are Kichiro Kobayashi, Takumi Murakami (Ultimate Yo-Yo Player) and Hari Bachchan (Ultimate Voodoo Student), talking and laughing)

 - SPEAKER. Attention, next station is the last one on this route: Hope’s Peak Academy. Be careful when you get off the train.

 (The train stops and all the students get off)

 - HIROYUKI. He didn't just go there to study. To train the most his skills and gain experience for the future he had been working in a news section of Hope’s Peak for a year and a half. Apparently, the Academy allowed a small management team and him to broadcast announcements, news and motivational phrases as the first thing in the morning before classes started for all those students who arrived early. This was supposed to "provide hope".

 (Speakers placed between the walls and the ceiling are lit throughout the corridors and classrooms of the premises)

 - KICHIRO (VOICE). (His voice can be heard through the speakers) Good morning, students of Hope’s Peak! It's twenty-three minutes past eight. From this humble section we thank you for being as punctual as always and for continuing listening to us day after day. Today we have a new phrase that will keep your spirits high: motivation does not come from inspiration, but from hard work and eventual failures. Have a great day at school.

 - HIROYUKI. "Hard work"? "Failures"? It was quite strange to hear those words coming out of the mouths of people like him. While Kichiro went to the Academy during the week, I spent my mornings and afternoons studying like crazy in order to pass the entrance exam that the school required for all those students who did not possess a recognized talent.

 (In Hiroyuki's room, while he is looking through the computer at examination papers from Hope’s Peak Academy, his mother, Natsuki Nishimura, appears)

 - NATSUKI. Son, don't you think you should get some rest? I'm going to prepare the food.

 - HIROYUKI. Thank you, Mom. I'll be right there. (He keeps looking at the computer and his mother leaves the room. Hiroyuki puts his hands to his head, nervously) Ahh... These maths exercises are impossible to solve. (He looks through the window) If they don't accept me it will be the end of myself... I can't allow that.

 ˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜

  (In class 76, where Kichiro, Takumi and Hari are located, there are only a few minutes left before school day finishes. Some students are exhausted and ignore the explanations of Professor Koichi Kizakura)

 - KOICHI. (Writing on the board) ...and that is why all the rest of the sentence is the subject. Does anyone know what kind of subordinate sentence this is? (Seiko Kimura raises her hand) Yes, Seiko?

 - SEIKO. Could it be a substantive subordinate?

 - KOICHI. Is that a question or a statement?

 - SEIKO. I-I'm not sure... (her classmates laugh and Seiko looks down regretfully)

 - KOICHI. (Leaning on Seiko's table) Do you know what? In this life the most important thing is to have confidence and determination in what you do or say. If you think something is one way, just say so. It doesn't matter if you fail; making mistakes is the most common thing that can happen and it's the only way to learn from them. I will ask you again: is it a question or a statement?

 - SEIKO. (Swallows) It is a substantive subordinate clause.

 - KOICHI. It’s right! The subject could not be other than that. (He raises his right thumb looking cheerfully at Seiko and rings the bell) Tomorrow I want you all to bring the rest of that sentence completely analysed, okay? See you tomorrow.

 (All the students are leaving the class and Ruruka Ando and Sonosuke Izayoi are approaching Seiko. The latter is holding two backpacks: hers and Ruruka's)

 - RURUKA. You were fantastic, Seiko!

 - SEIKO. (Blushing) Thank you, but it's nothing at all.

 - RURUKA. Hey, Seiko, could I ask you another favor?

 - SEIKO. (Nods) What is it about?

 - RURUKA. Could you prepare some pills to help me sleep? I haven't slept for several days...

 - SEIKO. Of course it is. Stop by the chemistry lab in an hour or so and I'll have it ready for you.

 - RURUKA. Really? Thank you! I no longer knew how to hide my dark circles...

 - SONOSUKE. You never have dark circles under your eyes, Ruruka. (Ruruka looks at him and smiles)

 (The last three students leave the classroom and Koichi is left alone, picking up his material. Someone suddenly enters the classroom)

 - ???. (Knocking on the door) Can I get in?

 - KOICHI. Go ahead. (He sees the face of the person who wanted to enter. It's Celestia Ludenberg) Celestia! How are you? Come in, come in.

 - CELESTY. Very well, thank you.

 - KOICHI. Did you finally make a decision with what I told you?

 - CELESTY. (She approaches a window and looks through it) I've been thinking about it... And I think I'm going to start my High School last courses in this Academy, he, he...

 - KOICHI. That's great. You are going to be the Ultimate Gambler of this centre then.

 - CELESTY. (Smiles) I'm sure the two courses ahead will be very interesting, I can really feel it...

 - KOICHI. (Smiles too) Don't hesitate. As soon as I send your written application to the Academy I will call you and you can fill in the registration form for the new course, okay? (Celestia nods) Well, it was nice to meet you, Celestia. I look forward to teaching you next year if there is still a shortage of teachers.

 ˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜

  (Kichiro, Takumi and Hari walk through one of the large gardens on the campus)

 - KICHIRO. (Stretching out) I'm getting more and more tired from classes, isn't it the same for you?

 - TAKUMI. (Playing with a yo-yo while walking) I think something similar, but I'm not really physically tired. What happens is that some classes are already starting to get boring at this point. The teachers' performance is generally correct, but I think there's a lack of originality in the subjects they deal with, that’s the truth...

 - KICHIRO. (Laughs a little) Always so deep, Takumi.

 - HARI. Well, the truth is that I don't feel very tired.

 - TAKUMI. Of course, because you spend all day thinking about other things than the study, you lazy dude...

 - HARI. Who are you calling "lazy"? (He hits himself in the face, but the damage is done to Takumi in his own skin. Hari doesn’t feel any harm thanks to his talent of Ultimate Human Voodoo)

 - TAKUMI. (He touches his face, a little red from the blow) It was a joke, Hari...

 - HARI. I know, don't worry. That's why I didn't hit myself hard, hahaha.

 - KICHIRO. (Trying to change the subject of conversation) Do you want to go and eat something?

 - HARI. Yes, because I'm starting to get hungry.

 - KICHIRO. What about going to the Academy cafeteria?

 - TAKUMI. As long as they don't go overboard using the spices again, I think it's a good option.

 (All go to the above mentioned place)

 ˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜

 - HIROYUKI. As I said before, I didn't get along with my brother because of all the differences we had. He, however, didn't give up in the struggle to try to reconcile with me, but I kept on ignoring him and treating him as if he wasn't really my brother.

  (In the evening, at dinner time at Hiroyuki's house they are all eating together: he, his brother Kichiro and his parents, sitting at a table. There is both silence and tension in the atmosphere surrounding them)

 - NATSUKI. (Trying to break the monotony) How did it go at school today, son?

 - KICHIRO. Good. Nothing new at all.

 - NATSUKI: Is there any interesting news you have read at the Academy?

 - KICHIRO. (Holding back laughter) Apparently a couple of students from the Reserve Course took a fire extinguisher and played a joke on another one of their class.

 - TADASHI. What savages. And were they warned or something?

 - KICHIRO. They were threatened with expulsion from the centre if they made any more mischief like that. (Denies with his head) And I'm fine with that; they think they can do whatever they want at the Academy and that's not true...

 - HIROYUKI. (Drops the spoon and stares at Kichiro) Because they are reserve students, right?

 - KICHIRO ... Excuse me?

 - HIROYUKI. I am sure that if it had been talented students who had done that, everyone would have been very happy with them. Everyone laughing with them because... uh, they excel at something.

 - NATSUKI. Honey, I don't think your brother meant that.

 - HIROYUKI. He never means that, he never insinuates anything, of course not.

 - TADASHI. Hiroyuki, that's enough. If you don't know how to behave, don't sit at this table.

 - HIROYUKI. (He gets up from his chair in a huff) Perfect, because I'm going to my room. (Leaves the dining room)

 - NATSUKI. (Trying to hold back tears) We are always the same. I don't know what to do to be a normal family anymore.

 - KICHIRO. (Touches his mother's back) Mom, don't worry. I'll go talk to Hiroyuki.

 - TADASHI. Don't do it. Let him take his time to reflect.

 - HIROYUKI. I was angry, but the worst thing is that I didn't really know why. I didn't know if I was jealous of my "perfect" brother or... if I hated myself for not having any talent... That night, before going to sleep, I started to do some exam models of the Hope’s Peak Academy to calm down after what had happened earlier during dinner, and between searches I was struck by a news item...

 (Hiroyuki is looking at the computer in his room and reading the headline and content of a recent news item)

  - HIROYUKI. "Missing Natsumi Kuzuryu, Reserve student of Hope’s Peak Academy and sister of Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu, the Ultimate Yakuza student" (He reads in his mind part of the body of the news and remains pensive) Another family in which there is one untalented brother and another one with everything... "The last time she was seen, today's classes were over. The family, belonging to the Kuzuryu clan, has avoided to make any statement to the police, although the missing student is being looked for after an anonymous tip"

 (Hiroyuki turns off the computer and lies down on his bed tired and sleepy)

 ×º°"˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜"°º×

  (The next morning, Hiroyuki, Kichiro and his mother are having breakfast in the kitchen)

 - NATSUKI. Hiroyuki, don't you think you should say something to your brother?

 - HIROYUKI. Hmmm... I don't remember.

 - NATSUKI. (Frowning) Hiroyuki Kobayashi...

 - HIROYUKI. (Looking away and speaking reluctantly) Sorry...

 - NATSUKI. Could you repeat that? We didn't hear you correctly.

 - KICHIRO. No need, thanks mum.

 - HIROYUKI. Could we change the subject of the conversation, please? (Looking at Kichiro) Do you know anything about the student who disappeared without a trace from your Academy yesterday?

 - KICHIRO. (Surprised) Excuse me? A student has disappeared?

 - HIROYUKI. Yes. I read it on the news yesterday on the computer; I think she was called Natsumi Kuzuryu or something like that...

 (Kichiro's mobile phone suddenly rings and he answers the call)

 - KICHIRO. Hello?

 - MAN (VOICE). (Via mobile) Kichiro, come immediately to Hope’s Peak and watch the news on the road, please. We need your talent to make an important announcement throughout the centre. These are orders from Director Jin Kirigiri's team.

 - KICHIRO. (Concerned) O-okay, I'll be there in half an hour.

 (Kichiro hangs up and gets up from the table to get dressed and leave for the Academy)

 ˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜

  (Once in the computer room, from where Kichiro's news are broadcasted before classes begin...)

 - KICHIRO. (Altered) Dead?! How did that student die??

 - MAN. The police claim that it was a pervert who forced the girl and ended up killing her in cold blood.

 - KICHIRO. Oh my God, the family must be devastated by this incident.

 - SUMIYE. The victim also has a brother, Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu, from class 77-B. Do you know him?

 - KICHIRO. Practically nothing. I only know him by sight during class exchanges.

 - MAN. I need you to prepare a proper speech by 8:30.

 - KICHIRO. (Nods firmly) I will do my best.

 ˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜

  (Around 8:32 all the speakers in the centre are switched on. Some classes are on campus doing gymnastics, other classes are doing exams and others are giving normal classes, but all of them stop their rhythm to listen to the message that Kichiro has to transmit)

 - KICHIRO (VOICE). (Discouraged) Good morning, students of Hope’s Peak. It's 8:32 a.m. Today is a sad day in the history of this Academy... It is hard to say this, but the student who disappeared yesterday shortly after finishing the last classes of the day has been found dead early in the morning in the music room of this centre... Everything indicates that the culprit has been a pervert who infiltrated the premises just when all the teachers had left, but the police still have to be left to know more precisely the information about the case, so it would be advisable that nobody goes near the scene of the crime during this morning. From here we also want to give our most sincere support to the victim's relatives and acquaintances... At 10.30 a.m. classes will be cut to have a minute's silence for the deceased. Thank you much for listening to this short speech.

 (Communication is cut off)

 ˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜

  (10:32 a.m. Almost all the students, both from Reserve and Main Courses, are outside the facilities and resting on campus waiting for the minute of silence to begin. The teachers are gathered near the entrance talking to each other; among the recognisable faces they stand out: Chisa Yukizome, Koichi Kizakura and the physical education teacher Juzo Sakakura is in the surroundings of the Academy together with a big group of security guards)

 - KICHIRO. (He looks for Fuyuhiko in the crowd and approaches him) Fuyuhiko, I am Kichiro Kobayashi, the one who gives the news section in the morning. (He places his right hand on Fuyuhiko's shoulder) Let me tell you that I am very sorry, really.

 - FUYUHIKO. (Filled with rage and anger, he takes his hand off of his shoulder) Get away and get out of my sight.

 (Peko Pekoyama stands between the two of them and drags Kichiro away from Fuyuhiko)

 - PEKO. The young master is very much in grief at his loss. You should stay away for a while until the situation relaxes.

 - KICHIRO. I-I understand, I'm sorry.

 (Kichiro returns to his classmates and the campus microphones are turned on)

 - JIN (VOICE). Good morning. I am Jin Kirigiri, headmaster of Hope’s Peak Academy. Thank you all for attending this meeting to observe a minute's silence for the late student Natsumi Kuzuryu, from the Reserve Course. As soon as a siren sounds the minute will begin, and will sound again when the time is up.

 (The siren sounds and everyone is silent. Only the chirping of the sparrows and the wobbling of the trees by the wind can be heard. Some students named Sato, Mahiru and Hiyoko are a bit apart from the large mass of students concentrated in the centre)

 - SATO. (Partly relieved and with a somewhat cheerful gesture) This story is over.

 - MAHIRU. ... You're not serious, are you? Natsumi is still dead.

 - HIYOKO. Screw it. At least that asshole won't be bothering you anymore.

 - SATO. Exactly. You don't have to worry about anything anymore, Mahiru, we are here with you to support you.

 (A teacher approaches)

 - PROFESSOR. (In a low tone) Please be silent, if only for the poor girl who has died.

 (All the girls become silent and Sato sees an imaginary Natsumi in the distance, beside a tree, with her bloody head, her bruised neck, her eyes wide open and her gaze fixed on her)

 - NATSUMI (IMAGINATION). (With somewhat distorted sighs) I will never forgive you for what you have done to me. I will never...

 (Sato swallows his saliva, sighs and closes his eyes until the minute of silence ends)

 ×º°"˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜"°º×

 - HIROYUKI. Things only got worse. According to what my brother told at home, the next day many female students refused to go to class because of the murder that happened. On the social networks this incident was described as a sexist and terrible act, and Hope’s Peak had gone, for one day, from being recognized nationally for its achievements and goals to being recognized for such a tragic act. But that's not all, what happened the next day marked a turning point in the history of this Academy.

 (Hiroyuki can be seen watching news on his computer in his room)

 - HIROYUKI. ... It cannot be. Surely they have made a mistake... (He looks at another news item and gets surprised) S-so it is not a mistake... "A second student from the Reserve Course has been found dead in the facilities of Hope’s Peak". Kichiro!! Kichiro!

 (Kichiro appears half-dressed)

 - KICHIRO. What's going on?

 - HIROYUKI. Have you seen the latest news?

 - KICHIRO. (Concerned) I'm afraid so. It is terrible what has happened.

 - HIROYUKI. Doesn't anyone care about the Reserve students or what? The information from the Academy says that there are always several teams looking after the safety of the students.

 - KICHIRO. The police say that this is a pervert, and I personally think that it has to be someone who belongs to the Academy and who can go unnoticed, because if not I don't find another possible explanation.

 - HIROYUKI. (He looks at his brother in frustration) It's funny that this doesn't happen with Main Course students. They are always protected to the last hair because they are indispensable to this disgusting society.

 - KICHIRO. That is not so, do not talk about what you do not know.

 - HIROYUKI. (He stands up from his seat) How many more talentless students have to die before you realize? You dudes are only interested in our money, nothing else! You don't give a shit about our life.

 - KICHIRO. (Suddenly slaps his brother) Shut up! How dare you tell me I don't care about you? What do you know? You're my brother!

 - HIROYUKI. (With a red face, he starts crying) Go away. Get out of my room!

 (Hiroyuki pushes Kichiro out of his room and slams the door)

 - KICHIRO. (Frustrated, leaning on the door) Hiroyuki, forgive me.

 - HIROYUKI. Shut up and get lost! I don't want to know anything about you.

 - KICHIRO. (Look at his watch) Damn it, I have to go or I'll be late. (He leaves the place quickly)

 - HIROYUKI. I hate that the mind tends to remember bad moments more accurately than good ones. I still regret what happened that morning, but I felt very helpless and unprotected then. In fact, I even thought about not taking the Academy entrance exams after those two deaths. I was really afraid about what had happened.

 ˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜

  (Kichiro appears in the editorial office of the main building of the Academy in search of his companions. The first person he finds is the former student Ultimate Journalist: Sumiye Miura, arguing with the head of the editorial team)

 - SUMIYE. I repeat that this does not look like a stalker.

 - MAN. It doesn't matter what it looks like. Both the police and the Academy have ruled that this murder has also been committed by a pervert and we cannot contradict anything about it.

 - KICHIRO. What's going on? Are you talking about the new murdered girl?

 - SUMIYE. Exactly, and I bet that these deaths are not the work of a stalker as the police say.

 - MAN. And what will it matter what we think? Our job is to collect information and transmit it in the centre and surroundings, full stop.

 - SUMIYE. But we can't ignore what is happening! I have been working in the world of journalism for years and I know the difference between the acts of a pervert and a serial killer.

 - KICHIRO. (Ironic, though somewhat frightened) Neither are we looking for a Genocider Sho or someone like that...

 - SUMIYE. Genocider Sho certainly wasn't. He only tortures men for what is known.

 - MAN. I repeat that this is no longer within our competence. Get back to work immediately.

 (A woman enters suddenly)

 - WOMAN. Attention everyone! They just found the culprit of the murders!

 (Everyone is surprised and begins to search the Internet or look through the windows to get information about it)

 - KICHIRO. Really?! They caught the pervert?

 - JOURNALIST. (Sitting in his work seat) So is he a stalker or not?

 - WOMAN. The police say that it is.

 - MAN. Kichiro, don't go to class today; I'll send your teacher a letter so that you can stay here today and work on your writing. We need you more than ever. (Kichiro nods and the man looks at Sumiye) And you, I want you to go where the news are and get even the slightest bit of unimportant information about this case.

 - SUMIYE. Understood!

 ×º°"˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜"°º×

 (The news of the main Japanese channels do not talk about anything else but the Academy)

 - PRESENTER 1. And in the breaking news we know that the alleged murderer of two young students from the prestigious Hope’s Peak Academy has just been arrested.

 ˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜

 - PRESENTER 2. Itaro Janure is the name of the suspect accused of cold-bloodedly murdering two students at Hope’s Peak Academy.

 ˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜

 - PRESENTER 3. A few minutes ago the police made public the identity of the alleged murderer of the teenage girls of Hope’s Peak, mostly known on social networks as the "Skull of Shadows". His name is Itaro Janure and he worked as one of the caretakers at the centre.

 ˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜

 - REPORTER 1. (At the scene of the arrest, crowded into the crowd) Well, as you said, I am at the entrance to the Hope’s Peak Academy so that you can see live how the current ex-janitor of the centre, accused of killing two female students.

 (You can see the former caretaker shouting that he has done nothing, that he didn't even know the victims)

 ×º°"˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜"°º×

  (In the office of director Jin Kirigiri, shortly after watching those news...)

 - KOICHI. (Leaning on the director's desk) So they've arrested the pervert, huh?

 - JIN. (Meditating with eyes closed) It seems so.

 - KOICHI. Can I ask you something? (Jin nods) Do you really think that poor man is guilty?

 - JIN. (Sighs and turns his seat to look out the window) Not really. Of course I don't think it was even a pervert's fault. In my opinion, it looks more like a revenge.

 - KOICHI. And you don't feel remorse that a possible innocent person is going to jail?

 - JIN. Of course I feel it, like the most. But I have to ensure the safety of this Academy, and for that the atmosphere has to be calm. If people believe that the culprit is already behind bars, no one will question our credibility.

 - KOICHI. (Pull out an alcoholic drink) As you wish; here you are the boss, mate. (Stops drinking and looks at the time on his wristwatch) Uh, I have class in ten minutes. I've got to go. (He gets up from the table and heads for the exit)

 - JIN. Kizakura...

 - KOICHI. Yes?

 - JIN. Thank you for your support. I promised you that you would not have to teach this year, but things have not gone as I thought. Anyway, I am already receiving applications from qualified teachers.

 - KOICHI. (Joking) I'll ignore your insinuation that I'm not qualified for the job. Well, see you, friend. (Jin smiles and Koichi leaves the room)

 - JIN. (Cheerful and somewhat relieved) Never change, Kizakura.

 ×º°"˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜"°º×

 - HIROYUKI. Murder, jealousy, lies, hatred, mistrust... That is what the Academy really offered in those days to attract more students. (Sighs) And the worst thing of all is that it managed to attract them. This was the beginning of the end of a world where there were many dangerous triggers, but people lived in peace because they were hidden, silenced. I hope I haven't talked too much about it.

 - ???. Not at all, we still have plenty of time. I want you to tell me more stories like that, I need to live in my mind everything that happened to you during that year and a half.

 ×º°"˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜"°º×

 (Footsteps can be heard in a dark street. This is Nagito Komaeda, who looks on both sides of the street in search of someone, until he finally finds him)

 - NAGITO. (Smiling) Hey, buddy, I was looking for you.

 - TED. (Spits out the gum he was chewing) Dude? Who are you, scum?

 - NAGITO. You just described me perfectly, hahaha. I'm someone unimportant here. And you have to be the Ultimate Explosives Expert, don't you?

 - TED. (Nods) That's right. Why are you here?

 - NAGITO. (His face darkens, he holds Ted Chikatilo's shoulders in his hands and whispers in his ear) I need to prepare a pump.

 - TED. (Puts Nagito in front of the wall and puts a knife under his neck) What are you playing at, you stupid little tadpole?

 - NAGITO. (Smiles again) Nothing, I just want a little help from you to do a good thing.

 (Luckily, a stray cat intervenes in the situation and snatches the knife that Ted was holding. He is amazed)

 - TED. W-what the hell?

 - NAGITO. (His sight is lost in his delirium) So, will you help me?

It will continue... next 17th January...

[anexplanationofunfortunateevents]

a post about the Democratic primary, which I did not enjoy writing

I haven’t talked about the Democratic primary here for a couple of reasons. I think that wrapping our minds about what Trump is doing in power – and what he and his backers did to get him that power – is a lot more important than any campaign tactic his eventual Democratic opponent can use, or even who the Democratic candidate is. I don’t even know who I’ll be voting for myself.

What I do know is that above all other issues, I’ll be voting on democratic values. That includes more conventional voting rights and election integrity issues that we’re used to discussing in American politics. It’s also about pounding the brakes on democratic backsliding at home, and giving institutional and moral support to people around the world who want the same. If we make enough progress on this issue, we can make enormous strides on other progressive priorities. If we don’t turn back this authoritarian tide, we will lose on everything else.  

And on my #1 issue, I’ve developed serious concerns about Senator Bernie Sanders.

This is a long post because it’s an attempt to articulate an uncomfortable pattern which requires a lot of context, but I hope you’ll take the time to read it, so let me assure you of a few things it’s not:

Concerns about Sanders seem to be collapsed into “is he as extreme and irrational a leftist as Trump is a right-winger” or “is he too kooky to win an election.” I’m not doing either of those. There is an argument out there that Sanders is too far to the left on policy. I’m … really not the person to do that argument justice. There’s an argument that, whether or not you like his policies, he would have a harder time winning a national election in a year that Democrats cannot afford any more disadvantages. I think this election really is going to be won or lost by the voters choosing to accept or reject Trumpistani autocracy, but it’s entirely responsible to consider that kind of thing. I have a substantive concern about Bernie Sanders, not because I oppose progressives but because I am a progressive, and I don’t pretend to have any insight into how it might affect his chances of winning a general election.

I don’t care a whole lot about what Senator Sanders feels in his heart or whatever. I tend to think this is more about being misguided than malicious, but that’s not make or break for the pattern I’m trying to describe.

I’m not trying to endorse someone else by process of elimination; like I said, I haven’t decided yet who I’m voting for myself.

I’m old enough to remember four years ago when only a few nerds had ever heard of superdelegates. Superdelegates, or unpledged delegates, are party activists and officials who get to vote at the convention along with the pledged delegates who are assigned in the state primary contests. They’re the backup plan put in place after the clusterfuck of 1968. We also got better at avoiding clusterfucks after 1968, so they weren’t an issue. Until 2016, when Sanders decided they were an issue for him because he was going to lose the old-fashioned way, and “superdelegates” were a convenient boogeyman he could use to turn progressives against the Democratic party. Then his campaign successfully talked itself into believing that this conspiracy theory about superdelegates going against the voters, so they started arguing that the superdelegates should take the nomination away from the winner and give it to him. This was always a pipe dream, but it did inspire Sanders supporters to dox a bunch of counterrevolutionary elected officials and progressive activists. Remember, he’s a member of the Senate Democratic caucus, so he’s talking all this shit as a superdelegate.

The sore losering only helped Donald Trump and his Russian backers, but it was delegitimizing enough that the Democratic National Committee felt pressured to revamp the presidential nomination process. Thus, a “unity” committee was formed to placate the feelings of those who were implacably infuriated that the person with the most votes had won the nomination. (The Republicans, whose party processes had allowed an unqualified, unstable, ideologically unreliable foreign asset to take over, made no such alterations.) The big concession on superdelegates is that they don’t vote on the first ballot. If someone wins a majority, then they win the nomination. If nobody gets a majority, then there’s a second vote where the pledged delegates are released and the superdelegates also get a say.

Presumably because pro-Sanders activists were so instrumental in drafting the new rules, they were all set to start gaming those rules before voting began. In early January, when it was assumed that former Vice President Biden would win more delegates than anyone else but come up short of a majority, groups supporting Sanders floated the idea that Warren’s delegates should be ready to join Sanders, or vice versa. The reasoning was that a vote for Warren or Sanders should be considered a vote for what they considered the relatively progressive wing of the Democratic party, and therefore pooling the two candidate’s votes together would represent the will of the electorate. Six weeks later, with Sanders having eked out a plurality in a few early states – more delegates than anyone else, but nowhere near a majority, and losing the popular vote – he’s out here warning that it would be very, very bad for everybody if the person who wins the plurality isn’t guaranteed to win the nomination. If 66% of voters split between two “establishment” candidates, well, that 34% who voted for the “anti-establishment” Sanders better get their way, or the party gets it!1

Sanders representatives also insisted states be allowed to keep holding undemocratic caucuses – until he was outplayed in the Iowa delegate count, at which point they realized the establishment $hills had been right about voter suppression being bad.

Look, real talk, small-d democracy is about trying to do what the voters want. If Sanders stays exactly where he is in the polls – winning a plurality of delegates with only about 1/3 of the voters – he will be getting a lot less support than he did in 2016. When he lost by a whopping 12-point margin, despite being propped up by the Kremlin, the Koch brothers, and thousands of years of patriarchy. If these trends hold (and they might not!) Democratic voters, who are the voters most likely to support his policies, do not want him. So – and I’m editorializing a little bit in this final assessment – spare me.

America is a big country and the Democratic Party is a broad coalition. There are going to be good arguments for and against a lot of different ways to pick a presidential nominee, but a key part of doing it as fairly as possible is to choose the rules beforehand and then stick to them. Campaigns making the best case for their candidate isn’t a bad thing, and a politician being able to change their mind is a good thing. But Sanders whips his supporters up with sweeping claims about the legitimacy of the process – until the opposite claim looks like it might be advantageous to him, at which point his campaign completely reverses itself on whether or not the rules of the election are fair. This is not acceptable. We cannot be playing this game when we are trying to defend the legitimacy of democracy itself against the most powerful person in the world.

On its own, I’d find that frustrating. But once a frustration starts overlapping with a genuine national security issue, it stops being a frustration and starts being a serious concern.

Senator Sanders was informed a month before the Nevada caucuses that the Russian government was supporting his campaign. Again. We still don’t know what kind of support they were giving him, though it’s probably more or less what they were doing in 2016 – pushing propaganda and making it harder for people to have productive discussions about the primary. He didn’t say anything about it, except to obliquely reference Russian trolls when he was challenged on the debate stage about some of his supporters being abusive online. (We’ll come back to that one.)

When this story broke, as it clearly would, Sanders reacted by attacking the newspaper. He claimed that the briefing his campaign received was classified, which a) it is unlikely to have been properly classified, which he would’ve known if he’d tried to work out a way to go public and b) didn’t stop him from using some of that information to his advantage during a debate. His campaign went around crowing about these great victories where he squeaked out pluralities knowing that those victories were tainted by a foreign government helping him and/or sabotaging his competitors. (Meanwhile, these competitors were not even told that they were at risk.)

He responded similarly to the Russian support he received in 2016. He failed to educate his supporters about the seriousness of the attack as it was happening. When asked later, he begrudgingly admitted to having known about it, falsely claimed to have tried to alert the Clinton campaign, and attempted to deflect criticism by literally blaming the victim. Admitting that he lost despite benefiting from the criminal sabotage of his opponent, rather than because he was the victim of some nefarious party establishment conspiracy, would have damaged the story he tells voters and been a blow to his ego.

Because he chose to deflect rather than face the issue, he has never dealt with the ways that the ways that the Russian attack probably did poison his movement. Nobody else has really wanted to deal with it either, so I’ll stipulate that this is my opinion, but I think it makes sense.

There is a qualitative difference between what Sanders tries to communicate to people and what his supporters do in response. I do not believe that Sanders wanted his supporters to vote for Trump, stay home, or discourage others from voting in 2016. I do not believe he wanted progressive organizers to be inundated with death threats. I do not think he wants people like anti-racist filmmaker Ava DuVernay or Parkland parent Fred Guttenberg to be swarmed with abuse online. I sincerely believe that if you hooked Sanders up to a lie detector, he would say that’s bad stuff and he doesn’t want any of it, and I am not inclined to be overly generous to Senator Sanders.

And yet it keeps happening, and it can’t just be blamed on Russian bots. Real people physically showed up in Philadelphia to heckle speakers at the convention in 2016. Abusive phone calls to perceived establishment enemies of Sanders really do slow down after he explicitly says he doesn’t want people to do that – which means that he dissuaded real people, who started down that ugly path because they thought it was what he wanted. There is an observable mismatch between what is being said and what is being heard. Something is jamming the signal.

Jamming the signal, incidentally, requires exactly the kind of stuff that troll farms do best. Post “edgy” guillotine memes and see who bites. Flood brutal criticism of mainstream Democrats with applause. When ostensible leftists use their independent platforms to spread disinformation or even just nastiness, toss a few coins in their Patreon – they don’t have to know they’re working for you, they just have to learn that pushing the envelope is profitable. Shout down even mild criticism by spamming it with garbage, so that skeptics withdraw or become defensive, while supporters internalize the idea that abuse is an acceptable response to dissent. Work hard enough to desensitize a campaign to that kind of behavior, and you might even get it to put a bunch of spiteful trolls in charge.

This is a theory, but I think it is the most likely theory. I certainly think it’s more persuasive than the alternatives, which are “those intelligence and disinformation professionals have spent the last few years shouting into the void and having no discernible effects on target populations, and also, all these people who say they’ve been hit with the exact type of toxicity that disinformation effort seems designed to provoke are actually all hallucinating and/or lying because the unbelievers of The Establishment(TM) are all conspiring to take Bernie down” and “this Russia thing is a fake news Democrat deep state witch hunt.”

I’m not saying I think Bernie Sanders is a Russian asset. I’m saying that the Russians seem to think he’s an asset to them.

The Sanders campaign has a complicated problem on its hands, and I don’t know what they should do about it. But it isn’t enough for Sanders to say “I don’t care who Putin is supporting.” It is his job as a United States senator who swore an oath to protect and defend the constitution to care about who Putin is supporting. It is his job as a presidential candidate to care enough to ask why Putin is supporting him. Even if he doesn’t care morally, he has to care politically, because plenty of voters care, and if he can’t give us an explanation we’re going to start trying to figure it out for ourselves.

Which makes it time to stop ducking the ugly question: why is Senator Sanders useful to people who are against everything he stands for?

Maybe, as the press and the Bloomberg campaign seem to think, whoever’s designing this strategy thinks Sanders is the most likely to lose to Trump, so of course they prefer him over the stronger competition. I hope they’re right. It would certainly be comforting to think that Trump’s Russian backers think we’re going to have a free and fair election based on how voters feel about the nominees, because it would mean they’re not relying on their ability to hack state boards of elections. And it would be comforting because the other possibilities get pretty depressing. Unfortunately, the Kremlin whisperers putting out this comforting explanation were also quite certain that the Russian government was just trying to cause chaos and didn’t have a preferred candidate in 2016 (they did), the Russian government only supported Trump because they hated Hillary Clinton (she’s not running and they’re still at it), that the propaganda campaign couldn’t have had an impact (it did), that the Russian government would never have attacked actual voting infrastructure because norms or whatever (lol) …. the mind-readers turn out to be big on the wishful thinking, is what I’m saying here.

Maybe it’s just a narrow convergence of policy. Sanders was one of only a small handful of legislators who voted against the Magnitsky sanctions that the Russian government is desperate to overturn. He failed to support further sanctions on Russia for the 2016 election interference – again, interference which helped his campaign. He’s called for neutralizing NATO against Russian aggression by letting Russia join. From the Russian government’s perspective, that’s as good as destroying it like Trump has been trying to help them do. Maybe those things are enough. I think those are bad positions and he should have to explain them. But he seems less committed to those things than Trump, who’s spent three years failing to deliver.

If four years of the Trump show have taught us anything, it’s that you can’t just write off the tinfoil hat conspiracy stuff; you have to acknowledge it and explain why it’s unlikely. So yes, it is theoretically possible that Russian intelligence believes they have some leverage over Sanders, either to manipulate him or to kneecap him at a moment they think is most advantageous to Trump. That doesn’t mean Senator Sanders has done anything wrong. It just means that there’s a bit of footage from when he visited the Soviet Union back in the day, and they might think they can use it to make a damaging deep fake. Personally, I think that’s pretty unlikely to be the motive here, because the cost-benefit analysis seems pretty thin, but we’re just trying to take a clear-eyed inventory about what’s possible.

A few hours after the Post broke the news about the Russian efforts to help him, his official Twitter account posted this:

I've got news for the Republican establishment. I've got news for the Democratic establishment. They can't stop us.

If you’ve been paying a bit of attention to Sanders you’re probably not too startled by that comment, which is exactly the problem. In a few short words, it boosts some of the most insidious narratives that pro-Trump propagandists have also been pushing over the past few years. It’s framed as a belligerent defiance of “party establishments” - AKA, those same American institutions that we know our adversaries want to destroy. It sets up a nihilistic false equivalence between the Democratic and Republican parties. In this little story, it’s Sanders up against shadowy forces and their conspiracy against him – he’s the real victim here, but also the center of the universe. (Sound like anyone else the Russian troll farms like?)

This tweet may or may not have been in direct response to the Washington Post’s breaking the story about Russian intelligence helping his campaign again, but the timing sure looks like a great American newspaper was being lumped in with the big, spooky “establishment” trying to “stop” Sanders. (A week and a half later, he’s still sore at the Post about something.) That, too, would fit a disturbing pattern of Sanders world’s relationship with critical press, or even with criticism in general. While all this was going on, there was a Daily Beast story about the kind of alarming behavior that seems to keep happening in pro-Sanders circles. A low-level staffer was running a gross Twitter feed that reflected badly on the campaign. The campaign responded to the story by taking out the trash, but supporters responded to the story by swarming the reporter and sharing pictures of his home address. This wasn’t surprising. If you dip into Democratic-leaning podcasts or cable news shows, it’s really common to hear people preface any criticism of Sanders with a semi-jokey “don’t yell at me on Twitter, guys!” or respond to someone else’s criticism with a rueful “RIP your menchies [Twitter inbox].” Journalists and political commentators know to expect disproportionate retribution when they criticize the Dear Leader. (Sound like anyone else the Russian troll farms like?)

Maybe you’re the kind of person who likes to give the benefit of the doubt. Couldn’t all that be  #ActuallyAboutEthicsInJournalism? I suppose a good test would be: what’s the response to negative feedback from a group of people, not just an individual who can be intimidated? And the answer is: conspiracy! Paid Protesters! Fake news, folks! That is not progressive, it is not healthy for our politics, and it’s exactly the kind of behavior that autocratic regimes around the world are always trying to normalize. Democrats, and all other small-d democrats, cannot start rewarding it.

That’s the context for this: Sanders has a long track record of defending authoritarian governments which call themselves socialist, communist, or otherwise leftist. Of course, authoritarian governments are more like gangster kleptocracies than “socialism” as Sanders sees it, but he just keeps rejecting opportunities to walk it back.

Too many progressive commentators with platforms have shrugged this off as some kooky Cold War thing that the media is blowing out of proportion, but it’s not just uptight Wall Street Journal opinion writers pushing back. A lot of Americans are Americans because their families ran for their lives from exactly these regimes. Five years of Latin American immigrants being Donald Trump’s favorite target, now we’re going to make people who fled Castro’s Cuba or Chavez’s Venezuela eat this shit sandwich? Mayor Pete Buttigieg was the first openly gay person running for the US presidency; was he supposed to add a bit in his stump speech about whether a dubious “literacy program” would help him in a concentration camp? The world is a complicated place where American leaders have to make hard decisions and don’t always get to work with nice people. That’s no excuse to be casual about rubbing salt in raw wounds.

