#but without necessarily feeling the bulk or being restricted by that bulk

[thewomancallednova]

The Schizoid Man

Better than I thought it was gonna be!

I was going in thinking this going to be another de-mystifying of Data's backstory, but it really isn't, beyond adding that Data's creator had a mentor, which I don't think is a big deal (if we already have a concrete creator anyway).

Oki I have to talk about the story structure again, because it's kinda like The Outrageous Okona and Loud As a Whisper again (at least in the a plots). We have a guest character, exploring whom the bulk of the episode is dedicated to. And then we have the crew intervening in a way that doesn't force the guest star to change, but inspires them to do so anyway (here Picard's outrage over Graves' accidental harming of the crew gets through to him). Admittedly, here the crew is more active, as they investigate Graves-as-Data beforehand, but the only thing that really advances the plot is Picard's appealing to Graves (and subsequent getting hit by him).

That's not really a complaint and more of an observation, btw. I do think that TNG is getting better and better at this.

It's kind of interesting how this is a Data episode but he's barely in it. And that's not a criticism, I think we learn a lot about Data here, by the hole that he leaves behind so to speak. It's quite clever how the episode manages to highlight so many of Data's qualities and discuss, I think quite positively, his relationship to humanity, by showing how Ira Graves is.

Which, side note, who the fuck names a planet Gravesworld. Like namig it after yourself is one thing, but Gravesworld?

but okay, Graves is obviously a huge sexist asshole, but I gotta admire the vanity of killing someone to prolong your own life, barely even make an attempt to impersonate them, then going to your own funeral (as the guy who's met you once) and hold a long-winded speech about how you were the greatest specialist little guy under the great bird of the galaxy's limitless sky.

honestly goals

minus the dehumanizing women and murdering and so on, you get it.

I love that this episode openly acknowledges that Data is kind of human. Like, Geordi explicitely mentions Data's human qualities surfacing, which is great. It also does that without downplaying Data's struggle and quest for being more like the other crew, which is also nice, and it also does that while emphasising that Data being just like he is is also really good (via Picard telling Graves literally that). So honestly, this is everything I want out of a Data episode.

I liked the story Graves told Data about the machine that wanted to be human only learn that he was human after all. it kinda feels like that's what the episode wants Data to have (in the long game, not necessarily by the end of this episode)

Also I call bullshit on Data not feeling pain, just two episodes ago you were about to cry because Guinan tricked you into thinking you were funny. Like that was absolutely pain, or at least a genuine expression of it. Fine if it doesn't map 1:1 on human expression of pain, but it is clearly something.

I think it's super super interesting that Troi was able to sense Grave's jelousy while Graves was posession Data. That means that there is no physical restriction in Data's positronic brain that makes it inherently unable to feel those emotions in a way that Troi can perceive, and it means that Data is generally capable of feeling emotions (even if not necessarily human ones). Of course we knew that already from observing Data expressing emotions all the time, but it's nice to have it spelled out, kinda.

Kind of a minor aspect, but seeing Doctor Selar here is SOOOO surreal. For those not in the know, she becomes a main character on the long-running New Frontier novel series, and her portrayal there has in my brain totally eclipsed her five tv appearances. So it's incredibly strange to see her be like a person and saying words instead of being text that evokes pictures in my imagination.

Also, is it just me or is something weird going on with Doctor Pulaski? Like, they have an episode with a significant medical component (Graves' illness), and instead of using Pulaski for it, they invent a new character with the same job who gets more lines than her? I dunno, it just seems like a weird choice. It's not like she wasn't in this episode at all either.

I'm taking Kareen's mistaking a Klingon for a Romulan as another instance of TNG trying to deemphasize the connection between Romulans and Vulcans. Kareen seems at least familiar with Vulcans (she doesn't have questions about Selar), but Worf is just a random alien to her, that could be a Romulan. To any viewer unfamiliar with TOS that woul communicate (subtely) that Romulans are not easily confused with Vulcans.

I find it funny that Graves accuses Picard of flirting with Kareen. Like. Look. Picard has many faults, as I love to point out, but coming onto a woman who spend almost all her life in the company of one single other person, who has just died, is not one of them.

[meditating-dog-lover]

Overwhelming - eating and exercising, confusing what works for me versus what fitness professionals advertise

Back in college I had an ed. At around 2017. And it was not fun. I can always look up a sample meal plan I had, but it was definitely restrictive and not fun to follow. I also had signs of nutritional deficiencies.

I got sick of it and felt like I was missing out on foods I enjoyed. I had cravings but told myself to not give in because I didn't want to gain weight. But I lost weight by eating less and by walking a lot. I walked a lot in college and when I moved to my mom's house walking my dogs. It burns so many calories and fat and I enjoyed it.

When I got sick of the dieting, I started looking into exercising more and eating more. Seeing that other women (including PTs) saw success by doing do. Some would eat 2500+ calories and weight lift 3-4x a week and become toned and slim. I know if I did that I would put on a lot of weight. And it's happened in the past.

So what helps? Limiting calories and brisk walking. I may be exercising often, but I am eating more calories and not being in control of the number I consume thinking that it's fine because I exercise.

Like I said I get less cravings now because of my supplements. So I can try eating less now but without worrying that I will be missing out on foods I enjoy and that I will deal with cravings. So I can look into what I consume and reduce where needed (especially for breakfast on weekends and lunch on weekdays). Another thing worth looking into is intermittent fasting. Or something that prevents me from worrying that I will die of starvation or suffer of nutritional deficiencies. I'm taking supplements anyways so these 2 won't be an issue.

So don't be afraid to reduce where it's needed. I may worry about getting hungry or cravings if I reduce my intake, but I'll take it from there. I did this in 2018 but it was disordered. So I won't recommend my diet, just recommend similar portion ideas in mind. Just be sure to take the supplements and make sure what I'm eating is healthy whole foods.

Another thing that helps is walking. I've done intensive workouts thinking that they replace paying attention to my diet. But walking along with portion and calorie control help. They helped me in 2018 where I had to walk a lot in college and then walk my dog. I also used to walk all they way to the mall. I even did a good job in 2019 with this. Again my diet was disordered and would binge, but I did not go extremely overboard with calories.

I've done a lot of challenging workout routines. However I'll go back to the basics - calorie restriction and walking. I'm not going to deal with cravings or nutritional deficiencies because I take supplements that are good quality and are highly absorbed.

I'm not hungry today for some reason. I had an upset stomach yesterday and did not eat dinner. But I woke up hungry for that reason. I went to a restaurant today at around 4:30 and it's 12:30 now and haven't been hungry since. Like I said my concern is feeling like I'm going to die of starvation or struggling with nutritional deficiencies. So I can find a way to convince myself this won't happen (a) and (b) try to get used to the habit of not having to eat fully all the time and maybe apply the principles of intermittent fasting here. Not necessarily fasting, but being comfortable with having an empty stomach.

I do have concerns that walking made my calves bigger. If anything strength training and HIIT have done that too and it's not worth ditching walking for that reason. So doing these 2 will help with removing any extra stubborn fat, reduce muscle bulk (especially in my calves), and help with bloating. Again reducing food and caloric intake and being comfortable with having an empty stomach (similar to the concepts of intermittent fasting and applying that so it becomes comfortable and I don't feel like I'm starving and missing out on foods I like), taking my supplements so I don't have to worry about nutritional deficiencies and their symptoms, and walking as my exercise and avoiding the intense stuff. I used to walk quite often in 2017-2018 going to class, walking my dog, and going to the mall. I can try to do the same, but I can see how to fit it into my schedule. Even after walking my dogs in the evening I can walk on my own and also walk on the weekends. It will make sense eventually.

I already do the walking and the supplementation. Replacing my intense workouts with diet modifications is the next step. I've improved my diet thanks to my supplements which reduced my cravings, now I want to take it a step further. I can either reduce portion sizes, eliminate some meals, or apply the principals of intermittent fasting (great for blood glucose and insulin resistance). Like the process of searching for my supplements, finding the best method and process here will take some time, effort, and trial and error. It's worth taking my work schedule into consideration (I'm on vacation now so it's not reflective of my work timing).

I've done workout routines since 2020 because I was unhappy with my body and thought intense programs will make me look better. But I was wrong and I get upset with myself for being harsh on my appearance in 2018 when that was the year I looked the best! I'm just going to repeat what I did then but with a healthier approach to eating and taking nutrition supplements along with it.

[sanstropfremir]

ok alright alright alright kingdom episode two

kinda disappointed that they only showed half the stages, but that's just an editing thing to draw out the content so you can air for longer, i'm not super surprised about that. i would have liked to evaluate them all at the same time, but at least this gives me time to go more in depth for all of them since they're full stages this time and I wrote 3000 words for last episode when they only had 100 secs. so this format will probably keep me sane for longer, i think. 

solid stages all round for them, none had especially glaring flaws on the whole. i'm not gonna do a full ranking for this episode since we haven't seen them all, but i will say that btob’s was my favourite from this set and both ikon’s and tbz’s stages were about equal; they both had things i liked and disliked in equal measure so i'm tentatively giving them the same ranking. full opinions and analysis on each stage below the cut, plus another section of general notes because hey what the fuck did you do to that stage mnet???

and for anyone that’s wondering yes i do have the qualifications. also seriously grab a drink or something because this is LONG.

some general notes

and here i thought this section wouldn't be as big as it was last time because mnet was going to get their shit together about the stage design, but noooooooooooo they had to go and make it worse! thanks mnet i hate it! remember how i said you shot yourself in the foot last time? well ya fuckin kneecapped yourself AND all your idols with this one ya dumb fuckin idiots. alright folks welcome back to stage design 101, my recurring segment where i explain the different types of stage layouts and their effectiveness for kpop idol survival shows, i guess.

ok so last week i covered the basics on theatre in the round and traverse staging, which i’ll link here if there’s anyone new or just wants a refresher. i mentioned that its likely that mnet will switch to an in the round style staging because it offers a lot more freedom for camera movement and also for directional blocking. well, i was wrong. so i'm gonna give you a quick rundown of prosceniums. a proscenium, proscenium arch, or just prosc, is an architectural feature that sits around the front ‘opening’ of the stage that delineates the stage from the audience. if you've ever been in or seen any pictures of old european style theatres it can be quite ornately decorated with scrolling, but it's almost always there in most western theatres. it basically provides your ‘wings,’ which are where you exit off into to get offstage, they provide cover from the audience sitelines. pretty much any theatre where the audience is directly opposing the stage across the 180 degree line is a proscenium stage, even if it doesn't physically have the arch. hell, movie theatres are prosc stages. now, there's a secondary architectural feature/device called a false proscenium, where you set a second, smaller archway inside the first prosc, usually done for a specific effect. think of it like a literal framing device; it's often used to visually signify that ‘this is a play, we are telling a story, please be aware that this is a play thank you.’ but sometimes, it can be a semi-permanent structure that’s set in place to narrow the prosc opening. we had this at my university, there was a false prosc set just inside the actual prosc because the stage had a hilariously big prosc opening for a university that never had casts larger than 24 people. so they set false prosc in to make the stage slightly narrower and to widen the wings, because it doesn't matter what size theatre you're in, you always need more wingspace. makes sense? ok, now here’s a very quick drawing of what i'm pretty sure the kingdom stage looks like:

before you get lost: stage directions are oriented to a person standing on the stage, hence SL and SR being reversed. a quick tip for remembering which way is upstage and which is downstage: if you go too far downstage you fall down (most stages are raised between 2-4’ from the floor, so if you step off the end you will actually fall.) the arrows on here signify the entrances i observed during the performances, which is not necessary in this explanation but i just thought it was interesting to note. still not entirely sure what the surrounding architecture is but it appears that the stage is a raised platform inside a room, and not actually built as part of the building. the ‘house’ is just a technical term for where the audience is, and in this case it's where it looks like most of the film crew and the producers/staff are. there’s pretty clearly a platform upstage centre, and i think there may be some others but i don't care about those right now. what i want to talk about is this dumbass false prosc they set IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STAGE. now i suspect that they did this to solve some problems that they could have had that i don't know about, since i don't know who the stage designer was and what the actual limitations of the space are. but basically they've built two stages and stacked them on top of each other to create one very deep stage, and then separated it off with a false prosc in order to control the size of the space a little better, and possibly to add some visual interest. this stage is functional for its purpose, absolutely, and i think, if mnet actually gave a shit about point of view and camerawork, it could produce some really interesting performances. however, because this stage is so deep, it kind of has the same properties as the traverse stage from before, but just with some big led screens in the middle for reasons. you extra have to pay attention to the directionality because you have all the staff and cameras concentrated in one specific cardinal point, so you have to get creative if you want to crossover between the two sides frequently. again, this is not necessarily bad; restrictions often produce some of the most creative decisions.  but! we have not seen a lot of consideration for camera and sightlines and audience pov, hence why i think this setup is dumb: it’s not facilitating the best performances it could.

ok now to the actual performances

btob

this is my favourite of the group because it's very clean lined and utilizes a few simple devices to pretty good effect. i realize these reviews are making me sound like i only like simple performances but i promise this is not at all true i'm just very critical and very picky. let’s start with the costumes, because why not. 

costumes

i like these very much, i love modernized traditional clothing in all forms, and these are very well tailored and well coordinated. they do the bulk of the work establishing the theme for the performance, along with the costumes on the backup dancers. personally i would have liked them to be a bit more colourful, à la the teal detailing that was on minhyuk’s final look. i'm getting a bit tired of the whole trend of having groups only wear all dark or all white, or maybe sometimes red if they're feeling spicy. obviously uniform colour is the easiest way to tie a group together visually, but on a show like this i think the groups would actually benefit more from looking distinct from each other internally rather than establishing the group as whole.

i liked that minhyuk had a costume change but i didn't really care for how it was how it was broken down. this is a very personal quibble because i literally have spent years prepping quickchanges but the method it broke down wasn’t the most visually compatible with the garment and felt kinda clunky. please ignore this anecdote it's just me being picky.

set

i loved the forest! a very excellent way to divide the stage area and obscure the weird stage lines/architecture that mnet has made. plus the snow, flowers, and fog? makes a really sharp and immediately indicative atmosphere, a very good use of visual shorthand to establish place.

i didnt love the screens, they reminded me a bit too much of rolling whiteboards from grade school, but they are thematically relevant. also, i feel like we didnt actually get to see about half the choreo for them? fuckin mnet and idiocy again. fun use of rear projection with the dancers’ shadows, and also good use of them to direct traffic, if you will. 

personally i think that the sheet gimmick from tbz’s performance would have been a better fit here instead of the screens, especially since the fabric motif was already established at the very beginning of the performance. plus you can do some really fun shadow work with a stretch fabric screen. 

personally i think there could have been a little bit more integration between the forest area and the screen area, or they could have done the whole thing in the forest space, but that would require a bit more consideration of camera and choreo maneuverability

sound

really liked this arrangement, obviously the song is iconic but they added a more traditional instrument sound. has good structure for the loose narrative that they had and they were well to label this as ‘theatre’ version because this did follow very closely to a traditional musical theatre sound and style

lighting

no complaints. the overall theme for this episode is apparently blue and red? again with them i like their dedication to a limited colour palette and i especially like the blossoms at the climax

staging

there was pretty clear camera choreo and a minimum of nausea inducing moves. i think some of the effectiveness of the staging got chopped by the editing but that’s not really btob’s fault.

i was just saying i wanted them to give minhyuk some time to shine, i was not expecting to get it so soon! this is a very smart choreo that proves you can be interesting without doing a lot of tricking. minhyuk obviously did a lot of practice and work with that sword, his movements are very fluid and he knows how to handle it. and it looks like its either a blunted proper blade or a correctly weighted replica. a lot of the times when sword choreo looks fake it's because the person either hasn't had enough practice or the weapon is not weighted/weighted incorrectly. only complaints are that you would never hold your fingers/palm that close and un-anchored over the edge of the blade, which is just a safety thing. also you would never scrape your blade on the ground like that, nor toss the thing like dead fish but that's a respect thing with a live blade and this is clearly done for dramatic effect so i’ll forgive it. please ignore this anecdote also it’s just my third dan getting uppity.

ikon

costume/set

smart thematically to go with the sort of miscellaneous 30s-40s (western) aesthetic because it's the fastest way to make it look like you built a theme with mnet’s weird pseudo art deco nonsense they've inexplicably got going on in the set dec. however, they should have stuck the theme all the way through, it would have been more visually cohesive and more interesting. we expect more hiphop/electronic sounding songs to come with these kinds of 4th gen costumes, it would have been anachronistic in a fun way to have them do that second half in 40s style suits. here’s a performance from sdc3 that uses that kind of anachronistic play (this was a combo stage with two ballroom dancers and it has a 20s aesthetic but close enough.) also here’s another routine from sdc3 that does a similar effect on a much more abstract scale, and also it’s a fucking incredible performance and it got slept on by the captains. also yes i know these are incredibly experienced career dancers but they way they construct narrative within their routines and their stage presence is SO GOOD. 

do not speak to me about the backup dancers costumes, holy shit i hate them. i hate them so much. how do you manage to hit too shapeless AND too fitted in the same fell swoop? i'm so mad at these. i'm neutral on bodycon dresses on the best of days but these were absolutely the wrong choice for this stage. generally kpop has abysmal costuming for female backup dancers on the whole but this is just like.....especially lazy. the point of the costume are to help give an indication of where and when you set your performance. they started off with a vaguely 40s theme and then jumped abruptly modern. why? also skirts like that are the literal worst choice for dancing in, hello?? the men’s looks are just sloppy, when you have a garment that big you want it to serve a purpose within the choreo, whereas with this it's just hiding the dancers’ movements.

as for ikon themselves, see everything ive said about black on black on black styling in the previous two reviews. 

the actual set is minimal and that's tragic. i mentioned mnet’s weird art deco theme and it was smart of them to try and play off that with a lack of stuff. definitely a mismatch of stuff pulled from yg’s prop storage, but they made it work as well as they could. no other meaningful comments i’m just kinda sad about it.

sound

the arrangement is fine, no complaints from me. they keyed up the old hollywood style musical theatre sound in the beginning which i really liked. i didn't mind the song/tone switch, i think they pulled it off.

staging

same as btob they learned more towards a theatrical style, which is smart for this particular format of show. i think this was the smartest staging of these three, and also i think the only ones to not get the crew in shot.

despite seemingly leaning into a more old hollywood style the narrative was a bit too loose for my taste. i'm not sure what i would have done to make it clearer at this moment since they had so little to work with, but i did get by on my previous knowledge of the songs. that shouldn’t be the only indication of narrative though! all elements need to support it!!

also like btob they had a pretty intentional point of direction and there weren't a crazy amount of spins. they also used the camera cuts the most effectively that i've seen so far. the first half is actually all in one take!!! incredible!!! thank you!!!! this is how you do it!!

the lighter flick gimmick was well pulled off and a good example of how to use a couple of simple tricks to good effect.

ikon as a whole has really great stage chemistry with each other, and they're extremely cohesive performers. this is a really strong physical performance from them, the dance was very solid and clean. good use of levels without verging into acrobatics. this might be the best group choreo i've seen so far, but we’re not very far so that's not a very high bar to clear.

it's a shame they had the budget of 1 banana.

tbz

i liked this stage better than their intro stage, but i still think they have a long way to go and they're still over ambitious. personally i find stages based on specific pop culture properties to be kind of twee and ineffectual, because it requires a specific knowledge of that pop culture property to work. sometimes the specificity can help with a narrative but you're at risk of alienating a larger portion of your audience out of sheer non-knowledge than anything else. 

costumes

again, interesting garments physically, but not much clarity of relation to the theme other than the colour. also the backup dancers???? another case of backup dancers being from an entirely different stage, what is up with those coats/dresses? looked more like they belonged in either sweeney todd or a vampire movie. 

hands in front of the camera again, but these were used much more effectively.  i'm not the biggest fan of mixing metals and i’m partial to silver on the whole so i didn't love the jewelry, but at least it was vague and stereotypical enough to denote ‘fire magic’ even if it does rely on a derivative middle eastern shorthand.

set

the stage set itself is fine, although definitely feels a bit haphazard to me. doric columns and frozen rocks and whatever that cover for the pyrotechnics was at the front, combined with the candles and the chaise lounge? like ikon, it felt a bit like they were pulling out of the props/set storage. not that all these things do not work together, it's just that you need a thread to tie them together, and this didn't have that for me.

sound

it's a crime they have a song called ‘no air’ and its not a jordin sparks cover. just saying.

i didnt really like this arrangement, again like their intro stage it didn't have a strong structure that suited the narrative, because they were pretty clearly trying a narrative on this one. also were most of the adlibs playback? they were singing live but there were so few shots of anyone specific singing. 

lighting

probably the weakest of the three. the projection design was a bit too tacky for me, and although i appreciated the small amount of variety in colour, it felt way too concert-lighting for me.

staging

the editing on this stage is wack and did no one any good. the hands leading/pov was a really smart device and they should have stuck out the one takes like ikon did, it would have made the whole stage feel a bit more cohesive. a lot better directional camerawork from them this time around, well done. again with the hands in front of the camera gimmick which i actually preferred this time, since they were a part of the narrative. the stretch/silhouette fabric i think they pulled off quite well, even if it didn't really fit thematically with the piece. i actually worked on a show a very long time ago that used this exact same effect with dancers and also rear shadow projection, and it requires a lot of rehearsal and trust to pull off well, so props to them. i think it was the wrong choice because there isn't an established motif for the fabric, so it kind of appears out of nowhere for one specific visual moment and then disappears, and i think that time could have been better served for something else narratively relevant.

again, these 4th gen groups are overly focussed on gimmicks as a way to make up for the lack of experience. personally i think this will be detrimental in the long run, and a reliance on gimmicks means that you don't trust your performers. tbz have the manpower to be doing some pretty cool collective dance work and i dont think its being trained or utilized correctly. they are suffering from a lack of cohesive stage presence right now and that can be fixed with training and time.

this might be because the group sizes are so different between these three but this choreo is very directionless. mnet is also providing to be absolute garbage at editing and i feel like i can't see the choreo at all.

this is a thing i've noticed with kpop camerawork in general, there’s very little regard for actually viewing the choreo as a singular work. and for some reason the camera always needs to be moving???? people do actually want to see what’s happening on the stage. the choreographer can only see from one spot, so from that spot is how they are intending it to look. you wouldn't need to upload full cams of every music stage if you just filmed the choreo properly in the first place. if you watch the two sdc3 clips i linked you can see a clear difference in maintaining the integrity of the choreo, even though both shows use several cameras and a lot of cuts.  obviously for kpop you want the money shots of idols’ faces but i definitely think there’s a healthier middle ground than what we have now.

ill wait for full subs but i want to know where in the fuck in sk you can rent a tank thas clearly been custom made for underwater photography, because that’s extremely cool even if it was absolutely unnecessary to the actual stage itself. i can think of several ways off the top of my head that would have achieved that same freezing effect without any of that wasted time and effort.

mnet decided to drop full cams while i was writing this and despite watching those my opinions are the same.

in conclusion, some more general thoughts:

i think ikon and btob got it right by leaning more into the theatrical than the cinematic, if that makes sense. i might be talking up my own ass here but these are theatre performances, and they should be treated as such. trying to do things that you can do on film isn't going to do you any favours in the long run, and it makes it harder to make a cohesive performance. i’m harping a lot about narrative but it is so important to performance. although it is not technically necessary, when doing big theatrical performance stages like this it does help with clarity of intent and general success. humans have brains structured around storytelling, it is literally the way our history has been passed down for tens of thousands of years. the atlantic published an article recently on narrative and memory, and it's a really excellent read for maybe after you've taken a break from this behemoth, oh dear god. 

tldr: the stages were good but disappointing in their own ways. mnet continues to sabotage via weird stage design decisions and bad editing. see you next week! (or in my ask box if you have questions)

[yubsie]

Hand Me Downs

Breha gives Hera baby gifts. Which means she can pass them on to Leia for her child. (AO3 if you prefer)

No one had warned Hera that being a high-ranking member of the Rebel Alliance was going to involve ruffles. She was prepared for overwhelming odds, to risk her life against an enemy who gave no mercy. And in the early days, that was exactly what she got. A lot of sneaking around and flying and getting shot at and  wearing a flightsuit . Then she’d worked her way up through the ranks and found herself having to attend formal dinner parties that covered for high-ranking strategy sessions. The perils of being a general.

