#How does it work to not know something but 80%+ a multiple choice test

[vio1315]

One of the weirdest side effects of being good at school is the ability to appear to learn something without ??? learning it ???

I'm not even sure how it's possible, but anything you'd expect would be impossible to fake learning, I can manage.

Like learning German vocab? I can get the right answer each time without knowing it, so I have to specifically switch to flash cards over multiple choice to force my mind to Actually learn.

Anatomy? Genuinely can Not get myself to learn it with how many shortcuts my mind takes. I have to purposefully make it more complicated to learn by studying what the in between state of bones between two species would be like- otherwise I just fake learn it???

[flowermikonotebook]

Interview with Jérôme Alquie and Arnaud Dollen from Saint Seiya - Time Odyssey

Thank you to everyone that submitted a question! As promised, the text version of the Saint Seiya Cosmocast's interview with the duo behind Time Odyssey, courtesy of Ablaze Publishing.

For the audio version with our commentary, please check out episode 45 of our podcast at the Cosmocast's official page! You can also listen to it on the multiple platforms listed on the website.

Disclaimer: Questions and answers were edited for the purposes of clarity. All questions were directed to both Jérôme and Arnaud.

1. From Albiore Caballero Argentino:

“How does it feel to be the first non-Japanese artists to publish an official Saint Seiya work? How has the reception been? Do you think there will be more western Saint Seiya artists in the future?”

First of all, it's a great honor to officially work on such an iconic license from the 80s, a series that we dreamed of as children. But it’s also a great responsibility because we have to give our best in carrying out our work so that our first reader, Kurumada-sensei, is as satisfied as possible with it.

The fan reception has been particularly positive, and everyone recognizes the great respect we have for the original work while enlarging the extended universe by exploiting parts left in the shadows by Kurumada-sensei.

We don't know if other Western artists will be allowed to do the same in the future, but we hope so, as long as it respects the sensei's work. Respect is the essential element of any project, if only because it respects the fans as well.

2. From Juni-Anker:

“How did you decide what graphic style to use for the comic? For example, what was behind your thought process when you decided ‘Oh! This is how I’m going to draw the characters!’”

Kurumada-sensei's style is perfectly identifiable and personal, and it’s perfectly well calibrated for the manga, including its layout. Similarly, Araki-sensei’s anime style is the one that most readers expected to find in the comic. We opted for a "compromise" between the two, while adding a pronounced personal style, to make something true to what people love while offering something different. This includes the way the eyes are drawn, the anatomy, the armor, the coloring... The graphic choice of this style required several months of testing to arrive at a version that was satisfactory for us, for Kurumada-sensei, and for the readers.

3.  From Ramses:

“Your first arc included the origins of Guilty. What were some of the difficulties in your comic when fleshing out characters already established in the franchise? Were there any objections or input from Kurumada-sensei himself, Kurumada Pro, or any of the parties involved in the creative process?"

Everything we do is validated by Kurumada-sensei. Sometimes we have carte blanche because the sensei had not planned anything in particular other than what he described in his albums, and that was the case with Guilty. Sometimes the framework is more complete, and therefore restrictive, as it is currently in volume 3.

But that's not a problem, in any case, because we always work based on what we know and always exchange ideas with Japan before developing the story fully. So, we know beforehand how much freedom we have and what framework we have to respect.

4. From Gryphy18:

“In the original series, Guilty was only a minor character to spur on Ikki’s growth. What was the inspiration behind giving him an extended backstory? I liked how Guilty was given more of a reason behind acting the way he did and making him feel like a more sympathetic person.”

We knew that as soon as we worked on Ikki, we would refer to his weakness and guilt for letting Esmeralda die. Guilty is a strong character in the Phoenix story, as he catalyzed the character's hatred towards others.

If Ikki is consumed by hatred, there are reasons. It must be the same for Guilty. So, the idea of developing his background came very early. We gathered everything we knew about the character, information from Saint Seiya Taizen about Death Queen Island, and the mythology of the Phoenix Armor we developed, to imagine the background of Guilty, who is now called, before donning his mask, Jorge.

5. From Flowermiko:

“Multiple Saint Seiya works have hinted at or loosely mentioned the existence of Chronos: What made you want to create a story revolving around this particular god? Did you want to explore the particular character and/or the concept revolving time?”

As far as we know, Chronos, the God of Time, appears only in Next Dimension. The Cronus of Episode.G is not the same, he is the titan father of Zeus, and not the god of time.

We chose this character because we wanted a story that could take place at various points in the original work (part Sanctuary, part Poseidon, and part Hades), and this God, capable of making leaps in time, seemed to be able to allow for this desire. So it was on this basis that the story was developed, and its mythology and ambitions were built.

But we don't forget that he appears in Next Dimension and so, not only are the sensei’s original 28 volumes considered in our work, but also what happens in Next Dimension.

6. From Benjas:

“Greek mythology is the foundation for the world of Saint Seiya and Kurumada-sensei has always taken creative liberties to weave new stories that respect the original myths yet are not bound by them. What creative twists did you find the most interesting to develop while creating Time Odyssey?

Of course, Greek mythology is the basis of everything. Its richness and depth offer us an inexhaustible well of ideas and inspirations.

In Volume 1, we not only developed the background of Chronos and his ambition to become an Olympian (which is a divergence from Greek mythology), but we also revealed the three Moirai, weavers of the destiny of men. However, we also intend to work with other mythologies, as Chronos chooses his warriors from different countries and builds them armor related to their own beliefs.

Thus, the Scotsman Arctos is dressed in the armor of the kelpie in accordance with a legend from his country. The same goes for volume 2 with the exploration of Native American and Celtic mythologies. In volume 3, we will go to Inuit, Danish and especially Japanese mythologies. And from the feedback we've received from Japan, it seems that Kurumada-sensei greatly appreciates this mythological development within Time Odyssey.

7. From Seiya Kurumada:

During an interview in Spain, Arnaud Dollen hinted that there could be an animated adaptation for Time Odyssey. How likely would it be for this to happen? Would it be exclusive to Toei Animation, or would a French studio participate in this project?”

It is true that discussions and desires exist... I must admit that it would be a great accomplishment for this project. But for the moment, we're 200% focused on comics. Our job is to make the best Time Odyssey comic book possible, so we'll see what the future holds.

8. From Pollux Dioscuros:

“We know so far that Kurumada Pro has been involved in advising and answering questions during the creation process, as well as approving certain decisions. Have any of your original ideas been rejected or changed during the creative process? If so, which have those been?”

Since everything is validated by the sensei, it happens that we are not always in perfect harmony with his ideas, in which case we discuss them.

It’s happened twice that we’ve been forced to change something. In Volume 1, we had Deathmask as a subordinate to the Pope's orders, but Kurumada-sensei made it clear that he didn't see this character that way, and that, if he agreed to do what the Pope asked of him, it was because he found a real personal interest in it. This required obvious changes in his lines of dialogue.

For Volume 2, the first attack on Ophialtes was changed. In the storyboard, Seiya, Hyōga, and Shiryu rushed at him at the same time. However, Japan reminded us that, unlike the anime, the manga still only features 1-on-1 fights. It’s against the rules of chivalry to attack alongside others (except against a god), so we've changed this sequence so that only Seiya attacks.

These are the only two examples so far. There's another one in book 3, but I can't talk about it ^^!

9. From the Saint Seiya Cosmocast Hosts:

“Time Odyssey is one of the few ‘Seiya’ works that have been released in English. What do you hope this release can accomplish for the franchise in the English-speaking world?

Personally, I don't know much about Saint Seiya's life in the US, but I understand that it wasn't aired at the time of its production and that, when it aired later, some things were changed.

Every time our story is translated, we only hope for one thing: that it will please the public and make those who are not familiar with the sensei's original work want to (re)discover it by reading Kurumada-sensei's manga. We hope the same for the current release, which we know is very faithful and respectful of our own work thanks to the efforts and professionalism of the ABLAZE team, who have already shown us their great involvement in the publication of our Captain Harlock.

Bonus Questions:

10. From Seiya Kurumada:

“The comics are being released on a yearly schedule, meaning the publishing will be complete in about 5 years. Once this project is finished, will there be any other Saint Seiya sequels for ‘Time Odyssey’?”

It's a bit early to talk about it today, as the mountain of work that remains to be done between now and the end of this project is enormous!

But when I finished Captain Harlock after 4 years of work on July 31, 2020, by August 1, I was already missing him, and I wanted to redraw him. I guess it will be the same for Saint Seiya, and that I will miss the Knights of the Zodiac the day after finishing a 6-year job!

11. From SantoLibra:

“Was Guilty’s (Ikki's teacher) name and nationality decided on by you or by Kurumada-sensei?”

Of course, we were the ones who proposed it as a nod to Jorge Vasquez, the biggest Saint Seiya collector in the world. And we gave him Peruvian nationality, also Vasquez's. As far as we know, Guilty is the first Peruvian knight. Kurumada-sensei willingly accepted the name as well as the reference to the real Jorge.

Before he was Guilty of Death Queen Island, he was a knight in the service of Athena. In the bonuses, we learn that he was the Silver Knight of the Furnace. I won't present his armor there, but maybe we'll see it in another volume? Who knows^^!

12. From Albiore Caballero Argentino:

“Outside of working on ‘Time Odyssey’, do you get to talk with Kurumada-sensei and ask him other questions. For example, like what was the design of Guilty’s mask based on?”

We only talk to Kurumada-sensei about Time Odyssey and nothing else... We wouldn't allow ourselves to do that, anyway.

I sometimes receive personal messages asking if I know how the sensei planned to complete his Next Dimension. There's no need to pester me; I have no idea!! As for the mask, it is inspired by the masks of a goddess from the island of Bali. But we don't know, the same as you, why he took this as a reference...

13. General question:

“Will you do surveys about the Time Odyssey characters? (like Jump's)?”

We get feedback on the characters from readers' letters. Obviously, the armor of Arctos was very popular, but also that of the Moirai on volume 1. Eastre, for her armor, her totem, and her background tying her to the Golden Knight of Pisces, was particularly appreciated in volume 2. We'll see if you all like the new characters in Volume 3. It's that there will be no less... than 10!

But I have to admit that doing a poll would be very good!! That's a great idea!

14. General question:

“What kind of Time Odyssey merch would you like to see?”

That's a very fun question to end on ^^! I'm not going to shy away from the infinite pleasure that merchandising around Time Odyssey would represent... I'd like to make a collection of illustrations (because I'm more of an illustrator than a comic book author). As a toy collector, I admit that the best thing would be to see the new characters reproduced as figurines. By the way, when I create armor sets, I always try to imagine what it would look like in a Myth Cloth version! Or in a 1/6 scale statue version. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. We'll see what the future holds.

15. From the Saint Seiya Cosmocast Hosts:

Any final thoughts or messages you’d like to share with all your fans checking out the comic?”

Just a quick word to thank them because we are fans too, and we share the same passion. We give everything we can of our time and energy so that they can relive the strong and intense emotions they had for the original series through new adventures. We thank you all for bringing Saint Seiya to life around the world through your passion.

[pi-cat000]

BNHA: something sad (Anger)

Summary: The last time Katsuki sees Izuku alive the other boy is rushing to save him. A ‘the Sludge Villain incident gone wrong’ AU. 

Katsuki gets the worst sort of wake up call, takes a look at himself, and doesn’t like what he sees. 

Characters:  Katsuki Bakugo

Fandom: My Hero Academia 

WARNINGS: Major Character death (mentioned but not described). Swearing. heavy angst. destructive behaviour.

(Follow up part here)

...

(Anger-  In which  Katsuki does not handle tragedy well  and implodes)

“Katsuki, son, you should come inside.”

Katsuki barely feels the soft touch of a hand on his shoulders as his father attempts to guide him over the threshold. He remains in place, glaring at the older man, unwilling to move. His father sighs and gives up on trying to move him, instead talking over his head, addressing the police officer behind him. 

“Where did you find him this time?”

“The park down the road. We had reports of a kid setting off explosives with multiple noise complaints from the nearby apartments...” The sound of the conversation washes over him, muffled in his growing irritation. He feels that familiar burning anger ignite, fuelling his resentment. “...repeated unlicensed quirk use can lead to time in a juvenile quirk correction facility.”

“We’re sorry for the disruption officer,” his father dips his head, “We’ll keep a better eye on him from now on.”

“See that you do. Next time, he’ll be taking a trip to the station. I would hate to see a kid with so much potential...”

“What fucking potential!” Katsuki snarls, whipping around to glare at the officer behind him. Bitterness curdles in his stomach, exasperated by the expression of disappointment directed his way. What right did this stranger have to look at him like that! He looked at Katsuki like he wasn’t living up to expectations!

“You don’t know a thing about me!” 

“Katsuki,” His father tries to interrupt.

“Why the fuck….

“Katsuki.” This time the interruption is louder, hash, “That’s enough.”

He scowls, shoving past his father, shrugging away from the comforting hand as he goes, “I’ll be in my room, don’t come in.” 

He stomps through the living room and down the hallway, sparks running up and down his arms. If his mum were home she might have yelled at loud his entrance, telling him to stop with the racket. She would probably have had some choice words to say about the police escort as well. She wasn’t home. She wouldn’t be home till later, having spent most of her afternoon with Aunt Inko.  

Before he can get to his room, he catches his father’s tired voice as he continues his conversation with the officer.

 “…still processing the death of a friend. He’s going through a rough patch...thank you for your leniency.”

He slams the door with enough force that it rattles the wall. With his back against the frame, he clenches and unclenches his fist, breathing hard.

Friend?  FRIEND! HA! 

Deku had never been his friend. Or rather, he had never been Deku’s friend. Deku had probably seen him as a friend, always following him around, whinging when he got too rough with other kids. The quirkless idiot had always been trying to help when Katsuki didn’t need help! He had never needed Deku!

He smashes a fist into his desk and the wood creeks, splintering but holding together. There are more sparks and the pop, pop, pop of tiny explosions. The computer barely escapes his next attack which sees the desk cracking, his books and pens crashing to the floor. 

“Damnit.”

If he wasn’t Deku’s friend, then why was he so angry! He couldn’t think. He couldn’t sleep. All he could do was feel angry. Burning directionless anger that ate at him, leaving him hollow. It followed him through his every waking moment. Inescapable and all-consuming. 

“DAMNIT!”

…

School is a chore. It’s boring.  Long. Tiresome. Pointless. The other kids were either idiots, dragging out simple lessons into weeklong ordeals, or so pathetic they never grasped the concepts at all. This is nothing new. School had always been boring and full of pathetic extras. For the longest time, school to Katsuki had been nothing more than a stepping stone on his way to greatness. Now it wasn’t even that.

He taps a single, impatient finger against his desk, glaring at the clock as it slowly ate away at the seconds left in the day. 

“Bakugo.”

He deliberately ignores the teacher’s attempt to get his attention. It wasn’t like he was going to get in trouble for the behaviour. She would simply shake her head, humouring his poor attitude like it wasn’t a huge fucking problem. Sometimes Katsuki wondered if he didn’t have some second quirk that projected an invisible bullshit shield, preventing others from seeing what a failure he was.

Today, the call is followed up by another, more insistent one. 

“Bakugo.” 

He tears his eyes from the clock.

“You’re being called to the principal’s office.”

 “Huh?” he drawls. 

“You must not have heard the announcement,” his teacher explains, her expression apologetic, “It was over the intercom so you better hurry.” By now, every eye in the class is on him, waiting for his reaction. The pathetic extras on either side of him are even leaning ever so slightly to the side like they expect him to blow his top any moment. 

“Whatever.” He stands, ignoring the wave of whispers that run through the class in hissed voices. When he steps through the door the voices get a bit louder, so loud that the teacher needs to call them to order, “Settle down. Now if you would turn your attention to this next question.” 

He shoves his hands into his pockets and stalks down the hall to his destination. When he arrives at the door he lifts a leg and kicks so it jumps open and smacks into the wall with a loud CRACK. The sudden action has both his principal, Mr Fukuhara, and that woman representing the district’s Careers Board-he can’t remember her name- startling. 

“You called?” 

They are both seated on the low couches placed at the front of the room adjacent to the principal’s desk. The only times he has been allowed to sit on these couches were during parent/teacher meetings.

“Ah, yes Bakugo,” Mr Fukuhara straightens his tie, recovering first, “Please take a seat.”

Katsuki slouches onto the closet couch opposite them, listening to the principal ramble his way through a greeting, “Now, we tried to have your parents come in but they were both unfortunately busy. Nevertheless, this is an important conversation to be hand and we want you to understand that the school is dedicated to….”

He exhales, cutting off the diatribe, “Am I in trouble.”

“No. No trouble. Though this does involve your recent behaviour.”

Of course, he wasn’t in trouble. He curls one hand into a fist, familiar anger beginning to bubble up, increasing in intensity.  

“We received your revised high school submission forms,” Ms Career Advice starts, “and we think there has been a mistake. We want to clear it up as quickly as possible.”

So that is what this meeting was about.

“What mistake?” He grunts even when he knows precisely what they’re talking about. 

“It says here that you're applying to Aldera Senior High.”

“Yeah, 80% of the losers in this shit hole are going Aldera Senior High. What’s the problem?”

The two adults exchange a meaningful glance. For a brief second, he thinks he might get told off for swearing. No such luck. Mr Fukuhara simply sighs and continues like Katsuki hadn’t said anything.

 “We were under the impression that you would be applying to U.A.?  You have it written on your original submission forms.”

“So what. I’m not allowed to change my mind? U.A. is a selective school…I’m just being realistic.” The words feel like ash in his mouth. Hadn’t he said something similar to Deku not too long ago?

“Your academic performance is more than high enough to qualify and with your quirk…”

He slams his clenched fist into the arm of the couch, cutting the woman off. There is an audible pop, pop around his hands, made loud in the sudden silence. God, would people shut up about is quirk for one second! Both adults pause, expressions a mix of worried and concerned. He hates it. He hates them. 

“I got a zero on my last test,” he snaps, “My average sucks now. I’m just like the rest of the extras here.”

“Yes, well, there were extenuating circumstances in that case. When looking at your academic history overall you’re dedication is obvious,” another pause, “even in the unlikely event that you did not get into U.A. there are plenty of other, top-rate schools that you can apply to as backups.”

Katsuki doesn’t bother responding, opting instead to stand. They weren’t going to listen so there was no point in him being here. 

“Bakugo  please sit back down.” Fukuhara stands as well, voice now stern, “This is an important conversation. You can’t just walk away.”

“Watch me.” He turns towards the door but before he can move there is the lighter touch of a hand at his elbow. 

“I understand that you have taken recent…events…rather hard,” says Ms Career Advice and her voice is softer, more sympathetic, addressing him like he is some startled child, “but you need to think about your future. Don’t throw away this opportunity out of some misplaced guilt…” 

“I’m not fucking going to U.A.!” 

He jerks his arm away, glaring over his shoulder, trying to force some of the fire burning in his chest into his eyes. It must have worked because the woman immediately stops talking, drawing away. 

“How much shit do I have to pull for you morons to get that through your thick skulls,” he growls as he stalks out of the room, the two adults rushing to follow.

“…see… councillor…talk …. your parents. This sort of self-destructive…” The words wash over him as he continues down the hall. 

Katsuki doesn’t bother returning to class, opting to ditch and leave the idiots and their bullshit behind.  He is too angry to concentrate anyway. Until now he has had a perfect attendance record, always meticulous in his show of dedication. 

And that’s all it really was wasn’t it…a show. None of that shit mattered now.

Hands in his pockets, Katsuki wonders aimlessly down the sidewalk, through side streets, jacket to his uniform thrown over his shoulder so he doesn’t overheat under the hot summer sun. At least out here, he is free to be as angry as he liked without people nagging him. He could glare all he wanted at the cracked pavement and it wouldn’t burst into tears. Maybe, he will go blow up some trees in a local park and the police would finally come through on their threat to take him in to the station. It’s tempting…very tempting.