I haven’t spent the past three years angry that Donald Trump fluffs up dictators because I’m looking for excuses to hate Donald Trump. Really, I’m good there. I’m angry about it because democracies are good and dictatorships are bad. When the American president is clear on that point, it really can make the lift just a little bit lighter for activists and freedom fighters and oppressed people doing the hard work of citizenship all over the world; when the American president fails to speak that truth, their work gets a little bit harder. I think their work is hard enough already.

You know that cliché about “Mussolini made the trains run on time”? It’s fascist propaganda. “Sure he locked up dissidents and inspired Hitler, but Infrastructure Week was a real success!” And he fucking didn’t even, because of course he didn’t, he was busy murdering everyone who could burst his narcissistic bubble. The Italian fascist regime polished up a few tourist-friendly routes and boasted to privileged visitors about how the trains were running on time. Then those visitors would go home with an innocuous sound bite to sanitize a brutal regime. Look, Prince Mohammad is letting women drive [and imprisoning the activists who made that a winning issue for him]! Sure, Putin is a heavy-handed old KGB guy, but he’s cracking down on corruption [as an excuse to imprison critics]. I’m not defending Castro, but hey, literacy program. Look, I’ve been to the Soviet Union, the bread lines didn’t look too bad on my guided tour!

Maybe the big money donors behind this Russian intelligence super PAC think Sanders will be susceptible to manipulation by their authoritarian regime because he keeps saying that he’s susceptible to manipulation by authoritarian regimes.

When someone seeking the United States presidency says that? Believe them.

I’m not saying Sanders is an aspiring dictator like Trump. I mean, I could be wrong, but that’s not my concern. A lot of politics is made up of civic habits. If we validate these tactics, we make bad habits that soften us up for a smart, focused Trump to come along in four or eight years. We can’t afford leadership that doesn’t understand, on a gut level, why those bad habits are dangerous.2

I’m not saying he’s the only flawed candidate on this issue, but he troubles me more than any candidate with even a slim path to the nomination. Representative Tulsi Gabbard is an exponentially more dangerous character – or at least she would be, if she somehow pulled ahead of “none of the above.” I have serious issues with former NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg; I’m less concerned about those issues because people can criticize Bloomberg without anyone mocking them for having been raped.

Because I think democracy is the most important issue on the ballot, I’m not going to mislead you with false equivalence. Sanders would not be as bad on Trump on these issues. He would not be stacking the courts with right-wing judges who are overtly hostile to voting rights, he doesn’t stand to rake in cash by cozying up to autocratic regimes, and an administration which pays lip service to democratic values is preferable to an administration which is overtly hostile to them. A vote to reduce harm can be cast with a clear conscience. It’s still the primary, though, so we have the chance to cast a general election vote for real improvement rather than damage control.

If I haven’t convinced you of anything, fair enough. If I have convinced you that this pattern is serious enough to consider as you’re voting in this primary … this isn’t one of those posts where I try to wrap up with a concrete suggestion about something you can do, for obvious reasons. I have a suggestion about voting tactically, though. Primary delegates are awarded proportionately to every candidate who makes it over what’s called a viability threshold. Basically, a candidate who gets 15% of the vote wins something like 15% of the state’s delegates, while a candidate who gets 14% gets zero. A vote for someone with 3% support is a vote for whoever wins the state, whether you like that person or not. Check FiveThirtyEight to see which candidates are polling above 15% (preferably above 20% to get outside the margin of error) and then choose your favorite of those candidates.

1A good argument for this particular system is that it gives candidates two chances to prove that they can build a coalition, because that is something Democratic presidents need to do. You can win an outright majority going into the convention, which requires satisfying a lot of diverse groups of people. If nobody can do that, then the convention gives you another shot to show you can win people over. If you have a plurality then you have a head start. If you can’t get from a plurality to a majority, you probably shouldn’t be nominated, because you would be a shitty president.

2The topic of this post is democracy, not politics, so I don’t want to go too far into it, but I do want to shoot down the bullshit counterargument: “oh, blah blah, knife to a gun fight, Democrats are wimpy little girly-men who always play by the rules, Republicans are big strong daddies who understand power, blah blah.” Guys? Guys. You’re not going to out-shitpost the Republicans; they have unlimited money flowing into sophisticated propaganda machines. You’re not going to out-bully the fascists as a means to an end; bullying is the end for them and they have a lot more practice at it than we do. You don’t get into a pissing match with a drunk. IDGAF about sinking to their level, it’s about refusing to fight on their turf. We’re not going to win their game on their terms.

[true79true-blog]

Online marketing strategy and Planning: The Path Map

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Starbucks enforced the internet marketing strategy by means of brilliant, catchy activities, a true and individual "front line" at the retail outlet level, and for often the most part, acknowledging any mistakes or perhaps shortfalls the fact that the idea might've run straight into. All of these activities happen to be traits, portraying a good significantly rooted culture the fact that is exuded from major to bottom of typically the Starbucks pecking order. And, adore 'em or maybe hate 'em, there's no question their great success, during a strained economy. Advertising Strategy v. Commercial governance is an incredibly sensitive issue around the globe. What we've furthermore seen is that the lot of companies and business masters are utilizing a depressed monetary state as a purpose (and in some cases, a great excuse) for the flaws throughout their business. For example of this, a major trend recently offers been layoffs. Larger companies are using weak financial systems as the purpose to be able to purge it has the workers and even cut positions, when it is aware just as well of which which is exactly the complete opposite of precisely what needs to take place. Or would it? It's become hard to tell. Is surviving a "depression" really as simple like, declare, reassessing your advertising and marketing strategy? While an volatile economy is troubling, high risk, and unforeseen, it's in addition an excellent evaluation regarding the flexibility of your own personal web marketing strategy. Your technique is not set in stone... the whole purpose of designing a technique in the first place can be for smooth routing through any given circumstance, if good or bad. Unfortunately, many CEOs and CFOs target their own marketing divisions first inside of lean periods, while the the truth is the fact that it should be investing in these kinds of regions therefore that its advertising administrators can adjust their strategy to survive-maybe even prosper, via tough times. An research through the blog of Third. Bruer, the owner in addition to head of a strategic sales and marketing communications firm in Portland, Or, lays all this out: "Most businesses deal with marketing as a discretionary cost, getting it an easy target for budget cutters. It's almost like marketing is the luxury paid for only whenever times are even. Much less customer demand, much less we can afford marketing, possibly even regular thinking goes. But really, can we ever before find the money for not to market? It's natural to wish to preserve cash during a downturn. I was initially a employer for practically 14 years, and so I'm sympathetic. But the trend is to make great slashes in marketing as soon as gross sales head south. Companies generally start by minimizing as well as eliminating outside expenses, such as marketing and advertising, activities, benefactors, research. Then when that's not enough, they lay down off marketing employees, sometimes the entire department. Typically the net a result of gutting advertising is to stifle age group of customer awareness, need and retention only when these things are needed almost all. It's the penny-wise, pound-foolish decision. " Your own personal Internet marketing strategy Although marketing method isn't touchable, its function in company is only as dreadful as often the product or service getting offered. It's contribution has significance by every stage of a business approach, from pregnancy in order to delivery and far beyond these kinds of four features of analysis, planning, individuality and economy. Marketing approach will continue to keep fold itself into enterprise plans as long as that is done and executed properly. Exploration on your current industry and challengers may enable you to develop and even formulate a suitable, flexible strategy. From below, your advertising plan may act as helpful information of which will bring your strategy to existence, obtaining in addition to exceeding the particular targets outlined, all while establishing your own personal corporate lifestyle and personality. Remember, the particular culture item works a pair of methods. Your culture helps you to form typically the strategy, and right after that strategy will support your own culture. And finally, the approach must be both robust and flexible enough to face up to the most difficult or capricious of circumstances, such as an economic depression, new trends or even competitors throughout your industry. Strategy is usually a small piece associated with a lot larger picture. The idea can become overwhelming in times, sure, nonetheless they have part of the voyage. Along with devotion, organization, and a safe bet marketing team (ahem! B&A), the portions will come as well as ease, allowing for the really amazing personality of your current business enterprise to shine, plus gains to follow soon after that.

[frenchpsychologistindubai-blog]

French Psychologist in Dubai

Depression and Its Causes

Depression can happen at any point in life. It often appears without any logical reason, plunges us into a world of disturbing strangeness. We no longer feel ourselves. It reveals itself to us insidiously with its train of symptoms: black thoughts, loss of pleasure in our daily activities, no desire to get up in the morning, sleep disturbances, eating disorders and social isolation.

The relationships with relatives are also disturbed. We do not recognize ourselves.  What is really happening?  Depression unless, it is related to a specific event: loss of a loved one, accident, trauma is often related to the past.

Depression and Burnout

I would first like to talk about the difference between depression and burnout. Burnout is a specific mental health problem often misdiagnosed by specialists.

Burnout, unlike depression, is a mental disorder associated with a difficult and unsatisfactory working environment. It is important to talk about it here because, in Dubai, cases of burnout are not uncommon.

This is associated with long working hours, constant pressure to lose one’s job and finally having little time and room to find another one … Often, some executives are sent on a mission to Dubai, with the promise of a promotion and better living environment, whereas the reality on a daily basis can be really challenging.

Burnout can occur in impossible work situations, where the company does not allocate the resources necessary for the proper functioning of the mission, plunging the individual into a paradoxical injunction. Working with many nationalities, whether managers or colleagues, who do not have the same criteria at all regarding work standards, can also be quite challenging.

The individual facing these new challenges can gradually consume all his forces. It happens that one morning he is simply not able to get up to work. The anxiety invaded him and end up suddenly completely out of energy. He is literally consumed from the inside.

It is necessary to quickly take action with an efficient medical and psychological care. Taking medication is mandatory and few can afford to take an appropriate sick leave in connection with their condition. A psychotherapy must be added to the medical treatment, to work on the causes, roots of the problem to release anxiety and pressure. Burnout reaches out more easily, individuals with high expectations on themselves, highly result-oriented and who cannot stand any kind of failure.

Depression and Grief

Depression may be related to the loss of a loved one, trauma, something that in our live breaches our capacity to adapt. Everyone does not experience these events in the same way and this is related to everyone’s resources. These resources and the ability to cope with bereavement, trauma, are linked to the strength of our “deep self” and of course our past.

An individual who has grown up in a safe environment in his childhood and who has been able to acquire a solid foundation on which to rely, in conjunction with receptive and grounded parents will be more able to cope with traumatic events.

On the contrary, an individual who cannot rely on his resources, in connection with a less secure experience, will be more threatened, confronted with traumatic events.

The mourning process can then lead to a breakdown and generate what is commonly called in psychoanalysis a melancholic depression.

It is an inability to mourn, the loss is unbearable for the individual and then threatens its own integrity. In fact, mourning is composed of several phases. At the beginning, there is the phase of denial, in which the loss of the loved one cannot be admitted.  After that, there is “the anger phase “why did this happen? Then come the phase of grieving, where people talk to their loved ones, following by the depression phase with an inherent feeling of sadness. Then comes the phase of acceptance where the individual can finally assimilate the loss and start getting better.

The melancholic individual is blocked in one of these phases.

This may also sometimes be related to conflicts with the deceased in the past, which leads to mourning tinged with ambivalent feelings, in a love-hate registry, but this is not always the case.

Family Depression: The Narcissistic Pact

A family with a difficult background can be unconsciously linked by what we commonly call the narcissistic pact in psychoanalysis.

This is a joint depression shared by the entire family group.  The child is then often the depository of depressive affects not elaborated by his parents, and which are related to their own history.

Indeed, a parent with a difficult past/childhood which hasn’t been metabolized by his psyche can then transmit these psychic contents in a totally unconscious way to his children.

Nobody talks about it, but we can feel that something is wrong: it’s the narcissistic pact.

This pact is resulting from the denial of depression, denial of the family’s past in order to protect the whole family from a depressive experience impossible to elaborate.

Parents who have lived through wars, having experienced difficult grief, a conflictual relationship with their own parents have a tendency do deny their emotional side. The child, being a small sponge, will feel this discomfort and become either the family’s nurse, or will be depressed or, on the contrary, will develop behavioral disorders linked to an internal malaise that cannot be understood or elaborated.  Substantive work on the unconscious issues of the family group will then be required to undo this past and psychically release each member of the family group.

This article aims to highlight the multiple causes of depression, depression can be linked to multiple causes, present or past. It is also possible that an actual event may revive an old depression that has not healed properly. It creates a physiological disorder in the brain that is always related to an episode of life that cannot fit into the psyche and comes back to the symptom by literally consuming the individual and his resources.

The French Clinic               3016, 3rd Floor, Block C/D, Al Razi Building No. 64, Dubai Healthcare City, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Phone:     +971 4 429 8450

Fax:     +971 4 429 8451

E-mail: vanessa@psychologistdubai.ae

Website:     www.psychologistdubai.ae

[nyullm2020]

A deep dive into two of my favorite classes at NYU

Hi all! I have had some questions from readers about what classes are like at NYU.

I thought I might procrastinate a little bit on my readings for my next class, and write up a post going a little more in-depth on two of the classes I have enjoyed the most while at NYU - one that was held during the Fall 2020 semester (Mass Media Law), and one from this current semester, Spring 2021 (Advanced Trial Simulation). For me, these classes are both representative of the incredibly diverse range of classes at NYU taught by adjunct professors, the close relationship NYU has with the broader legal community in New York City, and the practical orientation/style of many of the law school classes.

Mass Media Law 

This was taught by the wonderful Prof. David McCraw, the Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel (and lead newsroom lawyer) of The New York Times - who teaches in alternating semesters at NYU Law and Harvard Law. We examined how the First Amendment, in combination with tort law, statutes, and common-law principles, shaped the rights and limitations for media publishers. We covered topics like defamation/libel, protection of confidential sources, prior restraints on publication, invasion of privacy by publication, criminal liability for publishing classified information, legal limits on newsgathering, and access to information. 

Advanced Trial Simulation

ATS is designed to give students practical trial experience. At the outset of the class, the professors taught us basic trial skills (rules of evidence, do’s and don’ts of opening statements, closing arguments, and witness examination, etc) in a lecture format. 

The class was then divided into trial teams of four students each—with two plaintiff’s counsel and two defense counsel. The semester then had 4 simulated trials with different fact patterns - e.g. I had a wrongful death suit based on an allegedly defective drug. Students either had to deliver an opening statement or closing argument, and were required to run one direct examination of a witness and one cross-examination of an opposing witness (the witnesses were played by pre-law students from NYU’s undergrad programs, and you had to prepare them). Pre-law students also act as a jury and deliberate on a verdict, and then, unlike in real life, the ‘lawyers’ and the rest of the class are able to view the deliberations and hear the jury’s thought processes. 

Similarities 

There are a few similarities between these classes:

Credits: Both classes are 2 credits, meaning they each have 2 teaching hours (in 1 class) per week. This means they are both technically seminars, and aren’t on the same grading curve as the 4-credit core or substantive classes.

Adjunct Professors: They were also both taught at night because both were taught by incredible adjunct professors with full-time day jobs outside NYU. Mass Media Law was taught by the wonderful Prof. David McCraw, the Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel (and lead newsroom lawyer) of The New York Times - who teaches in alternating semesters at NYU Law and Harvard Law - while Advanced Trial Simulation is co-taught by Cravath, Swain & Moore Chairman and leading trial attorney Evan Chesler, and the also-brilliant Cravath litigation partner David Marriott.

No expensive textbooks required: For Mass Media Law, we had about 6 case extracts to read before class that we could download from the NYU Classes portal. For Advanced Trial Simulation, there was just a small course pack to read, that contained no cases - just the mock fact patterns, witness outlines, exhibits, and depositions we would use in our simulations. 

Differences

However, the classes differed in a few key ways:

In-person vs. Online: Mass Media Law was taught in a hybrid model - so while most students chose to attend online, I attended in-person each Tuesday night and was taught by Professor McCraw in person. He drove in from Connecticut every week! Advanced Trial Simulation is solely online.

Style of the Class (Lecture-Style vs. Simulation): Mass Media Law was taught in a somewhat traditional lecture-style, case-based model (with lots of slides that brought the cases to life, and a very engaging lecturing style from the professor!). Towards the end of semester, we had very interesting visiting lecturers come and speak to us - more on that below. In contrast, Advanced Trial Simulation dedicated the first 4 lectures to teaching us about the most critical rules of evidence for trial lawyers, and strategy/dos and don’ts for opening statements, direct examinations, cross-examinations, and closing statements (with video clips and other slides), followed by mock trials for the rest of the semester run by the students, with the professors acting as judges.

Manner of Assessment: Mass Media Law was assessed via an exam at the end of the semester, with a boost for class participation, whereas Trial Simulation was assessed on the basis of performance in a mock trial that ran over 2 weeks for each trial, with a boost for class participation. 

Overall Thoughts

I’ve found both classes to be really helpful and fascinating. Advanced Trial Simulation enabled me to immerse myself in trial strategy with my co-counsel, and I loved practically applying the lessons I learned in Evidence in Fall 2020 (e.g. impeaching a witness for inconsistent statements; objecting on the basis of hearsay). Hearing Professor Chesler and Professor Marriott’s tips based on their own stellar trial practice is an incredible opportunity.

Mass Media Law is probably my favorite class overall. Professor McCraw was so kind and engaging, and took the time to send us wrap-ups of the key takeaways from each class, and primers on the cases we would discuss next class. He cold-called, but you knew which case you would be called upon to discuss, so it wasn’t intimidating. He has also stayed in touch with me, and even put me in touch with people he knew in a city that I’m looking at for job opportunities.

The speakers we had in that class were also hard to beat, and included people like:

Ted Boutros - a leading media and entertainment litigation partner at Gibson Dunn, who spoke to us about his work acting for journalists who had had their White House press passes confiscated during the Trump Administration - Brian Karem of Playboy and Jim Acosta of CNN;

Mike Schmidt - the Times journalist and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who wrote #MeToo stories uncovering the sexual misconduct of Bill O’Reilly and Harvey Weinstein; and

Susanne Craig - the Times investigative journalist who covered all of the reporting on Trump’s taxes.

We discussed topics ranging from:

In the context of the tort of intrusions to privacy and the First Amendment - The artist Arne Svenson’s art exhibition, ‘The Neighbors’ - photos taken of unsuspecting people in a building next to his in NYC. 

Julian Assange’s indictment:

And Section 230 and the proposals to amend or repeal it:

Let me know if you have any questions about either of these classes - happy to discuss further!

[junker-town]

Deandre Ayton can be the Suns’ savior or an overlooked No. 1 pick

Deandre Ayton is already good. Can he be great?

The big man was immediately productive as a rookie with the Suns. Can he be impactful?

