#Capacity Development

[krisrampersad]

Prime Minister Panday's Last Parlance - Final Fiery Journey Comes Full Circle to Reconnect with Ancestors

When you came into the world, people laughed, and you cried.Go do something in life that when we die, the world weeps and we laugh.Sant Kabir Das, Basdeo Panday’s favoured Poet & Philosopher Panday’s Last Parlance, his final fiery journey comes full circle to reconnect with his ancestors with a State Procession of compatriots from the at the Southern Academy of the Performing Arts to the…

[sgnog]

SGNOG: small community, big ideas

Read about the article at APNIC.net.

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Eddie being shown hugging Ravi rather than buck in this scene has me up in my feels actually.

Especially in combination with the conversation about Eddie being in the army and having been to a lot of funerals like this.

Because Ravi is a physical embodiment of bucks abandonment issues and Buck is watching on when the hug happens but not when the army stuff is talked about and that’s significant. It’s Eddie embracing bucks fear of abandonment when he’s feeling abandoned by his pseudo father and trying to live up to his last words - that the others are going to need him. So Eddie embracing Ravi is Eddie embracing Buck - having bucks back as he always has done and which we get a further representation of when they are carrying the coffin.

[oldtestleper]

also when I say that the pitt is deeply invested in the theme of adults w baggage struggling to nurture the skills & potential of other adults w baggage. let us not forget about javadi, perhaps the most potent and excruciating example of this phenomenon. she’s an adult but everyone treats her like a kid except for her parents who seem to have always treated her like a future adult first and a naive young person when it’s convenient to impress upon her how little she really knows. her parents’ anxiety about her future resulting in a young woman with an outrageous amount of technical knowledge for her age and almost no life experience or understanding of herself to give context or meaning to that knowledge. Robby’s comcern about her age and inexperience leading him to bench her immediately and treat her with kid gloves all day. (I mean she did faint but also it was a degloved foot, no one liked seeing that.) the traits her parents pushed for and saw as desirable to cultivate were the very traits that got her sat out in five minutes flat—book smarts, youth. yeah she’s tenacious she’s smart she fought like hell to get to where she is. but for what. she doesn’t know. she’s 20. she maybe doesn’t have what it takes because what it takes (personal motivation, broadly adapted coping mechanisms, life experience, resiliency) was never allowed or encouraged to develop in her. failmentorship at its finest.

[pushing500]

Hmmm... perhaps our new melee-capable android would benefit from the addition of a holy relic that just so happens to be a kickass laser sword?

The first hidden complex was about a day's hike from Sparks. Mechi and Kwahu left Ivy in the capable hands of her new robot uncle and popped out for a bit to take Othello for walkies and do some hacking.

Helpful reminder that Alistair is adorable and eeeverything is fine...

He's not... he's not a great babysitter.

On the bright side, we've never had so many neatly cut bricks before, so that will be nice for any future grand construction projects. Not so nice for Ivy's boredom, though.

Ivy would have a blast playing pretend "robot controller" (she can't say the word 'mechanitor' yet) in Mechi's old airwire headset and duster. She might even want to copy their diligent void-study by mucking around near that big 'ol twisted obelisk outside the gate!

... Huh.

At least Ivy has a mood bonus for "transhumanist modded" now?

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[trappedinafantasy37]

Can you believe that I have spent this entire year completely obsessed over one fictional character? Minthara Baenre, what a woman you are!

[asteralley]

thinking a bit too much about this

[mutodaes]

Welcome to the cast of Hematemesis!