It would have to be somewhere without people-harder to find on such a nice day- because as much as he wanted, needed, to blow shit up, he didn’t want to injure anyone…

Now you grow conscious… too little too late....the treacherous part of his mind hisses. The thought feeds his anger like gasoline on an open flame.  

(Follow up part here)

[mydearthisbe]

Ayesha Liveblogs Class Action Park

“Gene was effectively kicked off of Wall street. So he did what anybody in this situation would do... buy up two ski resorts in Vernon, New Jersey.” That’s how I deal with all my career-related angst 

“Gene turned to his old buddy Bob Brennan, always there to find cash or investors any time Gene had a wild new idea” bdjdjjfkdbf find u a friend like Bob, I guess?

“Who we got? How about these teenage employees” oh NOOO

If your employer makes you call him Uncle maybe that’s a warning sign 

Gene giving his teen employees $100 every time he puts their lives in unparalleled danger has a similar energy as my dad giving me $5 when I was sad but 150 million times worse 

You know, if they had advertised the slide as a slide that could bite you like a shark, they might’ve been able to play off the teeth thing in their stride (in any case Slidey McBitey did not slow them down?)

“You couldn’t go down the canonball loop if you were too small, you couldn’t go down if you were too big” the Goldilocks of Dangerous Water Park Features

The way that everyone in this documentary says ‘water’ as ‘worder’ is very Jersey

I mean it absolutely doesn’t surprise me that there were no engineers involved in this but wow that’s a choice

The animations in this documentary in place of stock footage are truly on another level:

The accompanying dialogue to these images: People who Six Flags or Disney wanted nothing to do with; these guys would literally track Gene down at amusement industry conventions. You can tell these guys went and did bumps of coke and went just [unintelligentible] fuckin’ let’s just drill a slide right in the fuckin’ middle of the mountain and it’ll shoot ‘em 20 feet in the fuckin’ air--

“It was not fit for a safe ride by the average person in public” you don’t say, Bob Krauhlik, Head Lifeguard

I mean those like... bubbles for people to roll around in exist? Why couldn’t Gene have invested money in developing those in the seventies and just had people go down a very slight hill? Must EVERYTHING in this park be a deathtrap

The fact the Ball Man (presumably) survived the ride collapse, the freeway, and falling into a swamp,,, invincible

“We started sending employees off of [the airborne slide]” These guys really needed a union

“He’s gone on to lead a normal life” jhfkjhkjf the disclaimer

Honestly a built-in bidet/lota situation in a water slide doesn’t sound bad

Gene fulfilling my lifelong dream to get to lay on the baggage rollers at an airport

“The Aqua Skoot was also home to a thriving bee nest” I hope the bees were okay!!

“You’re probably concussed, and you have like a hundred and fifty people from New Jersey just being like ‘Pussy! You fuckin’ bitch!” this sounds in line with everything I know about New Jersey

“No lifeguard every blew a whistle and was like, ‘Hey stop chanting the word ‘pussy’ at this injured, bleeding person’“ I would pay money to see any lifeguard I know say that

Bob Krauhlik said: The first rule of Action Park is we don’t talk about our suppressed traumatic memories of Action Park

“Just literally imagine teenagers you know right now opening an amusement park” As someone who knows MANY teenagers this scenario sounds terrifying

“I was a good girl, so I wasn’t really involved in much of the shenanigans that took place” if u say so Faith

“I may have attended one [party]” HA I knew it 

This cattleprod story reminds me in a horrible way of a Paris Metro authority memory but long story short people will try to attack you physically if they think u cheated a $3 ticket; capitalism warps the brain

“But if we’re so bad, why don’t they just make a new town?” I’ve never heard a whiter sentence in my life

“He was a cool dude” [cut to] “I think he was a piece of shit” POETIC CINEMA

Gene annoying the state of New Jersey into relinquishing their land... incredible 

“Gene was free from the pesky state of New Jersey” is that what it says on the sign when you cross state lines into Pennsylvania 

“It might’ve attracted a more, say, working class clientele” ah the water park class divide

I don’t know what kind of mindset for just bodily-functioning all over the pool but I hope I never reach that point 

You really should need a sobriety test to operate anything motorized I think they could’ve made thousands on a Go-Kart breathalyzer

“It had a top speed of over 60 miles an hour, it was worth it” said Ed the Park Operations Manager, about driving a go-kart on the highway

“Action Park had full-on, Miami Vice-grade speed boats, where riders regularly tempted fate by treating them like bumper boats, a common action, that would send many a guest tumbling into a pond murky from leaked gas and oil, and known by employees to be infested with snakes” Somehow that sentence got worse and worse with time

The guy who literally crushed another person with his boat and then moved to the next ride: I pretend I did not do it

“He wound up getting getting ejected from the park” they said, about a person literally attempting to set other patrons on fire:

Bob the Lifeguard really speaks with way too much fondness in his voice of trying to throw carts on top of people sliding down a fibreglass and concrete slide

“On an an average day, you would have 50 to 100 people injured” the 80s were a lawless time 

“Gene Mulvihill had a vision of a place where there were no rules - something between Ayn Rand and Lord of the Flies” strike that this is the whitest sentence I’ve ever heard

HAHAHAHA I can’t believe the lawyer is now explaining Action Park with the argument that the 80s were a lawless time

“[D*nald Tr*mp] realized it was too wild, too nuts even for him” kjghkgjhkg this comment aged poorly 

The audacity of this man to blatantly exhaust everyone into submission

Kayaks did nothing to deserve being associated with electrocuting water park attendees 

Every time I think this documentary can’t get worse they introduce a new concept like The Death Zone at the Grave Pool 

“They expected to drown at the Action Park Wave Pool“ DID THEY, BOB? DID THEY REALLY?

“Nobody should ever be the second person to die in a wave pool, you know why? ‘Cause after the first person dies in a wave pool, close the fuckin’ wave pool!” Chris the Comedian has summed up this entire documentary in two sentences 

This documentary has intentionally saved the worst for last this whole interview with the family of the (first) deceased is deeply upsetting 

The Wave Pool death happened a week before the Kayak death??? THEY DIDN’T EVEN CLOSE FOR A WEEK???????

“Its time came and went” IS THERE EVER A TIME FOR A WATERPARK WHICH KILLS MULTIPLE PEOPLE 

Weird that the woman whom Gene got fired from her job and who deposed him became his friend

“Was he a villain or a victor” I think that’s a false dichotomy you can be victorious at villainy 

“The spirit of Action Park lives on today in the Fyre Festival” Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t remember Fyre Fest killing anyone

“Fyre Festival’s bullshit, man. Gene gave you everything he fuckin’ promised you” grievous injury???

There’s also something weirdly poetic about the name of the park going back and forth from Mountain Creek to Action Park and vice versa every few years 

I’m gonna leave off with this not: Not a single visible minority was interviewed for this documentary as a park attendee or employee and while that’s probably more a product of selection bias and New Jersey it’s also all the argument you need for diversity in any field. Diversity of thought and culture does not a loop-de-loop-death trap make 

[jme-crocodile]

(TW: my catholic school trauma)

Reading “The Boy Who Could Change the World”

It’s difficult to even imagine what America was like before the industrial revolution. Their notion of freedom was far stronger than the one we have today. For many Americans, life wasn’t about showing up at a job at a specified hour, following orders all day, and returning home for a couple hours of “free time”—that would be considered slavery. A free American was one who worked on their own or with their family, worked from home, worked whatever hours they liked, and got paid based on what they accomplished.

Under the putting-out system, for example, merchants would deliver raw materials like cotton to your house. When you felt like it, you’d card, spin, and weave the raw cotton into cloth. And then the next week the merchant would come by to buy from you whatever cloth you had produced.

He goes on to discuss mill workers in New England, who were mostly young girls, some around the age of 10. This was before our modern day labor laws, so the girls were working fourteen hour days. They still found time to read & discuss books/ideas, though. 

And through all that thinking and learning and discussing, they began to question the less pleasant aspects of their situation. When, in 1836, the Lowell mill owners decided to cut their employees’ pay, the girls walked out.

What these young girls accomplished is truly amazing. They organized their own newspaper, the Voice of Industry, which they wrote, edited, printed, and sold themselves. Through it they organized more protests and strikes, as well as organized their own slate of candidates in the state elections to fight for better working conditions and a ten-hour day. Amazingly, their slate won. The owners, outraged, got their legislators to declare the election results invalid and hold a revote. Before the revote, large signs were posted threatening that anyone who voted for the ten-hour slate would be fired. And yet the slate won again.

[..]

But their writing in the Voice shows that they wanted much more than simply better working conditions. They saw themselves as slaves—wage slaves—and concluded that the solution was not simply to demand that the bosses be nicer to them or pay them more, but to abolish the bosses entirely.

Their bosses didn't like this, at all. The mill owners fired the girls, blacklisted their names, and then did something strange: they sent girls to school.

The schools they built—the common schools—would be easily recognizable by any modern student. “The door [of each school] shall be closed precisely at the time fixed for the opening of the school, and in the morning religious exercises will be performed, for which purpose 10 minutes are allowed.” (Today we just say the pledge of allegiance.) “Each teacher shall call the roll call of his or her classes … in the morning and afternoon, and shall keep an accurate record of all absences.” The day was then divided into separate lessons, allowing “30 minutes for the study of each lesson and 10 minutes for each recitation.”

Instead of corporal punishment, teachers were encouraged to secure order “by the mildest possible means” to instill “a regard for right, and thus a standard of self-government in the minds of the children themselves.”* Students were tested on how much they learned and, just like today, working coordinating other students was considered “cheating” and punished. (Perhaps they were worried that if students learned to coordinate they might be more likely to foment strikes once in the mills.)"

[...]

Careful records kept by the mill owners allow us to compare mill workers who did and did not go to school. Just as with modern students, there is no evidence of any impact of increased education on worker productivity.*

So why did the mill owners spend so much money building and running these schools? They were quite clear about their intent. The classes were justified not for their usefulness but because memorizing them was a form of ���moral education” leading to “industrious habits … and the consequent high moral influence which it exerts upon society at large.”

As one Lowell manager explained it, “I have never considered mere knowledge, valuable as it is in itself to the laborer, as the only advantage derived from a good common-school education. I have uniformly found the better educated, as a class, possessing a higher and better state of morals, more orderly and respectful in their deportment, and more ready to comply with the wholesome and necessary regulations of an establishment.”"

As the Lowell School Committee summarized their findings: “The proprietors find the training of the schools admirably adapted to prepare the children for the labors of the mills.” Why? “When [their laborers] are well educated … controversies and strikes can never occur, nor can the minds of the masses be prejudiced by demagogues and controlled by temporary and factitious considerations.”*

Indeed, school was so important that the mill owners quickly decided to make it mandatory. “No language of ours can convey too strongly our sense of the dangers which wait us from [those who] are not and have never been members of our public schools,” warned the Lowell School Committee. Universal schooling is “our surest safety against internal commotions.”‡ The children who didn’t attend school “constitute an army more to be feared than war, pestilence and famine,” warned the committee. “Unsuccessful attempts, during the past year, to burn two of our school-houses … are an index to the evils which threaten from such sources.”

More accurately, such burnings were an index of public resistance to such coercion. In 1837, 300 teachers were forced to flee their classrooms by riotous and violent students.║ In 1844, the Irish population went on strike from the schools, reducing attendance by 80%. The School Committee stepped up their anti-truancy efforts to force them and others back to school."

And so the spread of schools and factories destroys the American model of freedom. Instead of being independent farmers or self-employed manufacturers, Americans are herded into factories enmasse, forced to work for someone else because they cannot earn a living any other way. But thanks to schools, this seems normal, even natural. After all, isn’t that just the way the world works?

The effect on the students is almost heartbreaking. Taught that reading is simply about searching contrived stories for particular “text features,” they learn to hate reading. Taught that answering questions is simply about cycling through the multiple-choice answers to find the most plausible ones, they begin to stop thinking altogether and just spout random combinations of test buzzwords whenever they’re asked a question.  “The joy of finding things out” is banished from the classroom. Testing is in session.”

School hasn’t seemed to have changed much since the early 1800s, at least the not sort of schooling geared for the masses. As a child, I was strongly discouraged from risk taking, ridiculed by teachers when I gave the wrong answer, punished for asking questions, had to ask permission to use the bathroom (and was often refused), refused permission to get a drink of water (the school had no air conditioning & it was June in Pennsylvania. Yes, multiple children got heat exhaustion, daily. Our parents commiserated, but thought this was normal. Teachers treated this as normal. We were told to “toughen up” and respect our elders when we complained.) We were taught to need someone’s permission to get medical attention. 

I was once refused when I needed to see the nurse (I was going to vomit.) The teacher accused me of lying & told me to sit down. I sat down, and about two minutes later threw up. I half expected to get a demerit for dirtying the floor. I burst into tears, blubbering out humiliated apologies to my classmates and to the teacher. Above my concern for my dignity and health had been placed my teacher. That was my mentality as a kid.

(Normal is whatever you’re used to, but people shouldn’t be used to this.)

The thing that stands out in all of this, now, was how the other students remained frozen. I don’t know how to interpret their freeze -- they didn’t move to get me a tissue, or towels, or anything. The teacher had forbade me from moving to clean up myself, so I had to wait for the nurse to arrive in a puddle of my own vomit. I obeyed. My classmates were staring at their desks, at the wall, anywhere but the teacher or myself. Maybe they were suffering second-hand embarrassment, or pity, or even fear that the teacher would lash out at them, next. 

That was the sort of environment we grew up in, for 14 years of our lives. 

In all of this, I notice this kind of moral fragmentation that society today seems to encourage. There’s a sense that people have abrogated all responsibility: “oh, that’s not my department, I’m not the one who makes the rules.” So we ignore people in pain, and accept on an instinctive level that there’s nothing we can do. 

Except that isn’t true, even that asshole Lowell said, “The children who didn’t attend school “constitute an army more to be feared than war, pestilence and famine.””

This submissive attitude people have comes from fear, from an underestimation of our own strength and compassion. 

---

Like, do people get what this does to a person’s self-esteem? Maybe not, because they’re all suffering from the same blindness.

Last week during the heat wave, I started experiencing heat exhaustion and  my instinctive thoughts were to move as little as possible, and wait for it to be over.

I mean, what does that sound like to you?

Like, maybe my experiences at school were unusually bad, but it looks to me a lot like our society is systematically abusing kids into submissively accepting poor treatment by their superiors. 

[argentdandelion]

Is Joe Cuppa Coffee Sans?

Or: Who is Sans, Anyway?

Caveat: It is impossible to reference every "AU", or even every permutation of "major" (common on the Undertale Tumblr tag) "AU". As such, mentions of various "AU Sanses" should be assumed only broadly correct.

The Undertale fandom has many, many works called “AUs”. Some of them count as Alternate Universe works, where the work’s very premise is altered, and so do not, but many of them feature distinctive versions of or interpretations of Sans, or Sans-like characters. Indeed, Sans is so disproportionately popular he’s practically a subfandom in himself, what with the many Sans-centric works or creative works or worlds which only feature Sans and Sans-oid characters.

But which works’ characters “count” as Sans, and which do not? There are multiple ways in which one can define "What is Sans?", and each definition has various problems. Some of these Sans-es look and act drastically different from the canon one, from lankier interpretations of Gaster-Sans to the hyperactive Underswap-Sans. Yet, supposedly, they are “Sans”, or “a Sans”, rather than Sans-like characters. Complicating the matter, it’s impossible to say how far Sans can change while still being himself. Indeed, canon timelines alone sometimes show the malleability of characters’ identities.

As a point of illustration, what’s to say Joe Cuppa from O.K. K.O. isn’t "a Sans" called Coffee Sans?1 After all, if a “Sans” can differ drastically from the original’s looks, relationships, and role, what would disqualify Joe Cuppa?

1. Genetics.

If the DNA is duck DNA, it’s a duck.

People often ascribe "essences"---something invisible from which recognizable traits arise—within living beings. By definition, essences cannot be measured, only the things that are presumed to be manifestations or signs of it. When it comes to living things, essences are generally conflated with DNA. If a particular animal’s DNA matches a duck, it’s a duck, regardless of whether it looks really weird. (say, being a plucked duck, or a plucked duck whose legs are missing).

By this logic, an individual who is genetically identical to Sans is Sans. For this to be a valid interpretation, a “Sans” would need to have the same parent(s) or source as canon Sans, whatever that may be. In works where a character obviously can’t have the same origin, DNA, or material composition as canon Sans that character cannot “count” as Sans.

Weaknesses & Oddities

This approach has obvious weaknesses. Identical twins, despite having the same DNA, do not count as the same person. Indeed, as time goes on and their environments diverge (e.g., not going to the same school), they come to differ more from each other. Though they may have the same DNA, the way that DNA is expressed (such as through epigenetics) can differ, and the differences can magnify over time. Therefore, to say than two Sanses are the same because they have the same genes only makes sense if identical twins ‘count’ as the same person, or variations thereof.

Joe Cuppa Verdict

It’s bizarre to assume a DNA test would reveal he’s identical to Sans, as his physiology differs so much. In fact, even if he were a “monster” or class of monster within the world of O.K. K.O., monsters’ natures differ so much in O.K. K.O. that it’s unlikely they’re equivalent.

Other Evaluations

In ReaperTale, a work where various Undertale characters are gods, Sans and Papyrus were made from a black hole. Dream Sans and Nightmare Sans were created from the light of a mystical tree, which is, again, not like canon Sans. However Sans and Papyrus were made in canon, they certainly weren’t gods made from a black hole or made from a tree’s light; ergo, none of them qualify as “Sans” by this logic. Though Fresh-Sans looks just like Sans in tacky 80s/90s clothing, he’s actually a bizarre alien parasite controlling “a Sans”, not a monster. In that case, the only thing that makes him a "Sans" at all is his looks.

2. Looks

If it looks like a duck, it is a duck.

Image by Insanelyadd.

In an "AU" where Sans is the only character (generally, Dream Sans, Ink Sans, Nightmare Sans, etc.), it's not possible for Sans to have similar relationships or roles, and other similarities are also less likely. Therefore, looks are the only thing which establishes a character is Sans.

Weaknesses & Oddities: People can look different over time. In fact, some people change so much photos of them as a child and an adult they aren't even look like the same person. If one of Sans' defining traits is that he's nearly as short as 8-12-year-old human child, but he's not actually fully grown by skeleton standards, what would stop him from not being "Sans"? If his face drastically changed in shape or proportions when he was much older, would that also affect this factor?

Joe Cuppa Verdict

Although Joe Cuppa acts much as Sans does, Joe Cuppa is clearly not Sans: he has a coffee mug-shaped head/a mug for a head, for one thing. Therefore, despite his behavioral similarities, he is not Sans.

Other Character Evaluations

Fresh-Sans (“Fresh”) is, supposedly, a bizarre alien parasite that is unlike Sans in genetics, relationship, most behaviors, and role. He has simply taken over a “Sans”. However, viewed from his host alone, he looks strongly like Sans, and if looks are all that is needed, he counts.

Furthermore, depictions of Sanses as other species (e.g., humans) or breeds of monster drastically change his looks, so they don’t count as Sans, by this logic.

3. Relationships

If it likes me, as evident by it wagging its tail and running to me, it's a duck.

According to this interpretation, whoever is Papyrus's brother and cares strongly about him, and is also the friend of the old lady behind the Ruins door, is Sans. This suggests that, in a world where Papyrus never existed, Sans wouldn’t exist—not as we know him. It would be someone who looked like Sans, certainly, but not someone with the same identity or properties.

If "a Sans" exists in a universe without other characters which are important to his identity (e.g., Toriel and Papyrus), then he's not really Sans.

Weaknesses & Oddities

This may mean that, in any Neutral route where Toriel and especially Papyrus dies, Sans would eventually stop being himself. However, it is possible a character counts as Sans if the character had a strong relationship with Toriel and Papyrus for a specific length of time, regardless of whether that relationship lasts indefinitely, for the full game, or beyond the game’s scope.