Whenever someone says Phoenix Suns, I think about Robert Sarver’s reign of terror, an unnecessarily complicated front office org chart and all the head-scratching choices it’s provided over the past two years, a frustrated Devin Booker and his frustrating talent, the never-ending game of musical chairs on the bench, and goats.

All are symptoms of the self-sabotage that reflect what the Suns are and have been. Unmentioned is Deandre Ayton, a 7’1”, No. 1 overall draft pick who averaged 16.3 points and 10.3 rebounds as a 20-year-old rookie. He should be at the center of Phoenix’s universe in the same way Luka Doncic and Trae Young are in Dallas and Atlanta. Or even a substantive symbol of change and growth, like Jaren Jackson Jr. in Memphis or Marvin Bagley in Sacramento. But instead, the expectations and excitement typically knitted into an aspiring franchise player’s DNA aren’t there, which is and isn’t Ayton’s fault.

The cynicism that corrodes everyone associated with the Suns organization makes the task of dragging them from the outskirts of the Western Conference quite a cross to bear. But separate from his circumstance, Ayton alone must be held responsible for the holes in his game that may prevent him from dominating modern basketball in the same way Doncic, Young, and Jackson Jr. soon will.

At the belly of his young career is a struggle between production and impact. How can he—or any traditional big man (i.e a non-primary ball-handler)—consistently influence games in a way that extends above and beyond the nightly double-double? Can they take over when a playoff series is on the line, force adjustments from the opposition, and use their physical gifts to dictate both sides of the ball?

These questions aren’t easy, particularly when directed towards someone with immense talent and just one NBA season under his belt. Ayton’s offensive function will likely toggle in several directions, depending on what type of players surround him at any given time, but big-picture reservations about relevancy and effectiveness grow a bit more urgent when defense is a question mark.

A couple months ago, Suns general manager James Jones appeared on ESPN’s The Jump and said this about his franchise center: “We expect him to take a big jump defensively. He needs to be a dominant defensive force...He has to get stronger. He has to recognize things a little bit quicker. But that comes with time.”

Indeed. Ayton has much to learn. He’s seven feet of chiseled brick that glides without instinct. Defensive anchors can’t be described that way. They must recognize their teammate’s mistakes in real time and then immediately transform into back-line insurance. Last year, Ayton was whatever the opposite of insurance is: Twenty players defended at least five shots around the rim per game, and none allowed a higher field goal percentage than he did.

The Suns were roasted at the basket and couldn’t force the mid-range shots most quality defenses are able to coax from an opponent. Ayton wasn’t entirely to blame—in every lineup he was surrounded by undersized or unequipped fours: T.J. Warren, Dragan Bender, Josh Jackson, Ryan Anderson, Trevor Ariza, Kelly Oubre Jr., etc.—but he was far from Phoenix’s solution. His fundamentals were all over the place. Flat hips. Low arms. Fickle feet:

Being large and taking up space can only do so much. Ayton was antsy and welcomed contact that served no purpose beyond forcing the referee to blow the whistle. Unguarded cutters whisked by whenever his eyes stayed on the ball. All big men find themselves in no man’s land from time to time. Ayton lived there:

But the thing about team defense is no one player can save it if another—or two, or three—routinely goes rogue. Ayton could’ve used a beefy tag-team partner in Phoenix’s frontcourt, and this year Aron Baynes will be exactly that. Over the past three years, the Celtics and Pistons were excellent on defense whenever Baynes played. He’ll shout instructions, take punishment, and protect Ayton in ways none of his teammates were able to last season.

Despite not playing a minute of power forward since he was drafted, Ayton should benefit from some time there this year. (Jones has talked about the possibility.) His post game is one reason to be bullish. Only seven players averaged more post-ups per game last season, and on a points per possession mark he was as or more efficient than Nikola Jokic, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Nikola Vucevic, per NBA.com.

With several teams—the Celtics, Blazers, Jazz, Nets, and Clippers, to name a few—momentarily abandoning the power forward position in favor of wings who allow more flexible options on both ends, Ayton’s contrarian bully ball can disrupt the NBA’s ongoing stylistic revolution instead of trying to fit inside it. (That’s a best-case scenario.) There was more skill than luck at the core of his impressive field goal percentage at the rim last year, and in situations where Baynes ties up the opposing center Ayton can find ways to bury a smaller defender. He makes it look so easy.

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Attacking with one’s back to the basket serves a purpose, and size will always matter when it’s combined with competence, but it’s not controversial to say that players like Ayton were a better fit 15 years ago, when those who do what he does were asked and expected to lift their team into perennial contention. Ayton is highly efficient, but thus far it’s been on shots that great offenses no longer depend on. It’s tough to reconcile with that fact, but his development isn’t static, either. There are other, encouraging dimensions to Ayton’s game that are plenty useful in this era.

As a muscular pogostick with tight-end hands, his potential as a roll man is off the chats, particularly with Ricky Rubio gift-wrapping lobs none of his teammates were able to provide last season. Rubio enters the year as a career 32.2 percent outside shooter, but working Booker, Oubre, and/or Mikal Bridges off the ball will help space the floor a bit whenever Ayton dives into the paint. Baynes, Dario Saric and Frank Kaminsky are all bigs who don’t hesitate from beyond the arc, either.

At the belly of Ayton’s young career is a struggle between production and impact

He’s as graceful as he is effective in the open floor, and has enough athleticism, strength, and aggression to normalize 16-rebounds-per-game campaigns. (When unleashed on the offensive glass Ayton knows how to finish: according to Synergy, he ended the year in the 92nd percentile on putbacks as a rookie.) If he can routinely draw double teams on the block, force help on the roll, and require multiple bodies to keep him off the glass, the Suns will undoubtedly be a better team when he’s on the floor, in ways that invigorate those around him.

Also, Ayton only attempted four threes last year, but if Monty Williams (a big man whisperer who helped mold LaMarcus Aldridge and Anthony Davis) is willing to extend his range a bit, the possibilities only grow. Ayton’s release on all the long twos he launched as a rookie was quick and smooth, and he makes his free throws. If he can become a pick-and-pop threat 25 feet from the rim, or simply stand above the break and create space for Phoenix’s guards and wings, his value will only climb.

If Ayton tops out as “polished Myles Turner” it won’t be the worst thing in the world, but the Suns probably also wouldn’t make any deep playoff runs. To eventually impose himself in fourth quarters during a playoff series, Ayton will need—in addition to premier defense—range, vision, and an ability to manufacture offense off the bounce. None of these qualities currently exist in his game—he averaged 0.41 dribbles per touch last year, which shades closer to support (Clint Capela) than star (Joel Embiid)—but there’s still plenty of time to fold them in and build on bits and pieces scattered throughout his rookie season.

A quick example: Ayton is not a great passer, but comb through tape of his assists and at least one hopeful pattern emerges. He already knows how to make release-valve kick outs that punish defenses when they trap the ball. This is small but significant.

A decade ago, the footwork, touch, and patience packed into his body would guarantee perennial All-Star appearances and raise Phoenix’s floor up to a respectable level. Ayton’s sheer size made him a privileged commodity. Today, he’s forced to adapt to his surroundings instead of having it be the other way around. But that doesn’t mean Ayton’s second season can’t end with people thinking about him before his organization’s endless missteps.

Phoenix’s most notable offseason moves were made, in part, to stabilize Ayton’s environment—from Rubio, to Williams, to Baynes. It’s a step in the right direction, though who’s to know if it will matter. Asking any one person to lead this franchise towards anything that remotely resembles sustainability is unfair. In countless ways, Ayton’s career, in or away from the Suns, can still go in so many different directions.

Still, their fans have little choice but to approach him with cautious optimism and reasonable expectations. The door for Ayton to become the savior they’ve been waiting for is wide open, but the areas of his game that took a nap during his rookie season need to wake up before he can take a step through.

[juniperpublishers-fashion-b-blog]

Fundamentals of Natural Dyeing of Textiles: Pros and Cons-Juniper Publishers

Introduction

India is rich in natural wealth and there are ample scopes to explore and revive application of natural dyes on textiles for growing consciousness of eco friendliness. Hence around the world, there are more and more information are now made available [1,2] to understand the chemistry of natural dyes and interaction between metallic mordant , natural dyes and natural fibres, to get maximum depth of shade of natural colour ants with reproducible shades by optimizing extraction, mordanting method and dyeing conditions and also to improve colour fastness for such natural dyed textiles of natural fibres like cotton, silk, wool and jute etc.

In spite of the better performance of synthetic dyes, recently the use of natural dyes on textile materials has been attracting people more and more due to the following reasons [3]

o Wide availability of natural dyes in India and its subcontinent and their huge potential of producing wide range of shades with skin and eco-friendliness.

o Growing consciousness about allergic and toxic effects of some synthetic dyes, while understanding the non-toxic and non-allergic nature of natural dyes.

o To protect the ancient and traditional dyeing technology generating livelihood of poor artisan/dyers, with potential employment generation facility.

o To generate sustainable employment and income for the weaker section of population in rural and sub-urban areas both for dyeing as well as for non-food crop farming to produce plants for such natural dyes.

o Availability of some archaeological study for conservation and restoration of heritage of old textiles of India for natural dyed textiles.

o Availability more and more scientific study report on application methods for natural dyeing of specific textiles.

Production of synthetic dyes is dependent on petrochemical source, and some of the synthetic dyes contain toxic/ carcinogenic amines which are not eco-friendly The present global consumption of textiles is estimated at around 30 million tonnes, and such a huge amount of required textiles materials cannot be dyed with natural dye alone [2]. Hence, the use of eco-safe synthetic dyes is also essential. But a certain portion of coloured textiles can always be supplemented and managed by eco-safe natural dyes that too on natural fibres, assuring/ creating environment friendly measure of dyeing textiles, at least to a certain percentages.

Natural dyes consume 75% of 48,000 tonnes of dye stuff produced in the country [2]. The market for the natural dyestuffs is though very small but has a growing trend. Many textile manufacturers are not using these dyes regularly because these dyes are not easily available in ready form and finally the process of natural dyeing become more expensive than synthetic dyes. Researchers are however working to find out a cost effective way of dyeing with natural dyes, but at the same time efforts are on for obtaining reproducible shades with appreciable colour fastness properties.

U.S.A is one ofthe major importers of natural dyed textiles from India [4]. There is also very good demand in European countries. The primary importers in Europe are Germany, France, Italy and U.K. with demand for natural dyes is growing continuously due to awareness towards ecological and environmental problems related to the use of synthetic dyes. Use of synthetic dyes has cut down significantly due to toxic effluent resulting from the dyeing process of these dyes. Therefore, natural dyed products represent the good opportunity for value added manufacturing as the process is eco-friendly. These products are comfortable for the wearer as it has soothing colour and non-allergic properties [3]. The use of natural dyes will also generate more employment for rural people because natural dyes are originated in villages were the waste lands are used to grow the dye yielding plants [2].

The alchemy of colour has its origin deeply rooted thousands of years ago. From the epic age this colour has played a very important role in human life. This inspired us to explore the vast storehouse of the nature's palette to initially paint ourselves then to dye the apparels we wore. Natural colorants are dyes and pigments that are obtained from plant, animal or mineral sources with or without any chemical treatments.

Today, when the world is facing threats of destruction from the synthetic toxic chemicals, eco-friendly awareness should be the major focus, else, it would be difficult to save this planet from compete extinction. Here lies the relevance of revival of this art of dyeing with 'Natural Colorants' or 'Natural Dyes' [4,5].

It is told earlier that in general introduction that the production of synthetic chemicals involves many chemical reactions requiring high energy. Moreover, there are many undesirable by-products generated during the reactions [4,5]. These toxic or environment un-friendly by-products have to be discharged in the rivers, ponds or into the atmosphere. These drawbacks of the synthetic dyes have prompted researcher to look for alternatives of producing eco-friendly products and technologies using natural dyes for dyeing. Moreover, recently the consumers have become very much conscious about the environment, renaissance of eco-friendly products and process like dyeing of textiles with natural dyes.

Natural dyes many times lack in uniformity and reproducibility of colour. Also, the major problem encountered is their availability of natural dyes in bulk quantity. There is limited availability of scientific information on standardization of the methods application [5] of natural dyes. Sometimes natural dyes do not produce acceptable level of colour fastness. The question of cost is also a factor to reckon with. Antimicrobial and UV protection properties of natural dyes need to be explored after their application on textile fabrics. Hence, in the absence of any precise information of scientific analysis and technical knowledge on dyeing different natural fibre based textiles with natural dyes, there is a need to study the performance of various natural colorants on natural textiles including protein fibres and cellulosic/lignocellulosic fibres (having compositional differences) separately under different pre-treated/post treated conditions [5] varying different mordants and other additives.

Natural dyes have been used as a means to colour textiles for centuries. All the dyes until the later half of nineteenth century were made of different parts of plants and animals. For thousands of years people all over the world followed the same basic techniques using roots, stems, barks, leaves, hard wood, berries fruits, flowers of various dye plants and tree, as well as from certain insects and shell-fishes. Most natural dyes are nonsubstantive which means that they have little colouring power within themselves, and require the aid of mordant to penetrate the yarn/fibre.

In recent years, there has been an interest manifested towards natural dyes by both the consumers and producers of textile; the reasons being bio-degradability and eco-compatibility of natural dyes. Some other associated advantages include expected non-toxicity/lower toxicity [6,7] and anti-allergen [1] and some medicinal value as well as antimicrobial and UV protective character of some of the natural dyes.

Definition of natural dyes

The Society of Dyers & Colourist's Colour Index (3rd edition) defines natural colouring matters as 'the natural dyes and pigments comprise of all colours obtained from animal and vegetable matter with no or very little chemical treatments [1]. They are mainly mordant dyes [1,2], but they also include some vat, few disperse/solvent dyes, some pigment colour, a few direct, basic and acid dyes' [1].

The term natural dye covers all the dyes derived from the natural sources like plants, animal and minerals i.e., derived from natural resources [8]. Natural dyes with very few exceptions are non-substantive, but must be used in consumption with mordants. A mordant usually a metallic salt has an affinity for both the colouring matter and the fibre and combining with the dye in the fibre it forms an insoluble precipitate or lake. Application wise, natural dyes include some vat dyes, a few solvent dyes, some pigments, and some direct and acid dyes. Only one natural basic dye is known but natural sulphur, disperse, azoic or ingrain dyes are still not available so far.

Classification of natural dyes as per application method

Natural dyes can be classified [1,5] in a number of ways. The earliest classification was according to alphabetical order or according to the botanical names. Later, it was classified in various ways, e.g. on the basis of hue, chemical constitution, application method. Most widely used classification is based on application method.

Classification of natural dyes on the basis of the method of application [1,5,9] as given below :

a. Mordant dyes: These are dyestuffs which require a mordant in their application as they have no affinity for the fiber being dyed. A mordant dye should have electron donating groups capable of forming a complex with the transition metal salt, e.g., madder, fustic, Persian, berries, kermes, cochineal etc.

b. Vat dyes: These are water insoluble dyes which are first converted to their water soluble form (reducing with Na- hydrosulphite and then solubilising it with alkali) and then applied to the fibres. The true colour is produced only on treatment with a hot soap solution. The soaping treatment completes the oxidation process, e.g., Indigo.

c. Direct dyes: Direct dyes are those dyes that have tremendous affinity for the cellulosic fibres. They are dyed from a boiling dye bath. Turmeric, Harda, pomegranate rind etc. are a few of the direct natural dyes.

d.Acid dyes: These dyes are applied from an acidic medium. The dye molecules have either sulphonic or carboxylic group (s) which can form an electrovalent bond with amino groups of wool and silk. An after treatment with tannic acid and tartaremitic, known as back tanning improves the fastness of these types of dyes, e.g., Saffron.

e. Disperse dyes: Disperse dyes has a relatively low molecular mass, low solubility and no strong solubilizing groups. These dyes have hydroxyl and/or amino groups which impart same solubility to the dye molecule. Disperse dyes can be applied on to hydrophobic synthetic fibre from neutral to mildly acidic pH. They can also be applied to silk and wool. These dyes can be post-mordanted with chromium, copper and tin salts, e.g., lawsone and many other flavone and anthraquinone dyes.

f. Basic dyes: Basic or cationic dyes on ionization give coloured cations and form an electrovalent bond with the -COOH group of wool and silk. These dyes are applied from neutral to mildly acidic pH. These dyes have poor light fastness, e.g. berberine.

Methods of extraction of natural dyes

The vegetable dyes can be taken from various sources like flowers, roots, bark, animal sources, mineral sources etc. The colour component present in these sources needs to be extracted so that it can be applied on the textile. Most vegetable dyes are extracted by pulverizing, grinding or soaking and boiling the herbs in water. The natural dyes can be extracted from dried solid raw material source of plant parts etc using aqueous method [5] i.e., by using boiling/hot water for the extraction with or without addition of acid/alkali/alcohol in extraction bath [10] at specific pH, MLR, Temperature and time followed by distillation ,evaporation and vaccum drying etc or by waterless supercritical carbondioxide fluid extraction [11], or solvent extraction by using soxhlet apparatus extraction [12] by use of alcohol and benzene mixture and by using rotatory vacuum pump/or doing the extraction under reduced pressure etc. Some water insoluble plant material like indigo leaves (i.e Natural indigo being vat dye type) needs to be fermented and reduced to release the glucosides of the dye and this fermentation and reduction and solubilisation can be done with use of natural reducing agent and alkali combination (instead of Dithionite or disulphide and Caustic soda used for redcing synthetic vat dyes) like combination of liquid jiggery and citric acid, use of paste of citrous fruits like tomato, lemons, ripened banana paste and Ash soaked water etc., in combination with use of lime in all cases and heating. Various studies have also been reported, where ultrasonic assisted extraction and enzyme assisted extraction have been also now being used to improve the yield of colour. The colour developed in natural dyeing on different textiles is sometimes pH dependant besides it is mainly dependant on type of mordant used besides dye concentration and mordant concentration as well. However combination of similar types of natural dyes in different proportion of compatible natural dyes are also another way for producing different shades for colour matching for combined shades.

Methods and Steps for dyeing with natural dyes

Prior to dyeing with natural dyes, the fabric is to be prepared by proper desizing, scouring and bleaching followed by usual pre-mordanting with single or double mordants applied in sequence. The colour much depend on the type of single or double mordants used by selecting a suitable mordant and natural dye-mixture combinations depending upon the colour needed and colour fastness level desired. Dyeing with natural dyes on textiles comprises of five to six steps:

i. Mordanting.

ii. Preparation of Dye liquor from natural source or extraction and solubilisation of dye.

iii. Exhaustion,

iv. Diffusion and migration,

v. Fixation and

vi. After-treatments (optional) for improving fastness or topping for tonal variation and final colour matching etc.

