#(although obviously it helps to have that mental framework to work with)

[sidewalk-scrawls]

Slowly but surely teaching myself a smidge of cybersecurity so that I can a. incorporate it into my work, b. get really weird with neocities, and c. get weird with it in general

[holisticalecsecareanu]

This interview by ERA News Beta speaks to Alec about a varied number of subjects to do with his film casting and debut in GOC, but farther than that, Alec speaks in great detail about his journey in Romanian theatre,  his views on the state of Romanian theatre today,  his acting philosophy.

I found this an incredibly revelatory article about Alec because you don’t fully realize, until an interview like this,  the depth and breadth, not only of his intelligence, but of his strong beliefs and views regarding his chosen profession. It’s very different going from little snippets in interviews where Alec discusses mostly just one project, to this really comprehensive presentation of who he is as a person and an actor. Also, obviously being able to discuss such complex subjects in his native language, I believe, really allows him to open up more comfortably.

He has a -LOT- of strong feelings and responses to the questions the interviewer asks and he expresses them eloquently, intelligently, and also pretty bluntly, sometimes. It shifted, a little, and not in a bad way, who he is in my head, or rather, it fleshed out who he is in a way that all the quick sound bites and magazine interviews don’t.

I know, from this, that he will never strop striving to push himself and his abilities, to discover new and different ways to learn in his craft. This interview also goes a long way towards explaining how Josh, Francis, and he,  formed such a bond, because I believe they also hold these beliefs and commitments to the roles they take on and the projects invest in. It’s almost like kismet because what are the odds that these three individuals would have the same kind of approach to the story they were telling? I think that is why God’s Own Country is such a superlative and luminous film.

Also, the Fight Club production sounds KICK ASS and I wish I had seen it and I can’t believe someone didn’t tape it!

And, yes, that photo, because it never, never ceases to rock every aspect of my world.

This interview is in Romanian but, at least on Google, there is a Google translate button that appears. I have also provided the Google translated version below; am not able to vouch for it’s accuracy, but at least it is something!

Thank you if you’ve read this far. :-D

Google Translation of Interview Below. : 

The first British film brings a London agent to Alec Secăreanu

There is also news that one of the young aspirants managed a movie in Hollywood, and for a second people hold their breath, dismayed, wondering "what the hell is this?", Before the engines start again. and to see life beyond its course - Radu Iacoban once said to me, referring to an entire generation, actors who are making their way to a glory that neither they nor we know much about yet . It could have the American endorsement or the greatness of the European trophies, in any case it will no longer be possible to rely on the applause of those who built their illusions in the theaters where they were taken by force or on the admiration of those who dreamed of the two hours of the program. television of yesteryear.

Alec Secăreanu is not one of the 10-15 actors who appear constantly in the distribution of each of the films of the new wave, fueling the impression that only a few people have managed to finish the theater institute in Romania lately. But it has the merit of entering Tyler Durden's mind. And to enter Tyler Durden's mind is courage, especially since it is a dark mind, split into two completely separate universes, and in each of them reigns revolt in all its forms, revolt against the system, against consumer society, against to an absent father and, therefore, against God himself. It's an even greater courage to do this after a perfect director has already passed by, who explored his corners, in tandem with an iconic actor.

The first six rounds of Fight Club demonstrations were, at the end of last year, an absolute success in Bucharest, so the complete version follows, with sophisticated projections made by Les Ateliers Nomades - the company that made the famous mapping on the Parliament Palace - and imagined stunt figures under the guidance of experts from the Gladiator Association, which works in the good tradition of its illustrious founder, Szobi Csech. It's like we lost sleep. Anyway, Tyler Durden doesn't sleep either… Alec Secăreanu certainly sleeps quite a bit himself, since in the meantime he finished filming the first feature film in which he took the lead role, a kind of Brokeback Mountain with a farmer from Romania, the debut film of the British director Francis Lee.

There were nine weeks of filming in Yorkshire, enduring the "bipolar weather" of England, during which time he learned, among other things, to cut the hooves of cattle, to make cheese, to witness the birth of lambs. Oleacă already knew from the Fight Club. And in few percussions I surpass him, after Alexandrul Dabija's Requiem, from the National Theater in Bucharest. In addition to stories about the British system, a show business performance machine, news about new theatrical productions in Bucharest or evaluations of Romanian theater in general, from Alec Secăreanu I found out that there is an online radio that takes you far, Nice Cream FM , and something even more interesting, that there is Radiooooo, with five "o's", which allows you to choose from the map of the world what kind of music you want, in decades, from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. «You can understand your decade and your country and listen to, say, Mongolian music from the '60s. It's something like Wikipedia, users are still uploading music, so they've already reached an impressive database, "says Alec.

Rep: Actors of your generation make most of the film and most make film outside. Ana Ularu, Iacoban, Bucur… a long series in which you have just been included, in the most honorable way, with a British production, a kind of Brokeback Montain as far as I understand, a love story that happens on a farm and involves a character born in Romania

Alec Secăreanu: The first feature film in which I had the main role, "God's Own Country" is Francis Lee's debut film. I really wanted a Romanian for the role, because the character in this story is Romanian, and the director wanted everything to be as authentic and organic as possible. Of course, the character has only a line or two in Romanian, not at all significant, by the way, for the story, so they could take absolutely any other actor who speaks English with an accent. But he wanted everything to be organic. The casting director from Romania gave more than 40 rehearsals and, a few weeks later, the director came to Bucharest and wanted to meet about 13 of us, a group from which he chose three actors. The three were in London for a final test, a so-called chemistry test with the other actor, the one who had already taken the role.

YOU HAVE TO HAVE EXTREMELY STRONG NERVES THOUGH, ESPECIALLY WHEN THE STAKES ARE HIGH. PROBABLY THE FIRST THING YOU NEED TO GET USED TO AS AN ACTOR IS TO BE REJECTED. YOU GO TO DOZENS OF CASTINGS, TO HUNDREDS OF CASTINGS, YOU GET FIVE OR TEN PERCENT OF THEM, TO THE OTHERS YOU ARE REJECTED AND, MOST OF THE TIME, IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT.

 They are simply looking for something else, the sooner you understand this system, the better. To keep your lucidity and show signs of mental health. And you have every reason to protect your health, since, in the end, the tool you work with is yourself and, if you break this tool or if it is defective, it no longer serves you properly. My character's name is Gheorghe Ionescu, he is a young Romanian farmer who went to work in England, who ends up working somewhere, in an isolated complex in Yorkshire, and there he meets a guy, the boy of the farm owners. An unexpected meeting for both of them, surprising, a friendship and a fascination are linked and the two end up living a love story, although neither of them identifies as a gay person. In fact, the film does not want to be a gay movie, but, rather, a story about people, a plea that some encounters are love. A very interesting creative connection was created between me, my colleague, Josh O'Connor, the director Francis Lee and Joshua, our operator.

We had two weeks of rehearsals, in which we discussed very well each stage of the script, each sequence, what happens to the characters, the history of each of them. When I started working, everyone in the frame knew what to do. I filmed a lot of exteriors, on which occasion I got to know very well the weather in England, which is dementia, you

have four seasons in one day, it starts with snow, followed by a storm, then hail, then the sun rises, then again it snows a little and so on. In fact, the weather was a real problem at the connections, because I was starting a frame in the sun and when I resumed it, it was snowing outside, so things didn't fit.

THE TWO WEEKS OF REHEARSALS HELPED ME BUILD THE CHARACTER, BECAUSE I HAD TO WORK ON THE FARM, I LEARNED TO WORK WITH COWS, SHEEP, TO WITNESS THE BIRTH OF LAMBS, TO CUT THE HOOVES OF CATTLE, TO MAKE CHEESE , LOTS OF THINGS. IF THIS THING WITH ACTING DOESN'T WORK… I LEARNED SOME EXTREMELY USEFUL THINGS, WHAT CAN I SAY.

Rep: I understand that the benefits were even greater, you chose an invitation to the British actors' union and a London agent…

Alec Secăreanu: I had the opportunity, for nine weeks, to work in a healthy system from the ground up, starting from the way the union works, to the fact that the actors from the British schools learn notions of personal discipline from college, in a broader framework for the management of the profession. I was treated as a member of their union. A month and a half after I finished filming, my agent received an email from the union asking if I had been paid for the work done, so that the warranty that had been withheld from the producers at the time could be released. in which they announced the film. What can I say… welcome to Romania!

I told them that I am not part of this union, they told me that such a contract in the UK guarantees me these rights and allows me to become a member. I'll be back on the 20th for a series of meetings, and we'll probably finish the talks on this occasion. In the meantime, I also have an agent in London, in addition to those who represent me in Romania. I started the relationship with my agent from Romania, Alexandru Harsany, from RAA (Romanian Artists Agency), two years ago, when I was just returning from Venice, where I stayed for about three months, at the Art Biennale, where I was a performer in an installation built by Alexandra Pirici. Alexandra…, a perfect artist… two days ago completed a performance that will be presented at the Tate, in London…

Returning to my professional path, my stake, I once told my agent, is to work abroad, because in the country, unfortunately, you have nothing to do. You just have nothing to do. Seven to eight films are made a year, which usually have the same cast. In fact, if you look at Romanian films from the last ten years, you might get the impression that only 15 actors have graduated from the University of Romania lately. Beyond this shortcoming, there is no market, the options are few, I do not understand how many of my colleagues manage. Well, I'm in this situation too. Outside, once you have a major project, some doors open, everything goes on.

HERE, I HAVE COLLEAGUES THAT PEOPLE RECOGNIZE ON THE STREET, BY SUBWAY AND BY BUS, WHERE THEY ARE MAINLY BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE TAXI MONEY. IT'S FRUSTRATING.

I worked with my agent in Romania, I updated my casting photos every six months, which means to make available to potential producers a picture of the state, in which you must be relaxed, not to frown and to highlights your features as best you can. We have updated, to the necessary standards, the video materials or CV presentations, ie that series of things without which you have nothing to look for at the door of a casting director or an agent. While filming in England, the producers there issued a press release announcing that they were filming and that they had a certain distribution. At time number two, Alexandru's mail exploded, hundreds of requests, questions and offers came, sent by casting directors, agents, an entire machine was set in motion.

During the filming in London, I had five days off at one point, and the producers arranged for me to meet with some other directors, agencies, to see how things worked. They are somehow looking for unpolished stones, hoping to find the next great talent. We don't have this culture. I know only one casting agent who goes to shows or to UNATC, to see new faces, and that is Domnica Cârciumaru. The others always work with the same people, and that's especially because they don't know other people, they don't look to see what actors there are on the market, they don't care. Romanian agencies do not have casting databases, for example.

There are real platforms out there for that. Our casting directors work from project to project. 'What I need, a 40-year-old woman. Where else have I had a 40-year-old woman? Aha, in the gum commercial. Well, let's call that one too - that's how things work. In London I had meetings with three agencies and I opted for a rather large one, The Independent, which deals not only with actors, but also with directors, screenwriters, a total of about a thousand people. I liked that it works as a boutique agency, they have 40 agents, every week they meet and discuss the projects that are on the market and to which they have access and then they try to promote the people they represent. In addition, this agency is open to the States. We will see…

Rep: Returning closer to home, you have a few shows in Bucharest, including Fight Club, one of the revelations of last season. The first six rounds of Fight Club demonstrations were an absolute success, so the full version follows… 

Alec Secăreanu: In addition to the most recent premiere, Fight Club, we have an extraordinary show at Godot, «Flowers, Girls, Movies or Boys», which we have been playing for ten years with great success. It is one of the first texts written by Mimi Brănescu, he being a basic actor, but lately he has reshaped himself on dramaturgy and screenwriting. A show about relationships, which follows the evolution of two couples, from the moment when future lovers know each other, until a little later, when they may lose love. It's a good, funny text, it catches the audience very well. I'm one of those lovers, a filthy neighborhood wannabe, the kind who feels like he knows them all, and obviously he's not.

His evolution is very interesting, he hits a person he underestimates, in any case he did not expect to have such an impact on him. The girl is from another social class and this very conflict between social classes arouses him and makes him get closer. In time, however, the two realize that they do not have much in common.

I KNOW, I KNOW, THERE'S A THEORY THAT OPPOSITES WOULD BE DRAWN, BUT THEY'RE MOST LIKELY DRAWN TO THE POINT WHERE THEY REALLY HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON. THEY MAY NOT EVEN MEET AT ALL, AND THAT'S THE STRANGENESS OF THE COUPLE WE'RE TALKING ABOUT.

I have another show at the National Theater, Requiem, directed by Alexandru Dabija, entered the seasons last year, things are going well. We expected him to be selected in the National Theater Festival, but it seems that was not the case. It is a text Vişniec, first placed in Romania, with references to an area that seems to be of great interest to Dabija now, more precisely the area of ​​war, the world of soldiers. Vişniec was also interested in this form in one form or another, if we think of "The Woman as a Battlefield in the Bosnian War".

most spectacular staging of this text. There was another show, once in France, he told me that he had seen it, but that it is much more extravagant. Dabija thought of an image show, there are costumes, there is scenery, there are quite a few actors on stage, about 20, some of them employees of TNB, most of them - collaborators. It is sung, it is sung beautifully, the music is by Ada Milea, some songs are really very nice, it is a kind of music specific to the instruments with which it is played: an accordion, a big drum - where I play… We have some marches and various others pieces that lead to the military music area.

I play the role of a soldier who still believes in victory. The story takes place in a cafe Chez Vişniec, a place where soldiers meet who are preparing to return home, who dream of the triumphant march and the glory of reception in their cities. All sorts of people gather at this cafe, some who have never believed in victory, others who have believed, there are some who still believe that victory is possible - all sorts of psychologists synthesized from this theater of war.

What did not delight me about this text is the fact that the characters do not have an evolution from one end of the show to the other. A logic does not have to exist, it is an area of ​​the theater that Vişniec has accustomed us to, but the characters, although very vehement, with a very strong speech, were suitable for a well-deserved development.

Rep: Do you believe in victory? Or have you not fought your big battles so far?

Alec Secăreanu: No, the great battles did not take place. But we started with a few fights, some of which we lost, others we won, others are still contested. I lost, for example, the struggle with the idealism I had at the end of college. I was very disappointed when I finished college, very disappointed… I had high expectations from the Romanian theater market, I hoped to have a vision, a coherence, a general enthusiasm. Of course, everyone wants to be part, at some point, of a movement that means something. I'm still part of the independent theater area, so I never relied on the state theater to do anything for me.

BY THE WAY, I THINK THAT THE STATE THEATER HAS ENTERED A KIND OF SHADOW CONE, IN THE SENSE THAT, AT LEAST THAT IS MY IMPRESSION, IT HAS BECOME MANNERIST, IT HAS NO IMAGINATION, IT HAS STUCK IN SOME RECIPES THAT SEEM TO WORK AND, WITH FEW EXCEPTIONS, NO ONE SEEMS WILLING TO DEVELOP NEW THEATRICAL EXPRESSIONS.

And in the latter case, the high hopes and high expectations were primarily for them, because they manage the funds needed to do that. Every year they have to put on a number of shows and I look in amazement that they are not trying to discover anything, they are systematically going to areas where they have been before, they only walk on dirt paths. It's not the commercial that has to bring the world to the theater. There may be a commercial area, but I think it is our duty, of artists, actors, directors, to push the boundaries a little, to invent new ways.

But the independent theater is currently identifying itself as an area of ​​precarious means. You do shows that catch the audience - logically, otherwise you can't finance yourself, the setting is, most often, modest, consisting of two chairs and a table - since there is no money for something more sophisticated, the costumes are also as they are - most often the actors come with their clothes from home. It's a poor theater, let's face it. If you try to look for what is happening in the independent theater, the first time you notice the lack of funds, and you notice it as a spectator and it would not be your job as a spectator to see things like that. It can be seen that the director made a kind of compromise with the money to make this show. While in the state theater a lot of funds are lost.

There are exceptions, of course, but my huge frustration is that you see shows with extraordinary budgets and you don't understand why the money went for such a show, which doesn't bring anything new. While in the independent theater there are so many ideas and so much desire to work, but there is no funding for their realization. I was really talking to someone the other day, because we're looking for funding for Fight Club, and I was asked, okay, beyond funding, what's the business? Let's get along, we're talking about an art form, and monetizing art in this brutal way is harder to imagine, because our stake is to try to develop new theatrical languages, we need grants, state aid, maybe even the private area, the effort is not made for a show to be sold like this, to fill the halls.

If you want that, you have a party, you call the world, you play a few more instruments, you say three more poems and that was it. Either way you want to go, the discussion inevitably reaches the area of ​​the diseased system, which you have little to do, except to try to build it from scratch.

I have a cultural association with some colleagues. We realized in 2007, when we finished the University, that there is no point in hoping, that we will not receive any kind of help from the theaters, where even now the places are blocked.