There's even more to come down the line, so stay tuned :>

I'm super happy with how far this project has come, and I'm so excited to continue onward :D

(Also, Rhyvet is 6ft1)

[krisrampersad]

People's Prime Minister Panday's Parting Punch in prep for Tell-All Memoire - mutating orator into author In Remembrance

His inglorious gift of gab would take him to the pinnacles of his profession, but it is the pen that would prove mightier to the sword-sharp tongue of the Silver Fox, PM Panday more at www.krisrampersad.com

Winner of the Communications Initiative Partners (BBC/UNESCO et al) pioneering Development Policy Blogging for New Media, Dr Kris Rampersad Demokrissy Blogs now find a home at GLoCaL Knowledge Pot The People’s Prime Minister Basdeo Panday’s Parting Punch is neatly couched in a pep-talk to him to pen his memoires – a promised tell-all which will leave no one ‘unscathed’ as ‘a most colourful…

[seraheart]

I kinda wish that the DetCo canon would do more with the fact that the relationship (I don't mean this in the shipping sense) between Conan and Haibara has been, or at least logically should have been, really strained for a long time.

Originally, they had this development where Haibara was really messed up, overly cautious and trying to force her maladaptive survival psychological issues onto other people, and generally not good at positive interactions. Then, slowly, Conan and the others started gaining her trust (not entirely though), and also her general mental health improved (never completely though).

But then it turned around, and started getting significantly worse. Haibara isn't really in a healing arc anymore. If Aoyama still took her seriously as a character (which, to be fair, I don't think is the case), she would be in a retraumatization arc. Conan and his allies are limiting Haibara's agency, invading her privacy, dismissing her concerns about all this, and pretending that this isn't happening while she can obviously tell that it is happening.

I think the really obvious turning point was the Mystery Train arc. Haibara even called Conan and Agasa out on it and stated that she wouldn't forgive if she were to be treated like that again. Instead of taking her hurt seriously, they just told her she should "be thankful", and dismissed her hurt as "tsundere", refusing to take her trauma seriously after using it and using her as a mere chess piece in their plans (and Akai even triggering her more by gloating about it).

Since then, Haibara has been trapped under the constant, violating supervision of these people who have demonstrated that they don't respect her, and also refuse to acknowledge that the problem even exists. It's not a situation where her recover arc could realistically continue. By all logic, she should be spiraling, getting worse again.

And maybe this is on purpose; Aoyama definitely didn't plan the manga to get this long when he introduced Haibara, and originally the slow-burn of her recovery was a good way to postpone a scenario where Haibara could actually trust Conan enough to give him the kind of information that would lead to the finale arc. But... eventually, even with the extreme slow burn of DetCo, Haibara's recovery arc and relationship development with Conan would have gotten to the point where her continued withholding of crucial information would no longer make sense... and, I guess, rather than start concluding the story at a humanly reasonable rate, Aoyama just opted to nuke Haibara's whole recovery arc and character and relationship development (not only with Conan but also Agasa).

Which could have been tragic but realistic (albeit kind of a major downer out of tune with the manga's usual tone, and upsetting to anyone who had been invested in the slow-burn mental health improvement arc), but then Aoyama can't even be arsed to take it seriously, and is now just pretending that the situation with Haibara and her relationships with Conan and Agasa are still "normal" instead of FUBAR.

It's regrettable and really shows how much everyone dragging out this franchise to milk it for more money just... doesn't actually care about the story anymore, hasn't in a long time. They'll eventually just kill central, fan-favorite, long-running story arcs rather than actually letting them conclude or evolve in a satisfying manner if that would mean risking their precious status quo (which has warped beyond all recognition anyway, so I'm not sure why they bother).

[serpentface]

Do psychotropic drugs and/or ritual play a role in any of the blightseed cultures? A pretty broad question, lol

Yeah that’s a very broad question, the answer is about as much as it tends to play roles in real history. Alcohol is pretty ubiquitous (outside of cultures that abstain from intoxicants) and used for a variety of purposes, opioids are commonly used in some parts for pain relief or recreational purposes, stimulants (usually in mild, natural forms) are used to provide extra energy, and hallucinogens are most commonly used as part of a larger religious framework (rather than for recreational purposes). Any more elaborate answer kinda has to be case by case in a certain culture or part of the setting.

I'll just take this as an opportunity to talk about the one established sect that pretty much REVOLVES around psychoactive use. This is the Scholarly Order of the Root, which is a sort of mystery religion + elite community of scholars who currently occupy the Ur-Tree and its forest in the far southern Lowlands (southeast of Imperial Wardin, on the same land mass).