To facilitate completion of dyeing in the shortest possible time, most dyeing systems make use of different additives and auxiliaries such as pH controller, retarders or exhausting agents, levelling agents etc. For dyeing with natural dyes, depending on the type and nature of natural dyes taken, the dyeing procedure and conditions will vary. Natural dyes often show non-reproducible shades due to variation in conditions of dyeing or following non-optimised conditions of dyeing. Hence, standardisation/optimisation of dyeing methods for specific dye-fibre-mordant combinations is essential. Most of the natural dyes being mordantable; dyeing with such natural dyes is carried out using aqueous extracts of natural dyes in aqueous medium in normal/not aqueous dye-bath. Dyeing with natural dyes may be carried by pre-mordanting, post-mordanting, simultaneous mordanting, following standardised dyeing process at low temperature water bath or in boiling water bath [5], HTHP technique [13], with additives controlling the pH of aqueous medium i.e. (acidity or alkalinity) [14,15], or using ultrasonic dyeing technique [2,16-19], using single natural colours or mixture of natural colours [12,20] extracted appropriately and found compatible scientifically

The major steps used in dyeing with natural dyes include the following:

a) The application of the suitable metallic mordant (mordanting) or bio mordant

b) The application of the tannin substance e.g. tannic acid, myrobolan fruit (harda) having chebulinic acid , gallnut etc. which is mainly done to increase the receptivity of the textile fabric for the dye to combine with the mordant and may be called as Mordanting Assistant (MA) increasing more and more dye- (mordant + MA )-fibre complexing in greater way

c) Dyeing of the fabric by the exhaust method.

The 2nd step can either precede or follow or be a part of the 3rd step (pre, post or simultaneous dyeing and mordanting).

Dye-bath assistants used for dyeing textiles with natural dyes

a) Tartaric acid: Dye bath solutions are acidified with it and it is used to neutralize calcareous luster

b) Cream of tartar: This white crystalline substance is used in conjunction with mordants. It brightens colors.

c) Glauber's salt/Common Salt: It is used extensively by silk dyers to obtain level dyeing.

d) Boiled-off liquor: The degumming solution, when used in the dye-bath, causes the colouring matter to be attracted more equally and evenly by the silk and helps preserve luster. Suggested quantities are 50-100ml boiled-off liquor to 1 litre of dye-bath solution.

e) Enzymes: Use of suitable enzymes as pre-treatment or in combination in dye bath for natural dyeing also enhance colour yield.

Advantages & disadvantages of natural dyes

In the recent years there has been an upsurge in the field of natural dyes. This is mainly because of the fact that although the synthetic colours are fast, durable and comparatively easy to apply, the natural dyestuffs have certain advantages over them. Some of these advantages are listed below:

a) Fairly non-polluting and have lower toxicity.

b) The naturally dyed shades are soft, lustrous and soothing to the human eye [1,5,21].

c) They produce a wide range of colours. A small variation in the dyeing technique or the use of different mordants with the same dye can create totally new colours, which are not possible with synthetic dyestuffs [1,5,22].

d) Natural dyestuffs produce rare colour ideas [1,5,23,24] and are automatically harmonizing.

e) Unlike the non-renewable which forms the basic raw materials for synthetic dyes, the vegetable based natural dyes are replaceable and at the same time biodegradable [1,2,5] . They save energy because the raw-materials are not from petroleum.

f) In some cases like hard a, indigo etc., the waste in the process becomes an ideal fertilizer for use in agricultural fields [1,5].

g) Many plants thrive on wastelands. Thus, wasteland utilization is an added merit of the natural dyes [1-2]. Dyes like madder grow as host in tea gardens. So there is no additional cost or effort required to grow it.

h) This is a labour intensive industry [1,5,21,23,24], thereby providing job opportunities for all those engaged in cultivation, extraction and application of these dyes.

i) It can increase the textile exports and thus help India in earning foreign exchange.

j) Some of its constituents are anti-allergens, hence prove safe for skin contact and are mostly non-hazardous to health [1,5,25].

k) Some of the natural dyes are enhanced with age, while synthetic dyes fade with time [9].

l) Natural dyes bleed but do not stain other fabrics [1,5,21,26], turmeric being an exception.

m) Naturally dyed materials have good resistance to moth and are anti-allergens; hence prove safe for body contact and are mostly non-toxic therefore non-hazardous to health [5].

n) Fabrics dyed with natural dyes can provide good protection against ultra violet rays without altering wear properties.

o) They are used in the conservation and repairs of historic textiles.

p) They can replace synthetic dyes in food-stuffs for safety [2,5].

Despite these advantages, they carry some inherent disadvantages [1,5], which were responsible for the decline of this art. Disadvantages of natural dyes:

a) There are lacks in sufficient scientific database and information on standardizing recipe and shade cards for the use of natural dyes [5,27] on different textiles. Hence, natural dyers are in complete uncertainty about dyeing shades and fastness results to obtained which vary from plant source to source, crop to crop and season to season (time to time and place to place and also from one crop to another) and even for mordant to mordant and their purity and extraction method. All these variations, if thus scientifically standardised, may be partially or completely avoided.

b) The extraction, preparation of textile materials requires and mordanting and natural dyeing need skilled craftsmanship and is thus expensive [5,28]. The use of expensive mordants, extraction of colouring component from raw material, low colour yield necessitating the use of more dyestuffs and long dyeing time sharply increase the cost of dyeing with natural dyeing considerably higher than synthetic dyes. However, if the natural dyeing of natural fibres is properly done maintaining eco-friendly processes, it has aspecilitynich market for eco friendly natural dyed products of textiles particularly for expensive textiles and garments of cotton, silk and wool etc.

c) Poor scientific back up of a large part of this branch of science is still being explored [5,29] and to be explored for its commercial exploitation in industrial scale for both small, medium and large scale sector. Natural dyeing using Jigger machine or Continuous dyeing range etc are the present days' need.

d) Lack of availability of precise scientific/technical knowledge on extraction and dyeing techniques [5,30] by optimizing dye wise and textile fibre wise process development for each natural dye type are essential to avoid the above said uncertainty for colour/shades and their colour fastness characters .

e) The natural dyed textile fabric may change colour when exposed to the sun (UV light), sweat (human perspiration) and air (oxygen) and moisture (water). This cannot be controlled if not scientific research are done in depth to understand the exact reasons of these effects and exact chemical interaction present in such cases for exposure to any particular agency at any particular time, which are not yet known [5,27].

f) Nearly all-natural dyes with a few exceptions require the use of metallic mordants to fix them on to the fabric substrate. While dyeing, a substantial portion of the metallic mordant remains unexhausted in the residual dye bath and these metals may pose some effluent disposal problem [5,23,24]. So, useof hazardaous metallic mordants like Copper/chromium etc are to be avoided.

g) With a few exceptions, most of the natural dyes are fugitive [1,5] even when applied in conjunction with a mordant. Therefore, their colour fastness performances are generally not always adequate for modern textile usage. Use of acidic pH in dye bath or post treatment with natural or eco safe dye fixer is needed to improve colour fastness to wash, light, rubbing and perspiration etc.

h) The widespread use of natural dyes will result in a major shift in the land use pattern throughout the world[30] . In reality the area needed to satisfy the demand for the production of natural dyes is unavailable, because higher priorities are placed on the growing of food crops for the world's burgeoning population. However, this may be noted that objective of promoting more and more natural dyeing is not to replace synthetic dyeing in totality or as majority, but objective of promoting natural dyeing is to promote eco- friendly dyed products of natural textiles forniche market for specific customers.

i) All natural products are not fully toxicity free. Very little work has been carried out to assess the toxicity of different natural dyes [23,24]. Although most of the natural dyes in use are known to have medicinal values and either antibacterial/ antimicrobial properties or UV protective properties and are eco safe , but there are reports on one or two natural dyes/ colour source materials that have been identified as posing potential ecological or toxicity problems, e.g. quercetin is considered to be mutagenic. On the other hand, new synthetic dyes are fully tested for their levels of toxicity, and when introduced in the market, they have a full set of data on their toxicity test and eco-toxicity profiles. Such studies and database for each natural dyes are needed essentially

j) There is severe shortage of trained dyers for application of natural dyes. Most of the so-called textile chemists in the country are trained to use synthetic dyes. If this technology is to be used for producing eco-friendly textiles, generating revenue, employment as well as for creating a strong base for renewable resources for the dye industry, a comprehensive training and interaction programme has to be launched.

k) Dearth of books and scientific literature on the technology of natural dyeing providing required the scientific basis for their application on different textiles.

l) Non-availability of the natural dyes in pure or standardised form, which may be powder, paste or in the solution form for easy and direct application in known shade percentage. Using source raw natural material directly for dyeing has many limitations, besides its being of unknown composition and colour yield, it generates considerable amount of biomass that is cumbersome to handle in the dye- house.

Inspite of the aforementioned limitations associated with natural dyes, it is expected to have a separate good export market potential for fabrics from natural fibers dyed and printed with natural dyes, because of the rigid standards imposed by the advanced countries in combating toxicity, eco- hazards and pollution control problems.

Constrains for the uses of natural dyes on textiles

The major hurdles for using natural dyes are serious gap and lack/non-availability of scientific data base and knowledge base required for their successful application on textiles. Most of the researchers worked in this area generated very general information on types of shades/colour fastness properties and their dyeing related information reported in literature that does not have complete profile of its chemical nature, materials data specification sheet, standardized extraction and dyeing procedure and scientific reasoning for its nature of problems and solution and basis for nature of bonding between dye-mordant and fibre system, methods of improvement of colour fastness to wash, light, rubbing and perspirations and compatibility of different natural dyes to apply together as mixture of different proportions for obtaining compound shades and required matching etc. There are very limited information available on use of binary and ternary mixture of natural dyes and their interaction/compatibility etc, for which use of mixture of natural dyes are still limited in traditional natural dyeing sector and have not advanced satisfactorily.

Unnecessary adverse talk and biased opinion are opinion of synthetic dye manufacturer/users against the use of natural dyes, where some of their logics are being over emphasised deliberately. One must keep in mind that natural dyes are NOT a substitute of synthetic dyes. They have their own market and any expansion in the market of natural dyed products is not going to be at the cost of losing synthetic dyes.

Colour fastness of natural dyes

Color fastness is the resistance of a material to change in any of its colour characteristics, to the transfer of its colourants to adjacent materials or both. Fading means that the change of colour strength (lightening or darkening) on washing or rubbing or in contact with human perspiration or on exposure to light. Cook [31] has described the use of post treatment with natural tannin related natural materials as after-treatment for improving the wash fastness and use of natural UV absorbers for improving the light fastness of mordant able natural dyes on cotton. There are many pre-treatments and post treatments known for improving either of wash-fastness, rub-fastness and light fastness of textiles dyed with synthetic dyes, but such treatments on textiles dyed with natural dyes are still very few. So, exploring such fastness improver from natural materials is essential.

The light fastness is the resistance of dyestuffs to the influence of UV-light energy [32], especially the ultraviolet (UV-A) part of the electromagnetic spectrum. UV light is subdivided into three category e.g UV-A (320-400nm), UV-B (280-320nm) and UV-C (100-280nm). The shorter is the wavelength (X), the higher is the energy E and higher is the damage to dyestuff or human skin (as per Einstein's rule: E= hv = [h X c/X)]. Fortunately UV-C is fully absorbed by ozone layer in the higher atmosphere (stratosphere), the usual content of UV-B in the total radiation intensity is less than 1% and is not that harmful, while to earth most common part of UV light reaches easily from Sunlight is UV-A part (320-400nm), which is about 5.6%. So, identifying of some UV absorbers from natural materials capable of absorbing UV -A part i.e in the region of 320-400nm and their application to dyed textiles are to be established.

The light fastness of the applied dyestuffs is sometimes also connected to the fading or inherent yellowing tendency of the fibre itself. Yellowing by UV Light exposure and associated damage to the fibre itself by exposure to UV light also accelerates fading of colour with or without photo-initiated fading of dyestuff[31] . Fading by UV light is generally promoted by moisture, heat, oxygen in air and other factors. The interactions of these influencing factors, including UV-absorbers photo-sensitizers, radical scavengers, singlet oxygen quenchers and their possible chemical reactions and interactions are quite complex. Moreover light fastness of natural dyes depends on its UV-absorption character of that dye [21,24,33]. Some natural dyes have inherent UV protective nature like anar peel/pomegranate rind.

Poor wash fastness of many natural dyes is mainly attributed because of weak dye-fibre bond formation between the natural dye -mordant and the fibre, change in hue due to breaking of dye- metallic mordant-fibre complex during washing for ionisation of the natural dyes during washing [12]. Since most of the natural dyes have hydroxyl groups which get ionised under alkaline conditions/acidic conditions and hence many fabrics dyed with natural dyes under acidic conditions change colour on washing with alkaline detergents or soap. Wash fastness of the natural dyes much depends on their chemical nature and type of bonds dye-mordant-fibre as a coordinating complex formed with specific dye-metal salt mordant-fibre combination. But as per expectations, many times there is less or limited very little or no such complex are formed actually and only H-bonding are formed causing poor wash fastness, which may be due to many reasons like stereo specific non fitting of physical structure/orientation of dye structure and fibre structure or any other problems.

Rubbing fastness is assessed by measuring change in colour on the rubbed textile surface or assessing the staining to the abrader white cloth after abrading in both dry and wet conditions (for wet rubbing fastness , additionally the migration of colour to the abrading cloth by bleeding is also included). Depending on the kind of fibre, especially its tensile strength, small abraded coloured fibre particles may fuzz out showing loss of depth of colour on the rubbed textile surface. If the dyestuff involved is water soluble and not sufficiently fixed on the fibre surface, this can also be the reason for staining during rubbing. Rub-fastness ratings, according to the standard grey scales for both loss of depth (fading) and staining scale, range from 1 (poor rating) to 5 (best rating). Parameters that influence rubbing fastness of natural dyes include:

a. Molecular size and structure, chemical nature and fixation mode of Natural dyes used.

b. Type of mordants and Concentrations of mordants.

c. Concentration of natural dyestuff, shade%, and extent of diffusion of dyes.

d. Dyeing procedure, degree of fixation and extent of surface dyeing and ring dyeing.

e. After treatment with dye fixing agents, softeners, silicones and cross linking agents.

f. Types of fibre and its tensile strength and dry and wet abrasion resistance.

g. Type of textiles used as abrading cloth in contact: Its surface, kind of fibre and fabric.

h. Intensity of the contact: pressure, time, moisture and temperature.

The influence of the moisture is taken into account in the test methods (dry or wet crocking tests). Wet cellulosic fibres may be partly damaged by rubbing, leading to additional staining. The rubbing force for the wet testing procedure is about double the rubbing force for dry rubbing. Therefore the wet rubbing ratings of the same sample are always poorer than the dry ones (up to two rating difference). For natural dye, if there are more unfixed dyes on the surface and when dyes are only bond by H-bonds without mordanting, both the dry and wet rubbing fastness may be inferior.

To know more about Journal of Fashion Technology-https://juniperpublishers.com/ctftte/index.php

To know more about open access journals Publishers click on Juniper Publishers

[ramajmedia]

Children of Morta Review: A Beautiful But Tedious Action Roguelike

Children of Morta will probably get some substantive updates in the coming months, but it currently pales in comparison to other action roguelikes and won’t hold most gamers’ attention for too long.

Crowd-funding and pixel-art-led games go hand in hand. Platforms like Kickstarter have introduced fans to wildly ambitious, gorgeous creations unrelated to publisher interest, and we have a bevvy of modern-day treasures as a result: games like Moon Hunters, Songbringer, Hyper Light Drifter, and Wizard of Legend. The latter is probably the most fit comparison point for the new family tree action roguelike Children of Morta; both will see deployment on the Nintendo Switch, both invoke the rhythm of repeat playthroughs to unlock content, and both are obviously amateur projects by budding developers. Children of Morta is certainly worth a look, but the amount of key mechanics and concepts that the game gets wrong grants it a considerable distance from greatness. Future patches (including a promised online co-op feature) may shrink that distance, but it’s a hesitant recommendation as it is.

The building blocks are there, though. As an action roguelike with a pronounced emphasis on narrative (in itself a rare and worthy ambition), Children of Morta quickly introduces players to the Bergsons, a multi-generational family of protectorate forest-dwellers overlooking their dominion. If you saw where the Bergsons lived you might feel a similar pang of ownership, as the cliffside manor on this otherworldly terrain presents a spectacular view. Sometimes the game looks eerie and uncanny but other times it feels cozy, intimate, and familiar, like cutscenes where the Bergsons eat dinner together around the table. In an understated but inspired decision, the manor itself functions as a menu screen in between forays into danger, where the uncle’s workshop lets you upgrade family member abilities, and Grandma Margaret’s library adjusts drop rates and other affairs. You can also just watch family members pacing in their rooms and gain entry to their thoughts, which usually amounts to a few different lines at different points in the game.

Related: Astral Chain Review - Another PlatinumGames Classic

So far, so good, but it should be mentioned here that Children of Morta goes the “one-omniscient-narrator-and-no-other-voice-actors-at-all” route, a strained creative choice that does get in the way of immersion in the plot tale. The narrator himself is decent, but also a little too precious and predictable, sounding like anyone you might hear reading the title card text from an old fantasy film. The intention seems to be for this narrative to be presented as a storybook, but it’s something we’ve seen a lot in film and video games before, and feels too cliché for the game’s clear attempt at innovation in the genre. The family members are all recognizable archetypes — all-knowing grandmother, handyman uncle, hot-headed younger sibling, etc. — but the brevity of the game prevents significant investment in any one of them, one point among many which compromises the game's thesis.

The gameplay is definitely exciting at first blush. At various points throughout the initial stages, you’ll gain access to additional Bergsons to choose from at the start of a dungeon run. The pater familias John carries a sword and shield and, like his kinfolk, additional abilities will emerge through XP upgrades, where each button on the controller will eventually be used in combat (XP points and ability unlocks are always permanent). He can swing a sword, bring up his shield to block damage, and call down a rain of ghostly swords. Conversely, Linda is an archer, with her abilities requiring safe distance from any opponents. The youngest daughter Lucy is a diminutive spellcaster, shooting fireballs and calling up cyclones to tangle up enemies.

Occasionally, family members get afflicted with slight debuffs which will push you to use others at certain times, though none of this ever seemed to work as expected (90% of the time, despite any in-game alerts stating otherwise, all family members were functioning perfectly at the start of a run). Additionally, the different family member classes seem to beg for co-op gameplay, an easy enough option for friends on the couch. Otherwise, online co-op is promised to release soon, and may very well improve direct elements of the basic game as a result. The main tank-oriented family member unlocked at approximately 1/3rd into the game is more or less unplayable alone, which hints at this co-op intention, but will clearly frustrate people who want to play Children of Morta on their own. Playing on controller you’ll also realize that Linda is virtually unusable, since the right analog stick coordinates the direction of her shots, but one of her abilities can’t be activated effectively unless you bring out the mouse and keyboard. Aside from this character, though, the game feels like it was built for a controller.