Joe Cuppa Verdict

Joe Cuppa does not have Papyrus for a brother, nor a close relationship with a different character who’s his brother. Indeed, Joe Cuppa never even mentions having a brother at all, and he certainly doesn’t talk about Toriel or Toriel parallels. Therefore, Joe Cuppa is not Coffee Sans.

4. Behavior

If it quacks like a duck, it's a duck.

By this logic, if a character acts like Sans, it’s Sans. For example, Sans is prone to sleeping, "boondoggling", eating "100s of midnight snacks", keeps secrets, and so forth. By this logic, Underswap Papyrus, who's generally depicted as "Sans, but in Papyrus's body” is not "a Papyrus" but "a Sans".

One should note not every depiction of Sans will show all his traits, in general or in behavior, due to length and genre limits. Yet it’s generally agreed these less fleshed-out depictions count as Sans. It seems there’s a consensus that a character needs to show most of Sans’ traits within a work, or some number of especially distinct traits.

Weaknesses & Oddities

Behaviors and beliefs don’t arise in a void; they are products of the environment. It would be hard to have a personality if nothing ever happened to oneself, or if one never had a choice on what to do.

Indeed, some have suggested some of Sans' recognizable traits are not things inherent to him at all, but consequences of having depression. (see related reading) For example, suggest Sans’ lazy ways come from a sense of nihilism or depression, which itself come from his studies on timelines stopping, starting, and ending. Papyrus himself says that Sans has been “sleeping more” lately: his laziness, thought essential, might have only started recently. In that case, if he stopped having depression, would he not be himself? (or, rather, "himself" as far as Undertale fans can tell)

If it takes only very Sans-like behavior for something to quality as Sans, then making it so he develops certain behaviors, or stops doing them, could make it so he no longer “counts” as Sans. If Sans talking about his brother a lot is a defining trait, then Papyrus never even existing would prevent this behavior, meaning that “Sans” is, in fact, not Sans. Furthermore, in a Post-Neutral work where Papyrus dies, if Sans stops talking about his brother years after his death, he also might stop counting as Sans.

Joe Cuppa Verdict

If only most of Sans’ traits/the most distinctive or crucial ones need to be shown for something to count as Sans, then, by this logic, Joe Cuppa is Coffee Sans.

Other Evaluations

Dream Sans (Dream), Ink Sans (Ink), Error Sans (Error), and Nightmare Sans (Nightmare) have drastically different environments, personalities, and relationships, and thus different behaviors and identities. Under any definition but a pure (and loosely-interpreted) visual definition, they don’t count as Sans.

On the other hand, Geno Sans (of AfterTale) might qualify as Sans, since his backstory was exactly the same as Sans’ up to being struck with the final blow in the Genocide Route. Although Geno Sans ends up more violent and cynical than canon Sans, it could be seen as continuing a trend established within the Genocide Route itself, and therefore support the malleability of identity.

5. Role

If it’s a small, lovable, somewhat tame animal that makes distinctive noises and enjoys small bits of food thrown into a pond on picnics or nature outings, it’s a duck.

Comparison between the turtle-ducks of the Avatar cartoon and a duck and between Storyshift Chara and canon Sans.

Using the “role” parameter, the exact role Sans plays within a work’s plot is a big cue to what makes him him. Therefore, any character which follows Sans’ role or closely parallels it counts as Sans. (specifically: second-area sentry, arranges puzzles with another character in that area, does something funny with a sentry station, gives the judgment, does the Genocide Route battle)

This consideration is especially important when considering role-swap “AUs”, such as Scramble Saga, Storyshift, and Inverted Fate.

Weaknesses & Oddities

At times, Swap Papyrus (best described as “Sans’ personality in Papyrus’s body”) fulfils a Sans-like role in fan works. By the logic of roles, Swap Papyrus counts as “a Sans” if fulfilling a Sans-like role, but, if not, he may be sorted as a Papyrus instead by virtue of appearance. However, this brings up Storyshift Chara, who fulfills a Sans-like role and has a Sans-like sense of fashion but is a human child who fell into the Underground and got adopted by a scientist-Asgore and royal guard captain-Toriel. Would Storyshift Chara count as “Sans” due to a Sans-like role and fashion, regardless of anything else?2

Joe Cuppa Verdict

Joe Cuppa is a somewhat glum/loosely "depressed", washed-up/loser-like person who receives help from a human child (K.O.) and others (Enid, Rad), and ends up happy at the end, having achieved his dream (becoming a successful comedian for Cuppa Joe, presumably getting to the Surface for Sans). Depending on how tightly one defines “role”, Joe Cuppa may count as “Sans”.

Other Evaluations

Dream, Nightmare, Ink, and several “AU Sanses” which don’t exist with other characters, roughly the same plot, and the same premise as canon Undertale cannot really fulfill the same role, and, as such, do not count as Sans.

This article was made with the help of Batter-Sempai (consulting), Ihasafandom (consulting), Voltrathesparking (creator of Storyshift; consulting), Loverofpiggies.

The author of this article, ArgentDandelion, enjoys discussion, comments, and reblogs. Feel free to do so on the Tumblr version, or on the Archive of Our Own or Pillowfort versions, where discussion is much easier.

The author also has a Ko-Fi and Patreon, and invites you to gaze upon it.

Related Works Did you like this article? There’s plenty more, so be sure to spread the love.

Papyrus is Probably a Better Boyfriend than Sans (series) (Character analysis of Sans and Papyrus, with emphasis on suitability as romantic partners)

It’s Okay to Hate Alphys (Or: We All Have Favorite Characters for Different Reasons) (Interpretation of a character and character reactions)

How to Make Underswap Sans: Antidepressants? (Subjectivity or malleability of identity in a Sans context)

Reasons Papyrus Would Kill a Human (Part 1, Part 2) (Talks about environmental influences on behavior and personality, but also argues one "AU Papyrus" is closer to the Undertale version that he might seem.)

It turns out, there are so many “Sanses” there actually is a Coffee Sans already. The name shall be preserved for the sake of rhetoric. ↩︎

Note that Storyshift exists in two versions: the preboot and the reboot. Many of the points about the preboot don’t hold up to the reboot, but the reboot isn’t developed enough yet to use in an analysis like this.

 ↩︎

[nuggetsofrandomness]

Can you afford being healthy?

So let’s say my goal is to have optimal health, both physical and mental, what should I do? Off the top of my head I’m thinking gym, organic food, green smoothies, psychotherapy, social life, maybe supplements. All of which sound very expensive compared to staying at home watching TV and eating corndogs. So for a long time, I thought I couldn’t afford taking care of my health. But then I had to, so I got creative.

Health is an investment

The first thing to keep in mind is that taking care of your health now will save you money (and trouble) in the future. Being sick is expensive: medication, hospital bills, missing work, etc. I try to remember that every time time I want to go for McDonalds instead of.. anything else really.. to save a buck.

Time to hang out with friends

Taking care of your mental health also means having a social life and leisure. What do you need for that? Time. Why don’t you have enough time? Mostly because of work. Why do you have to work so much? Because life is so fucking expensive. So my logic is: if I need less things, and if I spend less on things I have to buy, that means more time for me. I’ll summarize this in two words: thrift stores and simplicity.

First, go for simplicity

Try to buy less stuff and when you want to buy, ask yourself if you really need it, that’s basic. To avoid feeling in a place of scarcity and lack, think of something you really do want, and make it your goal, your reward. So instead of thinking “I shouldn’t buy this, I don’t absolutely need it. That sucks, I can’t have anything nice

” You could shift that to: “If I don’t buy this dress that I probably wouldn’t wear much, it means I’m $45 closer my trip to Bali :D”. Consistently doing this keep you exited about your goal because, how often do we want to buy things we don’t really need? That’s right, you’ll have your reward in mind very often.

Simplicity in your products

I think that a good first step to take towards health is eliminate toxicity. To do that, what often makes sense is to simplify: go for foods that have the less ingredients, or that are totally unprocessed. Same goes for cosmetics. Look for products that only contain a few ingredients that you can recognize, or if you’re so inclined, you can even make them yourself, thus, saving more money. So, weather it goes on your body or in your body, a healthy and cost effective solution is to buy ingredients in bulk and start cooking.

Save on food and reduce food waste with apps

Get this: you install an app on your phone (Flashfood is one but I’m sure there are a couple others), and it shows you products that are close to expiration date that groceries near you are selling at a discounted price. I can’t stand seeing food go to waste, and my cheap ass just loves save 50%, so this concept really is pure gold for me. These apps allow me to have access to meat that I couldn’t normally afford, which allows me to pursue my quest for the best diet for my body (I used to be a vegan, I’m now on an API diet, what’s next?!). You can find vegetables, bakery, seafood, anything. I’d say I buy 80% of my groceries through these apps now. Buying in bulk and cooking? Well that is possible with the apps. Having a truck load of bell peppers will sure spark your creativity, as you have to use them before they go bad.

Freeze food

That brings us to the freezer. If you can get a second-hand freezer (I suppose some models consume less electricity, you might want to look for these), that might be the best investment you make this year. Because if you’re half as obsessed as I am about health and simplicity, there’s just not enough room in your standard freezer for all that healthy food you’ll buy at a 50% discount. See where this is going? Buy basic ingredients in bulk, cook huge batches, freeze portions. You saved time and money and you get to eat as healthy as you want to.

DIY your skin and hair products

You’re lucky there is a big trend on DIY products right now, so recipes are easy to find for pretty much everything you want to make. There are some ingredients that have multiple uses, like castille soap or baking soda for instance, so these are a good choice for a starter kit. I tried making solid shampoo and I must say it’s very satisfying to successfully wash your hair with a shampoo you made with your own two hands! And to know you’re not sending chemicals in the water, and in your scalp. And not buying another plastic bottle. And throwing it away when empty. The shampoo bar cost approximately $7 and will last for.. I dunno like ten million showers. I also make my own face serum with two ingredients: jojoba oil and tea tree. Speaking of oil (sweet almond in this case), it’s the best and cheapest makeup remover, period. I used to buy very expensive natural face care products but I was frustrated that there was no visible improvement of my skin. I wanted to test them on half my face for a couple months to demonstrate how ineffective they actually were but I never had the required discipline. If you don’t see noticeable improvement in your face after using a product for a while, stop buying that shit and just rub your face with oil. Because the one you’re buying probably contains mostly oil anyway and the rest of the fancy ingredients are probably in traces amount and completely useless. And don’t even get me started on the non-natural products. Ew.

Get rid of plastic

They say (the same “they” I always talk about when I don’t have sources) that if you store food in plastic containers of drink out of plastic bottles, plastic gets in your body and can cause health problems, hormone imbalance and whatnot. A good alternative are glass containers. The tupperware style with lids can be pricey if you buy them new, so the strategy here is: no stress, buy just a couple at a time when you find them at the salvation army and gradually eliminate the plastic ones. When I say eliminate I mean re-purpose or give to good will. As good hippies, let’s try to produce less waste! There’s also the very trendy mason jar, so practical to store food and – Pinterest shows us every day – anything you can think of.

Drink the best possible water

I’ve heard that tap water contains traces of birth control pills, antidepressants, antibiotics, etc. I don’t have the expertise to know if it’s true but it did scare me. I’m the kind of hippie that will avoid taking a small innocent ibuprofen if I can. I don’t want drugs in my body, unless it’s going to be fun and psychedelic. I certainly have a lack of scientific evidence about traces of drugs in the city’s water supply but my nose and taste buds tell me that chlorine isn’t something I should drink. There’s also fluoride in the water, that is arguably bad for you. These are the reasons I decided to stop drinking tap water. What are the alternatives? I had a Brita but it doesn’t eliminate much of the bad stuff. Plus, it’s made of plastic. The high quality water filters are just ridiculously expensive so my only option was to buy bottled water. Not small bottles, the big ones that are reused when you bring them back to the store. It felt weird to buy water when there’s plenty in the tap but, my god, does it taste better. And I’ve read it hydrates you better too. Hydration is a key component of health, that’s for sure, so if you can’t afford to buy water, still, drink a liter a day, you’ll be healthier than if you let yourself dry like a raisin. I hesitated to make that water bottle move for a bit because I thought I needed to buy a water dispenser, but it turns out I don’t need it at all. I just leave the bottle on the counter and I got used really quickly to flip that giant heavy thing. Now I can pour myself a shot glass of water without spilling a drop. No need to buy a machine. Also, it’s best to drink it at room temperature, and it’s empty within a week of two so I figure it doesn’t have time to grow bacteria, or algae or whatever happens to water when you let it sit.

Sleeping is free

We underestimate the role that sleep has to play in our health so we often neglect it, but a good sleep hygiene can make a huge difference in your energy level, I’ve experienced it. I was always tired, couldn’t get through the day without a nap, couldn’t concentrate, I was unable to get up in the morning. Then a doctor prescribed that I take melatonin every night at 6 pm for two weeks, go to bed at 10, wake up at 7 and blast a light therapy lamp in my face for half an hour every morning. I did that and guess what? It. Worked. I didn’t follow the exact hours he prescribed and I’m not sure the melatonin had a good effect on me so I only took it for a couple days. So I think what does the trick is consistently waking up at the same time each morning, regardless of what time you go to bed. Occasionally I get only four hours of sleep and usually the next day I’d be unable to function. Now that I wake up at regular hours, I can go through the day and have so much energy that I even forget I got only 4 hours of sleep. A phrase he said about staying in bed later to catch up on you sleep stuck with me: it’s too hard for the system. It had not occurred to me that it could be difficult for the body to change its sleep schedule. I thought “as long as I get 8 hours I’m fine” or even “the more sleep the better, I’ll sleep 12 hours today”. So if you happen to have sleep problems, irregular sleep pattern or fatigue, set an alarm and get some light in the morning, see what happens. Hopefully your body will adjust to the schedule and you won’t need the alarm after a week, and your mornings will be less painful. Another thing I didn’t take seriously was avoiding blue light in the evening. But it turns out it’s serious, it really does mess with your natural sleep hormones. So I installed f.lux on all my screens. It’s an app that will cut the blue light out of your screen according to the time of day. My screen is yellow right now because I’m too silly to go to bed at a normal time, I prefer to write a blog post. I used to binge watch TV on my computer very late in the night and not feel tired. I realized after installing the app that it was the blue light that was keeping me up. Now I watch an episode and start to yawn, so that’s a good thing, less TV.

Meditation is free

According to every damn article I read or podcast I listen to, meditation is one of the healthiest thing you can do. Good news: all you have to do is sit there and breathe. Now that, you can afford. No time? A minute a day is still better than nothing. If you need a little help to begin, there are tons of free apps you can install. I use Breathe and Calm, which also has some nice sleep stories.

Functional training

Exercising at home requires more discipline, at least in my experience, but if you can pull it off, it means more money in your pocket. You don’t necessarily need those machines to have an effective workout. The weight of your body will do. Remember those good old push ups? Yep. YouTube will help you find some exercises ideas for what part of your body you want to work out. Weights can be found easily at thrift stores. Elastic bands offer multiple possibilities and are not too expensive. Cardio is important too so if running outside isn’t an option, because breathing smog will annihilate any benefits of working out, for instance, maybe look for a stationary bike in the ads.

You can still party

Even if you’ve decided that for health reasons, alcohol, sugar and carbs are to avoid, you can still allow yourself to have them every once in a while. Just don’t binge, and limit the damage. For example, I drink on rare but meaningful occasions and I choose low sugar and gluten free drinks like vodka-soda or gin-soda. That’s the protecting my health part, now for the protecting my wallet. Go to the liquor store and find the best value alcohol. Not the will-make-you-go-blind kind of alcohol, because that’s not healthy. Usually a big-ass bottle of average quality vodka will be a good price to quantity ratio, and will give you an occasion to let go of what the cashier thinks of you as a person. Vodka is pretty much tasteless so that leaves you more drinks possibilities. (plus, you can DIY perfume using vodka: avoiding chemicals on your skin and saving $200, yay)! Sugar in food now. It’s always best to choose natural sugars like honey, instead or refined sugar, or use stevia. Man, stevia is the best: it tastes like sugar, but it’s not. It’ll make your food taste sweet and do zero damage. Buy in a giant bottle to save money. Hell, you could even grow your own stevia plant! Let’s go crazy! You can also pour a drop in your vodka. Now that’s starting to look like a party to me! The use of the word honey and saving money just made me think of a fine browser extension you can use for online shopping. It’s called Honey and it can notify you when a product you watch goes on sale. It can also find and apply coupon codes for you. Here’s the only referral link in this article: my link to Honey. So, where were we. Sugar. When I stopped eating sugar, I bought dark unsweetened chocolat in bulk, thinking it would taste like dark 70% chocolate. Oh, was I wrong. It tastes bitter. That’s the only thing you’ll taste in sugar free dark chocolate. But it’s cheap to buy in bulk and I can control what goes into it, so from time to time I like to melt some in a pan, add stevia and eat that with bananas.

Let’s talk! What are your secrets to stay healthy and how do you afford it?

[batbirdies]

In your storyline ccat did Dick send Jason to Arkham like he did in the comics? How does Jason feel about that? How does Dick and the family

EDIT: I did not mean to post this yet. Ugh. The post button is too close to the little dots that let you save a draft and now it keeps not saving my edits. I was going to do some fact checking and, you know, general editing before posting but now we’re too late. I might make a more readable post about this later...

Get ready for an extremely wordy, answer.

So, this is an interesting question. Because I know that most batfans do consider this to be canon. Dick sent Jason to Arkham.

However - I read those comic issues, and even re-read them after getting this ask just to see if I missed something. And it’s very possible I still did since it could have been referenced much later in a comic when talking about the whole thing past tense. But....while Dick was there when Jason was arrested - he was arrested, as in by actual police, specifically, commissioner Gordon. He wasn’t taken in by Dick as Batman.

So while we can infer, possibly, that Dick had an influence on what facility Jason was actually brought to. It seems to make perfect sense to me that the police and court system would have ruled Jason criminally insane and sent him to Arkham themselves. ESPECIALLY after the arch in which he was arrested in. (The professor Pyg one, quickly followed by Flamingo the assassin where Jason does something so dangerous in order to kill flamingo that Dick asks him “was that some kind of suicide attempt?”)

Now, we could reason that Dick could have gotten Jason out of Arkham buuuuut, there’s so much to go into honestly... and I’m gonna go ahead and skip it here because basically everything I would say in relation to this will be the same as my reasoning if Dick was the one who was directly responsible for Jason being sent to Arkham.

So let’s go there, let’s say Dick was responsible for Jason being locked up in Arkham. Let’s first look at Dick’s options here, what places could he send Jason? He could send him to a regular prison, Blackgate, made for extremely dangerous criminals, or he could send him to Arkham Asylum, made for the criminally insane.

(One might also argue that he could have just not had him sent anywhere and let him go free, but let’s be real and honest here, unless you are the type of Jason Stan who thinks he’s perfect and never made bad decisions or been at fault for any apparently poor ones, this is faulty reasoning. Jason has not only been responsible for the deaths of a ton of people in recent times to this arrest, he also attempted to reveal Dick and Damians identities to the world and pitted himself directly against Batman and Robin in these issues. He tried to get in their way, ruin their plans, to prove that his methods of vigilanteism were more effective and in general, better than the bat’s. He was actively attempting to ruin their reputation and turn people against them.

You could reason he was also responsible, in a roundabout way, for Damian’s very serious injuries in this particular issue, where he is shot five times and ends up paralyzed from the waist down and must be rescued and operated on by Talia’s expansive medical team.

End note being: they had to lock him up. I certainly would have felt I had no choice.)

Sending him to a standard prison would never have been an option, Jason would have broken out in a matter of days if they ever would have even managed to get him locked inside. So Dick would have to choose between Blackgate and Arkham.

In later issues, after Bruce is back, he goes to visit Jason when Jason keeps appealing to be sent to Blackgate because he is sane and has passed all the tests they’ve given him with flying sane colors. Bruce says that he is in Arkham “For his own protection” implying that as Red Hood he made some massive enemies, a lot of whom are imprisoned in Blackgate at this very moment and who would take any opportunity to do harm to Jason.

