#this was from a phase where i spent 90% of my time on rendering

[sleepyc63]

yk what?? fuck it. reposting old art cause i’m still SO proud of this

CW: BLOOD/ANIMAL HARM. IT IS MORE OBVIOUS BELOW THE CUT.

alt versions

[ninevehgames]

I was considering this the entire way through production, and going back and forth on it, and even now there is definitely a large chunk of me that agrees with you. This reply isn’t going to be me defending me choices because I don’t think you’re wrong!

We have to go all the way back to the first thing I was doing in preproduction phase where I was first getting my bearings and figuring out if I could even do it. My absolutely naïve brain thought that if I cut out all the interstitials I’d have an audio file about a half hour long, and that would be only six times longer than the longest animation I’d done. “If I pace myself this time and chop away at it, I’ll have enough energy to tackle this without completely burning myself out.” I chop up all the audio into the different vignettes because I’m planning to have a different setup file for every different section so I can tackle each section as its own project, and I do not check the final runtime they add up to.

The “if I pace myself” thing? No. I built the lego assets, did some render tests on how many corners I could cut to speed those renders up without sacrificing too much quality, and then I had the intro segment done within 3 days of starting. It became clear to me very fast that I am very bad at not hyperfocusing. I posted a preview in the fan discord to make myself too accountable to turn back, and then finished the Pickman section in two additional days.

Then I spent a week prepping to go see some friends abroad for a week, and after I saw those friends I had an extremely bad experience flying home. So there were three weeks there where I just did not touch the project at all. I was thinking about it a lot but I was not touching it.

One constant thought that I am having through all of this is “Hey, you don’t actually have permission from the Friends to be doing this, you’re going to be posting this on Youtube, you’re about to post a half hour long video of content from people who make their living off of this without permission, the intro videos were fine but like, you could be doing ALL of this just to get a polite email to take it down that you’re going to have to comply with because you try not to be an asshole.”

So I do Lyke’s segment in 3 days, and Duvall’s in a day (Lyke was a lot more improvised, I had a firm plan for Duvall), and then I say to myself “okay, you’re too far into this project not to just block off the rest in Davinci to see what your actual run time is” and that’s when I realized I wasn’t making a half hour video, I was making a 47 minute video. I’m already banging this out at a good pace though, 6 hours after work each night, 11 hour weekend days, I’m going to be fine. But I’ll refer you back to the “no permission anxiety” thing, and that’s what’s making me go bad in the brain.

I make this compromise with my anxiety to make it shut up. I’m just going to post in-character audio only. To me, the non-in-character stuff is just as important to this whole thing, I love it, and if I cut that out, if I am not making listening to the episode redundant, I can at least like, I’m probably going to be fine? 80-90% odds. And my anxiety went from palpable to manageable.

A week and a half later I am at the end of the project. I just need to make the credits, polish up some of the scenes a little more, and I have this thought, “You could chop up some of the post-games to have that play over the credits and you’ll probably be fine.” But I was really tired at this point, I could feel the burn-out creeping into every bone, and I knew not everyone was going to like the whole thing, but everyone could find one or two favorite bits, and that was good enough to me.

I am truly sorry for this wall of text! I am really glad you liked it! And I agree with you there are definitely places it could have some better execution. And hopefully my brain will let me execute better next time I tackle a big project.

https://youtu.be/oNyf5t4soCQ

Friends at the Table: Sangfielle 21 - "At The Gates of Sapodilla"

so this guy animated basically an entire episode of Friends at the Table, and it's basically standalone so someone who hasn't listened to a second of this season could enjoy it.

for context, they're playing inhuman conditions in character, which is a game based off the voight-kampf test from blade runner.

[writingwithcolor]

Rebellion in Ojibwe Society: Considerations for Pre-Contact Indigenous Peoples

@raconteuse3​ asked:

Hi! I'm writing a fantasy story with an Ojibwe-like culture, and I'm wondering what rebellion/counter culture would look like in a tribal culture pre-contact? One of my characters has a rebellious spirit, but I keep writing her in a very ... American-teenage-rebellion way, which I know isn't a phase of life in all cultures. To rephrase in snarky terms, "what were Ojibwe punks up to 500 years ago?" I haven't been able to find any helpful information, so I thought I'd ask here! Thank you!

Traditional disclaimer: not raised under traditional parenting techniques, not from that nation, this is primarily pointing out structural differences in Indigenous society vs Western from a reconnecting person.

Teenagerhood as we know it is modern

When it comes to the concept of rebellion, there is one very important thing to keep in mind: how recent and privileged the concept of “teenagerhood is a sheltered time you figure yourself out” is. In a lot of traditional societies, you started helping doing the adult work in childhood alongside your parents. By teenage years you were a pretty valued member of the community, and were beginning to work on adult honours, were looking to get married, etc.

Pre-contact parenting traditions exists in modern day, too. You can absolutely look at very modern, very connected Indigenous societies and notice the way they structure work and parenting is different. Parenting traditions are going under a huge revival as communities heal from residential schools, and these traditional techniques are being preserved.

So what is she even rebelling against? She’d be in a world where she’d be granted a lot of autonomy, be able to do basically everything an adult could by this point, and would have been guided by people working alongside her. The traditional avenues of rebellion like “you don’t know what it’s like to grow up now” and “I’m not a kid stop treating me like one” are harder to rely on.

It’s really primarily an industrialization invention to have teen years be the “in between” years we know them as today. In modern times, teenage years are considered the years you focus on your education to eventually get started as an adult in your 20s, once you have a job that is in a separate institution to your family.

In non-industrial societies where the primary work available is what keeps the community running, and extra time is spent creating beauty (art, stories, music), or advancing our understanding of the world (medicine, scientific experiments). There is far less need for a period of being sheltered where all you do is educate yourself in order to be an adult; I’d assume the primary structures of teenage years would be based around helping teach emotional regulation.

A note: the average hunter-gatherer, according to anthropologists, only “does work” (to survive) about 20 hours a week. There would be plenty of time to do fun things in society. 

And I’m sure somebody in the notes will mention it: yes, the fact that the average age was closer to 60-70 instead of 80-90 like we have in industrial society is part of it. But elders could and did live into their 80s pre-contact, so the point is less salient than you’d think.

Environmental controls didn’t exist

The other important thing to keep in mind is: there was only so much rebellion you could do before you ended up dead from the natural world.

Elders were those who had survived and whose wisdom you could use to help everyone’s survival. Counsel and collective leadership were often prized, along with young experience. Humility was often taught as a virtue because pride went out and got you killed, and greed would render the land uninhabitable.

So really, the likelihood of having her be rebellious in any way we’d recognize is slim to none. Traditional Indigenous parenting techniques are worlds different than American parenting techniques, and anthropologist after anthropologist has noted that kids in Indigenous societies—when those societies don’t have massive traumas that come from, say, residential schools and parents never being able to learn Indigenous practices—are way more well adjusted than Western teenagers.

If you’re dead set on having her be rebellious in some way: my biggest suggestion would be to read ethnographies of the Ojibwe that described their cultural practices and see if there were any social norms discussed around teenage rebellion; you could get lucky and find a gem of rebellion actively described, or you might have to read through a bunch and piece together a cultural context from them. 

But you need to do this research anyway, so look for particularly thick and comprehensive tomes. As I said, this can be found in modern day, so you’re not super limited by time period. If you really want to focus on “as it was”, you’ll be looking for writings between 1850 and 1930.