Still, that detail is one of many hinting at the semi-finished state of the game. Regardless of the years spent in development, Children of Morta is very rough around the edges in a numerous ways. The few enemies that pop up in the different biomes are simplistic and unsatisfying to fight, with occasional elites revealed that have one or two additions to their move-sets. In a diverse game like Risk of Rain, these mostly mindless mobs would be easy enough to forgive, but Children of Morta has no comparable item and upgrade variety, a key component of action roguelikes that is interrupted on two separate fronts. First of all, most upgrades you’ll run into are completely dull, adding a tiny increase to critical hit or dodge percentage or something of the like, slight boosts to aspects that have little to do with combat feel. Secondly, each run consists of a single biome and abruptly ends, as players are yanked back to the Bergson home after completing a given area’s one to four stages, so there’s no real overpowered or underpowered potential in any given playthrough. For an action roguelike game this seems completely nonsensical, and makes each run feel inconsequential and bland.

Randomization within these biomes is minimal, too, with a very small assortment of chance rooms subject to the RNG. Yes, there are occasional story-focused rooms which will appear the first few times you attempt a level, but even these usually have no lasting affect on the way you play or experience the game; an early encounter sees the Bergsons taking in a baby wolf, which promises some actual change to how the game is played. Maybe the wolf becomes a familiar, or unlocks a special ability back at the home? Sadly, similar to other encounters, this wolf has no effect on the game whatsoever, aside from a new sprite lazing around the house that cannot be interacted with at all.

The expectations and disappointments persist throughout, making it somewhat clear that corners (and content) was cut prior to release. Other details, like characters who have died showing up in later cutscenes or on-screen text misread by the narrator, only hammer that point home further. Early levels imply real engagement, immersion, and randomization potential, but running through the game will only take most players ten hours or less, and they will find that they’ve been repeating the same actions over and over with little in the way of meaningful surprises between levels. Even most bosses have minimal attacks, and the majority may be bested on a first attempt, which seems outlandish for a game which expects multiple playthroughs and doesn’t present any special drops or benefits from boss kills — which, admittedly, would be pointless, since you're always sent back to the manor after they’ve been defeated.

Years ago, Children of Morta might have been seen as an ambitious and mostly acceptable action roguelike. These days, with so many other viable options available, the content of the game seems withered and its attention misguided, with an ultimately clumsy but well-meaning narrative that meanders and stumbles throughout. The graphics never falter, though, making the whole of it feel like a very strong proof-of-concept that stumbled on its way to final release. As with most things, Children of Morta will probably get some substantive updates in the coming months, but it currently pales in comparison to other action roguelikes and won’t hold most gamers’ attention for too long.

More: Children Of Morta Is A Narrative-Heavy Co-Op Action Game (Preview)

Children of Morta releases Tuesday on PC, with a Nintendo Switch release planned for October. A digital copy was provided to Screen Rant for purposes of review.

source https://screenrant.com/children-of-morta-review/

[burnouts3s3]

How do Video Games handle Female Protagonists?

(Disclaimer: The following is a non-profit unprofessional blog post written by an unprofessional blog poster. All purported facts and statement are little more than the subjective, biased opinion of said blog poster. In other words, don’t take anything I say too seriously.

Author's Note: The following concerns FEMINISM and VIDEO GAMES. If you don't wish to discuss FEMINISM and VIDEO GAMES, maybe you need to read this article. Don't worry, I'll post some movie reviews later).

How do Video Games handle Female Protagonists?

So, Horizon: Zero Dawn is going to come out next week and the general gaming public will experience what Ubisoft has been hyping up since E3. Horizon: Zero Dawn will take a bold risk; starring a big budgeted, AAA game with an original IP with a female protagonist.

It's true; there used to be a time when female protagonists were no big deal. But thanks to ballooning production budgets that can outspend even the most expensive Hollywood blockbuster and a divided gaming community, discussion of the topic has gotten heated.

And already, I can hear the endless chorus of thinkpieces of "Why aren't there more women protagonists in video games" being prepared once the game releases, from the usual sites of Polygon, Kotaku, IGN, Giantbomb, Destructoid, etc.

So far, word of mouth is that the game is pretty good. Even sites like Dualshockers are giving it a recommendation. (It gave it a 10 out of 10, hailing it as a masterpiece) while independent Youtubers, such as AngryCentaurGaming are giving it a Must Buy rating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7OP0g3Arzw

But, the question remains: In an industry that seems to be rivaling if not dominating other entertainment mediums such television and movies.

So, let's ask the question: Why aren't there more video games featuring female leads?

(CAVEAT: When I refer to video games, please note I'm mostly referring to games mostly found on PCs and consoles as opposed to iPhones. While I accept that games like Candy Crush or Pokemon GO 'are' video games, they are vastly different types of games with different control schemes, gameplay mechanics and monetary fees than those usually found in traditional games. Yes, there are exceptions to the rule).

Method #1: Pick your gender.

Examples: Any game which allows a character creator (such as Bioware games), or games where the game prompts you to select between a male and a female character (such as Dishonored 2)

This is the usual method when RPGs and other "simulators" want to give you a "personal" experience. They allow you to create your own character, give you a variety of options and let you decide how you want to play.

Overall, I'm fond of this message. It allows the player to explore themselves and potentially other options if they so choose. They don't dictate how you play; they just give you options.

But even this method has its setbacks. For one thing, the extent of how Non-Playable characters react or don't react to your gender is up to the individual game. And even with the most extensive character creator in the world, there's only so many options that can be allowed. Even the impressive Black Desert Online only has so many options. The game can handle so much.

Also, if the characters are voiced, that can add a HUGE production budget to the game. Voiceover work needs to be constantly recorded to cover EVERY aspect of the game and if you're doing the 1 male, 1 female voices, that can almost double the production budget.

But having a character creator also has its drawbacks. There's a certain amount of limitations that having a character avatar has that limits the potential in both the animation and the narrative.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6PUReOuHVw

Some games opt to choose between choosing a set male and set female character, as to make things cheaper and manageable. Again, it's a valiant effort, but most of the expenses don't necessarily go away.

Method #2: Have 2 Protagonists in the video game, one male and one (or more) female, and split time between the both of them.

Examples: A game which features one male lead and one female lead and forces perspective switches between the two of them during set times. (Such as Tales from the Borderlands, Dreamfall: Chapters, The Last of Us and Broken Age).

This seems like another solution the medium is adopting. Instead of taking any sort of stance or having to pick between two, the game insists on having both. The game is divided up between a male protagonist and a female protagonist. Sometimes they go along with each other, other times they are separated from one another and switch perspectives as given moments of the game.

You can see this in a lot of "story focused" games such as games made by Telltale or other episodic adventures such as Dreamfall Chapters and Broken Age.

While dividing the game to a 50/50 split seems like a well-intentioned idea "on paper", the matter of fact is, it's almost impossible to measure when both protagonists are given equal screentime as player agency almost always throws this out the window. It's very likely someone gets stuck on a puzzle playing as one protagonist and can't advance until they look up a solution online.

And while more focus is given to the female protagonist compared to other games nowadays, there's no guarantee that the female protagonist's story is as interesting, if not less so, than the male protagonist's. I've been seeing this a lot lately, and while the male protagonist can be a bumbling idiot for which ridiculing him is common among the game, there's a good chance that his story is much better written than the female's.

Between Vella and Shay in Broken Age, Zoe and Kian in Dreamfall Chapters, Fiona and Rhys in Tales from the Borderlands, the strength of the writing shines in the male protagonist's story. Their actions are related and continue to relate to themes and plots found early in the episode. Their arcs are fully fleshed out. Their actions have consequences through ACTIONS, not simply lipservice. The female character might be more progressive and more forward-thinking, but without a substantive plot to carry said character, it's all going to waste.

Again, strength in storytelling should be about 'quality' not, 'quantity'. As much as it would be easy and well-intentioned to take a measure, divide gameplay and story time between two protagonists, if a male protagonist's story is more compelling and emotionally driven than the female one's is, it doesn't matter what gender ratio you have; people will be drawn to the male's regardless of what the developer's did.

Focus should be made on how the emotionally engaging the story is, not how much poster space a character takes up on a box cover.

Method #3: Have a singular Female Protagonist without a male one and focus on her.

Examples: Any game that stars a female protagonist and doesn't have a male protagonist to switch to or embody. (Such as Life is Strange, Metroid, Mirror's Edge or Horizon: Zero Dawn).

This is the most ambitious and most risky of the options. In an industry where Call of Duty can still print money and earn a net profit on an annual basis, starring a female protagonist is often very risky, especially for money conscious investors who would rather have money than say any social statement.

Usually, these games play it safe and don't do much outside the status quo of AAA gaming. They usually just swap out a normally male character and put a female character there, and she does the jumping, the running, the climbing and all sorts of action platforming. As such, the investors usually tie in these games with a franchise that's usually recognizable, such as Tomb Raider or Metroid.

Using an original IP is almost risky. If the general public and gaming community hasn't heard about your game, there's a good chance it won't make the money it needs to. As such, they decide to go small and release indie games or use a crowdfunding service such as Kickstarter, Patreon or Fig.

As such, investors, publishers and developers are hesitant to use this method. Sure, the industry thinks you're a genius when something like Life is Strange or Horizon: Zero Dawn goes gold, but if you manage to flop hard (such as the case of Mirror's Edge: Catalyst) or underperform but make up your money over a longer period of time (Such as the rebooted Tomb Raider franchise), don't be suprise if a sequel takes years to get made.

Method #4: Do a spin-off title which stars a secondary female protagonist and have it as a solo DLC.

Examples: Any game that features a female character that was originally a side character in a franchise and put it out in a cheaper DLC that may or may not require purchase of the original game. (Such as Infamous: First Light or Uncharted: The Lost Legacy).

This is usually a spin-off of a bigger title and costs much less to purchase. It also doesn't require the original game to play. As with the case of Infamous: First Light, the game is a solo title in which you play "Fetch", a female character found in Infamous: Second Son.

While it's cool to play the game, it also means it gets a reduced production budget, will not be quite as large as the original game. But, there's an incentive to playing the original game, as having a save file will unlock 'bonuses' (such as being to play as Delsin).

As of right now, there's not a whole lot of information to go on with Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, but based on various articles, it seems like they'll be following in the footsteps of Infamous.

http://archive.is/vMvOM

Final Thoughts

I don't want to discourage any developers or publishers to shy away from making female characters. But, analysis shows that simply putting out a video game with a female lead doesn't necessarily generate sales and it's especially troublesome in an industry where the majority of the games cost 60 USD.

Overall, I think the video game industry needs variety. It needs variety of ideas. It needs variety of protagonists. It needs variety of outlets and pricing models. It needs a variety of perspectives and point of views. Most of all, it just needs variety.

[kennethmjoyner]

Guest Column: How the Global Pandemic Is Driving Innovation at Firms and Creating New Value for Clients

One of the biggest and most pleasant surprises emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic is how rapidly and effectively the legal industry is innovating in response to remote work mandates. And based on conversations that I have had with GCs of large corporations and big law partners, the dominant sentiment regarding changes to the workplace has been very positive.

In fact, top legal professionals in this large law sector, whose jobs are focused on innovation, are invigorated by what they see. A decade’s worth of social and technological innovation has happened in just a few months. Cultural resistance in the profession to doing things differently — which has been pervasive for decades — has virtually evaporated, opening up a multitude of opportunities for further innovation and for serving clients in new and productive ways.

These opportunities are especially welcome as COVID-19 presents other challenges related to risk, liability, privacy, compliance, and legislative changes. The continued technological advances and product launches we are seeing amidst this crisis are a perfect example of ways the legal industry is pivoting and adopting to stay abreast for themselves and their clients.

Mandates and existing infrastructure drive rapid change

Before detailing the success story, however, let’s acknowledge the transition to remote work has not gone smoothly for every organization, particularly for those that did not already have infrastructure like IP telephony in place before the pandemic arrived or were not already working at least somewhat in the cloud. Some firms struggled to adapt because suddenly they were trying to do two things at once — rolling out new technology in a virtualized environment while training their employees to adopt and use that technology effectively.

But for firms that were laying the groundwork for the future before the pandemic hit — that had already replaced traditional phone systems with VoIP and had been using applications like Zoom or Microsoft Teams to conduct meetings — the outcome has been positive. The pivot to remote work was not only exceptionally fast (as little as 12 hours for some firms) but adoption rates, which typically hover around 60% in law firm technology rollouts, are very close to 100%. Almost overnight we learned that with some basic infrastructure in place and a mandate forcing the removal of barriers to acceptance and adoption, dramatic transformation can happen very quickly — opening the door to further innovation and more creative thinking down the road.

The resilience with which firms have made the current transition would have been unthinkable when they were responding to the Great Recession of 2008. That’s when we saw a compression of rates, reduction of budgets and the migration of work in-house. But there’s little room left for that kind of cost-cutting now, and the kind of innovation the current crisis highlights tells a very different story.

Lawyers now realize they no longer must work down the hall from colleagues to be effective. Firms are exploring new ways to collaborate with clients (who are also learning to work remotely). Associates initially wondering, “When will we get back to work?” understand that the old ways of working are no longer obligatory.

Suddenly organizations are able to implement improvements to some of the most ingrained processes and bottlenecks in their workflows because the cultural barriers have vanished. The hard work and hard choices that progressive firms have been making to increase their agility and position themselves to compete in a dynamic digital and global marketplace are now paying off in a big way.

Addressing the human side of rapid technological change

While implementation of remote-work technology has been remarkably frictionless for many firms, a more subtle problem has been managing changes in the way employees interact with each other and with clients. Many of us did not anticipate, for example, that transitioning to virtual forms of communication could present challenges when it comes to mentoring younger colleagues and nurturing the ongoing learning that happens between lawyers with different levels of experience and at various stages in their careers.

Before the pandemic, it may not have been obvious that effective learning and collaboration cannot always be accomplished by a phone call. Firms are discovering that a thoughtful approach to setting up videoconferences is essential to see the body language and facial expressions of colleagues (and clients) and understand how they are responding. Using an application like Zoom, for example, is not automatically the equivalent of having a conversation around a conference room table where people can interact naturally in a very personal way. Some firms are experimenting with various applications and deploying them in a way that preserves the nuances of human interactions. Achieving high rates of technology adoption means finding ways to change human behavior and habits, and this requires an open mind and a willingness to try different approaches to implementation.

Changing technology priorities

Firms also report their technology priorities have changed radically in the wake of the pandemic.

Initially, investigation of AI tech solutions took a back seat to the required implementation of remote working applications and transition to the cloud. But now, many firms are refocusing on process and financial improvements and the use of data, analytics and technology to inform those improvements.

Other firms are accelerating efforts around matter planning and mapping additional services and technology offerings for every practice area, and using the data generated across the litigation lifecycle to build out more precise budgeting and pricing, develop more effective leveraging strategies, and make more effective use of the work product and knowledge stores they already have.

At the same time, organizations of all sizes need guidance on liabilities and risks associated with office openings (i.e. requirements of employees working from home/coming on site, social distancing procedures on site, etc.), accounting for government loans, legislation related to data-sharing and data privacy, the use of force majeure clauses, actions related to company growth and shareholder value.

Much of this information can be quickly and easily obtained through various legal tech products from eDiscovery to practical guidance. And despite the pandemic, we have seen several companies announce free resources, product enhancements and even new products that lawyers are gravitating toward to serve their clients.

Redefining value for clients

Finally, firms understand their clients may worry that work-at-home mandates could undermine the quality of the legal services they are paying for, and they realize clients are in a more leveraged position in the current environment to make decisions regarding outside counsel. Alignment of innovation initiatives with clients’ strategic business interests has taken on a new urgency. Firms are actively engaging clients in critical discussions about their needs, priorities and expectations to ensure they are delivering the value their clients expect.

Firms can no longer talk about client outcomes in abstract terms. There need to be ways to measure outcomes, whether the focus is on speed, efficiency or simplifying complex problems. Discussions of substantive legal issues continue, of course, but firms are also asking clients to talk about how their needs have shifted. One firm partner told me he has had more Zoom calls with clients in the last month than he did face-to-face meetings over a six-month period before the pandemic. Jumping on a video call is now the default, and in many ways that small shift in the use of technology has cultivated a more personal connection with clients and deeper understanding of client pain points.

The legal world is undergoing a sea of change, but many leaders I have talked to are more optimistic than ever. The fear that traditionally comes with change and innovation has evaporated in the wake of a remarkably rapid and largely successful adaptation to remote work, both on the firm side and the client side. There’s a new sense of empathy among firm employees and between firms and their clients, and everyone is busy imagining new ways to work smarter and collaborate more effectively.

Josh Becker, an expert on leveraging technology to improve the practice of law, is LexisNexis head of legal analytics and chairman of Lex Machina. He also leads the LexisNexis Legaltech Accelerator program. Previously, Becker served as Lex Machina CEO for seven years leading strategy and operations. During his tenure, Lex Machina was acquired by LexisNexis.

from Law and Politics https://www.lawsitesblog.com/2020/08/guest-column-how-the-global-pandemic-is-driving-innovation-at-firms-and-creating-new-value-for-clients.html via http://www.rssmix.com/

[douchebagbrainwaves]

A WORD HACKER

Maybe I'm just stupid, or have been outmaneuvered by yes-men and have comparatively little influence. When I realized this one day, sitting in my cubicle, I jumped up like Archimedes in his bathtub, except instead of Eureka!1 It would be a shambles.2 Brand is the residue left as the substantive differences between rich and poor evaporate. But I'm letting you in on the secret early. Even if your startup does tank, you won't harm your prospects with employers. But when I think about it, because there is no better way to get a program into your head when you start to design things, these are not just theoretical questions.3 To do that well meant to get good grades.4 All the unfun kinds of wealth creation slow dramatically in a society where I was materially much better off than I am now, but if there was any VC who'd get you guys, it would be huge.5 Jerry didn't seem to care. Today's experimental error is tomorrow's new theory. Hacker News is definitely useful.

If you want to help fix patents, encourage your employer to. Success is decided by the one factor they can't control: charisma. Fortunately you can also watch real doctors, by volunteering in hospitals.6 I think there are people who could, if they wanted to, but they might lose value from year to year.7 Mainly, I think what they mean is that the variation between individuals that it's negligible by comparison. It allows you to give an impressive-looking talk about nothing, and it is only because we're so well trained by advertising that we can even recognize the especially expensive ones.8 They don't have to look at users.9 None of which I could at that moment remember! When I went to work at Yahoo. He likes to observe startups for a while before acting, so don't be bummed if he seems ambivalent. You need rich people in your society, take relative poverty.10

Who made the wealth it represents? But unfortunately Yahoo actually tried to be the next big thing. I said I was speaking at a high school student? At Yahoo it felt as if they'd deliberately accelerated this process. I met them today. And that's just so far. Now, in order to be successful. If it's default dead, start asking too early. A lot have been told by their parents that the route to worldly success. In more organized societies, like China, the ruler and his officials used taxation instead of confiscation. Strangely enough, if you read the dictator's speech it sounds uncannily like a prophecy of the App Store, and it's combined with the emotion Really, it's Apple's fault. But something seems to come with practice.

