#I NEED the class in read because i want real analysis because i want measure theory because i want to take a grad level stochastics class

[taohun]

IT'S SO FUCKING OVER.

[a-room-of-my-own]

A while before the latest hoo-ha about Judith Butler, I had just been reading her again. Though she claims her critics have not read her, this simply isn’t the case. I read Gender Trouble when it first came out and it was important at the time . That time was long,long ago. She was just one of the many ‘post-structuralist’ thinkers I was into. I would trip off to see  Luce Irigaray or Derrida whenever they appeared.

I got an interview  with Baudrillard and tried to sell it to The Guardian but they  didn’t know who he was so its fair to say I was fairly immersed in that world of theory.  For a while, I had a part time lecturing job so I had to keep on top of it. Though Butler’s idea of gender as performance was not new , it was interesting.  RuPaul said it so much more clearly in a  quote nicked from  someone else “Honey ,we are born naked, the rest is drag”

What I was looking for again , I guess is not any clarity – her writing is famously and deliberately difficult-  but whether there was ever any sense of the material body. She wrote herself in 2004 “I confess however I am not a very good materialist. Every time I try to write about the body, the writing ends up being about language” . 

Butler from on high ,cannot really think about the body at all which is why they (Butler’s chosen pronoun) are now the high priestess of a particular kind of trans ideology.  The men who worship Butler are not versed in high theory. The fox botherer had a “brain swoon” at some very ordinary things Butler said. Mr Right Side of history nodded along in an interview. Clearly neither of these men are versed in any of this philosophy and would be better off sticking to tax law and the decline of the Labour Party. Butler is simply a totem for them.

Butler said in the Guardian interview for instance  “Gender is an assignment that does not just happen once: it is ongoing. We are assigned a sex at birth and then a slew of expectations follow which continue to “assign” gender to us.”

So yeah? That’s a fairly basic view of the social construction of gender though I take issue with the assigned at birth thing ,which I will come back to and why I started reading her again in the first place.

This phrase “Assigned sex at birth” is now common parlance but simply does not make sense  to me. I am living with someone who is pregnant. I have given birth three times and been a birthing  partner. I know where babies come from. There is a deep disconnect here between language and reality which no amount of academic jargon can obliterate. 

Babies  come from bodies. Not any bodies but bodies that have a uterus. They grew inside a woman’s body until they  get pushed out or dragged out into the world. 

The facts of life that we are now to be liberated from in the form of denial. Only one sex can have babies but we must now somehow not say that. The pregnant “people” of Texas will now be forced into giving birth to children they don’t want because they are simply “host bodies”. The language of patriarchal supremacy and that of some of the trans ideologues is remarkably close, as is their biological ignorance.

There is no foetal heatbeat at six weeks for instance. When a baby is born , doctors and midwives do not randomly assign a sex, they observe it and they do it though genitalia. 

There is a question over a tiny percentage of babies ,less that one percent with DSDs but even then they are sexed with doctors having  difficult conversations with parents about what may happen later.

Somehow, though when I read the way in which this is now all discussed it is clear to me that the people talking have never been pregnant, never had a foetal scan, never been near a birth , never miscarried, do not understand that even with a still birth babies are still sexed and often named. 

If you want to know the sex of your baby you can pay privately and know at 7 weeks ((*49-56 days from the first day of the mother’s last menstrual cycle). A 12 week scan will show it. That is why so many female foetuses are aborted . I have reported on this. 

Talking to paediatricians about this is interesting because they do indeed have to think through these things that we are being told are not real eg. that sex is just a by-product of colonialism for instance.  Sometimes pre-conception , geneticists will be looking at chromosomes because certain diseases are more likely in men or women. Males have a higher risk of haemophilia for instance.  

One doctor told me “When babies are premature, the survival advantage of females over males is well known throughout neonatology. This is sometimes something we talk about with parents when there is threatened premature labour around 23 weeks' gestation and options to discuss about resuscitation and medical interventions. In fertility treatment (or counselling around fertility in the context of medical treatments) it is pretty inherent to know whether we need to plan around sperm, or ova + pregnancy.”

She also said that if she involved in a birth that “assigning” isn’t the word she world use. “Observed genitals a highly reliable observation, just like measuring weight or head circumference which is also done at this time. “ Another doctor said that anyone involved with a trans man giving birth  would be doing the best for the patient in front  of them. 

Sex then is biological fact. A female baby will have all the eggs she will ever have when she is first born which is kind of amazing. It is not bio-essentialist to say that our sexed bodies are different nor is it transphobic to recognise it.