(I’ve read one ethnography that mentioned an avenue of rebellion among the Omaha, written in 1911. It described how arranged marriages for teenage girls were common, but if the girl could get her chosen husband’s family to treat her as his wife, then the father couldn’t force her to marry the guy he chose. But that relies on a patriarchal society, even if the idea of a patriarchal society would have looked different at the time)

Look for things published by universities; those will have the best academic rigour. I’m not super well versed in the modern anthropology programs because my education stopped right before I got to that point, but an edu with a heavy involvement in the tribe will be the best.

Historically your best sources, or at least a place to look for sources, are those who had close connections with the tribe and lived there for extended periods of time, or even better had tribal co-writers. An example of the former would be Margaret Mead, who wrote Coming of Age in American Samoa, and she kind of single handedly brought breastfeeding back to American society. Her work is highly debated, but the Samoans she worked with loved her; she lived with them for most of her life, from her 20s to retirement. An example of the latter is Alice Fletcher, who co-wrote The Omaha Tribe with Francis La Flesche.

Ojibwe, please comment: What does “rebellion” look like to you?

~ Mod Lesya

[vhaven93-blog]

Surfing the Waves: Science and Conscious Sleep

(K-complexes, Sleep-spindles, and PGO-waves during Conscious Sleep)

By Daniel Allen Kelley

   Conscious Sleep is arguably the most fascinating skill you can learn. It's almost ironic, really, because sleep is largely a process of memory and skill consolidation. Why is that ironic? Well, first of all, sleep is thought to be an eight-hour period of inactivity but is actually anything but. By the time you've entered the second phase of sleep (90 minutes in), your brain and nervous system have been very busy. While you were busy snoring, your brain was constructing neural connections to house new skills and information. Those piano lessons you had yesterday afternoon? Check! Those elective courses you took yesterday evening at school? Yup, your brain made room for those too.

   And that's happening whether you're sleep is conscious or not!

   The most ironic part of conscious sleep is that you're learning a skill which employs the very same mechanism that learns new skills. Dreams, being largely the consolidation of new skills, are now the skill you're attempting to consolidate! It's the neurological equivalent of what happens when two mirrors are facing eachother: It generates an endless hall of unending reflections that you experience as Lucid Dreaming, Astral Projection, Remote Viewing, and much more.

   Isn't that far out?

   Your dreams are at least 70% composed of people, places, things, emotions, and sensations you've experienced at some point in your life. The remaining 30% is, well, something extra. That “something extra" isn't personal or biographical. We experience these extras when we have Out of Body Experiences (OOBE), Astral Dreams, Precognitive Dreams, and so forth. We'll talk more about that later. For now, just note that Conscious Sleep, even though much of it is a theatrical reenactment of your diary, is unique in that it's a new skill that uses old skills to refine itself.

   Reflections within reflections within reflections…

   For example, imagine for a moment that you're having an OOBE. You wait until you reach the second phase of sleep and induce the OOBE by conjuring up the feeling of riding a rollercoaster. Suddenly, you feel yourself rocking back and forth. Heavy vibrations flood your body and a buzzing sound fills your ears. Before you know it you're up and out! You look around your room and everything is as it should be, save for the occasional appearance of a dream scenario. There's just one problem:

   You can't seem to fly away from your physical body!

   The reason you're anchored to your mortal coil may be any number of things. In this case, your subconscious mind presents you with a dream image of a vast body of water. You approach it and begin swimming. Suddenly, you find you're able to fly! The water vanishes and you're soaring high above the roof of your house.

   What's happened is that, because you've never actually flown before, the closest activity your mind could conjure that resembles flying was swimming. So you used your former experience with rollercoasters to get up and out, as it were. You then used your former experiences of swimming to fly away. Or, to put it more technically, you used the process of consolidating skills (dreams) to tap into learned skills to support the learning of a new skill; in this case it was OOBE.

   Reflections within reflections within reflections…

   But what's going on inside your brain when all this is taking place? In my book, Behind The Veil: The Complete Guide to Conscious Sleep, I discussed the Five Basic Brainwaves and their corresponding subjective experiences. Here, I'd like to focus on three specific brainwave phenomena called K-complexes, Sleep-spindles, and PGO-waves. Since I'm not a sleep specialist, l won’t be tangling you up in convoluted dissertations on synapses and neural firings along calcium channels in the brain (ahem, and so forth). Instead, I'll limit my focus (as always) to the experiential aspects of these things. After all, that's where all the fun is!

What Are K-complexes?

According to the book, Neurology Secrets (Fifth Edition), A K-complex is a high-voltage diphasic slow wave that may be preceded or followed by a spindle burst, maximally expressed in the frontocentral regions of the brain bilaterally.

   In layman's terms, what this means is that a K-complex is like the trough of a wave and a Sleep-spindle is like the crest. We'll discuss Sleep-spindles in a moment. For now, let's take a closer look at K-complexes and how they might be experienced by a Conscious Sleeper.

   When brainwaves are recorded on an Electroencephalograph (EEG), K-complexes appear primarily during the second stage of NREM sleep and are more prevalent during the first two sleep cycles in a night’s rest. At this time, the brain is still responsive to external stimuli and K-complexes tend to multiply in the presence of external sounds, touch, and changes in light patterns. Should you awaken someone at this phase of the sleep cycle, the subject may insist that he or she wasn't asleep. Some scientists speculate that K-complexes evolved to be responsive to external stimuli in order to serve as warnings of approaching predators while sleeping.

   Another theory holds that K-complexes perform a sedating function, effectively turning off the analytical mind so that the brain can begin its process of consolidating memory. My own experience bears this out and, in just a moment, I'll offer my own take on this theory.

   At any rate, once the sedative power of K-complexes takes hold, the process of memory consolidation begins. This neurological construction project begins with the appearance of Sleep-spindles.

What Are Sleep-spindles?

Here's what Tuck Sleep has to say about Sleep-spindles:

   “Researchers believe Sleep-spindles represent periods of time where the brain inhibits mental processing in order to keep the person in a tranquil state. By keeping the person in a tranquil state, the sleep cycle can continue and the person can transition to the next stage of deep sleep.”

   That sounds an awful lot like the function of K-complexes, yes?

   As I said before, I'm not a sleep specialist. Having said that, I strongly believe K-complexes and Sleep-spindles are two parts of the same movement. They are the Yin and Yang, the valley and the peak, the trough and the crest of the same brainwave phenomenon. In my own experience of over twenty years as a Conscious Sleeper, I've noticed a pattern during stages one and two of my own sleep cycle. This pattern convinces me that my theory is correct, but its credibility ultimately relies on future scientific research. I'll discuss the experiences that led to my theory in just a moment. In the meantime, let's hear more of what recent science says about Sleep-spindles:

   “Fast spindles (13–15 Hz) occur in the centroparietal part of the brain, while the frontal brain produces slow spindles (11–13 Hz). Increased spindle activity occurs at the onset and outset of light sleep.” (TuckSleep.com)

   For those of you who have no idea what these egghead scientists are talking about, here's a short list of the basic functions of the Frontal and Parietal areas of the brain:

Frontal lobe

•Personality, behavior, emotions

•Judgment, planning, problem solving

•Speech: speaking and writing (Broca’s area)

•Body movement (motor strip)

•Intelligence, concentration, self awareness

Parietal lobe

•Interprets language, words

•Sense of touch, pain, temperature (sensory strip)

•Interprets signals from vision, hearing, •motor, sensory and memory

•Spatial and visual perception

   With me so far? Yes? Good! Let's hear more from the eggheads:

   “Sleep spindles begin to develop once an infant has reached six weeks of age, and may explain why babies twitch in their sleep. EEG typically will display sleep spindles immediately after muscle twitching.” (TuckSleep.com)

   Since the Sleep-spindles located in the Frontal brain tend to be slower, could it be that their function is to sedate the analytical part of the brain? In other words, the part of the mind that is capable of Lucidity. And could it be possible that the Sleep-spindles found in the Parietal area of the brain are faster because their function is to discharge residual kinetic energy to prepare for Sleep Paralysis?