If she had a choice, she would have gone for formalwear with a bit of slink to it. But her rapidly expanding midsection didn’t lend itself well to that at all. The only dress she’d been able to find in... whatever her current size was took the philosophy that the bump could just blend in with the rest of the floof. Her attendance in her condition would surely fuel all sorts of gossip about her and the man Breha had chosen to sit her next to. Gossip was useful; it meant that everyone was speculating about her personal life instead of what they might actually be discussing. The trouble was it also meant they were speculating about her personal life and the child who hadn’t volunteered for this. It wasn’t even the worst thing to happen this week, but it felt so incredibly alien.

She wished she could talk to Kanan about it. He would have delivered some sort of over-the-top compliment. And then Ezra would have somehow still not noticed. At least she could still hope to explain to a very baffled Ezra where her child had come from.

But neither of them were here. Now she had the new constant figures of her life: Mon Mothma and the Organas. She trusted the high-ranking members of the Alliance; it would be disastrous if she couldn’t. She even liked them quite a bit. They were good people. Friends, even. They just weren’t family, and she wanted so much of that around right now.

Her glass represented their current target in the makeshift map they were drawing up on the dinner table. The fact that she was the only one currently restricted to water set it apart conveniently from the wine glasses representing rebel units. She tapped Bail’s glass. “If we bring the demolitions team in from the west, they’ll have the sanitation droids as cover.” Sabine would be thrilled, she was sure. Garbage had so much artistic merit.

Mon Mothma nodded. “And that will help minimize the collateral damage to the surrounding citizens.”

Ierlin Allston, head of their fledgling public relations department, nodded. “The benefits of that are pretty obvious.”

They probably didn’t need to consider it from the public image perspective. It was enough that it was right. But it was still a useful angle. Anything to win hearts and minds over in the fight against the Empire. While also winning key weapons factories. They had a solid plan that was sure to go out the window and require extensive improvisation, but at least they had something to build on now.

It was also as far as the plan could possibly go before that first engagement with the enemy. They were still waiting on several key intelligence reports Mon Mothma had hoped they would have in time for this session. There hadn’t been a way to postpone the dinner party that wouldn’t attract suspicion when the information. So they would have to fill the remainder of the dinner party with actual dinner party activity. Definitely not Hera’s specialty, that was more for those who had come here from the senatorial side of things.

“General Syndulla, a word?” She didn’t actually know enough about the etiquette of these sorts of parties to know if it was unusual for Breha to break away from her carefully balanced seating arrangement. They’d eaten most of the courses at this point, so perhaps mingling was entirely normal.

At any rate, when the Queen of Alderaan requested a word, one gave a word. She didn’t need to know anything about royal etiquette to realize that much. “Yes, of course.” How was she supposed to address her? They were on friendly terms, and in a flightsuit she would probably address her by name without a second thought. She really was out of her element in all these bolts of fabric. Who had bought out the store to construct this ridiculous dress? “Your Majesty?”

The queen smiled. “It can still be Breha.” She paused. “This is absolutely a personal interaction.”

Hera had almost forgotten what those felt like in recent months. They were always for family, but even the ones she could locate were scattered. Zeb and Kallus came by often, but they had their own work. It was often just her and Sabine, since Ezra vanished. And she didn’t want to put too much pressure on the girl. It wasn’t fair. “It is?”

“You know, Leia was rather unexpected.” It was obvious enough where that was coming from. No one had to be told that she hadn’t planned this. Even if Kanan had lived, they were in the middle of a war, and she still wasn’t quite sure how she was going to balance the baby with all of that. How she was going to keep him safe. He would need her to step back, especially at first, but he would also need a safe galaxy to grow up in. She had to find a way to give him a mother and a future at the same time. It would have been easier if Kanan were here to help. But she’d tried to stop dwelling on things that were well and truly impossible. She had to deal with the situation as it was.

“Wasn’t she adopted?” That was the sort of development one usually tried to plan. It didn’t just happen like having strange symptoms weeks after losing the love of her life and realizing that the Force apparently wanted more little Jedi running around. Or something like that.

Breha laughed warmly. “She was. The last days of the Clone Wars were the strangest.”

She’d only been a child then, but old enough to realize how quickly everything was changing. The galaxy suddenly looked completely different and as dangerous as ever. That was just never going to end, it would seem.

“We had talked about it, but I wasn’t expecting Bail to come home with a baby that day.”

Hera couldn’t even imagine. She was already struggling to prepare for her baby with months of warning. Having one just show up was a logistical nightmare. But she wasn’t sure where this was meant to be going. “You seem to have managed quite well. She’s remarkable.” The princess was involved in more missions of late. And she didn’t disappoint.

“There are... certain advantages to a hereditary home. The attics have more than anyone could possibly use in a lifetime. So it was easy to prepare a nursery.”

That wouldn’t really help on the emotional front, but sometimes logistics were the easiest thing to focus on. Their supplies had never been so well documented as right after the liberation of Lothal.

“I was wondering how you were doing on that front?”

“I...” She’d been trying to figure out how to care for the child. “Our usual suppliers don’t tend to trade in infant goods.”

“That’s what I thought.” She would never have expected a queen to be so practical before she met Breha. But what was government if not a giant exercise in logistics? She’d seen quickly that Princess Leia Organa had not been routinely handed off to nannies. They probably would have attempted to exert some sort of moderating influence to keep her out of the Rebellion. “Bail and I wanted to give you a few items. Some clothing, a travel bassinette. We have more spares than we could ever need. Leia could be a great-great-grandmother before we had to reuse a single item. It will go to so much better use with you, I think.”

“I...” She suddenly pictured items from a royal palace tucked into one of the Ghost’s empty rooms. The image was strange enough to bring laughter instead of the usual sadness at the state of those rooms. “That’s so generous.”

“Alderaan favours simplicity.” Translation: don’t worry, I’m not handing you something jewel encrusted to furnish a freighter. “The craftsmanship is excellent.”

Hera rested her hand on her belly, taking a moment to imagine her future. “He’ll be the most elegantly dressed baby at the spacestop.”

***

No one had warned Leia that victory would involve quite so many Functions. She should have been prepared for them, growing up in a royal palace, but after fighting a war for so long, she’d let herself forget. Now they moved more and more toward an actual government, and she had to learn an old role all over again. She’d gotten used to her days involving more strategy sessions than dinner parties.

Of course, she still had military officers approaching her. They just wore the notoriously unpopular dress uniform now. They had barely had a uniform at all when her parents first let her get involved in the Rebellion. Now there was a dress variant, and the people who wore it had no end of opinions. Even if a general would, of course, never breathe a word about it. “Senator, a word?”

Leia maneuvered herself around carefully. That was the only way she could actually move these days. Her small stature made her increasing bulk feel all the more unwieldy. “Of course, General.”

“It’s really more of a Hera conversation.” They’d known each other too long to always stand on ceremony. Right now, Leia didn’t much care for standing at all. “Can you handle the walk to the Ghost?”

“As long as there are chairs at the end.” At least they had enough history that she could admit that.

Hera nodded and started to lead the way. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” she said almost automatically.

Automatically enough that Hera immediately raised an eyebrow.

“Tired.” It was a completely different brand of exhaustion that the sleepless nights in a battle zone. Not necessarily worse, but unique. She’d never grown a human being before but it was taking more out of her than she was eager to admit. Especially when she was trying to convince her staff she wasn’t an invalid. “Exhausted, really.”

Hera smiled. “It’s like that a lot. I’m not going to lie and say it gets better, but it’s a nice sort of exhausted. Most of the time.”

“How’s your son doing? I hope he’s well.”

“He spent this last deployment with Zeb and Kallus. He’s amazing, even if keeping up with a Force sensitive child is more work than three full starfighter squadrons.”

More of a preview of her life than she meant it to be. Deep in her heart, she knew that was true, but she hadn’t had anyone who’d knowingly experienced that to talk to. She couldn’t have been that bad a child, could she have?

She probably had. “Just regular squadrons, I hope?”

Hera shook her head. “All of them are Rogue Squadron.  All   of them.” Current reports indicated that the general they were currently attached to was rapidly balding. Also making remarkable progress through former Imperial territory but in utterly exhausting and unexpected ways. “Of course, I don’t really have a non-Force sensitive child to compare him to. Sabine was already a teenager by the time she was in my life.”

She could handle it. At least she had some amount of Force sensitivity herself. Poor Han, she should warn him. Maybe have him talk to Hera, if they could stop arguing about the relative merits of their ships long enough to discuss anything else. This might actually be important enough to manage that.

Hera keyed in the sequence to open up the hatch and led the way into the common area. Which had some remarkably comfortable chairs. Well chosen. Maybe she could get Han to install something like this on the Falcon. At the very least she had to find out where these cushions came from. Maybe she could even sneak one for the next Function...

Once she was suitably settled to relieve her overtaxed feet, Hera tried several times to open a conversation. Finally, she managed, “It can be hard to stop thinking about who you desperately want to be there, with a child.”

Leia’s hand drifted to her belly. “Han’s the important part.” She’d worried a lot when he was off dealing with Kashyyyk. But he was back now and ready to be part of their son’s life. It wasn’t like what Hera had had to deal with when her son was born. She had so many others around her, it wasn’t fair to wish for the things she couldn’t have.

“A baby can never have too much family. The whole crew helped me with Jacen.” She reached over and took Leia’s hand. “And so did two people who would be the most delighted grandparents anyone could ask for.”

Hormones were completely unfair. She was a senator; she couldn’t go crying like this. “I keep thinking of all the traditions I always thought any child of mine would participate in.” There was a lot involved with being the heir to the throne of Alderaan. For all that she’d complained, she couldn’t have imagined back then things going another way. Her child wouldn’t be the heir to anything— only a field of rubble.

“I had no idea what I was going to do without Kanan. But your parents were so kind to me.” She’d been busy with her own missions and a certain amount of teenaged tunnel blindness, but she did remember General Syndulla being around more often in the months leading up to the Battle of Yavin. She’d assumed it was all about the Rebel Alliance getting more established and the longtime leaders having more work to do. But of course, a pregnancy would change the day to day activities of a general. For all that she told her staff she wasn’t an invalid, she did occasionally have to slow down.

“They were always like that.” That was why it hurt so much. The galaxy needed people who were that kind. She tried to carry on their legacy, but she could only do so much. It would never be enough.

Hera pulled two crates forward and opened the first to reveal an assortment of baby clothes. She handed Leia the top onesie to examine. It wasn’t the sort of clothes she would have expected an active rebel to pick out, but these must be Jacen’s old things. They didn’t get a lot of babies in the Rebellion, after all. She ran her hand over the fabric. “This is beautiful.” It almost felt like rannasilk. But the only place to get that was... “It can’t be...”

Hera handed her another piece of clothing. The same craftsmanship. The same material. “Your mother said she had more than she could ever dream of using.”

“I remember. We had more than we could ever need, but no sense letting perfectly good things sit by, even if they were a little bit too luxurious.” It wasn’t what most people expected of royalty. But Alderaan wasn’t like anywhere else in the galaxy.

“She told me you could be a great grandmother before they ever had to reuse any baby things.” And then all of that had gone to waste when Tarkin said fire. Except for these boxes.

Leia held the onesie to her heart. Any connection at all.

“The other crate is a few items of furniture. I assume you have something permanent set up at home, but they knew I was mostly going to be travelling.” Settling down only became a real possibility for any of them in the past year. And even that was slow going. “It would make a good shipboard nursery.”

She’d been surprised that Han was willing to make changes to the Falcon. Putting in a galley. If he’d do that for her, surely their baby would also be worth it. They weren’t going to leave any permanent marks, and there was that strange room that Lando kept referring to as his cape closet. There wasn’t much in there but junk now. They could sort through all of that and make space for the baby. Space for... she opened the crate.

A perfectly crafted travel bassinette. Just like she would have slept in for all but her very first trip to Alderaan. Artfully carved, solid craftsmanship. Though the straps attached inside didn’t look at all Alderaanian. A practical addition, but added with respect for the aesthetic. She tugged on them. Solid, that would keep a baby from going anywhere even if his father decided it was a good idea to go into an asteroid field. But also quite lovely.

“That was Sabine’s work. Alderaanian royal politics don’t tend to quite rival an active rebellion for excitement.”

“If you go far enough in our history...” There was a reason Alderaanian royals had found themselves drawn to rebellion. She’d like to think it was all about justice. But they didn’t come from a tradition of sitting quietly, no matter what her tutors had tried to convince her of at the time. “I hope they’re never necessary.”

“That’s what we all hope for our children. And we actually have a chance at giving it to them, thanks to the work your parents started.” Started. They’d all continued it. And now, her child would have more of a link to that than she’d ever dreamed.

“I don’t know how to thank you enough for this gift.” She didn’t expect anything from family for the next generation. It would have been a foolish hope. That was all lost years ago in the worst moment of her life. Except, it seemed, this one gift. Because her parents had taken the time to care for someone else. They couldn’t have known this would come back to her; they were expecting her to use the rest of the excess in the palace’s vast storage.

She would have to teach her child to be like them. Dreaming cradled in this gift they didn’t know they were giving him.

[docfuture]

Princess, part 12

       [This story is a prequel, set in an alternate 2012, several years before The Fall of Doc Future, when Flicker is 16.  Links to some of my other work are here.  Updates are theoretically biweekly. Next chapter is partly done so I’m going to try to get it out early in September.]