I WOULDN'T SAY THEY AVOID YOUNG PEOPLE, BUT RATHER THAT THEY ARE WARMER WITHOUT US. THERE ARE A LOT OF EMPLOYEES IN THEATERS WHO DO NOTHING, BUT KEEP THE SEATS BLOCKED, TWO OR THREE SEATS APPEAR ONCE EVERY THREE YEARS.

IT'S A KIND OF SLAVERY, PEOPLE WORK IN A WELL-GROUNDED SYSTEM, WHICH NO ONE REALLY WANTS TO CHANGE.

In fact, the same situation is in every state institution, many people who receive a meaningless salary. And these are not theater companies, to say that they are families, but they are state institutions, financed from the budget. One is an independent, self-financing theater company and theoretically is allowed to do whatever it wants with its money, and another is a budget-funded theater, obliged to function for the public and to educate it, to arouse it, to motivate it. . If you put the same pieces of Caragiale and Chekhov every year, and only that, and only that…

Rep: There are all kinds of public calls lately for the elimination from the scene - from various scenes - of the generation we call, coded, "golden", as we saw calls of some intermediate generations, I would not know how to define them , to finance somewhat less intellectual productions, which have at least some connection with the public. Where is the truth? And with the golden generation, what should be done, ideally, from the point of view of the new wave you represent?

Alex Secăreanu: Who else is today a consumer of magazine theater, for example? They are nostalgic, and they know where to find their shows, and they somehow look for them by virtue of inertia. I have no problem taking care of established actors. I appreciate them as history and there are some from which I had a lot to learn, because they are better than me. Victor Rebengiuc, for example, with whom I worked for a short film called Casting Call, written and directed by Conrad Mericoffer, is a man from whom I learned a lot. The story follows an elderly actor, who is called to a casting, but it is not necessarily about the elderly actor, but a generic meditation on the condition of the actor, because we are all, in fact, in the same situation. I played, Paul Ipate, Victor Rebengiuc and Sergiu Costache.

I learned a lot in the short time I spent with Rebengiuc, how to behave in a team, how to approach a role…

IT'S LIKE CHESS. IF YOU PLAY WITH SOMEONE WHO IS BETTER THAN YOU, YOU LEARN FROM HIM. IT'S NICE TO HAVE SOMEONE BETTER BEAT YOU, BECAUSE YOU LEARN FROM HIM.

There are cases, however, in which it would be in the best interest of the actors in question to give up, as is the case of Radu Beligan, for whom I have a huge respect, but who has advanced a lot in age, goes through natural stages of life, to simply remember the lines, it is simply no longer possible. What we want from this story is already doing him a disservice. It's just an example. With reconfigurations and reinventions it is harder… but actors like Victor Rebengiuc and Marcel Iureș believe that they went in different ways from the very beginning, they wanted more than they were offered and they looked for more.

In this profession you never stop searching, because as soon as you get the impression that you know them all, you enter a very dangerous area, an area where you don't come up with anything new, and the viewer feels that. You have to surprise him, he has to see you doing something new, otherwise there is no stake.

Rep: Fight Club… You were able to get into Tyler Durden's mind, a courage, probably, after his twisted imagination was once explored by David Fincher, with the iconic film released in 1999. What you found there ?

Alex Secăreanu: Fight Club… is a story that, for me, started many years ago. I read Chuck Palahniuk's book in 2006 and I thought that this book must be a theater show. The idea bothered me for many years, until last year, when the stars lined up, I said it would be time to do it, especially since I found an exceptional team. We developed ideas, we had a lot of meetings in which we kept challenging the imagination, to see where the story can take us, and finally we were ready to put everything into practice. Sure, we hit the funding. Arcubul financed us for the show, which is a complex one, with multimedia elements, videomapping, fight scenes, music,

It was a test for us first of all, to see if our ideas work, if the team works. After the first six rounds, we realized that we are on a very good road, which must be continued. We can bring new elements to the theater, we can develop new languages ​​in the theater, we wanted from the beginning to make an experience for the spectator, a one hundred percent experience made for him. We wanted the spectator, when he left the theater, to feel that he had received a punch in the stomach. We got pretty close to the goal, all the people said, after the show, that they lived that thing that we felt when we were little and we watched a karate movie, and after the movie you wanted to jump around the house, to give more and you a fist, try another scheme.

He left absolutely no one regardless of this show, which is very important. We need some more money to set it up the way we thought it would. The amount is not large for a state theater, but huge for an independent theater. About 60,000 euros. Usually, in the independent theater you say, come on, how much do we have, 5,000 euros? Let's do it, we come home with more clothes, we cut another set, we give up that one, the other one and we did the show. When you have thought of an artistic approach in a coherent way, you cannot make concessions like this. You can not. There are elements, means that you absolutely need to build your convention fluently, to say what you wanted to say.

THERE ARE ALSO PRODUCTIONS AT TNB OF ONE MILLION EUROS, APUS DE SOARE, THIS ONE FROM TEN YEARS AGO OR WHEN IT WAS MADE, TWO SEASONS WERE ALSO PLAYED AT REVEDERE.

There is also a record amount for a show that has never been played before. I don't know how much the funding was, but let's remember that in the year of Caragiale, a theater wanted to do D'ale Carnavalului somewhere, at the Metrorex Halls. They equipped a hall with bombers, cars, an entire fair built from scratch, and the show was never done again

[redbeanboi]

Guido Mista : ESTP [JJBA]

Excited to finally share this! One large bowl of mixed salad for the hungry beanie babies, as requested. :-)

As always—I’ll be looking at the Jungian cognitive functions.

And an extra big thank you to @string-bean-owo​ for helping me find some of these manga panels! :-)

Warning: Extended Spoilers ahead for JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Vento Aureo.

Functional Order: Se-Ti-Fe-Ni

Perceiving Functional Axis: Extroverted Sensing (Se) / Introverted Intuition (Ni)

Extroverted Sensing (Se)

Se is a perceiving function that relies on the five senses (touch, taste, sound, smell, sight) to interact with the environment. Se dominants like Mista prefer material, tangible things and don’t particularly like abstract ideas or concepts, as seen when Giorno first joins the gang and starts sharing his theories and strategies during enemy attacks (stuff that Mista cannot readily accept). Note Mista’s reactions to Giorno’s crazy hypothesis on the train:

Source: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Ch. 489

Mista finds it difficult to trust what his eyes (and ears, etc.) can’t perceive, and it’s only after Trish proves Giorno’s “theory” that he accepts it. Tangible, physical proof and evidence are things that Se dominants rely on when it comes to making their own conclusions. He handles solid, physical or simply real world information better than vague hypotheticals (which is where you often see him and Giorno clash).

Se dominants also love novel thrills, material items and creature comforts, which is one of Mista’s defining traits. Mista loves experiencing the world through his five senses because of Se and loves cheese, wine, sleep and good looking people. Se is a very big contributor to ESTP’s love of food, sports/physical action and/or sex (or any physical activity really). ESTP’s (and other Se dominants like ESFP) constantly seek out fun, sensory experiences to stay happy.

Source: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Ch. 508

Mista’s keen observation is yet another example of Se dominance; he’s quick on the uptake and uses his Se to process external stimuli. Whenever Mista gets into a fight, he takes mental note of his physical surroundings and uses his observations to make conclusions.

Source: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Ch. 464

ESTP’s are very physical and quickly respond to environmental demands, which is why Mista is able to think quickly on his feet and go with the flow on many different occasions. Wow!

Introverted Thinking (Ti)

Ti is more of a subconscious function in ESTP’s, but it’s what fuels their drive to understand the world and master their skills/talents. Like other ESTP’s, Mista uses Ti to analyze and process the ideas that his Se creates based on past experiences or any knowledge he’s acquired in his life. Together, these functions serve as a logical framework to help Mista determine which ideas/decisions are logical and which aren’t. It’s essentially a problem solving tool.

Though he’s not the type to overthink things, there are often times when Mista has to use Ti to make important decisions—betraying the Boss and organization being one of them. Knowing that Bucciarati is smart and having known him for a decent amount of time, Mista’s come to learn Bucciarati’s pragmatism as fact, and as Mista points out, Bucciarati wouldn’t betray the organization if it was a losing fight. Having seen Bucciarati make smart decisions in the past is what ultimately convinces Mista to join the band of traitors. He doesn’t necessarily cite protecting Trish as his primary motivation for betraying Passione, like Narancia—I think Extroverted Feeling played some role in this decision though, even if it was subconsciously—and Mista pretty much tells it like it is: he’ll get “filthy, stinkin’ rich” once this is over.

Source: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Ch. 523

This might be a sillier instance, but Mista’s theory on the tastiness (or lack thereof) of human flesh is another pretty good example of his Ti. He uses information he knows—”cats, lions, eagles, etc. are all carnivores and aren’t served in restaurants because the meat’s smelly, etc.”—to come to the conclusion that humans would taste pretty gross because they also eat meat!

Source: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Ch. 590 

Extroverted Feeling (Fe)

ESTP’s Fe is what ultimately drives them to use their keen observation and problem solving skills to help other people, as opposed to using these traits for purely selfish reasons. Mista is drawn to and strives to attain interpersonal peace, harmony and understanding (remember that he prefers to live a “simple life”), and I believe that this Fe is where his humanitarian side comes from. The most obvious example of his caring, compassionate side is his entire backstory.

Source: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Ch. 508

Mista’s Fe kicked in as soon as he saw this woman getting beaten in the car and acted on it, and although he is analytical and does make logic-based decisions (i.e. his decision to join Bucciarati and betray the Boss), Extroverted Feeling often drives him to do the “right” thing, most especially in the spur of the moment. In this instance, it’s killing a bunch of trashy men. 

In social environments, Fe works with Se and brings out Mista’s sillier, humorous side. 

Source: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Ch. 486

Source: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Ch. 590

Of course, at the same time, while Mista is extroverted and lively, he’s also perfectly fine with just enjoying his teammates’ company and doesn’t always need to take over the conversation and is okay with just making his little side comments. 

Source: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Ch. 456

Source: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Ch. 524

Of course, because Se is Mista’s dominant function, he usually shows his affection through action (rather than words) since it’s more comfortable for him; he’s not very good at explaining himself after the Rolling Stones incident, but Mista’s willingness to put himself into harm’s way to change Rolling Stones’ form is pretty indicative of the love and loyalty he has for Bucciarati.

Source: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Ch. 594

Introverted Intuition (Ni)

I know it’s easy to make jokes that Mista always ends up full of lead because almost all of his ammo gets fired back at him, but Vento Aureo is full of instances that show just how good Mista is at pulling information his Se has stored away and using that information to prepare an attack on his enemy.

We can assume that Mista’s dealt with a lot of other stand users at this point, especially since he knows the basics about Long-Range and Close-Range stands and keeps this info in mind when he’s looking for Sale.

Source: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Ch. 464

The White Album arc is my favorite to refer to when it comes to identifying Mista’s strengths as a member of Bucciarati’s team (also a good display of his Ni, both in its healthy and destructive forms).

Ni is sort of Mista’s “achilles heel,” since it’s undoubtedly his weaker function; it’s not nearly as strong as his Se and Ti, which Mista utilizes and relies on more. That being said, Ni helps Mista to pull from every single corner of his noggin and gets him to hone in on the evidence pulled from his Se. And from there, he looks for patterns in the information Ni gathers or just skips the thought process altogether and just predicts what might happen next (which you see when he kind of just jumps the gun—no pun intended). 

Mista’s good at keeping calm during moments of crisis and usually thinks things through, enabling him to make important deductions in life or death scenarios. “Obviously this weird enemy has to breathe somehow! I can attack from there!”

Sources: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Ch. 512 (above) and Ch. 514 (below)

At the same time, this Ni is a little dangerous when it gives Mista the idea that it’s alright to just “do first and think later”... and that’s usually when he forgoes thinking altogether. 

Source: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Ch. 512

Cue the ricocheting bullets. 

And it happens again during the Rolling Stones arc when Mista decides to jump outside of the apartment building with Rolling Stones—even though he doesn’t exactly know what will follow. He makes this decision without having thought it through carefully and it’s only after he falls (and survives) that Mista realizes he can’t change Rolling Stones, and in a sense, cannot change fate (oOoo).

Source: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Ch. 594

_____

A/N: This was super fun !!! Mista’s probably one of my favorite characters of all time, and I really think he embodies the ESTP type. At this moment in time, I haven’t gotten an Enneagram post for him planned in the near future, but I’ve typed him as a 7w8 if that helps. hope you enjoyed reading this !

[ivegotthefanficinme]

Freedom Part 7 Mandalorian X Reader

Summary: An escaped slave owned by the Hutt clan, with the knowledge of dark clan secrets.  A bounty is set and the best hunter in the parsec is hired, The Mandalorian. Two vastly different paths cross. Both are scarred physically and mentally by their past. Can they ever truly be free? *SLOW BURN*

Warnings: Blood, Mentions of slavery, PTSD, Rape implications, FLUFF, Language, angst

Words: 2.1k

Parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 (You are here), Part 8, Part 9

That night, the night Din was injured and you had completely fallen apart, was the first night that you had ever spent in Din’s arms.

As you sat in the copilot’s seat holding the child attempting to get it to sleep, your thoughts wandered back there.

You woke up with a jolt at the feeling of someone’s arm around your waist, hitting your forehead on the wall next to the cot.

“Ow!” You exclaim softly.

A groan comes from behind you.

“Are you alright?” A deep voice rasps.

You sigh at the sound of Din’s voice, comforted by the fact that it was him and not someone else.

“Hmm,” you breath as you turn over, “just hit my head. ‘M okay.”

Although it was dark, you could just make out Din’s face in front of your own. Although he was awake, his eyes weren’t open, as he laid on his non-injured side.

You can feel his thumb rubbing circles in the small of your back. 

“When did I fall asleep?” You ask.

“A while ago…” he replies.

You must have fallen asleep in his arms and then at some point, he had laid you down and stripped off the rest of his armor.

Although you liked being curled up next to him, this was something new for you.

“I’ve never actually slept in the same bed as…” you trail off in a whisper.

Din chuckles, opening his shining eyes, “Neither have I.”

Suddenly he removes his hand from your back and up towards your face. You flinch when he pushes a lock of hair behind your ear.

“You don’t have to be afraid anymore,” he breathes.

“Not of you or your touch,” you sigh.

You curl into him, your mind screaming at you not to, your heart beating out of your chest, but a feeling deep inside you burns for this intimacy.

Finally, you feel content, happy even. 

You sigh at the memory, the child’s soft snores filling your ears.

“What are you sighing at?” Din asks, turning his helmeted gaze away from steering the ship.

“Nothing,” you hum, setting the child in the bassinet and pushing the button to close it. 

It had been several months since that night, Din had healed well with the help of a lot of bacta. And it seemed that the more time you spent in Din’s arms, the more you healed.

“Alright, I’m going to set the ship down here and we can head into the market to restock on some supplies,” Din said. 

You nod, buckling your blaster holster around your waist. Din always insisted that you wear it just in case the two of you got separated for some reason.

Din lands the Razor Crest with experienced ease, you glance at the bassinet that the child sleeps in.

“Do you think he’ll be alright while we are gone?”

Din nods, “Yeah, this is a sleepy planet, there isn’t much here to begin with. The market is rather small, but it’ll do.”

You both head down the ramp and step onto the soft soil of the new planet.

This planet has large trees that tower above you, creating a thick canopy blocking out the hot sun. However calming the forest had been for a moment was completely lost when you entered the market. Although small, it was bustling with small stands and shoppers. 

The two of you made your way through the small market, Din’s hand resting in the small of your back most of the time. 

Din stops at one stall, carefully examining a few of the small metal trinkets the merchant sells. You get distracted by the next stall over, no one stands there looking, but the framework and tabletop of the stall seem to be covered in some sort of paper.

As Din haggles with the vendor about the pricing of one item you wander over to the deserted stall.

The papers look old, very old. You pick one up reading it, from what you gather it’s a story. You pick up another one and find that it is also a story, but a different one from the first. This peaks your interest.

You continue to examine the stacks and stacks of paper. As you quickly skim through another, you discover that most of them seem to be about an ancient people who use this supposed “force” to move things with their mind and fought the Sith in an everlasting battle against darkness.

You are absorbed in another story when something cold and round presses into your side. You jump at the feeling and you are pushed against the front of the stall.

“Well hello there…” a gravelly voice says from behind you.

“I will ask you kindly, once, to please remove your blaster, your hands, and all the rest of you from my body,” you whisper.

“Nope.” The blaster is pressed harder into your side. You feel your blaster removed from its holster. “Now, you are going to turn around and leave here with me.”

Slowly, you turn and your eyes find a very large man standing behind you, easily twice, if not three times your size. 