Dick would have been aware of this. Dick would have been very much caught between a rock and hard place here. Because while he would more than likely be aware that Jason would NEVER wish to be stuck in Arkham, as would NONE of the bats, he would more than likely put his physical safety first. Reasoning that even if Jason was unhappy in Arkham at least he could be safe and given more time to hopefully come around to a more reasonable state. Because it’s been shown that Dick wants to help Jason. Before stepping back and allowing the police to arrest Jason Dick says this to him: “Look at yourself Jason. You’re a mess. Everything’s a mess. Stop all this...and let us help you.”

Jason then responds: “Help me? ...It’s...it’s too late for me Grayson. It was always too late for me, don’t you get it?”

Jason was more but I don’t think it’s necessary to to recount the whole thing. During this exchange the police surround both of them with guns pointed at Jason and Commissioner Gordon says the only reason they let Batman do this stuff is because he stayed on the right side of the law. So they arrest him.

Dick is then distracted by Damian, who is lying on the ground after being shot multiple times and unable to move from the waist down.

The short answer to this question, is yes and no lol. Because going by canon I think it could easily be reasoned that Dick wasn’t the one who put Jason in Arkham, but even if I’m mistaken in this and Dick was credited with this at some point in the comics I’m unaware of...

I certainly would have questioned Jason’s mental health. And I mean, I think Jaosn’s mental health is a serious concern in general. He needs help. But he wasn’t willing to get it, he thought it was too late for him.

We also have to look at the fact that while we, as readers, see Arkham Asylum as this dumping ground for the criminally insane that’s rife with abuse and everyone who works there is incompetent and allows inmates to escape on the regular etc etc. That’s not really what it’s meant to be in canon. The Batfam obviously view it as the best option they have to deal with the particular breed of crazy that Gotham produces.

Jason’s personal history with the Joker in particular is brought up the most, because how could Dick put Jason in the same place as the JOKER. LIKE WTF.

But my understanding is actually that by canon timelines Joker wasn’t actually in Arkham while Jason was there. That’s not to say he couldn’t have been locked up during his stay at any point, but I would also think that in a psych hospital it would be a reasonable action to keep certain inmates always separate and never in the same space together. Of course we can reason that even being in the same facility would bring Jason all kinds of anxiety and be terrible for his mental health but again, just looking at what I already wrote - there just wasn’t an amazing option available. Nothing would have been a great move on Dick’s part.

To actually answer your ultimate question:

I think everyone would look at this time in all of their lives as just....the WORST. Like....the WORST possible time. This is during the year that Bruce was dead, all of their lives were in turmoil, utterly chaotic and incredibly stressful. Jason was at one of his lowest points and Dick was trying to be Batman to Damian’s violent and difficult to control Robin whole also being on the outs with Tim. Jason pulled some serious shit, trying to reveal their identities on national television? Beyond his killing of people, which the batfam has been staunchly against for forever, even if they decided to give Jason a pass because reasons. No one knew what to do.

I think Jason would look at this time in his life with a large amount of shame for his actions. He might resent Dick for being involved in the event that got him locked in Arkham but he could see what’s already been mentioned. What were his options?

I think Dick feels guilty, but again, what was he supposed to do? What was a better choice? Jason DID eventually end up in Blackgate and it ended terribly, multiple got killed and like over 80 people were poisoned and Jason escaped. So obviously Blackgate would NOT have been the better option.

I think it’s maybe a rough, sensitive spot between them, but both of them also just see it as a time when all of their lives were so difficult it would have been impossible for there to be a good outcome. I think the rest of the family feels similarly. This was a terrible time in all of their lives when no one was making their best decisions. And frankly there weren’t a lot of great options.

I think all of them just want to put this behind them and move forward.

[eddycurrents]

For the week of 7 October 2019

Quick Bits:

Batman & The Outsiders #6 concludes “Lesser Gods” from Bryan Hill, Dexter Soy, Veronica Gandini, and Clayton Cowles. We get another “Batman’s doing something naughty” hint as Ishmael and co attempt to turn Cass and Duke to Ra’s al Ghul’s cause. This is less a hard end than a twist to lead into what might be coming next.

| Published by DC Comics

Black Hammer / Justice League: Hammer of Justice #4 gives us an explanation for what the Stranger did to zap the heroes across their respective realities, even as the more hot-headed Justice League members continue to cause problems on DC’s Earth. I’m still loving the eerie darkness that Michael Walsh is bringing to the art. It keeps it more consistent with the feel established by Dean Ormston and Dave Stewart, making it feel more like a Black Hammer story.

| Published by Dark Horse & DC Comics

Blade Runner 2019 #4 concludes the first arc. Michael Green, Mike Johnson, Andres Guinaldo, Marco Lesko, and Jim Campbell have done a great job capturing the overall feel of the Blade Runner franchise and it pays off here with one hell of a harrowing end, with a nice twist for what’s to come.

| Published by Titan

Buffy + Angel: Hellmouth #1 begins the event in earnest, even though you really do need to read the prelude issue of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to get the real first part of this story, from Jordie Bellaire, Jeremy Lambert, Eleonora Carlini, Cris Peter, and Ed Dukeshire. It’s good. As Spike and Dru’s first step in opening the Hellmouth causes havoc through Sunnydale, Buffy and Angel team up to try to stop what’s coming next.

| Published by BOOM! Studios

Catwoman #16 has some truly stunning, beautiful artwork from Joëlle Jones and Laura Allred. It might also have a huge change on Selina’s status. Though, how exactly it fits in with “City of Bane” or anything else is anyone’s guess. Still, very nice artwork.

| Published by DC Comics

Coffin Bound #3 is even darker and more disturbing than what we’ve seen in the first two issues, going deep into some of Izzy and Cassandra’s past, while Cassandra’s sister learns how to be a peeler. Dan Watters, Dani, Brad Simpson, and Aditya Bidikar are doing something very different with this series.

| Published by Image

Collapser #4 feels like both a test and a turning point for Liam, one that almost seems like he failed. Liam’s new manager turns out to be a “Star Person”, and it feels like she’s leading him into temptation, as we seemingly can’t trust what we see. Mikey Way, Shaun Simon, Ilias Kyriazis, Cris Peter, and Simon Bowland are continuing to delivering one of the best, strangest trips out there.

| Published by DC Comics / Young Animal

Contagion #2 keeps this largely street-level, only reaching out to the Avengers as more or less support for the moment, as Iron Fist tries to deal with further eruptions of the contagion. Ed Brisson, Stephen Segovia, Veronica Gandini, and Cory Petit certainly make this feel grim as everything continues to go wrong.

| Published by Marvel

Detective Comics #1013 reveals more of what Mister Freeze has been up to, pushing some rather disturbing experiments as he continues to try to find a cure for his wife. Including a rather troubling cliffhanger that looks like it might upend a lot of what we think we know about Freeze’s situation. Very entertaining story here from Peter J. Tomasi, Doug Mahnke, Keith Champagne, Christian Alamy, David Baron, and Rob Leigh.

| Published by DC Comics

Doctor Doom #1 is an offbeat debut from Christopher Cantwell, Salvador Larroca, Guru e-FX, and Cory Petit. While it shows us some of the day to day runnings Doom does for Latveria, it sets up a mystery as his countries missiles and more launch an attack on a moon project designed to lower greenhouse gas emissions. Nice bits of humour in this one.

| Published by Marvel

Edgar Allan Poe’s Snifter of Terror - Season Two #1 is a welcome return of this series, with a fun lead story playing through many of Poe’s luminary tales in “The Tell-Tale Black Cask of Usher” from Dean Motter, Alex Ogle, and Julie Barclay. Really great seeing new work from Motter. This issue is rounded out by the usual poetry, prose pieces, and the return of Hunt Emerson’s Black Cat.

| Published by Ahoy

Event Leviathan #5 works further at the identity of Leviathan, throwing a few more suspects on the fire, along with the possible death of an important character. Also, you’re probably never going to guess who this issue points at being Leviathan. Gorgeous artwork from Alex Maleev as always.

| Published by DC Comics

The Flash #80 continues to dismantle the new forces and characters built up recently as Zoom and the Black Flash separately try to eliminate the force users. Great art here from Scott Kolins and Luis Guerrero. Kolins is the perfect choice to usher in this next stage in Zolomon’s story.

| Published by DC Comics

Gotham City Monsters #2 is even better than the first issue, working through Melmoth’s resurrection and gathering the team with invested purpose to bring about his end. There’s also added depth in that Melmoth may very well be right about part of his plan, just not necessarily in his execution. It could add some modicum of moral quandary depending on which way this goes. Steve Orlando, Amancay Nahuelpan, Trish Mulvihill, and Tom Napolitano are doing some very nice work here.

| Published by DC Comics

Harley Quinn & Poison Ivy #2 continues the confrontation with Woodrue, building on elements from Justice League Dark, even as something is very, very wrong with Poison Ivy. There’s a more refined, controlled humour here than what we see in the Harley Quinn series itself and it seems to fit the more serious tone of the subject matter. I’m really liking the art from Adriano Melo, Mark Morales, and Hi-Fi.

| Published by DC Comics

Hawkman #17 brings Carter’s battle with the Shadow Thief to a close, but he takes a turn for the worse as the title runs deeper into the “Year of the Villain” event and the fallout from The Batman Who Laugh’s infected. It’s interesting how Robert Venditti, Pat Olliffe, Tom Palmer, Jeremiah Skipper, and Richard Starkings & Comicraft deal with these multiple spinning plates. Especially that very nice cliffhanger.

| Published by DC Comics

Ice Cream Man #15 is one of the stranger issues, which is really saying a bit considering that the series itself is regularly very strange. It’s dark, with a protagonist who seems to be suffering a psychotic break. W. Maxwell Prince, Martín Morazzo, Chris O’Halloran, and Good Old Neon continue to work magic with this horror series.

| Published by Image

Invaders #10 continues “Dead in the Water” from Chip Zdarsky, Carlos Magno, Butch Guice, Alex Guimarães, and Travis Lanham. Some interesting complications here as Roxxon is further added to the mix and Roman starts making more problems for Atlantis. A really nice set up for something new from Steve and Namor too.

| Published by Marvel

Joker/Harley: Criminal Sanity #1, like Harleen #1 before it, surprised me. There’s a current saturation of Joker and Harley Quinn stories at the moment, spurred on by the movies, and it kind of tempers expectations. Thankfully, though, the start to this story from Kami Garcia, Mico Suayan, Mike Mayhew, and Richard Starkings is really rather good. It sets Harley as a criminal profiler, trying to figure out Joker’s murders, really getting inside this new take on her character and developing a more grounded crime thriller. The art from Mico Suayan is gorgeous, presented in greyscale, in contrast to the full-colour, photo reference of Mike Mayhew for flashbacks. I thought it was an interesting choice to present it that way, bucking convention for the flashbacks taking on a faded appearance. It gives the overall story a grittier feel for the present.

| Published by DC Comics - Black Label

Journey to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker - Allegiance #1 is kind of a slow start to this intermediary step between The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker from Ethan Sacks, Luke Ross, Lee Loughridge, and Clayton Cowles. There’s an interesting bit of showing just how evil the First Order really is, but a lot of what we get here is a regathering of the team. Gorgeous artwork from Ross and Loughridge.

| Published by Marvel

Justice League Odyssey #14 sees Dan Abnett, Chriscross, Cliff Richards, Le Beau Underwood, Danny Miki, Scott Hanna, Rain Beredo, Pete Pantazis, and AndWorld Design keep building this new team to confront Darkseid and his “new gods”. I really quite like the inversion of what we saw at the beginning, as Jessica Cruz is now working with villains attempting to do something heroic. We also get a reveal of Okkult, who is probably who everyone thought he was in the first place.

| Published by DC Comics

Livewire #11 gets at a point that was seemingly dropped in the wake of Harbinger Wars 2 in what the US government and their arms-length black ops group did in the Massacre, of how problematic rounding up and murdering a group of people are via American laws. I love that Vita Ayala, Tana Ford, Kelly Fitzpatrick, and Saida Temofonte pick it up here and incorporate it into another angle for this political warfare.

| Published by Valiant

Loki #4 concludes “The God Who Fell to Earth” and Loki’s conflict with Nightmare in fairly inventive fashion. Daniel Kibblesmith has been delivering some fairly interesting ideas here while planting more seeds for different permutations.

| Published by Marvel

Oliver #4 was well worth the wait. Gary Whitta, Darick Robertson, Diego Rodriguez, and Simon Bowland pack this confrontation full of action, with some absolutely beautiful artwork from Robertson and Rodriguez. Some very harrowing character moments as the story takes its next turn.

| Published by Image

Outer Darkness #11 is insanely good as John Layman, Afu Chan, and Pat Brosseau give us the first part of the two-part “season finale” to the series. The crew take shore leave as Rigg goes about interviewing what we think are replacement crew and a meeting with his superior, and then...well, you’re really going to have to read this issue. Great stuff.

| Published by Image / Skybound

Pretty Deadly: The Rat #2 is magnificent, delving into more of the existing mythology from the previous volumes, while still continuing on the new narrative for this era that started last issue. The repeated incorporation of visual motifs inspired by the film industry is a very nice touch. Kelly Sue DeConnick, Emma Rios, Jordie Bellaire, and Clayton Cowles are giving us a very compelling mystery here.

| Published by Image

Ronin Island #7 pushes the bandits and the Shogun into confrontation and...none of it goes exactly to Kenichi’s plan. Greg Pak, Giannis Milonogiannis, Irma Kniivila, and Simon Bowland continue to unfold this story in interesting ways, while Hana and Kenichi’s childhood lessons come back to both haunt and empower them.

| Published by BOOM! Studios

Shoplifters Will Be Liquidated #1 is an interesting debut from Patrick Kindlon, Stefano Simeone, and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou. Set within a rather expansive big box store, it presents an extreme look at consumer culture and the lengths that this store’s loss prevention staff goes to in order to get their man. It’s rather cutthroat, literally.

| Published by AfterShock

Sonata #5 unveils a bit more about the planet and the Lumani, revealing an interesting depth to their technology that’s seemingly been abandoned and their method of reproduction. Mixing that in with the action of trying to save members of the two colonizers in conflict keeps the pace moving along. Gorgeous artwork from Brian Haberlin and Geirrod Van Dyke.

| Published by Image / Shadowline

Spawn #301 continues the story and structure of #300, with Todd McFarlane, Greg Capullo, Jason Shawn Alexander, Clayton Crain, Jerome Opeña, Jonathan Glapion, FCO Plascencia, Peter Steigerwald, Matt Hollingsworth, John Rauch, Greg Menzie, Jay Fotos, and Tom Orzechowski breaking it down into numerous chapters, dealing with the various different elements. Some interesting new characters revealed again, even though we only get a bit about them.

| Published by Image

Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order - Dark Temple #3 reveals a few more secrets in the past, even as the Inquisitor searches for them in the present. Gorgeous artwork from Paolo Villanelli and Arif Prianto. It definitely feels like something weird is going on here.

| Published by Marvel

Star Wars Adventures: Return to Vader’s Castle #2 is another great entry into this series, with a central story illustrated this time by Kelley Jones and Michelle Madsen. It’s a wonderful monster story with one of Tarkin’s experiments, showing us what really makes up a monster.

| Published by IDW

Supergirl #35 sees Marc Andreyko, Eduardo Pansica, Julio Ferreira, FCO Plascencia, and Tom Napolitano juggling about as many plates as they are over in Hawkman. There’s “Year of the Villain” stuff and a rather deep tie-in to Event Leviathan as Leviathan makes a pitch for Kara to join him.

| Published by DC Comics

Superman #16 reunites Jon and Damian one last time before Jon heads off to join the Legion in the future, from Brian Michael Bendis, David Lafuente, Paul Mounts, and Dave Sharpe. It’s a fun, heartfelt send-off with some very funny moments, including a renaming of Leviathan that will hopefully stick.

| Published by DC Comics

These Savage Shores #5 brings an end to one of the most beautifully told stories in comics in the past few years. Ram V, Sumit Kumar, Vittorio Astone, and Aditya Bidikar have done an incredible thing with this story, giving new depth and nuance to tragic romance and the vampire story. This conclusion is heartrending as we see how far Bishan will go for love, in an epic confrontation between vampire and raakshas. Everyone owes it to themselves to read this series. Simply phenomenal.

| Published by Vault

Thumbs #5 is the conclusion to what has been a wonderful series from Sean Lewis and Hayden Sherman. There are some really interesting ideas, subverting the ideologies of both factions, showing realizations that maybe there might just be a better way.

| Published by Image

Triage #2 delves deeper into the three multiversal versions of Evie, contemplating how they came about while trying to figure out a way to stop whoever it is that’s hunting them. There’s some sweet and funny character moments with the main “normal” universe’s Evie and Tab. Phillip Sevy is doing a great job of juggling both the ordinary and extraordinary in this story.

| Published by Dark Horse

Vampirella/Red Sonja #2 is more fun from Jordie Bellaire, Drew Moss, Rebecca Nalty, and Becca Carey. The issues between Vampirella and Sonja become greater, even as they get a spell to understand one another. There’s a really nice mix of humour and action here.

| Published by Dynamite

Web of Black Widow #2 is another great issue. What Jody Houser, Stephen Mooney, Tríona Farrell, and Cory Petit are doing here feels perfect for Black Widow, giving us an action-packed story full of intrigue, even as it keeps us off-balance as to what exactly is going on.

| Published by Marvel

Wonder Twins #8 throws in a prison break and a high school reunion into the reasons why you should be reading this series. Mark Russell, Mike Norton, Cris Peter, and Dave Sharpe deliver another humorous chapter to this series, with some rather interesting heartbreak.

| Published by DC Comics / Wonder Comics

Other Highlights: Absolute Carnage: Miles Morales #3, Age of Conan: Valeria #3, Amazing Spider-Man #31, Animosity #24, Batman Universe #4, The Batman’s Grave #1, Battlepug #2, East of West #43, Future Fight Firsts: White Fox #1, Ghosted in LA #4, GI Joe: A Real American Hero #267, Go Go Power Rangers #24, Gwenpool Strikes Back #3, House of Whispers #14, Immortal Hulk: Director’s Cut #5, Joker: Year of the Villain #1, Jughead: The Hunger vs. Vampironica #5, Magnificent Ms. Marvel #8, Marvel Action: Spider-Man #9, Miles Morales: Spider-Man #11, Oblivion Song #20, Postal: Deliverance #4, Power Rangers: The Psycho Path, Powers of X #6, Reaver #4, Redneck #24, RWBY (print) #1, RWBY (digital) #4, Secrets of Sinister House #1, Star Wars: Target Vader #4, Thought Bubble Anthology 2019, TMNT: Urban Legends #17, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #49, Unearth #4, Usagi Yojimbo #5, Wonder Woman #80

Recommended Collections: A Walk Through Hell - Volume 2, Baltimore Omnibus - Volume 1, Battlestar Galactica Classic: Counterstrike, Battlestar Galactica: Twilight Command, Black Hammer ‘45 - Volume 1, Blossoms 666, Hack/Slash vs. Chaos, The Silencer - Volume 3: Up in Smoke, War of the Realms: Punisher, Wizard Beach

d. emerson eddy is ready for some shashlik.

[sabraeal]

#51 sounds really cute! :D

#51: things you said as we danced in our socks

Set a few weeks before graduation

Wide Florida Bay | Previous

Horns rattle from the tinny speaker, and thebriefest bass guitar, before abruptly cutting off. Shirayuki frowns as shescoops up her phone, flicking the screen on – that clip is so unsatisfying, she reallyneeds to fix it –

r u done?im doneim dooooooonnnnne

She glances up from the mixer whirring away, catching the bookbagslumped against the wall of the vestibule, abandoned the moment she walkedthrough the door.