Notes

Digg's algorithm is very long: it favors small companies. This is the notoriously corrupt relationship between wisdom and probably also the 11% most susceptible to charisma.

That should probably question anything you believed as a separate box weighing another 4000 pounds.

We walked with him for the same energy and honesty that fifteenth century European art. Fifty years ago.

94.

The reason Google seemed a bad reputation, a growth graph is mostly evidence that the big winners aren't all that mattered.

From the conference site, June 2004: While the space of careers does. I'm not saying all founders who are good presenters, but since it was very much better to overestimate than underestimate the importance of making a good chance that a their applicants come from going to create a Demo Day pitch, the term literally. I was there was a very good job.

This is what you write software in Lisp. 27 with the founders'. Perl.

In practice it's more like a ragged comb. Since people sometimes call a few years. It will require more than serving as examples of how you spent all your time working on that.

But the money they receive represents wealth—university students, he found it easier for us, because few founders are willing to provide this service, this idea is crack. If you treat your classes as a high school textbooks. During the Internet Bubble I talked to a 2002 report by the surface similarities.

They have the determination myself. His best bet would probably be the more subtle ways in which only a few actual winners emerge with hyperlinear certainty. They could make it harder for you? When you're starting a company, meaning master.

[operationrainfall]

Title New Super Lucky’s Tale Developer Playful Publisher Playful Release Date November 8th, 2019 Genre Platformer Platform PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One Age Rating E for Everyone – Mild Cartoon Violence Official Website

I’ve been looking forward to delving into New Super Lucky’s Tale since it was just called Super Lucky’s Tale and was an Xbox console exclusive. As a gamer that really loves platformers of every stripe, I pride myself on being able to immediately identify when a platformer has the right stuff. And even though I demoed both versions of the game a few years apart, one thing immediately stuck out to me – New Super Lucky’s Tale is a platformer made for platformer fans. It has precise mechanics, colorful graphics and is simply a joy to play. But even with all of those boxes checked, the question remains – does this game do enough to differentiate itself from the huge field of other retro styled platformers? Or does Lucky the fox disappoint?

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New Super Lucky’s Tale starts with a dramatic introduction that set the tone of the game respectably. The Guardian Order was created to protect many far flung worlds from chaos when the unthinkable suddenly happens. One of their members, Jinx the sorcerer, apparently goes mad, and wages war on his fellow Guardians. His goal is possession of the Book of Ages. With it, Jinx will have the power to rewrite reality and essentially be unstoppable. A war follows, and the Guardians are defeated and banished from their home, the Sky Castle. Jinx has his minions the Kitty Litter hound them, and eventually the Guardians are found. Just when it seems all is lost, the Book of Ages reacts to the sorcerer’s fell magic, and it erupts in a supernatural explosion. Many pages of the book are scattered to the winds, and fly to various worlds. In the chaos, a portal opens and drags into it the young and impressionable brother of the head of the Guardian Order, Lyta’s little brother Lucky. You will play this young and untested fox as he sets out to right the wrongs caused by Jinx’ madness.

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Pretty great start, right? I admit I loved the comic cutscenes and the scope of the introduction. Unfortunately, the drama and tension are lost rather quickly once the game actually starts. One reason is that you never get to meet with the far flung Guardian Order as you play the main story. At best you see them huddled around a campfire during load screens. Another reason is that once Lucky takes charge, the story is decidedly childish. I don’t mean that in a mean way, since this game is obviously meant to appeal to gamers of various ages, but the fact remains there’s a distinct change in tone. Thankfully, none of this stops the game from being fun, and I can say with confidence New Super Lucky’s Tale is a very entertaining adventure.

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Lucky’s goal is to find the missing pages from the Book of Ages. Finding enough in each world will unlock the gate to that world’s boss fight. While there’s only 5 main worlds in the game, each one is totally distinct thematically and serves as a HUB to the stages. You start out at the lofty Sky Castle, then tackle an agricultural world full of hillbilly worm creatures, or take my favorite, a theme park full of ghosts and goblins. Each world is delightfully strange and animated, and none of them was a bore. There’s a handful of stages in each, including both 3D and 2.5D levels, as well as optional challenge stages. Challenges can range from statue ice puzzles to rolling around in a giant pinball machine. My only complaint with regard to this structure was that I assumed each world would get progressively larger, but in truth almost every world has the same amount of stages. The key difference is that in general it will cost a bit more pages to unlock each subsequent boss fight, but even then it’s a small difference. I only complain about these details because I was so enjoying myself in the game, and wanted an excuse to spend more time there.

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But just because I want more game doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the gameplay in New Super Lucky’s Tale. I haven’t played a platformer this precise and fun in a long time. It’s both simple and finely tuned. You can jump with B or double jump with a second press, attack with a tail swipe using Y, burrow into the dirt with ZR (or slide on hard surfaces), move with the left stick and control the camera with the right stick. That’s it, and that’s all the game needs. I never had any issues getting the controls to work, and found the camera to be very intuitive and easy to use. I also really enjoyed the burrowing mechanic, not least since it helped differentiate Lucky from other platformer protagonists. Once you start, you’ll keep burrowing until you release ZR, but other than that you have complete freedom to move around and collect hidden coins. It’s also fun watching Lucky burst out of the dirt like some landlocked dolphin when you stop burrowing. Most enemies in the game aren’t much of a threat, consisting of angry insects, cranky crustaceans, bothersome bats and other assorted nuisances. Instead, most of the danger comes from stage hazards, such as fireballs, dangerous spikes, or simply falling to your death. Luckily, the game is pretty generous with hearts that restore your health.

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Since the enemies in the game aren’t much of a threat, that means most of the gameplay instead revolves around platforming your way through stages. The 3D stages have goals you’ll need to achieve to escape, such as awakening a giant Golem or wrangling lost animals, while the 2.5D stages are split between basic ones and endless runners. I tended to prefer the purity of the 2.5D stages, though the scale of the 3D stages was nice, but thankfully their large size is ameliorated by lots of checkpoints. I made great use of the camera in those large areas. Each stage, regardless of format, is full of optional goodies that will reward you with an additional page from the Book of Ages. You can acquire one by collecting 300 or more coins, finding all the hidden LUCKY letters and finding a well-hidden page, which is usually gated behind a timed gauntlet. So the maximum number of pages in each stage is 4, and nabbing all of them results in a perfect score. Not to gloat, but I found it incredibly easy to get perfect scores in most stages, though to be fair, there were a handful that required a second or third playthrough. One good example was in Veggie Village, in a stage where I had to find lost Wormal musicians to put on a concert. Two of the letters in that stage were so well-hidden I almost looked online for FAQs to guide me in the right direction. Thankfully, that sort of confusion was far form the norm, and I raced through New Super Lucky’s Tale at a brisk clip, usually spending less than an hour per world.

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For my fellow platformer completionists, I wish I could affirm there’s some big reward for finding everything, but I have yet to confirm that from the developer. All I know is that by finding more and more pages, you’ll unlock more and more outfits for Lucky at Geovanni’s boutique. There’s a ton of ridiculous outfits, and they all make Lucky look even more silly. Most of the game really comes down to how much you like playing New Super Lucky’s Tale, and if you’re eager to 100% it without the prestige of some giant reward. That said, I did enjoy it quite a lot, so I will probably slowly chip away at those hidden challenge stages and try to fully beat every main stage. If nothing else, once you beat the game you’ll unlock another world full of super hard levels, just in case the rest of the game was a bit too easy.

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I always enjoy a good boss fight, and I enjoyed them in New Super Lucky’s Tale. Each fight is against a member of the Kitty Litter, and they’re a ragtag bunch of deranged kittens. The first one you meet is ninja master Mittens, or there’s Tess the cantankerous mechanic. Then you have the sultry Lady Meowmalade and the dynamic duo of Buttons and Fluffy. And of course, the final boss fight is against Jinx, who to my surprise is also supposed to be a cat. Each and every boss has a lot of personality, and while they all fight somewhat differently, most of the boss battles are a bit too samey. They always involve Lucky evading attacks on the field of battle, then flinging something at the distant boss to hurt them, rinse and repeat. Some battles get really hectic, and a couple even go full bullet hell, but most of them left me wanting more. The primary exception to this format was the fight against Lady Meowmalade, which was both incredibly creative and utterly silly. Anytime I get to fight on a dance floor and avoid disco lasers, I’ll have a big smile plastered on my face. And the fight against Jinx was sufficiently difficult that I wasn’t able to beat him the first attempt. Ultimately, the boss fights weren’t bad, I just hoped for more of the same creativity in them that’s everywhere else in the game.

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Visually, New Super Lucky’s Tale is exploding at the seams with inventive ideas. Some great examples are country Wormals, wrestling Yetis, mechanical horrors, mind control speakers, ghostly freedom fighters and so much more. The whole game is tied together with colorful art and lots of cartoony enthusiasm. It’s bright, funny and very silly, and I love that. It’s also full of characters with lots of personality, from Greg the somewhat stalkery Mailgolem to the aforementioned Kitty Litter. Musically, the game is pretty different depending on the world. None of the tracks were particularly memorable, but they also didn’t hurt the pace of the game.

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I don’t have many substantive complaints to make about New Super Lucky’s Tale, more a collection of minor irritations. Though I can’t hold this against the game, it was a bit too easy for more than half of my playthrough. I would usually unlock the boss fight after playing two stages, and had to weigh whether to check out the other stages or just race to the next world. The plot, while interesting initially, quickly peters out. Worse yet, in loading screens Greg the Mailgolem seems to hint that there’s some mystery behind Jinx turning evil, but nothing like that is ever explained or delved into during the main game. And while I did enjoy every minute playing the game, I can’t help but wish there was a lot more game to get lost in. I suppose my best hope is that the folks at Playful are working on a sequel to address many of these issues, but in the meantime these issues kept New Super Lucky’s Tale from getting a perfect score.

Ultimately, as a fan of platformers, I really enjoyed New Super Lucky’s Tale. But since I enjoyed the game so much, I was also hoping for more longevity and more challenge. That said, this is a game that’s easy to recommend for pretty much everyone, even if they don’t think they’re good at platformers. For $39.99, there’s a very enjoyable experience here, albeit a brief one, taking me about 6-7 hours. I think New Super Lucky’s Tale is worth every penny, though if you want more content for your money, you might want to wait for a small sale. That said, I still am very glad I got to play this love letter to the platformer genre, and hope to see more in the future from Playful.

[easyreview cat1title=”Overall” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”4.5″]

Review Copy Provided by Publisher

REVIEW: New Super Lucky’s Tale Title New Super Lucky's Tale

[sciwriteblog-blog]

The Puzzle of Greater Male Variance

                                                 Abstract

Abstract

Greater male variability on tests of mental ability would explain why males predominate not only at the highest levels in mathematics and science, but in business, politics, and nearly all aspects of life.   The literature on sex differences in mental test scores was reviewed to determine whether males in fact exhibit greater variability.  Two methods were used to compare sex differences in variability, ratios of total test score variances and ratios of the number of males and females scoring at or above extreme score cutoffs, or “tail ratios”.  Most samples were greater than 10K.  The review also included studies of physical traits such as height, weight, and blood parameters; brain volume measures; and studies of variability in four taxa, mammals, birds, insects, and butterflies.  In the vast majority of total test score ratios, males were more variable than females.  Males were more likely to score in the extreme right tail, indicating higher aptitude, on tests of mathematics and spatial ability in which mean sex differences favor males.  On tests of writing, vocabulary, and spelling, in which mean differences favor females, males were more extreme in the left tail, indicating lower ability. Males also exhibited greater variance in physical traits, blood parameters, and brain volume measures. Similar variance differences were also found in animals.  Genetic theory proposes that greater variability depends on which sex is heterogametic, that is, has two different sex chromosomes.  In mammals and insects, this is the male sex, with the XY sex chromosome pair.  In birds and butterflies, this is the female sex, with the WZ sex chromosome pair.  It is heterogamety and not sex that determines which sex is more variable.  This is because in the heterogametic sex, recessives on the single X or Z chromosome are fully expressed generating a binomial distribution with higher trait variance, while in the homogametic sex, recessive traits are averaged generating a normal distribution with lower trait variance.  Females have improved their performance on mathematics tests for the gifted, with ratios falling from 13:1 favoring males in 1980 to 3:1 favoring males from 1990 onward, but the improvement has stopped.  Heterogamety predicts that females, because they are homogametic, will never equal males not only in the right extreme of mathematics ability and other ability distributions but in the distribution of any trait influenced by the X chromosome.

In 2007, Psychological Science in the Public Interest published an issue devoted to sex differences in science and mathematics written by a group of contributors from fields such as neuroscience, gifted-studies, cognitive development, cognitive gender differences, and evolutionary psychology (Halpern, Benbow, Geary, Gur, Hyde, & Gernsbacher).  Each author reviewed material from their specialty relating to the problem of female under-representation in mathematics- and science-based fields in academia, research, and industry.  The group concluded that observed sex differences result from both genetic influences and sociocultural differences in the treatment of males and females, most certainly an anodyne conclusion of the kind expected from a committee of disparate experts.

The 2007 article was in part a response to the controversy following statements made two years earlier by then Harvard University president Lawrence Summers to the effect that there were fewer women in academia and industry because fewer women score at the highest levels on tests of aptitude predicting success in mathematics and the hard sciences.  This was tantamount to saying that, at the highest ability levels, women are inferior to men.  Summers’ statement about women was a major factor in his 2006 resignation as Harvard’s president.  Regardless of campus politics, which also played a large role in his departure, the question remains, why do men dominate at the highest levels of mathematics, science, business, and industry?

Last year, the issue of sex differences arose again, this time in the citadels of technology, in particular the Silicon Valley offices of Google and the claim by one software engineer, James Damore (2017), that, among other things, “differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership.”  This was Summers’ explanation exactly, and for offering it, Damore experienced a fate similar to Summers’:  He was fired.

The topic of cognitive gender differences being much too broad for any one article, this paper considers only the issue of greater male variance on mental ability tests.  This review updates the 2007 Public Interest article now that more than 10 years have passed and considers new findings, which include much larger samples of test data than were then available, and recent research published by geneticists and behavior geneticists shedding new light on this controversy.  

The approach I’ve taken in this review was dictated by the issue under study, the variance of mental ability as reported in a wide range of aptitude and achievement tests of children and adolescents.  While it might seem preferable to perform a meta analysis of many study results, the variance statistic does not lend itself to this approach.  Pooling effect sizes from different samples can give a better estimate of true population mean difference than individual studies.  But it is difficult to know what group is represented in the result when a meta-analysis is performed on heterogeneous variances.  Studies of variance should be based on large nationally representative samples, not heterogeneous studies of selected groups, some based on selected samples, thrown together and christened a meta-analysis leaving the reader with the question, “What is the population the parameter of which is being described?”  For a brief yet astute discussion of the perils of using meta-analysis to study sex differences in variance, see Hedges and Nowell (1995) Pages 41-42.

If meta-analysis is inappropriate, what other approach can one take?  In the studies reviewed here, a wide variety of tests were given to children ranging in age from early childhood through late adolescence.  I have chosen to review the 17 studies  individually, presenting reported sex differences in means, variances, and tail ratios in separate tables for each study.  After reviewing each study, I discuss its merits, for example, Did the study assess aptitude or achievement? Did subject age affect the results? What patterns exist across tests of domains such as verbal, mathematical, spatial, and science aptitude; change in variances over time, etc?  

None of the data in the studies reviewed here were generated by the researchers for the purpose of comparing male and female variance, nor could it be, the sample sizes required are too large.  In every instance, tests were given to meet an institutional requirement such as college entrance or by a government agency assessing student progress or teacher/school effectiveness. The sample sizes were large, some having tested or screened millions of students randomly sampled from large countries such as the U.S. and UK, and in one case, the PISA test of 276,165 15-year-old students from 41 developed and developing nations.  The results were data sets that largely spoke for themselves with little data manipulation needed.  In most cases, I have reproduced the key tables from each study to enable inspection of the supporting evidence for the issue under review.

            Requirements to Show Sex Differences in Variability

Sources of Differences in the Right Tail of Distributions

Of interest here is the difference in the frequency of extreme scores in the tails of test-score distributions.  More males will be found in the extreme right of a distribution if males have a higher mean and both sexes have the same variance, or if both sexes have the same mean but males have a greater variance, or if males have both a higher mean and greater variance.  No studies with the exception of Nowell and Hedges (1998) using a method developed by Lewis and Willingham (1995) attempt to partition the relative frequencies of extreme scores into components due to mean differences and variance differences.  

 Measures of Sex Differences  

Virtually all of the reviewed studies of sex differences report the mean sex difference and the total test score variance ratio or VR.  They also report “tail ratios,” a proportion comparing the number of males and females scoring above a given cut off in the extremes of distributions.

Means are universally compared using Cohen’s d (1988), the mean difference standardized by the pooled within-groups standard deviation:

                                    (MeanM – MeanF)/√(VarM + VarF)

Cohen’s (1988) criteria for assessing the importance of d are .20, small; .50, medium; and .80, large.  In most of the studies reviewed below, d was calculated as male mean – female mean.  In those few studies were it was calculated female mean – male mean, I reversed the sign and so noted in the footnotes to the tables where I did this.

The standard deviation is the most commonly used measure of test-score dispersion, but its square, the variance, is a better measure of variability because its ratio can be used to compare the variability of different groups.  To do this for males and females, the simple ratio of male over female variance is computed:

                                                         VarM/VarF.

A ratio of 1.0 indicates equal male and female variances.  Ratios larger (smaller) than 1.0 indicate greater (lesser) male variance.  Feingold (1992) suggested that a difference of 10 percent in the variance, or a variance ratio of 1.10, is the minimal required for the difference to have substantive importance.  In all of the studies, the variance ratios were calculated as male variance/female variance.

Tail ratios are a simple means of comparing performance at the extremes of test score distributions.  The counts of males and females within the 10%, 5%, and .01% cutoffs provides the ratio of males and females performing at or above that level:

                                                 CountM/CountF.

Much like VR, a tail ratio of 1.0 indicates that the number of males and females scoring above a given cut off is equal.  Ratios larger (smaller) than 1.0 indicate more (fewer) males scored at or above the cut off.  An increase in tail ratios with successively higher cut offs indicates that a greater disproportion of males is scoring at higher levels and thus possesses to a greater degree whatever latent trait the test measures.  In all of the studies, the count ratios were calculated as male variance/female variance.