Except of course in my old newspaper ,The Guardian who are now so hamstrung by their  own ideology they have got their knickers in such a twist they can barely walk.  They completely misreported the WiSpa incident , basically ignored the Sonia  Appleby  judgement at the Tavistock. Appleby was a whistle blower ,a respected professional concerned with safe guarding. She won her case. The cherry on the cake this week was an interview with Butler, themselves (?) in which they went on about Terfs being fascists and needing to extend the category of women.

Does anyone EVER stop to think that most gender critical women are of the left, supporters of gay rights, often lesbian and that this is not America? We are not in bed with the far right. This is bollocks. Just another way to dismiss us.  

As we watch Afghanistan and Texas ,to say Butler’s words were tone deaf is to say the least. But they didn’t even have the guts to keep the most offensive stuff in the piece and overnight edited it out without really explaining why : the bits where Butler described gender critical people as fascist. Perhaps because the person their “reporters” had  defended against  transphobia at WiSpa turned out to be a known sex offender,  perhaps because someone pointed out that Butler was throwing around the word fascist rather like Rik Mayall used to do in the Young Ones. 

All of this is rather desperate and readers deserve better. When I left that newspaper I said that I thought and expected editors to stand up for their writers in public. Instead they go into some catatonic paralysis. I may have not liked this interview but it should never have been cut. Stand by what you publish or your credibility is shot.

But this is about more than Judith Butler and their refusal to support women . Butler is not really any kind of feminist at all. What this is about is the large edifice of trans ideology  crumbling when any real analysis is applied. Yes, I have read Shon Faye’s book and there are some interesting points in it and I totally agree that the lives of trans people should be easier and health care better . I have never said anything but that.

What Faye does in the book is say that there can be no trans liberation under capitalism so there will be a bit of a wait I suspect. 

Yet surely it is the other way round and what we are seeing is that trans ideology (not trans people – I am making a distinction here ) represent the apex of capitalism .

For it means that the individual decides their own gendered essence and then spends a fortune on surgery and a lifetime on medication to achieve the appearance of it. Of course lots of people spend a lifetime  on medication but not out of choice.  Marx understood very well that the abolition of our system of production would free up women.

Now it is all about freeing up men. Who say they are women. Quelle surprise.  

 Nussbaum’s famous take down of Butler is premised exactly on the sense of individual versus collective struggle “ The great tragedy in the new feminist theory in America is the loss of a sense of public commitment. In this sense, Butler’s self-involved feminism is extremely American, and it is not surprising that it has caught on here, where successful middle-class people prefer to focus on cultivating the self rather than thinking in a way that helps the material condition of others. “

Such thinking now dominates academia. There is simply an unquestioning  rehearsal of something most of know not to be true thus Amia Srinivasan writes in The Right to Sex  “At birth, bodies are sorted as ‘male’ or ‘female’, though many bodies must be mutilated to fit one category or the other, and many bodies will later protest against the decision that was made. This originary division determines what social purpose a body will be assigned.”

What does ‘sorted’ mean here? A tiny number of intersex babies are born. A tiny number of people are trans and decide to change their bodies. The feminist demand to challenge gender norms without mutilating any one’s body no longer matters. What matters now is this retrograde return  to some gendered soul. This is not something any decent Marxist would have any truck with . Of course one may change over a lifetime and of course gender is never ‘settled.’ We are complex people who inhabit bodies that often don’t work or appear as we want them to.

But not only is there a denial of basic Marxism going on here , what becomes ever more apparent is  that there is a denial of motherhood. Butler said “Yet gender is also what is made along the way – we can take over the power of assignment, make it into self-assignment, which can include sex reassignment at a legal and medical level.”

Self-assignment is key . One may birth oneself. No longer of woman born but self -made. This is a theoretical leap but it also one that has profound implications for women as a sex class. We are really then, just the  host bodies to a new breed of people who self-assign.

Maybe that is the future although look around the word and there isn’t a lot of self-assignment going on. There are simply women shot and beaten in the street, choked to death or having  their rights taken  away. There is no identifying out of this , there is no fluidity here . This is not discourse. It is brutality and do we not have some responsibility to other women to confront male violence ?

Instead the hatred is aided and abetted by so called philosophers describing  other women as Terfs. It is utterly depressing.

The sexed body. The pregnant body. The dying body. The body is in trouble when we can’t talk about it . I thought of Margaret Mary O’Hara’s  beautiful and  strange lyrics and what they might mean. I await my child’s return from the hospital as hers is a difficult pregnancy and thank god they are on the case. The sex of the child she carries does not matter to me at all .