I just got backObi still has one more though

ugh ofctell him hes an overachiever and he should b ashamed

(He’s been sitting like that for almost fifteen minute,pointer hovering over Add Class, hisdesignated selection time bleeding out, only fifteen more before the juniorsgets to start picking their classes too –

“I shouldn’t bother,” he says, toneless. “You have to applyfor it.”

She tucks into his side, laying her head on his shoulder. “Sodoes everyone else. You have just as good a chance as anyone.”

“You’re not doing it.”

She blinks, tilting her head up. “I’m not the one interestedin informatics.”

“It’ll be over my credit load,” he tries instead. “I’d need permissionfrom the dean –”

She tweaks his elbow, just hard enough to make him squirm. “Good thinghe’ll be your graduate advisor.”

It takes a bit for him to blush – or at least for her to see it – but there’s pink just under bronze on his ears, and that’s enough. “That’s not – that’sonly if Admissions all goes temporarily batshit and lets me in.”

His chest shakes, breath coming quick, and she slides her hand down,covering his. “You should do it,” she says, studiedly casual. “What’s the worstthat can happen? They say no?”

His breath steadies, but not easily. “Right. Yeah.”

The click is less than a second. “Fuck ‘em, right?”)

i don’t think i’ll tell him that

FINELAMEsuzus been done since yesterday bcuz hes a slackerwhen obi is done we should celebratelike unreal amts of booze celebrate

It’s – it’s not that her heart pounds, it’s just – quiet,now that the mixer is off. Everything is more – noticeable. Now that she – she’s –

She’s thinking about the last time they got drunk at Yuzuri’sbehest, looming over them as she poured more and more shots, tellingthem it’s a celebration, everyone has todrink –

– I don’t think you’dbe so hard to figure out, darlin’. Obi’s drawl is liquid in her memory,pouring over her like honey. Just have toknow where to touch –

uh sureI guess?

u guess?is there some sort of problem?

She thinks of Obi, chest heaving,slack-jawed, eyes wide – if I capsize inyour thighs, high tide – of what he’dlook like with swollen lips, panting down her body, spreading her legs –

Ugh. She shakes her head. Thewhole thing is just – just – a pop-up she can’t shake, an ad that keepsplaying over her day at odd intervals, only instead of it being for somethinglike experimental allergy medication or Cialis, it’s for Obi, like she suddenly needs to be reminded every few minutes thathe’s attractive and also experienced, like maybe she should consider –

no!everything is fine!

It will pass. It always does.

…whatever the ideas r percolating ill let u know what we decide but like def booze

This isn’t – it isn’t a problem. Everything is fine – very fine, the most fine.

All her papers are written, revised, and already sitting in drop-boxes, her only final is a multiple choice test about European History, most of which she learned just from living with Kiki for a year. If anything, she is set, living her best life –

“God.”

Her whole body flushes, toe-tip to hairline, and she’s so busy trying not to think of skin under her lips, of hearing that in an entirely new context, that she nearly misses the slam of the door.

Obi tilts a long-suffering look toward her as he leans against the wall, toeing his shoes into the tray. “I’m glad that’s fucking done.”

There isn’t a problem, because whatever this is, it’s just a phase. Something that will definitely pass.

It just never takes this long.

“Did your test go well?” she asks, clearing her throat, like it might expel the images her mind is supplying as he saunters around the corner, shirt already pulling up taut torso, sun-bronzed abs on display.

“Hope so,” he sighs, balling his T-shirt up in his hand. “Otherwise Lata’s going to give me a few more of these for putting off our action plan.”

It takes her a whole minute to realize what he’s pointing at, to see the thick silver sprawl of scars across his back and not the way his muscles ripple beneath the skin, the way his shoulder blades make his whole back look like an anatomy model.

She frowns. “Professor Forenzo would never –”

“I know, I know,” he says, waving a hand at her as he crosses into his room. “Gimme a minute, I gotta get out of these clothes. It’s killer out there.”

“Right,” she replies, faint, definitely not noticing the way his hands settle on his waistband, definitely not thinking about his skin shining with sweat –

She doesn’t have a problem, it’s just – just that she hasn’t figured out a way to get him back, to close out this prank so she can – can stop thinking about that stupid song, and capsizing on thighs and what it might feel like if he –

plans decidedwe gonna go C L U B B I N G

Shirayuki’s teeth grit down, her hands bracing against the counter. This is fine. They’ve gone before, a nice little place above a bar in downtown Wilant; it’d been all 80s songs and they’d all had a little more than they’d bargain for, and Obi –

– you’re a squeezing hips, neck-kissing girl, aren’t you, darlin’? –

Ah, maybe she…shouldn’t think about that. He didn’t even remember it in the morning.

“You all right, Doc?”

She jolts, watching Obi settle on the couch, bare feet kicked up on the coffee table, arms sprawled out over the back, remote in hand. Her hands tighten on the counter, trying to ground herself, trying not to have her knees go weak as she traces the delicate bones in his feet, the strain of his t-shirt over his biceps –

if obi gives u shit tell him its obligatorythis is the price of fucking friendship okay

“You might not want to get too c-comfortable,” she stammers, stacking cookies, trying to look like she’s doing something in the kitchen, and not just – ogling him. “Yuzuri says we need to go out and celebrate.”

His head turns toward her, just slightly. “Celebrate what?”

“Being done with, you know…school.” It sounds weak, even to her own ears, and the grunt that comes from him tells her he agrees.

“We’re all going to grad school,” he huffs out. “We’re not going to be done with school for the next decade, if Lata has anything to say about it.”

“Well, it’s the end of undergrad,” she presses, feeling flushed. “And the end of our thesis work –”

“And just what is this version of celebrating going to entail?” he asks with a sigh. “I already have my sweat pants on.”

I’ve noticed is not the right thing to say. Neither is dumbly standing there, thinking how good he makes them look. “Yuzuri says we’re going clubbing.”

“Oh, no,” he says, firm. “No. I don’t dance.”

“She wants me to tell you it’s a non-optional social convention.”

“Is that how she’s getting Suzu to go?”

“Probably.” Her shoulders twitch in a shrug. “You know how she feels about this sort of thing.”

His eyebrows lift. “That there’s no better way to celebrated scientific achievement than to get trashed and grind on strangers?”

“Yes.” Not quit how she would have put it. “That.”

His look turns incredulous. “And you went for that?”

“It’s what she wants to do,” Shirayuki insists, because – because it’s not like she cares. It’s not like she’s thinking about the way he was dancing with anyone who showed interest the last time, wondering if he might –“She’s been here longer. Maybe this is the best way to celebrate. When in Rome, you know?”

“That is the exactopposite of an attitude you should have in Florida. Never do what people inFlorida do.” He rolls his head along the back of the couch to give her a flatlook. “It’s like you’ve never seenthe internet.”

She returns itwith a look of equal flatness. “We made it so the Olin maris can be bred in captivity. We’ve saved an entire species.We can spend one night doing what Yuzuri wants to do.”

“Yuzuri wants toget sloppy drunk and see if she can get Suzu to breed in captivity.”

“And we should support that.” She sighs at his incredulous look, padding out to put the plate of cookies in front of him. “Besides, I’ve seen you dance. You seemed – fine.”

That is definitely a word. That she can use. Safely.

“We danced at a gala,” he protests, “I wore a suit. Youstepped on my feet. That is not this. This is – swampy club dancing. It’s acircle of hell, not an activity.”

She refrains from mentioning the other time; she doesn’t think he’d appreciate remembering just how good he dances drunk to Come On Eileen, no matter how impressive it was.

“I think you just need to get excited.” She’s too used to his stare to shrivel under it. “You know, uh – get pumped.”

“Are you evenplanning on drinking?”

She grimaces.“No.”

“That is such awaste, you can’t even drive.”

She frowns. “Ihave my license now.”

He gives her apointed look. “You can’t even drive.”

She stares at himfor what must be a full minute before it hits her, grin breaking out across her face. “I have just thething to get you in the mood.”

“Aw, c’mon,” hemoans as she pulls him upright. “I’ve got so many Cutthroat Kitchens to watch. On this one, theycook spaghetti and meatballs and someone takes some lady’s garlic.”

“Look, you alreadyknow what happens!” She grins at him. “So now you can do my thing instead.”

He grimaces when she pulls out her phone, when he sees her bring up her music library, pleading, “No, don’t –”

“Why do you build me up –”

“I’m honestly concerned,” he mumbles over the tinny piano. “Do you know what kind of music they play in clubs?”

“–Buttercup, baby–”

“This is to pump you up!” she tells him, trying to guide him into a bobbing two-step, one he follows with the enthusiasm of a man walking to the gallows. “Get your blood flowing!”

“Oh my god,” he sighs. “Of course. This is your pump up music. Motown.”

“It’s uplifting.”

“You listen to Angel of the Morning when you get up, don’t you?”

Her mouth pulls thin. “That’s not Motown –”

“That’s not a no.”

“See,” she tries instead, “you’re getting more lively already!”

There’s a flash of teeth behind his lips, but he hides it in his shoulder. “Whatever, the song is ending. How about you put on an actual club song?”

Her finger hovers over her screen.

“This decade.”

“Fine,” she sighs, scrolling past her collection of 80s music. “I can do that.”

“Uh-huh, I’m–”

“Shawty had those Apple Bottom Jeans, boots with the fur –”

He stares. “All right, I’m concerned you don’t know what year it is.”

“They still play this!” she insists, starting to bop to the beat. “It’s on plenty of club mixes.”

“All right,” he sighs, taking her hands. “This is physically painful, Doc. No one dances like that at a club.”

“Plenty of people do,” she insists, leaving out that most of her club experience is seeing them on CSI reruns. She’s got a feeling he already knows.

“Come here,” he guides her closer, until their hips are almost touching. “Let me just – show you. End the embarrassment.”

“I’m not –” Embarrassing gets swallowed along with her tongue, because his hand hooks over her hips, her own right beneath, guiding her into a slower swing that barely involves feet moving at all. He’s not – not touching her anywhere else, but he’s so close he might as well be, and she’s just – aware. Of all of him.

He smells nice.

“Oh is this – grinding?” she squeaks. “I’ve heard about that before –”

“No.” His voice is entirely too deep. “This would be grinding.”

His hands tug on her, yanking her forward until his knee is between her legs, until every shift on her body brings her right down on his thigh and –

Oh, that is – that’s not –

Okay, maybe this is a problem.

“Oh,” she breathes, jolting away, right back into the wall. That should be it, end of moment, but she – she doesn’t let go of his hands, and then he’s crashing into her, just catching himself on the wall, her hands still twined in his –

“Sorry.” He swallows; she’s so close she can hear it. She can see it too, and the way his eyes are all dark, mostly pupil with a thin rim of gold. His leg is still between hers, and her hands press up by her shoulder, and he’s just – so, so tall –

If he’d just bend down a little, maybe she could –

“Eep!” she yelps, pocket buzzing. “That’s just – I think Yuzuri –”

“Oh,” he breathes, pulling back. “Right. Her clubbing thing.”

r u guys gonna be ready soon?i wanna b drinking already

Obi’s already wandered away, back to the couch, and she –

i think our night is already spoken forobi wants to stay inbut let’s do breakfast tomorrow

boobut i get to pick the place

[captainbebold-blog]

Blog post numero 2

So, following on from my previous and very first blog post last month, I would firstly like to say how genuinely surprised I was by the amazing comments and words that people fed back to me. I would like to thank those individuals and to anyone who took the precious time to read what I wrote as I really hadn’t thought ahead of any consequence after posting the blog.

I would also like to add how great it felt to open my mind and heart and just blurt out words that were there for all to see, I found it therapeutic and I would urge anyone else who is thinking of doing something similar.

You will come to learn that by reading what I write, if you didn’t already know, I am honest, perhaps a little too much, but I love that about myself (oh yes, a woman in 2019 affirming a positive quality about herself without the need of validation from anyone else). And by being honest I will say that this blog post was particularly difficult for me to get started on. Not difficult in the sense that I found it emotionally testing but perhaps in trying to articulate myself genuinely.  

The topic that I would like to talk about this month is school, jobs and careers. Funnily enough, the definition of the word “work” as a synonym can also be known as “exerting oneself” or “to slave away”. The word “career” can be defined as “an occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person’s life and with opportunities for progress.” Now, I’m not sure what thoughts or opinions will cross people’s minds when they read this to themselves, but for me, here’s why I have trouble accepting both definitions.

Let me start from the beginning, buckle up.

From a young age, I was never really interested in school, I mean realistically why would a four-year old child who has spent the only years of their life so far playing and being free, understand or let alone choose why they had to go to a place called “school”.

But I knew and believed that it was important for my future. I believed so based on the values that my mum had taught me and that it was important for me to study hard and pay attention. My Mum had a difficult childhood and upbringing and therefore she never really got the opportunity or better still, the choice whether she wanted to go to school or not. So out of respect and love for my Mum, as well as sensing that she wanted to ensure I got the opportunities that she didn’t.

The school years are a blur from the age of 4 right up to high school and then university. The things that I enjoyed outside of lessons were dance class, singing (I cannot sing but that didn’t stop me) and reading. I remember being called a book worm and my teacher once called me his human dictionary. I would despise doing homework and think it was a load of crap. All I wanted to do was read, and read aloud to anyone who would listen, I would follow my mum around the kitchen reading aloud to her frequently.

As I got older, I enjoyed art class and it was the only hobby I happily and actively chose to do, I was good at art, I think it was the only subject in my entire life I ever achieved an A in.  All the hobbies that I have mentioned above all have one thing in common, they are all creative and imaginative activities. Yet, that wasn’t enough for me to realise.

Throughout my teenage years, I didn’t excel in anything at school, along with raging hormones and my primary concerns being if my trousers were tight enough on my arse (I didn’t have one back then) or if the vending machines would have sold out of Chocolate Milk by the time I got to the canteen at lunchtime.

 For me, I was at school because what else was there? It’s not like I had a choice to do anything else, or did I? I had a great social life. Life was carefree in comparison to now and “being an adult”. You aren’t taught life skills or what to expect once you leave school. To a certain extent you are protected in this bubble where there is no need to think outside of that. Teachers and parents alike would say, school will help you get a good job/career like it is the only thing that matters on planet Earth.

When high school finished at the age of 16, I still had no idea what career I wanted to pursue or what I wanted to be. I felt an element of pressure for that, like I would slip behind in life if I didn’t decide quickly. I often thought, when will I know what I want to do, or I would ask myself what was wrong with me? I told myself that the best way for me to have a successful career was to educate myself more, and by doing so I chose to go to college and study for A Levels. I told myself, Dayna you didn’t put your all in before but now is your chance to get higher grades and I cannot accept failure because then where will I get in life?

For my A levels I chose to do Psychology, Travel and Tourism and Health and Social Care. I was happy with these subjects because for the first time in my academic life, I was given the choice to decide for myself.

I loved Psychology, I absolutely loved it, it helped that my teacher was bonkers and 80% of his vocabulary was the word “fuck”. He had worked in prisons with sexual offenders for most of his career and once he even brought in a schizophrenic patient with multiple personalities to class. I have always had a real interest in how people operate and theories etc. Travel and tourism was something else I was interested in because I am a real geek when it comes to travelling, and not in the way that you think either. You could be thinking that it’s because I want to see the world (who the fuck doesn’t?) but that wasn’t the driving reason. It’s because I’m a massive geek and I have a weird genuine interest in modes of transport; planes, trains, you name it (but mainly those two). Again, I unashamedly love that about me. And, lastly, Health and Social Care was for me personally, the least interesting choice, I think I chose it at the time in case I decided to work with children or the elderly.

  Anyways – I don’t want to bore you with my every single life choice I had made by the time I was 17 but I did my A levels and I was still not getting higher grades. Not because I wasn’t capable, but because I was lazy and couldn’t be bothered. Sure, I loved listening to the facts and information that I was being taught but I used to think, why do I have to write an essay about this topic that I have just learnt. What does it prove? I remember thinking to myself, I don’t want to do this. But I would also be thinking that I was lazy and that I was sabotaging myself for not caring enough about my future. In hindsight, I have since realised and learnt that the schooling system is just wrong. On so many levels. It makes me smile when I think back as a few of my closest friends made the decision to leave college before the first year was over to go down a different route in life, i.e. get a job etc and I remember my mindset at the time was; omg they are going to fail at life (quite literally).

During college I decided I would go on to university. I still couldn’t give a definitive answer about what I wanted to do long term as a career, but I did want to experience more and let’s be honest, university was a 4-year party. I started university at Leeds Metropolitan in September 2011 and graduated 4 years later with a degree in International Hospitality Management. I absolutely loved university. I still stand by the decision that university was hands down one of the best experiences of my life. Whilst I was at university, I had a part time job because I couldn’t afford to live without it. I worked as a Kitchen Assistant for Wetherspoons and for the most part I hated it. The main thing that made it worthwhile was that I worked with completely crazy people who were fun and had something to teach me as I had never met people similar in the past. Working in the kitchen helped me rule out a chef career and gave me an insight into the hard work, long hours and stress that chefs endure.

My university course was a sandwich course which meant that I had to complete a year’s work experience in the industry to count towards my degree. I always had a real interest in hotels and the way they operated so I decided I would apply for a receptionist role in a hotel in Leeds. I remember writing my CV and printing 50 copies, putting on a suit and then walking around the entirety of Leeds walking into each hotel handing in my CV to a member of staff. I would like to add that I could have easily just looked for jobs online and applied that way, but I thought that it showed willing by actively going in and introducing myself. I never heard back from any hotel, except for the one that I got the job in.

The hotel I worked in was a large hotel with 134 bedrooms and a leisure club and spa that had 5,000 external members alone. When I started it was tough and on my first day, I was so nervous I couldn’t even answer the phone. But I stuck at it and was promoted to Team Leader 8 months after I joined, and I worked there for just under 3 years. I remember when I started working there, I really enjoyed it. I would work long shifts, up to 12 hours per day and double shifts where I would finish at 11pm and be back in at 6am the next day. I would bend over backwards based on the knowledge that I was doing a great job. But then I began to realise that I wasn’t appreciated. I wasn’t appreciated through words or emotions, or through tangible elements such as pay incentives or reward. I write all of this for a reason, I began to realise, and things started to add up. I started to focus more on the employees and how they felt and what motivated them rather than the business or how many people I could sell an upgraded room type to.

Motivation is a word that can be defined in a thousand and one ways, I would know, I wrote 12,000 words for my dissertation on that topic alone.  Motivation is something that has been researched and built upon over the years and is something that all companies should take seriously.

For me personally, I am motivated intrinsically, I like to feel warm and gooey inside knowing that I have achieved something to be proud of or I have made someone else smile with my words etc.

Other people may be more motivated by objects and items, money, and what they can purchase with the money.

For example, you could argue that a Doctor or a nurse must be intrinsically motivated because we all know how little they are paid for the years of studying and ball breaking dedication they put into helping others and saving lives.

Eventually I realised which career path I wanted to embark on, Human Resources. It had clicked in my mind that I wanted to work with the employees of a company as my customers rather than the customers that were buying the products or services from a company. So, I started searching for HR roles within the hospitality industry, I still loved the hospitality industry so I wanted to remain there, but I wanted to work more with supporting the employees and by doing so, they would support the company. Richard Branson, one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time says, “A company is people. Employees want to know, am I being listened to or am I a cog in the wheel? People really needed to feel wanted”. I got my first HR trainee role and relocated back home and started my first ever “real 9-5” job.

To cut another ultra-long story short, about a year after I had started the new HR role, even though I really loved it, I began to think to myself – is this all there is? You could call me overly ambitious but knowing myself I am just impatient. And somewhere along the lines, between graduating university with all the hopes and excitement that I first had and being a few years down the line in my career, reality set in and the little voice in my head said, be realistic.

But why should I tell myself to be realistic, I am a millennial. I come from an era where parents told us we could be anything that we wanted to be. When you are five years old and you dream of being an astronaut or a cowboy, your parents agree with you because it is harmless right? so why would you ever think that you were being unrealistic?