   I believe this may account for why the first and second stages of sleep are the most potent times for OOBE. Energy that would otherwise be spent in Gross Body activities can now be employed in dream activities, and even OOBE (if you know how).

   Whereas K-complexes “stun" the sleeper, slow-wave Sleep-spindles “sedate" the sleeper. This paves the way for fast-wave Sleep-spindles to release excess kinetic energy and do a quick run-through of recent data to consolidate. In my opinion, this accounts for microbursts of dreaming experienced during light sleep (e.g., hypnagogia/hypapompia, hypnic jerks and twitches).

   As an aside, I refer to the subjective experience of K-complexes and Sleep-spindles poetically as The Sleep Serpent. Like a snake with potent venom, these sedating brainwaves render dream Lucidity impotent. This is not to imply that these brainwaves are toxic, only you have to learn how to surf them. Just as you can gradually become immune to snake venom by ingesting small amounts of it, so too can you become immune to the sedative power of K-complexes and slow-wave Sleep-spindles. The secret is, in my experience, a mystery pertaining to the adrenals, hormones, and retraining of attention. But that's another story.

   Before I share the experiences and experiments which led to these theories of mine, there's one more brainwave we need to discuss.

What Are PGO-waves?

   It's difficult to find a straightforward definition of PGO-waves. At least not one that doesn't leave you cross-eyed. Generally speaking, PGO-waves occur at the tail-end of NREM sleep and at the start of REM. K-complexes and Sleep-spindles have accomplished their stun-and-sedate mission, and your physical body is now completely paralyzed. This is a necessary step for both Conscious and Unconscious sleep. With your physical body out of the way, its projected double can come out and play. This neurological doppelganger is called the Subtle Body.

   At this phase of the sleep cycle, a group of cells, called Cholinergic cells, begin firing upwards to the higher regions of the brain and down the spinal cord. The net effect of this neurological tango is twofold. On the one hand, the emotional and sensory areas of the brain become activated. On the other hand, the nerve-plexes responsible for physical movement are stimulated. Despite this kinetic stimulation, however, the body is now in sleep paralysis. Besides a few myoclonic twitches and hypnic jerks, the Gross Body is dead to the world. Instead, the motor impulses are now passed on to the Subtle Body and you can now run, fly, have sex, and breathe under water. Why? Because you've now passed the Veil of Tears and have entered through the Veil of Dreams.

   PGO-waves also appear to play a role in image-stabilization. Not just in dreams but in creative visualization, fantasy, and hallucinations. PGO-waves strobe rapidly, kicking up a dust cloud of paradoxical images and emotions. This is fertile soil for creative inspiration, spiritual epiphany, and psychological insight. Evidence suggests that many poets, painters, musicians, and even schizophrenics spin their webs using PGO-waves for yarn.

My Little Experiments

   The moment I learned about K-complexes, Sleep-spindles, and PGO-waves I immediately intuited what they were. I plan on one day recording and submitting my findings using my very own EEG machine.

   Just as soon as I can afford one…🤔

   In the meantime, I've carefully monitored my sleep cycle over the years and have achieved a good working knowledge of its architecture. I can tell, for example, when I'm entering the first and second phases of sleep. Depending upon factors such as how hard my workday was, how stressed I am, or how much caffeine or alcohol I've consumed, I can even consciously access the third stage of sleep fairly regularly. But before I could consciously access stage three sleep successfully, I spent about five years tapping into it by accident during the hypnopompic phase of sleep (beginning stage of waking).

   I'll never forget the first time I experienced PGO-waves consciously. It was about 3:00 or maybe 4:00 am. I became Lucid in the middle of a dream and noticed, to the left of me, a field of sunflowers. The dream starting shaking and I stabilized it by employing what I call The Hitchhiker Method. This works by fastening your attention onto a dream-object, sensation, sound, or smell and holding onto it for dear life. This surfs the already present PGO-waves and assists them in their purpose of stabilizing dream images.

   The next thing I knew I was taken up into a blizzard of fantastical images. These occiliated at a frequency that resembled the rapid flicker-rate of a strobelight. Lucid Dreams blended with OOBE and I was able to control every nuance of the narrative (Dream Control).

   I've had similar experiences during the hypnagogic phase of sleep, but that pesky Sleep Serpent often bested me in battle.

   K-complexes and Sleep-spindles are, in my opinion, responsible for the mind’s tendency to believe the absurdities of many dream scenarios. PGO-waves have also been shown to be responsible for this mental confusion. However, due to the fact that REM sleep resembles wakeful consciousness, it's easier to become Lucid while dreaming than Pellucid during NREM. In fact, scientists refer to REM sleep as “paradoxical sleep” for this reason.

NOTE: (Pellucidity is, generally speaking, meditation carried into the sleep cycle. It's easier to access Pellucidity in NREM than in REM sleep.)

   As the years rolled on, I gradually learned to detect the signs of approaching K-complexes, Sleep-spindles, and PGO-waves. For example, have you ever seen flashes of light behind your eyes as you're falling asleep?

   Those are PGO-waves…

    Have you ever felt like you were falling, only to snap out of it with a sudden jolt?

   Those are fast-wave Sleep-spindles…

   Or perhaps you've felt yourself “drifting off" into reverie. You're still vaguely aware of your surroundings but you're feeling disembodied.

   Those are K-complexes...

   Have you ever been to a hypnotherapist? You know that part where the doctor says, “Your eyelids are getting heavier…”

   Those are slow-wave Sleep-spindles…

   The cool part about learning how to consciously surf these bioelectric brainwaves is that it amounts to a sort of Tao of Conscious Sleep. It's sleep Yoga at its most scientific. It's Qigong at its most scientific. If we can honor the insights and practices of the ancient Wisdom traditions and wed them to modern scientific research we’ll be left with an Integral approach that honors the discoveries of the past, the technologies of the present, and the breakthroughs of the future.

   In such a world, what more proof would you need of the magical and miraculous?

http://behindtheveil.simdif.com

About the Author

(Daniel Kelley is an author, poet, musician, and Integral Life Practitioner with over two decades of experience in the Esoteric arts. He is the creator of Subliminal Cognition Training, Animitariomancy,  and is the author of four books. His work has been featured in several magazines and journals including Chronogram, Psychedelic Press, Global View, and LDE Magazine. Daniel was born in 1979 to Baptist parents in Waterloo Canada but raised in Chicopee and Springfield Massachusetts. His father was a Baptist preacher. After a profound and prolonged transpersonal crisis in early childhood, Daniel broke away from his strict Christian upbringing to study the wisdom traditions of the world. At age sixteen he suffered a breakdown that culminated at age twenty-one, at which time he experienced a transpersonal breakthrough. After joining various Hermetic societies and practicing their methods, Daniel eventually found his spiritual home in Chinese Taoist Alchemy, Integral Life Practice, and the various yogas of India and Tibet. He also practices and teaches Internal Chinese Martial Arts, Qigong, Taijiquan and Xingyiquan. Daniel currently lives with his wife and daughter in upstate New York.)

[aion-rsa]

Spider-Man: No Way Home Trailer Breakdown and Analysis

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

It’s finally here. We truly never thought it would arrive for awhile. But sure enough, the first Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer has arrived. And just as you might have expected from the veil of secrecy that surrounded it, it would appear that at least SOME of the crazy multiversal rumors about this movie are true.