He pushes you in the direction he wants you to go, keeping the blaster pressed against your hip under your cloak.

It was just then that Din had finished his deal, and turned around to speak with you. 

The large man hadn’t gotten very far with you, so Din spots you quickly.

“Hey!” he exclaims.

You jolt to a halt at the sound of his modulated voice, the blaster now digging even more into your side.

You hear a single blaster shot and the man standing behind you falls to the ground. You turn back around finding Din standing here, his body tense as he stares at the ground. Your eyes follow the tilt of his helmet, landing on a fob with a small blinking red light in the lifeless hands of the man.

You feel the blood drain from your face as your heart pounds, suddenly feeling as though you are going to throw up.

“We need to leave. Now.”

“Din, I-I’m sorry, I should have been paying more attention,” you stutter.

Din is silent as he grabs your hand and you both run back to the ship. Within minutes the ship was in the air and your mind was racing, unable to fathom what just happened.

“That fob was on me, wasn’t it…”

Din puts the ship on autopilot and swivels his chair towards you. You stare out into space, unmoving as he looks at you through his visor.

“Yes, it was,” he answers quietly.

“They are still after me, after all this time. I can’t ever escape it can I?” You whisper.

Din sighs as he reaches up, lifting his helmet up with a hiss. He sets it on the console in front of him.

“What do we do now, Din?”

He shakes his head, his dark curls trying to fall into his eyes.

“The same thing we have been doing. Keep out of sight and keep moving,” his voice is low.  His hands gently take yours, holding them tenderly. “There is a bounty on the child, a bounty on you, and two bounties on me now.”

This snaps you out of your trance, “There’s another one on you? Why?”

“Because someone who works for Limax saw you with me. They know that I lied when I said that I couldn’t find you, because I obviously did. I just didn’t turn you in,” he explains.

You pull one of your hands from his, holding your head, “Oh maker, Din… This is all my fault.”

He shakes his head. “This is just the life we live now.”

You glance over at the child playing contentedly with a small silver ball in his bassinet. Your heart clenches at the thought that you have put him in danger. You have put Din in even more danger for harboring not one but two bounties.

“Din,” you sigh, pulling your other hand away from him, “Din, I don’t think I can travel with you anymore.”

The words surprise Din just as much as they had surprised you, but you knew this was what you had to do. His eyebrows furrow over his dark eyes. 

“Y/N…” Din starts.

“I put the two of you in too much danger. It’s safer for the child if I’m not with you, you can’t continue to protect him and me…” You can feel your heartbreaking in your chest.

“I’ve succeeded in protecting both of you thus far,” he says. He sits back in his chair, his face betraying his confusion, too used to having the helmet hide his emotions.

You rise to your feet turning your back towards him, speaking over your shoulder, “What happens when you have to choose? When you have to choose between me and him? I couldn’t live with myself knowing that he was hurt, taken, or killed because you choose to save me first. Because they came for us, for me…” You keep your back to him, “I can’t… I can’t stay with you…”

You hear him stand behind you, he turns you around, his hands on your shoulders, “And what about this?”

“This?” Your eyes meet his, they are hard, determined, and piercing into you.

“Us.”

You shake your head, “This was never real…”

“Never real?” he scuffs, his hands falling from your shoulders, “Y/N, that's not-”

“You don’t want someone as broken as I am!” you exclaim. “I can’t have your blood on my hands! Or the child’s!”

“And if I let you leave your blood will be on my hands! I can’t live with that either,” he snaps.

“Says the man who hunts people down and kills them for a living,” you quip. 

“I can’t have YOUR blood on my hands, Y/N! If you leave they will take you back. Do you know what they are going to do to you? Every nightmare you have ever had will come true,” Din says, exasperated.  He grabs your forearms, holding them with a firm grip. 

“I’d prefer that over watching you or the child get hurt or tortured! You two could move on and forget about me,” you shake away his grip as his face just falls.

“You think I could just move on, Y/N? Move on and forget about you? Could you? Could you just move on and forget about us?” He asks, suddenly quiet.

The child whimpers in the corner, able to feel the tension between you and Din.

“I-” you start, tears welling up in your eyes, “I-”

Din stares at you intensely, his gaze burning into you. Although his lips are set in a firm line, you make the mistake of glancing up into his eyes. Pain, hurt, and betrayal is all you see in his dark eyes. 

Tears spill over onto your cheeks. “No,” you answer honestly, “No, I couldn’t.”

“Then don’t do something so incredibly stupid.”

“But-”

“Shush,” he grunts.

Before you could say another word he has stepped forward, with his hands cupping your cheeks he carefully sets his lips against yours. For a moment you are frozen.

Grahvix had done a lot of things to you, but he had never been interested in kissing you, solely focused on the use of… other things. 

Din’s lips move against yours, asking, begging for you to respond, something, anything so he would know that you felt the same.  

Is this what you want? You ask yourself. Do you want him and be on the run for the rest of your life, or go back to the sad life you lived before.

Your eyes flutter closed as you melt into the heat of his lips, pressing the palms of your hands against his breastplate. One of his hands slips from your cheek down to your lower back, pulling you closer to him.

His lips move against yours relentlessly as you kiss him back. He takes several steps forward, pushing you against the door of the cockpit. 

Now it feels like every inch of him is pressed against you. The beskar digs in slightly, but you don’t mind.  Your hands slide up around his neck getting tangled in his hair at the base of his skull. His teeth catch your lower lip, you gasp as he pulls away.

Your tears had stopped as you open your eyes, “Din…”

His forehead rests against yours, his eyes still shut as he whispers, “Please don’t leave, please Y/N. Please tell me that you won’t.”

Your sore lips quiver as you take in his face. The scruff that grows above his lip and on his chin. The small scar between his eyebrows. 

He sighs, “Please, I can’t lose you too.”

“I-I won’t leave,” you breathe.

Suddenly there’s a resounding crash and the ship jolts, sparks flying from the dash.

To be continued...

Hope you all liked this chapter!  Comment if you want to be tagged! This hurt my heart while writing it....

Tags:

@lokilover-39 @fleurdemiel145 @kaelyn-lobrutto24 @just-a-casual-fangirl-011 @70sgubler @pascalisthepunkest @ispilledmyink @imaginebeinlovedbyme @fastidious-and-a-mess @taman-a @yumisaru @whos-too-bi @frantheseer @retrobhaddie @aeryntheofficial @renreypoe

[ohhgingersnaps]

can you explain what you mean by "questioning the validity of the bible"? cuz i thought the bible was flawless 🤔

(in reference to my tags on this post)

Hey anon! I really appreciate you asking this question. This got pretty long, and I apologize for that, but I feel like it’s important for me to really dig into this, because this is an area where I feel like I’ve had some really interesting (and if I’m honest, deeply uncomfortable and difficult) spiritual growth.

TL;DR I place a lot of value on being encouraged to ask fundamental questions, fully allowing for the possibility of discovering you’ve been wrong. Truth-seeking, although sometimes painful, is a natural part of one’s spiritual growth and development, and it ultimately leads to deeper faith and understanding. I personally have gone through this process with questions about the validity of Scripture, hence the tag.

Background (and a bunch of explaining) under the cut!

First, I think most Christians will agree with your sentiments. I vividly remember sitting in the college dining hall with a friend and being asked whether you need to believe the whole Bible to be a Christian, and it stopped me dead in my tracks, because most Christians I know do, but do you, technically? (Biblically, I think the answer is actually no; faith in Jesus is sufficient, per Romans 10:9. One does wonder where a person is getting their ideas about who Jesus is and what he taught, so there’s definitely some inherent dependence on the historical accuracy of the Gospels there... But all of this is kind of beside the point.)

Overall, I think the exact starting point of The Bible Question was my trip a couple of years ago to the Museum Of The Bible in DC. It was a really interesting experience overall, but the one thing that really stuck with me was The Shepherd Of Hermas. This is an apocryphal book that was generally accepted as canonical Scripture by many early Christians, but was eventually left out of the Bible itself.

Now, I’m sure the Catholic church had perfectly good reasons for rejecting it, but it occurred to me that I, personally, did not know what those reasons were! I was suddenly hit with the irony that despite being Protestant, I had never questioned the validity of the Catholic-constructed canon of Scripture. To be clear, I absolutely don’t mean this as a knock against Catholic folks: I mean that in the Protestant circles I grew up in, we put absolutely no stock in church tradition, in every single case besides this one. The texts themselves are authentic, historically speaking, but which books “belong” in the New Testament portion of Scripture was decided in 1500 AD, and how much faith do I have that those council members were right? The Protestants removed a bunch of apocryphal books when they left, so why did they decide to keep the remaining text?

Hence, the question: Could the church have been imperfect in the construction of Scripture?

I was also absolutely terrified to ask this question.

Because, here’s the thing. If you are a Good Christian Girl Who Got Saved At Five™ you go to church and you maybe Ask Hard Questions every once in a while, but usually those questions aren’t fundamental faith-shaking questions! They are questions that are important and cerebral and sometimes difficult to answer, but not necessarily faith-essential. They are questions like, Do people still speak in tongues? or How much free will do human beings have? They are absolutely not questions like, Hey, um, we don’t know who wrote Hebrews? Why is it part of the canon of Scripture??

But here is the other thing: This question did not leave. I was scared of it, so naturally, I tried to ignore it. I had so much shame about it, too! I kept thinking like, Normal Christians don’t have questions like this, this is such a fundamental thing, why am I struggling with this! What’s wrong with me! So I repressed the question as much as I could, but it festered, and my relationship with God ended up suffering, because God wanted me to take this out in the open and deal with it properly, and I refused.

(Disclaimer that I was also dealing with some pretty bad burnout, which didn’t help, and of course even under normal circumstances my brain is generally kind of... Easily thrown into havoc by stuff like this? I like having things in a framework and do not like when that framework is disrupted, but also I have to properly vet and interrogate everything, so you can understand where the conflict here is.)

After six-ish months of bottling everything up, I finally broke down while I was home for the holidays. Obviously my parents were deeply concerned, both for my spiritual and mental well-being, but it was through talking with them that I realized that my question wasn’t inherently bad: At its core, it’s seeking truth, which is inherently good.

What I’d characterized as this horrible, faith-breaking thing was just spiritual growing pains. God was calling me to engage with Scripture more deeply, in a new, different, exciting way, and I was too scared and ashamed of asking the question to even think about following him there. It was taking me outside of what I felt was safe and well-established, but when has God ever stuck to what we know as safe and well-established, right?

Honestly, I’m still in the process of working through this. I’m taking the canon of Scripture at face value for the moment, because “go through each individual book of the Bible and figure out why it was included, and also go through the Apocrypha too just for good measure” is a pretty big goal and I don’t want to put my actual Bible studies on hold! And I feel like as I go through the books, I’ll end up saying, Oh, yeah, I guess that makes sense more often than not, and I’ll be glad to be fully convinced in my own mind about everything once this process is done... But I’ll have my answers, and I’ll be more certain of those answers than I was before, because I’ll have fully interrogated that question.

So I place a lot of value on not only being allowed to ask fundamental questions, but being actively encouraged to do so, fully allowing for the possibility of discovering you’ve been wrong. Seeking after the truth will never lead us away from God, only towards a deeper understanding.

I know this got super long (and maybe a little heretical?) but I hope it helps clarify where I was coming from with that particular tag. Thanks again for asking, and I hope this is useful!

[argylemnwrites]

Five Stages

Character: King Liam

Pairing: Drake Walker x MC (Riley Liu) referenced

Book: The Royal Romance (The Royal Romance Books 2 and 3, The Royal Holiday, The Royal Heir, and beyond)

Word Count: ~1700

Rating:  PG

Summary: There probably isn’t a framework for handling your best friend and the woman you love falling for each other, but that won’t stop Liam from trying to work through it all.

Author’s Note: Something about watching Drake and MC be all lovey-dovey in The Royal Holiday got me thinking about how unrealistic it is that Liam just apparently got over all his pain and heartbreak off-screen. I know Liam is a stoic, reserved man, but I just wanted to explore how I envision his internal healing process progressing.

Denial

For the sake of his mental health, Liam had chosen to ignore a lot of things over the past week or so. In some ways, it had been surprisingly easy. Not that Liam had anticipated needing to cope with a rejected proposal, but if someone had asked him last month how he would cope with Riley Liu rejecting him for his best friend, he probably would have thought it would have been harder than he’d found it thus far. 

Part of the way he was handling it seemed fairly healthy as he was able to shift some focus towards being happy for one of his oldest and dearest friends. Still, somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind, he knew he was ignoring many little signs of their relationship. The looks they’d shared on the train back to the capital. The way they’d hung back from the group on the way from the beer garden to the palace. Her hand on his shoulder as she invaded his personal space with ease at the bar off to the side of the dance floor last night.

Granted, some things Liam had seen were harder to ignore. His hand low on her back as they left that same bar and attempted to sneak out of the ball without drawing attention to themselves. The fact that when they returned to the ball, they both looked slightly less polished and put together than they had before. The way the two of them held hands and cozied up to each other during the fireworks. And of course, Riley and Drake had both independently stated that they loved the other. But the mind could rationalize with amazing efficiency to protect itself. So, even in light of all of those moments, Liam had found himself able to forget about the realities of Drake and Riley being together. And then, the assassins last night had nearly completely distracted him from this topic. At least until this moment. 

There were a lot of things he could ignore when it came to Drake and Riley. The ring on her left hand as his best friend announced they were getting married just wasn’t one of them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Anger

It was probably fitting that Liam had first felt an intense rage in regards to Drake and Riley in Lythikos. He got the feeling that Olivia would have almost been proud if she had known, most likely telling him that it was important to keep a fire burning inside your soul to stay alert and focused, as well as warm in the frigid climate. And now that they were back in Lythikos for the holidays, Liam felt some of that anger work it’s way back into his mind.

Watching Drake and Riley flirt and tease each other was still irritating. He didn’t want it to be, and he intellectually understood that newlyweds were going to radiate an aura of giddy love. He just couldn’t help but resent it a little, just like he had back when they were here during their engagement and he’d been forced to be their relationship’s number one champion, pretending that it wasn’t obnoxious to watch them cling to each other on the dance floor, his fingers tracing over the strip of skin across her midriff left bare by her dress. When he’d had to announce time and time again that he was happy for them when he was well aware of the fact that they had just snuck out, unable to keep their hands off each other until the end of the ball.

Did they think that the fact they hadn’t immediately jumped into bed together made it alright that they had lied to him? Because they seemed to act like the fact that they “resisted” their attraction for a few months left them above reproach, that their actions weren’t at all a betrayal. Did they want a prize for not having sex initially? Did they not understand that an emotional affair was still an affair?

Part of him knew that viewing their relationship as an affair was disingenuous. After all, he and Riley had never been an official couple. There were other women during the social season, and after that there was Madeleine. But then he would see them hand in hand, lips against each other’s ears, undoubtedly whispering sweet nothings, and he just felt the irritation and rage rise in his chest again. Wasn’t it enough that they had each other? Did they really have to throw it in his face?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bargaining

Liam felt a bit foolish. He’d spent so much time and energy thinking about how Drake and Riley’s relationship impacted his own romantic life, but he’d never considered the practical impact their relationship would have on his own relationship with Drake.

He had gotten very used to Drake being around, his presence a comfort in times of stress and strain. It wasn’t that he took Drake’s friendship and support for granted, but he was just used to having it. But right now, they were on their honeymoon, and Liam didn’t know who to talk to about the pressures Auvernal was laying on him. It just felt bizarre not talking to him about the situation as it was evolving, but that obviously wasn’t an option at this time.

As he thought more about it, he realized that this was going to become more and more common going forward. For so long, he and Drake had been one of, if not the most important person in each other’s lives. But now Riley held that title without question for Drake. Liam could never hope to compete, and it was only going to get worse when they had children.

He knew he still had things to work through when it came to Drake and Riley. He knew that he was still processing his mess of emotions when it came to them. But he swore he was working on it, that he was getting over her and moving on. He just would have to try harder, though. Because he couldn’t risk losing them both. He wanted to go fishing with Drake when he needed to escape for just a few hours. He wanted to joke with Riley at council meetings. He wanted to be “Uncle Liam” to their children. He just needed to keep them in his life in some capacity. If he could make that happen, well that would be enough. He was sure of it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Depression

Liam was lonely. That was a fact. He might be the most important person in the country, but that didn’t change the reality that he didn’t have anyone who saw him as the most important person in their life. He was publicly needed, personally all alone.

Leo called more often these days, inviting him on trips that would undoubtedly be filled with high-stakes gambling, Cuban cigars, expensive liquor, and even more expensive women. But Liam wasn’t up for that. He wanted the comforts and affection that came from long-standing love, not a temporary distraction. It wasn’t even really about not having a romantic partner, although that was certainly part of it. It was more about how isolated he felt, disconnected from literally everyone around him. 