It simply exists. Not in language but within a body. 

Why is that so difficult to acknowledge? 

[pickedproducttblr-blog]

7 best cheap golf simulators Under $1000 in 2021 – [Tested]

The golfer would love to have their own golf simulator setup, but unfortunately many aren’t able to afford mid-range simulators because the mid-range simulator price near about $5000. On the other hand, many golfers want to practice day or night but aren’t willing to pay more than $1000.

If you belong in this category then this article suits you. However, as golf simulator technology has advanced, very cheap solutions have appeared in the market.

There are some cheapest golf simulators available in the market to help you improve or enjoy golf in this COVID-19 situation, and in this article, I’ll review and compare our picks for the best golf simulator for under $1000 and some even are less than $500 bucks.

Things you should keep in mind before choosing best cheap golf simulators

Before we go further, you ought to understand that you'll get a limited experience with these sorts of cheap golf simulators. Some devices measures some shot data, simulation software, and maybe a net or mat, but not much more than this. Detailed shot data and more extra features you will get on a high-budgets simulator like SkyTark Golf Simulator, Trackman Golf, etc. But you don’t get advanced features on the cheap golf simulators. However, you’ll still get good experience and these cheap golf simulators can get your job done in terms of improving your game. We have tested all of those simulator setups. Some offer fewer features than others, but all of them give an exceptional home/outdoor golf simulators experience for the cost.

1. OptiShot 2 Golf Simulator for Home | Golf in A Box Series

Key Features:

Expanding library with 15 world-class golf courses.

Ability to play up to 4 players.

3D realistic environment.

Hit all shots from tee to hole.

Play with your own setup.

Practice shots from anywhere on the course.

Size: 1.5M long x 1.2M wide

High-quality dense foam and turf

Lightweight, easy to store, and has firm foam-based.

What’s Included:

Golf Simulation Software by Dancin’ Dogg

Infrared Optical Golf Simulator Swing Pad

OptiShot Practice Net.

OptiShot Hitting Mat

USB Cable, 10 feet long.

2 foam practice balls.

2 adjustable rubber tees.

Pros

Best visuals and course options

Training academy adds to the practice options

Only true studio system under $1000.

Comes as a package box and just plug it in and play

Swing stats with distance, speed, path, and clubface angle

Play online against other golfers

Cons

Doesn’t track actual ball flight, so you can miss launch angle

Graphics aren’t as good as other simulator sets

2. Rapsodo Mobile Launch Monitor for Golf Indoor and Outdoor

Key Features:

Professional-level accuracy: Distance accuracy is within 2.5% similar to Trackman, which is more than $30,000.

Set up within the 30s — Simply open the app, connect to your device via Bluetooth and start playing.

The instant real-time video feedback comes with a shot trace and data overlay which makes it easier to understand cause and effect.

Access your history to view averages, trajectory, dispersion, and standard deviation for each of your clubs.

Gps satellite view.

You can use it at home and outdoor also.

Pros

Very cheap price, under $500.

High quality and accurate

Whatever you needed, included in the box.

Can use your own sets

100% portability

Cons

Only compatible with ios(iPhone, iPad) devices.

Need a computer for a permanent home setup.

3. Rapsodo R-Motion and The Golf Club Simulator and Swing Analyzer

Key Features:

Play real rounds of golf with your friends by attaching your own clubs.

15 top courses included.

Incredibly accurate club and ball data.

Runs on your PC — no launch monitor or projector needed. 4 hours long battery life.

Extremely easy to use — just provide your own mat and net and start playing!

Play any time, no matter the weather.

What’s Included:

1 sensor

Clip

USB dongle

Charging cord

Pros

The incredible accuracy of the simulator

High-quality graphics

Software quality is also good

Cons

Don’t support Mac

Some users failed to connect to PC

4. FlightScope Mevo — Portable Personal Launch Monitor for Golf

Key Features:

You can use it at home, on the driving range, or even on the course.

MEASURE: It provides accurate real-time performance data to help you train and improve with every club in the bag.

EVALUATE Data parameters that include carrying distance, clubhead speed, ball speed, smash factor, vertical launch angle, spin, apex height, and flight time.

Automatically capture data and video on your mobile device.

Save and compare data over time to trace your progress.

Your videos and data are captured and stored automatically, allowing you to review each session, share together with your coach, and analyze your progress over time.