From its MCU multiverse shattering central concept to the presence of both Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange and Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus (with hints of even more characters yet to be revealed), Spider-Man: No Way Home looks like the biggest Marvel movie since Avengers: Endgame, and seems likely to set up future MCU Phase 4 projects, most notably Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

In other words, there’s a lot to unpack here. Here’s everything we’ve found so far. Oh, and just in case you haven’t watched it yet, here’s that trailer for you:

OK, now let’s get to work…

The Fallout From Far From Home

As we all remember, the previous Spider-Man movie, Spider-Man: Far From Home had a rather shocking ending, and one that didn’t exactly leave Peter in the best place. Thanks to the machinations of Mysterio, Peter found his secret identity outed by J. Jonah Jameson, and the world now knows he’s really Spider-Man.

We see glimpses of this in the opening moments, with Peter seeming to have a combination celebrity/pariah status, and it’s negatively affecting MJ and Ned Leeds as well. One classmate this seems to be going well for? Betty Brant, who we briefly glimpse on a TV screen in the high school, presumably reporting on this whole mess.

One fun detail about this? MJ is reading the real world New York Post, which on its own isn’t funny (the Post is a rag…except for the sports coverage), but in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies the Daily Bugle’s logo and layout were clearly modeled on the Post‘s. Another subtle reminder that this isn’t the world of the Raimi movies, and that The Daily Bugle of the MCU probably spent the last five years telling people to take Ivermectin to bring their “snapped” loved ones back.

That headline says “Spider-Minions” and I’d bet the puppets on the webs are MJ and Ned. Zendaya’s “Yesss, my Spider-Lord,” is legit hilarious, though. Not sure why the sports page would say “pray for New York”…UNLESS it’s about Spidey’s favorite baseball team, the New York Mets, for whom prayers are not enough.

Later on in the trailer, we see Spidey and Michelle being hounded by new helicopters, so this isn’t going well. But they take refuge on top of a bridge which…

Peter! You better Spidey your ass right the hell down off that bridge right this instant! You know what happens when you bring your girlfriends to bridges. Knock it off!

Steve Ditko

Let’s take a moment to appreciate the fact that Steve Ditko co-created both Spider-Man and Doctor Strange and here they are sharing the screen in an impossibly mega-budgeted film. Ditko absolutely would have hated this for any number of reasons, but especially because he barely ever saw a dime from all the Spidey and Strange merchandise through the years.

Why am I bringing this up (aside from the obvious)? Because Ditko’s name is literally in the first shot of the trailer, as some graffiti on the wall behind Peter and MJ. I’m sure Mr. Ditko wouldn’t have approved of street artists like this, either.

Damage Control

We see Peter being interrogated by someone in law enforcement, and it’s clear that Mysterio’s frame job is sticking pretty well. But wait…look more closely at the insignia on this guy’s jacket.

He’s not an ordinary fed, that DODC stands for Department of Damage Control. Remember them from Spider-Man: Homecoming? These are the folks who get called in to take care of the messes after big superhero/supervillain battles.

Here Comes Daredevil?

While there’s no official sign of Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock in this trailer, it sure seems like Peter could use a good lawyer right about now, and it’s hard to imagine a better time to bring in Daredevil, the most beloved character from Marvel’s Netflix era. Unless, of course, the faceless individual who slams a stack of files down in front of Peter is, in fact, Murdock.

Anyway, it should come as no surprise that Peter wants his secret identity back, and he’s already fought side by side with exactly the kind of guy who could help him do exactly that. Of course, the thing that reminds him of this are these Halloween decorations that look like if someone tried to describe Doctor Strange to Jon Favreau’s Happy Hogan and then Happy went and whipped up some cosplay based on the description.

It’s kind of cool that this movie seems to at least partially take place around Halloween. The MCU Spider-Man movies have always had a particular sense of time that most MCU flicks lack (although yes, Virginia, Iron Man 3 is a Christmas movie). Spider-Man: Homecoming took place at the start of the school year in September, while Spider-Man: Far From Home was a summer vacation movie. Assuming the end of that film was late summer, Peter has been dealing with his new and hellish existence for anywhere from 60-90 days by this point in the trailer.

Paging Doctor Strange…Doctor Stephen Strange

Benedict Cumberbatch returns as Doctor Strange for the first time since Avengers: Endgame, and he appears to be doing well for himself. He does, however, seem a little too eager to help Peter by casting a spell that is meant to either just erase the memory of the world that Peter is Spider-Man, or perhaps as Peter puts it, make it so Mysterio never went public with his identity.

Hell, Wong even shows up to till him what a mistake that would be. And Stephen being Stephen he, well, he ignores the hell out of him.

Also worth noting that Peter trying to wish his troubles away via magic is ALSO the basic idea of one of the most hated Spider-Man stories in all of history, the loathed “One More Day” which undid Peter’s marriage to Mary Jane in exchange for the life of Aunt May.

The Broken Spell

Of course, leave it to Peter’s anxious ass to have second thoughts at the last minute. You see, he wants Aunt May, MJ, and Ned to remember the fact that he’s Spider-Man. On the one hand, that’s nice, and reminds us that Peter is a good kid who still feels guilty about deceiving his friends. On the other hand, look at the big picture, dude! You can just…reveal your secret to them after the fact!

Also…is something wrong with Doctor Strange? For one thing, he never should have agreed to this. But for another, it’s clear that something isn’t quite right in the Sanctum Sanctorum since it’s snowing indoors. Is Strange having trouble with his magic for some reason? Will this be one of the things we have to deal with in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness?

The Multiverse

Anyway, Peter’s interruption screws everything up. How? That’s not entirely clear just yet. But it seems to be the nexus event that either sends Peter into other corners of the MCU multiverse or allows variants from other Spidey realities to start filtering in to the Sacred Timeline.

The Black and Gold Spider-Man Costume

The long-rumored black and gold Spider-Man costume seems to make its first appearance here. Is this a new suit Peter has whipped up, or is he Quantum Leaping into some variant form of himself elsewhere in the multiverse?

This scene also appears to take place in the charity where Aunt May works.

Get Ready for the Sinister Six

We get the introductions (well, re-introductions) of at least three villains in this trailer, and three is halfway to six, which can only mean that Sony has finally found a way to do that supervillain team-up Sinister Six movie they’ve been threatening us with for so long.

Electro

Is this lightning bolt blowing up police cars our first confirmation that Jamie Foxx’s Electro from the film we’d all rather forget, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, is indeed making his return here? There’s another shot that also makes me think this is more than just some multiversal storm.

Green Goblin

Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin is definitely about to make an appearance! That’s a pumpkin bomb, alright, and you can just barely hear his sinister cackle.

Doctor Octopus Returns

And, of course, the biggest applause moment in the trailer comes with the return of Alfred Molina as Doctor Octopus, one of the great big screen supervillains of all time. Is his “hello, Peter” directed at Tom Holland’s Peter Parker? Or is possible that he’s addressing another Peter entirely…perhaps one played by Tobey Maguire?

In any case, this scene looks like it might happen right after that pumpkin bomb explosion, which would mean that Doctor Octopus and Green Goblin have already teamed up by this point. Who else might be joining them in battle? We’ll find out soon enough…

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Spider-Man: No Way Home opens on Dec. 17. The full schedule of upcoming MCU Phase 4 and 5 movies can be found here.

Want to point out a Spider-Man or MCU Easter egg we missed? Just want to freak out about how cool this looks? Let us know in the comments!

The post Spider-Man: No Way Home Trailer Breakdown and Analysis appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3mt7nCa

[glottaling-too]

The textility of making. Tim Ingold, 2010.

Tim Ingold, 2010. The textiilty of making. In Cambridge Journal of Economics, 34, 91–102.

