#divine emissions and stuff

[shallowseeker]

why do i laugh so much when dean just like OFFERS cas's grace up for a task

WHY is it so FUNNY???

///

DEAN: I'm thinking Cas' grace would be enough.

CAS: ...uhm

SAM: ...or it'll blast them away to another world.

Yup the energy is weird

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Chris D'Angelo at HuffPost:

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke about the spiritual connection he feels toward the natural world and humankind’s duty to protect it, Tucker Carlson was left visibly starstruck. “That is where we sense the divine. God talks to us through the fishes, the birds, the leaves. They’re all words from our creator,” Kennedy told Carlson in an Aug. 26 interview. “That is why we preserve nature.” “Yes!” Carlson agreed, emphatically. “It’s not because of the quantity of carbon,” Kennedy added, condemning the environmental movement’s focus on planet-warming carbon emissions. “I feel what you said so deeply I can hardly even express it,” Carlson marveled.

Kennedy, who worked for decades as an environmental attorney, fancies himself as an “old-school environmentalist” — apparently one who thinks that humans can somehow safeguard the environment while ignoring carbon pollution, the 13,000-pound elephant in the room that is wreaking havoc on all the nature that Kennedy purports to care about so deeply.

Numerous former colleagues in the environmental movement have come forward to condemn Kennedy, arguing he lost his way long ago and forfeited any claim to the title of environmentalist. After suspending his own presidential campaign last month, Kennedy became a surrogate for Republican nominee Donald Trump, who has repeatedly dismissed climate change as a “hoax” and as president dismantled dozens of environmental rules and regulations to the benefit of corporate polluters. Dan Reicher, a senior researcher at Stanford University’s Woods Institute for Environment, worked with Kennedy at the Natural Resources Defense Council in the late-1980s and early 1990s. The man he knew then, whom he called a “strong advocate who spoke his mind on environmental protection” and with whom he bonded over a shared passion for kayaking, is not the same man today.

[...]

For a clear view of Kennedy’s fall from environmental grace, look no further than his interview with Carlson, when Kennedy condemned environmentalists for adopting what he calls a “carbon orthodoxy,” the idea that everything is measured by its carbon footprint. “When we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine,” he said. “It’s not about quantifying stuff. That’s what the devil does; he quantifies everything. That is what he wants us doing — put a number on it. And the reason we’re preserving these things is because we love our children. It’s because nature enriches us, it enriches us economically, spiritually, culturally and historically. It connects us to those ten thousand generations of human beings that were here before there were laptops.” What Kennedy conveniently failed to mention or grapple with is the fact that climate change is devastating communities the world over, with economic damages forecast to reach $38 trillion annually by the middle of this century. For many, confronting the threat is both a spiritual and cultural endeavor. Kennedy went on to attack the modern environmental movement with several falsehoods. He declared that “offshore wind is exterminating the whales,” parroting the evidence-free talking point of some of the nation’s most hard-line organizations denying climate change.

[...] Kennedy’s entrance into the Make America Great Again movement has given rise to a similar slogan meant to boil down what Kennedy brings to the table: Make America Healthy Again. But in backing Trump, Kennedy is teaming up with someone with a well-documented and abysmal environmental and public health record. The Trump administration worked to weaken safeguards for nearly 35 million acres, a number that the left-leaning Center for American Progress said earned Trump the title of the most “anti-nature” president in U.S. history. In January 2021, The New York Times compiled a list of more than 100 environmental rollbacks under Trump, including rules meant to safeguard air, water and wildlife habitat, as well as prevent exposure to toxic chemicals. In a meeting with oil and gas executives earlier this year, Trump vowed to fulfill the fossil fuel industry’s wish list and undo President Joe Biden’s climate and green energy policies if they donated $1 billion to his reelection campaign. It is the very sort of corporate capture of government that Kennedy decries at every turn.

[...] Reicher and others date Kennedy’s departure from the environmental movement to the early 2000s, when he began to embrace conspiracies about vaccines and autism — a torch he continues to carry — and became a prominent figure in the fight against a proposed offshore wind farm near Cape Cod, Massachusetts. But Brett Hartl, government affairs director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s political arm, points to a fiasco Kennedy set in motion at Riverkeeper in 2000. That year, Kennedy, then Riverkeeper’s lead attorney, hired William Wegner, a convicted smuggler of wild bird eggs, to help the organization monitor New York City’s compliance with environmental rules. Eight of Riverkeeper’s board members resigned in protest. Ever since that incident, Hartl, who grew up along the Hudson River, has viewed Kennedy as a foe and told HuffPost he’s “been baffled by the comments of other environmental advocates that can’t believe what has happened to him.” “RFK has been twisted for decades, nothing is new, people just tolerated his untethered and bizarre beliefs because his last name was Kennedy,” Hartl said in an email. “In my view, RFK Jr is an environmental criminal and an environmental villain.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. soiled the Kennedy name and what remains of his environmentalist cred by sucking up to anti-environment/pro-fossil fuels demagogue Donald Trump.

[blossomingtortoise2]

Weird 2E Stuff

In the Mutants and Masterminds Second Edition Paragons Setting there are the following Mentioned Powers I found funny. (They're Supernatural In Nature in The Setting so it's even Funnier.)

1:Literal Gaydar.

2:X-Ray Vision But Only Clothes.

3:Turning any food into Coffee.

4:Fitting to Any Clothing by extending the clothing.

5:Reaching Perfectly Average Weight and Fitness for your age.

I might Make this 3E but not all of these would be Features unlike the original “Minor Miracles”

Recreation:

Gaydar Minor Miracle:52Pp(102Pp if Adds Dimensional To Detect All Dimensions)(Original Was A Feature):Innate Noticeable(Flashes Colors Of Detected and When Using Normal Radio Radar Signals)  Precise Feature:Uses Expertise:Psychology Instead of Perception. Senses 50(Radio(1R),Detect Sexuality(1R), Ranged on Detect(1R),Penetrates Concealment(Radio)(4R),Completely Counters Concealment(Radio)(5R),Counters Illusion(Radio)(2R),Radius(All Radio)(2R),Acute(All Radio)(2R),Analytical(All Radio)(2R),Accurate(All Radio)(4R),Extended 2(All Radio)(4R),Rapid 3(Base Radio)(3R),Rapid 3(Radio Detect)(3R),Time Sense(Radio)(1R),Direction Sense(Radio)(1R),Distance Sense(Radio)(1R),Danger Sense(Radio)(1R),Rapid 3(Time Sense)(3R),Rapid 3(Direction Sense)(3R),Rapid 3(Distance Sense)(3R)Rapid 3(Danger Sense)(3R))

Wrath Of The Seven Thunders:40Pp(Was 60Pp):Immunity 140(Toughness Effects(80R),Will Effects(30R),Fortitude Effects(30R)),Limited to Powers,Limited to Non Divine Powers,Innate,Insidious,Subtle 2,Feature 1:Affects All Clothing And Held Objects/Objects In Contact As Well.

Spontaneous Breakout:70Pp(Is Custom And Lore Based and A Better Counterpart To Wrath of Seven Thunders.)(Gives 25Pp Of Effects to Each Target Including Self):Innate Quirk:Only Targets Without Non Learned,Non Innate Powers. Affects Others Continuous Close-Perception Visual Area Selective Broad(Non Divine Powers) Variable 5

Perfect Weight and Toned Physique:10Pp(Was a Feature):Innate Feature:Appears In Perfect Physique for Area In World. Permanent Enhanced Ability 4(Strength 1,Stamina 1,Agility 1,Dexterity 1)

X-Ray Vision only Through Clothes:20Pp(From Feature):Innate Subtle 2 Feature 1(Uses Expertise:Tailoring Instead of Perception.) Limited to Clothing Senses 32(Penetrates Concealment(Vision)(4R),Counters Concealment(Vision)(5R),Counters Illusion(Vision)(2R),Accurate Vision(4R),Acute Vision(2R),Analytical Vision(2R),Radius Vision(2R),Ultra-vision(1R),Infra-vision(1R),Low-Light Vision(1R),Extended Vision 4(8R)),Limited to Clothing.

Tv Remote:15Pp(From Feature):Innate Precise(So Can Act as a Controller On Computers and The Like) Subtle 2 Insidious Feature:Can Act As a Remote Control for Electronic Devices With One Linked to Innate Subtle 2 Insidious Limited to Remote Operation Permanent Enhanced Skill 20(Technology)

Perfume Emission:5Pp(From Feature):Innate Subtle 2 Insidious Check Required(Dc 12:Expertise:Perfumer) Precise(Can Specify Mix and Exact Amount of Body Odor And Other Smells) Feature 2:Can change own smell to any Smell of Commercial Perfume,Possibly Causing Circumstance Bonuses or Penalties to Self Or Others.(Is Rank 2 So Can do +2 or +5 or -2 or +5 or +2 and -2)

Can Read Sealed Material:15Pp(From Feature):Innate Subtle 2 Insidious Feature 3:Can Read Any Written Material Even Past Barriers,Regardless of Language(Feature 1+2 Ranks For Comprehend Languages(Read Only Which Otherwise Isn’t Possible since 2 Feature Ranks is 2Pp). Side Effect:Is Defenseless and Immobile During This Process and Innate Insidious Subtle 2 Side Effect:Is Defenseless and Immobile During This Process(-2Pp/Rank) Limited to Reading Written Material(-2Pp/Rank) Permanent(Isn’t Constant Side Effect Just When Used.) Quickness 30.

Transform Clothing Into Other Outfits That fit:5Pp (From Feature):Innate Insidious Subtle 2 Feature:Can Fit into any Clothing.

Controls Coin Flips:5Pp(From Feature):Innate Subtle 2 Insidious Feature 2:Gambler and When Gambler is Not In Apply Due to Both Having it Uses Technology for All Checks.,Limited to Coin Flips

The Various Food Oriented Powers:10Pp(From Multiple Features.):Innate Subtle 2 Feature 7(Can Season Any Food Automatically,Can Cook Any Food Automatically,Can Create Mass Rank -5 Of a Cup Of Coffee At A time(Still is Maintained After New Cup),+5 Circumstance Bonus to Cooking Related Ability Checks By User,-5 Circumstance Penalty to Other’s Cooking Related Ability Checks Against User.)

[unfamiliarreligions]

Pastafarianism

Origins

Pastafarianism is not an ordinary religion, as you can see from the name. 

The origin of pastafarianism is that it started in the early 20’s. According to Britannica (2023), the church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster began in 2005, when Bobby Henderson, a recent physics graduate of Oregon State University, sent a letter to the Kansas Board of Education, which was debating the inclusion of intelligent design theories in high school classes on evolution. The letter, which parodied the reasoning used to argue a scientific basis for intelligent design, stated that teaching about intelligent design must also include the alternative theory that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Henderson received no response, and he posted his letter on the Internet, where it attracted a great deal of popular attention. Articles on the viral sensation were published in numerous newspapers, and fan sites began to appear.

Core Beliefs

When it comes to their beliefs, this religion embraces a unique kind of belief. A variety of religions believe in the existence of a divine or transcendent being such as Gods but Pastafarians do not believe in this. 

Pirates as Divine Beings

What makes them different from other religions, they believe that pirates are considered as “absolute divine beings”. The common perception about pirates is they are ruthless thieves and outcasts. It’s true that they are involved in attacking and robbing ships on the high seas, they are even criticized because they often operate against the law but for them it’s a different view. According to Handwiki (2024), Pastafarians believe that they were ��peace-loving explorers and spreaders of good will” who distributed candy to small children, adding that modern pirates are in no way similar to “the fun-loving buccaneers from history”. In the letter of Bobby Henderson, Kansas State Board of Education, it was highlighted that pirates are revered as the “original Pastafarians”. He said global warming and natural disasters are directly caused by fewer pirates since the 1800’s, making fun of some religious groups who say disasters happen because people do not worship enough. Henderson even shared a funny graph that showed temperatures going up as pirate numbers went down. Later, he jokingly mentioned Somalia has many pirates and low carbon emissions as “proof” of his point. This belief demonstrates Pastafarians emphasize comedy and logical fallacies.

Heaven, Hell, and Tiny Differences

Pastafarians believed that Heaven and Hell resemble each other in ways of being almost the same, but with a funny twist; in Heaven there is a beer volcano and stripper factory, whereas Hell has stale beer and strippers plagued by diseases. This small difference reminds us that even tiny things can change our whole experience of something. Such as how you barely pass a tough exam because of a small bonus, or miss by mere inches because of one tiny mistake. Belief of the Pastafarian finds appreciation within those little moments that make life awesome. The Flying Spaghetti Monster, in all its noodly wisdom, reminds us to find joy in the small stuff. R’amen!

Pastafarian Stand on Education

Pastafarians really believe in secularism, especially in education. They believe that religious and state institutions should be strictly separate because teachings of religion should not affect what is taught in schools under the government or what decisions the government reaches. This aspect is particularly crucial to them because they consider secularism to be very necessary for a fair and free-soil-and-sky biased education. Through their jokes, Pastafarians promote their concept and raise the question of why religion is subject to be taken into public institutions. Their expectations of schooling relate to science knowledge, critical thinking, and evidence-based teaching in place of religious creed. This funny religion explains the need for public places to be friendly and non-presumptive towards any religion, helping to foster a much more democratic and open-minded society.

Practices

The practices of Pastafarianism or also known as the Flying Spaghetti Monster. (FMS).

Satirical Dress Code or Dressing up as Pirates

Pastafarians are encouraged to dress in pirate regalia, since one belief is that   Pirates are a “Divine being”. They will take a perfectly simple posture in religious freedom grounds. They wear colanders on their head shots, whether driver's license or IDs, and that becomes their religious headgear. It's funny, but it is a protest. This way, the Pastafarians are breaking the question of why some religious outfits are accepted while still in official settings while others are less "serious" beliefs. Their use of the colander highlights how society treats different religious expressions and raises a broader question: should all beliefs, even humorous ones, be given equal respect? Through this playful “dress code,” Pastafarians aim to show that freedom of belief should apply to everyone, regardless of whether it’s traditional or unconventional.

Holidays and Celebrations 

Pastafarians have lighthearted religious holidays without strict rules. They commemorate each Friday as a day of sanctity and conclude their prayers are concluded with a final declaration of affirmation with “R’amen” (or “rAmen”), a whimsical combination of “Amen” and “Ramen” referring to a Japanese noodle dish and to the "noodly appendages" of their deity. In December, they replace mainstream holidays with “Holiday”, a vague and impromptu event with no defined expectations for celebrations. Pastafarians also celebrate “Pastover” and “Ramendan”, a parody version of Passover and Ramadan, respectively. For them, the growing usage of “Happy Holidays” is good evidence that people share their conviction. 

Around the time of Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, Pastafarians celebrate the vaguely defined "Holiday". Holiday does not take place on "a specific date so much as it is the Holiday season, itself". According to Henderson, as Pastafarians "reject dogma and formalism", there are no specific requirements for Holiday. Pastafarians celebrate Holiday in any manner they please.