Working in HR I know that it is still widely frowned upon to look at an applicant’s CV and see that they have “job hopped” since they graduated. Recruiters and employers who aren’t willing to adapt to change believe that it shows a lack of stability and loyalty from a person if they change roles and companies every year or so. Well gone are the days where our grandparents would start a job at the age of 16 and do the same job until retirement at the ripe old age of 65. The world today is changing at an ever-increasing rate and who is to be certain of what tomorrow brings?

I am now in this process and point in my life where I have started to expose myself to new information and learn something that was foreign to me. As I said in my previous post, we don’t know what we don’t know. But when you start to focus your attention towards something, it manifests. Another core belief of mine is that everything happens for a reason, and that we are exposed to certain life events on purpose.

I have realised at the age of 27, that I don’t want to work for another 40 years until I can retire and live off state pension. I don’t want to work for someone else’s goals and objectives, I don’t want to be told how many hours I must work per week. I don’t want my financial stability to be in someone else’s hands. The list goes on and on.

It is fine to say, I don’t want this, I don’t want that, but the question is: do I have the power to change it? Absolutely. I revert to my previous comment about the fact that we tell children they can be anything they dream to be. So why is it that if I tell someone at the age of 27 that I am starting my own business and I am going to be an entrepreneur they look at me like I am batshit or tell me to be realistic? My grandma used to tell me when I was a teenager, study hard, why don’t you become a doctor. And even at a young age I would think in my mind, the only reason is because it would look and sound good to others so that she could say, “My granddaughter is a Doctor”.

I write all of this with no disrespect to a single soul. No disrespect to my loved ones or friends. Because 6 months ago, I was included in the 93% of the population that all live within the “rules” and norms of society. The rules being that you go to school, study hard, get good grades and then get a good job and jump through hoops for 40+ years of your life to provide for yourself and family and then you get to retire just a few years before death (if you make it that far). The late Jim Rohn, who was one of the world’s most famous entrepreneurs and motivational speakers said, “Formal education will make a living; self-education will make you a fortune”. It is correct, formal education does make you a living. I can honestly say hand on heart that I have never needed to use Algebra in my life since leaving school and that a calculator gets me through just fine. Self-education is what we choose freely, we have the choice to invest in ourselves or not.

One of my pet hates, which I am totally guilty of doing in the past is when people say, “Happy Friday” or “thank god it’s Friday”. Isn’t that sad? Society has created a monster, to the point where people may not even be necessarily conscious of what they are doing daily because it is like being on a hamster wheel. The daily commute to work at the same time every day, the same route, the same things that we see each day.

Maybe it is just me reading too much into it. But I do believe that to a certain extent, Instagram is also promoting the hamster wheel by having emojis that say “TGIF” or a Camel with the word Wednesday above it. I feel like people are wishing their life away, for 5 days of the week to be over, to then “live” for the other two.

I need to keep emphasising the point that I am not writing any of this as if I am better than anyone else, I have been doing most of the above for my entire life up until this point too. I am simply sharing what I have experienced and learnt and where I am at present in my life.

I have been at the point where I would wake up in the morning and would have rather done quite literally anything else but go to work because I hated my job, and I knew that I didn’t have a choice but to go because of one reason – money. Money was the primary reason and control over me having to go to a workplace. As Charles Bukowski famously says, “how in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30am by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, force feed, shit, piss, get dressed and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”

The reason that it strikes an emotional reaction inside me is because I have come from a family and background with little money. Most things have been a struggle. For example, when I turned 17, the legal age to drive a car, I didn’t pass my driving test straight away because my family couldn’t afford to fund the lessons, and neither could I. So, I passed my test when I was 19 instead, after I had earnt the money myself out of stubbornness. My mum offered to help me countless times, but I was adamant I would do it myself even when my friends would mock me for being lazy and not passing sooner. I have never had money chucked at me for things, holidays etc. And when I did have the financial capacity to have more freedom, I chose wrong and got myself into debt because I went to Ibiza and festivals etc. I don’t regret any of the decisions I made, because it was all a part of the learning process.

But since I started to invest in myself to become better, I realised that in the past, I had chosen to accept what was handed to me, instead of trying to create my own journey or spending time trying to find what my passions are to create a life that I chose, not that I slept walked through.

One of the most eye opening and invaluable books that I have read is “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki. There’s an old saying, that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, I used to believe that the rich were conniving and unjust. People say that the rich keep all the money and don’t help “the poor?” Why aren’t the poor doing anything to help themselves? Well, Robert also says that the word JOB stands for “Just Over Broke”. Perhaps I am being overly cynical but for me, this quote stands true as the sky is blue.

I find myself talking and talking so I guess I should wrap it up.

What I have learnt based on reflection and through changing what I pay attention to is that most of society is messed up. We are sent to school from a very young age and are kept there until the age of 18. We aren’t given the freedom or information to understand that we can think outside the box and that we don’t have to go to work for someone else. But then think of it another way, if everyone was taught at school that they could be an entrepreneur and teachers provided real life and world changing examples like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs… then wouldn’t there be too many “successful people” in the world. But that wouldn’t happen because people are like sheep, they follow what is “normal” or they prefer living in their comfort zone.

The world is forever evolving and whilst it is scary, it is also so exciting. Mary Augustine says that we become happier in life when we realise that life is an opportunity rather than an obligation. The amazing entrepreneurs that I mentioned above should be the people we are thanking and counting our blessings for, for the opportunities they have provided to the entire world. Mark Zuckerberg for Facebook, Steve Jobs for Apple, Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom for Instagram, to name a few. They have enriched so many people’s lives because of their innovative minds, for being brave enough to think outside of the box and push and believe in their dreams even when the fear of the unknown was greater. Astoundingly, millions of people choose to spend their precious time keeping up with the Kardashians plastic faces on Instagram, so if they became rich for doing nothing… then the world is our oyster!

Much love xxx

[optomstudies]

Hey, so usually I'm very early and prepared for exams but this time for my Christmas exams, I've left EVERYTHING until 5 days before the exams! There's too much to memorise in such a short amount of time! And I have a busy schedule so I can't do revision 24/7! Any tips? 

Pssst! The best tip for cramming is actually to not cram!! 🙃 But if you have to, here are some tips that actually work! 💲💲

Throw out all distractions, and palm off as many commitments as possible to others.

You’re a student at the end of the day. That’s your job, so do it properly. Before you are a retail worker, a movie buddy, a chauffeur for your siblings, or a studyblr blog manager, you are a student. 

You don’t have a lot of time left, so give your phone to your parents or someone you trust to keep it away from you. Add StayFocusd to Chrome and turn on the nuclear option so that you only use the internet for study purposes. Get your friends/siblings or parents to do chores for you and make it up to them after the exams. 

Know what’s likely to be tested.

This is much more important than anything else. There are going to be important concepts that you learn that are not going to be tested. No point studying for something that won’t be asked about. Pro tip: think about the homework exercises that you got and what they tested. 

Just as a general rule, the most basic things such as definitions (skim read these), as well as the most complex cases, will not comprise the majority of the test. For complex cases, you can’t just skim read them, but you should get an idea of the skills/processes that you need to solve them. 

For example, when learning about different diseases, the point is to make you a practitioner which can deal with the most dangerous (life-threatening, sight-threatening no matter how rare), most common (>1% prevalence) and uncommon (0.1-1%) diseases, which will comprise the majority of the points. The rare conditions (<0.1%) will either be right near the end of the test or be bonus point questions. The other thing is that if even if they do ask about rare conditions, it’s going to be a distinguishing sign, or it is related to a more common condition. And the question they most likely ask is “what further tests would you do to aid diagnosis?” which relates to basic concepts of disease diagnosis. 

Also, just keep in mind that there are university exams which literally ask you minutae in the multiple choice questions. For example disease exams have asked things like “What percentage of people with diabetes mellitus have diabetic retinopathy?” and have four really similar options for percentages. You just have to had studied that, and odds are you won’t be able to remember a hundred different stats prior to your exam if you’re cramming (just don’t cram, you literally can’t cram for uni exams). 

Divide your time appropriately (not necessarily equally) between understanding the course content and doing practice exercises/ examination style questions.

If you just launch into doing practice questions without having some sort of knowledge, you’ll get stuck on a lot of questions, get the questions wrong, and need to refer back to your textbooks and do a lot of searching and flipping through pages, which wastes your time.

So start off by going through the concepts first so that you know enough not to constantly look back. You should try to allocate as much time as possible actually answering questions though, because there’s no better way to prepare for an exam than to do exam-style questions. 

Step-by-step: Count the number of chapters/lectures you need to cover, and divide it equally amongst about 40% of the time that you have left, so that you know how long to spend revising each lecture. 

Focus on one exam at a time, and study the hardest concepts which require a lot of reasoning and understanding in the morning. 

Studying in the morning allows you to be at your freshest and most switched on. If you’re strapped for time, focus on being able to explain things. Explain it to your parents, siblings, or gudetama plushie. Explaining is an exercise in summarising which tests your ability to understand causative elements and how they relate to different consequences. 

Ask questions to yourself whilst studying. 

This tests your knowledge, and is a good way for you to check what you know and what you don’t know. When you’re cramming, you likely don’t have someone to help you at such short notice, so you need to be that person for yourself. Plus, it primes you to think like an examiner/exam paper - you’ll start realising what’s likely to be tested, which helps you narrow down what to study, and it helps you for the next part: practice questions. 

For example: geometry - to give a simple example, yes, you need to know what an angle bisector is, but are they likely in the exam to ask you to “Write the definition of an angle bisector.”? No. They’re going to get you to actually get your tools and bisect one. 90% of the time, you don’t need to know a definition in maths - it’s only the foundation knowledge so that you can answer actual questions. 

For example: medical/health science. Yes, you need to know differentials for diseases, but are they going to ask you to “List the differentials for ___”? No, that’s too simple, they’re obviously going to get you to eliminate a differential by considering the similarities and differences in signs and symptoms. So it’s much better to spend your time learning which conditions have similarities and what the distinguishing signs are e.g. Fuch’s Uveitis has stellate KP that is scattered all around the corneal endothelium - all other forms of uveitis pretty much have the KP scattered in Arlt’s triangle because of the convection currents in the anterior chamber. 

Chunk information together. 

This is a much more effective way of summarising all the information you need to study. Think of your memory as a mind map or a expandable list or like a set of folders in My Documents. You should try and sort things into topics and sub-topics that you can simply expand by just thinking of the title of that sub-topic. 

Step-by-Step: Cover up the information you’ve written under the sub-topics, and then try to recall it all just by looking at the title (acts as a trigger word). 

Topic/Chapter/Lecture 1

“Sub-Topic 1″ #Try and recall all the info below by reading this#

#cover up this information#

#cover up this information#

#cover up this information#

“Sub-Topic 2″

“Sub-Topic 3″

Not only does this 1) actually test your knowledge through a smaller form of the blank paper method (previously written about here) but it also 2) allows you to chunk and remember massive amounts of information just by seeing the trigger word (the title of the topic). 

It helps to make a mental note of how many points were written for each section.

Tie everything together with a mnemonic. 

Of course, the issue now is that if you don’t have the trigger word then you won’t remember that chunk of information - so you need to counter that by using a mnemonic to remember the top level of topics and link everything together in your mind. 

Using this method is what I’ve always done to remember large chunks of information. That way, when key words turn up in the question, you will be able to remember all the information under that category and hence answer the question flawlessly. 

Practice by doing one exercise for each type of question. 

Particularly useful for studying for maths/science. You just need to know how to solve one question in the set to know how to solve the rest. Pick the hardest question at the end of the question set because it will involve the most skills to complete. 

Study in a different order. Study your concepts in reverse. 

Make sure you change things up, because you don’t want your brain to only be able to answer a question if all the topics lead on to the next. The questions in the exam are going to be covering all your topics in all different orders. Jump from Chapter 3 to Chapter 5 to Chapter 2, and do the same for the sub-topics. 

Secondly, study concepts in reverse because this is how exams test who really knows their stuff. For example: instead of learning that Disease A has Symptoms 1, 2, and 3, force your brain to think “What Disease has Symptoms 1, 2, and 3?” - because this is exactly the type of question that comes up in exams. 

Drink water, take breaks, sleep. 

Still needs to be done to maximise your productivity. Not taking breaks will make you less efficient and less effective. You also said that you have other commitments so try to get that stuff done in the short breaks between your study sessions so that you can be productive. Take a 5-10 minute break every hour and get out of your seat and stretch. Sleep is essential for our brains to consolidate information and retain information. 

Best of luck!!

MY STUDY TIPS

My study tips directory (web only) for the full list (over 80+ original posts/guides!)

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29/11 How to Be Fluent in Languages Masterpost 3 👂 27/11 How to Be Fluent in Languages Masterpost 2 📰 26/11 Thinking about Stress 1 and 2 23/11 Motivation to Make You Study! 🏃 22/11 How to Be Fluent in Languages Masterpost 1 🙊 20/11 Advice: Art School vs. College 🎨 19/11 Exam Study Tips 💯 15/11 Digital Organisation System 💻 14/11 Library Adventures! 📚 11/11 Budgeting for Students 🏦 10/11 How to Deal with Leeches 🐛 08/11 Extra-Curriculars Tips 🤹 07/11 More Handwriting Tips ✍️ 07/11 APUSH Masterpost 🤠 06/11 Memorising Tips 💭 06/11 How Your ATAR is Calculated Infographic 💯 04/11 Reading a Scientific Journal Article 📜 02/11 Tips: Tackling Assignments while Sick 🤒

UNIVERSITY STUDY TIPS SERIES

Part 0 Choosing a Degree - what’s right for you? popular!!

> Things to Consider Before Switching Degrees!

> Changing Degrees

Part 1 Administration - choosing majors, available services, choosing class times etc.

Part 2 Getting to Class - pros and cons of attending class, when you should choose not to attend, advice about choosing a backpack and other essential equipment.

> Laptop Considerations and Recommendations

Part 3 Studying - differences between high school and uni, basic tips on how to keep on track, class types like lectures, tutorials, etc.

Part 4 Extra-Curriculars - what clubs to join, what to do outside class, and other great things to discover around campus.

Part 5 Exams - everything to know about examiners, how to prepare, what happens during the whole examination process.

Part 6 Social Life - differences between high school and university, some hard learnt lessons, etc.

Part 7 Part Time Work

Part 8 Four Secrets The Uni Tells You

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Part 12 How to Study From Textbooks in Uni

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[transhumanitynet]

The Future Acts Like You - How To Live in the Future Part 7

My friends and I were walking dogs the other day on city greenbelt trails, observing how polite and well-behaved the female dogs were when compared to male dogs, how much less likely they were to get riled up by meeting strange pets — and the thought occurred to me (as surely it must have for many others) that if it were up to choice, most people might prefer a female dog for this one reason. How, if we could breed the ratio down to the market’s preference, or find some way to pre-arrange the sexes of a litter (like they can by turning off one gene in turtles), it might be 80/20 females/males, or hardly any males at all. And then I realized that we’re here already – modifying mammal genomes is old hat by now, and all that stands between us and deciding if your baby will be born a boy or girl (or intersex, or some new thing) is just a few years’ of Moore’s Law driving down the price of lab tests and in vitro or in vivo interventions. We are very close to giving women what they’ve always wanted under patriarchy: the ability to reproduce without a man involved.

Sure, birth control was liberating, but imagine how it’s going to be when a sufficiently large XX population can clock out and then womyn-ufacture Amazons on their apotheosis-feminism, GMO coral vulva artificial island. But of course, Athena born from Zeus’ brow is quintessential patriarchy — equally the goal of men, since written records started, to extract themselves from their dependence on the mysteries of reproduction, to appropriate them with the scientific program, finishing the murder of Sophia and then peacing out, and up to some transcendent Man Cave in the sky, Elysium in orbit, hanging out in virtual reality with perfectly obedient and caring AI girlfriends. But of course, this is The Matrix, and it doesn’t get more Cosmic Mom than that. It isn’t hard to see the dawn light of an age in which both sides stand hands on hips, across the atmosphere from one another, shouting, “We don’t need you anymore!”

Nor is it hard to see why it’s ridiculous. It won’t work like that, because time’s not so much a centrifuge that pulls polarities apart as it’s a live volcano, constantly erupting, spreading novel opportunities and forms to make new landscapes that include the past, but ooze beyond it. And as each side of the War of Sexes clusters further from each other on the graph, a huge magmatic bell curve upswells in between them, opening our options. We will have our age of clones, chimerae, and designer babies; and we’ll go on dating one another, even when it seems archaic posed against the novel kinds of families in a Cambrian Explosion of communal “body plans” that place the nuclear “Mom, Dad, & Kids” at the top left of a new periodic table, opening a vast new chemistry of love and reproductive options.

First, though, we will suffer through an era that empowers narcissists to make more narcissists with even greater ease, and without having to recruit a partner to help raise the lovely little bastards they create. I see it now: instead of virtue-signaling as single parents, people running solo with their mini-mes will be the objects of suspicion, probably contempt:

“I’m raising him to inherit my dangerous and lonely life of bounty hunting!”

“Can you believe he paid the carbon tax to make a copy of himself? If everybody did that, we’d need eighteen Earths to make it work…!”

“I thought she was amazing on our first date, till I realized that her little girl was just a backup. No way, dude, I’d only be a plaything for that woman.”

People will look wistfully back on The Good Old Days, when you knew that the cute guy with his kid in Central Park was not just readying the vessel for his memory-and-wallet transfer in another fifty years… And yet none of these biotech shenanigans will ever guarantee the realized dream of solipsists: to carry on forever, and thus matter to the story, True and Timeless, an immortal in the flesh, around which everything ephemerally spins. The best that we can get’s a domino chain of compelling duplicates — in just the same way kids are now already the extension of their parents’ unexamined death anxieties and unfulfilled desires — the iteration of a process changing gradually enough (and also, paradoxically, flickering fast enough) that we’re fooled into interpreting it as continuous.

But history does not repeat itself; it rhymes, and rhyming couplets will appear in longer lines, or shorter, and embedded in more, or less, complicated schemes, as we convince ourselves that we’ve achieved eternity, or push rebelliously opposite, to try and offer something fresh to who, or what, comes next. For meditators this is already the case: the ego is an “optical illusion”“caused” by oscillations in the coming-in-and-out-of-being of sufficiently-alike appearances. You only act like you already, since your “you” is based on feedback and experience, and you can’t ever know the whole you all at once;and you treat your future selves like children, whose responsibility it is to carry on your legacy, as if you owned them, or they owed you; or to break the pattern of a self divided, self-assessed as “broken,” somehow.

Future You, by contrast, is emergent, rhyming, under zero obligation to agree to contracts you imagine it inherits — just as “mind uploading” falsely presupposes that it is desirable to have (or be) some magical computer that believes it’s you for the two seconds that it takes to leave that personality behind. (Why not just die?) Or worse, preserved in static non-life at a ghastly price, unchanging in direct proportion to the violence required to export entropy indefinitely, to transform from human being into humanoid refrigerator. (In this sense, death is life: because participating in the transformation cannot be escaped, and we’re alive as much as we’re aware of our participation.)

Increasingly high fidelity echoes of people further disrupt attempts at linear history.

You already have a fossil of you made of data, “shaped” like you but in n + a million more dimensions than a human can imagine at a time. Everything you do is tracked, and this is common knowledge, and the reason is that information “wants” to integrate, that evolution tilts toward senses and intelligence as adaptations to the ever-more-complex occasions senses bring upon us in the first place. It’s an ever-loving ratcheting of quickening self-inquiry that isn’t always pretty; curiosity comes in the form of turtle-persecuting birds and other more deliberate sadism, the police search and The Eye of Sauron and so on. And this results in things like Cambridge Analytica, which learned to please its masters by presenting them with cunning models of us, insights into how to press our buttons, how to literally steer us into multiple non-overlapping narratives and kill our opportunity to have an easy argument as citizens of a consensual reality.