Real-Time Performance Data includes:

Carry distance

Clubhead speed

Ball speed

Spin rate

Launch angle

Smash factor

Apex height

Flight time

Pros

Very affordable

Usable on all OS

Truly portable system, using GPS for swing data analysis

A small device fits in your pocket or golf bag.

Cons

Accuracy can be affected sometimes by monitor placement.

Metallic stickers must be attached to every ball hit, which can take time

5. tittle X Home Golf Simulator 2021

Key Features:

The best home cheapest golf simulator has E6 Connect with 4K ultra-high definition.

Provides real screen golf experiences in various practice modes.

An impressive reaction rate of 0.1 sec provides no delay in data transfer.

The smart stick offers the ability to play golf at home.

Up to 8 people can play golf with this simulator.

Title X home simulator analyzes your swing with a fancy designed lightweight sensor.

What’s Included:

Title X Device

Swing Stick

E6 Connect Product Key

Charger Cable and Manual

Multi Clip and Bands

Fixed 4 Clips

Pros

Simple design, easy to use

12 courses included with purchase

Instant, live feedback on every swing.

Cons

Without a computer, you can analyze data

6. Phigolf Mobile and Home Smart Golf Game Simulator

Key Features:

Connect the app to your TV and immerse yourself in realistic golf courses available fully HD.

Enjoy a round of golf without the necessity for extra setup. Use the swing trainer included within the Phigolf WGT Edition and begin playing without nets or balls.

With the swing trainer measuring only 2 ft, Phigolf WGT Edition allows you to enjoy golf in your own front room.

Bad weather won’t stop you from having fun. Play golf anytime, anywhere; challenge your friends online — all at the comfort of your house.

What’s Included:

Game Simulator

Swing Stick

Pros

Realistic

Can play in your home

Has multiple practice options

Really cheap

Cons

Doesn’t allow the use of real clubs or balls

Can only be used indoors and not on range or course

7. Matro Home Screen Golf Practice and Playing Simulator Tmax Swing Baro

Key Features:

You can play golf at your home or office or wherever together with your loved ones at any time.

Courses and Ranges Are ahead of You — This amazing unit can bring the golf courses and driving ranges into your home or office, wherever you’re in by TV connection.

Easy reference to TV and Just Play Golf — Connect main body with TV by HDMI cable and just play golf, no need internet or computer.

Perfect Equipment for The Novice and Experienced Golfer — it’s great to play and practice golf for both the novice and therefore the experienced golfer.

What’s Included:

Playing Simulator Tmax Swing Baro

Sensor, sensor clip

Practice stick

Pros

Multi-functional

Usable at home

Very easy to set-up

Affordable

Cons

Doesn’t allow the use of real clubs or balls

Can’t be used on range or course

Conclusion

Golf simulators became a lot more accessible and affordable over the past decade, and this suggests more golfers than ever before are ready to have their own personal setup.

Even a cheap golf simulator is often a huge boon to your golf toolkit. Finding a simulator package that may meet your needs is certainly possible with some research.

Each of the simulator options reviewed above offers excellent value for the price. We’ve given you the information you would like to create a decision; now it’s up to you to go the remainder of the way.

While it’s likely that no golf simulator setup will tick all of your boxes, some will come pretty near to doing so. If you wish for an excellent better experience, consider increasing your budget.

We highly recommend reading consumer and professional reviews of golf simulators to accumulate useful insights on how they really perform. this can assist you a lot within the decision-making process.

FAQ

What type of computer do I need? Can it be used on a Mac/iPhone/iPad?

Each system will have its own list of minimum system requirements. generally, though, you’ll need Windows 7 or later, 4gig of RAM, and a minimum of 1gig of disk drive space. an honest graphics card is going to be required to point out the courses in high definition, and you’ll need a powerful processor just like the Intel i5 or newer. Most of the listed systems here will work on Mac also as Windows PCs. However, you ought to double-check with the manufacturer before making a sale.

Will, I should buy these golf simulators?

No. Each listed simulator comes with everything you want to have to play, with the exception of mobile apps and computers. Of course, you’ll also need your own golf clubs to play, and you’ll always prefer to purchase more courses.

[gamesception]

So, the Infinity Train is bad, right? Not the show, the show is great, but the train itself within the show.

Spoilers, below.

Including spoilers for the end of season 3.

Like, ok, it's trying to help people work through emotional problems and maladjusted/antisocial personality traits.  Benevolent intentions, at least when humans are concerned, seem sincere enough.  And sure, it worked for Tulip & Jesse.  But while maybe not deliberately malicious, the train is trying to serve a moral function with an automated, amoral system that doesn’t work and is fundamentally inhumane.