He wanted someone to confide in and discuss his investigation into his mother’s death. He wanted someone who could comfort him as delving into his memories dragged up old pains and horrors. But instead he kept that all to himself, his feelings his alone to deal with as his time with his friends was focused on their lives. Olivia had her investigations. Maxwell had his novel. And of course Drake and Riley had impending parenthood and all that entailed.

Riley’s pregnancy seemed to be everyone’s focus these days, from the general populace to their entire social circle. And while Liam knew it wasn’t rational, he could help but feel alone and blue while everyone else moved on to better and brighter things. Drake and Riley just represented his separation with such profound clarity. His best friend and his ex, in love, married, and expecting a child, moving forward with their lives and leaving him behind. He knew he objectively led a blessed life. It just wasn’t what he craved most.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Acceptance

Liam smiled as he took in the sight around him in the palace’s private lounge. Olivia playing bartender, refusing to serve Drake whiskey until he drank a glass of Malbec, a sly smile sliding across her face as Drake scoffed and groaned while picking up the wine glass. Maxwell grabbing the baby from Riley’s lap, insisting he needed to teach his godchild some dance moves, the air filled with Riley’s laugh and the charming giggles that can only come from an infant who is completely delighted. Hana slicing a cinnamon apple cake she had made herself, all part of the perfectly simple birthday party she’d organized for him.

He had spent so long chasing things. Being a perfect ruler, the type of king that served the common man and the noble with care. Securing the country without repeating his father’s paranoid mistakes. Balancing foreign diplomacy with internal strength. But today, just for a few hours, he felt at peace, calm and content with the love of those closest to him.

Because love took on many forms, and the platonic love that surrounded him was absolutely something worth being grateful for. Just as he had worked to define the type of king he wanted to be, independent of his father and his legacy, he had worked to define what it meant for him to have personal connections, not just royal ones. And a low-key “commoner” birthday was just one way to embrace all the good things in his life.

Of course, he still hoped for a romantic partner, someone to share his life and with whom he could start a family. But wanting more didn’t mean he couldn’t celebrate what he had right now. He had gained enough perspective and experience to see that. Twenty-nine had been rough, and thirty hadn’t been much better, but painful times were not indefinite. Liam had no idea what thirty-one would bring, but he was hopeful. All he could really do was take it one day at a time.

Tags: @dcbbw @mfackenthal @yaushie @jovialyouthmusic @iplaydrake @gibbles82 @drakewalkerisreal @riley–walker @thequeenofcronuts @notoriouscs @butindeed @octobereighth @ao719​

[ckret2]

do you think alister if he even has any kind of preference (he could be sex repulsed and all) would have that old 'its not gay if you're the one fucking the other man' mentality (round about way of asking for the same post you made for pen but. for the radio demon)

No, no, see, this isn’t the same as the question I answered earlier at all. The question I answered earlier was “do you think Sir Pent tops or bottoms?” (technically, the “question” i answered was “pen is a bottom” and my answer was “INTERESTING! NO.”) But the question you’re asking is “do you think Alastor defines a person’s sexuality by their sex acts rather than by the people that person is attracted to?” with a side helping of “do you think Alastor has any sexual preferences at all or is he 100% sex repulsed?”

“Which acts does the character think ‘count’ as gay” has no inherent correlation to “which acts does the character enjoy engaging in.” You see the difference. For them to be the same question, we’d have to start off the question by assuming that what acts the character is okay with engaging in is determined by whether or not the character thinks those acts are gay. Conflating what they think is gay with what they’re okay with doing implies that you’re assuming a whole lot about that character’s personality, how much internalized homophobia that character is dealing with, and how fragile that character’s sense of masculinity is, and I’m pretty sure you don’t actually want to imply any of that!

So if you want me to answer the same question I answered earlier, then come back and ask that question, not a roundabout version of the question that’s in fact a very, VERY different question. In the meantime, I’m going to answer the question that you actually asked: “do you think Alastor has 'it’s not gay if you’re penetrating’ beliefs about sexuality?”

The tl;dr is: big shrug, I dunno. Seems possible based on what little I DO know about the time period but I don’t know enough yet. Also if anyone happens to have resources on queer life/history in 1920s New Orleans, like, please chuck them at me.

Essay below!! Hey tumblr you’d better let the read more cut work, don’t let me down.

As it happens, I’ve actually been trying to figure out how sexuality was viewed roundabouts the 1920s in New Orleans—because I figure Alastor’s views have probably evolved very little since then. I get the impression that he’s very set in his own era; and because he’s sort of in a social bubble—who’s going to try to get close to the Radio Demon?—and doesn’t engage much with current mass media, he’s more or less shielded from evolutions in modern culture.

(Compare that to, say, Angel, who sounds very modern—or Charlie, who’s at least a couple of centuries old (probably much more) but also dresses and acts very modern.)

So whatever he thinks about sexuality is going to be rooted in whatever was current when he was alive.

The 20s were actually surprisingly good to queer folks, from what I’ve found so far—there was some VERY gay vaudeville & jazz tracks coming out—but like, I don’t know exactly how good, relatively speaking. Or where. Was it, like, only New York? And/or only San Francisco? I’ve got next to no sources on what was going on in New Orleans. The ONLY fact I’ve been able to find from the era so far is that 1933—the year of Alastor’s death—is the year the first gay bar opened in New Orleans (or, at least, the first one that’s still open today—it relocated but it’s still going). But that doesn’t tell me a lot about the overall environment. All it tells me is “New Orleans wasn’t so homophobic that the bar was burned down immediately, and/or they kept it too secret for that to happen.” That’s not a lot to go on.

And all of this is, like, the level of mainstream tolerance/acceptance toward queerness. It doesn’t tell me what people actually believed then.

Here’s a paragraph on late-1800s/early-1900s psychological beliefs about queerness that are hella outdated today: one contemporary belief about sexuality called “sexual inversion” basically said that a queer person’s brain was “inverted” gender-wise from the norm—that is, for instance, if you’re AMAB and attracted to men, you’ve got a feminine brain, you’ll like to do feminine things, you’ll want to perform feminine sex acts (ie, be the recipient in anal sex), and you’ll probably want to have a feminine body. Basically it conflated being gay and being trans. On the other hand, if you’re AMAB and you’re attracted to a feminine AMAB “invert,” you’re more or less still straight, because you’re attracted to someone with a feminine brain so like that’s more or less a woman psychologically speaking. By modern standards this whole framework is very “oh yikes” but like… ours probably will be seen as cringy in 50 years; and psychologists who believed in sexual inversion generally advocated in favor of letting inverts live in alignment with how their brains told them to, which was a big step forward.

So that was a theory going around. But like, how widespread was it? I know a book about lesbian inverts was written in the late '20s to try to make the term more widespread but idk whether it succeeded or to what extent. Was it a term ONLY being used in psychiatric circles and a handful of people who picked up the book? Was it restricted to certain metropolitan centers? If you went to a drag ball, did people introduce themselves as inverts? (Did they have drag balls? I know they did in mid-Victorian England but that doesn’t tell me much about what was being done in 1920s USA, much less New Orleans.)

And as far as I can tell, the idea of “sexual inversion” was the first time that a framework was presented in Western society where queerness was presented as something inborn rather than a choice people make to go screw someone they “shouldn’t” screw. There was a shift around the 20th century from “gayness is an action that you perform, people can perform the act or not perform the act but they’re basically all the same on the inside” to “gay is something that you ARE, on the inside,” but WHEN exactly did gayness shift from an action to an identity? And when did that shift happen in New Orleans? Knowing when it happened in NYC or some shit isn’t gonna do me any good if, say, it didn’t happen in NOLA for another two decades.

So like obviously I need to find a lot more research on queer history in that region and decade before I can give a super firm answer about what Alastor’s opinions/beliefs are.

I’m toying with the idea that Alastor did spend some of his life in NYC, though; like, he didn’t just casually pick up a Mid-Atlantic accent on the streets of Nawlins. He might’ve picked it up from talkies—although he would’ve had to spend a LOT of time at the movies studying specifically to copy the accent. I know the Mid-Atlantic accent was big in theater, but was that also the case in NOLA, or only in New England? Were there, like, traveling Broadway shows then like there are today? I’m inclined to believe that Alastor actually studied theater at some point in order to pick up the accent, which probably means going to some theater school in the northeast. We know he was into theater, being trained as an actor before going into radio makes sense to me. (He also could’ve learned it at a fancy expensive private school, but I prefer headcanoning him as from a lower background than that.) So maybe he spent some time living in NYC before going back home to NOLA, so if I really really can’t find anything on 20s NOLA I can focus research on NYC instead and say “he picked up his opinions there.” That’s my plan B.

I know that, WHATEVER the 20s NOLA queer community was like, I want to headcanon Alastor was sort of in it but also sort of on the fringes of it—like, due to his very conspicuous (conspicuous to himself) lack of normal/expected attraction to the people he knew he was “supposed” to be attracted to, he sort of felt a draw to the company of other folks who were conspicuously not attracted to who they were “supposed” to be—but he never really felt super deep ties to that community because, one, he just naturally forms very shallow relationships in the first place, and, two, he wasn’t hanging out in queer spaces looking for a relationship or a date or an opportunity to express some hidden side of himself so much as he was looking for a place where he wasn’t being weighed down by The Mainstream Expectations. But you can still be weighed down, albeit to a lesser extent, by The Counterculture Expectations, too. So, he was comfortable enough in queer spaces, but remained just sort of on the edges—was probably recognized by sight by other folks in NOLA who frequented queer events but wasn’t anyone’s best friend. Kinda shows up and makes small talk and goes home.

So, what sort of opinions and beliefs would he have absorbed from those edges? And how would they have been influenced by his own ace/aro perspective, from which ALL talk of sex and romance, whether queer or straight, is a foreign perspective that he could intellectually learn about but not ever really FEEL on an instinctive/gut level the way allo folks do?

I don’t know yet. Gotta find the right research materials first!

So tl;dr anon I don’t know yet whether he thinks taking it up the ass makes someone gayer than putting it in the ass.

[skinfeeler]

I watched Joker (2019) at the cinema last night. It induced in me a lot of thoughts about the film, but also about the nature of criticism and art in general. Because I respect people’s time and general sensibility, I’m putting the rest of this post under a cut. Content warnings surrounding discussion of (sexual) violence, and obviously a number of spoilers.

I left the room feeling uncertain how to interpret what I had just watched, and for this reason (and others) quite uncomfortable. As a narrative the film seemed disjointed and overly metaphorical, certainly as a movement of set-up, crescendo, climax, and denouement the film made no sense because the film for the most part utterly denied itself a clear and uninterrupted line in events. This was because of certain scenes in the film that can with certainty be said to not possibly have happened in the way they did on the screen, even with suspension of disbelief intact, but also in general the solipsism of the film— Arthur Fleck seemed like the only character in the film with everyone at most taking a rather symbolic, flat, role (Thomas Wayne) or only purposefully serving as a source of narrative unreliability and confusion (Penny Fleck). Most characters, however, were simply part of an unindividuated antagonistic bloc whose sole purpose seemed to truncate both its own humanity and Arthur's— perhaps this is what we could call 'society', or something.

It took me a moment of talking to friends to find a method through which this film perhaps not quite become intelligible, but at the very least that I could get something out of it. This method is one of doing away with the narrative and instead, trying to view it as a character study.

Certain parts of the film become immediately more palatable when viewed this way, or at least, easier to parse as meaning anything at all. For example, we don't have to accept the pop criticism analysis of that his relationship with his neighbor is something Arthur hallucinated and then realised he hallucinated. Instead, we can take each of the scenes in which she is present as something that tells us something about Arthur even if not extant in the ‘real narrative’— while he is truly and actually maligned by society, it can't be said that Arthur himself is particularly sensitive to the complicated humanity of those around him. For example, when it comes to Penny, he seems to have absolutely no regard for the simultaneous plight and guilt surrounding her character, that of a woman who, yes, let him be abused by her boyfriend but who herself was also being abused by him and presumably had her own troubled past.

Likewise, we can state that if his neighbor were to be present in the scenes in which she couldn't possibly have been (since it would defy all plausability of that relationship developing in that way), Arthur would actually have seen her as how she acted in those scenes: A symbol, at most. An anchor. Something without particular agency or drives or motives of her own, which she only reclaims in the final scene that she's in, where she is concerned with the safety of her daughter and Arthur leaving her apartment. The disparity between her as a an agent and the scenes in which her presence was imaginary (as opposed to unreal) tells us something about Arthur, even if it tells us nothing about the narrative.

When it comes to Penny, perhaps it doesn't matter so much to Arthur whether she had her own complicated reality of pain and powerlessness. In the moment where Arthur killed her, he was simply reclaiming a kind of power he never had. Arthur has no social means to power, so he resorts to presocial means, or really just only ever one, which is murder. And not just any kind of murder, not the kind of violence of slowly strangling someone, or beating someone into a pulp until they pass away as a combination of factors such as lung failure, neural trauma, and internal bleeding, but the kind of violence with a huge power differential where the moment he decides someone dies, they're already dead, a wish spoken to remove someone from this world that one immediately grants oneself. A terminally ill woman can't defend herself against smothering, and even an able-bodied adult man stands no chance in the second between the revolver being unholstered and being shot in the head.

Hypnotising, really. In particular that moment where the third businessman who was first harassing a woman on the train and then beating Arthur up is now slowly limping away as Arthur casually follows him, you can see every aspect of his fear, the sheer realisation that the social dominion he enjoys means nothing when faced with a cartridge of sufficient caliber.

I feel that this is significant somehow, the fact that Arthur is both traumatised into being unable to parse the very intricate and individual drives of the people surrounding him, and the fact that he recognises that this is happening to him, constantly, and acts very purposefully to circumvent it through means which in turn allow no resistance in any sense whatsoever. All of this can, of course, be attributed to trauma as an aspect of the character study of the film, and for this reason I believe that the scenes-that-couldn't-possibly-have-happened and the very real violence he enacts are part of one and the same network of themes.

The fact that for most of the film Arthur is simultaneously treated by the narrative as the one person with humanity (but having this unrecognised by society) but Wayne and everyone else is portrayed as not possessing it (but at the very least conditionally having some of it bestowed upon them by those around them) is an important part of this conceit.

The inherent hypocrisy of Arthur’s character as maligned but having no qualm with truncating the subjectivities around him shows us both that the way he views things is disturbed and that he is legitimately cut off from others, that he genuinely cannot conceive of why he should not act as he does, but the harm he does is real. It’s obvious that we know Arthur did not have any choice in becoming the kind of person he ended up being, but also that he's not in particular a 'good person', if that means anything at all. One could possibly draw parallels to Brad in LISA: The Painful RPG, but to anyone who has played that game I shouldn't have to explicitly draw the links.

Furthermore, this baseline of the ineluctable unpleasantness of Arthur's character helps us differentiate between the parts of the film where he can meaningfully choose what to do, actions he undertakes without the force majeure of trauma and mental illness making any other options not even appear in his head. From here we could possibly draw a parallel to the utter meaninglessness of Alex’ actions in A Clockwork Orange post-Ludivico, a film in which this particular theme is much more explicit, although there’s a contrast of the ability to be compassionate being truncated as opposed to the ability to be cruel.

(To be clear, I'm working with the framework of "what could you reasonably expect from someone who has had their psyche malformed like that?" whether it is the lack of 'good' deeds from Arthur or the lack of 'evil' deeds from Alex as opposed to a blanket condemnation/sanctification of character.)

This is where directorial fiat starts meaning anything, or from a more in-universe perspective, what little agency Arthur himself has left— Watsonian or Doylist analysis, who gives a shit, you know what I mean.

There are a couple actions Arthur took that were completely unwarranted, which were neither reactions to imminent threats or reactions to people who had wronged him in the past. In particular, I am referring here to him sexually assaulting his neighbor — even if not a real scene within the narrative, it still tells us something about Arthur as within the aforementioned parameters — and later the woman on TV.

Were he not to have taken those actions, a meaningful moral judgement — a positive one but in particularly the negative ones — could not possibly have been ascribed to him, because all of his actions could have been conceivably reduced to simple learned traumatic behaviors and reactions to impending harm. The story of Arthur could have been one of a gun cocked by SOCIETY and then exploding in its own face.

However, since not all of his actions can be placed within this framework, we can say something about Arthur for certain that I don't feel we could unequivocally have before: He is not the hero of this story. There are actions of his to which morality meaningfully applies, and in a negative light— as opposed to not being a bad person, the 'not' here referring to the futility of trying to ascribe morality to the actions of those who have certain faculties truncated from their psyche. But why opt for this in the script?