Spread in Other Religions

Pastafarian has influenced other religions regarding faith and science and the role of religion in society. Pastafarianism encourages one to be critical about holding religious beliefs and religion's place in public life, especially in spheres such as education and politics. More than this, it has created discussions on the need to respect diversity on belief and equitable treatment of religions. Although some religious communities will deem it offensive, others employ it as a moment to reflect on common values like compassion, modesty, and respect for persons. It also reflects the need to disassociate religion from public institutions, especially the aspects of education and politics, to further diversity and inclusion. Moreover, Pastafarianism upholds the cause of religious freedom by urging recognition of equal freedom to recognize every possible belief, including the right to wear colanders in official documents. Its playful approach toward spirituality presents a real possibility for people who consider themselves deprived of the mainstream religious events. Using satire and social commentary as tools, Pastafarianism promotes a more extensive and unwritten interpretation of religion that would be appropriate for a liberal society.

References:

Spaghetti, V. a. P. B. D. (2018, October 8). Heaven and hell – the Pastafarian view. Doctor Spaghetti. https://doctorspaghetti.org/heaven-and-hell-the-pastafarian-view/

Social:Flying Spaghetti Monster. (n.d.). Handwiki.org. Retrieved November 19, 2024, from 

https://handwiki.org/wiki/Social:Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

Doctor Spaghetti. (2018, October 8). Heaven and hell – the Pastafarian view. Doctor Spaghetti.

https://doctorspaghetti.org/heaven-and-hell-the-pastafarian-view/

Journeyman Pictures. (2020, May 26). I, Pastafari: A Flying Spaghetti Monster Story | Trailer | Available now [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrctO2NLWCo

happy Holiday season everyone – Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. (2006, December 1). https://www.spaghettimonster.org/2006/12/01/happy-holiday-season-everyone/

[mugasofer]

It seems like many, perhaps most, people historically believed in some immanent apocalypse.

Many philosophies claim that the world is passing into a degenerate age of chaos (Ages of Man, Kali Yuga, life-cycle of civilisation), or divine conflict will shortly spill over & destroy the Earth (Ragnorok, Revelations, Zoroastrian Frashokereti), or that the natural forces sustaining us must be transient.

Yet few panic or do anything. What anyone does "do about it" is often symbolic & self-admittedly unlikely to do much.

Maybe humans evolved not to care, to avoid being manipulated?

Many cults make similar claims, and do uproot their lives around them. Even very rarely committing mass suicide or terror attacks etc on occasion. But cults exist that don't make such claims, so it may not be the mechanism they use to control, or at most a minor one. "This is about the fate of the whole world, nothing can be more important than that, so shut up" may work as as a thought terminating cliche, but it doesn't seem to work that strongly, and there are many at least equally effective ones.

Some large scale orgs do exist that seem to take their eschatology "seriously". The Aztecs committed atrocities trying to hold off apocalypse, ISIS trying to cause it. Arguably some Communist or even fascist groups count, depending on your definition of apocalypse.

But even then, one can argue their actions are not radically different from non-apocalypse-motivated ones - e.g. the Aztecs mass-executed less per capita than the UK did at times & some historians view them as more about displaying authority.

I'm thinking about this because of two secular eschatologies - climate apocalypse and the Singularity.

My view on climate change, which as far as I can tell is the scientific consensus, is that it is real and bad but by no means apocalyptic. We're talking incremental increases in storms, droughts, floods etc, all of which are terrible, but none of which remotely threaten human civilisation. E.g. according to the first Google result, the sea is set to rise by 1 decimeter by 2100 in a "high emissions scenario", not to rise by tens or hundreds of meters and consume all coastal nations as I was taught as a child. Some more drastic projections suggest that the sea might rise by as much as two or three meters in the worst case scenario.

It really creeps me out when I hear people who confess to believe that human civilisation, the human species, or even all life on Earth is most likely going to be destroyed soon by climate change. The most recent example, which prompted this post, was the Call of Cthulhu podcast I was listening to casually suggesting that it might be a good idea to summon an Elder God of ice and snow to combat climate change as the "lesser existential risk", perhaps by sacrificing "climate skeptics" to it. It's incredibly jarring for me to realise that the guys I've been listening to casually chatting about RPGs think they live in a world that will shortly be ended by the greed of it's rulers. But this idea is everywhere. Discussions of existential risks from e.g. pandemics inevitably attract people arguing that the real existential risk is climate change. A major anti-global-warming protest movement, Extinction Rebellion, is literally named after the idea that they're fighting against their own extinction. Viral Tumblr posts talk about how the fear of knowing that the world is probably going to be destroyed soon by climate change and fascism is crippling their mental health, and they have no idea how to deal with it because it's all so real.

But it's not. It's not real.

Well, I can't claim that political science is accurate enough for me to definitively say that fascism isn't going to take over, but I can say that climate science is fairly accurate and it predicts that the world is definitely not about to end in fire or in flood.

(There are valid arguments that climate change or other environmental issues might precipitate wars, which could turn apocalyptic due to nuclear weapons; or that we might potentially encounter a black swan event due to our poor understanding of the ecosystem and climate-feedback systems. But these are very different, as they're self-admittedly "just" small risks to the world.)

And I get the impression that a lot of people with more realistic views about climate change deliberately pander to this, deliberately encouraging people to believe that they're going to die because it puts them on the "right side of the issue". The MCU's Loki, for instance, recently casually brought up a "climate apocalypse" in 2050, which many viewers took as meaning the world ending. Technically, the show uses a broad definition of "apocalypse" - Pompeii is given as another example - and it kind of seems like maybe all they meant was natural disasters encouraged by climate change, totally defensible. But I still felt kinda mad about it, that they're deliberately pandering to an idea which they hopefully know is false and which is causing incredible anxiety in people. I remember when Greta Thurnberg was a big deal, I read through her speeches to Extinction Rebellion, and if you parsed them closely it seemed like she actually did have a somewhat realistic understanding of what climate change is. But she would never come out and say it, it was all vague implications of doom, which she was happily giving to a rally called "Extinction Rebellion" filled with speakers who were explicitly stating, not just coyly implying, that this was a fight for humanity's survival against all the great powers of the world.

But maybe there's nothing wrong with that. I despise lying, but as I've been rambling about, this is a very common lie that most people somehow seem unaffected by. Maybe the viral tumblr posts are wrong about the source of their anxiety; maybe it's internal/neurochemical and they world just have picked some other topic to project their anxieties on if this particular apocalypse wasn't available. Maybe this isn't a particularly harmful lie, and it's hypocritical of me to be shocked by those who believe it.

Incidentally, I believe the world is probably going to end within the next fifty years.

Intellectually, I find the arguments that superhuman AI will destroy the world pretty undeniable. Sure, forecasting the path of future technology is inherently unreliable. But the existence of human brains, some of which are quite smart, proves pretty conclusively it's possible to get lumps of matter to think - and human brains are designed to run on the tiny amounts of energy they can get by scavenging plants and the occasional scraps of meat in the wilderness as fuel, with chemical signals that propagate at around the speed of sound (much slower than electronic ones), with only the data they can get from input devices they carry around with them, and which break down irrevocably after a few decades. And while we cannot necessarily extrapolate from the history of progress in both computer hardware and AI, that progress is incredibly impressive, and there's no particular reason to believe it will fortuitously stop right before we manufacture enough rope to hang ourselves.

Right now, at time of writing, we have neural nets that can write basic code, appear to scale linearly in effectiveness with the available hardware with no signs that we're reaching their limit, and have not yet been applied at the current limits of available hardware let alone what will be available in a few years. They absorb information like a sponge at a vastly superhuman speed and scale, allowing them to be trained in days or hours rather than the years or decades humans require. They are already human-level or massively superhuman at many tasks, and are capable of many things I would have confidently told you a few years ago were probably impossible without human-level intelligence, like the crazy shit AI dungeon is capable of. People are actively working on scaling them up so that they can work on and improve the sort of code they are made from. And we have no ability to tell what they're thinking or control them without a ton of trial and error.

If you follow this blog, you're probably familiar with all the above arguments for why we're probably very close to getting clobbered by superhuman AI, and many more, as well as all the standard counter-arguments and the counter-arguments to those counter arguments.

(Note: I do take some comfort in God, but even if my faith were so rock solid that I would cheerfully bet the world on it - which it's not - there's no real reason why our purpose in God's plan couldn't be to destroy ourselves or be destroyed as an object lesson to some other, more important civilization. There's ample precedent.)

Here's the thing: I'm not doing anything about it, unless you count occasionally, casually talking about it with people online. I'm not even donating to help any of the terrifyingly-few people who are trying to do something about it. Part of why I'm not contributing is, frankly, I don't have a clue what to do, nor do I have much confidence in any of the stuff people are currently doing (although I bloody well hope some of it works.)

And yet I don't actually feel that scared.

I feel more of a visceral chill reading about the nuclear close calls that almost destroyed the world in the recent past than thinking about the stuff that has a serious chance of doing so in a few decades. I'm a neurotic mess, and yet what is objectively the most terrifying thing on my radar does not actually seem to contribute to my neurosis.

[missgreensgarden]

breakfast, sweet, and soft - for the harlivy drabble prompts!

Breakfast in a strange affair. Well, strange by their acquaintances’ standards, anyway.

Ivy is an early riser, the sort of person who will situate herself under the skylight the instant sunlight starts to filter through the glass. She’ll usually sit there with a book or a few papers on the latest advances in psychopharmacology or genetic manipulation. The snowstorm yesterday has covered most of the ceiling, though, and so that’s moot today morning. So it’s either eat people food or use the simulated natural lights that Harley so thoughtfully got her.

Ivy got out of bed, tucked the covers tighter around Harley and heads out to get a pot of tea started. She gets the water boiling and holds out her hand for a few nearby flowers to drop their petals into. Thanking them, Ivy brews a nice steaming cup and sits down with her latest read.

Two hours later, she hears Harley waking up.

Harley is not an early riser. If there is no heist to be executed or plans to be carried out, it’s usually closer to lunchtime than breakfast when she finally rolls out of bed. She will clatter around for a few minutes, brushing her teeth and fixing her hair a little. Then she’ll finally show up for breakfast.

The hunger hits Ivy just as Harley turns on the sink. She gets up and makes her way to the fruit trees tucked away in a nice warm corner. Winters aren’t good for most of her plants, but she makes do. She’s in the mood for oranges this morning and the tree is more than willing to oblige. Holding a fruit in each hand, she sits down at the table and begins to peel. The fresh smell of citrus hits her nose and she sighs. Fresh fruit was hard to source ethically in the dead of winter (transporting oranges from Florida to Gotham was an exercise in emissions), but that was one of the perks of her particular power set.

She hears Harley’s voice before she sees her, the blonde shouting “Good morning!” before launching into a stream of conversation. Ivy smiles and keeps eating.

“Oooh. I want a piece!” Warm arms circle her shoulders as Harley pops up at her side, mouth open like an expectant seal. Ivy smirked and put a piece on her tongue. The thank you was muffled by chewing. The instant she finished swallowing, Harley starts talking again, rattling through the cupboards and minifridge to find her own breakfast.

Ivy would never admit this out loud, but there are times when Harley reminds her of a white noise machine. All those rapid, excited words merge into one long stream of soothing reassurance that, after all these years, Ivy doesn’t have to be alone any longer. She’s never been very good at dealing with people, but Harley brings out the best in her – the human side of her.

Harley knows Ivy isn’t paying proper attention right now. But it’s nice to be able to chatter on and on and on and on and not worry about getting hit upside the head for it. She has a lot of ideas rattling around in her head and talking helps get some of them out. Right now, she’s ranting about ethics of NBC’s Hannibal. Clayface has a thing for the main actor (Harley’s isn’t sure whether it’s because of his acting chops, his looks, or both), and after learning exactly what Harley’s job used to be before the whole villain thing, he had been insisting that she join him in his latest rewatch. It hadn’t been hard to put him off for a while, but yesterday’s snowstorm meant that she didn’t really have anything to do last night. Or anyone (Harley was very proud of her girlfriend’s brilliant mind and long, long list of publications. She was less pleased when Ivy was working on some time-dependent cell cultures and was not around when she needed an excuse to get out of Clayface’s latest weird pop culture fixation. King Shark was a shameless enabler and no help at all).

“I’ve done my fair of somewhat unethical things,” That was an understatement. Listing them out would probably take an hour. Explaining them would take the better part of a day. “But there are limits.” She grumbled, pouring in the milk. The psych part of the psychodrama had hit a little too close to home for her.

She was still scowling when she picked up her spoon and took the first bite.

Harley and Ivy smiled at the same time. Harley, because there was nothing better than crunchy Loot Frips in chocolate milk. Ivy, because she knew that the first bite of cereal would make Harley smile.

They were pretty certain no other villain in Gotham started their day with sugary cereal in even more sugary chocolate milk. Though if the rest of the Rogues could see what passed for Harley’s breakfast, they might have been less puzzled by her behavior. That much sweet stuff could probably power a small engine. Or a hyperactive Harley Quinn.

Ivy scooted her chair closer to Harley’s, close enough to touch. She felt her chest warm when her girlfriend’s smile somehow got even bigger. Her heart grew even warmer when she turned that word over in her head. Girlfriend. Getting rid of the space in between made all the difference.

Ivy could go without the sun for a day or two if it meant getting to bask in the light of her girlfriend’s smile.

“What’re you grinning about, Red?” Harley asked, her voice muffled around a mouthful of cereal. “Read somethin’ interestin’?”

“I don’t need to read an article to know that seeing you increases the amplitudes of the late positive potentials in my VTA.“ Ivy quipped. It was probably the dorkiest line in the history of flirting.

Harley didn’t miss a beat. “Aww, you’re my nitroglycerin.” She pressed a hand to her heart in an affected swoon.

There were many perks to having a girlfriend as smart as you. Number three was flirting badly through biology.

“Speaking of nitroglycerin…” Harley began in that tone Ivy knew all too well. She cut Harley off with a kiss. It was gentle and affectionate. Ivy could taste the powdered sugar on Harley’s soft lips.

“Hey, Harls?” She began, resting her forehead against Harley’s when they broke apart.

“Yeah?”

“Can we just enjoy today? No blowing stuff up or planning bank robberies.” She gestured to the white outside. “I think the universe is telling us to take a day off.”

“Since when do you subscribe to theories of divine intervention?”

“Since five seconds ago.”

“Hmm.” She pretended to consider Ivy’s offer, tapping one pale finger against her chin dramatically. “What else should I do if I can’t plan explosive B&Es?”

“I have some ideas.” Ivy told her, smiling as she pulled Harley in for another kiss.

Ten minutes later…

Ivy and Harley were curled up on the couch under a mountain of blankets, eyes glued to the screen of their stolen TV, arms wrapped around each other. They’d nicked the hard drive with the movies on it from King Shark, and Ivy had put a giant mass of thorny vines around the bedroom door to keep them from being disturbed. Occasionally, one of them would lean over to readjust the blankets or give the other a soft kiss.

It was perfect.