The Ur-Tree is the obligatory Huge Fucking Fantasy Tree (and its surrounding forest). It’s a mass of vegetation about a mile tall and almost as old as Plant Life Itself, its upper branches are primeval plants, which become more modern the nearer they get to the ground (and each 'level' holds tiny ecosystems, some containing descendants of LONG-extinct arthropods/other small animals). Its lowest branches and the surrounding forest are contemporary plant life, and all is connected and protected by an incomparably MASSIVE fungal mycelium network (which is itself a living god).

A lot of the Scholars' more secretive practices revolve around experimentation with substance use with the goal of expanding the Mind and transcending the body to fully connect to the Dreamlands, and they have a supply chain of traders and mercenaries called Rootrunners who traffic substances into the Lowlands. Most of their psychoactive use is in a very intentional capacity and not just like, for fun, but a LOT of them are just straight up addicted to cocaine (in the form of alchemically refined bruljenum, which is used for practical purposes of its stimulant effect during long hours of work).

All known psychoactives are desirable for experimentation (particularly hallucinogens), with each having properties that either allow expansion of the Mind, transcendence of the body, or outright divine communion. Their effects are logged in great detail and interpreted to form the basis of the Scholars' understanding of the natural world and reality itself.

The most important substance is Ur-Root, which is root matter from subterranean levels of the Ur-Tree that have both their own intrinsic psychoactive substances and a very, very high concentration of living god mycelium. The tree root contains DMT and the mycelium has its own wholly unique effects (being an actual living god). They alchemically refine it into a purer, more potent form, and use it to expand beyond the body and directly commune with the Giants, a group of entities they have identified as the only true gods.

An Ur-Root trip starts off with minor visual distortion, which turns into shifting fractals that slowly obscure the vision. Eventually the senses are entirely taken over by a 'tunnel' of rapidly shifting fractals and geometries. In a complete trip, the experiencer gets a sense that they have been pushed through a membrane and entered another realm, finding themselves in a distinct experiential Space.

At this point they may encounter entities which communicate to them in a language impossible to describe but wholly understood. These beings are understood to be the Giants, or at least aspects of the Giants that mortals are capable of comprehending (they often take familiar tutelary forms of the Mantis or the Snake, or appear resembling the same type of sophont that the experiencer is, all composed of ever-shifting geometries). The experiencer often feels a sense of unconditional and endless love from these beings, though the Giants may be more hostile and may appear in the form of the Trickster (usually a cultural figure regarded as malicious, be it an animal or otherwise) in a bad trip.

(^Up until this point, this has mostly just been a DMT 'breakthrough' experience ft. 'machine elves' and the like).

They are then removed from this space and returned to something that feels like the real world, but is nearly unrecognizable. They have a sense of rapidly moving through time, and will usually see 'the spires' towards the beginning, which just so happen to look like this:

(source + some context via Implication- the spires are exactly what this art is depicting)

The experiencer continues to move across an unfathomable amount of time, occasionally 'seeing' other such flashes of unfamiliar landscapes and creatures, and yet also being devoid of all their senses, the 'seeing' is pure, unfiltered experience. There is a sense of interconnectedness with all life, and that one has become the forest (or even Life) itself. The sense of time is wildly distorted, the trip lasts only about 5 minutes but feels like an eternity and is understood as literal hundreds of millions of years.

The experiencer has usually lost any remaining sense of Self and individual consciousness during this phase (in which case this time distortion is usually a neutral or even peaceful experience), but some retain a fraction of their identity, and find themselves trapped and conscious while experiencing what feels like eternity (which can be LIFE-CHANGINGLY distressing, even after the fact).

(^This latter part of the trip is the effects of the Ur-Tree fungus).

The trip ends with a sense of rushing through the ground and back up into one's body, at which point they will abruptly return to their senses and consciousness. The details are then immediately retrieved via interview and recorded in immense detail. The whole experience is understood as having been full comprehension of the Dreamlands, communion with the Giants, and then a tour through the act of creation.