If Arthur could possibly have had all of his actions justified or at least hypothetically justifiable, he would have been the hero of the story. And 'the hero of the story' implies 'story', it implies 'narrative', it would have meant a regression to the narrative structure that the film explicitly seemed to be avoiding, at least most of the time. Joker (2019) wouldn't have been a character study, it would've regressed to a relatively standard narrative with an antihero. Thus, I think it makes sense to insert these actions as a diversion of the baseline of things which could really not have been any different in any categorical way (the killings in self-defense, general acts of revenge, the general insensitivity to the humanity of all others).

All of this is very complicated and challenging, perhaps in particular to those who aren't familiar with the larger lines of the subjectivity that is Arthur: One of a kind of mental illness that not even provisional accommodation exists for, particular economic dependence and destitution, and a general sense of being cut off from the world soul or whatever metaphysical metaphor you would like to use.

(The reason I want to use a metaphysical metaphor is because the longer you are both stuck in and at odds with society, the more everything that happens feels like a presocial fact, something that is intrinsic to you, rather than something that is occuring for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with you. One could choose to draw a distinction between saying that all of it is absurd, that the very construction of value in a Marxist sense creates an impersonal system of domination upon us all, or that the reason why things are as they are is the result of the enforced interests of certain blocs, but this doesn't really matter here. The fact that this reality is rapidly occluded from those who are subjugated to it remains, and that education to circumvent this occlusion and being reminded of what one knows by oneself and others is necessary to not keep returning to a mindset where one feels like something is intrinsically wrong with oneself rather than with society or whatever.)

All art produced by humans, even mass-produced art, is the result of the labor of those who even if they have no particular personal creative input, still levy the aspects of the contexts they are embedded in within the film. No film about a truly alien universe is possible, if it were, it would intrinsically not be possible for humans to conceive of and portray on any medium. Thus we have to conclude that this film, too, says something about perhaps all of us, and those around us.

This is very difficult. The morality of the film is so contradictory as to be completely reprehensible to anyone with any worldview at all, and trying to view it as a character study protects us from being impacted by it. It's a film about Arthur, after all, not us, a twisted person who does not deserve our sympathy. This contradiction doesn’t matter if we abstract Arthur away from ourselves.

I would call this cowardice, or at least, a kind of fear. There is a difference between consuming art from a critical, analytic distance, and really engaging with it. This is of course scary to most people, and I think many of us, even or perhaps especially those who claim to be hardcore critics and analytics are often unwilling to do this. After all, if we really open our minds and hearts to the art we interact with, we don't know how we will end up on the other side.

Will we come to question our preconceptions about who deserves sympathy? Does anyone, even, does the concept retain meaning in a world in which we are all traumatised? Does everyone, perhaps, which may be much scarier to some of us? Why do people behave in the way they do? It would be so easy to assume that the people we hate are behaving either irrationally or from a position of malice, and the idea that everyone has reasons to do what they're doing is a difficult one when we have been hurt by others.

There are a lot of questions like these that pop up when we truly take art for what it is, and I think most of us just can't be bothered. Certainly I couldn't while watching this film, or immediately after it.

This is why I think why a lot of both professional critics and more casual consumers seem to have trouble taking this film in. As a narrative, this film is obnoxious, frustrating, incoherent. As a character study, however, it is still painful, but if you dare to see it that way, you will get way more out of the film than you otherwise would. However, I feel even this is still a layer of abstraction too far removed from the meaning that the film could potentially confer upon us, but it’s one that people seem to be consistently refusing, judging by the state of discourse surrounding this film.

There are certain areas where analysis and ideology fail, or even if they succeed at a totalising idea of how to organise communities and lives, they don't suffice to let us truly perceive ourselves and others. There are certain things that can only be conveyed through art in this way, and at times, even the methodical structures surrounding art can prevent us from getting out of it what we can from nowhere else.

If Joker (2019) fails at any point, I would say it fails here, the parts where it fails to commit to disemphasising the narrative, where they return to the frame of a monomyth with an antihero, where it pulls punches about Arthur and why he does what he does, where it is altogether too subtle about the fact that there are more commonalities between Arthur and everyone else in the film than there are differences. Its cowardice makes it too easy for its audience to, in turn, also hide and scurry away from feeling what they could potentially feel, from having their psyches touched in a particular way.

There is, however, an artist whose work I feel consistently successfully eschews structures and their intrinsic problems, and whose art is extremely impactful as a result.

Play Vesp, by Porpentine.

[kitchencupboardunderground]

Ayurvedic Herbalism

Today’s post features guest blogger Katrina Svoboda Johnson, AHP/CAP, LMP, SOMA, herbalist, and teacher of the Ayurvedic Health Center & Wellness Shop. The goal is to present you with her wellness and personal care perspective and knowledge as a practitioner. To learn more about Katrina’s Ayurvedic practice, you can check out her links below. If you are interested in being considered as a guest blogger and your content fits with the wellness and personal care framework, please reach out to us (botanicaltherapy.com/collaborations).

As anyone who has studied even a brief history of herbalism in the United States knows, herbalism was a primary form of medicine with a strong history and tradition of use. This changed when the allopathic model rose to prominence. Thankfully, herbalism has recently been staging a come-back, although it is still working to regain the trust and confidence of the public.

Ayurveda went through a similar cultural suppression as British colonists worked to wipe out indigenous forms of wisdom, including natural medicine. Fortunately, the Brits weren’t completely successful; much of the ancient knowledge has survived, and Ayurveda is enjoying a resurgence of popularity in India and has even expanded outward into the United States and Europe where it is increasingly becoming mainstream.

The efficacy of Western herbalism is well documented. We are fortunate in the United States to have so much biodiversity available to us—along with fairly easy access to herbs from all of the many varying climates of North America. We have a large natural pharmacopeia.

India, too, is a geographically diverse land with a dizzying array of plant diversity. Because of Ayurveda’s long and continuous history (5,000+ years), the use of herbs in Ayurveda is a detailed and sophisticated science. It has a depth of understanding that offers much to the practice of herbalism in the West. Ayurveda’s comprehensive approach to herbalism can greatly add to any Western herbalist’s practice.

I have been lucky to study herbalism from many aspects and from many teachers. Those who commune deeply with our plant allies are able to create wonderful healing magic. Each herbalist’s approach is a unique expression of who they are, and, of course, no one approach is inherently better than any other.

I collected books on herbs for years before I ever knew what to do with the herbs themselves. I would page through them and make notes of interesting tidbits of information, but I never felt like I had a framework for understanding how to make the magic come alive.

When I began my formal studies of Ayurveda, that framework presented itself in the three doshas (vata, pitta, kapha) and the qualities that are used to describe and understand them. It was a big moment for me; what had previously seemed beyond my grasp now made complete and total sense. In fact, there was an obviousness to working with herbs that I never would have guessed at previously.

Through the wisdom of Ayurveda I have found myself enjoying a deeper relationship with plant allies. Applying the principles of Ayurveda to herbs has demystified the world of plant medicine. Maybe this information will be helpful for you, too.

Ayurvedic Herbalism

Ayurvedic herbalism is careful to take many considerations into account when designing an herbal formula:

the client’s constitution & current state

the qualities of the herbs, including:

temperature

effect on bodily tissues

the form in which to take the herbs

the correct delivery mechanism for the herbs

synergy of herbs

the appropriate timing for taking the herbs

proper dosing of the herbs

Finding Balance

There are two fundamental rules in Ayurveda:

Like Increases Like

Opposites Reduce Each Other

These two rules work hand-in-hand and mean that:

more of any dosha or its quality (ie: heat) increases that dosha or quality;

the application of an opposing dosha or quality (ie: cold) decreases that dosha or quality.

A practical example will make this clear: If you have a sunburn, your skin becomes hot, red, and inflamed. These qualities (heat, redness, inflammation) represent excessive Pitta dosha (fire element) at that particular location. You would never apply more heat to the sunburn as a way to treat it (this would be “Like Increases Like”). Rather, you would oppose the quality of heat with the quality of cold to restore balance and bring healing (ie: “Opposites Reduce Each Other”). You would, for instance, apply ice or aloe vera gel. Both of these are cooling and bring relief to the burned skin.

In designing Ayurvedic herbal formulas we use this line of reasoning when choosing which herbs to include (or not). For example, we choose particular herbs for a pitta-predominant individual who has a sunburn, and we choose different herbs for a vata- or kapha-predominant individual who also has a sunburn. The pitta-predominant person constitutionally carries a lot of heat while the vata and kapha types do not. A pitta-predominant person would need a stronger cooling agent to address the sunburn than would someone who is predominantly vata or kapha.

Constitution & Current State

As with your genetic DNA, your Ayurvedic constitution is unique and distinct to you. It takes into account your physical body as well as your mental–emotional body. This is a body–mind type that is comprised of the three doshas: vata (air element), pitta (fire element), and kapha (water and earth elements). All of us have all three doshas present within us; we vary in the proportion of the three doshas relative to each other—and in how they express or manifest.

Ayurvedic herbalists are intentional about which herbs are used based on the individual’s Ayurvedic constitution— as well as any current imbalances—and their combined qualities. Using the reference point of the constitution plus the “You are Here” of the imbalances, it is possible to chart a course back to the place of ideal balance with herbs. The benefit of using this approach is that an issue can be addressed without inadvertently causing further aggravation in another aspect (ie: tissue, organ, system) of the individual.

Qualities of the Herbs

Herbs carry specific energetics that we keep in mind when creating a formula; for example:

heating or cooling;

tonifying (building up of bodily tissues) or reducing (depleting to bodily tissues);

moistening or drying

Temperature Herbs are understood to have an inherent temperature, and an Ayurvedic herbalist chooses herbs for their desired heating or cooling effect. Some examples of herbs that impart a cooling action are: peppermint, dill, nettle, neem, and cilantro. Some herbs that are heating include: powdered ginger, cayenne, black pepper, basil, and cinnamon. In our example of the person who has a sunburn, we would intentionally choose cooling herbs rather than herbs that have a heating effect. It may seem to be a minor consideration, but if you’ve ever been overheated, you know how overbearing more heat is on a hot summer’s day. Another example of how important a consideration temperature is can be found with echinacea. This herb is a favored Western herb for working with colds. It is antiviral, antiseptic, alternative, and analgesic, making it a good choice for this purpose. Echinacea has a very cold quality to it, so in clients who constitutionally tend to run cold, echinacea works best if combined with a herb that has heating qualities (such as ginger). Used on its own, echinacea could drive the cold deeper into the system. In a client who constitutionally tends to run hot, however, the echinacea might pose no issues since its cold quality could nicely balance out a fever state.

Effect on Body Tissues Herbs can influence how the body maintains its tissues. Herbs such as neem, turmeric, gentian, and nettle encourage the body to shed what no longer serves it. These reducing (catabolic) herbs are bitter and/or astringent and help the body to reduce weight and/or swelling (ie: metabolic wastes and edema). Other herbs build tissues up: oatstraw, licorice, shatavari, ashwagandha, slippery elm, and comfrey are examples of tonifying (anabolic) herbs. These herbs are anabolic; they help the body to increase tissue mass and/or increase the body’s capacity to maintain a higher level of wateriness. In clients who are in a state of depletion, tissue-building herbs would be a better choice. Conversely, in clients who tend to carrying excess weight, reducing herbs might be a better option. By a similar logic, we can choose demulcent herbs for clients whose tissues are dry and papery, and we can use astringent herbs to reduce swelling.

Form in which to Take the Herbs

Ayurveda considers what form of an herb would be best used for each person/circumstance. Whenever possible, the choice is made based on what is in the best interest of restoring balance to the individual rather than based on what a practitioner has easy access to. Fresh herbs (or freshly prepared formulations) are often preferred for their high amount of life-giving prana. In some cases, the qualities or properties of herbs change when they are dried.

Options include: fresh herbs (whole or chopped up) or dried herbs (powdered or whole). Herbs can be taken cooked into foods, in capsules, as an infusion (hot or cold), or as a decoction.

Delivery Mechanism

Ayurvedic herbalists carefully choose the delivery mechanism for the herbs based on what bodily tissue, system, or organ those herbs are targeted for. This helps to make the best use of the herbs and their actions.

Here’s the analogy: We want the herbs to get on the correct bus that will take them to their destination. The herbs are of no use if they can’t get to the correct location to do their work. So, Ayurveda makes use of specific vehicles that do just that. These vehicles each have an affinity for a specific tissue/system/organ and are easily able to deliver the herbs to their proper destination. Ayurveda calls these vehicles “anupana.” Anupanas include water, milk, ghee, vegetable oils, alcohol, honey, etc.

Each anupana has its own qualities: heating/cooling, tonifying/reducing, moistening/drying, etc. The practitioner designing an herbal formula keeps those in mind so that the anupana will be harmonious with the herbs that it is transporting. For example, an alcohol-based tincture combines the energetics and properties of the herb along with the energetics of the alcohol. Alcohol itself is primarily very heating and secondarily drying. This might be beneficial to the individual; it might not. For people with an addiction to alcohol, alcohol-based tinctures should be strictly avoided. Likewise, people with an excessive amount of heat in them (Pitta dosha) (ie: any inflammatory condition) should also avoid alcohol-based tinctures since they would experience an increase in heat—even if the herbs themselves have a cooling effect.

Synergy of Herbs

Ayurvedic herbalism will often use a combination of herbs to support a desired action. For example, Ashwagandha and

Bala are well known to enhance each other’s efficacy. These two herbs have similar influences of the doshas, balance each other’s inherent temperatures to deliver a neutral effect, specialize in targeting similar bodily tissues, share many of the same actions and indications, and work well with the same delivery mechanism. Ashwagandha and Bala work strongly in combination with each other, and we see their combined benefit working well for clients of all constitutions and states of imbalance where their use is indicated.

When to Take Herbs

Ayurveda considers the appropriate time to take an herbal formula. For example, if the intention of an herbal formula is to (positively) effect digestion, then you would take the herbs with the meal. The herbs might even be taken at a specific time during a meal (beginning, middle, end) to influence a particular aspect of digestion. If the intention of an herbal formula is to work with the mind (such as for boosting memory or relieving anxiety), the herbs would be taken as far away from meals as possible. Herbs may also be taken to address a specific dosha. If this is the case, herbs might be taken during the part of the day when that dosha is most predominant.

Whenever possible, Ayurveda prefers taking herbs as a proactive, preventative means (before deeper imbalances and symptoms arise—as with springtime allergies) vs. taking herbs during an acute, symptom-laden moment.

Dosing

The dosing of herbal formulas within the Ayurveda model is very intentional and is based in part on the body weight of the individual that will be taking the formula (higher dosing for those that weigh more; lower dosing for those that weigh less).

Ayurveda recognizes that herbs, being plants, have a threshold below which they deliver little therapeutic benefit. Compared to Western herbalism, Ayurvedic herbal formulas are generally taken in higher doses that are recognized to be therapeutic. This is especially true for herbs such as ashwagandha and shatavari, which, being starchy roots, can be safely taken more generously than other herbs can.

With Ayurveda’s focus on a person’s constitution, we find that people have optimal doses that are unique to them. We sometimes have to spend a small amount of time finding “your” dose—the amount of herbal formula taken to produce the desired result. While this may seem annoying to our Western culture that is habituated to taking a onesize-fits-all pill in a bottle, Ayurveda recognizes that we differ in the rate at which we metabolize what we take into our bodies. Sometimes we are far enough out of balance that it takes a stronger dose of an herbal formula to get the job done. Allowing a short period of time to attune to how the body and herbs work together is good medicine in and of itself and begins a dialog where the body’s receptivity to the herbs is awakened and we can notice the effect that the herbs have on us.

For More Info

Ayurveda (ayurvedichealthcenter.com/what-is-ayurveda/)

About the doshas (ayurvedichealthcenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/AHCWS-Doshas-in-a-Nutshell.pdf)

Free eBook about the principles of Ayurveda (ayurvedichealthcenter.com/resources/ebook-a-beginning-exploration-into-ayurveda/)

Determine your Ayurvedic constitution (ayurvedichealthcenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/AHCWS-Dosha-Self-Quiz-pg1.pdf)

About the author

Katrina Svoboda Johnson, AHP/CAP, LMP, SOMA, HERBALIST

Katrina Svoboda Johnson transforms complex situations into simple solutions. She has a knack for perceiving the underlying dynamic that is at play—and getting to its core. Through the alchemical sciences of Ayurveda, herbalism, subtle energy systems, yoga, and Structural Integration, Katrina artfully creates a tailor-made protocol that will move you from imbalance to balance, from stress to ease, and from confusion to clarity. Regardless of where you are now, this process will deeply support you in improving your health and wellness by weaving timeless traditions with contemporary practices to craft something as unique as you are.