Form came to be seen as imposed by an agent with a particular design in mind, while matter, thus rendered passive and inert, became that which was imposed upon. My critical argument in this article is that contemporary discussions of art and technology, and of what it means to make things, continue to reproduce the underlying assumptions of the hylomorphic model, even as they seek to restore the balance between its terms. My ultimate aim, however, is more radical: with Deleuze and Guattari it is to overthrow the model itself and to replace it with an ontology that assigns primacy to the processes of formation as against their final products, and to the flows and transformations of materials as against states of matter

(p92)

Taking their cue from Klee, philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari argue that the essential relation, in a world of life, is not between matter and form but between materials and forces (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004, p. 377)

(p91)

whenever we encounter matter, as Deleuze and Guattari insist, ‘it is matter in movement, in flux, in variation’. And the consequence, they go on to assert, is that ‘this matter-flow can only be followed’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004, p. 451). What Deleuze and Guattari call ‘matter-flow’, I would call material. Accordingly, I recast the assertion as a simple rule of thumb: to follow the materials (Ingold, 2007A, p. 314).

(p94)

The world according to alchemy, as art historian James Elkins explains, was not one of matter that might be described in terms of its molecular composition, but one of substances, which were known by what they look and feel like, and by following what happens to them as they are mixed, heated or cooled. Alchemy, writes Elkins, ‘is the old science of struggling with materials, and not quite understanding what is happening’ (Elkins, 2000, p. 19). His point is that this, too, is what painters have always done. Their knowledge was also of substances, and these were often little different from those of the alchemical laboratory. As practitioners, the builder, the gardener, the cook, the alchemist and the painter are not so much imposing form on matter as bringing together diverse materials and combining or redirecting their flow in the anticipation of what might emerge.

In their attempts to rebalance the hylomorphic model, theorists have insisted that the material world is not passively subservient to human designs. They have expressed this, however, by appeal not to the vitality of materials but to the agency of objects. If persons can act on objects in their vicinity, so, it is argued, can objects ‘act back’, causing persons to do what they otherwise would not.

[...]

We may stare at an object, explains Elkins (with acknowledgement to the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan), but the object also stares back at us, so that our vision is caught in a ‘cat’s cradle of crossing lines of sight’ (Elkins, 1996, p. 70)

[...]

bep042 91..102 In this endless shuttling back and forth between the mind and the material world, it seems that objects can act like subjects and that subjects can be acted upon like objects. Instead of subjects and objects there are ‘quasi- objects’ and ‘quasi-subjects’, connected in relational networks (Latour, 1993, p. 89). Yet, paradoxically, these attempts to move beyond the modernist polarisation of subject and object remain trapped within a language of causation that is founded on the very same grammatical categories and that can conceive of action only as an effect set in train by an agent (Ingold, 2007B, p. 52).

(pp94-95)

It would indeed be foolish to attribute intentions to catflaps. But is it any less so to suggest that they ‘possess agency’? Rather that attributing the action to the agency of the flap (along with that of the cat, and of the cat’s owner who installed the flap in her door so she would not have to open it herself), would it not make more sense to attribute the operation of the flap to the action into which it was recruited, of the cat’s making its way in or out of doors? Surely, neither the cat nor the flap possess agency; they are rather possessed by the action. Like everything else, as I shall now show, they are swept up in the generative currents of the world.

(p95)

The world we inhabit is not made up of subjects and objects, or even of quasi-subjects and quasi-objects. The problem lies not so much in the sub- or the ob-, or in the dichotomy between them, as in the -ject. For the constituents of this world are not already thrown or cast before they can act or be acted upon. They are in the throwing, in the casting.

(p95)

The kites behaved in the way they did because, at the moment we went out of doors, they were swept up, as indeed we were ourselves, in those currents of air that we call the wind. The kite that had lain lifeless on the table indoors, now immersed in these generative currents, had come to life. What we had thought to be an object was revealed as what I would call a thing. And the thing about things, if you will, is that far from standing before us as a fait accompli, complete in itself, each is a ‘going on’—or better, a place where several goings on become entwined.

(p96)

In practice, then, flyer and kite should be understood not as interacting entities, alternately playing agent to the other as patient, but as trajectories of movement, responding to one another in counterpoint, alternately as melody and refrain.

(p96)

Daniel Miller, a leading figure in the study of material culture, has argued that it is by studying ‘what people do with objects’ that we can best understand how they create worlds of practice (Miller, 1998, p. 19). However, neither brick nor mortar, nor soil, nor the ingredients in the kitchen, nor paints and oils, are objects. They are materials. And what people do with materials, as we have seen, is to follow them, weaving their own lines of becoming into the texture of material flows comprising the lifeworld. Out of this, there emerge the kinds of things we call buildings, plants, pies and paintings. In the very first move that isolates these things as objects, however, theorists of material culture have contrived to rupture the very flows that brought them to life.

(p96)

to read creativity ‘backwards’, starting from an outcome in the form of a novel object and tracing it, through a sequence of antecedent conditions, to an unprecedented idea in the mind of an agent. This backwards reading is equivalent to what anthropologist Alfred Gell has called the abduction of agency.

[...]

A work of art, I insist, is not an object but a thing and, as Klee argued, the role of the artist—as that of any skilled practitioner—is not to give effect to a preconceived idea, novel or not, but to join with and follow the forces and flows of material that bring the form of the work into being. The work invites the viewer to join the artist as a fellow traveller, to look with it as it unfolds in the world, rather than behind it to an originating intention of which it is the final product.

[...]

Following, Deleuze and Guattari observe, is a matter not of iteration but of itineration (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004, p. 410) [...] It is in this very forward movement that the creativity of the work is to be found. To read creativity ‘forwards’ entails a focus not on abduction but on improvisation (Ingold and Hallam, 2007, p. 3). To improvise is to follow the ways of the world, as they open up, rather than to recover a chain of connections, from an end-point to a starting-point, on a route already travelled.

(p97)

Elsewhere (Ingold, 2006), I have illustrated the difference between iteration and itineration with the example of sawing through a plank of wood. Sawing a plank is like going for a walk. In walking, steps do not follow one another in succession, like beads on a string. Rather, every step is a development of the one before and a preparation for the one following. The same is true of every stroke of the saw.

[...]

For the carpenter himself, however, who is obliged to follow the material and respond to its singularities, sawing is a matter of engaging ‘in a continuous variation of variables, instead of extracting constants from them’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004, p. 410). The carpenter who has a feel for what he is doing is one who can bring the many concurrent variations with which he must engage more or less into phase with one another.1 This calls for continual correction, in response to an ongoing perceptual monitoring of the task as it unfolds (Ingold, 2006, pp. 76–7). That is why no two strokes are identical. And it is also why sawing has a rhythmic quality. For there to be rhythm, movement must be felt. Rhythmicity, as the philosopher Henri Lefebvre argues, implies not just repetition but differences within repetition (Lefebvre, 2004, p. 90).

(p98)

The charpente, Berger observes, is ‘filled with time’. There is the time it took for the trees to grow, the time to let their wood dry, the time to build with them and—now that the building has reached the end of its useful life and its planks can fetch a good price elsewhere—the time spent putting away, taking out and pulling down (Berger, 2005, p. 139). But why does Berger choose to include the story of the charpente in a dialogue with his daughter, Yves, on the subject of drawing? The clue comes right at the end: ‘Le dessinateur comme charpentier. Le dessin comme forêt?’ (Berger, 2005, p. 144). Could it be that drawing is an activity like carpentry, or even that there is a parallel between the drawn lines of a sketch and the lines of growth of living trees? I believe the parallel is apt, and that a consideration of drawing can serve very well to bring out the itinerant, improvisatory and rhythmic qualities of making as a way of working with lines.