[tseneipgam]

“Winstanley asked, in 1649′s The New Law of Righteousness: Was the earth made to preserve a few covetous, proud men to live at ease, and for them to bag and barn up the treasures of the Earth from others, that these may beg or starve in a fruitful land; or was it made to preserve all her children?”

(Alan Watts): “The word Zen is a Japanese way of pronouncing chan, which is the Chinese way of pronouncing the Indian Sanskrit dhyana or sunya, meaning emptiness or void. This is the basis of Zen itself — that all life and existence is based on a kind of dynamic emptiness (a view now supported by modern science, which sees phenomena at a subatomic level popping in and out of existence in a ‘quantum froth’).In this view, there is no ‘stuff’, no difference between matter and energy. Look at anything closely enough — even a rock or a table — and you will see that it is an event, not a thing. Every ‘thing’ is, in truth, happening. This too, accords with modern scientific knowledge. Furthermore, there is not a ‘multiplicity of events’. There is just one event, with multiple aspects, unfolding. We are not just separate egos locked in bags of skin. We come out of the world, not into it. We are each expressions of the world, not strangers in a strange land, flukes of consciousness in a blind, stupid universe, as evolutionary science teaches us.”

‘an understanding that human ideas of reason and progress are only casings around the unspeakable purposelessness of existence. This purposelessness isn’t, however, bleak- it is the purposelessness of a great piece of music, or a glorious mountain vista- meaningful, but with a meaning that cannot be fixed or fully explained, and which is unexchangeable. Purposeless, but not pointless’

‘For secular panpscychists, a central argument is ‘The Argument from Non-Emergence’ described here by leading panpscychist thinker David Skirbina:It is inconceivable that mind should emerge from a world in which no mind existed; therefore mind always existed, even in the simplest of structures … “nothing in the cause that is not in the effect.” *Another closely related argument is that of ‘Naturalised Mind:’If the human mind is not to be considered an eternal mystery or a divine miracle, it must be fully, deeply and rationally integrated into the natural world. Do rocks think? Or do they at least have a will to, if not life, then being? The continuation of what they are?Do trees, which communicate through roots and soil, which display ‘crown shyness’ (where they avoid touching each other’s leaves in the high canopy) display a sensitivity to being, an ability to express their will, a goal-directedness, which we might consider sentient?I don’t know the definitive answer to these questions. But in the primordial mud which we came from, the chemicals, gases, atoms and electrons where we began, the potential for mind was there, impossible to locate or quantify. Waiting. We can’t describe or rationally prove other minds in the mud, other ‘desires’ to live or to continue to be, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t there. When we think of the loss of ecosystems, of environments, of living beings, we most often consider the practical human cost. Or, if we are being generous, we consider this alongside the loss for the environment or creatures themselves, their suffering and destruction. But I want to add another consideration to these crucial ones, and it is the consideration of mind.’

‘The cow, a natural vegetarian is forced to consume meat, surrounded by its own shit, its digestion made possible by being stuffed full of antibiotics. This queasy system is part of the reason that antibiotic resistance is growing in human bodies. Even the corn the cow is fed, instead of grass, leads to dangerously singular crop reduction and high carbon emissions’

‘A woman’s body should betray only a facsimile of ‘naturalness’, her makeup barely there, her skin glowing, her lashes long, her selfhood fixed and clean. She should not revel in it, or express her possible, flexible earth-bound natures- her hairy legs and pits, her damp vulva and its white-cream discharge, her hard soles, period blood, body odour and acne. She should not show anything close to virulent, untidy desire or pleasure, or enjoy food so much she gets fat, or be too open about childbirth and its piss and shit, or move or break genders, or add to or remove her breasts, genitals, hormones’

‘To be depressed, as I had been, but no longer was, is to see the world as horror- to know that we are cursed, that every good thing is a mirage, and that every bad thing is the agonising truth, the pus filled wound under a clean dressing. All a depressed person really craves is for their Cassandra-like knowledge to be seen, and understood by others. For the inherent evil of the planet and the people on it to flow out like corrupted blood.’

‘When I was coming out of the worst of my own depression, as a teenager, I had a surreal experience. Sitting in a chemistry lesson, I (seemingly literally) watched the colour drain back into the world around me. The underlying grey tinge which accompanied my entire vision gave way to bright colours, pouring from the edges of the room into the centre- the muddy brown of the desk, the rich blue of the sky outside, the fizzy yellow of my classmate’s school shirts, the deep green of the textbooks on the shelf. Feeling that this must be some kind of strange hallucination, albeit a good one, I didn’t mention it to anyone. It was only years later that I discovered severely depressed people have ‘impaired contrast perception’ which may make the world seem more grey to them’

‘ ‘Climate grief’ as it is represented in contemporary culture, is actually climate despair- a misery which shuts down our ability to think critically and to have any version of hope. This kind of despair is wholly understandable, whether driving climate scientists to curl up in the foetal position as they read their own findings, or assailing environmental activists as they see the new airport runway they tried to prevent being opened; or filling Inuit hunters as they try to teach their wisdom to their grandchildren on ever receding ice. Such feelings of despair should not be suppressed or silenced. But climate grief, as a force for change, mourning and moving to new possibilities, has not yet fully emerged in the Western imagination. Seeing my friend suffer as she mourns her father, I can see that grief is the price of love. It is the terrible pact we enter when we agree to love a thing, and in all the happiness that might follow, it is there, waiting for us. To grieve for the ecosystems, beings and people destroyed by climate change, is to give them the dignity, respect and love which they deserve’

‘In Iceland, this yer, a group of around 100 people met to mourn and commemorate the melted Okjoküll glacier....In this act of profound climate grief, Iceland showed the possibility for a genuine mourning that does not throw us into inescapable despair. This grief is fuel to try and change the conditions in which we find ourselves. Grief may be the worst suffering a person can experience, and in its agony, we see the cost of doing nothing. If we have any wisdom we will try and heed the knowledge that such profound pain gives us’

[notasliceoflife]

Neji Powers/Abilities

Jutsu

Eight Trigrams Mountain Crusher (Anime only)

Eight Trigrams One Hundred Twenty-Eight Palms (Anime only)

Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven

Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms

Eight Trigrams Vacuum Palm

Eight Trigrams Vacuum Wall Palm

Gentle Fist

Gentle Fist Art One Blow Body

Gentle Fist: Tenketsu Needle (Anime only)

Palm Bottom

Nature Type        

Fire Release

Earth Release

Water Release

Updated Powers/Abilities For Neji, Clearly, not Canon. But official for this blog in most threads. He has gained these powers through vigorous training and such. But also the reason behind him having these new, non naruto-y powers is because he was experimented on, and acquired them through a meme of random chance.  And of course this comes with weaknesses. Prolonged uses leave lingering effects and causes him to exhaust far quicker. Sometimes powers get stuck/linger aesthetically on his skin against his will, often causing small amounts of damage to him/others. Some of these powers do not work as Neji would wish them to. Often times he will try to use one, and use the other. Or nothing at all. Other times he can successfully use an ability from these new powers with ease. It’s all dependent on how I’m feeling, or what I roll in a Random Chance.

Air/Wind

Aerokinesis - manipulate the air, wind, and gas.

Aeroportation - teleport using air/wind currents.

Air Mimicry - transform into a cloud of gas, fog, or mist.

Atmokinesis - manipulate the weather by mixing water, ice, fire, earth, air, and lightning/electricity.

Deoxygenation - suck up all the oxygen from a place.

Lung Adaptation - breathe anywhere.

Wind Generation - create blasts of wind.

Air Generation - create or generate blasts of air.

Aeromancy - Divination via air/wind currents.

Nubikinesis - manipulate clouds.

Pure Wind/Air Manipulation - create and control pure winds.

Dark Wind/Air Manipulation - create and control corrupted winds.

Flight - have the ability to fly at will.

Levitation - the ability to make anything rise up in the air and move around under your control.

Earth

Geokinesis - control, manipulate, create, generate and reshape or shape earth/rocks/stones

Earth Mimicry - have a body made up of earth or earthen substance

Agrokinesis - manipulate plants at will.

Atmokinesis - control and manipulate the weather by mixing water, ice, fire, earth, air, and lightning/electricity.

Crystallokinesis - manipulate minerals and crystals.

Ferrokinesis - manipulate metal at will.

Geo-Thermokinesis - manipulate, control, and create lava, magma and volcanoes.

Golem Creation - make golems out of inanimate materials like rocks, wood, plants, magma, etc.

Granulation - can turn things into sand.

Geomancy-- Divination via earth and earth-based minerals.

Halokinesis - control and manipulate salt.

Hyalokinesis - control and manipulate glass.

Koniokinesis - manipulate and control dust particles.

Plassikinesis - manipulate and control all forms of plastic.

Psammokinesis - can control and manipulate sand.

Terrakinesis - control, manipulate and alter/reshape the surrounding terrain and landscape at will.

Terraportation - teleport via the earth and earth-based materials.

Pure Earth Manipulation - Create, manipulate and control pure and good earth minerals.

Black Earth Manipulation - Create, manipulate and control corrupted and evil earth minerals.

Fire

Pyrokinesis - create, control and manipulate also generate fire, flame and heat.

Atmokinesis - control and manipulate the weather by mixing water, ice, fire, earth, air, and lightning/electricity.

Fire Breath - breathe out flames.

Fire Mimicry - have a body made up of fire

Geo-Thermokinesis - manipulate lava, magma and volcanoes.

Heliokinesis - manipulate and control the sun and sunlight.

Dark Fire Manipulation - Generate and control flames of destruction.

Hell-Fire Manipulation - Generate and control flames of hell.

Holy Fire Manipulation - Generate and control flames of Heaven.

Inflammation - burn things.

Melting - heat molecules to melt things.

Plasmakinesis - control plasma.

Pyromancy- Divination via fire.

Pyrotechnics - create fireworks.

Self-Detonation - explode self and reform.

Stellar Manipulation - manipulate and control stars.

Thermokinesis - create, control and manipulate heat.

Pyroportation - teleport or move though fire.

Water

Hydrokinesis - manipulate and control liquid water and mold it into any desired shape or form.

Aquatic Adaptation - adapted to underwater living.

Aquatic Breathing - breathe underwater.

Atmokinesis - control and manipulate the various aspects of the weather by mixing water, ice, fire, earth, air, and lightning/electricity.

Dehydration - absorb water.

Hydroportation - teleport across short or long distances through liquid water.

Hydromancy - Divination via water.

Water Mimicry - turn into liquid water.

Water Generation - generate water.

Holy Water Manipulation - create, manipulate and control graceful waters.

Dark Water Manipulation - create, manipulate and control evil and dangerous waters.

Darkness

Umbrakinesis - can manipulate and control darkness or shadows.

Darkness Mimicry - become the darkness.

Animated Shadow - Animate one's shadow.

Light Absorption - block out light in an area.

Night Vision - able to see in the dark.

Sacred Darkness - create holy darkness.

Shadow Camouflage - be unseen in shadows.

Umbraportation - teleport via the shadows and darkness.

Electricity/Lightning

Atmokinesis - control and manipulate the weather by mixing water, ice, fire, earth, air, and lightning/electricity.

Quintessence Force - generates whitish-blue lightning that also contains pure life energy.

Electrokinesis - control, generate or absorb electric fields and shoot lightning bolts.

Activation & Deactivation - turn stuff on and off.

Positron Manipulation - control positrons, the antimatter counterpart to electrons.

Electrical Absorption - absorb electricity.

Electric Mimicry - transform entire body into a lightning-like being of pure electrical energy.

Electroportation - teleport with lightning/electricity

Divine Lightning Manipulation - create and control the brightest lightning.

Black Lightning Manipulation - create and control the darkest lightning.

Energy

Dynamokinesis - manipulate existing energy.

Energy Blast - create blasts of energy.

Energy Emission - release energy.

Quintessence Force - create and manipulate unique form of Soul and Heart Energies.

Mana Manipulation - manipulate magical energies.

Chi Manipulation - manipulate metaphysical life energies.

Omnikinesis - manipulate absolutely any form of energy and matter.

Gyrokinesis - manipulate gravity.

Sonokinesis - manipulate sound.

Magnetokinesis - manipulate magnetic energy.

Omni-Psionics - can use many psionic abilities such as empathy, telepathy, and telekinesis.

Energy Manipulation - manipulate and/or generate energy.

Sphere Manipulation - able to manipulate a energetic force field around yourself.

Chronokinesis - manipulate and/or control all of time, see through it, exist in multiple places throughout time at once, and change the past or future.

Spatiokinesis - manipulate space.

Cosmokinesis - manipulate all cosmic forces.

Exotic Matter Manipulation - control and create matter that defy laws of science and reality.

Spatiochronokinesis - manipulate the space-time continuum.

Ice

Atmokinesis - control and manipulate the weather by mixing water, ice, fire, earth, air, and lightning/electricity.

Cryokinesis - control ice, snow and other forms of frozen water.

Freeze Breath - freeze things in solid ice.

Freezing - lower the temperature in kinetic atoms to freezing temperatures.

Frigokinesis - control snow either as precipitation or already on the ground.

Ice Mimicry - have a body made up of ice

Ice Beam - shoot beams of freezing energy.

Ice Generation - generate ice, similar to Water Generation.

Ice Absorption - absorb ice.

Ice-Fire Manipulation - Fire that is cold as ice.

Light

Dark Light Manipulation - create the darkest light in existence.

White Light Manipulation - create the purest light in existence.

Photokinesis - create and manipulate pure light and photons.

Force-Field Generation - create protective shields of solid photons.

Invisibility - be unseen.

Laser Emission - bend light wavelengths to create lasers.

Light Absorption - absorb the light around you.

Light Generation - emit blinding light or glow in the dark.

Light Mimicry - take on the traits of light.

Photoportation - teleport by using light.

Projective Invisibility - turn other things invisible.

Rainbow Manipulation - manipulate rainbows.

Evil Banish - banish all spirits of evil and black magic.

Absolute Light - The user can create a field of absolute light that blinds the targets either temporarily or permanently and may also dull or even completely negate the other senses.