This is done as part of the initiatory practice into the inner mystery-religion of the scholars, and as needed for study by high scholar-priests. It is not taken lightly, both as it is absolute communion with the gods and reality, and in that it can be a very, very difficult experience. People who have gone through this often walk away with a permanently shifted perspective, often in a positive and/or comforting way- a sense of interconnectedness with all life, a peace with the concept of death, seeing less of a point in individual ego and the concept of Self, and comfort in the sense of divine love they (may have) experienced. This heavily influences the philosophy of the Scholars and has had effects by proxy in the religious worldviews of the region.

Details of this experience are closely guarded, and initiates are given absolutely no prior knowledge and expectations for their trip. This is seen as a necessity- their naivety will allow for a true, unfiltered experience, and can be used to gauge whether they should or should not be accepted. Those that have a distinctly bad trip upon initiation may be assumed to have been 'rejected' by the giants and thus denied full priesthood, though this largely depends on How they interpret their distressing trip- those who identify this as a test and harsh lesson in a journey to enlightenment may be accepted (as this is how fully initiated scholar-priests interpret and handle their bad trips).

This inner priesthood is only a small fraction of the Scholarly Order, and its greater function is as a hub of education and repository of knowledge, and Scholar-trained doctors can provide some of the best medical care available in the setting ('best medical care in this setting' only means so much but it's pretty solid, relatively speaking). Only a chosen few Scholars ever get to commune with the Ur-Root, and most of the divine secrets revealed in the process are kept hidden (though they indirectly influence the politics and worldview of the entire order).

[hiccupologist]

[looking at fictional character who places a lot of value on being imposing and threatening] okay but what if they got the hiccups at an inopportune time

[margindoodles2407]

so here's the deal guys. in the past week i reread my way through prisoner of azkaban, goblet of fire, order of the phoenix, and half-blood prince. i am currently halfway through deathly hallows. and as i was eleven the last time i seriously read harry potter. i forgot that it allows me to unlock secret shrimp emotions that humans aren't normally capable of feeling

[transgenbur]

i need a real life boygirlfriend who isnt cwilbur. @god can we get on this

[zeb-z]

The thing about Forever and Bad is that they don't know how to deescalate, and they start at 100 straight from 0 every time with each other. They will spend hours arguing about semantics that don't matter. They will go to the extreme ends of pranks (which as fun as the audio remixes were, spending hours trying to find the source was literal hell genuine psychological torment). They will go for the throat just to antagonize the other.

So no, I don't think Forever knows a thing about Dapper or the other eggs whereabouts. He just knows better about the way Bad operates, the way he lies and deflects. He's familiar with his crafty words and how he turns a conversation on its head. He knows that what Bad is being accused of is entirely likely, that he is not who he usually is when the eggs are around. And he knows that Dapper, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is who Bad cares for most of all.

This isn't something he can argue hours about, to chip away little by little like he usually does. For both the safety of the worker, because the longer they're locked up surely the worse off they'll be - and for the safety of Bad, who if he wasn't under extreme watch by the Federation, he certainly is now, after Tubbo very loudly accused him in his Federation office.

He goes for the throat, immediately playing a trump card that he knows Bad won't just brush off or ignore, because as much as Bad can be unpredictable, Forever knows that Bad cares about the eggs as much as he does. As questionable as his morals are, as slippery as he can be to pin down, Bad has always placed the eggs as the highest priority - and he needs Bad to have no choice but to be honest, or to knock him off guard enough that he'll give him something to work with.

Is it fair? Maybe not. But when has Bad ever played fair with him?

[krisrampersad]

When Your World View is the World's View! Happy New Year!

When Your World View is the World's View tuned in from every corner of the world. Look out for more creative stimulants in the New Year 2024!

When You World View is the World’s View! Happy New Year! As we say goodbye to 2023, thank you for tuning in! Look out for more creative stimulants in the New Year, even as we reflect on a year that has drawn you into the GloCaL Knowledge Pot where the world’s minds meet from virtually every corner of the world, as the map indicates. We have moved from being just an incubator to a fermenting…