(p99)

[topicprinter]

Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview.Today's interview is with Love Regefalk (u/MrP0ng) of Mapsery, a brand that makes map posters you designSome stats:Product: Map Posters You DesignRevenue/mo: $3,500Started: December 2017Location: StockholmFounders: 2Employees: 0Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?Hello StarterStory! My name is Love Regefalk (yes – it actually is) and I am the co-founder of Mapsery. I founded Mapsery together with my twin brother, Daniel, and we run Mapsery on the side of our engineering studies.The idea of Mapsery is to let you design a map posters of a place that’s meaningful to you, such as where you went to university, got married or where you grew up. Literally any location on the face of the earth can be chosen. All you have to do is to enter your preferred location, adjust the level of zoom and decide on a color theme and style that matches your criteria for an awesome looking poster. Want a map of London or New York? You got it! Want a map of the middle of nowhere? No problemo! Unlike regular stock posters, our posters can be customized in an infinite number of ways, making them truly unique and personal.That being said, although our maps are unique, the idea isn’t. When we launched Mapsery at the end of 2017, there were two other competitors in this space. Since then, 5-10 new direct competitors have seen the light and space has gotten way more competitive.Looking at our customers, they can be found all around the world (30+ countries to date) who share a love for maps, traveling and interior design. Owing to the fact that our website is in English and that we only run ads in English, a majority of our customers can be found in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. To a lesser extent, we get customers from other corners of the world. In terms of demographics, slightly more women than men purchase our products and people aged 25-34 are our primary age group.imageWhat's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?My backstory is that I, during my 2nd year at university, got particularly bored during an exam period and toyed with the idea of starting my own business. In short, I wanted to put the theory from university into practice. Said and done, one month later I had put together a website where I planned to sell beer pong related products that I would import from China. The setup, however, was far from ideal. I kept the stock in my dorm room and I would personally run home from school in the middle of a lecture to hand the orders to the DHL guy every day.Eventually, I got enough orders to make the move to outsource the logistics to a third-party logistics (3PL) partner. Finally, I didn’t have to handle the orders manually.Great success!One problem remained, though. Inventory management was a bitch.The products that I ordered from China were made to order and then shipped by boat, which created lead times of 60-90 days from placed order until the products where restocked. The result? My products were out of stock 25% of the time. I decided that I didn’t want to deal with the inventory anymore. Especially not with such long lead times.In a weird way, this is what made me think of the business idea that later became Mapsery.I loved the idea of e-commerce, but I hated the idea of keeping inventory (and yes, I hated the idea of dropshipping even more).The solution? A product that doesn’t have to be kept in inventory.At this point, I had heard of a company called Printful and I knew that they did printing on demand (PoD). However, I quickly realized that my margins would be thin if I were to use PoD. So I said to myself, how can I increase my margins?Easy. I would have to charge a premium for my posters.How?By having the customer design them themselves, of course. This way, they would stand out from regular stock posters, which would allow me to charge a premium. By this logic, I argued that I could sell custom made posters for $50 instead of $25.By the way, at this point, I decided to involve my twin brother Daniel in the idea. There were two reasons for this. For one, I wanted to have a partner on board because that was something that I missed on my first entrepreneurial endeavor. For two, I lacked the programming skills required to realize this idea, so why not invite your brother who knows how to code?With my brother on board, we looked to create posters for couples and families that would change shape and color based on user input such as the names, the number of family members, the date of marriage and so forth. Although we liked the idea, it became clear to us that it was a hard task to create graphical representations of families and couples that were good-looking and truly unique at the same time. We decided to settle for custom map posters instead, which we knew had been done by two other companies. What’s more, judging from their profit and loss statements we could easily see that there was a demand for map posters.We drew a lot of inspiration from these competitors, I can’t deny that, but we wanted to make sure that we used a different technology (vector rendered maps, rather than image-based maps) and we styled our maps slightly differently.To launch this idea, we started a limited company. By Swedish law, 50,000 SEK (~5,000 USD) in equity is required to do so. A small portion of that money was used for printing prototypes, setting up a domain, server hosting and so forth, but most of it was never used. In total, we spent a little less than $500 to get started (but a lot of time).Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.The first step for us was to design the raw map data. As you might have guessed, the core of our map posters is map data. More specifically, we use data from the Open Street Maps (OSM) to create our posters, which is a free wiki for map data for the world. It’s a wonderful thing, really. However, if you compare our posters with OSM, you’ll quickly realize that they don’t look the same. The OSM maps are informative, factual and great to use if you want to find your way from point A to B, but they’re not necessarily aesthetically pleasing. Thus, we had to break them apart and redesign every layer of them – from paths and highways to forest areas and buildings. This took a ton of time. The most difficult part was that they had to look good regardless of if the customer wanted to frame a rural area or a city.When prototyping and honing the design of our map posters, we utilized a printing facility on campus that was used for printing doctoral theses and what not. We managed to convince them that we would use the printers for a school project, though I’m not sure whether they actually believed us or if they just didn’t care. Regardless of which, it allowed us to print the prototypes that we needed.To conduct some market research on the different color schemes and styling options that we had designed, we put together a Google Form where our friends and family could rank the different designsOnce we had a product that we liked, all that was left for us was to find a partner that could print our posters on demand and handle fulfillment (note: we didn’t use Printful). This proved to be easier said than done. However, one lucky day, I googled “[competitor name] customer case” and struck gold. Bingo – I had found a partner that I knew could deliver.https://www.instagram.com/p/BdheFrGHDrD/Describe the process of launching the business.To launch Mapsery, a lot of time was spent on designing and developing the product. Given the fact that we developed Mapsery on the side of our engineering studies and other commitments, the development phase took quite some time. In addition to this, my brother was left to do all the coding.At the beginning of 2018, we launched Mapsery. I wouldn’t really call it a launch, though. We didn’t reach out to any media outlets. We didn’t post on Producthunt, Reddit or any other forum. And we definitely didn’t hire a PR agent. In fact, we didn’t even tell our friends about it or share it on our personal social media channels! No, our so-called launch consisted of us rolling out some ads on Facebook and Google.The reason? We didn’t think that our launch was newsworthy. We didn’t believe that our idea was novel enough. The fact that our main competitor – the company who invented the niche – also was Swedish, played a part as well. Had the primary competitor been from any other country, I think that we would have felt more comfortable doing a proper launch.That being said, If there’s anything to learn from our launch, it’s this: don’t launch as we did.Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?To be honest, this is probably where we’ve performed the poorest. We haven’t spent more than 2-3 hours per week on Mapsery, in total. Of that very limited amount of time, a majority of it has been put on customer service and minor developments. In other words, we’ve barely spent any time at all on growing our business and attracting new customers. Crazy, I know. What’s more, we haven’t created a lot of content for social media and we haven’t worked with influencers. Our ad spend, apart from Google Adwords, has been limited and the same could be said about our SEO efforts.Without a doubt, this is the reason to why we sell for a meager $3.5K a month and not ten times that amount a month. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that we could easily sell ten times more. I’m simply saying that I know why we don’t sell for more.When comparing us to competitors, this is definitely where we lack the most. Sure, I’m 99% certain that we spend less time on our business than they do, but we definitely should be able to do better.How are you doing today and what does the future look like?We are doing alright. We’re profitable and our profit margin is around 25%. Given that we charge a premium price, our gross margin is 65%, which isn’t too shabby. The cost of printing and fulfillment is 35% and we spend roughly 25% on customer acquisition. Primarily through Google Adwords and to some extent on retargeting ads on Facebook.In terms of traffic, we bring in 3.000 visitors per month, out of which 50 converts. Not great, not terrible (hello Chernobyl fans).Our presence on social media is quite limited. We have a little more than 1K followers on Instagram, but we rarely post. Our social media efforts can at best be seen as a hygiene factor at this point. We haven’t given social media any love and we don’t work actively with influencers. Given how social media-friendly our product is, this leaves a lot of room for improvement, to say the least.Moving forward, we have decided to spend more time on Mapsery to increase sales. We’ve got a good picture of what needs to be done in order to do so, and we’ll try to execute that plan. While we don’t hope to tenfold our sales, we believe that we can do a lot better by increasing the time that we spend on Mapsery and by directing our efforts towards sales efforts.https://www.instagram.com/p/Bdm_zEqn838/Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?There’s a difference between a business and a hobby. Frankly speaking, I’ve come to the realization that we run Mapsery as a hobby and not as a business. It’s a fun side project, absolutely, but it’s not a business. We might like to think that we run it as a business, but we don’t.It’s time to change that.https://www.instagram.com/p/B1_SSG5Hzcv/What platform/tools do you use for your business?Our website is built on WordPress and WooCommerce, using Braintree Payments to process payments (in the process of switching to Stripe). As mentioned before, our map data comes from OpenStreetMap and we use Google Analytics and Hotjar to make informed decisions about how our users interact with our platform.On the rare occasion that we post to social media, we use Buffer. For customer support, we use Gmail. To use Gmail for customer support is nothing that I recommend because it’s really the wrong tool for the task, but it gets the job done for us at this stage. To avoid disputes about who spends the least amount of time working on Mapsery (hint: both of us do), we use Clockfy’s Chrome extension.What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?Apart from Swedish podcasts on E-commerce and entrepreneurship, How I Built This on NPR is an all-time favorite. Honorable mentions should of course also be given to Indiehackers, Product Hunt and Reddit. The reason as to why I’m writing this StarterStory is actually because of Indiehackers.Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?Just do it. Afraid of failing? Don’t be. That’s part of the process and that’s how you learn.However, if you must fail, make sure to fail early. How? By creating an MVP and by involving your potential customers in your product development. Don’t spend your time and money developing something that no one wants.These tips aren’t necessarily related to the story that I just shared, but I think those tips are crucial for anyone starting out!Where can we go to learn more?WebsiteFacebookInstagramIf you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data.For more interviews, check out r/starter_story - I post new stories there daily.Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM

[hub-pub-bub]

As part of the Financial Times’ free schools access programme, the FT and the World Bank launched a competition asking students around the world to reimagine education for the coming century,

Among more than 500 entries, common suggestions were the use of technology to help connect students, ideas and thinkers around the world, a shift from knowledge to skills, more individualised learning, and encouraging independent thinking and study through projects with practical applications.

There were also calls to strengthen mental health support and ensure equality of access through greater investment by governments in education.

The two winners — Ishita Gupta from Inventure Academy in India and Nhi Doan from the Olympia Schools in Vietnam — were announced at a session on learning at the World Bank’s spring meeting in Washington. Their articles are published below.

Bricks-and-mortar learning is obsolete

Sociology lessons inspired Nhi Doan to imagine an audacious learning experiment with pop-up classes and AI technology breathing new life into obsolete bricks-and-mortar learning.

In Sociology, I took a sip of my future.

Outside the classroom, my digital native self was poised to go online. Hungry to explore Goffman’s concept of dramaturgy and the implications of deviance, I would dig up CrashCourse videos, The Atlantic articles, edX courses, and everything in between. In these endeavours, a curious melange of theory and application was always to be found: long and short reads of various styles, pop quizzes, data visualisations, videos, and global discussion forums fused together to make a compelling narrative, which screams “you’re the special one!” Like fellows of my own cohort, I bounce back and forth between the real world and the data-saturated virtual world, being fuelled with an insatiable zeal for knowledge that is new, egalitarian, and individually curated.

Inside, however, the axis was flipped. In temporarily tuning out of online information consumption, I tuned in to the intimate experience of being human — talking, collaborating, inquiring, creating, storytelling. If anything, this class instilled in me a sense of mental flexibility, such that I could navigate tomorrow’s uncertain world with almost everything unconceived.

From then, I wondered: what does it mean to be an educated person in this volatile future society? Within my 17 years of existence, I have witnessed the crumbling of that old story we all cherish — a phase of formal education followed by work and retirement. In an exciting era where “change is the only constant,” one so inundated with superintelligent machines, algorithms that can read our moods, and the constant remoulding of jobs, college education will have to be at the forefront. It will be reimagined.

Enter pop-up classes. Such are the marriages of poetry and Twitter marketing, of rockets and philosophy, of brick-and-mortar learning and adaptive technologies, of students in their twenties and those in their fifties, of educators and “glocal” entrepreneurs. In the spirit of audacious experimentation — with content, timeframes, spaces, and participants — these classes render the cookie-cutter lecture obsolete. What they have the potential to do is respond to an accelerated loop of skill recycling, synchronised with the staccato rhythms of technology-driven 2025 and beyond. In a nutshell, they engender an appetite for wonder, co-design and unexpected intersections. How else will we “run faster than the algorithms, faster than Amazon and the government,” if not by living a life of perennial learning?

Within this particular imaginary, traditional college degrees might as well dissolve into thin air. As AI innovations push our social machine forward, what bears the most significance will hardly be credentials incapable of bespeaking one’s unique competencies. Replacing such outdated qualifications, technologies such as Stanford’s “skill-prints” will breathe a new life into the beautiful partnership between academia and industry. A blended future of higher education that I was tiptoeing into in my sociology course might not be so far away after all.

The writer is from Hanoi, Vietnam

The future is in the decisions we make now

What will school look like in 2030? Virtual reality headsets and blended e-learning will change the fabric of education, but technology will not diminish everything, writes Ishita Gupta, who plots a new school structure that will foster the creativity of its students.

Picture this. You are a student in the year 2030. School is completely different from what your parents remember. Only attending school four days a week, most of your time is spent outdoor learning spaces. With the help of Blended E-learning, you can study on your own, focusing time on strategic topics through a plan personalised for you. Your AI learning assistant grades and offers feedback on your assignments, guiding you through difficult problems step by step, reteaching you concepts from scratch if necessary.

In geography class, you put on a virtual reality headset. Suddenly you are transported to the Andes in South America. Mesmerised by the colossal formations all around, you take notes on which materials constitute the vibrant spectrum of rock layers. History debates come alive as you and your classmates reimagine the Paris Peace Conference, sitting in the Palace of Versailles.

The possibilities are truly endless.

With the education evolving in ways that could not have been previously imagined, it is thrilling to conceptualise what innovations will come by in the future. Change is all around us. With 55 per cent of the world connected to the internet, websites like Khan Academy and Coursera are bringing incredible learning material to students even in the most rural parts of the world, free of cost.

Mastery and project-based learning will form the cornerstones of a futuristic education system. Mastery learning is an educational philosophy that requires students to achieve a level of mastery in prerequisite knowledge before moving forward. It ensures thorough learning free of conceptual gaps.

Master learning vs traditional education

Traditional

Subject material to be completed in predefined time, followed by a test

Fixed syllabus determines the content students learn through the year

Teachers teach groups of children together and are the primary means of learning the syllabus

Test scores are calculated and transcribed, after which the next topic is taught regardless of scores

Mastery

Students learn at their own pace until mastery is achieved

There is no minimum or maximum limit to what students learn, and they are free to study topics in as much detail as they like

Students learn on their own through personalised programmes while teachers identify gaps in understanding and answer questions

Students must get at least 90% of all questions right before moving on to the next topic

A curriculum unique to each learner can help focus efforts on weaker areas and stimulate development in stronger ones. Using this approach — blended with teamwork projects aimed at solving real-world problems, internships and design thinking — balanced student reports can be generated, measuring a myriad of skills relevant to real-world environments.