Previous: Part 11

      Recovery--and a start at change and learning.       Flicker thought about the wrap up of her first session, and Stella's comments on paying a bit more attention to the ways other people were already helping.       "... and I just suppressed thinking about it at all because the frustration got real bad when I didn't," Flicker had said.       "Understandable," said Stella.  "Did you consider talking to Armadillo?"       "I talked to her about some general stuff, but she's... old."       Stella nodded slowly.  "I can see how the Database might have given you the impression that sex was invented sometime in the 60s.  And Armadillo was already middle-aged by then."       "That's not fair.  It just that the primary sources were so indirect and coded about it.  And left so much out.  The Database doesn't..."  Flicker frowned, then sped up to check a few things.  After a while she slowed back down.       "Well, crap," she said.  "I learned most of my 20th century history when I was randomly bouncing around the Database reading whatever caught my interest when I was 11 or 12.  So I missed stuff.  And I didn't go back, and made some implicit assumptions."       "You might find a discussion with Armadillo illuminating," said Stella.  "Have you considered that Doc might not be the person contributing the most to the collective judgement of your social maturity level that the Database uses to set your default access levels?  He seems willing to delegate to people he trusts, and of those, Armadillo clearly has had experience with children."       "Oof.  No, I hadn't thought of that."  Flicker sighed.  "Sometimes I wonder about the amount of time I spend mentally running circles around things without looking at what's at the center."       "Don't be too harsh on yourself.  You blame most of your social difficulties on mental differences, poor references, and lack of practice.  But the form of your education mattered, too.  You never went to school before your graduate work, and you did most of that remotely.  You learned from Doc, the Database, and direct observation--primarily of static scenes because of your speed.  And the bulk of educational material in the Database was written by and for typical humans, with all the embedded assumptions that entails."       "I really like the Database.  And the summaries help."       Stella shook her head.  "Not always.  Not if you don't know what's missing.  The Database AI made judgements when you were younger about what was appropriate at the time.  This shaped your knowledge map, which was already going to be very different from most humans.  So do your Database access restrictions.  Information revealed selectively or out of order can harm.  And if the Database can't reveal A to you--for, say, privacy reasons--and revealing B without A would cause harm, it will restrict B as well.  I'm sure Doc must have warned you about that."       "Yeah, but a lot of his restrictions seem arbitrary."       "Many will, if done right.  Database restrictions can and do cause bias problems, but overriding them is inherently risky.  The Database AI has to balance that, and there are no optimal choices, because the whole idea of the Database as an 'objective' knowledge map is a illusion.  The Database is biased by what gets recorded.  Your access to it is further biased, and what you actually do access is even more biased.  But the idea that you are necessarily getting closer to impartial truth when you override a warning is dangerous."       "So I can mess myself up with overrides."       "You already have.  Repeatedly.  Information shaping is one of my more powerful tools.  Cruder forms of it are in widespread use and getting more effective every day.  But perceptions come pre-shaped."  Stella had sipped from her cup of coffee before continuing.  "For example, you are highly proficient in many math-heavy technical subjects not usually mastered until graduate school, and awkward in areas typically covered by early childhood education or peer group socialization.  So when you made your implicit assumptions?  Of course you missed things.  However."       Stella was good at an 'I have a secret to share--eventually' style of speaking that was both mildly annoying and very effective at focusing attention.       "Yes?" said Flicker.       "Anyone would.  You just missed different things.  Others might have helped with some of them.  But no one could predict them all.  Not Doc, not the Database, not me.  So do what you can, but don't be too hard on yourself when mistakes happen."       "Ah.  I'll try to remember that."       *****       Flicker tried to follow Stella's initial guidelines, which focused on short term recovery, stabilization, and 'stop making this worse'.  Avoiding patrols was the most important and hardest to follow advice.  Physical therapy and exercise were tedious, but not difficult.  The dietary changes... were trickier.  Flicker had lost weight from the accident and the isotope exchanger sessions which she really couldn't afford.  And her kind of pseudo-shapeshifter healing depended on adequate body mass.  Stella forwarded some funny essays on cuisine and recovery for shapeshifters supposedly written by a French werewolf, and had the Database reset her food and drink related warnings, with an eye to both mental and physical health.       She'd also pointed out to Flicker that it only took a few early incidents of plasma in the GI tract while pushing the limits of her entropy dumping to cause lasting aversion to eating much while on call.  So when she later started to feel like she was on duty almost all the time, she stopped eating proper meals except with friends.  Staying off patrol for now made it possible to change that, but not easy.  Theoretically, she could eat like an Olympic athlete in training while exercising appropriately, and recover quite quickly, but that wasn't realistic.  She was stubborn, but so were her habits.       She couldn't patrol, but she could keep busy by surveying--updating Database geographical and obstacle data--and doing interior construction and finishing work on her house.  Back-ordered materials had piled up.  Flicker used power tools mainly for precision and delicacy; she had custom hand tools for speed and power, and boxes of regular hammers and screwdrivers to replace the ones she wore out or broke.  Superspeed and robotic help let her make rapid progress in the half days she was putting in to it.  Common areas and guest rooms were finished, and recreation areas, a wider variety of workshops, and Database node expansion rooms were all taking shape.       Making time to talk and eat with friends wasn't sophisticated advice, but it was obviously helpful.  She'd had dinner with Jetgirl and her husband yesterday.  Good food, carefully non-specific sympathy, then after dinner, 'girl talk' with Jetgirl.  Which meant tech geekery--they spent a few hours discussing the instrumentation and results from Speedtest, and Jetgirl's suggestions for some issues Flicker had encountered expanding her robotics workshop.  Reliable comfort.       The aftereffects from the cybernetic interface withdrawal were finally mostly gone, and Flicker's metabolism and appetite seemed to be responding to her exercises.  She was definitely putting on muscle faster than a human could.  And she'd mentioned her problem to Stavros, the owner of her favorite Greek restaurant, he'd gotten a look on his face like he'd been personally called upon to save the world, and now she had enough takeout in her fridge to feed a starving pseudo-mythological extradimensional being for a week.       Today, a visit with Armadillo.  She had promised something interesting.       Flicker had once asked Armadillo why she hadn't picked the name Glyptodon instead, because that seemed closer in size and fearsomeness to her appearance.  Armadillo had laughed and said she'd never heard of them at the time--the late 40s.  The two of them were at Armadillo's house, sitting at a table with an impressive feast.  It was not unusual for Armadillo; with super strength, near invulnerability, and half a ton of mass, she ate a lot, and saw no reason not to enjoy it.  Armadillo was cheerful and a good friend, as well as effectively family.  And at an age of 98, she knew a lot of history, especially the kinds that didn't usually get recorded very well.       The main reason Flicker didn't visit more often was an embarrassing one: When she'd been younger she'd had episodes of severe insomnia.  But Armadilo knew how to spin a story to help.  So when the biological part of Flicker's brain was working, it associated Armadillo's stories strongly with drowsiness.       Which didn't mean they were boring.       Armadillo was sharing some anecdotes from the late Pre-Net era--the 50s through the 70s--when Luce Cannon, Belle Tinker, and One-eyed Jack had been prominent superheroes.  They had set precedents that ended up shaping the way the Database had been assembled.  The norms Luce had established as a practical way of preserving relationship privacy and security without centralized infrastructure required narrative indirection and implication in order to discuss certain subjects at all.  Armadillo was very good at the style needed.  Unfortunately, that and the lack of unrestricted Database references hindered the usual ways Flicker updated her memories, so she was having trouble with details.  But there were definitely differences from the way she'd thought about the origins of the Database.       "Huh," she said.  "I always assumed that Doc decided everything important when he first built the Database, and the rest was just legacy format and historical records."       "Not entirely," said Armadillo.  "Luce knew all about records and careful access--she built her own intelligence operation, after all--and Belle was already starting to convert some of them to electronic form and building early bots in the fifties.  But reliability for anyone but Belle was always a problem, and she didn't have the level of conscientiousness about documentation that Doc did."       "Um.  Doc isn't always that great about documentation.  He gets--"       "The Database AI or someone else to do a lot of it.  I know.  But someone does.  Heck, I've done my share.  Belle was way ahead of her time, but we never found anything but cryptic notebook scribbles for some of her weirder stuff.  Left a bit of a mess after she was gone.  Doc brought in organization, documentation, robustness, and speed, and then extended it to everything.  But the first Database grew out of what he built for Luce not long before she died.  And Luce set some access conditions, which Doc won't change without a good reason.  So don't blame Doc for all of them."       "So the age restrictions are from Luce?"       "Some of them, yeah--but they aren't hardcoded, they're more flexible; we knew they'd have to accommodate aliens and extradimensional beings and whatnot.  It's really a maturity threshold."  Armadillo smiled.  "But I have a treat for you."       "Oh?"       "There are a few things I have personal discretion about.  And you've hit a block involving one of them twice now.  It's a good example of how we handled a few things back in the day, and might help you understand some of the ambiguity.  I can show it to you, but you'll have to put your visor on locked standby or take it off--no unrestricted electronic images of this are allowed."       Flicker frowned, but arranged a protocol with the Database and pulled back her hood.  Armadillo pushed back a plate, picked up a small case, opened it, and pulled out a large photographic print.       "This is a copy of the last known good photograph of Belle Tinker.  The original is in my family photo album in one of Doc's vaults."       Flicker moved her chair closer to get a better look.  It was a group photo, centered on a younger Armadillo.  "What's that blacked out area?"       "Non-superheroes with living relatives.  The photo is from my 60th birthday party in 1974."       Given the date, Flicker wasn't surprised that Armadillo was a bit narrower--she'd still been slowly adding mass.  But...  "Head spikes?"       Armadillo laughed.  "Yeah, that was my last try at regrowing them.  I'd been on a trip to Tokyo the previous year, and there was a translator around during a Kaiju attack.  I ended up stopping it by talking to the big fellow about the relative effectiveness of head spikes for challenge bellowing.  We had a nice talk, and everyone went home happy.  No property damage, even.  So I decided to give them another try.  But mine were only a little stronger than steel, so they kept breaking off--same kind of problem you have with your hair.  I finally gave up in 75?  Or maybe 76?  But really, I'm the least interesting person in that photo.  I'm curious what you think about the others."       "Okay," said Flicker.  "But that goblet you're drinking out of...  Is that a demon skull?"       "Yep.  The goblet was a birthday present.  It would have been rude not to try it out."  Armadillo nodded towards a nearby cabinet.  "I still have it, but I hardly ever use it anymore.  Little call for it, and it's tricky to clean."       "Um, okay."  Flicker studied the image of the woman with red hair, a lab coat, safety glasses, and an expression of indulgent patience.  "Belle has the same kind of 'I could be in my lab working on something cool' face I've seen Doc make.  Most of the contemporary sources I found in the Database were really bad at describing her.  She'd have been, what, in her late forties?  She looks younger than that, fit, and tough, I don't understand what was going on."       Armadillo smiled.  "There were a few that treated her reasonably--but they tended not to emphasize appearance.  Belle did not fit any 'feminine' stereotype back then, there were a number of media bigwigs who really didn't like her, and she didn't humor patronizing reporters.  So it was common for them to distort or belittle her intelligence and accomplishments, insult her appearance, attack her character, or just use bad pictures.  If they had to write about her at all.  That's one reason why the quality of much of what you found about her is poor."       Another woman with short dark hair was leaning against the table with a relaxed smile, but a very clear presence.       "Did Luce Cannon always look like she was in charge?" asked Flicker.  "I mean, it was your party, but..."       "She could hide it, but she was keeping an eye on someone who could get overenthusiastic."       A girl wearing a black outfit was smiling intently at the camera with a predatory look.  She appeared to be around eleven; it was hard for Flicker to judge ages.       "Is that a toy sword?" asked Flicker.  "It looks awfully realistic."       "Nope.  That was Katya's first magic sword.  She outgrew it; it's in the vaults now."       "Magic sword?  Wait... Katya?  That's Jumping Spider?"       "Oh, goodness no; she wouldn't use that name for years.  That's Katya the... Hunter, I think?  She switched from the Devastator sometime around then.  This was only a year after Luce started teaching her."       "Did... What... Why is she waving a sword around at your birthday party?"       "It was a compromise; she wanted to make a little pyramid out of the other skulls for the picture, but Luce vetoed that as unsanitary.  Just as well; Belle said they smelled pretty manky."       "Other skulls?"  Every time Flicker got a question answered, she immediately had several more--and she couldn't speed up and check the Database because her visor was off.       "Besides the one Jack and Belle turned into the goblet for my birthday present.  It was Katya's idea, so she got to hunt the demons, and she went a little overboard getting spare skulls.  Jack took her to the dimension where they lived--nasty place, but they were immune to poison, which was handy."       "...it's a magic goblet."       "Oh, yeah, it detoxifies anything in it," said Armadillo.  "If I ever want to be absolutely sure I can't be poisoned or I'm worried about contamination, I use it.  But it's usually overkill, it makes most non-alcoholic beverages taste kind of funny, and properly cleaning the precipitate chamber is a pain."       "Doc never let me hunt demons when I was ten," muttered Flicker as she studied the figure standing next to Belle in the photo.       "Mores change, and your adoption process wasn't complete yet.  It would have been awkward to explain."       "Did One-eyed Jack ever show any sign of aging?  It doesn't look like his appearance changed at all in pictures."       "Nope," said Armadillo.  "At least not from when I first met him in '50 or so until he disappeared in the nineties.  White hair, neatly trimmed beard, and the eyepatch.  He almost always wore that hooded robe and carried that staff with the magical doodad on the end.  Occasionally he'd switch to a really old style suit and a dress cane--he could do an impressive Offended Aristocrat act.  But his apparent age never changed.  I suspect he was some kind of shapeshifter, and I know he could create illusions, though, so I'm not sure anyone really knows for sure."       "Wait.  Disappeared?  The Database lists him as 'presumed dead' with supporting evidence; someone found his eyepatch and a scrap of robe near a small crater in the Topaz Realm and Doc verified they were genuine."       "Yep.  Doesn't mean he died.  He might have just decided it was time to stop being Jack.  Hard to believe someone as careful as him would botch a portal like that, and it seemed awfully pat that it happened somewhere with enough ravenous scavengers to ensure the lack of remains wasn't suspicious.  If he was a shapeshifter, there could be someone with his memories who looks quite different running around somewhere.  And he had a saying: 'Sometimes you see something coming and all you can do is get out of the way.'  I think that's what he did."  Armadillo grinned.  "But then, I've been accused of being sentimental from time to time."       "Okay," said Flicker.  "If you're suspicious about Jack, what about Belle?  She was declared dead, but all the Database says is that something catastrophic happened to her portal generator late at night and she was gone afterwards.  Jack is recorded as testifying that as far as he could tell, she hadn't been murdered or kidnapped, definitely wasn't alive on Earth, and he wasn't able to tell quite what happened with the portal.  But Doc said that if she really wanted to burn her bridges, she could have set the portal generator to self destruct, then gone through to somewhere before it blew.  He still has the remains of it in the vaults."       Armadillo looked out the window.  "All true.  She seemed kind of withdrawn for a while before that.  Well, withdrawn for her--she was always full of more ideas than she had time to try.  She'd had a disagreement with Luce and the Volunteer for a couple of years over... I guess you could call it public policy.  She made some predictions that turned out to be pretty accurate, and the first part of one of them had just happened--that was '80.  It's conceivable she might have just been tired of Earth.  But then she was kind of close to Jack, and he was pretty down afterwards--and if she went somewhere else, I don't know why he wouldn't be able to visit.  I tried talking to him about it once, and he just shook his head.  So I really can't say."       "Were they a couple?" asked Flicker.  "Database is ambiguous--they at least pretended a few times, but it wasn't clear what was going on.  I assume it's okay to ask about that now that they're both gone?"       "Heh.  It's not forbidden to ask, and they worked well together in the lab when Belle wasn't out causing trouble with Luce.  I'll say this; Belle never showed interest in most men--she'd roll her eyes at most of my jokes--and Jack never showed any interest in anyone but Belle.  But it could just have been cover; a convenience for both of them."       "Oh."       Flicker frowned at the last figure--a middle-aged man in nondescript clothing, leaning back in the chair beside Armadillo.  His glasses were perched precariously on the end of his nose, his fingers were laced over his chest, and his eyes were closed.       "Who is the guy beside you, and why is he asleep?"       Armadillo smiled.  "Oh, he'd had a long day, then a nice meal, so he just was catching a little nap.  He sometimes answered to the name of Chandler Devon."       Okay, now I know I'm being tested.  Flicker sped up.  The name was vaguely familiar--why?  She glanced at Luce again, then remembered.  Chandler Devon was connected to Luce Cannon in some way, perhaps one of her agents, or possibly romantically linked--but that had been a shaky source.  Documentation about him had been really spotty, with large gaps.  He'd been a skilled enough amateur geologist to get a few articles published, later in life.  But his fondness for volcanoes had apparently done him in--he'd disappeared during the Mount Pinatubo eruption a few years after Luce's death.       That made the third nominally dead person in the picture with a missing body.  The only person who was definitely dead and buried was Luce--she'd died of cancer in the late 80s.       There were several odd things that required explanation about 'Chandler Devon'.  Why was he even at Armadillo's party?  Had Luce brought him?       Why hadn't anyone woken him up for the picture?  It was a memorable occasion.  Was it a prank?       Wait.  Armadillo had said she was the least interesting person in the photo.  What could possible make him more interesting than her?  If he--       Oh.       So that's what he looks like when he's asleep.  But how did he manage...  Luce.  Of course.  She was the original super spy.  Jumping Spider's teacher.  If anyone could cover everything he'd need, it would have been her.  That explained so much.  He'd gone more than fifty years without anyone--       Idiot.  Everyone in that picture probably knew.  He'd always had a family.  A family of choice.  They just never, ever gave it away.  Even when they disagreed with each other.       But still, a few years after Luce died, he decided it was time to stop being Chandler Devon.  Could he still maintain cover?  Probably; Jumping Spider was 27 by then, and Doc was 17, with the Database up and running.  But the Lost Years were about to start, and Doc had seen that coming.  No longer worth the trouble, maybe?  How much had Luce meant to Chandler Devon?       A lot to think about, most of it not even about Belle.  But there was etiquette to be observed.  And as far as Flicker could tell, it was to indicate obliquely that she'd guessed, but not say anything unambiguous.  She could come up with something.       She slowed back down--and found herself blinking back tears.       "He looks like...  someone who works very hard," she managed.  "And doesn't get a chance to relax very often.  I'm glad no one woke him up."       Armadillo nodded slowly.  "So was I."  She started to put the picture back in the box.       "Wait," said Flicker.  "Who took the picture?  I thought I knew, but now I think I was wrong."       Armadillo paused.  "Another time, maybe.  You probably have enough to cogitate about today already."       "Yeah.  Yeah, I do."

Next:  Part 13

[yogaadvise]

5 reasons why teaching alignment matters

You've most likely, eventually, been instructed to Stack your knee over your ankle in Warrior 2 or Align your shoulders over your wrists in Slab present. Just recently there has actually been much conversation in the yoga exercise world regarding whether or not yoga exercise instructors ought to give so many anatomical positioning signs like these.

As a passionate SAFE YOGA EXERCISE lover as well as a 6-year professional makeup educator of yoga teachers-in-training, my reply is a loud and unquestionable 'YES' to comprehensive and also smart placement cues. Below are 5 of my factors why:

1 FEEL ME, TOUCH ME, HEAL ME: Straightforward body awareness

When I was asked lately in a meeting why I think individuals need to practice Hatha yoga exercise, my response was: 'Yoga allows you to have the alternative experience of your body and also where it is positioned, at any kind of moment, in area as well as time ... basically the superb experience of being entirely symbolized, of sensation greatly ALIVE."

The bulk of trainees concerning exercise yoga for the very first time are hardly knowledgeable about their body as a whole. The majority of individuals experience themselves as parts ... fragmented.

The majority of trainees practicing yoga for the very first time are barely mindful of their body in its entirety. The majority of people experience themselves as parts ... fragmented.

Life has a means of doing this to us: throwing us curve sphere after captain hook (work, worries, traumas) and afterwards desensitizing us from the concerns that have built up in our tissues. I inform my teachers-in-training constantly that one of our many vital tasks as yoga teachers is to put 'Humpty Dumpty' back with each other again so she or he can go back into their lives and also do whatever it is that they do (for work or play) around again ... with zest, vitality, and incredible sense of feeling complete.

Alignment cues motivate people to concentrate their minds on a certain body component, the signs instruct them how to relocate (within their very own variety of motion), location it as well as infuse it, exactly how to feel it if it is tight, tense or restricted in some method. This then opens up the trainee approximately the much deeper understanding of their body and the myriad of possibilities (as well as realities) of much less pain as well as pain and even more liberty, simplicity as well as array of movement (where perhaps they were even not aware there was none).

2 THAT ARE YOU? Stiring up to one's physical regular patterns

Whether it be from resting at a desk all day, driving a car for a work, training for a marathon or bicycle race or resting on your stomach with your head relied on the right for three decades - habitual patterns have been established in your body that will detrimentally affect (deteriorate) the body as a whole.

Whether it be from 'automatic' activities inscribed over a lifetime, mishaps, psychological traumas or considerable life occasions, purposeless habitual motion patterns will negatively affect (weaken) the body as a whole.

Also, deposit from accidents, emotional traumas or large life events like growing, birth as well as lugging a baby on your hip will certainly establish regular patterns in the body that are not useful to the body's continuous attempts to achieve vibrant stability (natural state of harmony, balance and also radiant health and wellness).

The human body is composed of regarding 300 joints and each joint has a specific quantity of all-natural activities done by certain agonist (key mover) and synergist (assistant) skeletal muscles. In order for the body to be radiantly healthy and execute at its maximum degrees efficiently, all connective tissue (bones, tendons, muscular tissues, ligaments and fascia) require to fully experience the equilibrium of toughness as well as suppleness - not as well tight, strained or limited in one area and also loosened or weak in another.

Teachers that show bone placement additionally require to show correct muscular tissue activation - informing their pupils on what skeletal muscular tissues move and also position the bones in certain shapes (presents and counterposes). This is so essential for both on- and also off-the-mat long life, if we have the knowledge as well as the experience of how to appropriately relocate the body we will be much less prone to soft tissue wear as well as tear and the risk of injuries will be diminished.

3 GRAVITY: Always a factor

As we continually and also continuously exercise the numerous various designs of Hatha yoga, working to experience the body-breath-mind union, we will undoubtedly obtain more powerful, more flexible, more able to experience feelings of entire body vibrancy as well as buoyancy. Up until after that we usually land on the mat experiencing the reverse: thickness, tightness, with a body that seems fragmented (experiencing the individual components versus the fantastic sum whole).

Sometimes I believe us older, wiser (wink, wink) and seasoned yoga exercise educators neglect what it felt to be a new yoga professional: puzzled, uncoordinated, clumsy, weak, incapable to float, fly or also stabilize! My partner, Dan, came up with an excellent example for this:

If you sent out a number of seasoned/master yoga educators (all asanas executed easily, pranayama techniques mastered, bandhas flawlessly engaged, reflective minds totally as well as utterly concentrated on their drishtis) on a school trip to a world where gravity is a lot different to ours below on planet (as if the air was like the consistency of honey) and asked them to exercise yoga exercise like they do back residence ... they will inevitably check out each various other and also ask HOW do we navigate these bodies? Where are the inhabitants of this earth ... can they educate us exactly how to move as well as position our bodies in such a method we won't obtain hurt?

I enjoyed this analogy of his! What would it really feel like to be a beginner once again ... to be educated how to relocate your body in a means that defies the restraints gravity puts upon it?

What would it seem like to be a newbie once again ... to be educated just how to move your body in a manner that opposes the constraints gravity puts upon it?

We all have had the experience (as well as if you are reading this as well as it hasn't took place yet ... IT WILL!) of a position that we battled, sweated and also vowed with, that with attentive technique, became unbelievably easy as well as stylish. Alignment-based yoga instructors are instructing basic bone-stacking as well as muscular tissue activation standards (not all positionings help all body kinds, obviously) so that the student can discover this ease, the free-flow of pranic power that is so Sukha sweet!

4 SECURE YOGA ROCKS: Tendons are not elastic

Wrong placement - breaking the natural functioning order of the bones and joints - of one's body parts can place feasible injurious stress and anxiety on the surrounding connective tissue - especially when gravity is a factor! A reality to keep in mind: tendons are not flexible! As soon as stretched from their original form they will never ever return to their original form. As a result of this, it is not beneficial to the ligaments to 'hang' on your bones in a stretch - again, especially when gravity is a factor.

Once extended from their original shape ligaments will never ever return to their original form. Due to this it is not helpful to the ligaments to 'hang' on your bones in a stretch.

For example, in a posture with a greater center of gravity such as Warrior 1 or 2, the knee ought not to surpass the stacked ankle/heel. Or else, the quantity of pressure that the upper leg bone put on the kneecap ligament as well as the knee joint tendons can cause injury - both from recurring movement and also traumatic. A reduced centre of gravity posture such as Low lunge doesn't necessarily have the exact same quantity of pressure on the knee. Some knees, even in such a low pose, should also not pass through past the ankle/heel.

Another instance is to make certain your shoulders do not dip listed below your joints in Chaturanga

Dandasana. This puts unneeded (and also damaging) weight on the tendons, ligaments and bursas of the shoulder girdle and the arm joint. Be aware of keeping the ribs in line with the parallel-to-the-earth upper arm bones in this reduced slab posture. By not allowing the ribs to dip reduced you prevent any kind of unneeded load-bearing anxiety on the tendons of the sternoclavicular and acromioclavicular joints.

For lots a lot more on this read For the love of the shoulder as well as Our complex shoulders and also Chaturanga Dandasana

It is ok, however, to have the shoulders lower than the elbow joints as you relax on the floor as well as prior to you use your back muscle mass to peel your body off the mat in Bhujangasana (Cobra Posture) since your alignment to gravity is reduced (resting on the ground) as well as you're using your erector spinae muscle mass (back extensors) to lift your body off the mat.

Up to this factor all these examples I have discussed have been ones I have actually experienced many various other yoga exercise experts struggle with discomfort, pain and injury in.

A last example is one I have actually directly experienced. I am a hyper-extender of the knees, without any muscular tissue activity I have 'dropped' right into the rear of my knees given that I was a child. Well, this quality of mine was celebrated in a details kind of hot yoga I have actually been lovingly exercising considering that 1999 where a recurring sign is to 'lock your knees, lock your knees, secure your knees'. Easy for a hyper-extender such as myself to do ... every class, 6 days a week for two years directly I secured my knee in 6 standing postures (higher facility of gravity, labelled weight bearing as well as 4 of them getting on one leg just). The tendon damage in my knees is so considerable that occasionally I stumble when I stroll because I am so unstable there. Now, when I practice that kind of yoga exercise (I still like as well as value the collection sequence) I micro-bend my knee to shield this valuable joint - a crucial safety and security alignment hint not normally offered but is vital for the health and wellness of the tendons of the knee!