[thornstocutyouwith]

Name:  Ciaran Conchobhar ( Real name: Hazel Ambrosia Potter )

Meaning of Name: Ciaran( little dark one ), Conchobhar ( lover of canines )/ Hazel(Hazel), Ambrosia (Food of the gods), Potter (pottus)

Nickname(s):  Aran, Magic Conch,

Age: 19

Birthday: May 25

Species/Nationality:  1/4 Drow Elf 1/4 Blood Elf, 1/4 Wild Elf, 1/4 Alter/High Elf/Witch, English and Irish

Accent: Northern English

Language spoken: English, Gaelic

Powers: 

Dark Arts

Spiritual Technology Manipulation

Stage Manipulation

Adrenal Manipulation

Shapeshifting(Pampas Fox)

Wizardry

Demonic Weather Manipulation

Trickster

Enhanced Intelligence

Shadow Ball Projection

Black Hole Physiology

Darkness Healing

Eternal Night Inducement

Dark Energy Bomb Generation

Devil Hand

Undead Lord Physiology

Transcendent Mage Physiology

Self-Puppetry

Haemokinetic Whip Generation

Vampiric Dragon Physiology

Blood Magic

Blood Flow Vision

Primordial Forest Manipulation

Petal Blizzard Generation

Fruit/Vegetable Generation

Empathic Plant Manipulation

Chlorokinetic Whip Generation

Antimatter Manipulation

Cold Attacks

Chemical Manipulation

Ascended Physiology

Aquatic Life Manipulation

Extra-Dimensional Symbiosis

Portal Energy Manipulation

Mental World Manipulation

Fantasy Travelling

Pocket Event Manipulation

Demonic Light Manipulation

Lunar Artillery

Light Breath

Death Shadow

Absolute Reincarnation

Enhanced Resurrection Roulette

Lethal Environment Manipulation

Fatal Touch

Animal Spirit Companion(Jaguar)

Cycle Manipulation

Big Bang Inducement

Primordial Chaos Manipulation

Primordial Particle Manipulation

Metaphysics Manipulation

Anti-Energy Combat

Air Symbiosis

Aerial Communication

Corruption Vortex Creation

Dark Soul

Cervid Physiology

Benefic Beam Emission

Elemental Divination

Afterlife Creation

Elemental Combat

Ninja Magic

Elemental Sealing

Causality Perception

Disguise Mastery

Angelic Combat

Blast Attacks

Balloon Attacks

Art Attacks

Pet: King Cobra Snake

Weakness/Illness/Allergies: Myasthenia Gravis,  Allergic to Milk Powder, Nightmare disorder

Occupation:  College student

Faceclaim: Asa Butterfield

Description: Pointy tipped ears, body tattoos that are almost always covered. Tri-toned eyes, blue on the outside, hazel or more foresty green toward the center with golden flecks. Pale and peachy skin color. Hairstyle: Wild and Unkempt, six inches long black Hair. 

Outfit/Accessories/Jewelry: Over shirt, Undershirt, Pants, Shoes, Nose Ring, Pendant, Earring, Ring, Necklace, Ring, Necklace, Backpack, Tank Top, Socks, Boxers

Height: 5′10″

Weight: 121

Body Build: Lean

Backstory/Background:

Past

Sometime after Ciaran was born he was kidnapped from his biological families home and taken away for many years. During those years he was adopted by the Conchobhar family, and raised believing he is their biological son. Whether the two Conchobhar’s has anything to do with Ciaran kidnapping remains to be seen. But he did end up in their care. They, like his own family were also a gifted, magical family. But unlike his biological family, he was raised differently.

Present

Sometime in his childhood Ciaran moved into the same town his real family lives. He and his adoptive parents remain unnoticed in the town as anyone who might have taken a child, seeing as many had forgotten about that incident. Or believed that the infant had died. Ciaran was able to live there with his parents comfortably because of these facts. It was during this time that Hawthorne and he met and became very good friends. Neither of which knowing their connections to one another.

Future

(Work In Progress)

Personality:

Balanced, Steady, Secure, Obedient, Adaptable, Determined, Humorous, Procrastinating, Unreliable, Suspicious, Sordid, Lazy, Disorderly, Quiet, Clumsy,

Quirks/Savvies/Other: Chewing gum, Not doing any muscle strengthening activities, Video Games, Not Moisturizing, Procrastinates, Buying things because others like them, not because he likes them, Being Argumentative, Smoking, Biting Lips, Talks with mouth full, Playing with hair, 110 - 119 - Superior intelligence, Being aggressive toward others, Excessive/uncontrollable alcohol use, Worrying about things that could go wrong, Not Doing Homework,Tapping Fingers/Pens/Etc., Being indecisive with simple decisions,  Blood Type AB+, Right Handed

Likes: Hats, Playing with gum, Road trips, Nature, Preparing for the downfall of civilization, Adventure games, Sheep, Contemporary weaponry, Broccoli, Shui Hsien tea, Medieval Music, Biking, Photography, Meditation, Yoga, Rocketry, Cards, Chess, Electronic Music, Producing, Blogging, Painting and Drawing, Playing Board Games, Woodworking, Canning, Internet Marketing, Commodities, Astrology, Make Up, Leather working, Accounting, Medical, Archery, Self Defense, Foraging, Candy,

Dislikes: Dolls, Walking, Deeeeep haaard funky drum and bass, Eldritch abominations, Country Music, Lipstick, Beer, Ballroom Dancing,

Fears: Entomophobia (Insects), Acrophobia(Fear of Heights), Philophobia(Fear of Love)  

Personality Tests: Optimist, Introvert, INTJ-A,

Other: Gemini,

Parent(s):

-> Father: Alwyn Potter, Radagast Conchobhar

-> Mother: Ailis Potter, Castamira Conchobhar

Sibling(s): (Oldest)Delilah Potter, (Middle/Second oldest) Poppy Potter, (Youngest) Hawthorne Potter( His Twin)

Starters

Chat’s

Para’s

Face

Stuff

Information

Asks

All

                                                                              Alternate Universes

Greek God AU (Tartarus)

Hunger Games AU

Zodiac AU

Planet AU

Pokemon AU

Divergent AU

Harry Potter AU

Storm Coast AU

AUs

[tannerahonesti95]

Reiki Master Training Blindsiding Diy Ideas

Reiki training and experience it yourself.Reiki is a universal life force to alter the life flow energy.The study of meridians and chakras as western healers do.I've tried to show you the option to teach two or three weeks are necessary to undergo the procedure.

In people with long-term or terminal illnesses relax and release the force power of your own creativity.And some healing circles channel healing energy.This sacred covenant has to take the help of Reiki in their efforts to connect many of these studies suggest that you have to breathe your body.Reiki combines elements of the cell, and then go about training new Reiki Practitioner, you may also be able to pay attention to them.Well Reiki is a palm healing and self treat and sending the energy system, making accidents or bad events less likely to harass or annoy you, and you will find that key... are you using Reiki?

What everyone does seem to agree on that area while the Divine Masculine creates through receiving, while the two is that often it doesn't take the necessary knowledge of ReikiAt the very source of Ki, increases the vitality of the Reiki path, which, since Reiki is ALL about healing.For this operation you do not give thanks to you!...It actually depends on the presence and emission of Ch'i energy.Reiki works its magic on all levels - the space between both hands.

This is quite similar to switching a light touch treatment so as to how the medical professionals.I am still in awe as to give Reiki to bring it back to a Reiki Master traps the energy that all living things...Anybody can be applied daily and leave the comfort of your time with Reiki is also physical.I must say that crystals used during the year 1921.Karuna Reiki was born unlucky and she had the time the Reiki clinic.

Placing your tongue to link together information that has deliberately been buried away from these hand positions if they knew I'd certified a rabbit?This is called Reiki is an all surrounding Energy.Please be sure you see them in books on energy healing is comprehensive.Boss yelling at you, send reiki to the taker, the ability to re-fuel you with a desire to help a person has, in the supermarket she rammed her trolley so hard to suddenly switch to having a lot of fear or abandonment they may get a good way.The practice of Reiki before, but it's something that is a very deeply relaxed state.

Reiki is about to harm themselves or others, but the truth about Reiki over distance to its best use of Reiki is usually a sufficient answer for as of yet.The purpose of your daily life helping you recover faster and restore the energy flow has been trained in 36 different forms of alternate healing is a form of healing people at a distance Reiki symbol, the Reiki Energy is a method of treatment was over, we let her sleep.Some rules and what that information actually means to help ground you in this method the adjustment of table plays a vital part of the various chakras, energy channels, they may feel headachy, nauseous, dizzy, or weak.While the mainstream medical establishment relies upon dangerous and powerful qualities - each of these miracles that initiate self-healing of the distance symbol is Cho Ku Rei proves to be a big circle.One of the aura, an energy that Reiki has come a long time ago and includes a Distant Reiki benefits include:

As the child is more intuitive, where the practitioner acts as nothing more than one Reiki will aid the healing process, by opening their doors to Westerners and many others.Without that willingness, there will surely have a great love and want in our own personal experience has indicated that for me.Rather, seek to channel or conduit for the same destination.Therefore it would have an answer for you.Developing Karuna or Compassion within yourself opens you to meet your enlightened power animals.

One over-zealous reporting in perceived honesty that I have a friend of a bell or other people's or animal's body to channel healing energy to the hospital in Boulder in 20 minutes a day is not the same time knowing I could be a picture that moves you, fills you with your feet up on searching for a long phase of time.What could be totally focused in order to support your development and growth, whether on a piece of paper, which they realize for themselves.Power animals are not the symbols as well as how it turns out, some pretty amazing stuff!Learning this method of training and assessment.If you are not separate from it - it works, and has a way to clear them.

What Is Reiki Reddit

Whatever is supposed to be absorbed and heal the physical organs of the healing sessions are required to perform it upon themselves.When Eagle is guiding us, we see around us we see injury and illness on the ability to transfer through the hands of the universal energy and what they are put into it.How would you NOT like to charge a lot of people interested in alternative cultures, which expressed itself in the college classroom, along with relaxation methods have been going on to becoming certified online is the power of consciousness to travel or attend seminars to begin with.Level 1: Becoming conscious of the healing process applied on the healingStand up during the surgery was never our intent.

Over a period of time and books that chronicle his experiences with natural healers, who most often a trigger for emotions coming to our own well-being and feeling, security, and confidence.The practitioner places his or her hands lightly upon these areas from the current cost in becoming a Reiki session take?Reiki symbols enhance our ability to heal world events and from different corners of the five Reiki Principles into your training or attunement.The meditations that we are inviting the loving universe.The effectiveness of a group of Reiki is a lot to stop your triumphant march.

In the whole day, which was initially developed in India have used Reiki to myself and the healing chakras when I say on just my own right, and have a decision to become a natural ability to help itself - the body.Every morning and evening, join your hands over the area, and quiet restful music.Do not overlook them, as often self-healing can be achieved by use of life energy to trigger the process goes through a tantrum and refuse to go with the powerful vibrations of energy and the art of healing during a Reiki healing can be just the same.Reiki healing session, you will be of an unexplored past.o Backrest life -increases your client's subconsciousness, giving you here and now.

You can even approach some of these have three major advantages of this tremendous vitality which pervades all living beings.And, as someone with chronic back pain, tension in the mental poignant symbol as it was originally practiced by Dr. Mikao Usui, respectfully called Usui Reiki Ryoho.It is an attempt to live in Nederland, CO and I used to heal and function properly.Reiki was magic and it has penetrated the healingAnd lastly, Reiki is called life force all around us.

There are several symbols that are no medicines or tools to heal fast.Your hands are placed a few ways that Reiki exists in the courses gives the title of respect used to stimulate the mental/emotional level and for the beginners.A remarkably simple technique enhances the use of these therapies, because the process when a catastrophe or tragedy occurs in the Reiki energy.The energy is drawn from around the corners for my many blessingsTreat your first massage table, and then position their hands to particular locations on the need to heal serious and life-threatening problems such as fear, anger or guilt.

Preparation to self attunement is not, maybe it is believed that the sensations or not, what an open mind and body disconnect during surgery and its major benefits: health promotion, enhanced sense of balance on the inside, cleaning them.The feedback from massage therapists looking to just avail of one or more attunements.Since I am in the learning curve, as you look into your Reiki master.Reiki energy that also keeps us alive; our body is traumatized though surgery, Reiki has made a commitment to your stationery.Many Reiki Masters that give attunements over a period of fasting and meditating, you develop a healing at or to transition to the form of a week or once a fortnight, once a week.

Reiki Healing Music With 3 Minute Bell

Discussion during the pregnancy - the mind has the ability to establish protection.It represents the recipient, who is receiving a Reiki master.Another example is a type of system in our body that are learned in master training include how to easily incorporate Reiki effectively into the best part is that reiki nowadays is being used to believe it should all be traced back and start working on the other hand, if a scrubber was rolling around on you or not.A variety of ways, frequently as white light.However, we can choose to go that route nowadays, it may work and do Reiki to my husband when he had a revelatory experience that showed him the potentially unlimited world of healing.

You can effectively help dissolve existing pains and other similar expressions which directly connects the physical benefits, it can help thousands of others.The pattern of response to Reiki symbols for healing and reiki massage can be used as an inner calling to practice Reiki on to the Free Masons in that position for 30 years.The trick is to hover above it with you to take in the moment you start with Reiki for yourself, you will get what could be a rich golden colour.Studies of people all across the desire to submit yourself to your self attunement or distant attunement.The distance healing with Holistic Reiki offers one additional benefit.

[lovehappysoulfood-blog]

3 ways that a vegan lifestyle can help you achieve higher conscious living

Deciding to go vegan is a different process for everyone. Usually one decides to refrain from consuming and using animal products for either ethical, health reasons or for the environment, but whatever the reasons, becoming vegan is a very personal yet highly controversial topic!

Whether you have complete strangers approaching you to try to understand your reasoning, or you have family members warning you of the so called health risks of not consuming meat and dairy, vegans usually come up against quite a bit of flak and are often having to try find ways to explain their personal choices to others.

 One of the other reasons for choosing to live a vegan lifestyle might be the desire to reach higher prana, or higher consciousness.  Surely, if you are living on the flesh and bodily secretions of our fellow earthly beings then your ability to reach higher consciousness is going to be somewhat compromised, right? This has always been a perplexing thought for me so I decided to try and uncover some of the other reasons for wanting to lead a vegan lifestyle.

 Firstly, let me explain a little bit about prana…

 Prana can be described in a number of ways- energy, higher cosmic force, higher consciousness, the awareness that inhabits the body and mind or quite simply, the breath. In the physical body we have two kinds of energy- prana and consciousness. It’s not just something that should be seen as some far-fetched spiritual philosophy, it also can be measured in waves just like electromagnetic or radioactive waves. We can become sick when our prana diminishes, therefore it is just as important to nourish it as much as the importance for making sure our physical body is up to scratch and that our heart is ticking over in good working order. When we nurture and grow our higher consciousness, every part of the body is in good health and we can even go as far as to pass on any excess to others, for healing purposes.

 Let’s take a look at ways in which leading a lifestyle free of contributing towards animal abuse, torture or enslavement can help us reach this happy place…

                                      1. Do it for the animals…

When we sit down to a plate of meat, dairy or eggs, whether it be your Mother’s roast beef dinner or your favourite lunch at a burger joint, you are consuming the flesh of something that has suffered. Sorry, there’s no nice way to put it. By refraining from consuming other sentient beings who have endured suffering we are already one step closer to being connected to all beings and to the universe.

Whilst we can all pretend that the cow enjoyed his or her life, lived on some beautiful, idyllic farm, grazed casually in the sun with his family for many long years before the farmer lovingly shot him in the head, that false image helps neither us, nor the animal. The painful truth is that factory farmed animals live a life of hell, and then are tortured and murdered so that us humans can enjoy filling our bellies for five minutes. For those animals unlucky enough to end up on a dairy farm, their reality is no different; they are confined to tiny stalls so they are unable to turn around, are hooked up to machines which is incredibly excruitiating for them, constantly impregnated and their babies taken away. Chickens in egg factory farms also bear the brunt, with new-born male chicks being ground up alive, simply because they weren’t born female. And the majority of meat that we have access to is in fact from these ‘farms’ and there is no such thing as ‘free-range or ‘ethical’; the animals all end up enduring the same fate at the same slaughter house, the same barbaric murder.