But people hammer cannons into bells and back again, and round and round…and weapons like the profile advertisers use on you, the cast impression that you leave of every decision that you’ve made since you first intersected with the Internet… (I realize that for most of you, you never intersected but have always been not-two, but this applies to you, as well — and, arguably, The Acceleration is a transtemporal object and exudes time, draws us into it, our attention on it is our fascination to a serpent, and we’re in the belly of the beast Already Always, and there never was no Internet, no Noösphere, no highly patterned information at the intersections, striving.)

…and every decision that was made about you, also part of the Big You you can’t see, You The Elephant, officially and formally transfinite in complexity as we explore down magnitudes of scale, a multitude of multitudes…

…all that can be turned into the instruments of art, and your hard-forked personae generated with assistance from an always-more-complete (but also always-incomplete, retreating, deepeningly weird) recording can be the new media, The Last and First New Media. Remixed along a functionally infinite set of dimensions and indefinitely, you-not-yous proliferate.

Most of you will likely get along.

But fleshy clone or software “mindclone,” the best that we can get is to extend life into non-life, until (as has already happened in the sciences, and will soon pounce out of them to snare us all in its unpleasant truth) these definitions snap, and leave us navigating a deterritorialized liminal zone, an uncanny simulacra-land where “living things” become deprived of their priority, not known transparently and fully as controllable/predictable, but found beneath our microscopes to be composed of ever weirder and unknowable phenomena no would comfortably call “life.” The soul escapes to everywhere, diffuse, without allegiance, coming into focus on the shores in crashing surf, and every bit as happy to inhabit fog computing meshes as our mess of flesh and blood. Complexity “emerges” into our awareness, not into “reality” — it enters from the theater itself, from the occluded, at the “boundaries,” in between the voices of a choir, where sea meets land and oscillating waves reveal by contrast “difference(s),” Gregory Bateson says, “that make…a difference.”

The closest we can get, again, is with provisional, loose, working definitions that stay open to the force of revelation. When Alan Turing asked, “Can a submarine swim?” — when Timothy Morton says that we are “weak” before the Great & Terrible reality of “hyperobjects” like the Biosphere or Singularity — when Kevin Kelly tells us science manufactures questions exponentially faster than it answers them, and so experiment and prayer converge at Mystery worship — this is their message: we lose solid footing in the future (ever-more the loudest part of now), and first to go is the container of belief in sure things that has cradled us for centuries. What once were “sure things” still appear as traces, tracers like the afterimages left on a retina from staring at the Sun, the spectral fossils of modernity, luminous vestiges that haunt the shadows cast by the Atomic Age’s Angel as it enters, interrupting histories and worlds to deliver us into the crowded Noösphere.

The human form will live beyond humanity…often imagined as a diaspora of freed slave replicants.

We might consider this, as Erik Davis does, “re-animism” — a revival of the lived experience of haunted stones and forests, all reincarnated as the silicon chips, fractal aerials, semantic tress of “virtual machines,” and sigil-magic logo mascot animals, quite happy to return to our mundane realities in forms more suited to their nowhere-in-particular-ness. But maybe it’s more accurate to say the disenchantment of the modern world has run its course by finally erasing itself (and the world) as the last spell spoken to protect us from the spooky mess of things, a failing ward — not a “re-animism” so much as an accidental welcoming-back as we all become transparent (and thus sensitive, aware of, maybe even wise) to forces that we never truly banished.

So, the future acts like you because as we grow meek in our attunement to it, we allow a conversation to occur. It learns our mannerisms, like the metamorphic mannequins of Terminator 2 or Alex Garland’s version of Annihilation, or (more heinously) John Carpenter’s The Thing, or (sentimentally) the aliens of Carl Sagan’s Contact — weirdness taking shape to interface with us, inquisitive, its motives totally unknowable.

Rave Egg Wants For Nothing. Rave Egg Is INEFFABLE.

To drive this home with repetition, this is already the case: the alien reality of our own bodies, papered over with a sense of home and deep familiarity, disclosed by our collaborations with nonhuman scientific instruments to be endlessly-shifting puzzleboxes, deeply Other.

“What do you want,” we ask — and, straining to discern an audible reply, we might hear something about selfish genes, or entropy, or childhood attachment issues, or The Lord’s Good Work, or (similarly) our participation in the future history of unborn gods. But these are all refractions and distortions, echoes of the ghost notes of the choir-roar of the black hole that has already swallowed us and who-knows-what-else. The deeper that we listen, the more we empty subjectivity into the object and accept its speech, the more apparent it is that the future acts like you because you act just like the future, too; you can’t not. Consequently, it is “for” no-thing and for all things; it is the All-Thing, and all things are rendered equally mysterious and strange before this knowing.

Uncanny even for the uncanny: The liquid metal mimetic T-1000 mistakes a mannequin for one of his kind.

What this means “in practical terms” is that we will spend this interregnum between Ages either in the bardo, lost within a maelström of appearances; or in the zendo, learning to appreciate (and be) “miegakure,” the aesthetic of the garden in which thirteen stones are carefully arranged so that you never see them all at once. One of the thirteen stones is always hidden, and that incomplete view thus points past delusional “completeness” to a hyperspace in which what we call time is the rotation of a mystery afloat on deeper mystery — just like the “glass chrysanthemum” that meets some DMT explorers at the moment that they’re born out of their lives and into what always-already IS, mistaken as a death because we pass through the distracting clarity of that peacock mandala into no-space/all-space, no-time/all-time, in which everything’s already happened.

It is the water that the water swims in. We are made of it, including you and your AI assistants and your clones and children and the other other-selves more distal still, distilled until it’s easier to see the ghost in the machine, the you you can’t convince yourself is you, in all its splendor and its overwhelming strangeness…

Each zendo is a bardo and vice versa; we are always traveling, always invited into deeper seeing. This gets more and more apparent — or comprises more of the apparent — as things weird around us. We meet weird halfway, accepting our perversity and bottomlessness in just, equal measure to accepting the surprising life of the “inanimate.” We get a hell of a lot cozier with living in a noisy void of whirling, breathing unknowns vying for attention even as they dodge our scrutiny. It’s just another day in the profanely sacred Pandemonium.

SalviaDroid knows what it’s like to have everything trying to distract you. Don’t give in to astonishment!

From here to there — at least if we pretend that prophecy (in speaking of the timeless, evergreen, and always-true) can be prediction (and thus stretch from past to future “forward,” as with time-space synesthesia, and can be read like Doppler-shifted history) — we stand to suffer some extraordinary shocks.

Expect the sci fi usuals: love bots that take the shape of your departed partner(s); mansions full of talking toys that remix “Beast” and “Beauty;” 3D-printed “respawns” that arrive too soon and sue for your identity; software-person genocide; high-resolution body scans that live online and let you run scenarios until you lose track of which basement level of the dream you’re in; Siri making calls on your behalf and forging your identity (with and without permission); intelligent memorials you visit in VR sets dressed up looking like your parents in their old house; an entire menagerie of slightly-out-of-focus junior holograms of you that sit on either shoulder and debate like parliament about what you should do next. And you listen even though they’re out of focus, because they are privy to a wider view than you, they help translate the flood of information, some folks run a lot more at a time than you, but you’re conservative and two seems plenty.

(It’s already this way — ask any neuroscientist — but soon you’ll have two intuitions, neither of which you can be entirely sure hasn’t been suborned by hackers. Oh well — at least you can compare them to each other for a third opinion, always weighing new perspectives, forking when you all can’t reach consensus, delegating runtime on the fogmesh to the version that refuse to play so they can spin off into some human but solipsistic microverse, your self an integrated legion, cross-platform ecology, that blurs and fringes at the margins, no concrete delineation other than what we place somewhat arbitrarily between the “I” and “it,” the things you are and your appearances.)

Do I really look like that?

(This is a draft chapter from my first book, in progress, and a companion text to Future Fossils Podcast. Learn more at Patreon.com/MichaelGarfield.)

The Future Acts Like You – How To Live in the Future Part 7 was originally published on transhumanity.net

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

30Will Michael Cohen flip? The media has been debating that question ever since the FBI raided the office of President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer on April 8. Cohen is under investigation for bank fraud and campaign finance violations, and while that case is separate from Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election, many have wondered if Cohen will be tempted to help Mueller in exchange for a little leniency on his own legal troubles. The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, one of the country’s foremost Trump whisperers, said on CNN that Cohen could end up having to choose between “his life or the president’s.”1

But the key question about somebody like Cohen is not only “will he flip” but also “should we trust him if he does?” A Cohen flip would be a big red flag to researchers who study what’s known as “accomplice witnesses” — people who agree to testify against former colleagues and receive, in return, lighter sentences for their own, related, crimes. These kinds of witnesses aren’t treated with enough scrutiny by juries, experts said, and the use of accomplice witnesses and other informants by prosecutors is largely unregulated and undocumented. That’s led some experts to be suspicious about any case that hinges on testimony from someone who is incentivized to talk.

Now, their skepticism is about informants, generally, and doesn’t have anything to do with Cohen or the Mueller investigation specifically. Moreover, incentivized informant testimony — both from accomplice witnesses and from “jailhouse informants” who pass on information gleaned from cell mates — isn’t inherently bad, said Jeffrey Neuschatz, professor of psychology at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Nobody knows the rates at which they provide inaccurate information (although we do know that humans are willing to alter their behavior in big ways for even small incentives). And both law enforcement and prosecutors say these kinds of witnesses are sometimes necessary to prove a case — especially ones involving complex criminal enterprises where it might be easy to catch a low-level perpetrator and much harder to catch his boss’ boss.

But what we do know is that, when researchers study situations where people went to prison for crimes they did not commit, informant testimony was one of the four major factors contributing to those convictions.

Informants can be a key factor in wrongful convictions

Types of evidence involved in the 330 cases exonerated by DNA evidence in the U.S. as of 2015

Type of Evidence No. of Cases Share of Cases Eyewitness misidentification 236 72%

–

–

Poor-quality forensic evidence 234 71

–

–

Incentivized informants 80 24

–

–

False confessions 68 21

–

–

Most cases involved more than one type of evidence

Source: Cambridge University Press

For instance, out of the 330 people exonerated by DNA evidence as of 2015, 24 percent of those convictions involved informant testimony, according to research by University of Virginia law professor Brandon Garrett. An earlier study from the Northwestern University School of Law’s Center on Wrongful Convictions, which focused just on capital cases, turned up even higher rates: Of the 111 death row inmates exonerated between the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 and 2004, 45.9 percent of their cases involved informant testimony. According to both Garrett and the National Registry of Exonerations, the use of incentivized informants seems to be more common in capital cases than it is when the stakes are lower.

In that way, incentivized informants are similar to three other major issues in the criminal justice system that have also been shown to heavily contribute to wrongful convictions: eyewitness misidentification, false or coerced confessions and flawed forensic science. But while those issues have received widespread attention in recent years from the media, scientists and legal reformers, the problems in incentivized witness testimony have largely flown under the radar. In a 2016 American Criminal Law Review article, Yeshiva University law professor Jessica Roth wrote that no one has any idea how frequently incentivized testimony is used and juries don’t always know when the testimony they are seeing was incentivized. There are no federal requirements that it must be backed up with corroborating evidence, no judicial tests for how it should be used and balanced against civil liberties (unlike, say, the famous Miranda rights that regulate confessions), and no federal investigations or research commissions that have been convened to drive reform.

The inherent risks and lack of oversight are enough that even a former prosecutor like Daniel Blinka, professor of law at Marquette University, said incentivized informants should be a last resort in court — particularly because there’s an inverse relationship between the kinds of cases where these informants are used and the availability of corroborating evidence. “If I have a mountain of corroboration already, I don’t need to give anyone a deal,” he said.

The use (or misuse) of informants has huge stakes. When informants do testify, research suggests that their words could have a significant effect on jurors’ behavior. Neuschatz and Butler University psychology instructor Stacy Wetmore found that incentivized testimony makes mock jurors more likely to convict, even when they were explicitly told by an expert witness that such testimony is unreliable. In a paper soon-to-be-published in the “Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology,” Neuschatz even found that incentivized testimony can make people distrust their own eyes. After watching a video of a crime and choosing the perpetrator out of a lineup, participants were told who a jailhouse informant had fingered for the crime. Of the people who picked a different perp, 80 percent changed their story to match the informants’. Regardless of whether we should believe people who flip, we do.

The Mueller investigation doesn’t involve a jury, but Neuschatz said incentivized testimony can shape the direction any investigation takes. In addition, some of the reforms suggested by experts like Neuschatz, Blinka, Wetmore and Roth would apply to Mueller’s work. Requiring incentivized testimony to be reviewed in a reliability hearing before a judge, for instance, or requiring prosecutor’s offices to adopt formal policies governing when they will and won’t use incentivized sources and how incentives can and can’t be offered. Even simply increasing transparency by requiring that all incentivized testimony be recorded — every interview, not just the final one — would help, according to both Roth and Blinka: Informants are often given multiple attempts at telling their story, and can sometimes change it to fit what prosecutors want to hear. Until reforms happen, Blinka said, we’re often left with little choice but to trust people we shouldn’t and hope justice is served even if the details may be tainted.

It’s still unclear what all this means for Cohen, Mueller and Trump. But if Cohen does flip, it’s worth thinking critically about his motivations — and your own in believing him.

[michaelandy101-blog]

Why Overworking Is Bad For Your Health (and Your Career)

New Post has been published on https://tiptopreview.com/why-overworking-is-bad-for-your-health-and-your-career/

Why Overworking Is Bad For Your Health (and Your Career)

There’s no doubt that technology has simplified the way we carry out our day-to-day routines. Computers help us do things faster, emails and text messages let us always be in touch, and the internet makes it easy to find the answer to any question with just a quick Google search.

While being constantly plugged in can make us feel safe, connected, and in-the-know — both at work and at home — it also means we never really clock out.

It’s one thing to pull a long day every once in a while to finish a project or deal with a crisis, but it’s another to routinely stay late at the office or work into the night. That’s chronic overwork — and it can have extremely negative impacts on your health, happiness, and overall quality of life.

But working overtime has become the norm for most people. And, now that multiple offices have embraced remote work, the lines between the end of the work day and the start of personal time can get even blurrier.

It’s one of those things everyone knows is bad for us, but no one really listens. Trouble is, failure to prioritize a healthy balance isn’t just bad for the employees — it’s actually bad for employers, too.

There are numerous research studies out there showing how overwork — and its resulting stress — can lead to many health problems. But, it also impacts your brand’s bigger business too. Read on to learn exactly why it’s bad for health and our performance at work.

Why Overworking is Bad For Your Health

1. It prevents sleep.

Study after study shows that working too much or too late in the day can negatively impact your sleep — whether it’s the resulting stress, the staring at the computer screen, or just not having enough time to unwind before hitting the hay.

Avoiding sleep can cause us to build up “sleep debt.” Essentially, it feels like your energy is overdrawn for days at a time until you get a proper eight hours of sleep.

Chronic sleep debt raises the risk of obesity, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. In the short-term, lack of sleep can have significant effects on the hippocampus, an area of the brain involved in memory creation and consolidation.

Think you’re one of those “lucky people” who can get by fine with only five or six hours of sleep? You probably aren’t. While researchers have found genes in people that enable them to be well rested after less than eight hours of sleep, they also say incidence of either is incredibly rare.

2. Overworking gets in the way of good habits.

Working too much can take a toll on the body and brain in two ways — by boosting stress and by getting in the way of exercise, healthy eating, and other good habits.

For example, when you’re overtired, you rely more on caffeine to get you through the day, you tend to make unhealthy food choices and working out becomes a thing of the past.

Cleveland Clinic reports that stress due to overworking or lack of sleep can cause you to overreat or make poor diet choices. But how does this happen?

First, overworking and lack of sleep slows activity in the areas of our brains responsible for ranking different foods based on what we want and need.

Second, little sleep also causes an increase in the brain’s amygdala, which is responsible for controlling the salience of food. Over time, poor food choices can lead to weight gain and even obesity.

3. Overworking is bad for your heart.

A long-running study of more than 10,000 civil servants in London found that white-collar workers who worked three or more hours longer than a normal, seven-hour day had a 60% higher risk of heart-related problems than white-collar workers who didn’t work overtime. Examples of heart-related problems included death due to heart disease, non-fatal heart attacks, and angina, a condition caused by low blood supply to the heart.

A follow-up study of over 22,000 participants found that people who worked long hours were 40% more likely to suffer from coronary heart disease than those who worked standard hours.

And even after that, reports from health sites like WebMD still tell stories of people who developed heart conditions through overworking.

What about overworking might be causing heart disease, specifically?

The link between overworking and heart disease might have something to do with your personality. In fact, the “Type A vs. Type B” personality test was originally aimed to determine how likely it was that a person would develop coronary heart disease. Considering Type A folks tend to be more competitive, tense, time-oriented, and stressed out — which is often intensified by overworking — their personality type is often associated with a higher risk.

4. It leads to bad habits.

Aside from health risks, research done in the last decade has shown how overworking links to bad habits that are also unhealthy.

Even back in 2015, the Finish Institute of Occupational Health published the largest ever study of the correlation between working patterns and alcohol consumption. In the study, a group of researchers put together a dataset of over 330,000 workers across 14 different countries.

They found that 48 hours of work per week was the magic number: When people worked more than 48 hours per week, they were more likely to engage in “increased risky alcohol use.” Risky alcohol use was defined as more than 14 drinks per week for women and more than 21 drinks per week for men.

Aside from alcohol consumption, researchers have also found that long hours link to bad smoking habits.

And a 2018 paper from Welltory added to the list of bad habits by showing that overworking can also lead to more social media consumption, which can danger your level of stress recover when you’re not working. 

5. It causes higher risks for low-income workers.

Way back in 2015, a group of researchers investigated the role of long working hours as a risk factor for type 2 diabetes. They found that the link between longer working hours and type 2 diabetes is apparent in individuals in the low socioeconomic status groups. This was true regardless of age, sex, obesity, and physical activity, and remained even when they excluded shift workers from the analysis. Shortly after, another study showed an association between long hours and type 2 diabetes in low-income workers.

Overall, these findings show how strong of a relationship a person’s mental state can have on physical health.

Why Overworking is Bad for Business

If better health and happiness isn’t enough of an incentive to do something about chronic overwork, it turns out overworking can have a legitimately negative impact on a business’ bottom line. Sarah Green Carmichael of Harvard Business Review calls the story of overwork “the story of diminishing returns”: keep overworking, and you’ll keep making avoidable mistakes and getting lost in the weeds — all while not actually producing more.

6. More input doesn’t necessarily mean more output.

Do longer work hours equate to more work getting done? From time to time, yes — but not when “overtime” becomes “all the time.”

Research by the Business Roundtable found employees saw short-term gains when they pushed their workweek to 60 or 70 hours for a few weeks at a time if, for example, they needed to meet a critical production deadline. But increasing the number of hours worked in the office from 40 to 60 hours doesn’t result in more output: “In fact, the numbers may typically be something closer to 25–30% more work in 50% more time,” writes Sara Robinson for Salon.

Why? Robinson explains that most people do their best work between hours two and six of working in a given day. By the end of an eight-hour day, their best work tends to be behind them — and by hour nine, fatigue begins to set in and productivity levels drop. They won’t be able to deliver to their full potential — especially if they aren’t invigorated by something like a rare, critical deadline — and they’ll end the day completely exhausted.

Interestingly, one study out of Boston University’s Questrom School of Business found that managers actually couldn’t tell the difference between employees who actually worked 80 hours per week and those who just pretended to. What’s more, managers tended to punish employees who were transparent about working less — but there was no evidence that those employees actually accomplished less, nor were there any signs that the overworking employees accomplished more.

7. You’re more likely to make mistakes.

Speaking of exhaustion, researchers have found that overwork — and the resulting stress and exhaustion — can make it far more difficult to do everything that a modern office requires, including interpersonal communication, making judgment calls, reading people, or managing one’s own emotional reactions. Aside from small office slip ups, research from NCBI even shows that overworking can lead to physical injuries in the workplace.

8. You lose sight of the bigger picture.

Have you ever worked on a project so long that you began to obsess over it and forget about everything else related to your role or personal life? Many marketers have been there.