5 BE BELOW CURRENTLY: Atha Yoga exercise Anushasanam

Lastly, one of one of the most yogic factors for teaching and exercising alignment-based yoga exercise: GREATEST EXISTENCE IN THE SPIRITUAL NOW. One of the most profound utterances besides AUM is the sanskrit work ATHA which means CURRENTLY. Yoga suggests union and also among the lots of translations of this principle of unity is the body-mind-breath-spirit link that truly can just be feasible RIGHT NOW. This minute. RIGHT HERE. NOW. Are you right here? Where are you? Are you planning or fretting about the future? Are you feeling resentment or regret about what occurred in the past? Are you right here being, breathing, experiencing the magic that is constantly unraveling or are you ... oops, you simply missed it. Currently, below it is again. Be here currently ... and also currently ... as well as currently ...

Are you below? Where are you? Are you below being, breathing, experiencing the magic that is constantly unfolding or are you ... oops, you just missed it.

Teachers that continuously teach their trainees exactly how to align their bodies in such a way that one of the most Sthira (stability) as well as Sukha (comfort) will be experienced are supplying their pupils something to concentrate their minds on. For 60, 75 or 90 mins the trainee's mind is paying attention to the instructor, paying attention to their body's toughness as well as weak points, paying attention to their breath to locate both obstructions as well as liberty. Throughout this moment there are no bother with the children, the costs, the one in charge, the aging and also troubling parents, etc. Essentially, alignment based courses are meditations right into the now, where the body actually moves, changes and relaxes. The mind likes to desert the body ... placement based yoga exercise offers the pupil a means to the body, a back to the NOW.

Read all the articles in Jennilee's collection on protecting against yoga exercise injuries:

The breath, prana as well as the vayus

The bandhas

Bone alignment

Muscle intelligence

Joint integration

[zombiesmouth-blog]

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[zoids-whisper-blog]

                                 Chapter Two: Dark Skies

Alise is still missing, Juno still insists on going after her and Pana, despite what she says, is still not fine.  Chapter Two begins immediately where chapter one left off.

But this time, the stakes are much higher.  Skies has come out of the shadows and is wreaking havoc as he pleases.  Pana wants to pursue Alise into Dunraven, but it will be impossible unless Sylvanr is able to gain some ground on her brother, Skies.  Her extended babysitting adventure has now grown into fighting a territory war with two deities.

Meanwhile, the Village of Songs is slowly regaining a sense of normalcy after the attacks preceding chapter one.  Whispers are leaving their huts and venturing out into the world again...A world which is in serious need of rebuilding.

https://rpgmaker.net/games/6250/downloads/10130/ ---

The game has been up for several hours, but I was too exhausted to type up patch notes or anything like that.  Now I have.  Given the amount of time that's elapsed since the last patch, the extreme loss of old files and documentation, and my own fallible memory, I cannot hope to provide full patch notes.  Please accept these partial notes instead.  I will provide further notes once I've been able to sort things out, but there's no need to delay release for that. Some patch notes may have been for things in v1.2...but I had them down for a version v1.3 that never seems to have been released?  Who knows... ---

-After reaching a certain point in chapter two, players will be able to (finally) construct additional zoids.  As I said in an earlier post, this will initially be limited to four new zoids (Sabre Tiger, Red Horn, Lightning Saix, König Wolf).  However, unlike I said in an earlier post, these zoids will not be pilot restricted.  You are free to put Adele in a Sabre Tiger, if you so wish.  In addition, pilots can swap into existing zoids.  Pana can pilot Juno's Stone Fuhrer if you so desire.

I plan to add additional zoids.  Just like last time I mentioned this, the change-over system has been updated to make adding zoids easier.  At the same time, they all require animations, updates to Link Attack code to make sure Adele isn't sniping people in a gunless Sabre Tiger, and so on.

-I've created a new way of coding menus which makes it much easier to offer choices (as many as I want) to players with the flexibility of easily adding/removing choices based on various circumstances.  I didn't have time to roll this out completely, but players can see it during pilot switching and in a certain post-chapter Tribute Shop.  Plans are underway to update Isaac and other NPCs.

-Mathilde Gavrielle has been updated with what will eventually be the new method of coding NPCs.  This means that, whenever she appears, she largely uses the same code.  While this may not seem like it matters since I achieved the same effect with massive juggling of flags and variables before, it means that it will now be much easier to have NPCs move about the world without introducing bugs, breaking quests or eating up Dev time.  Expect mobile NPCs in a future update...I want to make this world come alive.

-As always, Sylvanr has more variety in Statue speaking bits, Pana has more variety with plant healing speaking bits and Juno has slightly more variety with plant healing speaking bits.

-Sylvanr's Rage was a good technical skill on paper, but the bulk of its power was in debuffing enemies in an AoE.  Unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily come across to players.  Rage now debuffs enemies so hard that it can't be missed.  It is now sufficiently powerful for a Link Attack.

-Juno's Sylvanr's Fury has a new animation.  More animation updates coming, but they take time and I didn't want to delay over that.  Feel free to speculate as to why I did this obscure skill first...I sure don't have a clue.

-Ursula may have been completely reworked.  I honestly don't remember if that rework went out in patch 1.2.  Anyway, it's been so long since that happened (for me) that I can't really give you an accurate step-by-step comparison with her original form.  Her new Bear focuses on locking down a single target and doing moderate turn-1 damage as opposed to buffing up to deal damage later.  

-Juno's Hope is now an instant skill.  This should give it a wider use case, hopefully.

-The main menu is now a Ring of Flowers.  I want to do more with this (like show Sylphs somewhere), but I didn't want to risk blowing up the stability of the build by mucking around with menu coding in the eleventh hour.

-The Quest Log has become the Notebook.  It has been largely re-coded to prevent crashes, now contains more quests and is generally more useful than before.

-Christopher and Leeland's Shield of Love link attack was mistakenly firing 64 times instead of 8.  Whoops.

-Christopher and Leeland's Strike Hyacinth included 3 attack actions for Christopher.  In light of new changes that make basic attacks stronger in general, this became a little over the top.  To prevent Christopher from being able to make 54 attacks with this skill, the number of attack actions has been dropped to 2.  Enjoy your 36 attack combos though, if that's your thing.

-Leeland's Divine Stratagem fizzled out if the player did not pick a support skill in time.  It now uses the main skill with no support, if possible, and a minor plan B skill if not.

-Juno's supports in Divine Stratagem were sometimes using the wrong skill due to a bit of database reordering.  She has been un-addled.

-Some Link attacks involving multiple enemy targets resulted in characters each targeting a different enemy.  They will now display coordination worthy of the vanguard.

-Leeland's DS: Strike Lily with Christopher support caused Christopher to use the original Double Time instead of Double Time II even if he had learned the latter.  This led to silly situations where Christopher could attack all day long.  No more.

-Pana and Juno's Sylvanr's Resolve link prayer was available for use even if they were not in the party together or if one of their systems was frozen.  Now it isn't.  Also, the buff it imparts lasts 1 turn longer so that Godspeed isn't necessary to get some use out of it.

-Pana's Atalanta formation was doing good work, but wasn't in line with the strength of other formations due to how low Agility values are compared to other stats and the relatively few places where it applies.  It now gives a 300% Agility boost instead of 200%.

-Adele has a new skill available after she has Taken Cover: Emerge.  She steps out of cover and gains 30 AD.  

-After the player reached a certain level of strength, Core Coating stones stopped working, maybe.  Now they work at all times, definitely.

-The Ill-Fitting tunic says that it increases the players AD gain rate.  Instead, it just made enemy zoids want to attack the wearer more often.  It is now a tunic of its word.

-If Sylvanr caused a storm to occur in certain maps, the screen would become too dark to see anything on.  This particular interaction will no longer occur on those maps.

-Previously, a System Freeze while in formation would cause the affected pilot to drop formation until the skill was used again.  Now, they should drop back into place as soon as they're back online.

[orbemnews]

So You Want to Open a Hotel? Now? Before the pandemic began, the second location of The June Motel, a 24-room boutique hotel in Sauble Beach, Ontario, was set to open in late last spring. To be fully ramped up for Lake Huron’s 2020 beach season was the goal. Construction stopped in mid April, however, leaving the property’s restaurant with half-installed floor tiles and guest rooms that hadn’t yet been coated in cheery blush-colored paint. April Brown and Sarah Sklash, the June’s co-owners, weighed three scenarios: not open at all; open as a rooms-for-rent Airbnb model without amenities; or push the opening until Labor Day. “A lot of it came down to: Can we financially wait three months to open?” Ms. Brown said of their decision to delay. “The reason we were able to do that is that we got a lot of subsidies. We got grants; we kept several employees on payroll. There was a lot of support from the Canadian government for the tourism and hospitality sector.” Over the past decade, tourism destinations around the world saw record hotel development. In 2019 alone, a global construction binge increased the number of hotel rooms by 8 percent compared to the year before. But in 2020 — and, now, 2021 — the lodging industry has faced almost unbelievable challenges: increasingly complicated restrictions on domestic and international travel, virus safety protocols that require resources and training, and strict testing mandates and quarantine requirements for travelers. Which leads any rational person to wonder: Is it wise to open a new hotel during a pandemic? According to a recent report by Lodging Econometrics, which tracks the lodging industry, more than 900 hotels opened in the United States last year — more than 100,000 new rooms. This year, another 960 new hotels are expected to open. The owners and operators fueling these projects have done so are going beyond hiring bartenders and housekeepers, ordering linens and signage, and establishing booking systems and marketing plans. They must also implement disinfection protocols, enforce distancing and mask wearing, and figure out how to make the numbers work in a climate that isn’t all that favorable to travel. For Ms. Sklash and Ms. Brown, the government support was a game-changer, but their success during the pandemic also relied on a slate of virus-safety measures, a doubled-down approach to attracting locals and a cool, escapist atmosphere. Others in the industry have echoed similar tactics — and have even found some unexpected perks during these unprecedented times. “When you open a new place during Covid, you get to say, ‘This is the experience you get,’” Ms. Brown said. “You’re not saying, ‘This is the new experience.’ It’s just the experience. There was nothing comparable to what we used to do, which can be a benefit.” ‘It was down to the bitter end’ Delaying the opening gave Ms. Brown and Ms. Sklash time to create new policies and determine their new priorities. They implemented a shift-coverage system, should a staffer awaken with a fever, and tinkered with personal touches — in-room canned wine, for example, served as a good stand-in for a glass that would have otherwise been poured for a guest at check-in. When reservations opened in July, Ms. Brown and Ms. Sklash hit their fall financial target in a day, thanks, in part, to organic marketing efforts on Instagram, where the June’s page is a frothy expression of beaches and pastel hues. Within 30 minutes of releasing rooms for Labor Day Weekend, the entire hotel sold out for the three-night minimum. “The independents aren’t going to be backed up by an extensive brand and marketing program and an enormous customer database,” said Kate Walsh, the dean at Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration, contrasting the opening of smaller hotels to that of larger chains. “So they’re going to have to really double down on how they convey what that experience might be and why.” Ms. Brown and Ms. Sklash also shifted funds earmarked for the restaurant to the patio, which they kitted out with string lights, stylish furniture and greenery. But two weeks before opening, another outdoor space — the pool deck — was only partially finished. “Home construction projects were up — everyone wanted to renovate,” Ms. Brown said. “Our contractor went to the hardware store twice a day for at least 10 days before we had the wood we needed. It was down to the bitter end.” At first, the housekeeping team serviced rooms upon request only and left newly vacated rooms empty for at least a day before cleaning them. That strategy worked fine until peak season hit in June, driving occupancy above 50 percent. “No problem; we’ll buy commercial electrostatic sprayers and sanitize the room,” said Glenn E. Tuckman, the chief operating officer and managing director of the Cavalier Resort Complex, the $350 million, mixed-use complex that includes the new Marriott. “Problem was: No one had them. The airlines bought them all before the hotel industry realized their value. We found ours on eBay, but we paid for it.” ‘There was no playbook’ As hotel owners and operators have confronted the challenges of the pandemic, Dr. Walsh said, safety has emerged as the biggest priority. “Safety is paramount — it’s the essential part of bringing the guests back,” she said. “And the challenge for hotels is showing that they are safe and secure.” Miraval Berkshires, the 100-room spa resort in Lenox, Mass. — where this writer spent two nights over Christmas after shelling out tens of thousands of World of Hyatt points — was about 90 percent complete when the pandemic hit. Construction stopped until June 1; the opening was pushed from Memorial Day weekend to mid July. Management spent the downtime developing an enhanced slate of cleaning and safety protocols. Pens and ice buckets were removed from guest rooms. Public seating was halved. Extra heat lamps arrived, ready to brave fall and winter in New England. Wellness activities — most of which are included in the room rate — were tweaked for social distancing and vibe; a seminar on resilience was designed with the pandemic in mind. “There was no playbook for opening a hotel during a pandemic,” said Susan Santiago, the head of lifestyle and Miraval operations at Hyatt, which owns the hotel. “We essentially had to write it and think about how to put it into action at the same time.” Since the hotel opened, most weeks have sold out at the occupancy limit of 50 percent, Ms. Santiago said. ‘We wanted to be very cautious’ The Lytle Park Hotel was on track to open in Cincinnati on March 19. Three days earlier, plans were postponed. Ninety percent of the newly trained staff was furloughed. The small group that remained established a Covid plan using guidelines from various sources, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When the 106-room hotel, which is part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection, opened on June 3, it did so with about 50 percent capacity in the restaurant, bar and rooftop lounge. Even cocktails got a pandemic spin. “Garnishes were served on the side instead of in the drink,” said Brett Woods, the hotel’s general manager. “We wanted to be very cautious as we opened into this new environment.” Mr. Woods said that establishing those protocols upfront allowed The Lytle Park to come out of the gate with fully functional, if slimmed-down, dining. That strategy has been good for business: The socially distanced rooftop bar, he said, quickly became a hit with Cinncinatians angling for drinks and views this summer. Weekend wait times sometimes exceeded two hours. “Most hotels were doing the opposite: not having any food or beverage,” he said. “Since we were a brand-new hotel, we didn’t want to open without having certain services available to people who would be experiencing this hotel the first time.” ‘It’s been exciting to connect with locals’ After a soft opening in February and nearly immediately shutting down, The Pearl Hotel, in San Diego, reopened in June with Covid-friendly bells and whistles like Zingle, a real-time texting service that allows guests to correspond with hotel management before and during their stay. “Guests are able to limit physical contact while checking in, but they also get personalized service and they feel they’re being taken care of,” said Carolyn Schneider, president and partner of Casetta Group, the hospitality management group that operates the 23-room boutique hotel. After procuring hand sanitizer in bulk this spring, Ms. Schneider worked with Casetta’s creative director to design custom refillable glass bottles that matched the bath amenities. Rooms also feature sealed boxes of sanitized high-touch items, including hairdryers — a detail not lost on Jessica Bender, 51, who has visited The Pearl nine times since July. “Everything’s clean; there’s sanitizer everywhere,” said Ms. Bender, who works in the film industry in Los Angeles. “They even figured out how to have movies by the pool — I’ve watched ‘Dirty Dancing’ out there.” As the Casetta Group gears up to open Casa Cody, a 30-room boutique hotel in Palm Springs, Calif., in early March, Ms. Schneider is reflecting on what she calls a “silver lining” at The Pearl: “It’s been exciting to connect with locals we wouldn’t necessarily meet otherwise,” she said. “A new independent hotel has the opportunity to build a customer base from scratch,” Dr. Walsh, of Cornell University, said. “It might’ve been harder to attract locals before, when people would have gotten on a plane.” ‘When we come out of this, we will be far more agile’ The luxury market segment, meanwhile, has reckoned with how to extend hospitality and high-end flourishes in the absence of, say, the ability to shake guests’ hands. At the new Four Seasons Hotel Bangkok at Chao Phraya River, a kids’ club is off-limits for now, but children can play with individually sanitized toys that have been arranged in their rooms. The private setup might also include a personalized play tent bearing the child’s name. “The expectations from guests when they come to a luxury hotel has not changed,” said Lubosh Barta, the hotel’s general manager. “They expect the highest possible level of service. Despite what is happening around us, they expect it even more.” The opening of the 299-room Four Seasons was delayed from May to December; during those months, management live-streamed trainings to keep staff engaged from home. Mr. Barta said his team adapted in ways that would have been inconceivable in the Before Times — say, positioning lights based on the recommendations of a consultant working from more than a thousand miles away. “No one knows how long this will go on, and we’ve learned to operate in an environment that has been unseen, untested in our life span,” Mr. Barta said. “But as a positive, when we come out of this, we will be far more agile and lighter in the way we do business.” Sarah Firshein is a Brooklyn-based writer. She is also The Times’s Tripped Up columnist, so if you need advice about a best-laid travel plan that went awry, send an email to travel@nytimes.com. Source link Orbem News #hotel #Open

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FOLLOW THROUGH BEHAVIOURS: THE AKRASIA EFFECT

A brief story: 

In the summer of 1830, Victor Hugo was facing an impossible deadline. Twelve months earlier, the French author had promised his publisher a new book. But instead of writing, he spent that year pursuing other projects, entertaining guests, and delaying his work. Frustrated, Hugo’s publisher responded by setting a deadline less than six months away. The book had to be finished by February 1831. Hugo concocted a strange plan to beat his procrastination. He collected all his clothes and asked an assistant to lock them away in a large chest. He was left with nothing to wear except a large shawl. Lacking any suitable clothing to go outdoors, he remained in his study and wrote furiously during the fall and winter of 1830. The Hunchback of Notre Dame was published two weeks early on January 14, 1831.

Procrastination is usually a “yes” or “no” question”

For more conventional instances, consider addictive behaviour patterns or compulsive traits like over-shopping and blowing the budget, or manic media use; maybe even something like starting an argument one “knows” one will regret and that will lead to trouble or grief.

Having an explanation seems good because it suggests some kind of intervention based on that knowledge, but in some cases, it just doesn’t work. Yet we still feel the hypnotic pull toward explanations, even if the terms being explained are just accepted in a very uncritical way. 

When we make a decision to do something or not, our brain usually has a “gut instinct” answer of yes or no, before the words even come out of the mouth. We consider what benefit it has first, and then what benefit it may have for another person. Then we consider other criteria like time, strength, and effort it will take before we actually decide what it is we are going to do. This all happens in a split second before we commit, and the answer comes out of the mouth.

Often, procrastination occurs when you have decided to complete a task, but you keep postponing until later without consciously choosing to do it then. Not all procrastination is bad procrastination. There are two types of procrastinators- active and passive.

Active procrastination involves making a deliberate decision to procrastinate, to use the pressure of acting under a deadline as motivation to complete a task. This form of procrastination leads to positive outcomes, since it helps people be more efficient while they work.

Passive procrastination involves procrastinating due to an inability to act in a timely manner. In short, putting off one task merely because your lazy or cannot make up the mind to do it because of some of the other distraction.

Though you may be convinced by this that you are an active procrastinator the truth is most of us are actually passive procrastinators. We delay our work just because we can and with no justifiable reason.

Maybe it is better to try to “own” the behaviour rather than blaming externals. So, it is not necessarily a useless idea. The concept of Akrasia is a sort of promise the executive self makes to itself about self-control and autonomy. And it is also the basis for promises one makes to other people about accountability, or rather, explanations for the occasional breakdown and exception.

The Ancient Problem of Akrasia

Human beings have been procrastinating for centuries. Even prolific artists like Victor Hugo are not immune to the distractions of daily life. The problem is so timeless, in fact, that ancient Greek philosophers like Socrates and Aristotle developed a word to describe this type of behaviour: Akrasia.

Human behaviour is complex, and we interpret through a network of concepts which themselves are cultural and philosophical constructs. If the typical definition of “akrasia” is “weakness of will”, then what is will? If will is some vaguely defined power of “mind”, then what is mind? If mind is an active presence within “self”, then what is self? … and so on.

Akrasia is the state of acting against your better judgment. It is when you do one thing even though you know you should do something else. Loosely translated, you could say that akrasia is procrastination or a lack of self-control. Akrasia is what prevents you from following through on what you set out to do. Why would Victor Hugo commit to writing a book and then put it off for over a year? Why do we make plans, set deadlines, and commit to goals, but then fail to follow through on them?

Also, akrasia is loss of self-control, in the sense of action contrary to reason. In akrasia, there is an ingrained habit in an individual, of the non-rational elements of the soul subverting the rational capacities. Action is usually guided in a range of ways by reason. So akrasia is interesting because it involves a departure from a norm. Why We Make Plans, But Don't Take Action

One explanation for why akrasia rules our lives and procrastination pulls us in has to do with a behavioural economics term called “time inconsistency.” Time inconsistency refers to the tendency of the human brain to value immediate rewards more highly than future rewards. When we make plans for ourself — like setting a goal to lose weight or write a book or learn a language — we are actually making plans for our future self. We are envisioning what we want our life to be like in the future and when we think about the future it is easy for our brain to see the value in taking actions with long-term benefits.