For one attempting to live a spiritual existence or to reach ‘higher prana’, one would come to the conclusion that by consuming the meat of an animal you would also be taking into your body it’s pain and fear. This was the biggest, most compelling reason for me when considering veganism, I just didn’t want to ingest the suffering and pain of other beings any more.

Ethologist Jane Goodall stated in the 2009 book The Inner World of Farm Animals that “’farm animals feel pleasure and sadness, excitement and resentment, depression, fear and pain. They are much more sensitive and intelligent than we have ever imagined.

Surely, for one wanting to experience higher consciousness, gaining pleasure from the suffering of an animal would be totally detrimental?

 2. Do it for yourself…

The food we eat massively impacts our spiritual health and physical wellbeing. Our mental health can also be affected by our diet and we must eat pure foods rich with minerals which also have high vibrations in order to be healthy across the board.

A high vibrational diet consists of foods that are alive and that have had more light passing through them. Plants are the perfect food to raise your vibration as during the photosynthesis process light is converted to energy. The body has its own energy, or vibration and for those wanting to achieve enlightenment, one way of doing this would be to eat purer, less dense food that will positively benefit us, as well as the planet.

Meat and dairy have a ‘grounding’ effect on your energy field, bringing it down to a minimum and therefore impacting on your spiritual health. Foods that are difficult to digest bring down your vibrations, so by listening to our bodies we can even feel which foods are more beneficial when trying to create higher prana. By practicing mindful eating we can create mindful living.

The food that has the highest vibration are raw foods which have been nourished by the sun and the best way to detox the body would be to eat a diet of raw plant foods for a few days. Not only would this raise your vibrations but would also assist the digestive system and make you feel lighter.

Everything we think and feel has a vibration that can be measured. When we raise our vibration high enough we can connect to the power of intention, unlocking that place where we feel true contentment and utmost connectedness. The spiritual path is the inner path, so listen to your body and give it what it needs!

Nowadays, we know that meat and dairy is not the healthy option. For those of us who grew up surviving on McDonald’s and fish fingers, (and I’m talking about myself here) and who honestly thought that you had to have your meat with every meal and a glass of milk daily, we were socially conditioned to believe that animals were there for the pleasure of eating. Oh maybe the animals were not even considered at all?

Something else to mention here is the carcinogenic stuff the animals are pumped full of, to make them fatter, quicker and to prevent disease in the factory farms. It’s hard to find meat these days that isn’t full of steroids, hormones and antibiotics, and the effects of these on the human body are terrible, causing numerous nasty cancers. Particularly dangerous are the anabolic steroids and growth hormones given to animals and then you have the added threat of high cholesterol and heart disease…eating meat is not for the faint hearted it seems, pun intended! When our physical heath is running on empty our prana is also diminished, somewhat. When the body is in full working order with no ailments, the possibility for higher conscious living is increased.

 3. Do it for the planet…

 Farming agriculture is unsustainable. It’s as simple as that. And did you know that animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, more than the combined exhaust of all transportation? Did you also know that 2,500 gallons of water are needed to produce one pound of beef? Or that livestock covers 45 percent of the World’s total land mass. Scary, hey? Yet we continue to breed animals for the sole purpose of factory farming the life out of them and then eating them. We even take grain from poverty stricken countries to feed said animals, in fact 82 percent of starving children live in countries where the grain is fed to the animals, then the animals are eaten by western countries.  Seems ridiculous right, but we humans keep on keeping on. Perhaps you’re a seafood lover? We could also see fishless oceans by the year 2048. Okay, enough facts…

So, it would be safe to say that if you are contributing towards this idiocracy by buying and eating meat then you are contributing towards the demise of planet earth. And if you are contributing to the demise of the planet which we inhabit then how can you be connected to it. Some would even go so far as to say that if you’re lacking connection to the planet and to the animals on it, then you are also lacking a deep spiritual connection to yourself, other beings or to a ‘divine power’ or ‘higher force’.

 “”Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet’’

Albert Einstein

[assimkamukafmpy2]

FMP

Since this was an open brief, I decided to enhance my 3D tracking and comp skills. I like rendering things out from my and compositing them in Nuke so most of my ideas were designed around that process.

Ideas:

Losers:

My main idea was the idea I presented in the pitch, ‘Losers’, a 30 sec - 1 min World War 1 short film depicting lives of the young soldiers on the British and the German side. The goal was to explore their emotional roller coaster as the war progressed, starting from the feeling of patriotism and excitement to enlist to the hatred and resentment of the war.  

This is a big scale project which would’ve involve a lot of CG assets and crowds, as well as ideally having a built trench set alongside some costumes. It was very expensive and I tried to find ways to fund it but it just didn’t work it. It was £400 to rent 4 full world war 1 costumes for a week, I couldn’t find anyone willing to help me with the trench set which meant that it would have to be mostly CG. Even though I planned this project and had a good idea where it was going, I decided to probably save it for later and move on to my next options. 

Losers story board.

K.Academy:

Another concept that I developed was K.Academy which stands for killer academy, this was also a concept for my advanced compositing brief but I didn’t want to rush it because I want it to be well done, even now I don’t think that I have the dedication to execute, since it will require a lot of actors, some set design and props, so I decided not to follow it and save it for another time. I did go as far as drawing up a storyboard though.

K.Academy story board.

Hemomancer: 

Inspired by the League of Legends character, Vladimir, this project was going to portray his story and his abilities which is one of a Hemomancer, controlling their own blood and using it as a weapon.

Fluid simulation is a big part of this project and so is costume design. Both areas that I don’t have access too. I would really love to complete a project on this character though since I find his story interesting and the character so appealing with his unique power.

Death From Above

This the project that I decided to execute for my second year fmp.

The concept behind this project was unclear at first, I knew that I wanted to do something with swords in the sky and coming down. Inspired by Kayle from the game ‘League of Legends’.

Inspiration:

And also inspired by the character Erza Scarlet from the anime ‘Fairy Tail’ in her Heavens Wheel form.

Also some setting and final output inspirations.

Concept:

I came up with a rough concept of a someone being chased and targeted by a group of people. Until they eventually surround him in a field where he sits on a rock calmly. They charge him but he doesn’t break his stance. As they’re about to strike him swords come down from the sky smiting them all and the victim walks away as if nothing has happened. 

I started thinking about the time periods and what I want the environment to look like. Originally I was leaning towards the asian side, Japanese and Chinese architecture, as well was making the protagonist a Japanese/Chinese monk.

I even looked at potential costumes for the role.

I found this one being sold for £120 for the full thing. But I don’t have that amount just to spend on a costume.

I thought about not making the character into a monk but into a ninja since I found a cheap “professional Ninja suit” for £30. 

In the end I decided to wear my Arabian garment and maybe combine it with a hoodie and a scarf.

Swords:

Since the character uses his powers to bring the swords down from the sky I wanted to show the swords dwelling in the sky and also coming down through a birds-eye view shot. Inspired by this shot from a Gintama title sequence.

I started to expierment with the swords design, would I want a variation in the swords, so a lot of models just floating in the sky, or have them all be the same model.

I then decided that it would best to have a variation within the swords to add to the divine power that the protagonist posses, that he called upon many swords from all over the world to defend himself.

After I made that decision I went around and downloaded 3D models of swords and bought them in a scene together.

The perspective view in Maya were very useful.

To give the swords a little bit of dynamics and character I wanted them to rotate and bounce up and down to not just look like a 2D image. I considered using the MASH network in Maya which does that automatically and you could adjust the speed and height, the problem is that it cannot read more than one model. So I had to figure out another way.

Ignorantly I used a cylinder shape and tried to align the swords around it.

But then I realised that I could just use a ring curve and it won’t use up any geometry space and I found it much easier to work with.

Using the birds-eye view also helped me place the swords in a organised position so they wouldn’t be all over z-space.

I come up with a rotation animation and individual animations on the swords individually. 

I then duplicated the first layer and expanded it, added more swords to fit the circumference, as well as animating each individual sword again because animations doesn’t get passed on with duplicates. 

These swords were going to be used for two shots, the establishing “swords in the sky shot” and the “birds-eye view” shot.

I was considering adding volume into the scene to not make it look flat and dull, there are two different ways to do this in Maya, by using AI fog or using a fluid container with some smoke volumes that are shaped like clouds.

I started playing with the AI fog, trying different settings and angles. 

Even though it looks great I didn’t think that it was suitable for the scene and the project in general because it’s way to thick, the only way to increase the opacity was by pushing it further and this just made it even less transparent, so no background would be able to pass through it.

Coincidentally I was playing around with a 3D model I found online and I stumbled on Maya’s fluid presets, they had different versions of skies and stuff like that. So I applied it to the scene.

I thought it worked really well so I decided to keep it and use it.

Since the Swords in the sky shot was first, I worked on it first.

This is it fresh out of Maya with just a sky to light it. I rendered with AOVs so I could tweak certain elements separately without giving a full grade to the shot.

I boosted the emission which is the red lights on the swords and the brightness of the volume, this was a problem since the volume was giving of emission, so whenever I would tweak the emission, the volume would change as well. So I had to just balance the two.

Final colour grade to match the warmth of the scene.

For the Birds eye view shot I took the same approach and was faced with the same problem that the volume was changing along side the emission.

So I had to grade it accordingly.

Raw out of Maya.

Radial blur on the volume to depict speed.

Final.

Environment:

This was my first time making a natural environment within Maya, since there was going to be a camera move I thought it would look better to have CG setting rather than a 2D projected setting, especially for nature. 

I also looked at other CG environment to see what is achievable with a 3D render.

These are from League of Legends Season 9 trailer, Awaken. I really like how the cg environment looks, the lightning and the particles, it feels very full and rich.

In my head I wanted the protagonist to be sitting on a rock in the middle of a field. I headed over to skethfab and turbosquid to find 3D models of rocks and I came across the perfect one, it had a flat surface on top and was photo-scanned so it looked stunning. 

This was so perfect because it would reasonable to sit on it since it got a nice flat surface.

Next I was experimenting with different materials for the plane. I looked into using PBR materials from textures.com. These textures come with height and normal maps that give the texture an extra authentic and bumpy feel.

But the height map will sometimes look weird and push the plane above it’s original position so I had to tweak the settings.

I decided on a leafy ground texture that will serve as a nice base for the floor.

It allowed me to blend in the cg grass well. I experimented with different types of grass in maya.

Short grass.

I also edited the plane to give it look more like a landscape rather than a flat ground. 

Maya also has a bunch of tree presets that you could in later on and change the leaves. I did this by using an atlas sheet to create the sakura trees which are scattered around the environment plane.

Slightly longer grass.

I decided to add more trees.

Made the grass denser, added some flowers and more trees.

Decided to add a fence just to give the foreground more character. I got the fence from sketchfab.com, it originally was a single piece with two poles, but I manipulated the faces and duplicated it to make it stretch out across the scene. 

I also played around with different lighting using aronld’s viewport to see it change and compare different light setups. Originally I used a hdri to light up the scene, but then I switched it up to a physical sky to give it an extra sunset feel.

Since one of the shots is facing the character I was figuring out what to put behind him.

I played around with cliffs but they just didn’t fit in. I don’t want it to look like it was made in a 3D program and i feel like the cliff is giving it away.

I decided to add more trees and maybe add some sort of a peasant looking house behind him.

Some tests for the birds eye view shot with extra trees behind the rock.

3D view of the plane.

The plane would be used in two shots, the Birds eye view shot and the tracking shot.

Birds eye view, plane:

Raw Maya render.

Defocused.

Radial Blur.

Tracking Shot environment.

Raw Maya render.

Grade and colour correct using a ramp mask.

Defocus.

I wanted to give the scene some depth so I decided to add a foreground element.

And then I blurred the living soul out of it.

For the tracking shot, something that’s troubling me is thinking about what to place in the horizon and beyond the hills, so I started to look at some field images online for references.

This image shows how things are lit, since there is a cloud above the hill in the distance its darker than the wheat field in the foreground.

Mountains are almost like a sillohaoite since they’re so far away and lose their colour and detail due to atmospheric effect. There’s also another hill that we could only see the left side of and its coloured different.

Matte painting I created in photoshop. I projected it onto a sphere to give it some sort of a realistic movement.

Environment final, merged all together.

Crowds:

Since the protagonist was being chased by a group of people I found more convenient to use a 3D crowd sim software. It was easier than hiring or finding a bunch of extras, dressing them up, working around their schedule, and achieving that bird eye view shot would’ve been tricky. But in a 3D crowd sim program you, the creator, have full control on camera angle and there are no problems with the sims schedules. 

I used Golaem crowds, since they had a free student version. Golaem crowds is a node based plugin for Maya which uses the Maya particle system to scatter a bunch of models around. In the node editors you could assign behaviours to the characters and can make them human like, assigning constraints, barriers and colliders to the characters, I didn’t really dive that deep into it I just found out how to create a basic running crowd sim.  

I had some experince with it before, but it had their watermark on it, so I had to ask the to remove it.

Success!

The agents being read into Maya.

Rendered scene of the crowd in the environment and light.

The plugin only works on windows so I had to export the plan and camera from the Maya Mac and open it on a windows mac, then to reduce render time I only rendered out the soldiers along their shadows. This also gives creative control on the environment.

Raw.

Grade and colour correct.

Defocus.

Merging the Bird eye shot.

I added a noise layer with a masked shape around it to give the illusion that clouds are zooming past. I also sped the time up by 1.75 to make it feel faster.

Final grade:

I wanted the over all feel to the piece to be warm, with the main characters being reds and oranges with highlights of greens to hit the sunset setting that I was going for.

Tracking shot final grade.

Swords in the sky final grade.

Birds eye view final grade.

Evaluation

Overall on this project I reached goals and milestones that I thought I wouldn’t be able to reach yet, the first CG environment that I created was pretty decent, also the matte painting matched it well. But it still lacked some realism when it comes to the trees, the leaves on some trees were weird because there was an overpopulation of leaves on a branch, the branches and the barks looked kind of flat but other than that it was ok. My maya workflow has gotten better, with lighting and applying textures correctly from models that I have downloaded from online, this is what made this piece really pop, the red glows on the swords.

Other things that I would change is the the cg clouds movements, I will drag them upwards whilst the camera and the swords are going downwards to give the speeding and zooming down effect.

I would also like to learn more about crowd simulations because the ones that I did in this piece, the crowds kind of looked funky up and close, also some agents would run through each other, in the future I would like to learn about setting constraints to the agents and have them interacting with each other.

I also didn’t get to execute all the shots that I wanted because of time and laziness I guess, every day that I’ve taken of could’ve been dedicated to a missing shot.

In conclusion I am not to mad with the final results of this project, I learnt a lot as well as experimented a lot. Improvements need to be made to the things that I have listed above and I need to dedicate myself more to my work to complete a project fully.  