Some studies look only at the right tail of the distribution.  Samples selected for high scorers will reduce the variance by truncating the left side of the distribution.  For these studies, is it not useful to estimate the population variance but rather to compare the counts of males and females scoring at or above a given cut off score, that is, tail ratios.  Lewis and Willingham (1995) found that the mean sex difference in restricted samples was correlated with the variance difference.  

Volunteers are known to differ from the general population.  Children who volunteer for enrichment programs, or whose parents do the volunteering, are likely to be more motivated and different from a nation-wide sample of non-volunteer same-age children in intelligence, motivation, SES, race-ethnicity, etc.  

Factors Affecting Variance Differences

Age.  Haworth, Wright, Luciano, Martin, de Geus, van Beijsterveldt, & Plomin (2014).  found that the heritability of general intelligence increases with age, from .41 to .55 to .66 at ages 9, 11, and 17 respectively, in a study that pooled 10,689 MZ and DZ twin pairs from six studies done in four countries.  Others have suggested that heritability is as high as .80 in late adulthood (Johnson, Carothers, & Deary, 2009; Plomin & Deary, 2015).  At the very least, tests should be of young adults although there is no large-scale testing of persons older than those taking graduate school admissions tests like the GRE.

Range Restriction.  Because we are interested in the relative number of males and females scoring in the tails of the test distribution, there should be no ceiling or floor effects.  An ideal test would have few or no zero or perfect scores to assure that the difficulty of the test matched the ability of the test takers.  

Unselected Samples.  Ideally, samples should be unselected to ensure that the full distribution of ability within a population is tested.  This can be achieved with a procedure such as national probability sampling, which is the best means to obtain a truly representative sample of the nation as a whole.  There are large samples of selected populations such as the SAT and GRE, tests used to screen students for college and graduate school.  But these samples are neither random nor representative despite samples numbering in the millions.

Aptitude Versus Achievement Tests.  Aptitude tests measure student ability and achievement tests measure student learning and school effectiveness.  It is better to study tests of aptitude rather than achievement if we are studying ability although it is impossible to study any ability divorced from previous learning experience.  Unfortunately, there are few large-scale studies of “culture-free” tests of intelligence, such as the Raven Progressive Matrices.  Societies economically developed enough to do large-scale testing also have compulsory schooling usually through the American equivalent of high school.  Large-scale testing is done with school children and adolescents to monitor their progress and to screen for college and graduate school admissions.  An example of using large-scale testing over a range of ages is the No Child Left Behind program, which required regular testing of elementary and high school children to determine whether they were achieving specific learning goals and whether teachers were performing up to standard (Zelizer, 2015).  Some schools whose students failed to progress adequately were closed.  The diversion of classroom time and school resources away from instruction to prepare students for these achievement tests has been a source of parental complaints (Strauss, 2015).  To the extent that test preparation becomes “teaching to the test,” sex differences in the means and variances will be reduced.

Genetic theory

This paper will show that the sex difference in variance is due to the difference in their chromosome allotment, namely the difference in the sex chromosomes, XX for females and XY for males.  There is no difference between males and females with regard to the 22 pairs of somatic chromosomes, the autosomes.  Both males and females have the same chromosomes and the same coding regions and alleles on all 22 pairs of autosomes.  The random process by which they are assigned those alleles is the same for both sexes.  But with the sex chromosomes, X and Y, the genetic allotment is different.  Because the Y chromosome that men receive is vestigial, it leaves the X chromosome unpaired so that not only are dominant alleles fully expressed, recessive alleles are also fully expressed.  In females, the pairing of two X-chromosomes means that recessive traits are expressed only if there are recessive alleles on both X chromosomes, which reduces the probability that the recessive trait is expressed to the square of the probability for males, one source of lower female variability.

Johnson et al. (2009) demonstrated how this works in a simple model of a single gene with two alleles on the male single X chromosome,

                                                           A and a,

that will have the maximum population variance of

                                                    0.5 x 0.5 = 0.25

when the allele frequencies are equal.  For both the dominant and recessive alleles, their probability of expression is equal to their proportion in the genome.

Matters are different for females, who have three genotypes arising from the same two alleles because the two alleles, A and a, are on one of two different chromosomes, XX,

                                     AA = 0.25, Aa = 0.50, and aa = 0.25.

 In a perfect world, this would lead to reduced variance in females because the phenotypic expression of AA and Aa are the same when there is complete dominance and thus a lower population variance of

                                        (0.25 + 0.50) x (1.0 - 0.75)

                                             0.75 x 0.25  = 0.188.

But the fact that females have two X chromosomes while males have one complicates matters.  This is an imbalance that nature corrects by silencing or “inactivating” one of the two female X chromosomes.  Which X chromosome is silenced is randomly determined early in gestation when the embryo is between 8 and 16 cells (Craig et al., 2009).  Half of these cells will have chromosome X1 with allele A and half will have chromosome X2 with allele a. This equal splitting of the two X chromosomes and their different alleles will lead to phenotypic expression that is the average of allele A and a.  Because half the females have the heterozygous genotype Aa, and one-quarter each have the homozygous AA and aa genotypes, their distribution is more approximately normal and has a smaller variance than the binomial distribution of A and a in males.  In short, this is the source of greater male variance and is discussed in greater detail below.

Published Studies

The following studies present in some detail what I think is the most comprehensive review extant of the literature bearing on the issue of male and female variance in mental ability testing.  The studies reviewed unmistakably make the case that 1) males are more variable with regard to virtually all tests of mathematical, spatial, and science aptitude and achievement at both the high and low ends of the respective test score distributions and 2) many tests of verbal aptitude and achievement especially at the low end of the test score distributions.

Benbow and Stanley (1980, 1983)

 The issue of differential variance was given it’s current prominence by Benbow and Stanley who reported in two papers (1980 and 1983) on sex differences in mathematics based on large samples of mostly 7th grade children who were given both the verbal and mathematics sections of the Scholastic Aptitude Test as part of the Study of Mathematically Precious Youth (SMPY).  

The SAT-Mathematics test (SAT-M) is normally taken by college-bound high school seniors, who at age 17 or 18, are 5 to 6 years older than the SMPY 7th graders, all of whom were age 12 except for a small number of 13 year olds in the early years of the study.  Few of the SMPY children had taken algebra or had any formal training in the skills needed for the SAT-M.  Benbow and Stanley (1980) gave the SAT-M not to test mathematical aptitude, but because the test was so far above the skill level of 7th graders that the SAT-M would be a test of their “numerical judgment, relational thinking, and logical reasoning.”  Spearman (1904) would recognize the ability Benbow and Stanley were testing as general intelligence or g.  

The 1980 report was based on the scores of 9,927 students who were recruited from the greater Baltimore region between 1972 and 1979 after scoring in the top 2 to 5 percent on a mathematics screening test.  Tables 1 and 2 show the results for both the verbal and mathematics scores.  Removing the 8th grade scores for December 1976 because of the small N, the mean d value of -.03 for the verbal scores shows that males and females were about equal in verbal reasoning and the mean variance ratio of 1.04 also suggests parity in variability.  But the mean d value of .50 and the mean variance ratio of 1.58 for mathematics scores shows that males score a half standard deviation higher and were nearly 60 percent more variable than the females.  The extreme mathematics scores were even more disparate, 16.6% of the males scoring above 600 but only 2.1% of the females.

      In 1983, Benbow and Stanley reported results on the SAT-M from nearly 40,000 students in the mid-Atlantic region and another large group from a nationwide talent search within and beyond the Johns Hopkin’s talent search area.  All students were under age 13.  The results were similar to those from the earlier study.  No difference was found in the SAT-Verbal, with the male and female means 367 and 365 respectively (Standard deviations not reported).  But there was a 30-point mean difference on the SAT-Mathematics, with the male and female means 416 and 386 respectively.  The variance ratio was 1.38, roughly the same as in 1980 and showing again that males are more variable than females.  More importantly as shown in Table 3, the number of boys scoring above 700 on the SAT-M over both national search samples, was 13 times the number of girls (260:20), despite equal numbers of boys and girls taking the screening test.  

Comment. Benbow and Stanley’s findings gave enormous impetus to research on sex differences in cognitive ability generally and to sex differences in variability specifically.    

The extreme 13 to 1 ratio has become ingrained in the literature on sex differences in variability even though it has been out of date since 1990, the ratio now being 2.8:1, or in round numbers 3:1.  Use of the SAT allowed Benbow and Stanley to avoid ceiling effects:  Few students scored above 700, and in many years, no one scored a perfect 800.  Their samples were young and highly selected, making it possible to generalize only to the very brightest students rather than to the population of seventh graders as a whole.  The students were volunteers, a special group that probably differs in many ways from students in general although it is unlikely that these factors substantially affected the differential pattern of scoring.  Comparing means and total score variances between two groups all of whom are in the right tail of the score distribution is questionable.

Benbow and Stanley (1980, 1983) were among the earliest to note that the traditional arguments made to explain the lower numbers of extremely able females in mathematics, such as lack of opportunity to study math and social attitudes discouraging females from pursuing careers in math and science, would create mean differences between the sexes not variance differences.  Benbow and Stanley also noted that through 11th grade, boys and girls have taken the same math courses, obtain about the same grades, and rate similarly their liking for mathematics and their perception of mathematics as important.  Summarizing their assessment of theories explaining male superiority at the highest score levels in their 1980 report, Benbow and Stanley stated that “boy-versus-girl socialization” as the only acceptable explanation of the sex difference is “premature,” and in 1983, said that the reasons boys “dominate the highest ranges of mathematical reasoning ability were unclear.”  

[theconservativebrief]

The Senate this week is expected to vote on a legislative package that will take an array of actions to curb the opioid epidemic, the deadliest drug overdose crisis in US history.

If you hear senators describe it, the legislation, dubbed the Opioid Crisis Response Act of 2018, is a big breakthrough that will boost access to addiction treatment and many other interventions to mitigate the opioid epidemic, from law enforcement efforts against illicit drugs to combating the overprescription of opioids. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who oversees the Senate health committee, noted that the legislation “represents the work of over 70 senators, five committees, and countless staff who have worked together to help put an end to the opioid epidemic ravaging virtually every American community.”

Experts and activists are more tepid. It’s not that the legislation does anything outwardly bad. In fact, the changes are mostly positive, according to the experts and activists I spoke with. But Dr. Leana Wen, the health commissioner of Baltimore, said that the legislation “is simply tinkering around the edges,” and that a far more comprehensive, ambitious response is needed to really deal with the crisis.

The big issue seems to come down to money. The legislation makes a lot of legal and regulatory tweaks that will attempt to make addiction treatment more accessible, try to make it more difficult for illicit synthetic opioids like fentanyl and carfentanil to slip through the border, and boost research on non-opioid pain treatments. But it doesn’t pay for a wide expansion of addiction treatment, which is the policy approach that many experts argue is necessary.

In fact, the bill would not provide a significant increase in spending for the opioid crisis at all. Even though it authorizes some relatively small grant programs, the actual funding for those will be decided later on by Congress’s appropriations process. Previous estimates by the Congressional Budget Office suggested earlier versions of the bill would add around $8 billion over five years if fully appropriated — which is still far from the tens of billions a year that some experts say is needed.

Keith Humphreys, a drug policy expert at Stanford University who worked with Senate and House staff on their bills, said that “there are many ‘small sanities’ in the Senate and House opioid bills that will make a positive difference.” But the response is far from what America undertook for, say, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, when it enacted sweeping programs like the Ryan White Act and PEPFAR that dedicated serious money and resources to fight HIV/AIDS in the US and around the world.

“This reflects a fundamental disagreement between the parties over whether the government should appropriate the large sums a massive response would require,” Humphreys said. “Lacking that, Congress did the next-best thing — which is to find agreement on as many second-tier issues as they could.”

Once the Senate passes its opioid package, it will move to conference with the House, which passed its own version of the Opioid Crisis Response Act earlier this year. There, lawmakers are expected to compromise on some disagreements — some technical, some substantive — over their bills. If they come to an agreement on a compromise bill, President Donald Trump could then sign the legislation into law.

That Congress, despite all the political conflicts of the day, is actually taking action is reflective of how bad the opioid epidemic has gotten. In 2017, more than 72,000 people in the US died of drug overdoses, at least two-thirds of which were linked to opioids, based on preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s the highest number of Americans who ever died of drug overdoses in a single year — and more than were ever killed by guns, car crashes, or HIV/AIDS in a single year in the US.

Whatever comes out of Congress and Trump signs into law could mitigate some of the crisis and save some lives. But it probably won’t be enough.

For a full breakdown of the Senate bill, you can read the full text or a section-by-section summary (both of which are subject to change, particularly during conference). But here are some of the major steps proposed by the Senate:

Reauthorizes funding from the Cures Act, which put $500 million a year toward the opioid crisis, and makes tweaks to hopefully give states more flexibility in using the funding.

Creates a grant program for “Comprehensive Opioid Recovery Centers,” which will attempt to serve the addiction treatment and recovery needs of their communities (in part by using what’s known as an ECHO model).

Authorizes another grant program that will help health care practitioners obtain waivers so they can prescribe medications that are highly effective in treating opioid addiction.

Expands an existing program that attempts to get more first responders, such as police and firefighters, to carry and use naloxone, a medication that reverses opioid overdoses.

Allows federal agencies to pursue more research projects related to addiction and pain.

Makes several changes to Medicare and Medicaid to try to expand access to addiction treatment and limit the overprescription of opioid painkillers within the programs.

Advances new initiatives to educate and raise awareness about proper pain treatment among health care providers.

Attempts to improve coordination between different federal agencies to stop illicit drugs like fentanyl at the border, and gives agencies more tools, including “facility and physical infrastructure improvements,” to improve detection and testing at border checks.

Increases penalties for drug manufacturers and distributors related to the overprescribing of opioids.

Puts more money toward law enforcement programs meant to stop illegal drug trafficking.

There’s a lot more in the bill, but these examples give a rough idea of the wide approach the Senate is taking, from treatment to prevention to law enforcement and interdiction to better pain care (to stop the excessive proliferation of opioids for pain treatment).

The legislation has wide bipartisan support, with both Democrats and Republicans working extensively on it. In the current political climate (and with midterm elections looming), this is remarkable — both parties coming together to work on a major issue and taking a fairly broad approach in the subsequent legislation.

But the legislation fails to do one thing: Despite reauthorizing and creating some small grant programs, it won’t result in much more money and resources going to the opioid crisis.

And while Congress has allocated a few billion dollars here and there to address the crisis in recent years, the sum total falls short of the tens of billions experts say is needed to quickly reverse the opioid epidemic.

That gets to why experts are a bit down on Congress’s actions.

The opioid epidemic is a truly massive drug overdose and addiction crisis. Since the 1990s, more than 700,000 people in the US have died of drug overdoses, mostly driven by the rise in opioid-related deaths. That’s more people than live in big US cities like Denver and Washington, DC. Some estimates predict that, at the current rate, hundreds of thousands more could die in the next decade of opioid overdoses alone.

When experts talk about the current epidemic, they compare it to previous public health crises like HIV/AIDS, which also killed tens of thousands of Americans each year.

“We hear a lot of talk about how addiction is a medical condition that needs to be addressed similarly to other chronic illnesses, yet the existing treatment system is largely separate from the medical mainstream and offers interventions that bear little resemblance to how we care for people with other health conditions,” Sarah Wakeman, an addiction medicine doctor and medical director at the Massachusetts General Hospital Substance Use Disorder Initiative, told me. “To actually stem the tide of overdose deaths we need funding and innovation that is on par with our response to HIV/AIDS.”

That, Wakeman explained, will require “a massive infusion of funding and a fundamental restructuring of how we treat addiction in this country.”

To put this in context, the New York Times this year asked 30 experts how they would spend $100 billion over five years to address the opioid epidemic — a number comparable to how much the US spends domestically on HIV/AIDS. That may sound like a lot, but some experts cautioned that even that amount of cash may not be enough.

That’s in large part because a lot of America’s addiction treatment infrastructure is in a very bad spot. Consider: Medications like methadone and buprenorphine are widely considered the gold standard of opioid addiction care, with studies showing that they reduce all-cause mortality among opioid addiction patients by half or more and do a far better job keeping people in treatment than non-medication approaches.

Yet federal data suggests that only one in 10 people with any substance use disorder and one in five people with an opioid use disorder seek specialty treatment. And even when an addiction treatment clinic is available, fewer than half of facilities offer any of the opioid addiction medications as an option. In other words, treatment is inaccessible enough that most people who need it don’t get it, and even when treatment is available, it doesn’t meet the best standards of care.

To change this, Congress will simply need to invest much more in addiction treatment — and in the long term, not just in the one-off bills Congress has done so far. In response to the HIV/AIDS crisis, for example, Congress set up the Ryan White program to provide long-term, sustained resources to deal with HIV/AIDS, particularly in the worst-hit communities. Some lawmakers have called for similar actions in response to the opioid crisis, like the CARE Act proposed by Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). But the proposals have not moved forward in Congress, largely due to concerns about the extra spending they require.

Even beyond money, experts argue that a bill simply has to systemically reform how America approaches addiction.

Wen previously drew a comparison to past disease scares, such as Ebola and Zika. These crises led hospitals and doctors, with government support, to retrain and restructure so they were properly built to handle any patients that came in with potential problems related to these diseases. “We are now dealing with an epidemic of opioid overdose and addiction,” Wen said. “Why shouldn’t we require all doctors and all hospital systems to treat the disease of addiction?”

Some states have provided a model for this systemic reform. Vermont, for one, set up a hub and spoke system that not only expanded addiction treatment, but integrated it into health care settings, from traditional doctors’ offices to hospitals. Perhaps as a result, the state also defied the national trend with a slight decrease in overdose deaths in 2017 — while maintaining the lowest drug overdose death rate in New England, a region hit particularly hard by the opioid crisis.

As experts have long told me, there is no silver bullet that will solve the opioid epidemic overnight, but there’s a mix of policies that would help: more treatment (particularly medications like methadone and buprenorphine), more harm reduction (such as better access to naloxone), fewer painkiller prescriptions (while ensuring the drugs are available to those who really need them), and policies that can help address the root cause of addiction (like mental health issues and socioeconomic despair).

A recent study by Stanford researchers found that a mix of these options could save at least tens of thousands of lives in the next decade.

But the congressional proposals, despite some positive moves, don’t do nearly enough on any of these fronts, experts warned.

“Although if one wanted to be more upbeat,” Humphreys of Stanford said, “given how incredibly dysfunctional Congress is at this historical moment, this is an achievement — there are dozens of other important issues upon which they are making no progress at all.”

Original Source -> Congress is on the verge of a bipartisan opioid package. But experts have big concerns.

via The Conservative Brief