Classroom design would also be largely redefined. Interlaced with technology, with moving walls, flexible seating, standing desks, OLED surfaces all over and augmented reality, classrooms will become interactive learning hubs, ensuring each and every student is actively engaged with the learning material.

[aion-rsa]

First New Marvel X-Men Crossover Revealed

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Marvel announced the first major crossover of Jonathan Hickman’s Dawn of X era of X-Men. X of Swords will tie all the X-titles together in a ’90s throwback, 15-part crossover touching every single book in the line. 

“One of the cool things we are able to do now, because we’ve established the X-line and really know where we’re going, is that we’re able to try some different things out,” Hickman said in a statement. “X of Swords will be an old school crossover that meanders through the entire line. It’s almost like chapters of a story.”

Hickman, you’ll recall, reinvigorated the X-Men line with House of X and Powers of X. And like Powers of X, X of Swords is using the Roman numeral X as a sort of low-nerdy double entendre. Where Powers of X examined four time periods of exponential scales, X of Swords heavily implies a focus on the mystical (the Ten of Swords is a not great tarot card – it depicts a man lying face down on the ground with ten swords in his back), and the promotional artwork seems to hint at that being the case. 

As he did for HoX/PoX, Mark Brooks drew a pretty interesting promotional piece for X of Swords. Take a look, but be warned: Past the picture, there will be spoilers for most Dawn of X comics, as we try and look at who’s on the piece, and almost as importantly, what swords they’re holding.

Starting in the top left corner and moving clockwise:

Eye Boy, created for Jason Aaron’s underrated Wolverine and the X-Men and slated to appear as part of Leah Williams’ and David Baldeon’s X-Factor. That book has Trevor as a part of the team that investigates mutant deaths so the resurrection protocols can be initiated. He’s wielding some kind of eye sword.

Gorgon, the ex-Hand leader who once killed, resurrected and brainwashed Wolverine into being a Hand agent. Since joining the mutants on Krakoa, Gorgon was personally recommended by Logan to be one of the four Great Captains of Krakoa, responsible for the protection of the mutant ruling council when they leave the island. He’s holding the Godkiller sword that he’s carried since he was in Hickman’s Secret Warriors. The blade was created for Zeus but lost, and eventually made its way into Gorgon’s hands.

Next to him is John Greycrow, formerly one of Sinister’s Marauders, and slated to be a member of Hellions, an upcoming book from Zeb Wells and Stephen Segovia. Greycrow is a master marksman who honed his talents in war (originally World War II, but Marvel Time means his service dates have been moved up to Symkaria or something) and has technology powers. He’s carrying some kind of technological gunsword.

Below and to the right is Brian Braddock, formerly Captain Britain but now titleless (I believe) after ceding the Amulet of Right to his sister Betsy in Tini Howard and Marcus To’s magnificent Excalibur. He’s holding the Sword of Might, one of the two artifacts offered to potential Captains Britain. When captured and corrupted in Otherworld by Morgan Le Fay, Brian gave up the Amulet of Right to Betsy to help her stop Le Fay’s attack. He’s currently suffering through a crisis of confidence now that he’s left with only the sword. It also feels important that he’s textually not a mutant.

Below Captain Britain is Psylocke. This will stop being confusing in a couple of months – Kwannon (the woman who was body-swapped with Elizabeth Braddock back in the late ‘80s, then died of the Legacy Virus in Betsy’s old body) was resurrected during Wolverine’s return before HoXPoX. She was most recently in Fallen Angels running down ex-family and trying to kill Apoth, a self-aware AI drug dealer. Psylocke is carrying a fairly standard-looking sword. 

Above him is Rachel Grey, another member of X-Factor, carrying the Blade of the Phoenix, the Shi’ar sword used by the Death Commandos to wipe out her bloodline on Earth.

Below her is Charles Xavier, carrying the sword Magneto made for him out of the broken shards of the Cerebro helmet he was wearing when he was shot in the head in the pages of X-Force.

Next to him is Cable carrying a sword I recognize but can’t name at the moment. Cable is set to appear in his own book, from Gerry Duggan and Phil Noto, but has spent much of Dawn of X on family vacations with Cyclops, Jean Grey, Rachel Grey, his uncle Gabe, his dad’s boyfriend Wolverine, his dad’s other wife Emma Frost, and their island home’s estranged sister.

Above Cable is Doug Ramsey, Cypher. Doug was most recently running around Shi’ar territory trying to get to Chandilar to visit with Cannonball in Hickman and Rod Reis’ New Mutants. He’s back on Earth and back to functioning as Krakoa’s voice now. The sword he’s carrying looks like it’s a techno-organic extension of his arm, but it could also be his best friend, Warlock the Technarch, hiding from Cyclops. Confused? Go read X-Men #7.

Next to Cable and Cypher is Betsy Braddock, the newest Captain Britain. She is attacking with her telekinetic sword that’s a manifestation of her powers, and she’s dressed in her snazzy new Captain Britain uniform designed by To for Excalibur.

Next to Betsy is a yet-unnamed sidekick to Angel who’s set to appear in Vita Ayala and Bernard Chang’s Children of the Atom, starting in April.

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Down and to his right is Domino, sporting a fancy wooden stabbing sleeve crafted by Forge to heal the parts of her that were skinned by the Reavers to allow them to pass undetected through Krakoa’s defenses in early X-Force. 

Below her is Cyclops with a laser sword. You don’t need much more than that.

In the bottom right corner is Armor, Hisako Ichiki. She debuted in Joss Whedon and John Cassaday’s Astonishing X-Men, and has been a leader of that era of students since. She’s currently spreading the good word about Krakoa to mutants around the world in the pages of New Mutants.

To the left is Wolverine carrying the Muramasa blade. This sword cuts through anything and disrupts healing factors – it’s one of the few things that could potentially hurt Wolverine enough to kill him.

Next to Logan is Magik, Ilyanna Rasputin, carrying her Soulsword. More on this in a second, but Magik has most recently been in space with Cypher and the rest of the New Mutants, in her case trying to make out with all of the Shi’ar Death Commandos.

To Magik’s side is Storm carrying some kind of long lightning kunai.This is one of my favorite sentences of all time.

Below Storm is Nightcrawler, the first Pope of a new mutant religion (again, read X-Men #7, it’s bonkers) carrying a fancy looking rapier. Nightcrawler has always been modeled (and modeled himself) after Errol Flynn, and the rapier is a big part of that.

Next to Nightcrawler is Storm’s Marauders teammate Iceman, ready for some Stabbing…and…Chill…? I’m sorry, once I thought of it I had to type it.

And finally, above Iceman is Apocalypse, the man who ended the Bronze Age. Apocalypse is pictured here holding one of the jagged scimitars he was last seen carrying in a flashback told by Cypher about Krakoa’s ancient history. Krakoa was once Okkara, one big island, until an invasion from another plane forced Apocalypse to sacrifice his first Horsemen to seal off that invasion, and half of Okkara. Arrako, the sealed off sister island to Krakoa, reappeared in X-Men #2, and with it the daughter of one of the Horsemen. 

This was one of the most exciting dangling ideas from House of X and Powers of X. The fact that Dawn of X has been just as casually stuffed with new concepts and deep examinations of the changes wrought by Krakoa and the Five’s resurrection abilities, while also making time for fun superhero punch ups and picking up ideas that have been left on the ground by the introductory series is what’s making the X-Men line so exciting right now. 

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X of Swords kicks off in July.

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