When the time comes to make a decision, however, we are no longer making a choice for our future self. Now we are in the moment and our brain is thinking about the present self. And researchers have discovered that the present self really likes instant gratification, not long-term payoff. This is one reason why we might go to bed feeling motivated to make a change in our life, but when we wake up, we find ourselves falling into old patterns. Our brain values long-term benefits when they are in the future, but it values immediate gratification when it comes to the present moment. This is one reason why the ability to delay gratification is such a great predictor of success in life. Understanding how to resist the pull of instant gratification—at least occasionally, if not consistently—can help you bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

The Framework You Need to Beat Procrastination

Here are three ways to overcome akrasia, beat procrastination, and follow through on what we set out to do. Strategy 1: Design your future actions. When Victor Hugo locked his clothes away so he could focus on writing, he was creating what psychologists refer to as a “commitment device.” A commitment device is a choice we make in the present that controls our actions in the future. It is a way to lock in future behaviour, bind us to good habits, and restrict us from bad ones. There are many ways to create a commitment device. We can:

1)      . . . reduce overeating by purchasing food in individual packages rather than in bulk size.

2)      . . . voluntarily ask to be added to the banned list at casinos and online poker sites to prevent future gambling sprees.

3)      . . . athletes who have to “make weight” for a competition have been heard to leave their wallets at home during the week before weigh-in so they won’t be tempted to buy fast food.

The circumstances differ, but the message is the same: commitment devices can help us design our future actions. The goal is to find ways to automate our behaviour beforehand rather than relying on willpower in the moment. 

Strategy 2: Reduce the friction of starting. The guilt and frustration of procrastinating is usually worse than the pain of doing the work. In the words of Eliezer Yudkowsky, “On a moment-to-moment basis, being in the middle of doing the work is usually less painful than being in the middle of procrastinating.” So why do we still procrastinate? Because it is not being in the work that is hard, it's starting the work. The friction that prevents us from acting is usually centred around starting the behaviour. Once we begin, it is often less painful to do the work. This is why it is often more important to build the habit of getting started when we are beginning a new behaviour than it is to worry about whether or not we are successful at the new habit. We have to constantly reduce the size of our habits. Put all of the effort and energy into building a ritual and make it as easy as possible to get started. Do not worry about the results until the art of showing up is mastered. Strategy 3: Utilize implementation intentions. An implementation intention is when we state your intention to implement a particular behaviour at a specific time in the future. For example, “I will exercise for at least 30 minutes on [DATE] in [PLACE] at [TIME].” There are hundreds of successful studies showing how implementation intentions positively impact everything from exercise habits to flu shots. It seems simple to say that scheduling things ahead of time can make a difference, but implementation intentions can make us 2x to 3x more likely to perform an action in the future. Fighting Akrasia Our brains prefer instant rewards to long-term payoffs. It is simply a consequence of how our minds work. Given this tendency, we often must resort to crazy strategies to get things done—like Victor Hugo locking up all of his clothes so he could write a book. But it is sometimes worth to spend time building these commitment devices if our goals are important to us. Aristotle coined the term Enkrateia as the antonym of Akrasia. While akrasia refers to our tendency to fall victim to procrastination, Enkrateia means to be “in power over oneself.” Designing your future actions, reducing the friction of starting good behaviours, and using implementation intentions are simple steps that you can take to make it easier to live a life of Enkrateia rather than one of Akrasia. **Source Credits: The book-  Atomic Habits by James Clear. 

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa.

[largemaxa]

Karmayoga: the Yoga of Spiritual Work

There are several discernible threads in current thinking about spirituality in mainstream Western culture. The most prominent views spirituality as a set of tools to provide peace, healing, and relief in a stressful world. This line of thinking is able to bridge the sacred and the secular by allowing individuals to participate in a variety of practices to access their beneficial effects without necessarily needing to affirm (or deny) any particular contentious metaphysical or religious doctrine. Another trend that is more submerged, though correspondingly more passionate, views spirituality as a gateway to beautiful and ecstatic possibilities, whether situated in a transformed utopian future or in an occult inner world. In addition to these two currents, the idea of devotion still persists, though it is viewed with skepticism by a scientific and secular mainstream culture for its associations with fanaticism and irrationality. Love is, of course, regarded as the noblest motive in human life, but only as long as it refers to the love of man for his fellow man in the institutions of the family, community, and society; the love for God seems less reasonable, though still persists in private, if nowhere else.

But somehow, despite the large swath of human possibilities these approaches cover, none of them truly seem able to deal with life. And since spirituality must deal with life if we are to take it seriously in our practical civilization, we half suspect that spirituality is not really meant to deal with life, and is restricted to the realm of the ideal along with art and philosophy: something that is fit for idealists and dreamers, but is not really suited for those who are serious, rational, and pragmatic. Inner peace is perhaps an appealing dream, but how many of us are really able to feel it in the midst of the stresses of our lives? "Healing" may be necessary as well, but it does not provide a guide to constructing life. Ecstatic visions may enthrall, but so far they seem to have had no substantial effect on the outside world. And love for God, too, might be felt in the privacy of one's room, but is it really reconcilable with the skyscraper, the long commute, and the subway?

For most of us, the bulk of experience of life remains impermeable to the spiritual touch. And, perhaps not coincidentally, that substantial portion of experience consists largely of work. The ideas of peace, vision, and love have very little to say about this part of our lives, except gesturing vaguely at the fact that they need to be brought to the bustle of the work world somehow. Still, even that much is an admission that the principles themselves are not the *essence* of work, but foreign principles that somehow need to be added to the realm of work. In other words, if the main principles of spirituality are limited to peace, vision, and love, then there is nothing spiritual about the sales receipt, the shovel, or the medivac helicopter staffed by EMTs. But these things comprise the majority of our familiar world.

In the world of business, political affairs, labor, medicine, there there's no peace, there is no love, there is no ecstasy—so there is no spirit. But if we believe this then we have already ceded the world away to the mundane, and so spirituality really must be incompatible with the totality of life. To those of us who believe in a world-affirming spirituality, this can only mean that there must be an error somewhere in our views. In fact, there is another venerable spiritual practice known as karmayoga that can easily incorporate all the activities listed above, and many more—all of the activities of the world—in a practice that affirms and redeems the seemingly mundane realm that we spend so much time in.

What is Karmayoga?

Stated simply, karmayoga is the practice of offering one's work to the Divine, with no demand, desire, or claim of the ego. Karmayoga can consist of the offering of any work at all, whether streetsweeping, giving metaphysical discourses, exploring the nature of the stars, or teaching school; the only requirement is that the work done should correspond to one's individual nature, with no type of work or psychological nature being regarded as greater or less than another. The work done for karmayoga may even be work that is not remunerative because of the current standards and practices of society, such as parenting, art, or volunteer work. Through the practice of karmayoga, our personality (or "outer nature") becomes purified of egoic blocks, or samskaras, that prevent the union of the soul with the Divine. The outer nature also becomes able to express more intense and more refined energies of the Divine. In short, one increasingly becomes an instrument of God.

To those with the right opening or receptivity—perhaps because they grew up with cultural influence like the Bhagavad Gita's gospel of karmayoga or the Western Protestant work-ethic, or simply because they have an intuitive understanding of the workings of the Divine—this suggestion alone is able to open the gates to a lifetime of practice. Those individuals will be able to take this simple, straightforward advice and use it to take their daily work and consecrate it to God based on this simple formulation, and have no need of further explanation.

On the other hand, the description above may not seem so straightforward to others. To some, it may appear that the description makes sense as a theory, but not as a concrete path of spiritual practice. To others, the description of karmayoga may seem pointless and unappealing. Then there are those with a tendency towards philosophy or metaphysics to whom the process described above will perhaps not seem straightforward at all, leaving open many questions and the possibility of subtleties and complications. This article is aimed at any of these groups of people, and more generally at anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of karmayoga. We will ask a set of practical questions: how does one do karmayoga? And why should it be chosen over the other practices of peace and prayer that are more familiar as routes to God? We will also ask deeper questions that will require a dive into the metaphysics and psychology of yoga: what exactly is work, and why would God care if I do it? And what exactly is the mechanism of karmayoga? But before going into the main discussion, I will briefly explain where these ideas come from.

A Note About Intellectual Lineage

Karmayoga is a spiritual practice originating in the Indian subcontinent. In India, practices which aim at the union of the soul with the divine are known as yogas, and karmayoga is the branch of yoga that deals with karma, the concept of action and consequence. While similar spiritual, religious, and philosophical doctrines pertaining to work and action may have arisen in other traditions, I will be discussing this one that I am familiar with, without discounting the possibility of truth or value in any other philosophies of work and action. I am most influenced by the presentation of karmayoga in the work of Anglo-Indian philosopher and yogi Sri Aurobindo. He was influenced in turn by the great Indian scripture which many regard as the chief gospel of karmayoga, the Bhagavad Gita. However, Sri Aurobindo's ideas are not the same as the Gita's, not least because, as he notes in his treatise Essays on the Gita, there is no way for anyone to know if their interpretation agrees with the "truth" of a text that is many centuries old.

Following the same principle, my own interpretation of karmayoga is influenced by my own personal experiences and eclectic intellectual background. In particular, this work is not meant to be an interpretation or exegesis of either the Gita or of Sri Aurobindo; there is every reason to consult these great authorities firsthand, and I would even defer to their understanding and presentation over my own in the case of any discrepancy. I will use general terms from the Indian philosophical tradition and define them as I go. However, throughout the long history of the Indian philosophical tradition, these terms have been used with varying degrees of consistency, and the reader may find varying degrees of consistency between my use and that of others.

I have tried to explain the theory of karmayoga in a way that may be compatible with spiritual systems beyond the one that I myself practice, the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. Indeed, karmayoga has been practiced in India for millennia, long before the work of Sri Aurobindo, and it doesn't require his specific spiritual system to explain it. Still, it is difficult to make statements that apply to all possible metaphysical systems that the reader may hold without actually doing metaphysical inquiry, and this is not primarily a work of metaphysics. If this exposition conflicts with the reader's metaphysics in a way that renders the article unusable, then I would encourage him or her to seek other sources or other practices. Still, I hope there may be something here that is useful. I add all this to acknowledge my debts and to make my perspective clear.

Karmayoga as a Path for Modern Life

Earlier in this article, I introduced karmayoga as an approach to spirituality that can deal with more parts of life than other currently prominent paths and practices. What is it, specifically about the structure and values of contemporary life that make karmayoga especially well suited to them? First, let's consider a traditional view on selecting a spiritual path. Aspirants to yoga, or spiritual practice, are encouraged to find a yogic practice that corresponds to their fundamental nature. Just as life works best when we choose our friends, occupation, living situation, and forms of entertainment like music so that they correspond to our inmost preferences and tendencies, so it is with spiritual practice: spiritual practice proceeds best when people choose practices that comport well with their own nature rather than causing deep-seated conflicts. Three major paths of yoga presented in the spiritual synthesis of the Bhagavad Gita are karmayoga, the yoga of work, bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion, and jnana yoga, the yoga of knowledge. An approximate personality typology could be used to divide people into three general types: those with an active, willful nature, such as businessmen, athletes, and artisans; those with great emotional sensitivity, such as artists, teachers who work with young children, and therapists; and those with a sagely, serene nature as found in seekers of philosophical wisdom. This very approximate personality typology applied in a naive way might advise the active-natured people to undertake karmayoga, the emotional people to undertake bhaktiyoga, and the sagely ones to undertake jnanayoga.

But there is another factor that is neglected in this traditional analysis: the overall aim of the spiritual path. The word yoga applies to all practices which aim towards union with the Divine. But there is a further distinction to make between yogic paths: some yogic paths are world-affirming while others are ascetic, or world-denying. By "world-affirming yoga", I refer to spiritual paths which affirm a divine purpose in human life and aim towards harmonizing spiritual realization with continued life in the world. Ascetic paths, on the other hand, seek release from worldly life in some principle such as pure Divine realization, an otherworldly plane of heaven, or negation of Nirvana. This description of ascetic paths may seem pejorative given the strongly world-affirming character of Western civilization, but suffice it to say that there are compelling philosophical and spiritual justifications for the ascetic path. That said, the practice of the author and thus the perspective of this article are world-affirming.

The practice of karmayoga is valuable in both world-affirming and ascetic paths. However, there is another layer of justification for karmayoga in the world-affirming path, which is relevant because it is likely that most readers will have a world-affirming attitude. Karmayoga is still a valid spiritual practice in the context of an ascetic spiritual path because it can assist the practitioner in reaching the goal of union with God. For the ascetic, after achieving this union, for the duration of the life of the body, the individual may retire from action, and there is no further need or justification for karmayoga or any action whatsoever. The role of karmayoga in this system is simply as a method for achieving that liberation, and has no further or greater purpose. In other words, the reason to pursue the karmayoga on an ascetic path is mainly if it is the trend of your nature; and for those who are on the ascetic path, it is also perfectly fine NOT to practice karmayoga if you do not have an active nature.

But karmayoga becomes almost necessary in an world-affirming path because here the ultimate aim is to perfect the outer side of life in line with the Divine Will and not just to secure release of the inner spirit. A world-affirming spirituality holds that outward human life—which consists of actions taken within the world—has a purpose and meaning of its own. This means that firstly, in the world-affirming path one will still act in the world both before and after any given spiritual realization. Further, the actions taken in the world-affirming spiritual path would ideally be actions that reflect God, or the Divine spirit, and not actions that reflect only the desires of the lower ego. But the state of acting from a perfect spiritual basis is, in fact, the end state of the practice of karmayoga: the practitioner of karmayoga eventually reaches a perfection where the force of the divine moves through the purified being which is not obstructed by egoic samskaras. In other words, karmayoga is the exactly the spiritual path that aims at increasing the ability of the individual to take actions that reflect the divine spirit and not the desires of the ego. So karmayoga is, in a sense, essential to the world-affirming spiritual path, in contrast to the ascetic spiritual path, where karmayoga is just one optional means to an end.

A question arises: would it not be possible to secure an inner spiritual liberation and perfection, perhaps through devotion or meditation, before taking up karmayoga in the outer being? For perhaps even in the world-affirming path it would be better to concentrate one's full energy on achieving inner spiritual perfection first, given the difficulty of even securing this level of realization, without throwing too much energy out in worldly activity in a stumbling attempt towards karmayoga; perhaps one could learn to take divinely inspired actions after first achieving an inward spiritual perfection. The issue with this approach is that the inner spiritual realizations themselves do not confer any special ability for karmayoga on the outer nature. The outer nature has many difficulties of its own which inwardly directed spiritual practices do not affect, such as the difficulties inherent in building skill in any particular craft or discipline, the ability to continue acting in stressful situations, the ability to deal with other people in work, and so on—in short, the entire dynamic nature of outer human life. If one plans to have a world-affirming spiritual practice at all, the difficulties of karmayoga will need to be faced anyway as the outer being needs to be prepared to act in ways that reflect the Divine. Further, it may be difficult to return to action or outer development after a period of total or relative cessation of activity. Therefore it's best to pursue a parallel approach, keeping a balance between the inner and outer development, though admitting the possibility of the need for periods of exclusive spiritual absorption and attempting to create a life that is flexible in response to the needs of the spirit.

The practicalities of modern life present another consideration. In today's world, it is generally necessity to do some form of work to survive in society. The debate over the value of ascetic withdrawal from the world still poses a crucial philosophical question, but it had a special salience when actual complete withdrawal was more possible. In ancient India, there was a tradition of sanyassi, or renunciation, in which an individual could abandon all responsibilities to family and society and wander the land, satisfying basic needs by begging, thus creating a life that expressed the philosophical principle of ascetic withdrawal. This is significantly more difficult, if not actually impossible, in the current more regulated state of the modern world. At that earlier societal stage, the tradition of sanyassi found a basis of support in the cultural tradition of donating to the sanyassi, whereas today begging as a means of subsistence is restricted to a homeless underclass with an extremely dangerous dangerous life. As a society, we should of course figure out the political accommodations needed to address the unnecessary human suffering due to homelessness. But the point with regard to the possibility of spiritual seeking is that there is simply no "reasonable" mechanism for withdrawing from the world as there used to be. So for most people, work of some kind is needed to persist in society, and debates about withdrawal from the world have mostly theoretical significance. The need for work to survive means that there are many hours every week which cannot be used for solitary meditation or contemplation. The practice of karmayoga then becomes a way to take the substantial amount of energy devoted to the maintenance of life in modern society and transmute it so that it may support, rather than detract from, our spiritual progress.

We see that there is a strong case for karmayoga for contemporary spiritual practitioners because of its compatibility with world-affirming values, or at the very least because it makes the best spiritual use of the present conditions. But no matter how much work is done in the bustle of the post-industrial economy, the home, or the halls of power, it will not yield spiritual benefits if is done with merely conventional motives, no matter how much benefit it gives to the rest of the world. For a spiritual seeker to make the most of the energies they use in the world, therefore, it would be best for them to understand how to do karmayoga so that they can do their work in a spiritual way. But this spiritual conception of work that does not weigh its utilitarian value seems at odds with the conventional understanding of work where concrete benefits and results are the only thing that counts. Are we really talking about the same thing when we talk about "work" in the spiritual and conventional contexts? What exactly is "work" in this spiritual conception, and how does it square with the conventional idea of work?

What is Work?

To understand what work is in its deepest spiritual significance, we need to go back to our fundamental understanding of the world; we need to understand what the world is if we are to understand the function and nature of work in its proper context. One view of the universe that has long been present in Indian thought, and is echoed by contemporary spiritual thought, is the view of the created universe as made up of "energy", which means that the world is not made up of a fundamentally inert and value-neutral substance, as in the scientific conception of matter, but rather is made of a flux and interchange of forces with various degrees of consciousness and quality. When we look at the physical world, we see a constant collision of physical energies—tides, volcanoes, gases, and the formation of stars. When we look at the living world, too, we see systems of energetic interchange. All forms of life require energy (again, in the physical, scientific sense) to survive and carry out their activities. Plants convert electromagnetic energy from the sun into storable chemical energy, then use that to grow their bodies and reproduce. Animals ingest energy from eating plant or other animal life and use the energy for locomotion, predation, self-defense, and reproduction. The science of ecology shows us a circle of life where the activities of each organism produce, in addition to securing the energy resources and nutrient needed for that organism, produce byproducts that are used as inputs for other organisms in the system.

In the language of Indian philosophy, we can say that each organism acts according to its svadharma, its own law of being, or way of acting according to its own nature. Because the actions of plants and animals are fixed within a delimited range, it's apparent that each one has its own svadharma. We may not be able to predict its exact movements or destinations, we may not be able to fully understand the meanings or purposes of the actions, and there are countless organisms and ways of behaving that are still unknown to the human mind, but we have enough knowledge to know that the activities of, say, the chimpanzee generally consist of foraging for fruits and leaves, fighting other chimpanzees, and so on. It would not be within the svadharma of a chimpanzee to build an anthill, ride a motorcycle, or change colors like an octopus.

Notice that just because a plant or animal has a certain nature or way of being does not necessarily mean that it is effortless to carry out. While the nature of plant consciousness may be beyond the imagination of most humans, we can imagine some aspects of animal consciousness through analogy with our own experience. Though an act of imagination, we can see that the process of hunting for prey, evading predators, or foraging for fruit and leaves might be difficult for an animal, leading eventually to a feeling of fatigue. The animal's activity can be seen as having a structure that resembles some aspects of the structure of human work: there is an expenditure of energy structured according to the animal's own nature, or svadharma, directed towards the purpose of its continued existence. Though the animal of course does not have the conceptual structures in place to recognize it as "work", an imaginative experiment could show similarities between the human and animal experience.

Humans are also part of this energetic universe—they, too, can be seen as structures that seek, consume, and transform energy. Like other animals, they ingest energy from eating plant or animal life, which is broken down and absorbed by the digestive system, then used for locomotion, predation, self-defense, and reproduction. However, human activity is much broader in scope than the activities of other animals. The characteristic difference between humans and animals is the ability to use rational intelligence to decide upon and execute its actions and activities. The Western philosophical tradition which descended from Aristotle identified man as the animal rationale, while the Indian philosophical tradition identified the buddhi, the principle of intelligent will, as an important faculty of mind that was not present in the animal nature.

The rational intelligence can be seen as the critical factor that differentiates the human from the animal nature. Beyond identifying that man *has* a rational intelligence, however, it is very difficult to identify a positive definition for the essential nature or svadharma of the human being. Inquiries into what is a "natural" way, a "right" way, or a "good" way—or even a *possible* way for a human to act have been conducted for millennia, and we are still disputing the answers. Is it good for a human to grow hair down to their waist? Is it natural for a human to consume food that was mass-produced in a factory rather than being prepared from farm-fresh ingredients? Is it possible for human society to subsist on Mars, or is it the essential nature man to dwell on his home planet, Earth?

Luckily, we don't need to circumscribe the scope of human action at all, or prescribe any correct actions, for this inquiry into the discipline of spiritual work. It's enough to simply look at the human condition, the range of activities that humans generally engage in, as the scope of human nature. Rather than focusing on exotic or perverse extremes of human nature, since our view is to understand the nature of work in general, it suffices to consider the main stream of human activity. Human activity includes, but is not limited to, scientific inquiry, development of various kinds of technology, from metallurgy to navigation to computer and information technology, creation of artworks in various media like painting, carving, and music, teaching, parenting, farming, architecting and constructing buildings, and so on.