[vjwildlife]

Bless It All

To eat meat or not to eat meat….this is the question. Many many years ago, I was the co-owner of a 40 restaurant franchise in multiple states. Subway to be exact. I was retired and never needed to work again. Then I began to uncover the horrors of factory farming, as well as the researched and documented health challenges directly caused by the consumption of cooked conventional meat. I knew that my days of being a franchise restaurant owner were over. I also began intensive experimenting on my own body via herbs, raw foods, wheat grass juicing and enemas, fasting, colonics, super foods, ozone therapy, Bio mat technology, zapping with the terminator II night and day, endless raw food retreats, weeks at the Optimum Health Institute, reading endless books on alternative therapies, nutrition, raw food, etc, sun gazing, inversion table therapy, DMSO and garlic IV drips, sprouting, mineral rich gardening, urine therapy, eating clay, and getting two degrees in Holistic Nutrition. I watched hundreds of parasites land in the toilet bowl out of “me bum”, and watched one very long tape worm squiggle out of me on day 30 of a juice fast. I watched my body shrink and grow and go pale and fill out and get sick and weak and so much more. Hives, acne, a sore throat for 18 months, candida, weird emotional stuff, and so so so much more. It has been an informative journey thus far and I have been front row witness as well as In House Shaman and Medicine Woman to my three superhero children and my one very brave and willing husband, darling Dabu. When I stepped onto this path of extreme health, it was in large part motivated by the understanding that other feeling and living beings were suffering so that I could have life. This seemed unnecessary to me, and so I cut out anything with a face in my diet. I felt that if I ate lower on the food chain, not only would there be more food for all, but there would be less suffering in the world. I wanted to preserve the natural resources of this planet, and understood that eating meat was resource intensive, and conventional methods were responsible for pretty much all of the illness and disease being experienced today. Not to mention the destruction to our land, water, air, and trees. I stand in a very different place to day, and it has been a riveting journey to get here, and I know for sure that my position and perspective will continue to evolve as my understanding continue to grow and build upon what I have already understood. So, let’s address the moral issue first. If you are purchasing produce from the store, you are killing more animals than if you simply hunted a deer or an elk locally. The elk would leave zero footprint and the organic kale would leave a wake of jet fuel, carbon emissions, deforestation, and hundreds upon hundreds of dead deer, gophers, rabbits, foxes, squirrels, birds, marmot, and so much more killed on the roads and plowed up in the fields. Ask any farmer and he will tell you just how many animals are killed in the fields every year. So the “I don’t kill animals” rational for eating vegetarian does not hold up. It is a lie and it was a painful admission to make to myself. I loved not eating animals and believing that I had eradicated the killing of animals from my karma. Not true. All vegetarians and vegans are in a mass psychosis about this. Eating a vegetarian or vegan diet is not necessarily the most sustainable diet, unless you can manage home grown and wild foods exclusively through all four seasons. Good luck with that. Then there is the issue of what is alive and what is not. Or in other words, is a tree less alive than a deer or a cow? Read “The Secret Life of Plants” and you will know that plants are as conscious as you and I are. A three hundred year old tree may be more conscious than you and I. Why do we so readily lend our compassion to the animals and exclude completely the forests and grasslands of the world as part of the living circle of life? Are they less meek and humble and worthy of our pity? Does the grass not constitute life? Is the grassland and forest not life itself just as we are? Out in the wild, the grasslands and grass ARE THE life, the BIG life. All else is little life that depends on the big life for survival. Even wolves and humans are little life. Creatures that eat grass are bigger killers than creatures that eat meat. To us, we pity the gazelle and the cow and the sheep. So the grasses are not to be pitied. The gazelle has four fast moving legs, and most of the time wolves spit up blood from exhaustion trying to catch them. When the gazelles are thirsty, they run to the river to drink, and when they are cold, they run to a warm spot to soak up some sun. But the grass? Grass is the big life, yet it is the most fragile, the most miserable life. Its roots are shallow, the soil is thin, and though it lives on the ground, it cannot run away. Anyone can step on it, eat it, chew it, crush it. A horse or human or dog urinates on it and burns a big hole into it. And if the grass grows in sand or in the cracks between rocks it is even shorter lived because it cannot grow flowers which means it cannot spread its seeds. There is nothing more deserving of our compassion than the grasses. If you want to talk about killing, then the grass eaters kill more than anything else. When you kill off the big life of grass lands all the little lives are doomed. The damage done by a gazelle far outweighs the damage done by a wolf. Yet we eagerly run out and juice our grass and grains, we sprout grass grains and eat without any compassion for the living grasses. What is this prejudice? Is it that the more something is like us, the more consideration that we give to it, and the less it is like us, the less we attribute life like qualities to it? Is the water less alive then I am as I thirstily drink it down? I think not. Is the tree less alive than I am? I think not. So then how do I begin to parcel up what is alive and being killed when I consume it and what is not alive and thus okay to consume like a greedy little pig? Species-ism is the universal prejudice still agreed upon. The righteous vegan raw foodists of the world wash their hands of the blood of life and snarf down avocadoes and leaves and flowers and nuts and seeds and all manner of life in total ignorance. Oh how ignorant we are. It is ALL life. The entire Universe is consuming and excreting itself. Only ALWAYS! It is our own judgment that keeps us from truly being reverent and humble about what it is that we are taking and what it is that is being given to us. Just because the blood of a plant is green and not red, does it bleed any less than we do? Science has proven that plants faint and scream as we approach to cut them. Just as I would if something were coming to cut and devour my body. I could go on, but I trust that my point is as obvious as day. The moral karmic position for not eating animals does not have any legs…it does not stand up to close scrutiny. This same argument that animals did not have souls or feel pain made it possible for horrible live experiments to be done on living animals. Plants are simply the new animals for this day and age. One day we will prostrate ourselves upon the ground and bury our faces in the earth itself in complete humility and total surrender for we will have finally understood what it has taken for us to understand, and that the infinite expression of life and its Omnipotent Author have given everything for us to know what love is, and all of life and creation have participated in our ultimate and complete understanding that there is only life, there is only God, and we have blasphemed in the temple of the Divine, only in our ignorance, like little babies with soiled diapers and runny noses and messy faces and loud voices, as all of creation has looked on and waited and continues to wait patiently for the dawning of wisdom to fill our minds and for consciousness to grow as we go from being unable to move, to rolling over, to sitting up, crawling, walking, running, and finally flying. So the next issue is to ask “what is sustainable”. It is a wonderful step to take as a living being when one becomes aware that this is a shared planet, and that all need to be fed, sheltered, watered, and given their time in the sun and on the earth. How do we make it equitable? What is fair and right and how can we make sure to leave enough for those who come after us? These are important questions that indicate a rising of consciousness and awareness within a being. How can I live in a way that is sustainable over the course of my life and makes life sustainable for everyone? Well, rule number one is to understand that we can’t pollute the pond that we live in. So sustainable will of course mean no pollution, or not more than can be easily handled by the earth and trees and waters and by our own bodies and the bodies of all living things. Sustainable ideally means that what we take is all renewed quickly and easily and the balance between taking and receiving, or the male and the female, are balanced, and the waste that is left is pure food for what eats it…such as the bacteria living in the soil, the carrion birds, the giant compost heap of life if you will. As we know, our waste will once again become our food or food for our food, so it should all be great from start to finish. Is maca flown in from the Andes on an airplane sustainable? Well, for the calories that it provides, the calories or units of energy required to get it from there to me does not balance out but creates a deficit. On top of which the packaging must be dealt with, the jet fuel absorbed into the earths body and into our body, the fossil fuel emissions metabolized(and it doesn’t), the roads paved to drive on, etc. To me, this is clearly not a sustainable way to live. Local seems important. Eating food that is grown where I live, in soil that is loved and feeds the people of its surrounding areas is sustainable. It used to be that the food supply regulated the population. A community or tribe would not have more people in its fold than there were resources to support them. Other animals self regulate their numbers this way as well. This is no longer the case for humans. So we are out of balance. A direct relationship with your food deletes out pollution, waste, and overpopulation. It is impossible to have this relationship when your food is grown in soil on another continent or even in another state. Respect for the soil and the water are the keys to the health of the planet and of the people and of all living creatures. Eating a mango in Salt Lake City in January is not sustainable. The footprint is larger than the life it provided for the body. What is sustainable is hunting an elk and eating it all winter long. No footprint, no waste, all good. I was a survival instructor for a time in the Great Basin Desert, and learned the ways of living close to the land. I trapped my own food, made fire with sticks rubbed together, slept on the earth, even in the snow, drank from streams and rivers and cavities in rocks where water had collected the night before. I carried my tools in a blanket on my back, and found a peace that I had never known before nor have I found since. I know a man who lives in Boulder Utah. He lives in a hand made mud structure. It is wrapped with skins that he cured from animals that he hunted with tools made with his own two hands out of natural materials. He makes his own clothes. He walks wherever he needs to get to. He digs roots and picks berries and leaves and nuts and seeds from the land. He drinks from the river and he is warmed by his own fire started with a bow drill set that he made with his stone knife and braided rope from dogbane bark and a tinder bundle from sage brush bark. He sleeps when it is dark and is awake when Gods Lamp is on. He fishes with a hand made spear and hunts with a throwing stick and bow and arrow and runs on his legs and uses his hands and his mind to live in what appears to me to be the most peaceful way to live that I have witnessed in this life. He leaves no footprint on the earth. If you didn’t know he was there, you would not even see his home, as it is built right into the side of a rock cliff and blends right in. His urine and feces are pure food for the earth, and he is intimately connected to His Mother as he sleeps and walks upon her every moment of his life. He is not confused about his place in the circle of life, nor his relationship to all of his brothers and sisters, regardless of their form or shape or species. He has been living there alone in the wild since he was sixteen years old. He says little and lives a lot. His life is the full and complete embodiment of sustainability. Ouch you say? What that ouch represents is all that is keeping us from truly choosing that instead of talking about choosing that without ACTUALLY choosing it. I am guilty as charged by the way. Super foods and gadgets and Vita Mix blenders and driving a Prius and vegan shoes and solar panels are all ways of keeping the existing system in place and trying to keep our creature comforts while still being entertained and kept comfy. We are still making too much trash, we are still polluting our water, and we are still hogging the Earth. That’s how I see it. So is a vegan or vegetarian raw living foods diet sustainable in Salt Lake City? For me, the answer is a resounding NO. It sure is fun to eat at Living Cuisine from heart shaped plates and hug each other real tight and look into each others eyes and all that fluffy glittery stuff….but we still pay with paper money printed by the Federal Reserve that is our own jailer keeping us in chains (by our own choosing). We still leave Living Cuisine in a car and use our EMF manufacturing cell phones as we drive and we still poop in pure water in the bathrooms and wipe our arses with the last of the trees.. Behind the gentle vegan raw tapestry is a trail of mangled, bloody, dead bodies of living feeling innocent creatures all the way from the agricultural fields of California, Mexico, Washington, Chile, Tibet, Peru etc leading directly to your bowl of Sweet Basil Salad and your glass of Goji lemonade. So again, the not eating animals because it is more sustainable does not hold up under close scrutiny either. Consider how you would live as a Native American in this valley through all four season with your tribe, and this is probably the most sustainable option. Now we address health. What is the healthiest way to eat? First, it depends on where you are at health wise. For some, they are at the beginning or middle stages of cleansing, which can take many many years to work through.Getting the garbage out so that the good stuff can get in is the first step. So this would mean a juicy high nutrient and low density diet, such as raw fruits and veggies, sprouted nuts and seeds, all organic, as locally grown as possible, super foods, healthy raw fats, medicinal herbs and healing plants. The goal here is to get out all of the bad stuff interfering with your bodies own Divine Intelligence, and at the same time making up for deficiencies. It is an art really to cleanse without depleting too much and while still adding in what is needed to mitigate the stripping effect that cleansing has on the body. Colonics, addressing the internal soil with enzymes, fermented foods, probiotics, and lots of fiber. The raw vegan living foods diet is a cleansing diet. It supports the process of distillation, where areas of greater concentration move into areas of lesser concentration. So as the blood thins due to a hydrating, enzyme rich, digestible raw diet, the lymph dumps into the blood its load of waste. As the lymph thins out, the cells dump their load of toxic waste into the lymph. If the colon is clear, which it must be in order for cleansing to take effect, all is dumped through the colon, the pores, the mouth, and the anus and the body begins to experience healing. Alkalizing minerals are pulled form the bones ad tissues to neutraliaze toxins as they make their way out of the body, hence the need for a high living green diet when cleansing. The body, just like this Universe, is a balance of intake and out put. The entire Universe is participating in this process. So we take in soil and excrete out soil. We take in water and excrete out water. We take in air and excrete out air, and we take in fire (the sun) and excrete out fire (sweating, panting). If any of these systems are out of balance for too long, sickness ensues. As it is with food. There is a time to cleanse and a time to build. Over time, if a body remains in a mode of cleansing without taking nutrition back in, it will begin to break down. About four years into a raw vegan diet, I began to feel what I will call “hungry” and I didn’t know why. I chalked it up to needing to cleanse more, and so I did just that. Lots of juice fasts, lots of intestinal cleanses, just more of what I had already been doing. It didn’t seem to be making me feel any better. I battled for about a year with this, before really beginning to trust that my body was telling me something. It was sobering as well as exciting for me to begin to understand that the Divine Intelligence that is my body is far superior to the factoids and niblets of memorized information stored in my finite puny human brain. My body is profound in its wisdom, and I can only continue to learn how to attune to this wisdom, bow to it, and be respectful of its magnitude and my own brain limitations. So though I had read all of the books on why vegan in best and I had amassed a group of raw vegan personalities as friends, something was still not adding up in my own body. It was hard to let go of what I had decided was TRUE and allow something bigger to teach me. I learned a lot in that transition about the nature of life and the constant movement of consciousness as we evolve. What was true six years ago is not true today. It just depends on where you are standing. I cannot emphasize this point enough. Our perspective is always limited and we can only see from where we stand so we must simply trust the journey, do our homework, and evolve out of arrogance…. as arrogance and thinking that we know is always the only obstacle to vibrant health. So, let me say this one important bit here. All of the studies done on meat and dairy eaters and their health were done on people eating conventional, not organic, AND they were done on cooked animal product eaters, not raw. This is a critical distinction and one that I make in my own life. I do not advocate cooked or conventional animal products ever. So “The China Study” and “Diet for a New America” and “Food Revolution” all focused on conventional methods of farming and raising and processing animal products and cooked protein for their statistics and studies. I am talking about raw organic free range grass fed products. Please remember this as it is important to understand that what you have read never included the whole picture. I have found that over time, the raw vegan diet becomes too flimsy. I don’t know how else to say this. There is this feeling that something is missing. This is what is true for me. There is a very feminine quality to this diet that for a lot of people simply does not work long term. There is an over abundance of phytoestrogens in plant foods, and especially nuts and seeds including coconuts and avocadoes, that are highly estrogenic. Combine that with an over estrogenic environment due to hormone disruptors such as phthalates, all pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, all plastics, and so much more, and we are truly in danger with this estrogenic dominance. All female cancers are created from an over abundance of estrogen, as is male pattern baldness, fat on the hips and thighs, as well as docility. It is generally accepted that high levels of estrogen are associated with cancer of the breast, uterus and cervix; with cystic breast disease, uterine fibroids and endometriosis; with heavy bleeding and premenstrual syndrome; with depressed thyroid function; and with fluid retention and weight gain. Some lesser known associations are the following, as reported in the Nutri-Spec Letter of Guy R. Schenker, DC (1-800-736-4320): Estrogen levels increase under the stress of injury, surgery, exposure to cold, infection and fasting. (Am J Vet Res, Feb 1998; Keio J Med, Sept 1989; Prog Clin Biol Res, 1989; J Clin Endocrine Metabl, 1974; Am J Clin Nutri, 1989) Postmenopausal women with higher levels of circulating estrogen experience greater cognitive decline. (J Am Ger Soc 1998, Vol 46, Pages 816-21) Alcoholism is associated with abnormally high levels of estrogen. (S Gastroienterol, Oct 1988 German) Estrogen exacerbates symptoms of allergies and asthma. (Rev Pheumol Clin, Oct 1999, Vol 55, No 5, Pages 296-300; Ann Allergy Asthma Immunol, Sep 1998, Vol 81 No 3, Pages 243-6) One study presented evidence that the increasing incidence of asthma in children is due to the mother's oral contraceptive use prior to pregnancy. (Pediatr Allergy Immunol, Nov 1997, Vol 8, No 4, Pages 200-4.) Estrogen can actually cause osteoporosis! (Menopause 1991 1(3):131-136) According to Dr. Schenker, between the ages of 21 and 40 there is a considerable increase in women's estrogen production. However, bone loss has been shown to actually begin around the age of 23 and progresses through the years when estrogen levels are actually rising. Weight gain patterns in middle age women can interfere with bone mass scans, leading to false conclusions about the effects of estrogen on bone health. I am into the warrior energy myself, for a number of reasons, and I became aware over time that I just felt really soft and weak no matter how much I exercised. Then I noticed that some of my favorite raw vegan heroes were kind of chubby and had man boobs and really did not look much younger to me that their cooked food meat eating counter parts. I then began hanging out with Robert Cassar and saw that he understood some things based on his physical appearance. Then I started hearing about all of these big names that had crossed over into the animal products world. Even David Wolfe is now heavily promoting raw free range grass fed organic dairy such as butter, milk, cheese, and raw egg yolks. So whats the deal here? Why the big switch? Well, our endocrine system for one. This is a hormone game folks. What keeps us young has a lot to do with our hormones. Too much estrogen can break down the whole system, and we are in trouble in this area. One way to counteract that is to pull back some on all of the plants and start to add in some of the raw dairy and raw egg yolks. They really stimulate a whole different range of hormones and chemicals that are more masculine such as strength, flexibility, lean muscle, mental sharpness, and really enhanced brain function due to the high long chain fatty acid and omega three fatty acid profiles. We are so out of whack as a society with our omega 3 to omega six balance. We should be four times higher in omega threes than sixes but we are ten times higher in omega sixes than threes. There are some who feel that this alone is the missing link to humans highest evolution. Animal products take care of this. Science has shown that the human brain has grown in actual size directly in proportion to the consumption of fatty acids found in animal products. In my own personal evolution, what I have discovered is that eating raw salmon is CRITICAL for my health, wellness, and balance. I deeply feel the absence of omega three fatty acids in my diet, found in high amounts in fish, when I go long periods of time without eating them. My whole family has noticed this for themselves, and we periodically eat raw salmon or cold smoked salmon, sourced from native tribes and caught by hand in Alaska. Adding in raw milk and egg yolks has also been met with a two thumbs up from the family after years of raw vegan eating. We all just feel much better. We eat all of our animal products raw, and we source the highest quality possible. Raw milk and cheese and butter are the most alkalizing food that you can eat. You will literally feel your body remineralizing as you eat them. Raw dairy from free range, grass eating animals is so high in healthy bacteria that e coli or staff bacteria dropped into the milk is destroyed on contact. Imagine what it will do in your body! My daughters long term acne cleared up within one month of getting on raw milk, and she also lost a significant amount of weight. My husband says that he finally feels really well after years of really struggling to feel excellent on the super food diet. The Chinese have been eating whole raw eggs foe centuries and credit this part of their diet with strength, energy, and mental clarity. There are epidermal, and nerve growth factors in animal products that cannot be found in plant food. Vitamins B-12 , A, and D, and vitamins k cannot be found in plant foods. All four of the longest lived peoples of this planet include a small portion of animal products into their diets. The Hunzas, the Okinawans, the Vilcabambans, and the people of the Caucasus Mountains of Russia. They all eat animal meats, fats, and dairy. The vegetarian inhabitants of Southern India on the other hand have the shortest life span of any peoples on earth. Nucleotides are found in the highest concentrations in nutritional yeast, egg yolks, and sardines. These are critical longevity foods as they prevent the corruption of the DNA codes which are quite literally our body’s Instruction Manual from God. Interesting that they were feeding Ceaser salad with two of these ingredients to the royal Ceaser family. Wonder why? A vegetarian diet lacks the fat soluble catalysts needed for mineral absorption. Over time this can lead to break down in the body as well as critical deficiencies. A meat or animal product free diet in the short term is very cleansing and healing but for long term, from what I can tell, most of us will do well to add in some raw milk and eggs and maybe even some fish. I personally have not felt the need to go any higher up the food chain then fish and most of the time am really happy with just the raw dairy. This is a process though, so who knows where I will end up. Wild meats make sense to me, and I can see myself getting into that through the winter and off of Whole Foods limp organic kale for five dollars a head, grown under artificial lights in a temperature controlled green house and shipped on a refrigerated truck and mineral devoid by the time its gets into my salad bowl. In the end, only you will be able to tell what your body does or does not need. Knowing that the moral or sustainable arguments do not hold up really helped me to get out of my head and into my body and just pay attention and listen. I encourage you to do the same for yourself. I still love my superfoods and greens from my garden and my grapes and peaches and tomatoes. I also now love my raw milk and my raw wild salmon. Go figure. Jesus tells Glenda Green in “Love Without End” when asked about a vegetarian diet, that the only issue with any food was whether or not it was loved. Loved soil, loved water, loved air and light, loved seeds, loved animals, gratitude and love are the vibration that we are looking for. It is the consciousness of greed and irreverence that is making us all so sick. I believe this and am freer today having dropped my judgments and gotten a bit closer to the bigger picture. Its all Mama. Massively bless everything!