Especially to the denizens it creates.  However artificial they may be, seasons 2 and 3 especially make clear that they are fully realized actual people, and the train just makes them up on a whim and suborns their entire existence to the passenger's personal growth. Life for a lot of denizens is pretty horrific. Not just Lake being hunted, but kick-me toad, the wind guy, several denizens seem created to suffer an existentially nightmarish existence so that their suffering can teach some passenger a moral. Even the ones that aren't created to suffer still face perpetual risk from ghoms, passengers, & other dangers of the train, and are still trapped in a single car, or risk being forever separated from that home by the movement of cars if they ever leave it. Even if the system works to help humans, creating an entire subordinate class of fully sapient creatures and then treating them as expendable tools in furtherance of that goal is kind of horrific & bad?

And that's before you consider that therapy train isn't even very good at what it does. Like, looking at the memory tapes we've seen, the things that land people on the train aren't that bad? Like, they're bad and all, but they're still things that people can and do work through and overcome in the plain old regular ass world. None of that shit seems like stuff that would be easier to work through with the help of isolation from human contact and regular mortal peril. The success rate among characters we've met isn't especially high, and one one himself has admitted that, statistically, passengers are more likely to die than they are to get their numbers to zero and get off the train.

Which would be bad enough if the passengers were adults, but most of them are little children! Which, like, of course. Because whatever inhuman system is choosing the passengers seems to key in on self centered behavior and uncontrolled emotional outbursts as criteria for passengers, and sure those are signs of maladjustment in adults, but they're also just normal conditions of children and young teens who are still developing socially and emotionally?

In season one, it could be readily imagined that the train only picked up people who were otherwise going to die. Tulip ran off into the snowy night in Wisconsin & easily could have frozen if not picked up by the train. Amelia, standing next to the tracks before the train even appeared, seemed like she could have been contemplating suicide. And based on that reading, the risk of death is slightly more forgivable. But implied in season 2 and explicitly in season 3, the train can pick up anyone at any time, so yeah, you could easily imagine a kid lashing out from some traumatic abuse they can’t process ending up on the train to become monster food when without the train some teacher or counselor could have intervened to actually help them.

We don't get to see Simon's backstory before the train, but according to the numbers, it wasn't as bad as what happened to Grace, and wasn't all that far removed from Tulip's issues with her parents. Could any bad thing he did before entering the train have justified the traumas he was subjected to from the moment he got there?  Did he really have a better chance on the train than he would have had off of it? Yeah, he made his choices, I'm not saying he "didn't deserve" his fate, but how did any of the stuff he went through constitute helping him?  Not all of this can be blamed on Amelia’s usurpation of the train.  Even without One One, Tulip shows that the train was more or less working as normal outside of the cars Amelia directly tampered with, and even after One One was back as conductor, the dangers of the train - from flecs to ghoms to laval moles - were still very real.

And if the train wasn’t helping Simon, that only makes all the suffering that it allowed various denizens to experience at his hands by abducting him in the first place all the more unforgivable, since there was never a point to him being on the train at all. Unless he was only there to serve Grace's growth?  There’s not a lot of reason to think that, but it is a possibility since without Simon reflecting her worst actions back to her, Grace might never have grown in the way she did.  Was that an accident, or intentional on the train’s part, with Simon’s fate an acceptable cost of Grace’s redemption?  If it was that would only be worse, since then the train then wouldn’t just be failing to recognize that it's own creations matter as much as humans that exist apart from it, it's also actively choosing to damn some humans to save others.  Either the train is dangerously incompetent, or actively malicious here.

Or consider the flecs, the ‘mirror police’ antagonists for most of season 2. I doubt many felt bad for them when they died. After all, they chose to become flecs, and chose to repeatedly try to murder Lake just for wanting her own life.  Unlike Simon we don't see a string of humanizing traumas driving them towards those choices. But did they actually choose any of that?

In s2e8, Mace questions not just Lake's existence, but the entire existence of the mirror world, implying that their memories and personalities are as artificial as their bodies, constructs created by the train to teach a passenger a lesson. He drives the questions at Lake, but the same reasoning could be applied to him. Did Mace become a flec after his prime died, or are those memories fake, and he was always a flec, created by the train to be a villain in a little morality play for Tulip's & later Jesse's benefit? Did Mace ever really have the choice to be anything other than the monster he was? And even if he did, would that absolve the train of a measure of guilt in creating Mace to be that monster in the first place? Did the train intend for him to catch and kill Lake after Tulip & Jesse had returned home, cleaning up loose ends? One One seemed to jump at the chance to let Lake off the train once her trick of reflecting Jesse's number provided an adequate excuse, but before that he also seemed perfectly willing to go with Sieve's suggestion of resolving the conflict by just killing her.