Each of these tasks is performed with a particular goal in mind. The teacher teaches with the goal of instructing the students; the parent sets limits, instructs, and punishes when necessary with the goal of raising the child into a responsible and fulfilled adult; the information technology worker constructs an application to enable the government or corporation to access its records in an automated way. That is, the activities of a human are directed towards specific ends just as the activities of the animal are directed towards specific ends. One key difference between human and animal work, however, is that human work is more complex in the structure of its purpose: animal activity generally procures energy or self-defense directly, or at most through a small number of layers of social organization, while humans work is generally removed by several layers of social organization from the larger ends, and the larger ends may be goals that are morally higher than the simple furnishing and maintenance of bodily necessities. For example, a teacher teaching history to a class of students is not doing work that will directly procure food for himself or herself or for the students. It could be argued that learning history will lead to increased respect for the nation's political system, bolstering the capacity for national defense, but, firstly, this is not a guaranteed consequence, and secondly, there would still be many intermediate consequential steps and several layers of complex organization separating the work of teaching from the actual act of national defense.

With these observations, we have in view a general conception of human work and its relation to the forces at work in the universe—or, for those who are more metaphysically skeptical, the above discussion hopefully at least provides a fruitful analogy. That said, it is still difficult to give a positive definition of human work that covers all cases. One general principle that we can give is that work is the application of psychological energy towards a task. If we consider the fact that there is no abstract or general work, but that work always occurs within a specific context or situation, we can clarify that general principle further to the idea that work is energy applied towards a task with a particular purpose, the nature of which is made clear from the context. Consider the concrete situation of a community grade school. In this school, the work of the teacher is to give the lectures and give feedback on the students' work, the work of the janitor is to clean the buildings so that the building is sanitary and clean, and the work of the principal is to see to organizational matters in the school and to dialogue with the broader community. In the conventional definition of work, the list would end here with the remunerative jobs held by adults with formally defined adult responsibilities. However, in the broader definition of "work" that we have been developing, we see that there are further relevant contributions to the school considered as a system of energetic interchange from the children, who concentrate on their studies and do exercises in and out of the classroom to solidify their knowledge, and parents, who provide a safe environment for the children, assist them with their studies, and help them get to and from the school.

Another general characteristic of human work is that it causes some sort of constructive transformation in the world. The work of a person cleaning their room or house transforms a state of dirtiness and disorder into a state of cleanliness and order;  the work of the scholar producing a research report transforms a state of human ignorance and disorganized data and source material to a state of knowledge in a form that can be communicated to the relevant audience. In the Indian conception of the universe, even destruction can serve a purpose in a larger construction—there are cases where the breakdown of an old societal order, or even war, may be necessary to bring about a new or more just state of order. This example is not given to glorify or advocate for war in general or any particular war, but simply to recognize that that certain forms of destruction are part of the cosmic process, and that the line between "construction" and "destruction" may not always be clear. By the guideline of "constructive transformation", I mean to highlight that the transformations performed by work are not arbitrary, chaotic, or random, otherwise there would be no point in deliberately applying psychological energy to bring them about.

Spiritual Energy

We have developed a vision that sees all of the activities of the universe, including human activities, as transformations of energy brought about by other forms of energy. But we have not yet explained the connection between work and finding God. Indeed, the conception of the universe as a system of energetic transformations is completely compatible with modern science—and the depiction of the universe given above would not have been possible without the sensibility and specific findings of modern science. In particular, the description given above is consistent with the worldview of scientific materialism, which sees all phenomena in the universe as reducible to the workings of matter, with considerations of human value being subjective and relative—that is, having no essential significance, but rather things that we consider as matters of practical reality, or perhaps are compelled to consider due to the self-interested nature of our psychology, which is still conditioned by matter through the processes of biology.

Scientists view all types of energy as material energy, meaning the kind of energy that can move physical objects or heat water. And they view all other phenomena described with the word "energy" as things that can either be reduced to material energy or are otherwise illusory or unreal. For example, to the scientific materialist, the phenomenon of "psychological energy" discussed earlier would likely be seen as reducible to the physiological energy used by the body for perception, movement, and emotional experience; any further significance we attribute to the idea of consciousness that transcends physical reality would be seen as purely illusory. Spiritual seekers, however, generally recognize more forms of energy than the purely material, like life energy, psychological energy, mind energy, and the energies of personality, place, form, and spirit. The scientist would understand the power of the waterfall in terms of such factors as the velocity of the stream before the fall and the difference in potential energy before and after the fall. The spiritual seeker would in addition recognize an additional level of "vibrational" energy produced by the life-force of the waterfall. The use of the term "spiritual energy" is viewed as less than rigorous by the scientific materialist, but to the spiritual seeker, it is clear that the concept of spiritual energy is a real phenomenon that is not separate from the concept of material energy; material energy one subtype of spiritual energy, and there are more kinds of spiritual energy. In terms of the phrase used by transpersonal theorists such as Ken Wilber, we could say that the concept of spiritual energy "transcends and includes" the concept of material energy.

Let us consider how this applies to the human work involved in building a house. The scientific materialist might view the work of constructing a house as being made up of the energy of the human labor needed to gather the raw materials, the energy used to transport the materials to the job site, the energy expended by the workers laboring to build the house, plus whatever physiological energy was used by the architect, all measurable in units of physical energy. To the spiritual seeker, it is clear that the material layer of energy is real, but that there are additional significant energies involved, like the emotional energy used by the architect and builders, the mind energy used to organize the architecture and craftwork of each beam, door, and arch, the life energy of the land shaped by the previous geological and biological phenomena present at the site, and even the vibrational energy of the people who will eventually dwell in the house shaping and structuring the process as the Aristotelian "final cause".

The question of how to reconcile the stupendous variety of expressions of energy, whether physical, material, or spiritual, with the nature of God has been a persistent question throughout the history of religion and philosophy. For one prominent idea of the highest nature of God is that God a being of perfect perfection, beauty, and love who would seem to have no need or use for such an imperfect created world as we see in front of us. Still, as spiritual seekers, we are confronted with both the reality of the imperfect world and the reality of God, and the need to make sense of them somehow. For the theist or spiritual seeker, this means seeing that these forms and energies we see in the universe are not separate from the spiritual nature of God, that there presence was brought about purposefully by God, or they exist harmoniously with God, or are at least not contradictory with the existence of God. There are different ways of explaining the details—the idea of "nonduality", the idea of pantheism, the idea that God and the world are separate but that God still keeps a significant "record" of the activities and results of the world—but the specific metaphysical answer accepted by the reader does not actually affect the ability to do karmayoga; karmayoga can be practiced within a variety of metaphysical systems. The important idea that is needed for karmayoga is the idea that the energy that makes up the universe, which is the same energy expended in work, is somehow connected to God, whether that means it is separate from God but can be "given" to him, or that the energy somehow "is" God, or some other such compatible idea.

The Possibility of Spiritual Work

The essence of karmayoga, given at the beginning of the article, is offering one's work to the Divine without ego or desire. In the past two sections, we have seen that there is a nontrivial amount of philosophical and metaphysical subtlety that can go into understanding what "work" really is from a spiritual perspective. But simply doing the work, acting according to one's nature or svadharma, is still not karmayoga; a yoga is a spiritual discipline, and the act of going about one's natural activities according to one's nature with no modification is not yet yoga. The crux of the karmayoga is not just doing the work; for if we interpret the previous two sections in the most general way, we see that work is always happening—man is always expending energy according to his nature at some activity or another—for even idleness is part of man's nature and consumes energy. The crux of karmayoga is rather in offering the work to God, and not simply the act of living and expending spiritual energy by itself. To understand how this works, we will need to understand more about spiritual psychology and the nature of spiritual work.

We come to spiritual psychology by posing a question that is still left over from the discussion of metaphysics: why would God need this energy to be "offered" to him at all? Does he not possess all the energy in the universe, and already have everything that he would need? We stipulated earlier that the energy in any metaphysical concept of karmayoga is related to God somehow—it is either God's energy, or energy that God controls, or perhaps is God himself. Why would there be any need to offer it further to God?

To address this issue, we must go back to the entire purpose and aim of karmayoga. Karmayoga is a form of yoga—it is a spiritual discipline meant to lead to union with God. The discipline must be done because before doing the discipline, we are somehow not in union with God. That is, we are separated from God. Any theory of spiritual seeking must reconcile two contradictory facts: on the one hand, we have a loving relationship with God even without doing any sort of spiritual work; and yet on the other hand, we are still not ourselves in complete union with God. Rather than try to resolve this metaphysical puzzle, I will simply appeal to the empirical reality that in our normal human state we are not in God-consciousness, we are not completely filled with his knowledge and love and in union with him. A spiritual seeker is someone who realizes this fact and understands that some sort of action, practice, or discipline is needed to address it. (I would recommend that readers who wish to resolve metaphysical paradox seek out a work on metaphysics from their spiritual tradition.)

The separation from God manifests itself in each part of our psychology. The mind breaks the undifferentiated consciousness of God into the finite consciousness of our human experience made up of our own personal thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations. The heart is dominated by suffering and self-regard rather than the love for all God and all created existences. And our work, too, is affected. Normally when undertaking actions, we are concerned mostly with our own benefit. Sometimes we may also have the benefit of our family in mind; rarer elevations lead us to acts of patriotic service, the pursuit of beauty, or even the service of humanity. But work undertaken for any of these purposes or entities is still not work yet undertaken for the sake of God or offered to him directly. Actions such as these, which are intended to benefit our own human ego—or some larger form of collective ego which we are a part of—maintain the reality of separation between our own consciousness and that of God. The work done with a consciousness that upholds the state of separation serves to maintain the state of separation; karmayoga, work that is offered to God, is work that is gradually able to bring our consciousness in greater contact with God.

The fact that the essence of karmayoga lies in the offering of the work rather than the content of the work itself has implications for the nature of spiritual work. Take the examples just discussed: is it bad, then, to do patriotic or humanitarian service—or simply to undertake remunerative work for the benefits of one's family? These things no doubt are good by the standards of the world, and should by no means be abolished. (As the Gita says, the spiritual seeker's knowledge of the relative value of these forms of work should certainly not lead them to discourage people who are living regular lives that are not consecrated to God from discharging the work of their usual nature.) But unless the action is offered to God as spiritual service, it is still not karmayoga. This leads to a sort of paradox: any act that is offered to God is karmayoga, regardless of the size of its worldly effects. Doing the dishes or preparing taxes for a client, if it is done with the attitude of offering the energy of the work to God, is karmayoga; a patriotic speech, humanitarian rescue, or virtuosic artwork, if the energy is not offered to God, is not karmayoga.

This can be confusing because it conflicts with our usual human conception of selfishness versus selflessness. Human society evolved to encourage an attitude of altruism, acting for the benefit of other humans, without concern for one's own needs, because it provides benefits for society. So actions are evaluated by society as "good" if they benefit other people and "bad" if they do not. But that is not the standard by which God evaluates actions: on one hand, God transcends every person, group of people, and humanity altogether, so service to him may benefit no human beings at all; on the other hand, a portion of God is present in each person, group of people, living thing, or inanimate object, so service to any one could also be service to God—even if that service is inefficient by a utilitarian standard. This means that acts that are inspired as part of one's karmayoga may not necessarily be actions that society traditionally praises as "selfless", because a broader range of actions could be considered desirable from the perspective of God. Of course, traditionally "selfless" acts are perfectly worthy of being consecrated as karmayoga as well. And the opposite quality of "selfishness", where someone acts with regard for nothing but themselves is not compatible with karmayoga either, as the aspiring practitioner of karmayoga has to be mindful of what is asked by God.

Similarly, the spiritual value of karmayoga is not related to the economic productivity of the work at hand. Karmayoga may be very lucrative, and there is no inherent contradiction between doing karmayoga and receiving money for work. But karmayoga may also consist of work that does not generate income at all. Some of the most worthy tasks do not generate income in our current societal arrangement, such as parenting, creating fine art, or political organizing, but these are still essential to human life and culture.

Offering Work to God

One point still remains obscure: what exactly does it mean to "offer" something as abstract as work, or the energy of work, to God? Such an offering seems hard to wrap the mind around, as it would seem be an abstract offering to an abstract being. The concept of offering becomes easier to understand if we approach it in stages. First, let us consider the simple human act of giving. When we give, we start out in possession of something, and there is a specific human whom we love or care for who has need or a use for what we have to give. We give the other person the gift as an expression of love or caring, and they receive it with gratitude. We see this when a mother gives food to a child, when a child gives a toy to a friend, or when an adult gives a gift to a romantic partner.

There are several religious or spiritual ritual practices that elevate this human act of giving to a spiritual level of giving to a deity or being that is not physically present. First, the ritual practice of leaving food as an offering to the deity, and second, the practice of donating to a church or place of worship that serves as the symbol of the community of God. These now seem to be familiar, almost mundane actions, which can obscure the fact that they grow out of a much more concrete, embodied practice. In the offering of fruit to the deity, we leave a physical object for a non-physical being, though the being is represented in the physical construction of the idol. Here, the deity is not physically present in a concrete way, but they are represented by the idol, and the gift is at least tangible and recognized as having value in the human world.

To more closely approach the the "abstract" nature of the offering of work, let us consider the case of the electronic money transaction, which is more and more common in the modern world. While cash transactions still take place, the intangibility of the electronic transaction, when contrasted to the tangible case of cash or fruit, actually serves to clarify the "energetic character" of money. When exchanging money electronically, a low-dollar-value transaction like buying a sandwich may not provoke much of a reaction, but considering a larger purchase like an appliance can feel weighty and dramatic; one can almost "feel" the larger quantity of money involved. From this example we can see that, in a sense, spending money means "spending" some of your own force or energy. The analogy remains valid whether we whether we view money as an ontologically "real" force, or if we simply see the phenomenon in the psychological terms of projecting psychological energy onto the conventional symbol of money.

In this framing, the donation of money to a temple can be seen as a donation of our own personal energy or force to the community of God. And this is exactly how we must consider the energy we spend in work to do karmayoga: karmayoga is the act of offering of our will, our psychological energy, our force to God. Just as in the electronic donation of money to a temple, we cannot directly see object or the recipient but still feel our energy leaving and reaching the intended recipient, so is it that when when we lift a box, write a song, or give a speech as an offering of karmayoga, we trust that the energy of the effort is received, even though we cannot directly see the energy itself or the recipient. When a work is done as karmayoga, one applies oneself to the task with the same energy and concentration as before—the difference is that there is the consciousness that the energy of the effort is offered or donated to God. And this offering must be done without the feeling of bargaining or expectation; the offering must be with one's whole mind and heart, and devoid of claim for any benefit.

Still, even if the above analogy is helpful, the idea of "offering work to God" may still appear as a somewhat abstract concept that is less tangible than the human act of giving. When we work, we are not face-to-face with God doing the task directly for him, so the notion of "doing work for God" cannot be a literal interpretation. We are embedded in a physical world of objects like desks, computers, buildings, chairs, cars, streetlights, and so on—God himself is nowhere to be found. We use tools for our work, and the direct recipients of the work appear to be the clients, managers, and third parties of all kinds that the work is done for; the "offering" of the work to God is not as obvious as the act of sending a postal package to a client.

There are two implications for karmayoga. First, karmayoga requires practice. It is a challenging spiritual discipline that is capable of leading to the highest levels of spiritual realization, and we cannot demand that the deepest secret of the understanding of service to God is apparent immediately. And on the way to realizing that secret, we come face to face with the recalcitrance of the physical world that is being worked on and the limitations of one's human nature. Maintaining concentration on a task, performing it to the highest attainable standard of of perfection, and are dealing with the stresses of performance, which are difficult enough in the normal practice of work, need to be reconciled with an additional level of spiritual concentration. However, like other spiritual disciplines, it gets easier with practice and bears the fruit of spiritual result, and the very meaning of karmayoga itself, which may have once seemed obscure, becomes clearer.

The second lesson we see, though, is that the very difficulty of reconciling the mundaneness and physicality of the world of work with an unseen God is exactly what makes karmayoga such a powerful practice—especially for a world-affirming spiritual practice. After all, if the world is to be reconciled with God, it must include the efforts and strains of the world that an exclusively visionary or exclusively peaceful idea of spirituality is not truly able to accommodate.

In summary, karmayoga proceeds by taking up the work that we do in the mundane world and offering the effort that goes into that work to God. And we have seen that the important thing about work done for karmayoga is not the specific task that is done but the fact that the effort is offered to God. But that still leaves a major question which vexes modern man: the question of what specifically is to be done. The pure theory of karmayoga has nothing in particular to say about this subject: the work done simply has to be according to one's svadharma, or one's own nature; the question of what that nature is that should be lies in other forms of inquiry, like perhaps psychology or social theory. In this article, we have already admitted the philosophical difficulties of fixing the nature or limits of human work, simply pointing to the broad stream of human activity and saying "that is the work of man", and noting that that is the effort which karmayoga would take up. Still, we must ask: can anything else be said about this "svadharma" and its role in karmayoga?

Svadharma

One of the deepest questions facing man has to do with understanding his own nature and the way he should act. After millennia of inquiry from every major religious and philosophical tradition, and now from empirical psychology and social science, there are no firm answers. What we can say as a generalization is that the discussion about man's nature runs between two poles: one pole says that man is free to choose his actions and the other pole that says that man is constrained by various factors, and his freedom is compromised by these constraints. Every reasonable answer gives some sort of balance between these two poles, however: even the pole of freedom, for example, recognizes that the laws of physics constrain human action; and on the other hand even the the extreme pole of constraint, which might argue that we do not even have free will, recognizes that it at least feels like we have free will some of the time, and that this feeling of free will has moral relevance.

For the individual who wants to find their own nature or svadharma, each pole has its drawbacks. If we believe that we are constrained by unchangeable factors like our biology, socioeconomic status, or position dictated by an inflexible religious-philosophical system, we may not be open to the new potentialities and energies that God wishes to guide us towards. On the other hand, if we are too insistent on the possibility of our own freedom and neglect to take note of the patterns in our psychology, and the patterns in the specific ways that we relate to society and society relates to us, and other facts of circumstance, we may be unable to recognize the real limitations of the world, and might blame ourselves for not being able to exceed them with our sheer force of will.

We come back once again to the view that the pure theory of karmayoga itself does not point to an answer to the question of what should be done. Guidance can be sought in the field of career counseling or personal development; it can be pursued by trying new things; we can gain clarity by talking with people, whether domain experts or friends and family; or we can even interrogate the fundamental limits of reality or human nature through philosophy. The only general guideline I can give, that I have found valid in my own experience, is that the process of living, experiencing, and questioning refines our judgment about what is the best course of action, and we should act from our best synthesis of our experience, knowledge, heart, and divine guidance. But this advice cannot be of any specific help to anyone in any specific situation.

In short, the entire set of analytical methods and behaviors pertaining to the question "what should I do?" should remain valid for the reader even after reading this article. From the point of view of karmayoga, what is truly important is that whatever occupations or activities we do adopt, we offer the energy to God. This is not to downplay the difficulty and importance of finding the right activities and right balance of life in the complexity of today's world. But one thing the seeker finds that as they progress along the path of karmayoga is that the question of what one's svadharma is resolves itself, slowly or quickly. When the energy of work is offered to God, it has a purifying effect as it moves through your system, so you become more and more able to discern God's guidance, which helps to answer the questions of what you should do and be.

Results of Karmayoga

Ultimately, the true reason to take up a demanding practice like karmayoga is for its effects. (That is, at least until the final stage of karmayoga when one feels that one is doing the work only for God, without even any need of individual spiritual benefit.) What then are the specific effects of karmayoga? First, karmayoga leads to greater perfection in work: when doing work offered to God, the capacity of executing work with perfection inevitably increases. This is because when one offers work to God, one will feel compelled not to offer mediocre effort but rather one's best effort; this is similar to how an inspiring teacher or manager will draw the best efforts out of the students or employees, even though it makes greater demands on them. This quality effort will result in a greater and greater perfection in the results. Of course, this does not happen in a vacuum: mechanisms like external feedback, theoretical insight into problems and defects, and skill and knowledge of the craft of the task all remain relevant. But if the aim of the work and its offering to God are kept sincerely in view, inadequate results will feel like an inadequate offering, and the practitioner will be guided towards the right resources for improvement.

A second beneficial effect of karmayoga is developing the virtues of work. To execute work well, the practitioner will need to develop perseverance, skill, judgment, the ability to work well with people, and so on; in fact, it offers a nearly endless field of practice and realization. Of course, these benefits may come from doing any sort of work regardless of whether it is specially offered as karmayoga. One difference is that karmayoga can mitigate against the negative effects that can attend progress in work done simply with a secular motive, such as arrogance and superiority. That said, there are obviously many secular workers who are able to avoid these pitfalls as well. From a spiritual perspective, though, these virtues are beneficial because they allow us to be more perfect instruments of God.

A third benefit of karmayoga is that it is able to bring spiritual results that are conventionally thought to be the result of other spiritual paths into the outer part of the being. For example, karmayoga can assist in growing one's inner peace and solidity in all outer situations, as one confronts greater real world challenges and stresses that come with work and meets them with a spiritual attitude. Karmayoga can even result in developing the quality of love: all work is a form of service, whether one is serving human clients, or abstract ideals; through karmayoga, one grows into a deeper and deeper caring for the end that is served, which goes with a deeper and deeper love for God in the form of the client or end, which fuses with the love for God himself. And karmayoga can make these virtues stable in a more robust way than other spiritual disciplines because it must bring these virtues into the difficult situations that come up in the "real world".