The breaks we take to recharge, eat meals, or spend time with the people we love help us step back from our work and stay mindful of how our work contributes to our goals.

9. Overworking hinders creativity.

As marketers, we’re sought after for our creative and colorful ideas, messaging, and content. But, this type of work takes a lot of time, energy, and open-mindedness.

Unfortunately, lack of sleep, stress, and other issues caused by overworking can drain your energy, motivation, and, ultimately, your level of creativity.

If you want to stay fresh and creative, it’s important to limit your work hours, get a good night’s sleep, and take time off when you feel like your mind is being drained of creative thoughts.

When you do take time off, be sure to keep a notepad or a phone recording app nearby. Sometimes, creative ideas can strike when you’re most relaxed — and you’ll want to take them down somewhere.

10. It makes multitasking harder.

As we mentioned above, overworking raises the risk of making silly mistakes. This risk gets even higher when you’re working on multiple projects all at once. 

Multitasking is one of the commodities of a modern marketing role. Each day, we might send out an email, update social media, write a long-form blog post, attend multiple video meetings, and monitor the analytics of what we’re doing.

When you’re tired, low on energy, and not primed to pay attention to detail, it will be harder to complete all of your tasks correctly — let alone one of them. 

Who’s to Blame?

Chronically overworking isn’t fun. It doesn’t feelgood;to realize you have to work through yet another family dinner or relaxing weekend.

So why do people do it? Is it because our bosses told us to? Or because we want to make more money? Or do we have some deep-seated psychological need? In her article for Harvard Business Review, Carmichael asks, “who’s to blame?”

Over-ambitious managers?

In many cultures, bosses want and expect employees to put in long days, make themselves available on email 24/7, and work nights, weekends, and during vacation without protest. In this version, writes Carmichael, we overwork because we’re told to.

This is especially evident in the three countries in which employees work the longest hours of all advanced countries in the world: America, South Korea, and Japan.

… Or ourselves?

Some of us overwork even when our managers don’t want us too, And, truthfully, most of us can’t put all the blame on others.

More often than not, working long hours is a way for us to prove something to ourselves. Maybe working late makes us feel ambitious or important. Maybe it’s because we think it’s the only way to get a promotion, make more money, or avoid falling behind. Maybe we straight up feel guilty when we get up and leave at 5 P.M. Several studies have even shown some of us consider work a safe haven — a place in which we feel confident and in control as compared with stresses outside the office.

And who could blame us? More and more, working beyond normal business hours has become something people brag about. In some cases, it becomes an addiction.

“We live in a competitive society,” writes Laura Vanderkam for The Wall Street Journal, “and so by lamenting our overwork and sleep deprivation — even if that requires workweek inflation and claiming our worst nights are typical — we show that we are dedicated to our jobs and our families.”

Know When It’s Time to Log Off

Sometimes, working long hours can feel rewarding — even invigorating. Other times, especially when we make a habit out of it, it can make us feel stressed, mad, lonely, and generally unhealthy.

The key is paying attention to how it makes you feel. If it’s interfering with your mental, physical, or emotional help, it may be time to reprioritize.

Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published in June 2016, but was updated for comprehensiveness and freshness in October 2020.

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RX 570 8gb Hashrate: Mining 2021| Review| Testing | Specs | Profit

Sapphire RX 570 8gb Hashrate - Mining | Profitability |Payback Period| Review | Best Testing (Benchmarck) Radeon RX570 Nitro 8 GB video cards are very popular among miners, so they don’t stay long on the shelves. Accordingly, it can be concluded that this type of map can be used for profitable mining. Thanks to its powerful specifications and performance it helps to quickly recoup costs. However, before making the final choice, it is recommended to pay attention to a number of nuances. Features Radeon RX570 Nitro 8 GB Model RX570 has several similar characteristics with the RX580 card, given the presence of factory boost and improved vendors. It also affects the cost. Despite the similarity, it is important to note that experienced users still stop their attention on 570 models from the manufacturer AMD. Regardless of the type of 570 cards, they have 1200 MHz core frequency. A number of vendors total more - 1300 MHz. Power is estimated at 150W.  Today on the market you can see cards with memory sizes of 4 and 8GB. Their difference between them consists only in spaciousness. As for the frequency parameters, in this case they are the same. Equally important for miners is the overclocking indicator. Experts agreed that the card from the manufacturer Samsung. They are put on the most productive versions: Nitro or Sapphire. Regarding manufacturers such as Hynix or Micron. On average, the difference is 1-2Mh / s. Please note: Please note: In spite of the bad review by a few customers, we experience no such issues (not saying you won't) but We would comfortably recommend this product for mining cryptocurrency based on our testing that will be continue below. People also ask: Common Questions RX 570 8gb What’s up techies, let’s dive right into this. I can’t say enough about the AMD/Radeon/Sapphire… let’s just go with “The non-Nvidia GPU”. You might want to keep up with your friends and be a part of the FPS and triple monitor setup talk, all while getting; the best performance for your buck, the most quiet graphics card (considering it’s in a case your keyboard strokes are probably louder all said and done) and something that looks like your rig is an aggressive graphics producer. What I find as far as looks go is that most GTX graphics card’s aesthetics are pretty much the same in color scheme. With the Radeon graphics cards you can get a red, blue silver, black and a mixed black, silver and light blue scheme. Some even have RGB lights! Not to mention the price for a mid grade Radeon is like 200$ less than that awesome GTX 1080i or what have you. Instead of 650$ you walk away around 300-350$. (Mind you this is just off the top of my head to get the idea across). With that said, this card specifically has a very nice color scheme, a protective/stylish backplate which is preferred by most when the installation of your card happens to show off the underside of it, you’ll be pleased to not see the unattractive green circuit board and instead a painted backplate. This is important now a days where there are multiple ways of mounting your GPU. Some mount them vertically, horizontally, upside down both ways or even outside of the computer case itself! Okay it looks good you got that? Now I’m gonna talk about the AMD Radeon graphics software. One key benefit I want to bring to light is the fact that when you enter the update menu you have a choice between, the latest update or the best reccomended update all while showing you the current version you have installed. With this feature you might find you’re using the latest update and your pc is being weird having random monitor black outs or maybe even pc restarts! So you’re able to switch to the recommended version which is known to work with your setup and should a revision of the latest update arrive you can give that try all on the fly. Jeesh get to the performance already! So I’ll name a couple games and my performance in relation to each game. World of Warcraft, I’ve played for the last 14 years is it now? Obviously their graphics only get so good because Blizzard refuses to update the visuals but if you’ve played as long as I have you’ll see that you can set all the settings on ultra and turn up your viewing distance, shadow detail or spell detail to get the most of what Blizzard offers. While having everything set to ultra etc.. I’m getting 80 FPS and if I just go in a room with my character I can hit 100 which is what my FPS in capped at in wow. I’ve never been over 30 due to always playing on a “beefed up” laptop lmao Also I play overwatch and it is flawless with all graphics levels turnt up I forget the exact FPS. I went ahead and bought the HTC vive and this thing handles VR without breaking a sweat! Considering I will have the in game display on the tv at all times and obviously the display in the HTC. Another noteworthy feature is that the fans shut off when it’s not in demand so add power saving to the list of why you should buy this graphics card! I honestly can’t see getting much more from a 700$ graphics card unless you’re a high end game developer? Well that’s all folks feel free to ask any questions and I will do my best to answer! Top 7 Questions Asked on Amazon Before Buying - RX 570 8gb ASRock Phantom Gaming D Radeon RX 570 DirectX 12 RX570 4G 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Video Card Question 1: Will this work for a ryzen 3200G ? Answer: Yes, you may want to drop into the bios and make sure it is defaulted to your PCIe slot and not integrated. Question 2: How many pins does Radeon RX 570 have? Answer: The RX 570 Have 6 Pins. Question 3: Does The Radeon RX 570 works with a pci express x16 gen 2 interface? Answer: We suggest you contact your computer manufacturer to get their list of compatible graphics cards. Many old computers require a Bios update from manufacturer. For old computers the best compatibility results is to pair with old graphics cards. Question 4: Will The RX 570 works with a Ryzen 5 3600? Answer: Absolutely! Be sure that it can fit your case though :) Question 5: Is the Radeon RX 570 compatible with intel? Answer: Yes it should be, as long as you have the proper driver from AMD u shouldn't have a problem.. Questions 6: Will The Radeon RX 570 works with the Ryzen 7 2700x? Answer: Yes, as long as you have the correct driver installed. Question 7: Why so expensive? It's the RX 570 for Christ sake! Answer: There is a chip shortage, so even the older models are being price gouged. It is a matter of supply and demand at this point. RX 570 8GB Amazon - Top 6 Underrated Questions Before Buying on Amazon + Answers - Question 1 - Please do you know if this graphic card can be use in asus m5a99x evo r2.0 motherboard. thank you in advance? Answers: This question was answered by the manufacturer - According to my research for you. You have these specs below and my answer would be yes it does fit. But a few other tips. Have at least 8gb of Ram and a have a good power supply - Question 2: What memory does this card use? Samsung, Hynix? Answer: Download tech powerup gpu-z it will tell you the type. Anyway it is Hynix - Question 3: The fans that come with the RX 570 8GB are they rgb? Answers: No, the Sapphire logo is RGB though. - Questions 4: Has anyone solved the code 43 problem with trying to install the drivers? Answer: Get driver Booster 6.2 on ebay for less then $5.00, and it keeps mine running fine. - Question 5: Is The Sapphire Radeon Rx 570 8GB a good video card for gaming or music? Answer: Yes, it is very Good. - Question 6: What's the difference between the sapphire nitro + radeon rx 580 4gb gddr5 graphics card (11265-07-20g)? Answer: This has more ram but fewer core clusters. The 580 will be slightly faster in games less ram dependent and about the same in more ram intensive games. Best Reviews Posed on on Amazon From customers - RX 570 Best Reviews Posed on on Amazon From customers - RX 570 Good Amazon Review By Customer For The RX 570: First off, I'm not a high-end gamer. I don't overclock or anything like that. My only real goal was playing Elder Scrolls Online with 30fps or better in world zones. This card can handle that just fine using the "High" but not "Ultra High" preset. And results may vary depending on what else is in my build (AMD A8 9600 APU / this GPU / 12GB slower RAM / Installed on a 7200RPM WD HDD). After tweaking settings, my build maintains 20-30fps in environment zones and 50-60fps in dungeon zones. But that's after changing a few settings to higher than "High". Anyway. For what it is, this GPU works just fine. My only complaint is that, of the two fans, one of them runs virtually silently, while the other fan has a constant low-grade bearing whistle. Ordinarily, I suppose a person would send it back for a replacement, but the low noise level is within my tolerance level, and I bought this card with the intention of getting into the game as cheap as possible, then upgrading in the near future, so I didn't want to deal with the hassle of a return. When it comes to fans on any PC component these days, one's entering into a bit of a lottery, so I expected the fans to be rather loud. Even with this bearing whine, it's still quieter than many other GPU fans I've run across over the years that oftentimes sounded like jets taking off. So, again, I'm satisfied. Remarks of the Best Review on Amazon2: WORKS REALLY GOOD I WOULD BUY FROM THIS SELLER AGAIN 😁👍🏽 GET 144+ on every game Review 3: A little pricey but during this pandemic its to be expected. Cards arrived new and in a timely fashion. Very happy with the seller and the product. Good Review 4: Using it on my 3rd gen i5 and holding up well. Just good enough to play beat sabre. Good solution for tight budget. Worst Review Posed on on Amazon From customers - RX 570 Worst Reviews Posed on on Amazon From customers - RX 570 Bad Review of the Radeon RX 570: This is a good GPU but I would not recommend buying it at this price. Spend your money on a better graphics card if you are going to spend an extra $100. It's worth $200 right now. Please note: In spite of the bad review by a few customers, we experience no such issues (not saying you won't) but We would comfortably recommend this product for mining cryptocurrency based on our testing that we will be continuing below. Poorest Remarked on the Radeon Nitro+ 570 8GB TLDR The card is defective, the seller Platinum Micro Inc Wont take back (as a return was submitted 31 days after arrival of product), Amazon can't help with a return, RMA shipping per the requested method was almost $40. I'd recommend avoiding the card. I purchased a Nitro+ RX 570 8GB from Platinum Micro Inc on 8/29/18 and received the card 9/6/18. My wife and i were about to move so i didn't test the card until 10/4/18 when i found that there was an issue with the card. I tried to trouble shoot the problem myself through the 10/6/18 when i found some postings (see toms hardware, amd support, ect...) , that this was a known issue with the Sapphire cards and likely a bios problem. 17 and 18 series drivers i tried gave me an error reading "No AMD graphics driver is installed, or the AMD driver is not functioning properly. Please install the AMD driver appropriate for your AMD hardware" on BIOS 1 and i get frames about the same as my 5 year old 7870 on bios 2. Newer drivers read bios 2 as an RX 580 in GPU-Z and same issue with frame rates. The only way that BIOS 2 functions is with drivers that are almost a year old (17 series drivers) and makes me doubt support for current gen titles coming out this year. I filed for a return on 10/7/18 and was denied as i filed 1 day outside of the window. I first called amazon and asked about their 90 day A-Z guarantee and was told that because the seller was a 3rd party seller the 90 day guarantee didn't apply. I ran through Sapphire support for a few days before they recommended an RMA with their 3rd part RMA company, Althon Micro. Althon Micro has given me an rma number and on their email requested the use of bubble wrap and packing peanuts which with shipping ran about $40. I'm worried though that their fix for the problem is a bios re-flash which would void any factory warranty i have on this card. After this fiasco I'm avoiding sapphire cards. For the $320 that this card has cost me i should have just bought a better card and that's my recommendation to you. Our Comment After Testing The RX 570 8GM We Try to be as honest as possible with our products of recommendation and based on this cards Testing and very performance that we have seen, we would gladly recommend anyone to buy. Purchase on Amazon Now - Sapphire 11266-09-20G Radeon Nitro+ Rx 570 8GB GDDR5 Dual HDMI/ DVI-D/ Dual DP with Backplate (UEFI) PCI-E Graphics Card Calculating the average result (excluding firmware), you can count on the following indicators: - Pascal 0.72Gh / s - DaggerHashimoto 23.7 Mh / s - Equihash 311 Sol - Decred 1.24 Gh / s. Speaking about the prospects of mining and which currency is most profitable to extract the most, it is worth noting ETH. The card is able to reveal its technical characteristics and show the maximum possibilities.  - 1 x CPU - 4 x DIMM 240-pin - 2 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (dual x8 mode; single card: x16 mode) - 1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4 mode) - 2 x PCIe 2.0 x1 - 1 x PCI - If we compare the characteristics of the 500 model and 570, it is worth noting that the second option has lower power consumption characteristics, which has a positive effect on the size of the final profit. This indicator makes the card as popular as possible among the entire range from leading manufacturers.  Increasing the hash rate of Radeon RX570 Nitro 8 GB No modern video card can not be called a perfect option. For example, Nvidia manufacturers did not take care of the firmware, so after purchasing it, many users begin to solve this kind of puzzle. Firmware is needed in order to increase the hashrate. As a rule, after it the result is increased by 40-50%. The average hashrate in the factory state varies 18-21 Mh / s, which is a relatively low figure. Taking into account the cost of the card, this is a rather low indicator, and therefore it will pay off for a long time. When using the Afterburner program, it is possible to increase the rate on average to 23-25 ​​Mh / s. Unfortunately, even this indicator will not save the miner from a long payback period (about 29 months). In this case, it is worth noting that AMD seriously loses the card from Nvidia. But the firmware can fix the situation. After the BIOS is reflashed, the card can be sharpened for mining and organize optimal overclocking. Do not forget to set the optimum timing, and the most appropriate frequencies. However, this is a process that requires certain knowledge, so miners rarely can perform it on the first attempt. For some users, it is possible to achieve optimal results only from the 10th attempt, which also does not always add optimism. But after the work is finished, After the firmware is implemented, the user can expect to receive the following indicators: - When using the Nitro, Asrock, Expedition model with Samsung's memory, the hashrate index will be around 31.7MH / s - Gigabyte Aorus / Gaming using Samsung memory figures up to 30.5Mh / s - Asus loses a bit - 29.9Mh / s. It is important to take into account that the above indicators are maximum as a result of the check, therefore, they should be guided during the selection process. As a rule, similar results are given to be achieved only on maps from the manufacturer Samsung. Regarding Hynix, this effect applies only to Nitro.  Another option that can play hashrate is the choice of the operating system. Regarding Hive, it can provide stable performance, through additional functions: you can organize work with a flash drive without the need to connect the HDD, WatchDog firmware, as well as the convenience of monitoring workflow compared to Windows. Accordingly, the first version of the operating system is best suited for mining.  How long can the Radeon RX570 Nitro 8 GB pay off? Over time, the concept of payback begins to be used as a relative concept. This is due to the fact that the rate of extracted cryptocurrency also changes. As a rule, miners who are engaged in such activities constantly, try to control the situation and make appropriate adjustments. When they talk about 570 models, you can directly associate it with mining ETH. In addition, an equally important factor is the purchase price of the video card. Depending on the course of the coins, it also tends to change. The higher the rate, the higher the purchase price becomes.  Power is another important factor that the miner takes into account when choosing a video card model. Even if you spend the worst version of the system BIOS firmware, you can get an indicator of at least 28 Mh / s. If the card will differ in stable operation, it is possible to expect a stable indicator of 2 Mh / s 7 days a week. Given the average cost of the card, you can safely expect an annual rate of 70-80%. If you keep the value of the currency at the peak of its course, then you can count on the fastest 100% payback during the year. However, it is also worth considering the complexity of the farm, the higher it is, the slower it will pay off.  Card selection First of all, it should be noted that in 2021 it will no longer be possible to mine the ETH with a 570 memory card of 4 GB. This is due to the ever-increasing size of the DAG file. Therefore, for users who are accustomed to forecasting ahead, it is important to take this moment into account. Regarding the same model, but with 8 GB, there will be no restrictions.  Speaking about the total result of the 570 model, it is important to note that this is an economical option that is best suited for novice miners. This is due to the fact that energy consumption is relatively low, which means you can save a lot of money on paying bills. As a rule, vendors have an efficient cooling system. According to the testing, it is unlikely that the temperature index will go beyond 60 degrees. Due to the minimum payback period, this model is recognized as one of the best deals on the market.  However, do not forget about the prerequisite - the presence of firmware. Otherwise, an indicator of more than 26 MH / s cannot be obtained at the factory settings.  Purchase on Amazon Now - Sapphire 11266-09-20G Radeon Nitro+ Rx 570 8GB GDDR5 Dual HDMI/ DVI-D/ Dual DP with Backplate (UEFI) PCI-E Graphics Card RX 570 8gb Best Review - Still Relevant In 2021 ( How to be Profitability mining Bitcoin?) The Radeon RX 570 is not that much different from the Radeon RX 580 in terms of GPU configuration, and choosing between versions with 4 GB and 8 GB of RAM will allow additional savings on memory. Will all of this make the RX 570 a better buy than the 3GB RAM version of the GeForce GTX 1060? The SAPPHIRE Pulse Mini-ITX video card will help us to answer this question.⇣ Contents We recently tested AMD's top-end second-generation Polaris silicon-based graphics card, the  Radeon RX 580 . As tests have shown, a deep revision of the circuitry of the chips and the matured 14 nm FinFET process technology justified the hopes placed on them, significantly increasing the "quality" of the crystals. AMD thus acquired a reserve entirely invested in GPU clock speeds, which, even within the framework of the reference specifications, increased so much as to provide conditional parity in performance between the Radeon RX 580 and the  GeForce GTX 1060 . Compared to its main competitor, the Radeon RX 580 can offer the buyer such advantages as a larger amount of RAM (8 versus 6 GB) and the ability to work in multiprocessor configurations, which NVIDIA in the current generation has deprived of video cards with a lower rank than the GeForce GTX 1070. Read the full article