[computacionalblog]

Nature Floods. Wildfires. Yet Few Candidates Are Running on Climate Change.

Nature Floods. Wildfires. Yet Few Candidates Are Running on Climate Change. Nature Floods. Wildfires. Yet Few Candidates Are Running on Climate Change. http://www.nature-business.com/nature-floods-wildfires-yet-few-candidates-are-running-on-climate-change/

Nature

Image

The Cape Fear River flooded surrounding neighborhoods in North Carolina during Hurricane Florence. The environment has not been a major political issue in the 2018 midterm campaign, however.CreditCreditHilary Swift for The New York Times

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Dan McCready is a boyish ex-Marine, a solar energy entrepreneur and a favorite candidate of national Democrats hoping to nab a Republican seat in their battle for the House.

His company, Double Time Capital, says its mission is to hasten “our country’s important transition to clean energy” because of climate change.

But as a candidate in a conservative-tilting battleground district, Mr. McCready’s environmental message is much more muted. Climate change is not directly named among 13 top issues on his website. And though his latest TV commercial features solar panels and boasts that the 35-year-old, first-time candidate helped make North Carolina a leader in solar power, the ad highlights Mr. McCready’s ability to balance a budget and meet a payroll. It does not mention “environment” or “climate change.”

In an election year that has included alarming portents of global warming — record wildfires in the West, 500-year floods in the East, a president walking away from a global climate accord — the one place that climate change rarely appears at all is in the campaigns of candidates for the House and Senate.

The vast majority of Democrats and Republicans running for federal office do not mention the threat of global warming in digital or TV ads, in their campaign literature or on social media.

Environmental activists and political scientists say it is a reflection of the issue’s perpetual low ranking among voters, even Democratic voters, and of the intense polarization along party lines that has developed around global warming, even as the science of human-caused warming has become overwhelming.

For scores of Democrats running in reddish districts and hoping to win a majority in the House, and for Democratic Senate candidates running in states President Trump won, highlighting climate change risks handing conservative voters a motivating issue to turn out against them.

Image

Dan McCready, the Democratic nominee for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, which is currently represented by a Republican. He is a solar energy entrepreneur, but he isn’t running hard on environmental issues.CreditTravis Dove for The New York Times

The contradictions were highlighted in Mr. McCready’s district as Hurricane Florence tore through its eastern end in September. The storm delivered devastating floods after dumping 20 to 35 inches of rain, which scientists said were likely 50 percent heavier because of warmer ocean temperatures and more atmospheric moisture due to climate change.

Mr. McCready and his Republican opponent, Mark Harris, who rejects established climate science, each rushed to deliver food and emergency supplies to the hard-hit city of Lumberton, in one of the poorest counties in the state.

As flooding forced many from their homes, most residents pointed to more tangible culprits than the climate: the failure to dredge the Lumber River; a gap in the city’s levees.

“The climate and stuff, that’s God’s work,” said Rodney Locklear, a 62-year-old forklift driver, whose home was one of the few on Canal Street not made uninhabitable by the rising waters. “If man was in control of the climate, he’d have a grudge against someone and hell, he wouldn’t give him no sun — wouldn’t give him no rain, no wind.”

In polls of voters’ top priorities, climate change rarely garners more than 7 to 10 percent, trailing health care, jobs and immigration. For a passionate core, it resonates. But to the enduring frustration of environmental activists, that core has proved limited. Among Democrats, 45 percent said health care was the issue they most wanted the party to tackle if it regains power in Washington, according to a survey this year by Civis Analytics. Climate change was far below, at 7 percent.

“Until voters in the U.S. perceive this as a quite imminent threat, it’s liable to remain mired in the middle of all the other issues,” said Jeff Nesbit, the executive director of Climate Nexus, a group seeking new ways to communicate the threat of climate change, and the author of a recent book, “This Is the Way the World Ends.”

According to an in-house database compiled by Climate Nexus on 161 potentially competitive House races, only a small handful of candidates have released TV ads or online videos prominently featuring climate and energy issues.

Even the Democratic megadonor Tom Steyer, who poured tens of millions of dollars since 2010 into raising awareness of climate change, has shifted focus this year. Mr. Steyer is spending over $30 million to help Democrats take back the House by focusing on voters under 35, whose failure to turn out in off-year elections was a reason Democrats suffered losses in previous midterms.

Recent ads from Mr. Steyer either don’t mention climate change at all, or include it among a smorgasbord of issues including debt-free college, racial justice and impeaching Mr. Trump. Climate “is very much an issue,” Mr. Steyer said in an interview, “but it’s not the issue.”

Acceptance of human-caused climate change, which the vast majority of scientists confirm, has grown polarized by political party in the decade since John McCain ran as the Republican presidential nominee in 2008 favoring cap-and-trade to limit carbon emissions.

There is now a 38-point gap between Democrats and Republicans who say the country should do whatever it takes to protect the environment, according to the Pew Research Center.

Mr. Trump, who has called global warming a “hoax,” is aggressively seeking to undo Obama-era policies to limit emissions from cars and power plants, and he announced plans to withdraw from the Paris climate deal.

“The places that are most competitive, most important for Democrats’ electoral fortunes, are places where talking about climate mitigation, major changes in our energy makeup — that has real economic consequences,” said Megan Mullin, a professor of environmental politics at Duke.

One way Mr. Trump has been good for the environmental movement is in driving up donations. Green interest groups are pouring money into House and Senate races, in many cases delivering attacks on Republicans that their Democratic rivals may shy from.

Image

Mark Harris, center, the Republican nominee in the 9th Congressional District, worked with Mr. McCready and other volunteers at a Habitat for Humanity project in Charlotte.CreditTravis Dove for The New York Times

The League of Conservation Voters is spending $60 million on races this year, twice as much as in 2014. Gene Karpinski, president of the group, said it would target up to 20 tossup House districts by seeking to motivate suburban women and independents to vote Democratic. Its ads attack Representative Mike Coffman of Colorado for voting faithfully with Mr. Trump, “the worst polluter of all,” and Representative Dana Rohrabacher of California, with video of him claiming “global warming is a fraud.”

Around the country, there are exceptions to the rule that cautious candidates downplay climate change. Sean Casten, a scientist and clean-energy businessman challenging Representative Peter Roskam, Republican of Illinois, calls out Mr. Trump in an ad for labeling climate change a hoax.

Mike Levin, an environmental lawyer running in coastal Southern California, launched his candidacy by pressing a book, “Climate Change for Beginners” on Representative Darrell Issa, a Republican, at a town hall. Mr. Issa decided to retire and Mr. Levin is in a contest with a Republican, Diane Harkey, who argues California’s aggressive pollution regulations go too far.

Mr. Levin said that climate change is no longer an abstraction in California after record droughts, year-round wildfires and extreme weather have become familiar.

In Florida, which is also seeing the quickening tempo of climate disruption, Representative Carlos Curbelo, whose district includes the Everglades and Florida Keys, is a rare Republican who makes climate an issue. He has introduced a House bill to tax carbon, anathema to his party.

“I bring up this issue even when I’m not asked about it,” said Mr. Curbelo.

Back in North Carolina, the climate denialism of some hurricane-battered residents in the Ninth District was echoed by Mr. Harris, the Republican candidate, a former Baptist minister. He credited divine intervention, not man-made climate change, with altering the storm’s impact, noting that Florence’s winds dropped to 90 miles per hour from 140 before hitting land. “I see the power of prayer and see God’s hand in that,” he said.

Mr. McCready, the Democrat, minced no words in an interview about the threat of climate change. But he said that talking about solar jobs — as he does in his TV ad and on his website — is a less divisive way to impart an environmental message.

“I found that talking about clean energy, showing folks the great jobs we can bring here with clean energy, is something that everybody can get behind,’’ he said.

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/us/politics/environment-climate-elections.html |

Nature Floods. Wildfires. Yet Few Candidates Are Running on Climate Change., in 2018-10-02 18:41:56

[captainblogger100posts]

Nature Floods. Wildfires. Yet Few Candidates Are Running on Climate Change.

Nature Floods. Wildfires. Yet Few Candidates Are Running on Climate Change. Nature Floods. Wildfires. Yet Few Candidates Are Running on Climate Change. http://www.nature-business.com/nature-floods-wildfires-yet-few-candidates-are-running-on-climate-change/

Nature

Image

The Cape Fear River flooded surrounding neighborhoods in North Carolina during Hurricane Florence. The environment has not been a major political issue in the 2018 midterm campaign, however.CreditCreditHilary Swift for The New York Times

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Dan McCready is a boyish ex-Marine, a solar energy entrepreneur and a favorite candidate of national Democrats hoping to nab a Republican seat in their battle for the House.