About Katrina Svoboda Johnson (ayurvedichealthcenter.com/practitioners/)

Schedule an appointment with Katrina Svoboda Johnson (ScheduleWithAHC.as.me/?appointmentType=category:Appointments+with+Katrina)

2015 Interview with Katrina Svoboda Johnson (botanicaltherapy.com/underground/2015/12/30/cam-practitioner-interview-katrina-johnson)

Kitchen Cupboard Underground is a weekly blog on home remedies and natural wellness. Find natural wellness and personal care products Made for You and delivered to your door at BotanicalTherapy.com.

[do-your-socks-have-holes-in-them]

Til the End of the Night / Ch6: In which Roman has company

Previous / Masterpost / Next 

Summary: The Dragon Witch finally shows up in person.

Warnings: manipulation, breaking things in anger

A/N: Roman wanted more page time. And by wanted I mean demanded from me. So I gave it to him. :)

Read on AO3

Roman watched through his full-length mirror as his friends entered the forest.  All the walking wasn’t very exciting, but watching it was better than doing nothing. He had finally worked out how to zoom in on the stupid thing after tinkering with it (and shouting at it) for most of the day, and jeez was he ever gonna have to have a talk with those three about their clothing choices.  Virgil at least looked the part, although it was the wrong part.  And, okay, yes, Patton was freakin’ adorable, that was a given.  Logan, uh… yeah, he had nothing there.  Even his face- which was, of course, identical to Roman’s own face, and Roman looked good in anything- still couldn’t save that outfit. Back to the point, though, if they were going through the forest, that meant they were taking the same route he himself had a few days ago.  Which meant… hmm.

He flopped on the bed to think, staring up at the ceiling. When he traveled that path, he was always presented with challenges- three of them, to be exact.  Adventuring was his way of testing himself, making sure his improvisation skills were kept sharp, as well as his swordsmanship.  His friends probably wouldn’t be fighting much, though, given that they had no weapons and wouldn't know how to use them if they did.  No, they were more likely to face obstacles suited to their individual strengths.

“But what might those be?” he mused aloud.  Not that he didn’t know what their strengths were, but how did, say, Patton’s emotional intelligence and caring nature translate into anything that might pop up in the normal course of a heroic quest?  He tried not to dwell on the fact that he should have known, that he seemed to be losing control over his own dreamspace thanks to their presence and truly did not know what would happen.  “I mean, I’ve certainly never heard of anyone defeating a dragon with hugs.”

“Have you ever tried?”  He sat up in surprise at the sound of another voice, light and teasing, yet underlaid with a dangerous sharpness.  The Dragon Witch herself, stepping through the mirror.  He dismissed the images quickly and laid a hand on his sword, jumping to his feet.  “It’s been a while, Prince.”

“Not long enough, witch, and I believe the attempt would only earn me a knife in the back,” he pointed out, eyebrow raised.  She laughed, tossing her intricately braided dark hair over her shoulder.

“You know me too well.  How are you faring, all alone in here?  I know it must be difficult for you, what with the lack of adoring imaginary subjects and all.”

“You’ll be disappointed to hear that I am perfectly fine.” Actually, he had never been so bored in his life.  Now that the reality of his situation had really settled into the Imagination’s framework, he couldn’t conjure anything fun anymore.  “Enough small talk, what are you planning?  You must have a reason for wanting me out of the way.”  His weapon was drawn now, and they circled each other, Roman holding his sword at the ready, the witch’s hands giving off a warning glimmer of magic.  They both knew better than to attack first, so a wary peace existed for the moment.

“Oh, taking over your kingdom, terrorizing the populace, the usual.  I do wish you’d give me more complicated motives once in a while.”  The witch was one of Roman’s earliest creations.  He wasn’t entirely sure when she had become self-aware.  It was a bit worrying, if he was honest; sometimes he wasn’t sure if she was really under his control or just playing along for her own amusement.

Roman bristled at the insult to his creativity, clapping a hand over his heart in offended shock.  “You dare presume to tell me how to craft my stories?!  I wish you wouldn’t imprison me in my own architecture, but we can’t always have what we want, can we?”

“Point taken.  But that reminds me, I didn’t just come to indulge your love of antagonistic banter.”  She took a step towards him and he raised his sword defensively.  “Oh, put that down, I’m not here to fight.”

“Maybe I am,” he retorted, and, well, with an opening like that, what was he supposed to do?  He lunged at her with a shout, only to find himself suspended in midair, surrounded by green and gold light.  Stupid magic. His sword floated out of his hand and over to her while he was immobilized.  She finally released him from the spell after catching it and he thudded onto the floor in a very unprincely manner.  He glared at her and stood up, brushing himself off and trying to look at least a little bit dignified.

She responded as if nothing had happened between his last statement and this one.  “No, you’re here to wait for someone to save you from my evil clutches, but since I doubt that will be happening any time soon, right now you’re going to help me with this.”  She produced a rolled-up parchment and showed him a vague drawing of a castle.  “I mean, it’s definitely missing something, right?”

He blinked, taken aback and briefly forgetting to be angry. “Pardon?”

“The design of my castle,” she said, as if it should have been painfully obvious.  “How am I to take your place as ruler of this realm without anywhere to rule from?”

He really shouldn’t be helping her with that, but dangit, the temptation of having something to do was too strong.  It wasn’t as if she would have time to actually construct the thing, after all, he certainly wouldn’t be lending any assistance there, so there was no harm in merely planning it as a mental exercise.  And he really wanted to draw a castle, okay?  He snatched the paper and spread it out on the table, conjuring a pencil.

“Alright, you’re definitely going to need more spikey bits here… No, no, this is all wrong-” he erased an entire section of the building- “this should be over here, and then maybe some spires… Oh, and of course there’s got to be a wall with a nice, intimidating front gate…”  Without her noticing, he also scribbled in a small back-door entry.  No impenetrable stronghold would be complete without a way to sneak in, obviously.

Soon he was flipping the paper over to sketch different angles on the back, and then unconsciously summoning up more, so absorbed in messy floor plans that he didn’t notice when the sun went down. The witch watched over his shoulder as he muttered to himself, smirking at how easy it had been to get him going. Eventually, he finished off one last illegible annotation with a flourish and stepped back proudly. “Done!  Beautiful, right?”

She stepped around him and shuffled through the papers. “Oh, yes, you’re so talented!”  He preened.  She glanced sideways at him, a glint in her silver eyes and a smug smile tugging at her lips, and he faltered, realizing he may possibly have made a slight mistake.  “And so, so incredibly easy to manipulate.”

Her eyes flashed green.  He gasped and braced himself on the table.  It felt as though someone had wrapped a hand around his internal organs and given a sharp tug.  Something was torn from him, forced violently out into the world.  His closest reference point was a dream gone wrong, the feeling of nightmares forming themselves from his creative power against his wishes, only so much stronger. He couldn’t breathe for a second, and then the witch flicked a hand at him before he could try to move, walking away and leaving him frozen in place.  He could only watch as she oh-so-casually opened a wooden door that definitely had not existed before, on the opposite side of the room from the window, and stepped out into a long torch-lit hallway, taking his sword with her.  “Thanks for the castle, Princey,” she sang while closing the door.  There was the metallic sound of a key in a lock, and he stumbled a bit as her magic dissipated from the air around him.

“No,” he said out loud, surprising himself with how angry he sounded.  “No! How could I be such an idiot!”  He swept the papers off the table in frustration, and the look he gave them as they fluttered harmlessly to the floor should by all rights have burst them into flame.  “I finally get a chance to do something in this story, the story I was supposed to be the hero of, might I remind you-”  He appeared to be reminding the lantern.  “-and the one thing I’ve been able to do in like a week, it all goes completely flipping pear-shaped!  It’s not fair!”

He was vaguely aware that this was the literal definition of throwing a tantrum, but given that no one could see him anyway, he didn’t particularly care.  In fact, he decided to go ahead and throw a pillow, too, while he was at it.  Then he accidentally knocked the lantern off the table, again, while pacing angrily around the room, and then the pillow he’d just thrown was on fire and so were the drawings, and the lantern survived but he burned his hand retrieving it and at that point he was too frustrated and tired to clean up properly, so he didn’t. He just fell into a convenient chair and glared at nothing in particular, trying to get himself under control before his burning anger morphed into hot tears.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He couldn’t tell how long it took him to calm down.  When he felt like sitting up properly again, it was really dark outside, and that was all he knew.  The lantern was flickering, because a lot of its oil was now pooled around the charred remains of paper and fabric and fluff.  He simply snapped his fingers to get rid of that mess, now that he was stable and not at risk of making it worse instead.  While he was at it, he cleaned himself up and changed into some more comfortable clothes for sleeping, red flannel pajama pants and a soft t-shirt.  He sat on the edge of the bed, dropped his head into his hands, and sighed.

“Am I… losing control?”

The room didn’t respond.  His own thoughts tried to answer him instead, and he didn’t much appreciate what they had to offer.  The evidence was beginning to add up, as Logan would say, probably while dressed as Sherlock Holmes for some reason.  Getting stuck here in the first place could be dismissed as a fluke.  The others having influence over his realm, well, that made sense, given the way it responded to his thoughts, although that didn’t mean he liked it.  But the Dragon Witch hijacking his power to bring an entire castle into existence?  That should not have been able to happen.  He created her.  She was a figment of his own imagination.  Why was she suddenly doing things he didn’t expect, or understand, or know how to stop?  It was… scary.  He had never been genuinely afraid of anything here, always knowing on some level that none of it was real, but this scared him.

He wanted to conjure up a new pillow, but was hit with the probably-irrational fear that it wouldn’t work and he would have proof that his power was fading.  Maybe leaving him entirely, stranding him here, never to return to Thomas except in dreams, where he would desperately try to get a message through each night only to have it forgotten upon waking and okay no this was not a hypothetical narrative he needed to follow to its conclusion, that was only making things worse, stupid brain seizing on anything it could turn dramatic and taking it way further than necessary.  This was exactly why he needed the others to get here soon.  Logan would bring him back to what was real and actually happening when his thoughts ran away with him like that, and Patton would surely give him a hug and believe in him so hard he’d forget he ever doubted himself, and Virgil would make him feel better just by being there, ready to stop him if he tried to do anything else stupid for the sake of showing off.  He and Logan were basically 85% of Roman’s impulse control, but Virgil was the one willing to literally tackle him to prevent a bad decision.  He’d never expected to miss that.

This wasn’t getting him anywhere productive, and he couldn’t sleep with his thoughts in such turmoil.  He gave up after fifteen minutes of trying and sat up.  The room was nearly pitch-black, but there was a dim sliver of light coming through the crack under the newly-extant door, making the mirror appear to glow.  Maybe he would just check on them once more before going to sleep, just, you know, to see how far they had gotten since last time.  They were almost certainly asleep by now, but still.  He felt his way carefully across the darkened room and pressed a hand against the cold glass of the mirror, focusing his thoughts on his friends.

[wardoftheedgeloaves]

Of Sound Laws, Shortcuts and Sloppiness

I want to expand on Tocharian Irredentism’s last post regarding the decline of historical linguistics (as it’s short, I’ll quote it here in its entirety):

I don’t know what it’s like in the hard sciences, but my impression is that, past a certain point which we may or may not have already reached, the rate of progress in historical linguistics wouldn’t change much with the addition of more manpower because you need a lot of motivation and brainpower to do it right, and to the extent that anyone with those qualities isn’t already there it’s because academia is a raw deal nowadays. Adding more people would probably just result in more ‘work’ like Blevins’s Indo-Vasconic, where many of the proposed IE etymologies are straightforwardly wrong, or premature internal classification, or ~computer-aided statistical methods~. There are only so many people who are going to bother to learn four languages or spend years doing fieldwork on Malaria Mountain, especially since you could instead bung together some computer program and golly would you look at that, Japonic must be related to Ainu and Korean!

A lot of science is sort of fake, and if you add more people who are just going to do fake science, you’re not going to get anywhere – and it’ll be harder for the people who aren’t doing fake science to find each other, keep up with the papers, and so on, since the signal-to-noise ratio will change unfavorably.

What could increase the rate of progress is improving access to information. UPSID was useful, PHOIBLE is useful, Index Diachronica could end up being useful and that was put together by random people on a forum. There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit! But how well does academia incentivize doing the infrastructure stuff? In many fields, not so much.

...............

About a year ago I had a conversation with a guy who was doing his doctorate at one of the top grad programs in the US for linguistics. He explained solemnly to me that the reason it was Important always and everywhere to transliterate Greek into the Latin alphabet was that otherwise the literature wouldn't be accessible--accessibility being the lodestar of linguistics (and other fields more broadly) in our modern age.

Never mind that many, many, many of these articles and monographs are paywalled at exorbitant prices. It's self-evident to me that transliterating Greek into the Latin alphabet in an article that costs $29 for any non-academic to look at isn't about "accessibility" at all, and that anybody who thinks it is is either blind or willfully disingenuous.

But more broadly I think the whole "accessibility" obsession is symptomatic of a broader loss of...it's not rigor and I want to make it clear that I'm not accusing the wider linguistic community of lack of rigor. It's something else. I think there's a big difference between how historical linguistics is done and how many other forms of linguistics are done, that this difference runs very deep, and that both the obsession with "accessibility" and the decline of good historical linguistics are symptomatic of. Consider the way theoretical syntax or sociolinguistics are done. You have a broad theory (minimalism, X-Bar, sociological observations about code-switching or class differences in language use), and you fit a case study into it: A Minimalist Analysis of the Syntax of Guaraní; Gender Differences in Spoken Egyptian Arabic; Class and Language Use in Brazilian Portuguese; The Morphosyntax of the Nivkh Verb (A Generative Approach). The case study is generally fairly self-contained and, although obviously references will be made to the existing literature (if you're doing a Minimalist analysis of Burmese, you'll probably be referencing a Minimalist analysis of Yoruba or Kurdish at some point), it's a case study: fit language A into theory B.

I don't say this to imply that these approaches aren't intellectually rigorous or valuable--they absolutely are! But they break down in the face of historical linguistics, where to figure out why a particular form in Celtic appears to show a lengthened grade it helps to be able to reach into the back of your head and pull out an obscure paradigm from Luwian or Tocharian, or where to explain why a particular word almost but doesn't quite fit the known sound laws you want to be able to rack your entire mind for neighboring forms looking for a dialectal borrowing or analogical reshaping. And if you can't find the form in the back of your head, you'd better have the patience to rummage through five or six dictionaries until you have a good picture of what might have happened. It is not a field that lends itself to doing anything quickly, by halves, or with corner-cutting, and it encourages, indeed almost requires, the ingestion of hundreds of individually meaningless factoids about individual words, sound changes, or morphemes--each factoid nigh-useless on its own, but enabling the historical linguist to make incisive and wide-ranging analyses by bouncing from factoid to factoid in one's mental or physical library until a slightly less murky picture emerges.

This is the fatal flaw in the fashionable attempts at macro-comparison exemplified by Blevins' attempt at Proto-Indo-European-Euskarian (a lengthy title--Indo-Vasconic works just as well, surely?) or the Automated Similarity Judgment Program. By not putting in the tedious spade-work of individual analysis at the word level the new approaches are doomed to see connections that aren't there and miss connections that are. An example from Blevins' newly published monograph on Indo-Vasconic is a proposed reconstruction *okho:

I won't comment on the Basque lemmata--I know very little about Basque. But PIE *ko- 'together, with, by' must have had a palatovelar, as Lithuanian sù (with unexpected depalatalization, but a clear etymology) and OCS съ readily attest--but PIE *ḱ goes back to *khi- in Blevins' PIV.

How about Tocharian oko? Here's Douglas Q. Adams' Dictionary of Tocharian B on the matter:

Probably cognate to "acorn", from a form *h₂ógeh₂- or thereabouts, with reshaping here and there. But under Blevins' framework PIE *g must go back to PIV *g.

Or take this entry:

But Greek τῑμή can't be from *t- anything; *t before *i *u or their glide counterparts yields σ in Greek (compare Latin tū with Greek σύ and Sanskrit tyájati with Greek σέβομαι. (Should I be writing all my Sanskrit examples in Devanāgarī? Perhaps, but there seems to be less of a tradition to do so--and there's certainly no such tradition for Tocharian). Instead τῑμή must be from the zero-grade of *kʷeh₁y-, probably with laryngeal metathesis, in the same family as τίω 'I honor'--on this Beekes and Chantraîne are in agreement. The development of the Greek consonants is hardly an obscure matter--the palatalization of the labiovelars before front vowels and sigmatization of *t before high ones are well-known.

Now it is all very well to propose "I think I'm right about these words, and the established etymologies are wrong, and here's why." But Blevins doesn't do that. τῑμή and oko indeed look like the other forms to which they are connected, but it is well-established that they are not related at all. Well-established etymologies are of course overturned from time to time. But you cannot overturn a consensus judgment without confronting it, and the consensus judgments here are not even mentioned.