But the most characteristic perfection of karmayoga is becoming an agent of the Divine Will. As we give up our energy to God without seeking for our own personal gain, our being is purified. We become more and more open to the inspirations that God gives us, more capable of discerning and refusing the demands of our ego, and the capacity of the outer nature to execute the inspiration increases as well. In earlier sections, we discussed the vision of the manifested universe as a system of energetic exchange. The Divine Will works through all these energies to bring about his Will by influencing the entities incarnated in the universe in a variety of ways. But the beings who are most able to bring about the Divine Will are those who have perfected their outer instruments and surrendered them to God. Karmayoga is the most direct way of training oneself to participate fully in this Divine Plan.

[our-mrs-saku-love]

First Drive: The Aston Martin DBS Superleggera Volante Is a Scorching-Fast Drop-Top Dream

Absolute beauty, absolute torque, absolutely buy one.

One of the most crucial things you learn after cycling through a veritable legion of different cars is that numbers—those cold, hard, irrefutable statistics pooled at the base of so many published automotive tests—don't tell the whole story. This is common sense, but no one prepares you for the inevitable perspective rot that sets in sometime between your first afternoon with a 220-horsepower hot hatch and the third time you pin the throttle in something with more 500 hp; it eats away at your internal goalposts to the point where your first impressions of statistics are now gangrenous and foul. "$50,000, 600 hp, and zero-to-sixty in 3.7," you read. "No dual-clutch? Might as well turn the whole lot of them into an artificial reef." No, not really, but this is where the 715-hp, 211-mph 2020 Aston Martin DBS Superleggera Volante comes in.

As tested, this metallic orange, color-shifting shard of crystalized speed will liberate $388,000 from your offshore accounts if you replicate its build. If we're comparing caviar to caviar, that's $200,000 dearer than a loaded BMW M8 Competition Convertible and $32,000 more than a base Rolls-Royce Dawn. Heck, for that kind of cash, you've got a stripper fixed-roof Ferrari 812 Superfast and a spare $53,000 in options to play with. Leave all of the extras on the shelf, and you're still going to pony up roughly $330,000 for the privilege of owning the 2020 Aston Martin DBS Superleggera Volante.

Plenty Of Power For this kind of financial sucker punch, more than a few of you are sneering at the 715-hp figure. After all, the aforementioned Ferrari 812 manages 789 hp without the help of forced induction, which is itself a smidge down from the blue-collar Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat Redeye with its concrete-crackin' 797 hp. Keep reading, and it becomes statistically more upsetting; in place of the supercar-standard dual-clutch transmission, the 2020 Aston Martin DBS Superleggera Volante makes use of a traditional ZF-sourced eight-speed automatic, returning a zero-to-60-mph pull of a feet-dragging 3.5 seconds. Can you imagine admitting that middling time down at the athletic club? Careful you don't mention that in front of Alistair—I heard he's been mighty proud of his new 911 Turbo S and its 2.6-second sprint.

Enough snark. Untethered by comparisons, spec charts, instrumented testing, and Instagram comments, 715 hp is borderline unfathomable in a road-legal car, let alone something that was designed as a semi-cushy riviera mile-muncher. Significantly, aside from the monumental power, the DBS' 5.2-liter twin-turbo V-12 chugs out 664 lb-ft of torque. If you absolutely have to keep score, that's more twist than anything with an internal combustion engine on the present production roster at Ferrari, McLaren, Porsche, and Lamborghini.

Spleen Scrambling Speed There's so much torque, in fact, the transmission restricts the output in first through third gears, only giving up the full goods once you shift into fourth. From a dig, there's a mad scramble from the rear as the Pirelli P Zeros hop, skip, and slide trying to hold on. Once it hooks—somewhere around the 50-mph mark—you gather speed like a hiker chucked off a cliff by Bigfoot. There's no discernable drop-off in power, even as things get a bit blurry, breathless, and lose-your-license stupid; drinking deep from that twin-turbo V-12 gives off the sneaking suspicion the invisible hand of acceleration's been hitting the trenbolone rather aggressively. Not since the Porsche GT2 RS  and the McLaren 720S have I experienced a car that feels so capable of a million-miles-per-hour—and those aforementioned Automobile All-Stars did so with a piddling torque figure well shy of the 600 lb-ft mark. If one of your qualifiers for being a true "GT" car is the capability to effortlessly shuttle occupants at high-speeds for long distances, the 2020 Aston Martin DBS Superleggera Volante passes with flying colors.

Looks To Die (Another Day) For That's to say nothing of the visual and aural drama that accompany this railgun launch. With or without the soft-top, the DBS Superleggera is arguably the most stylistically evocative Aston Martin we've seen in quite some time. If you weren't a fan of the catfish-style grille Aston cultivated since the 1950s, you're not going to like the DBS' maw, but it synergizes well with the DBS' unavoidably hulking footprint. Those flowing, windswept lines are devastatingly beautiful; it looks as if, were you to spatter a parked DBS' clamshell hood with water, the droplets would streak over the bodywork and dissipate off of the rear lip within seconds.

There isn't the same level of aesthetic theater inside, but mostly divine materials and thoroughly modern design permeate the cabin. Stitching and leather is top-notch, as is the infotainment infrastructure sourced from technical partner Mercedes-Benz. Some fasteners and mounting points are plastic, but you have to hunt for anything not leather-wrapped or carbon-clad. For the intended purpose of long-distance cruising or coddling on your daily commute, it feels mostly worthy of the $330,000 payout.

I'm not the only one who digs the DBS. Wherever you drive, cruise, park, fill up, or idle, phones come out, kids cheer, and takes are tripled. Parking the Volante in front of a nearby house where a car-hungry kid lives drew surrounding neighbors out like free ice cream, requesting photos, info, and an earful of that 12-cylinder music.

The Sound And The Fury What a sound it is, too. V-12s are understandably endangered these days, and two out of the six existing V-12 automakers don't even put their's on performance duty. Mercedes' AMG-ified V-12s are gruff torque monsters with an industrial-age soundtrack to match, so it falls to Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Aston to harmonize. The DBS' 12 isn't as sonorous as the vaguely Duratec-based Aston V-12s from the past two decades, but it's smoother and less gargle-prone than those free-breathing monsters.

However, just like those prior Aston V-12s, the DBS sounds objectively phenomenal, but somehow it manages to be somewhat clinical—almost like a V-8 tuned to sound like a V-12. Distant highway rips in a big Ferrari or Lambo are easily identifiable, but the DBS' 5.2-liter is almost characterless in tonality, similar to the crackly noise emitted by Jaguar's ubiquitous 5.0-liter supercharged V-8.

Superleggera Does Not Necessarily Mean Super Light Escape the looky-loos and charge into the hills, and the story gets even sweeter. The 2020 Aston Martin DBS Superleggera Volante is a big car, so leave the tighter, narrower stuff to the Boxsters and BMW M2s, and head for an area with wide sweepers. Sawzalling the roof off the DBS coupe added an additional 220 pounds to the already hefty car, now weighing in at a total of 4,107 pounds. All of that extra mass went into both the folding canvas roof and the requisite structural bracing to compensate for the aire libre configuration. To offset this added bulk, Aston rejiggered the rear suspension by increasing the spring rates by 13 percent, alongside a 30-percent higher compression-rate and a 25-percent greater rebound rate.

Without having driven the coupe back-to-back with the drop-top, I can't say how big of a difference it makes, but I'd reckon with the Volante-specific changes, differences are minor. Charging over curvier tarmac, the excellent multilink suspension setup, wide track, and 50:50 weight distribution belies the bulk, returning composed handling that suits the car's multi-purpose, long-legged character. Compared to the sharper-edged Vantage, the DBS eschews the smaller car's Track suspension setting, instead offering three stiffness tiers ranging between GT, Sport, and Sport Plus. Most seat time was spent toggled between comfort-oriented GT and edgier sport, leaving Sport Plus only for truly pristine pavement.

Dynamically, there are only two gripes: The steering isn't as sharp or tactile as I'd hoped, and when paired with the DBS' particularly touchy throttle, the ZF-sourced eight-speed transmission was either overeager or reluctant to downshift, depending on the toggled drive mode. However, during regular day-to-day driving, neither the steering, throttle, nor transmission intruded enough to warrant further complaint.

Endurance Superstar Surprise, surprise—sublime, semi-relaxed grand touring is the 2020 Aston Martin DBS Superleggera Volante's party piece. Like the big Astons that came before it, the DBS gobbles up hundreds of miles at an alarming pace, with nary a care given to broken pavement nor speed limits. Meanwhile, paralyzing beauty and roaring vocal cords alone are nearly worth the cost of entry. The 2020 Aston Martin DBS Superleggera Volante is not a numbers car; call it a sensation car, as corny as that may be.

Next time the members down at the polo grounds get high-and-mighty with their Bentleys and Maybachs, take 'em out for lunch in the DBS—just make sure you take the long, straight-and-then-sweepy way.

2020 Aston Martin DBS Superleggera Volante Highlights: Brain-bending good looks Enough torque to move an oil tanker Feels absolutely capable of its claimed 211-mph top speed Expensive—and worth it เดิมพันบาคาร่า

Contact us by Line ID: @ufa98v2

[nakedfullmonty-fr]

ive mentioned the smoke and mirrors plotline a bit so i figure its time i actually lay out some info on the first two dragons

Saion

as close to royalty as Clan Lucubrare gets

his father is on the Council of Mirrors and he’s lined up to take his place later in life

all too aware of the supposed “Lucubrare Curse” that leads all of it’s council members to die via assassination, and as such has a deep fear of dying

frequently finds himself frustrated that he appears to be the only person who seems at all bothered by this fact, as the other council members treat attacks on their lives in the same mundane way a normal person would view doing the laundry

grew up in on the the various towers that the Council of Mirrors reside in, and has remained there for almost his entire life, only being allowed outside a few times in his childhood, as per his father’s instruction

originally, his room within the Council buildings had a window with a small balcony, where he would spend most of his day in the hopes of making conversation with anyone within hearing distance. However, around the age of 14, an attempt on his life was made via an arrow shot through the window, which Saion luckily survived, but afterwards the window was removed, and replaced with a one-way glass wall, blocking his contact with the outside world. On the left side of his neck, Saion still bares the scar from his injury.

surprisingly confident and self-assured for someone who knows so little about how the world actually is

his confident composure only really cracks under two situations, the first being political endeavours; despite being quite knowledgable on such things (as a future Council member, politics made up the bulk of his childhood education), he frequently second guesses himself

the other would be romantic situations - the lack of social contact beyond the other Council members he grew up with mean he’s never exerienced romance in any form, but the thought alone flusters him

saion wishes to leave the tower in which he resides, and wants to find a way to the Shrouded City, for he is quite envious of its people and the Council of Smoke. To his knowledge, the do not spend their lives cooped up inside in fear of assassination attempts, and care little for rules and expectations - in his mind, they are truly free people

although he fears death more than anything, he feels that if he must die, he wishes to do so a free man, out discovering the world rather than wasting his whole life kept inside in a fruitless attempt to keep him safe. he values freedom, especially his own, more than anything

the type to wear oversized button-down pajamas, probably

Malkenja

daughter to the Chieftain Rogue of the Council of Smoke within the Shrouded City

spent her whole life training to become a master thief, to take over her mothers position as Chieftain Rogue one day

actually prefers more bodyguard-like work, as she enjoys a good fight more than sneaking around unless its necessary

always seems to have a smile on her face, even if its a sad one

isnt necessarily opposed to her situation within the Council of Smoke, but has things she’d much rather do instead

actually would rather leave the Shrouded City and join the Council of Mirrors in Lucubrare. She has a hard time articulating why exactly, her usual reasoning is that she thinks herself a good person, and that she’d rather herself be in charge and guide the population with good intentions than not do it, and risk someone bad coming into power and ruining innocent people’s lives. She’d also like to indulge herself in extravagant clothing from time to time.

related; she’s a big believer in “if you want something done, do it yourself”, and has a hard time relying on other people

her mother raised her under the ideal of “duty before honor”; that as a member of the Council of Smoke and resident of the Shrouded City, she will always be lesser to the people of Lucubrare and it’s Council. She exists only to provide, to do her job, fight dirty if she must, and complete her given tasks no matter how much of her pride and dignity is stripped from her.

as a result, she is resilient but rash, often taking big risks without a second thought of consequences. a very in-the-moment kind of person

Malkenja’s relationship with her mother is a strained one; she respects her mother, but more in a way one would respect a teacher, going as far as to refer to her as Ma’am instead of Mother. She also understands that her mother is strict in her ways because of her duties, but remembers a time long past when her mother treated her gently as most mothers would, and so is a little bitter.

afraid of ghosts. she’s never seen one, but the idea of something that she cant fight physically scares her

Saion and Malkenja first encountered one another early in their lives, when the Council of Mirrors and Council of Smoke would meet, and the two children would play together while their parents worked. They have remained close friends ever since.

Originally, Malkenja would often fly up to Saion’s window balcony to visit and keep him company, as Saion had no other companions of his age. However, after the attack on Saion’s life and the removal of the window, their physical contact has been restricted to the few times per year that the two Councils meet.

Not prepared to sacrifice their friendship, slowly and carefully Saion wittled a small hole in one of the outer walls of his bedroom, just small enough to fit a length of string through. Now, their main form of communication is a rudimentary tin-can-and-string phone that runs from inside Saion’s bedroom to the roof of a nearby building. Saion’s end is easily hidden behind a full length mirror, lest his father find it and become angered, and a length of string is small enough that most people wouldn’t notice it unless they flew directly into it.

As things stand at the beginning of the Smoke and Mirror’s lore, they both share the same goal: Free Saion from the confines of the Mirror Council’s buildings. Where they’ll go after that, they have no idea.

[cryptoquicknews-blog]

New Post has been published here https://is.gd/Ow8Ooo

Who Has the Power, Retail or Institutional Investors?

This post was originally published here

Noelle Acheson is a veteran of company analysis and a member of CoinDesk’s product team. The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own.

The following article originally appeared in Institutional Crypto by CoinDesk, a free newsletter for institutional investors interested in cryptoassets, with news and views on crypto infrastructure delivered every Tuesday. Sign up here.

There’s a scene in Pixar’s “A Bug’s Life” (a very underrated movie) where Hopper (the evil grasshopper) clocks his whiny brother with a seed. And then another. Neither really hurt, obviously. He then opens the valve to the large seed granary, and ouch.

The point Hopper was successfully making was that size and might do not necessarily equal power. That lies with the seeds, I mean the masses. Volume trumps influence.

We hear so much about “institutional influence” in the crypto markets that it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that institutions alone will decide when the next bull run will start. The “wall of institutional money” that most of us were breathlessly expecting in early 2018 was supposed to push the price of bitcoin and other assets “to the moon,” and savvy retail investors would tag along for the joyous ride (in a lambo).

A year later, we no longer talk about the “wall,” instead we are focusing on the infrastructure building and waiting for large incumbents to loudly declare their allegiance. Now we’re repeatedly told that “when Goldman/State Street/BNY start offering crypto services,” institutions will pile in.

A year later, we’re still missing the point.

Bridging the gap

Here’s the thing: “institutions” are not stand-alone entities that operate in a separate microcosm from the rest of the economy. Most hold retail money: the vast majority of institutional assets under management are held by pension funds, mutual funds and insurance companies. They are not going to make investment decisions without some assurance that their clients will be ok with this.

There are exceptions, true. Hedge funds, family offices and endowments cater to different constituencies. They can take more risk, often have a more innovative base and aren’t subject to the same rules and restrictions. But – sizeable as they may be – they are a small percentage of global wealth.

And they are, to varying degrees, already investing in cryptoassets. A survey earlier this month by Fidelity Investments and Greenwich Associates showed that over 20% of institutional investors already have some exposure. Another survey published last month by Global Custodian and BitGo revealed that 94% of endowments had already invested in the asset class. Grayscale Investment’s Q1 report released a couple of weeks ago showed a strong increase in family office participation.

The vast bulk of institutional money, however, is still waiting, and it’s not for an announcement from Goldman Sachs or its peers (although that wouldn’t hurt sector confidence). It’s not for a more comprehensive build-out of market infrastructure (although that is helping). It’s not even for regulatory clarity (although that would also be very good news).

It’s for mainstream retail interest to kick into gear.

In position

When the clients of pension funds, investment advisors, mutual funds and the like ask about crypto assets, then a broader base of institutional investors will scramble to get informed. When the chatter about the concept in the respective investor communities grows to a volume that can’t be ignored, then even more large intermediaries will roll out new services.

Many smart institutions are getting ahead of the curve and positioning themselves with services that can satisfy the inbound interest. These early leaders are earning valuable experience and mindshare (not to mention revenue), as well as adding layers of professionalism and reassurance to the new markets.

Nevertheless, crypto is still far away from “mainstream.” To us in the sector it may seem like a flood of new infrastructure entrants over the past year has lifted awareness, interest from all sectors is growing strongly, and the regulators have not been sitting idle.

Yet crypto is, looking in from the outside, still very niche – total crypto market cap is miniscule compared to other investable assets, and for many, buying crypto is too complicated to bother with.

Crypto is also still seen as risky. Scams and hacks still weaken its reputation, it is still tough for crypto businesses to get solid banking relationships, and the tax situation in most jurisdictions is just plain confusing.

Taking notice

A glance at some recent headlines shows that is starting to change.

TD Ameritrade, one of the largest retail brokers in the world, is planning on offering crypto trading to its almost 12 million clients via institutional-grade exchange ErisX, in which it has taken a stake. On stage at Consensus earlier this month, executive vice president Steve Quirk recounted the “off the chart” interest in their crypto education series. According to reports, online retail broker eTrade is also planning to offer crypto trading to its almost 5 million clients.

Just last week, stock trading app Robinhood – which claims 6 million retail user accounts – announced the launch of crypto trading, with approval from the New York Financial Services Department.

The growth in the retail crypto audience goes beyond trading opportunities. Crypto assets and their virtues are being dangled in front of millions of retail investors with a series of media pushes. Last week, CBS’s news broadcast “60 Minutes” ran a segment on bitcoin. Earlier this month, asset manager Grayscale Investments revealed a stirring TV spot urging investors to “drop gold.” And since early this year, striking ads by institutional exchange Gemini, plastered on buses, taxis, billboards, bus stops and train stations in major cities across the US, announced that “crypto” is not the Wild West it once was.

Retail interest momentum seems to be building, but the “tipping point,” in which it is loud enough to get a broader swathe of the institutional sector to start investing in crypto (which in turn will encourage other institutional investors to join in), may be a way off yet. Or it may be just around the corner. The tipping point may be something as obvious as a bitcoin ETF launch, or it may simply be a cumulation of subliminal indications.

Meanwhile, rather than treat the two pools of demand as separate, those of us focusing on institutional interest need to keep an eye on retail developments.

Up we go

But just as the institutional sector needs retail interest to trigger a deeper commitment, so does the retail sector need the institutional channels. Without the support and oversight of institutional partners such as trusted advisors, familiar brokers, mutual fund managers and pension fund allocators, most retail investors will probably not feel comfortable enough to take the plunge on their own.

Retail investors may be increasingly noticing and digging into cryptocurrencies – but for this interest to hit scale, they need institutional support.

At the end of A Bug’s Life, Heimlich the plump caterpillar undergoes a cheerful metamorphosis and emerges with colourful wings that are unfortunately too small to carry his considerable heft. He can’t use these new tools effectively by himself. Not to worry – his airborne teammates have a lot of experience with the new infrastructure. They help him to soar over the landscape.

Chess image via Shutterstock

#crypto #cryptocurrency #btc #xrp #litecoin #altcoin #money #currency #finance #news #alts #hodl #coindesk #cointelegraph #dollar #bitcoin View the website

New Post has been published here https://is.gd/Ow8Ooo

[dynamics-of-an-asteroid]

what do you think about teen jim, his mind, his ways of knowing the world and his own progress in general?

Well, the thing that tends to define most teenagers is their experiences and how that fits in to the bigger “worldly” picture they’re building with all the knowledge they’re acquiring, their sense of independence, their understanding of responsibility for themselves and their actions, and the influence of other friends or peers or role models who bring their own experiences in to the mix where all that information can be exchanged and mulled over together.

The base reading I have for him is he realized at an early age that everyone around him didn’t think the way he did, process things the way he did, or react the way he did so his closest companion growing up was his mind. It kept him company and in return he kept it distracted with whatever he could find to stave off boredom. But as he got older, it required more from him than his usual outlets could sustain now. So this was probably the time he experimented the most because he’d be desperately trying to keep his mind distracted at this point and he’d have more access to options he wouldn’t have necessarily had when he was younger. I think he tried a little of everything (smoking, drinking, sex, drugs, etc.), but found most of it didn’t work for long or in any fashion he found would be beneficial long term.

I believe the bulk of his experiences would have come in his 20s though, because at that point I imagine his criminal web was expanding and he’s meeting a diverse array of individuals who range from questionable to unsavory (especially if he’s moved to London by that point from Brighton) who can teach him more. Whereas before he was probably able to get by holding himself with the maturity of someone who had experience under his belt when that may not have necessarily have been true, now he can actually back that up with some hands on references. If anything, this was the time he started building up a pretty solid box of tools to get by with (the masks, the voices, the personas, the skills, etc.) and acquire what he needs to handle the scenarios he was finding himself getting in to later on.

He probably had TOO much independence by this point because no one really understood what to do with a child this intelligent, so he was more than likely left to his own devices to figure things out (which goes back to what I was saying earlier about experimenting and getting in to some risky behavior). That’s not to say he didn’t grow up with rules or restrictions. I think he grew up with a lot of them even if most of them he didn’t understand or thought were pretty pointless. But he very quickly learned to manipulate the rules and redefine them and bend them and find loop holes and tip toe all around the line without going over it to better serve his purposes because as a budding consultant to criminals he was going to come up against that a lot. I wouldn’t say he necessarily was self-raised, but I think he grew up a little sooner than the expected time frame because of it since he wasn’t particularly dependent on many people other than himself.