His company, Double Time Capital, says its mission is to hasten “our country’s important transition to clean energy” because of climate change.

But as a candidate in a conservative-tilting battleground district, Mr. McCready’s environmental message is much more muted. Climate change is not directly named among 13 top issues on his website. And though his latest TV commercial features solar panels and boasts that the 35-year-old, first-time candidate helped make North Carolina a leader in solar power, the ad highlights Mr. McCready’s ability to balance a budget and meet a payroll. It does not mention “environment” or “climate change.”

In an election year that has included alarming portents of global warming — record wildfires in the West, 500-year floods in the East, a president walking away from a global climate accord — the one place that climate change rarely appears at all is in the campaigns of candidates for the House and Senate.

The vast majority of Democrats and Republicans running for federal office do not mention the threat of global warming in digital or TV ads, in their campaign literature or on social media.

Environmental activists and political scientists say it is a reflection of the issue’s perpetual low ranking among voters, even Democratic voters, and of the intense polarization along party lines that has developed around global warming, even as the science of human-caused warming has become overwhelming.

For scores of Democrats running in reddish districts and hoping to win a majority in the House, and for Democratic Senate candidates running in states President Trump won, highlighting climate change risks handing conservative voters a motivating issue to turn out against them.

Image

Dan McCready, the Democratic nominee for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, which is currently represented by a Republican. He is a solar energy entrepreneur, but he isn’t running hard on environmental issues.CreditTravis Dove for The New York Times

The contradictions were highlighted in Mr. McCready’s district as Hurricane Florence tore through its eastern end in September. The storm delivered devastating floods after dumping 20 to 35 inches of rain, which scientists said were likely 50 percent heavier because of warmer ocean temperatures and more atmospheric moisture due to climate change.

Mr. McCready and his Republican opponent, Mark Harris, who rejects established climate science, each rushed to deliver food and emergency supplies to the hard-hit city of Lumberton, in one of the poorest counties in the state.

As flooding forced many from their homes, most residents pointed to more tangible culprits than the climate: the failure to dredge the Lumber River; a gap in the city’s levees.

“The climate and stuff, that’s God’s work,” said Rodney Locklear, a 62-year-old forklift driver, whose home was one of the few on Canal Street not made uninhabitable by the rising waters. “If man was in control of the climate, he’d have a grudge against someone and hell, he wouldn’t give him no sun — wouldn’t give him no rain, no wind.”

In polls of voters’ top priorities, climate change rarely garners more than 7 to 10 percent, trailing health care, jobs and immigration. For a passionate core, it resonates. But to the enduring frustration of environmental activists, that core has proved limited. Among Democrats, 45 percent said health care was the issue they most wanted the party to tackle if it regains power in Washington, according to a survey this year by Civis Analytics. Climate change was far below, at 7 percent.

“Until voters in the U.S. perceive this as a quite imminent threat, it’s liable to remain mired in the middle of all the other issues,” said Jeff Nesbit, the executive director of Climate Nexus, a group seeking new ways to communicate the threat of climate change, and the author of a recent book, “This Is the Way the World Ends.”

According to an in-house database compiled by Climate Nexus on 161 potentially competitive House races, only a small handful of candidates have released TV ads or online videos prominently featuring climate and energy issues.

Even the Democratic megadonor Tom Steyer, who poured tens of millions of dollars since 2010 into raising awareness of climate change, has shifted focus this year. Mr. Steyer is spending over $30 million to help Democrats take back the House by focusing on voters under 35, whose failure to turn out in off-year elections was a reason Democrats suffered losses in previous midterms.

Recent ads from Mr. Steyer either don’t mention climate change at all, or include it among a smorgasbord of issues including debt-free college, racial justice and impeaching Mr. Trump. Climate “is very much an issue,” Mr. Steyer said in an interview, “but it’s not the issue.”

Acceptance of human-caused climate change, which the vast majority of scientists confirm, has grown polarized by political party in the decade since John McCain ran as the Republican presidential nominee in 2008 favoring cap-and-trade to limit carbon emissions.

There is now a 38-point gap between Democrats and Republicans who say the country should do whatever it takes to protect the environment, according to the Pew Research Center.

Mr. Trump, who has called global warming a “hoax,” is aggressively seeking to undo Obama-era policies to limit emissions from cars and power plants, and he announced plans to withdraw from the Paris climate deal.

“The places that are most competitive, most important for Democrats’ electoral fortunes, are places where talking about climate mitigation, major changes in our energy makeup — that has real economic consequences,” said Megan Mullin, a professor of environmental politics at Duke.

One way Mr. Trump has been good for the environmental movement is in driving up donations. Green interest groups are pouring money into House and Senate races, in many cases delivering attacks on Republicans that their Democratic rivals may shy from.

Image

Mark Harris, center, the Republican nominee in the 9th Congressional District, worked with Mr. McCready and other volunteers at a Habitat for Humanity project in Charlotte.CreditTravis Dove for The New York Times

The League of Conservation Voters is spending $60 million on races this year, twice as much as in 2014. Gene Karpinski, president of the group, said it would target up to 20 tossup House districts by seeking to motivate suburban women and independents to vote Democratic. Its ads attack Representative Mike Coffman of Colorado for voting faithfully with Mr. Trump, “the worst polluter of all,” and Representative Dana Rohrabacher of California, with video of him claiming “global warming is a fraud.”

Around the country, there are exceptions to the rule that cautious candidates downplay climate change. Sean Casten, a scientist and clean-energy businessman challenging Representative Peter Roskam, Republican of Illinois, calls out Mr. Trump in an ad for labeling climate change a hoax.

Mike Levin, an environmental lawyer running in coastal Southern California, launched his candidacy by pressing a book, “Climate Change for Beginners” on Representative Darrell Issa, a Republican, at a town hall. Mr. Issa decided to retire and Mr. Levin is in a contest with a Republican, Diane Harkey, who argues California’s aggressive pollution regulations go too far.

Mr. Levin said that climate change is no longer an abstraction in California after record droughts, year-round wildfires and extreme weather have become familiar.

In Florida, which is also seeing the quickening tempo of climate disruption, Representative Carlos Curbelo, whose district includes the Everglades and Florida Keys, is a rare Republican who makes climate an issue. He has introduced a House bill to tax carbon, anathema to his party.

“I bring up this issue even when I’m not asked about it,” said Mr. Curbelo.

Back in North Carolina, the climate denialism of some hurricane-battered residents in the Ninth District was echoed by Mr. Harris, the Republican candidate, a former Baptist minister. He credited divine intervention, not man-made climate change, with altering the storm’s impact, noting that Florence’s winds dropped to 90 miles per hour from 140 before hitting land. “I see the power of prayer and see God’s hand in that,” he said.

Mr. McCready, the Democrat, minced no words in an interview about the threat of climate change. But he said that talking about solar jobs — as he does in his TV ad and on his website — is a less divisive way to impart an environmental message.

“I found that talking about clean energy, showing folks the great jobs we can bring here with clean energy, is something that everybody can get behind,’’ he said.

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/us/politics/environment-climate-elections.html |

Nature Floods. Wildfires. Yet Few Candidates Are Running on Climate Change., in 2018-10-02 18:41:56

[blogparadiseisland]

Nature Floods. Wildfires. Yet Few Candidates Are Running on Climate Change.

Nature Floods. Wildfires. Yet Few Candidates Are Running on Climate Change. Nature Floods. Wildfires. Yet Few Candidates Are Running on Climate Change. http://www.nature-business.com/nature-floods-wildfires-yet-few-candidates-are-running-on-climate-change/

Nature

Image

The Cape Fear River flooded surrounding neighborhoods in North Carolina during Hurricane Florence. The environment has not been a major political issue in the 2018 midterm campaign, however.CreditCreditHilary Swift for The New York Times

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Dan McCready is a boyish ex-Marine, a solar energy entrepreneur and a favorite candidate of national Democrats hoping to nab a Republican seat in their battle for the House.

His company, Double Time Capital, says its mission is to hasten “our country’s important transition to clean energy” because of climate change.

But as a candidate in a conservative-tilting battleground district, Mr. McCready’s environmental message is much more muted. Climate change is not directly named among 13 top issues on his website. And though his latest TV commercial features solar panels and boasts that the 35-year-old, first-time candidate helped make North Carolina a leader in solar power, the ad highlights Mr. McCready’s ability to balance a budget and meet a payroll. It does not mention “environment” or “climate change.”

In an election year that has included alarming portents of global warming — record wildfires in the West, 500-year floods in the East, a president walking away from a global climate accord — the one place that climate change rarely appears at all is in the campaigns of candidates for the House and Senate.

The vast majority of Democrats and Republicans running for federal office do not mention the threat of global warming in digital or TV ads, in their campaign literature or on social media.

Environmental activists and political scientists say it is a reflection of the issue’s perpetual low ranking among voters, even Democratic voters, and of the intense polarization along party lines that has developed around global warming, even as the science of human-caused warming has become overwhelming.

For scores of Democrats running in reddish districts and hoping to win a majority in the House, and for Democratic Senate candidates running in states President Trump won, highlighting climate change risks handing conservative voters a motivating issue to turn out against them.

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Dan McCready, the Democratic nominee for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, which is currently represented by a Republican. He is a solar energy entrepreneur, but he isn’t running hard on environmental issues.CreditTravis Dove for The New York Times

The contradictions were highlighted in Mr. McCready’s district as Hurricane Florence tore through its eastern end in September. The storm delivered devastating floods after dumping 20 to 35 inches of rain, which scientists said were likely 50 percent heavier because of warmer ocean temperatures and more atmospheric moisture due to climate change.

Mr. McCready and his Republican opponent, Mark Harris, who rejects established climate science, each rushed to deliver food and emergency supplies to the hard-hit city of Lumberton, in one of the poorest counties in the state.

As flooding forced many from their homes, most residents pointed to more tangible culprits than the climate: the failure to dredge the Lumber River; a gap in the city’s levees.

“The climate and stuff, that’s God’s work,” said Rodney Locklear, a 62-year-old forklift driver, whose home was one of the few on Canal Street not made uninhabitable by the rising waters. “If man was in control of the climate, he’d have a grudge against someone and hell, he wouldn’t give him no sun — wouldn’t give him no rain, no wind.”

In polls of voters’ top priorities, climate change rarely garners more than 7 to 10 percent, trailing health care, jobs and immigration. For a passionate core, it resonates. But to the enduring frustration of environmental activists, that core has proved limited. Among Democrats, 45 percent said health care was the issue they most wanted the party to tackle if it regains power in Washington, according to a survey this year by Civis Analytics. Climate change was far below, at 7 percent.

“Until voters in the U.S. perceive this as a quite imminent threat, it’s liable to remain mired in the middle of all the other issues,” said Jeff Nesbit, the executive director of Climate Nexus, a group seeking new ways to communicate the threat of climate change, and the author of a recent book, “This Is the Way the World Ends.”

According to an in-house database compiled by Climate Nexus on 161 potentially competitive House races, only a small handful of candidates have released TV ads or online videos prominently featuring climate and energy issues.

Even the Democratic megadonor Tom Steyer, who poured tens of millions of dollars since 2010 into raising awareness of climate change, has shifted focus this year. Mr. Steyer is spending over $30 million to help Democrats take back the House by focusing on voters under 35, whose failure to turn out in off-year elections was a reason Democrats suffered losses in previous midterms.

Recent ads from Mr. Steyer either don’t mention climate change at all, or include it among a smorgasbord of issues including debt-free college, racial justice and impeaching Mr. Trump. Climate “is very much an issue,” Mr. Steyer said in an interview, “but it’s not the issue.”

Acceptance of human-caused climate change, which the vast majority of scientists confirm, has grown polarized by political party in the decade since John McCain ran as the Republican presidential nominee in 2008 favoring cap-and-trade to limit carbon emissions.

There is now a 38-point gap between Democrats and Republicans who say the country should do whatever it takes to protect the environment, according to the Pew Research Center.

Mr. Trump, who has called global warming a “hoax,” is aggressively seeking to undo Obama-era policies to limit emissions from cars and power plants, and he announced plans to withdraw from the Paris climate deal.

“The places that are most competitive, most important for Democrats’ electoral fortunes, are places where talking about climate mitigation, major changes in our energy makeup — that has real economic consequences,” said Megan Mullin, a professor of environmental politics at Duke.

One way Mr. Trump has been good for the environmental movement is in driving up donations. Green interest groups are pouring money into House and Senate races, in many cases delivering attacks on Republicans that their Democratic rivals may shy from.

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Mark Harris, center, the Republican nominee in the 9th Congressional District, worked with Mr. McCready and other volunteers at a Habitat for Humanity project in Charlotte.CreditTravis Dove for The New York Times

The League of Conservation Voters is spending $60 million on races this year, twice as much as in 2014. Gene Karpinski, president of the group, said it would target up to 20 tossup House districts by seeking to motivate suburban women and independents to vote Democratic. Its ads attack Representative Mike Coffman of Colorado for voting faithfully with Mr. Trump, “the worst polluter of all,” and Representative Dana Rohrabacher of California, with video of him claiming “global warming is a fraud.”

Around the country, there are exceptions to the rule that cautious candidates downplay climate change. Sean Casten, a scientist and clean-energy businessman challenging Representative Peter Roskam, Republican of Illinois, calls out Mr. Trump in an ad for labeling climate change a hoax.

Mike Levin, an environmental lawyer running in coastal Southern California, launched his candidacy by pressing a book, “Climate Change for Beginners” on Representative Darrell Issa, a Republican, at a town hall. Mr. Issa decided to retire and Mr. Levin is in a contest with a Republican, Diane Harkey, who argues California’s aggressive pollution regulations go too far.

Mr. Levin said that climate change is no longer an abstraction in California after record droughts, year-round wildfires and extreme weather have become familiar.

In Florida, which is also seeing the quickening tempo of climate disruption, Representative Carlos Curbelo, whose district includes the Everglades and Florida Keys, is a rare Republican who makes climate an issue. He has introduced a House bill to tax carbon, anathema to his party.

“I bring up this issue even when I’m not asked about it,” said Mr. Curbelo.

Back in North Carolina, the climate denialism of some hurricane-battered residents in the Ninth District was echoed by Mr. Harris, the Republican candidate, a former Baptist minister. He credited divine intervention, not man-made climate change, with altering the storm’s impact, noting that Florence’s winds dropped to 90 miles per hour from 140 before hitting land. “I see the power of prayer and see God’s hand in that,” he said.

Mr. McCready, the Democrat, minced no words in an interview about the threat of climate change. But he said that talking about solar jobs — as he does in his TV ad and on his website — is a less divisive way to impart an environmental message.

“I found that talking about clean energy, showing folks the great jobs we can bring here with clean energy, is something that everybody can get behind,’’ he said.

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/us/politics/environment-climate-elections.html |

Nature Floods. Wildfires. Yet Few Candidates Are Running on Climate Change., in 2018-10-02 18:41:56