And what of the Automated Similarity Judgment Program and similar attempts to do historical linguistics by bringing in Big Data, the Delphic oracle of our time? Anything a human can do, a computer can do faster; and insofar as the goal is to draw surface-level connections between similar-looking words that will fall apart upon closer inspection, these programs may be said to be successful indeed. Consider the way the ASJP codes sounds (Appendix C): all the sounds of the world's languages have to be mapped onto 41 characters. But the groupings are not made with reference to what sound changes and correspondences are actually found. For example, <i> is used for all four of /i ɪ y ʏ/ and their lengthened versions; but /y/ corresponds to /u/ in related languages far more often than it does to /i/, because /y/ derives from /u/ much more often than from /i/ (consider French, Ancient Greek, Dhegiha Siouan, Germanic umlaut, and California English). By using a simplified toy model of phonology with little reference to what actually happens, the deck is going to be stacked in bias of certain sound shifts and correspondences before the cards are even dealt. But the broader problem is that same as that seen in Indo-Vasconic above: historical linguistics does not deal in chance resemblances but in the historical derivation of lexemes and morphemes. A computer program is doomed to ring true on English bad and Persian بد (bæd), English day and Latin diēs, PIE *h₁ed- 'eat' and Mongolian идэх; it's similarly doomed to ring false on wheel and cakrá-, day and foveō, hear and ἀκούω.

Of course, you can always give it extra information, telling it to undo Grimm's Law with Germanic data, for example. But where does that extra information come from? It comes from the tedious nuts and bolts of real historical linguistics, thumbing through dictionaries, making lists of misbehaving words, for which there is no substitute and never will be.

Real historical linguistics is hard. Real historical linguistics is tedious. Long live historical linguistics, and long live historical linguists, who can't be replaced by computers--not until the computers are really reading through dictionaries and thinking about reshapings. More broadly, I think both the Indo-Vasconics and the Big Data-driven approaches are driven by the desire to make historical linguistics work more like generative syntax, the application of a theory to a well-defined, self-contained case study.

I'll leave everybody with a quote from the inimitable Ives Goddard's 1981 article Against the Evidence Claimed for Some Algonquian Dialectical Relationships (bolding mine):

The problem with Proulx's claim is that it is made without any explicit formulation of what the historical rules are that are taken to derive the attested languages from the protolanguage. But to do comparative linguistics by making reconstructions without formulating the subsequent historical developments that convert them into the attested languages is completely invalid, since the reconstructions are not ends in themselves and are only as valid as the histories that they imply. It is a widespread misunderstanding to consider the comparative method a method for reconstructing protolanguages or proving languages to be related. It is not. It is a method for doing linguistic history.

And that is the crux of the issue. To connect Basque okho to Tocharian oko, or to propose linguistic relationships based on a computer's similarity judgments among a list of forty words picked from the Swadesh list, without reference to the real historical work on the languages involved, is like asking a computer to write a history of the United States based on a random subselection of the literature while ignoring out a vast field of very important work on the subject. It wouldn't fly in history and it shouldn't fly here.

(A final word on transliteration of Greek? It's an OK norm to adopt, I suppose, if you're really concerned about accessibility. But I remain convinced that it's not really about accessibility. Rather--and this is a very unusual attitude for an academic to have--there are a lot of linguists who for some reason just don't want to learn how to read the Greek alphabet. I agree that there's a bit of Eurocentrism and arbitrariness in that e.g. we traditionally transcribe Sanskrit and Tocharian but not Greek or Cyrillic; but it is what it is. And much more often accessibility is made more or less possible not by the format of what is being written or even by paywalls but by the literature on which the subject is founded. There simply is no doing comparative Indo-European at anything approaching an academic level without knowing the Greek alphabet or indeed being able to make your way through an article in German, with a dictionary if need be. Absent a monumental effort to translate and transliterate two hundred years of literature, that won’t change.)

[balioc]

Sexbots, Plato, and Jung

Apparently today is the day for sexbot discourse.  Joy of joys.

So...why does anyone want a sexbot?  What’s the value-add in this proposition?

There’s obviously a wide spectrum of possibilities here, but I think we can usefully divide them into three conceptual buckets. 

On the one end, there’s the pure straightforward object-oriented desire for a better sex toy with cooler features.  “Give me a vibrator/fleshlight, but, like, mobile, with arms and legs and a face and stuff, because that’ll make the orgasms better somehow.”  

To the extent that anyone is thinking this, I have zero trouble saying that there’s absolutely no objection to it at all that carries any water.  Go and get the best tool for the task.  Have fun. 

...on the other hand, an honest assessment will compel us to admit that basically no one will be thinking this.  Sex is mostly mental and emotional for pretty much everyone, the things we want out of it are mostly about complicated deep-laid psychological stuff -- and to the extent that it really is just about pushing physical pleasure-buttons, existing technology has that covered just fine.  This is kind of a strawman, and I’m mentioning it only for the sake of thoroughness. 

All the way on the other end, you get a number of variations on “I want a sexbot so that I can fool myself into believing that it’s a person with whom I can have a relationship.” 

(A few of those variations entail “...so that I can fool myself into believing that it’s a person with whom I can have a cruel/abusive relationship, one that for moral or practical reasons I can’t get with a real person.”  But only a few.  I’m not going to discuss them separately; I think we’ve had quite enough of that particular sub-discourse.)

Some people actually will think this; some already do.  In particular, if your conscious mind has become so soured on relationships (or so soured on the-opposite-sex-as-a-whole) that you believe them to be worthwhile only for the sake of fulfilling extremely simplistic psychological needs, you might be inclined to think that a non-sapient robot with a good user interface -- something like a current-tech video game NPC with a meatspace body, let’s say -- could fill the role of a human partner without much being lost. 

This is not a correct or healthy thing to think, and anyone whose mind is on this track is going to be painfully disappointed by the reality of having a sexbot. 

This is true for a lot of super-obvious reasons that boil down to “people are intellectually and emotionally generative, the value of being close to them mostly involves getting to interact with their complicated thoughts and feelings, the sexbots we’re talking about will not give you any of that.”  It’s also true for some slightly-less-obvious reasons.  A lot of what people want out of relationships, a lot of the thing whose absence actually drives lonely people to madness and despair, is social validation -- the validation of having someone (especially someone with a high social value) think that you’re worth caring about, the validation of everyone around you thinking that you’re cool or mature or successful or whatever -- and none of that can be faked, even if right now you feel like you’d be totally happy to settle for the external trappings. 

For whatever it’s worth, I also do agree with @jadagul that fooling yourself in this way is Unvirtuous, independent of any utilitarian fallout of any kind. 

So I’m happy to say that using a sexbot, for this particular kind of reason, is probably bad for you and you probably shouldn’t do it.  That in itself is not a good enough reason to make policy, we allow all sorts of bad things into society because trying to enforce a ban would be much worse, but it’s a judgment. 

But everything I’ve said thus far is kind of pointless, because the vast majority of the world’s desire-for-sexbots would in fact fall into the third bucket, which sits in between the other two. 

OK, our first Weird Philosophical Analogy: Plato’s tripartite soul.  You’ve got your semi-physiological animal appetite soul, you’ve got your seething subconscious emotional psychological soul, and you’ve got your conscious intellectual soul that contains your actual personality and goals and ideas.  In your “average” “normal” person, all three of them are united in strongly wanting sex.  But that desire means totally different things to each of them. 

The appetite soul can be satisfied with a vibrator or fleshlight.  The intellectual soul definitely needs another real person, someone who can constantly feed you you new thoughts and cause you to grow, someone who can be a part of your life and contribute things, no substitutes accepted. 

[I think that, in modern parlance, a person whose appetite soul doesn’t have that kind of need is called “asexual,” and a person whose intellectual soul doesn’t have that kind of need is called “aromantic.”  But maybe that mapping doesn’t work?  Discuss.]

The “emotional soul” -- which is a terrible name for it, but there isn’t a better one in modern language, which has lost the semantic distinction between nefesh/psyche/soul and ruach/pneuma/spirit, thanks, Church Doctors -- is roughly akin to the subconscious mind of the Old Psychologists, although you certainly can be aware of its workings under many circumstances.  It’s the part of you that cares about feelings and social cues in an unreflective way, much as the appetite soul cares about sugar and temperature and orgasms.  It’s the part of you that cringes when you feel shame, without any consideration of whether that shame is endorsed or desirable or appropriate.  It’s the part of you that crows like a rooster when some stranger likes your post on social media. 

The emotional soul cares almost exclusively about social, cultural, and emotional things, but...it doesn’t actually care about people, not in any sense that a thinking intelligence would find meaningful.  It doesn’t understand their existence as beings with interiority; that requires abstract thinking, which is not a thing of which it’s capable.  It doesn’t care about who they are or what they want.  It cares only about what they do, in a very direct and concrete kind of way, because human actions line up with the happy-patterns and sad-patterns that it does understand.

The emotional soul has a lot of use for a sexbot. 

An easy and not-very-loaded example: when you are despairing and full of doubts, it can be very comforting to have a beautiful-person-shaped-entity giving you the basic reassurances that you would otherwise have to give yourself.  Today, in our sexbot-free world, this usually translates to “it’s nice to have a loved one comfort you in such a way” -- but in fact your loved one’s existence as an independent thinking entity isn’t providing very much value-add in this particular scenario.  You already know the words in question, it’s not like you need someone else to generate them.  And, let’s be honest, your loved one is going to say those things pretty much no matter what he’s actually thinking in the moment, it may be so much a ritual courtesy that his not saying the words would be a hurtful surprise.  And yet it helps, perhaps quite a lot, because there’s a sub-rational part of you that doesn’t have declarative beliefs but knows that it likes seeing someone pretty say the nice words. 

A much-more-loaded example: many sexual fetishes.  No beliefs of any kind involved, no caring about anyone’s interiority, just some part of your mind that likes seeing someone pretty do the thing.  It’s a happy-button; maybe it has its origins in some interpersonal emotional complication, but at some point your psyche contains an independent module that’s just “button push ==> happy.”  And a sexbot can be pretty, and do the thing, just as well as a person with hopes and dreams. 

(I am pretty confident that, in a world with actual sexbots worthy of the name, a big slice of the sexbot-buying population is going to consist of couples interested in doing Group Sex Acts without any of the complications attendant on involving actual other people.) 

So OK.  Evaluation time.  What happens if this actually takes off?

A bunch of people get their emotional-soul needs met without having to rely on other human beings to do it for them.

This is potentially a very good thing. 

You can say “it will allow a bunch of lonely people who can’t find partners to satisfy more of their needs than they could otherwise,” which is true, but in fact it’s the least of it.  It could change the fundamental dynamic of human romantic relationships for those people who are capable of finding them.  It could allow them to be less driven by raw psychological need.

We’ve never actually relied on our partners for our appetite-soul needs; if you’ve got hands, you can probably find your way to an orgasm.  But we rely on our partners, extensively, for our emotional-soul needs.  We demand that they do the thing, whatever the thing is, because we need a person-shaped entity to fulfill that function or we get anxious and depressed.  We need them to play their assigned roles in our sex rituals and our comfort rituals and so on. 

If we have convincing person-shaped-entities without interiority that will just do whatever we want, then we can slot them into our rituals.  And maybe we can have a little more respect for each other as independent people, and approach each other in more of a spirit of exploratory appreciative wonder, and mutilate each other a little less in the name of creating the supportive partners we need.

A sentence you won’t hear very often these days, for good reason: I think it is helpful to think about this concept through a Jungian framework.

As Jung would have it, one of the important parts of your mind/soul/whatever is your anima if you’re a “normal” straight man, or animus if you’re a “normal” straight woman.  (There have been lots of arguments over how this works if you’re not doing the standard binary heterosexual thing, I’m not getting into it now, just...roll with it.)  The anima/animus is a sort of internal princess/prince figure, the living Grail at the end of the sacred self-development quest, containing within itself all the aspects of you that seem foreign and impossible-to-understand and not-quite-part-of-yourself.  The muse who brings inspiration, the voice of solace and comfort in the depths of depression, etc.  It’s represented as an idealized lover because it is all the things for which you reach out to the world in an attempt to feel complete.  But it’s all there inside. 

Achieving union with your anima/animus, in the Jungian scheme, is a key step of becoming a whole and happy person.  Without that internal union, you try to force other human beings into the role; it never works, and it does lots of damage to both parties in the process. 

I don’t know whether projecting aspects of your anima or animus onto a sexbot is a good way of coming to terms with it “properly.”  But I’m damn sure that I’d rather you do that, and seek out your private hieros gamos in a psychological mirror made from silicone, than dragoon an actual person into the job of making you complete. 

A lot of bad relationships -- and a lot of bad parts of good relationships -- are that second thing.  People feel so much desperate need for one another, because they feel so broken.  But love works a lot better when you go into it whole. 

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MYTH BUSTERS

Myth: When a teacher says, “don’t memorize this,” it means stop paying attention

because this won’t be on the exam.

Reality check: WRONG! This is an unfortunate and all-too-common source of

teacher-student miscommunication. What they almost always mean is that

you should understand it, not just memorize it for later regurgitation. More

than likely, it will be on the exam!

BUILDING A MEMORY

n its journey through the three stages of the brain’s memory storage system – sensory, short-term

(STM), and long-term (LTM) – a tremendous amount of information is filtered out. Your goal as a

medical student is to select learning strategies that maximize retention and minimize loss of important

information.

What are the take home messages?

" Pay attention to the learning task at hand and avoid distractions

" Get 7-8 hours of quality sleep on a regular basis

" Incorporate “active recall” into your study plan

" Deliberately link new information to existing knowledge

" Adopt a deep approach to learning

All perceived stimuli enter your memory storage system as “sensory memories.” Stimuli you attend to enter short-term memory (STM) – your attention signals the brain, “Hey, that’s important!” Depending on what you do next, some STMs will be lost and some will enter long-term storage. In the absence of continuous rehearsal (e.g., repeating a phone number over and over again), anything you can recall after 24-hours (and probably after a minute) is a long-term memory (LTM). Even so, many common study methods create “weak” memories (neural networks) that render retrieval all but impossible after a short period of time (hence erroneously referred to as “short-term” memory). Imagine that forming a LTM is like wearing a path in a rug. The first time you walk across a rug you leave footprints, but after a short time they are no longer detectable (STM). However, the more you traverse the same path (rehearsal), the deeper and more permanent the wear pattern becomes (LTM).

How are long-term memories (LTM) stored?

" The brain has a complicated storage system for long-term memories. An LTM is distributed

in a neural network (i.e., group of neurons primed to fire together) with different aspects of

the same memory stored in different brain areas, e.g., visual aspects of an episodic memory

stored in the visual cortex and associated sounds stored in the auditory cortex.

How are memories retrieved?

" “Remembering” (accessing a stored memory) involves replicating the pattern of neural

activity that occurred when the memory was originally formed. The relative ease or difficulty

of memory retrieval is related to the “strength” of the neural connections (like the depth of

the wear pattern in a rug). Because memories are stored throughout the brain, retrieval

involves reconstructing the memory, like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.

o Example: Imagine trying to remember someone’s name, but you can only recall that

the person was female and her name began with the letter ‘B’ so you mentally run

through all the female names you know that begin with the letter B. Alas, recollection

finally comes from a different retrieval cue altogether, “Her name was Betty and I

remember because we talked about how much we both liked the Flintstones when

we were kids.”

" To be readily accessible, a memory needs to have multiple, relevant retrieval cues. Study

methods that improve long-term retention and subsequent access to a stored memory

involve intentionally creating meaningful associations. In the example above, retrieval cues

included: female category, name begins with letter B, instance of discussing mutual

fondness of the Flintstones, and Betty Rubble was a Flintstones’ character.

" Two main processes are used to access memories: recognition and recall. Recognition

involves comparing a current stimulus (e.g., a sight, sound, or smell) to something sensed in

the past; it is a single step process and is generally easier and faster. Recall involves

directly accessing information in LTM, and is generally more difficult because there are no

direct retrieval cues, thus the entire neural path must often be reconstructed.

" When retrieved, information is pulled from LTM back into “working” STM and must undergo

a process of reconsolidation, which can strengthen and even alter the memory.

What does it mean to “forget”?

" In the absence of pathology, the human brain is capable of storing LTMs permanently, but

“memory decay” is a normal physiological process. Just as new neural connections can be

made, old ones that haven’t been used in a while can be “pruned” – “use it or lose it.”

Forgetting is either the result of poor initial encoding and/or faulty retrieval – without

adequate retrieval cues, a memory might as well not exist. Forgetting happens rapidly at

first, but slows as time progresses. Re-studying information at spaced intervals staves off

forgetting and improves long-term retention and retrieval. The MSUCOM curriculum takes

advantage of this aspect of memory by revisiting certain topics over again, but you can also

incorporate this into your overall study strategy.

What is “rote learning”?

" Rote learning methods are based exclusively on repetition and rehearsal – the idea is that

the more something is repeated the easier (and more quickly) it can be recalled.