The flip side of that is I don’t think he fully developed a sense of what he’s doing in the context of others yet? Like he can see intricate patterns and how things are interconnected in terms of his immediate actions and the results he wants, but hasn’t pieced together ‘the big picture’ in terms of its impact in other areas outside of himself or for other people. He eventually does gain that ability later on by developing his emotional intelligence along side what he’s thinking only because he realized he could get better results being able to distinguish what someone was feeling, and adapt to them or the environment to gain information that’s maybe not available upfront (something Sherlock uses as a tool himself but wasn’t the best at it and had trouble using it in every day situations). He still doesn’t care, but he has another means to acquire or secure information without having to use threats, especially since I don’t think he had as much credibility behind any he would have made yet (even though he’s killed someone at this point but he can’t necessarily let them know that, so he has to sell himself as just scary and menacing enough that you don’t want to test him, because things will happening and you can’t pin anything on him but you know it’s him somehow).

And it goes without saying that he didn’t exactly have friends or peers that were on his level. Although I think he attempted to have some semblance of normalcy by mimicking a lot of the norms for his age group and trying to blend in, that’s all it ever could be is an impersonation or a skin he put on because he just wasn’t one of Them™ and obviously his peers picked up on that. As he got older that gap became bigger and bigger - some of it self-imposed, some of it not - and his singular fixation on Sherlock being It™ to confirm a lot of questions he never could find the answers for increased exponentially to say the least. He just made better connections to stories and performances and larger than life figures who provided guidance on how to conduct himself rather than the boring, average people living mundane lives he was surrounded by - including his own family. He eventually becomes a sort of storyteller or performer himself since slipping in and out of personas is really all he knows how to do, so good luck trying to find any original pieces in there cause he doesn’t even know.

But yeah his teen years were probably when his mind was the most unsettled, although you wouldn’t necessarily know that just by looking at him. He came to realize (probably with the help of the situation with Carl Powers) that coming up with a very detailed plan which seamlessly blended in with real life almost as if there wasn’t a plan in place at all felt good, it felt right. So instead of solely depending on other factors to supply him with mental stimulation now, he has the power to produce it himself by fixing “problems”. I think on some lesser scale he was already doing that to placate his boredom (I personally have a headcanon he liked to tinker with broken objects), but he started picking up bigger problems as a test of his abilities and to give him a wider range of subjects to work with and from there he had to sort of weaponize himself to make the most of his abilities. It slowly burned him from the inside out, but I don’t think any of this could have gone any other way even if one of the above factors changed. It would have just delayed the inevitable because in the end it was always going to be him and the eternal problem with his mind that he could never come up with a solution for. But his teenage years are at least the start of the longest lasting solution, that’s for sure.

[neingel]

Complete review of Aether Revolt cards for Commander!

Well as the spoiler season ends as a new set prepares to be released. Aether Revolt does look to me one of the most exciting sets Wizards have made in a long while. Many new toys for Standard as well as minor tweaks for various decks in Modern to enjoy. However I myself am a Commander player and today I’ll be looking as well as handpicking a group of cards. Yes but not only any ordinary group of cards, but more specifically cards to a format I call home, yes that’s right! It’s time for a good breakdown of the potential cards in Aether Revolt that could see play in Commander!

Starting off, it’s no surprise that with every new set, everyone is excited with what new Legendary Creatures are in the set as they could make strong generals in the Future. I must say among the 5 all of them are very unique and have strong abilities. Sram falls perfectly into decks that already run Equipment, Auras and even recently printed Vehicles (Yes I’m looking at you Depala), while Baral features a Goblin Electromancer v2.0 with extra cycling effects, though not as good as a general but very promising in the 99. Yaheeni does seem to me my favorite pick for this entire lot, she’s low costed,able to protect herself and fits perfectly with popular graveyard strategies in EDH . Kari Zev does admittedly look the weakest among the 5 but who knows what build she might fit in. Last but not the least Rishkar can either be an excellent General fr a new build or give decks that play around with +1/+1 counters a unique “Cryptolith Rite”-like ability. Overall, I feel that the Legendary Creatures in this set has been of great success!

Again, a new set comes with a new cycle of special spells to play with. Not only are these spells pretty flavorful when it comes to the storyline, but they are all very powerful for what they do at their cost, getting a sweet effect and being able to cast a card for free from your hand is always nice. As for Commander I’m generally in favor of both Yaheeni’s and Rishkar’s Expertise, reason being Yaheeni’s is a mini board wipe early game which would result you in placing a reasonable 3 drop afterwards, while Rishkar allows you to draw a lot of cards and being able to not worry about mana and place a 5 drop from what you’ve drawn. However what I like most about them is despite each having the same “free cast” effect, each of them are still very unique in their own way and would definitely find a home in many decks.

WHITE  

Do note, I might include the previously mentioned Expertises and Legendaries in these lists. Well in no order or ranking whatsoever, we shall start off the 5 best cards for each color in Commander!. 

Consulate Crackdown

Now Consulate Crackdown is an interesting card that caught my attention when it first got spoiled, it was not only expected to be quite strong in Standard but also in EDH. White has gotten a unique way to get rid of pesky, troublesome artifacts (yes Darksteel Forge is definitely something this loves looking at) without actually having trouble blowing them up, resulting in all artifacts being reanimated through something like Scrap Mastery. Also this card works insanely well with Myconsynth Lattice, serving as another combo piece for the artifact that is well dreaded in Commander, this neat little trick causes you to exile each and every one of your opponent’s permanents, leaving them with nothing but your board in play. Insane boardwipe for artifact themed decks and it also serves as a powerful artifact removal for others.

Exquisite Archangel

Well about this card..yes it isn’t very good on paper as they are more reliable cards that prevent you from losing the game, cards like Platinium Angel and Phyrexian Unlife are both excellent in Commander. However do keep in mind, this card is just another one of those ways to prevent you from losing the game. Especially when it’s a long game, everyone has either ran out of answers or resources. Your opponents would most likely not want to see this being played. Also, this could fit in some neat Angel Tribal theme or some deck that aims to recur it’s creatures for their powerful effects.

Call for Unity

Ah yes..a White Coat of Arms! Being in White has never been better when you can run 2 Coat of Arms! Call for Unity does stand out a little bit from Coat of Arms though, it does not require a tribe to be played and it’s an enchantment. White in Commander is well known for some of it’s aggressive synergies, in particular creatures and their enchantments. This card’s strength is no stranger to many players. However, with it’s Revolt ability, a lot and I mean a lot of decks that play around flickering their own creatures/permanents will adore this card. It will be interesting to see how players will build around this card and how it might grow to be the next Coat of Arms.

Sram, Senior Edificer 

Sram is a very interesting card. He could play effectively as a general but I feel he would be much better being in the 99 for decks playing Auras and Equipments, and boy there are a lot of generals that would love him in their deck! Zur, Kemba, Bruna Light of Alabaster, Krond, Aurelia, Jor Kadeen...the list just goes on! He is perfectly costed and acts as a very powerful draw engine for these decks.

Sram’s Expertise

Ah..token decks players are probably rubbing their hands in glee. Sram’s Expertise is literally a 4 for 1. Netting 3 tokens which make excellent blockers or simply piling them up to your already growing token army. The free cast for a ≤ 3 cmc card from your hand is just icing on the cake. Many token decks like Trostani, Rhys the Redeemed, Teysa Orzhov Scion and many more would have this auto-included.

BLUE

Mechanized Production

For players outside of Commander, seeing this Mythic might leave them a bad taste in their mouth. It does look quite horrible at times but Commander’s specialty is turning bulk rares into rock stars. This is just one of those fun cards Wizards prints once in awhile, Mechanized Production does remind me of Biovisionary but somehow easier to pull off due to it’s synergy with artifacts. You don’t necessarily need to copy a big fatty, but what you could do is to place it on “artifact tokens”. Thopters, Myrs, Golems...the list is endless, this card has quite the chance to shine in most artifact decks being a cheap and reliable copy generator or just simply a win-con in decks that produce a lot of tokens!

Whir of Invention

I clearly remembered when this got spoiled, I just started sharing with my friends about this “artifact chord”. While Improvise is slightly worse than chord, it does give artifact decks a strong instant speed tutor for any artifact in their deck. Also cmc isn’t really an issue with the amount of mana rocks artifact decks run, they can just improvise away~. Overall, solid card, not too over or under powered.

Disallow

As a control player and someone who adores counterspells...FINALLY! Like..it’s hard to put it but Disallow is literally the blue Voidslime. Heck, it’s an even better Voidslime for the ability to splash with colors outside of Green. It’s the same mana as Cancel but strictly, no I mean really - many blue players have wanted a Voidslime outside of Simic colors, and we finally got one! *Fist pumps like crazy* 

Trophy Mage

Is that you Trinket Mage? Oh no? Oh but you do have better stats! Yes, it is Trophy Mage whom supposedly is the cousin of Trinket Mage except she is from Kaladesh. Anyways, Trophy Mage is just like Trinket Mage except she searches for only cmc of 3. But in Commander, cmc 3 often means Chromatic Lantern, Static Orb, Phyrexian Altar, Thousand-Year Elxir....the list is endless and you can see why this card makes it to this list.

Baral, Chief of Compliance

Well well well, I spy with my little eye a new addition to my Melek spellslingers deck as well as a potential powerful general. Yes, Baral is probably the card Goblin Electromancer should be. He is just strictly better than Electromancer, they both have the same effect, but he has looting and he’s not restricted to Izzet colors. I see him being a powerful addition to any spellslingers deck and he would make a good rival to the next mono-blue spellslingers general: Talrand.

Black

Herald of Anguish

This is probably one of the best demons I’ve seen printed in a Standard set in a long time, don’t get me wrong, Demon of the Dark Schemes back in Kaladesh was an all round solid card. But Herald of Anguish is a really powerful card. Improvise makes this potentially an unexpected early drop for your opponents, the discard ability is very relevant in black and it also has reliable removal that require some artifact synergy. I would love to see how artifact decks play around this card as it simply is a value-bomb.

Yahenni, Undying Partisan

Yahenni is pretty much what everyone is hyping about right now. She works too well with reanimation/sacrifice synergies in Commander. The fact she is almost a nightmare to deal with when combined with Grave Pact/Dictate of Erebos, she can buff herself and she can make herself immune to boardwipes is ridiculous. She is pretty solid in the 99 but I feel even more powerful as a Voltron general. Overall the best legendary in this set so far!

Yahenni’s Expertise

One of my personal favorite cards in this set that i expect to see Modern play, Yahenni’s Expertise is still quite strong in Commander. It does set itself up as an early boardwipe in Black following up with a creature or..Demonic Tutor :P it also gets rid of pesky, small hexproof/indestructible creatures. And for it’s cost, it’s normally alot of creatures and a free spell for 1. 

Gonti’s Machinations

This is actually a very unique card in a unique spot. For just 1 mana, Gonti’s Machinations can be quite the trouble for opponents from the very moment it’s been cast. Black does have ways to lose life easily, 2 simple examples include Phyrexian Arena and Necropotence. Also it is easy to regain back the life lost since Commander is a multiplayer format, a simple activation of this in a 4 player game means you gaining back 9 life with just this cheap and simple enchantment. Overall, its a very unique and cool card I want to see being played.

Battle at the Bridge

I honestly wasn’t really excited for this card when it was spoiled, but then again I realized that again artifact decks in EDH can simply pay 1 Black to kill a fatty if they had enough artifacts. Sure it’s a sorcery but the life gain here is quite the bonus. Imagine over-tapping your artifacts to help cast this card help you stay in the game. This card is pretty underlooked but I’m sure it’ll have a few decks running it.

RED

Indomitable Creativity

Now, it is not the first time seeing a red “poly-morph” effect but this card can be used to yourself. You could basically set your deck up with Selective Memory/Doomsday, this card could basically be a card to set up the win with lesser mana than required. It could also mean a “Chaos Warp”-ish boardwipe for your opponent. Overall Vandalblast would be better but this is here for it’s combo potential.

Release the Gremlins

Despite it’s funny name, this card is actually pretty funny when played against your opponents. It is especially more hilarious when you already have some form of infinite mana combo together with Myconsyth Lattice and you basically wipe out your opponent’s board and leaving you a massive amount of Gremlins. +1 for flavor and name!

Pia’s Revolution

Now again for all the artifact lovers, I can imagine this card being in a mono-red artifact deck like...Daretti of all generals. Where he doesn’t really cares where the cards go to and opponents would definitely not want certain artifacts to be in the graveyard, in this case they would normally take the 3 damage. Another one worth mentioning is when Breya starts activating her ability for damage, this might actually push 4 damage to 10 out of nowhere.

Freejam Regent

Again, another solid bomb for artifact decks imo, a less than 6 cmc for 4/4 with flying and fire-breathing makes it a solid finisher. Other than that, this card is quite the value it speaks err as it breathes I suppose. Although many might disagree this card getting this spot as it is competing with other red dragons such as Hoard-Smelter Dragon, Hellkite Igniter and the biggest daddy of them all Hellkite Tyrant. But I still feel this card has a certain place for some decks in Commander.

Lightning Runner

A potential combo breaking card that could basically mean the win for you. Lightning runner does require a steep energy cost, but this might be the card that could break energy into Commander. 8 energy might be slightly hard to pull off whenever this attacks but some builds have started to show up building around generating massive/infinite energy. We will have to wait and see how strong energy will perform now with the addition of this sweet thing.

Green

Aetherwind Basker

And now as you can see, Elfball decks have a new toy to meddle around with. Aetherwind Basker can be quite a terrifying creature to drop earlier than usual due to ramp in Green. This gigantic lizard is a close mimic to other big finishers such as Craterhoof Behemoth as well as Decimator of Provinces, though not as powerful as the latter two,Basker does work terrifyingly well when either is cast. Basker does reward players when casting him on a board full of your creatures. Add in a Lightning Greaves/Concordant Crossroads and he is guaranteed to get in there for a lot of damage.

Rishkar’s Expertise 

Rishkar’s Expertise does feel a lot like Soul’s Majesty, Momentous Fall or Regal Force. However, almost any green card with the ability like this all suffer the same weakness. Which is the case after you draw, you would normally not have the mana to play almost anything you drawn. Rishkar’s Expertise however allows you to play a reasonably “big” card at 5 cmc! And while you compare Rishkar’s Expertise to other Green cards that draw a massive amount of cards, Rishka Expertise is probably the best for it’s cost. That free cast for a cmc 5 card is just too good. I personally feel this has a slight edge over my other favorite Expertise, Yahenni’s.

Heroic Intervention

Everything about this card is awesome, the art, the fact Ajani is in it, the cost and most importantly the ability to basically counter a boardwipe/mass targeted removal. More importantly for 2 cmc and at instant speed? That is just absolutely bonkers when you think about it. Definitely will see play with the high amount of threats to permanents in Commander.

 Rishkar, Peema Renegade

Rishkar is rounding out the last of the best Legendary Creatures in the set (Sorry Kari Zev :/). Rishkar does bring an interesting inclusion to generals playing around the +1/+1 counters mechanic. He does come in helping out 2 other creaures, for a 3 cmc 2/2, that is already quite good. But the real fun begins when most of your creatures with counters get to produce mana on their own. He is a great boost to many existing builds but also quite independent and strong on his own as a general.

Lifecrafter’s Bestiary

Now I know this isn’t an entirely Mono-Green card but we’re still in Mono Green and all of the cards mentioned here are still splashable in Gx colored decks. Anyways Lifecrafter’s Bestiary does look like a card many creature based decks would want to put in. A low costed artifact with a free scry every upkeep does sound interesting, but it acts as a earlier game Zendikar Resurgent that requires 1 green mana per draw activation. Overall, it’s low costed, packed full with value. Solid card just for Commander play.

Multicolored

Ajani Unyielding

Though Ajani has received some criticism around his speed and playability, I personally feel that he is actually good enough for Commander. He has the ability to get multiple cards into your hand fast, get rid of annoying creatures and his ultimate if you do get to a stage to use it, is literally a steroid pump to both your creatures and planeswalkers. All round very solid and I feel his abilities go very well along with his colors. Especially for the super-friends builds like Atraxa.

Tezzeret, Master of Metal and Tezzeret the Schemer

Now, I actually had a hard time choosing which of these 2 were going to take this spot, but I figured out that both were very powerful. Even if they aren’t as good as the original Agent of Bolas, both are still very solid in Commander. Let’s start off with the “heavy metal” version of Tezzeret, it does have a strong digging ability which is quite relevant in Commander, his 2nd skill can act as a way to ward off opponents or host a major lethal damage threat late game. Whereas his ultimate is very devastating, being able to take someone’s best creatures and artifacts is no laughing matter at all. Now onwards to the “scheming” version of Tezzeret, he does not provide any form of digging but he does produce an extra artifact that acts like a Lotus Petal. He has strong, solid and reliable creature removal while his ultimate though not as terrifying as the heavy metal version, does quicken your clock fast by turning any artifact you control during combat on your turn into a 5/5 creature. A time bomb ticking for your opponents if you will, sweet effect nonetheless. Tezzeret does have a thing for turning artifacts into 5/5s...why doesn’t he just make them slightly bigger?

Dark Imitations

A tuned-down version of Cruel-Ultimatum that targets each opponent, but does come with the added ability of returning either a creature or Planeswalker from your graveyard to your hand. What’s interesting is the synergy with the “Bolas” Planeswalker spell, this not only helps decks that already run the Nicol Bolas Planeswalker card but it also does give clues to the next set Amonkhet, the home plane of Nicol Bolas whom might have recruited other Planewalkers for his evil plans. All these hinting at more Planeswalkers printed with the “Bolas” keyword in their Planeswalker type. Overall, this card might be bound to seeing more improvements and playability.

Oath of Ajani

Well if Wizards was trying to push Planeswalkers in Standard, they forgotten that Atraxa Super-friends IS a very powerful deck in Commander. But outside of that particular topic, Oath of Ajani is the dream card for many Super-friends decks. It’s low costed, gives early buffs to a few creatures, reasonable when played mid-game. Again another solid card in this set overall.

Winding Constrictor

If you thought the invasion of cards having synergy with counters wasn’t enough in Aether Revolt, this little angry noodle does stand out a slight bit from it’s other counterparts in the set. The fact that it does give extra counters on both creatures and artifacts alike is very unique, it also has a 2nd ability which allows you as the controller to receive an extra counter of any type. I can certainly see this being placed in a very wide variety of decks. From +1/+1 counters to charge counters and loyalty points on Planeswalkers. This danger noodle will be guaranteed to be seen in decks far and wide.

Colorless

Metallic Mimic

Ah finally! I have no idea how long it has been where Wizards finally print a form of global tribe support. Metallic Mimic does seem to to be the new kid on the block, matching Adaptive Automaton’s popularity. Mimic does have a few differences from Automaton, it cost 1 less than its fellow robotic cousin and it also buffs your chosen creature type with counters. This means even if your Mimic dies, your creatures are sure to remain buffed with a counter.

Crackdown Construct

Ah.every once in a while a new awesome combo piece Wizards prints comes out of literally nowhere. While this awesome robot won’t be seeing much play in Standard. It will see immense amount of play in Commander. If you were wondering why this card is so hyped up for do take note. The equip rule states you can use an equipment to equip to the same creature as many times as possible so long as you can pay it’s equip cost. This means if u equip Lightning Greaves to Crackdown Construct, and naming an infinite amount of times equipping to it, you’ll have an infinite power and toughness robot flying at your opponent.

Inspiring Statuary 

Well another interesting and potentially powerful piece of artifact that could bust Commander. Inspiring Statuary basically makes artifact decks have the confidence to run a bit more non-artifact cards. Simply because it would be much easier casting them with this card on the field with full of artifacts. It’s reasonably costed and I can see this card enjoying a good amount of play in Commander.

Paradox Engine

Probably the most ground-breaking, nerve-wrecking card in the entire set *hands down*, many are already comparing this to staples in Commander like Doubling Season, Seedborn Muse and somewhat a close resemblance to Prophet of Kruphix. I can guarantee almost any decks playing a untap/tap synergy such as Phenax,Ezuri Elves and Azami would go bonkers with this card. Sitting at 5 cmc which I feel is very low for a card with such a high power level. This card will change Commander as a whole, it’s effect is really too significant to ignore and when I mean too significant. When this hits the table...

Like literally man!

Land

As for lands goes, unfortunately only one card makes this list and that’s the new rainbow land in the entire set 

Spire of Industry 

Another card for artifact decks yet again! They finally have a City of Brass/Mana Confluence just for themselves. Spire does remind many of a less harsh Glimmervoid. But even though there are many rainbow lands available for artifact synergies in Commander. This is one good inclusion for many of them alike.

Conclusion

Aether Revolt is one of the most exciting sets we’ve stumbled across in a very long time! With powerful and unique “build-around-me” cards popping up, it is no surprise quite a number have made it into this list. The power level of Commander is certain to be on the rise as the player-base brews new strategies for each individual card in different decks or will we see a new archetype coming out on it’s own? It is still unknown but just look at the set so far! Despite the overwhelming amount of Artifact/Planes-walker/Counters support, many cards have been printed in good measure to bring new toys for a wide variety to play with.

If so, that’s all of the time I have for you today, be sure to follow the blog for more updates and such. And stay tuned for the next article as well, I’m hoping to see you there!