Is rote learning a good study method?

" In some situations, but generally not. Rote methods represent a surface approach to

learning that are very useful for some learning tasks, such as memorizing a long list of

random words or numbers. Medical students often utilize rote learning to their detriment,

and describe their learning process as memorizing the course material. However,

“memorizing” and learning are not synonymous. Of course, one must “remember” something

in order to later recall it to answer a test question, but rote memorization creates LTMs that are particularly devoid of context, associations, and meaning. Rote study techniques do not

lead to genuine understanding and fail to produce retrieval cues required to recall and apply

information in a novel context such as answering an unfamiliar or higher order exam

question (i.e., knowledge “transfer”).

What are alternatives to rote learning?

" Alternatives to rote learning include deep learning approaches: meaningful learning,

associative learning, and active learning.

STUDY TIPS FOR IMPROVING LONG-TERM RETENTION AND RETRIEVAL

What are some study methods that produce deep learning?

Access to memories is greatly improved when the information being learned is meaningful. To aid in

recall, study methods should involve deliberate creation of logical, intuitive, and even fanciful

associations with existing knowledge. Make sense of new information and develop an

organizational scheme/framework. Information you understand rarely needs to be

“memorized” using rote techniques.

What to do

# Use your own words to rephrase definitions/descriptions

# Think of familiar examples – things that you can relate to

# Use familiar acronyms, acrostics, analogies, codes, musical

jingles and rhymes

# Relate new information to knowledge from other courses

(past or present) or to life experiences

# Relate theory to everyday practice

# Think about how the information relates to the medical “big

picture”: What is the clinical/practical significance? Why are you learning this?

What is the impact on/relationship to patient diagnosis and treatment?

# Create concept maps

Actively participate in your own learning (“generation effect”). Retention and recall are

improved when you actively participate in the creation of your own knowledge.

o What to do

# Create your own summaries, study guides, diagrams, charts, etc.

# Ask and answer your own questions.

# Use your whole brain, not just your left hemisphere. Play around with

information until some outstanding feature suggests a memory “hook”, such

as a mnemonic, picture, pattern, rhyme, or story; the more emotive (funny,

dirty, disgusting), the better.

Create both a visual and a verbal memory for the same information (“dual coding”).

o What to do

# Associate words with pictures

• Use your own words to describe a picture/figure/diagram

• Translate a written passage into a drawing or diagram

# Examples of specific memorization techniques that employ imagery include

the method of loci and journey method.

Whenever possible, study in an environment that is similar to the testing environment

(“state- & context dependent memory”). Recall is enhanced when the environmental context

is similar during both the encoding (learning) and recall phases, and is one reason why

studying in a quiet place is generally preferable to a noisy one.

" Spread studying out over several days, rather than cramming (“distributed effort”). Say you’re going to spend 10 hours studying a particular topic, it is more effective to spend that time as 10 one-hour sessions, or 5 2-hour sessions, or even 2 5-hour sessions, spread out

over two or more days, than it is to spend one marathon 10-hour session. This is why it is so very important to review everyday. Obviously, you cannot review everything everyday, but

make sure you frequently review the things that are most challenging to you.

" Avoid multitasking when learning difficult or dense material. Research has found that

although multitasking does not impact recall, it is extremely detrimental to the encoding

process. Multitasking divides attention, takes up valuable short-term memory space, and

negatively impacts on LTM formation.

" Review information you’re trying to memorize right before you go to sleep. Deep sleep

plays an important role in memory consolidation. This is a good time to spend a few minutes

reviewing a chart or going through some flashcards. To further enhance your memory, try to

recall the information shortly after you wake up.

" Self-quiz frequently by recalling information from your memory. Every time you access

a memory, you strengthen it. So, not only does self-quizzing help you identify your areas of

weakness, it also helps you retain the information for later recall by strengthening the neural

connections.

USEFUL RESOURCES RELATED TO MEMORY AND LEARNING

Memory http://www.human-memory.net/index.html

Memory Techniques: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/main/newMN_ISS.htm#mem

How to Improve Your Memory: http://www.helpguide.org/life/improving_memory.htm

Enhancing Memory http://www.sparknotes.com/psychology/psych101/memory/section4.rhtml

Memory Curve http://www.com.msu.edu/Students/Academic_Development/memory_curve.pdf

Optimal Memory Curve http://www.com.msu.edu/Students/Academic_Development/optimal_memory_curve.pdf

Reference:

1. Tigner RB (1999). “Putting Memory Research to Good Use” College Teaching, 47(4) 149.

[sunshineweb]

Why We Make Bad Decisions

Here is some stuff I am reading and thinking about this weekend…

Book I’m Reading – What I Learned Losing A Million Dollars The backdrop of this book is the true story of a trader called Jim Paul. His career in stock market started with a string of unusual successes that vaulted him from a dirt-poor country boy to jet-setting-millionaire. However, after 15 years of uninterrupted success, all of Jim’s wealth was wiped out in a matter of few weeks when he lost $1.6 million in a speculative trade. This devastating failure led him to intense self-reflection and discovery of some unusual insights about success and failure.

Jim’s Aha! moment arrived when it finally occurred to him that studying losses, losing and how not to lose was more important than studying how to make money. He writes in the book –

Why was I trying to learn the secret to making money when it could be done in so many different ways? I knew something about how to make money; I had made a million dollars in the market. But I didn’t know anything about how not to lose. The pros could all make money in contradictory ways because they all knew how to control their losses. While one person’s method was making money, another person with an opposite approach would be losing — if the second person was in the market. And that’s just it; the second person wouldn’t be in the market. He’d be on the sidelines with a nominal loss. The pros consider it their primary responsibility not to lose money.

The moral, of course, is that just as there is more than one way to deal blackjack, there is more than one way to make money in the markets. Obviously, there is no secret way to make money because the pros have done it using very different, and often contradictory, approaches. Learning how not to lose money is more important than learning how to make money. Unfortunately, the pros didn’t explain how to go about acquiring this skill. So I decided to study loss in general, and my losses in particular, to see if I could determine the root causes of losing money in the markets.

This book begins with the unbroken string of successes that helped Paul achieve a jet-setting lifestyle. It then describes the circumstances leading up to his $1.6 million loss and the essential lessons he learned from it ― primarily that, although there are as many ways to make money in the markets as there are people participating in them, all losses come from the same few sources. Overall, his cautionary tale includes strategies for avoiding losses tied to a simple framework for understanding, accepting, and dodging the dangers of investing.

Idea I’m Thinking – Why We Make Bad Decisions Short answer – We have design flaws. We are fairly sure we are way above average, and we are also sure we see everything perfectly.

Long answer – Ray Dalio wrote in his book Principles –

The two biggest barriers to good decision making are your ego and your blind spots. Together, they make it difficult for you to objectively see what is true about you and your circumstances and to make the best possible decisions by getting the most out of others. If you can understand how the machine that is the human brain works, you can understand why these barriers exist and how to adjust your behavior to make yourself happier, more effective, and better at interacting with others.

The first bad habit is believing you are always correct. That’s ego. We don’t like to look at our mistakes and weaknesses. To avoid this pitfall, Dalio suggests viewing criticism as helpful feedback instead of as an attack.

“The blind-spot barrier is when a person believes he or she can see everything,” he explains. And that mentality is a mistake: “It is a simple fact no one alone can see a complete picture of reality,” he adds.

Now, we all, even the best decisions makers, have blind spots. We can’t see ideas and perspectives because we would never have considered them. And these are a product of our unique strengths. Like, some people are big-picture thinkers, some are more detail-oriented. Some are creative, while others are more organised. Some are strong at observing reality, while some can imagine possibilities way better. Some always follow rules and routines, while some are naturally spontaneous. Blind spots occur when we see the world and ideas the unique way we are, without trying to consider a wide range of perspectives.

So, what’s the solution to overcome these two barriers to good decision making?

Being open-minded is the answer. As Dalio suggests –

…open-mindedness is motivated by the genuine worry that you might not be seeing your choices optimally. It is the ability to effectively explore different points of view and different possibilities without letting your ego or your blind spots get in your way. It requires you to replace your attachment to always being right with the joy of learning what’s true.

…open-mindedness doesn’t mean going along with what you don’t believe in; it means considering the reasoning of others instead of illogically holding onto your own point of view.

Thoughts I’m Meditating On

One of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, right here, right now, in this single, solitary, monumental moment in your life, is to decide, without apology, to commit to the journey, and not to the outcome.

~ Joyce DiDonato

We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.”

~ Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Video I’m Watching – Jim Carrey’s 2014 Commencement Address

Jim Carrey: Your job is not to figure out how it’s going to happen for you, but to open the door in your head and when the door opens in real life, just walk through it. Don’t worry if you miss your cue because there’s always doors opening. They keep opening.

And when I say, “life doesn’t happen to you, it happens for you,” I really don’t know if that’s true. I’m just making a conscious choice to perceive challenges as something beneficial so that I can deal with them in the most productive way. You’ll come up with your own style, that’s part of the fun.

Oh, and why not take a chance on faith as well? Take a chance on faith — not religion, but faith. Not hope, but faith. I don’t believe in hope. Hope is a beggar. Hope walks through the fire. Faith leaps over it.

You are ready and able to do beautiful things in this world and after you walk through those doors today, you will only ever have two choices: love or fear. Choose love, and don’t ever let fear turn you against your playful heart.

Articles I’m Reading

The Pandemic Isn’t a Black Swan but a Portent of a More Fragile Global System (New Yorker)

It’s Time to Build (Marc Andreessen)

68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice (Kevin Kelly)

Are We Too Busy to Enjoy Life? (Ness Labs)

All the Things We Have to Mourn Now (The Atlantic)

The First Modern Pandemic (Bill Gates)

When You Have No Idea What Happens Next (Morgan Housel)

Finding Meaning In Our Suffering (Daily Stoic)

There Was No One Like Irrfan Khan (The Atlantic)

A Question for You Look at each stock in your portfolio and ask, “If I did not own this stock already, would I be buying it now?”

If the answer is ‘No,’ ask, “Why am I even owning it?”

Stay safe. Stay happy. Be at peace.

With respect, — Vishal

The post Why We Make Bad Decisions appeared first on Safal Niveshak.

Why We Make Bad Decisions published first on https://mbploans.tumblr.com/

[daylflay]

He/She/Him/Her/Liberal/Conservative

All the Twitter’s a Stage

The performance of gender is typically engendered via societal/cultural inculcation. The gender archetypes germane to traditional Western culture are familiar to most of us: Men are supposed to be tough and stoic, whereas women are supposed to be compassionate and emotionally expressive. Online, though, gender performance takes on an additional dimension; as Sarah Banet-Weiser puts it in Mediated Girlhoods: New Explorations of Girls’ Media Culture: “The construction of the self is not an insular, isolated activity but is rather situated in a media and cultural context that involves a dynamic between the self and others, or…content and user feedback”. Due to Twitter’s focus on creating/growing a following, for example, gender performance for those with significant followings on the platform is arguably the result of their ideologies/audiences. On Twitter, in some cases, general societal expectations seem to take a backseat to one’s ideological leanings and the subsequent type of following that attracts. 

The Actors

All of the individuals I’m monitoring were raised within a Westernized cultural framework, so they no doubt are fully aware of the gender norms expected of them, which Rosalind Gill delineates in Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility: “A key feature of the postfeminist [era] has been the resurgence of natural sexual differences…[,] one arena in which this played out was the media debate about…an unashamed celebration of true or authentic masculinity”. Rick Wilson/@TheRickWilson and Mehdi Hasan/@mehdirhasan, the two men I’m tracking, are both heterosexual Westerners, but their gender performances are dichotomized based on their identification with conservatism and liberalism, respectively. 

Conservatism, as a social ideology, is concerned with conserving traditional Western values, and in Rick Wilson’s case that means performing as a tough, red-blooded, take-no-shit kind of man similar to what Gill described as “authentic masculinity” (though Wilson takes politically moderate positions on myriad issues, he still self-identifies as conservative). Perusing his tweets/replies, it’s clear that he takes a very aggressive posture on Twitter. Wilson seems to constantly be engaging in Twitter spats with a variety of users, and is crude and condescending towards his targets: Just today (2/20/20), in response to a Twitter user who said something that Wilson considered distasteful, Wilson sarcastically tweeted, “I am intrigued by your views and wish to subscribe to your news letter”; the Twitter user in question had a minimal following, and Wilson, with his formidable following and widely recognized body of online content, clearly delighted in mocking her and her nonexistent newsletter. Regarding the photos/videos he posts to Twitter, Wilson almost exclusively uses those forms of media to promote either his most recent book release, or his media appearances; it all revolves around self-advertisement, which is consistent with the typical capitalistic leanings of economic conservatism. There also seems to be a lack of emoji use by Wilson, which is basically a portrayal of the stoicism associated with the Western male archetype. 

Socially, liberalism, which Mehdi Hasan proudly identifies with, espouses an open-minded and empathetic mentality unlike Wilson’s display of “true masculinity”. Hasan’s tweets/replies can be aggressive at times, but he’s much more open to the use of humor and emojis than Wilson is, which sets a friendlier tone than Wilson does. In general, Hasan seems more interested in engaging with current events than with Twitter users; the majority of the photos/videos Hasan posts are germane to whatever current event is on his mind, whether it’s a screen-grab from the most recent Democratic debate or a video of Iranian activists protesting their current political regime. Hasan cultivates a Twitter identity that is focused on informing the public without the use of pontification/condescension, which jives with liberal precepts. One of Hasan’s most recent tweets simply stated, solemnly and without a trace of irony, “interesting argument”, in response to a tweet by New York Magazine writer Sarah Jones/@onesarahjones. 

    The Actresses

Kashana Cauley/@kashanacauley and Patti Harrison/@Party_Harderson are both liberals, and the general atmospheres they curate via their Twitter accounts are mostly friendly and overtly humorous. One of Cauley’s tweets following yesterday’s (2/19) Democratic debate humorously read: “Bloomberg’s going for the left vote by being publicly owned”; her tweet was jocular and tame in tone compared to the vast majority of political tweets and their vitriolic nature. Both women engage enthusiastically with other Twitter users, and their tones when engaging are supportive and optimistic; I wasn’t able to discern any recent instances of either woman sparring with other Twitter users, in fact.

Cauley and Harrison have a lot in common in terms of their Twitter use, but the latter is much more active in feminizing her tweets than the former, and it’s for a good reason: Harrison is a trans woman, and that typically entails the performance of some form of traditional femininity. Though being trans is obviously a major aspect of her identity, it’s also part of her brand. I’m not suggesting that Harrison is capitalizing on her identity in a reprehensible way, but being publicly trans is bound to attract a plethora of other trans and marginalized peoples to her, which is commensurate to what Patricia G. Lange touches upon in The Vulnerable Video Blogger: Promoting Social Change through Intimacy: “Years ago, exposing oneself through writing and art constitute[d] a kind of vulnerability”, and now that vulnerability is expressed and subsequently shared via social media, which has undoubtedly worked in Harrison’s favor. In comparison to Cauley, Harrison tweets many more selfies, as well as videos featuring her doing silly things, and also frequently uses emojis that invoke traditional femininity such as hearts, kissy faces, etc.: e.g., about a month ago (1/24/20), Harrison tweeted a photo of herself dressed up for a night out accompanied by text describing a hair-iron related debacle; the tweet concluded with a series of red heart emojis. 

In opposition to Cauley and Harrison, Candace Owens/@RealCandaceO is passionately conservative, and as such her gender performance has more in common with a traditional male archetype than a female one. Owens’ Twitter behavior has a lot in common with Rick Wilson, although their views in many instances, despite both being conservative, are polar opposites. Regarding their similarities, Owens, like Wilson, is highly aggressive on Twitter, probably more-so than Wilson, and her photo/video uploads primarily consist of self-advertisement; here’s a recent (2/17/20) Owens response to a Twitter user who tweeted at her: “This would be funny if it weren’t for the fact that you were too stupid to actually listen to the clip where I clearly said that Bernie Sanders would destroy Black America for the next 100 years.” Another commonality between the two conservatives is the lack of emoji-use and humor; Wilson is basically a comedian with a sunny disposition in comparison to Owens’ austerity. Owens basically bucks every trend of typical online female performativity in favor of a an extremely aggressive and traditionally male posture that appeals to conservatives. In Virtual Feminisms, Jessalynn Marie Keller states that “feminism has helped to redefine notions of…resistance and activism, with cultural and political action taking on new forms that ‘may be unrecognizable if interpreted through more traditional paradigms of activism’”; although Owens is vocally anti-feminist and would emphatically reject the feminist label being applied to her in any capacity, it can’t be denied that her Twitter activity falls in line with a conservative form of the neo-activism that Keller articulates in her article. 

As Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players…and one man in his time plays many parts”.