Again, that’s not to say the flecs didn’t deserve their fates, or that it was wrong of Lake to kill them.  Mace in particular questioned the entire purpose and reality of the mirror world, which means he had the self awareness and philosophical insight needed to question and reject the role the train had created him for, and even while dying he instead chooses to use that insight as just another way to vindictively deny Lake’s person-hood. He chooses to be every bit the monster he was created to be, and Sieve makes the same choice even seeing the fate that it led Mace to.  They didn’t “deserve better”, but them choosing to embrace their predetermined villainous roles doesn’t reduce the train’s accountability for creating them to fill those roles in the first place.

So yeah, Trauma Train is a fantastic show - imo s2 is still the best, but s1 and s3 are both very solid. But within that show the train itself is a dangerously negligent therapist and a willfully unjust deity, and if Infinity Train does get future seasons I hope that aspect gets further explored and deconstructed.  And I think it will be.  Like, I don’t think any of this analysis is an unintended edgy dark reading for the heck of it.  Season one could have left you with a neutral or positive impression of the train, but the fundamental systemic injustice of the train is, like, the explicit text of season 2, and while Lake managed to trick her way free, the underlying system she fought to free herself from is still in place in season 3.

That said, I kind of hope one way or the other that the show is done with grizzly on-screen deaths. There's a lot of good lessons for kids in the show, important stuff about handling life changes, dealing with grief, the importance of self identity & self determination. And much like the train is a bad therapist for trying to traumatize its victims into self improvement, the show becomes a bad vehicle for the lessons it's trying to teach if the scenes of shocking violence are what stick most firmly in younger viewers memories.

[slliest-clownmari]

Hello again! For the month of June we decided to don our best Icarus costumes because we flew directly into the sun on this one! Extra long disclaimer this time. If you're interested in the technical side what we did and how it went wrong, or want to see the raw numbers, that'll be at the bottom of this post!

Disclaimer: There were two major errors during collection. The first one resulted in five people's views not being collected for the first half hour of the event.  These people were SMajor/Noxcrew, ItsFunneh, Squaishey, ASFJerome, and Mefs, amounting to about 56k views when added back. The second error left a 45 minute gap in the data where nothing is collected. While these are major errors general trends are still visible and neat to look at!

TL;DR: MCCP21 peaked with 627.4k viewers a little more than thirty minutes into the event. 65.4% of those viewers were watching the Pink Parrots, and 87.9% of those were watching Technoblade. The second most watched team was the Lime Llamas at 16.9% of viewership, 77.6% of that coming from Wisp.

For easier viewing of the graphs, check out the Google Slides version! Total Viewership Over Time

The event peaked with 627,421 viewers at 8:33PM which was during Sky Battle. Looking at the trend of the data, this statistic is unlikely to have changed if the missing 45 minutes had been counted, especially seeing how the peak of MCC14 was also easily in the first hour.  Data collection began about an hour before the event's official start at 8:00PM and ended an hour after the event's end at 11:08PM.

Viewership by Individual Over Time

A fun game you can play with this graph, sans the labels, is guess which one's Technoblade! So far everyone I've shown the unlabelled graph to has guessed correct.

Three people went live after the official start time of the event at 8:00PM, those being Technoblade, Grian, and AyChristeneGames. Four streamers had gone offline prior to the end of 20vs20 Dodgebolt at 11:08PM. Twenty of the 24 participants had gone offline within 5 minutes of the event end. This is in sharp contrast to MCC14 where it took 15 minutes to have half of the 36 participants to go offline. MCC14 participants were also more likely to start streaming well in advance of the event. (For context, only Twitch data was collected for MCC14.) This is probably a cultural difference between Youtube and Twitch.

Viewership by Team Over Time

The viewership drop off after a team fails to reach Dodgebolt is a lot more severe this time, and you don't really see the two teams who did get to Dodgebolt get a boost either. Best guess is this is because MCCP21 was non-canon so nobody really cared who won the whole thing if their favorites didn't make it. Another observation: Pink Parrots has a much more severe dropoff during the Bird App Poll than everyone else. Unseen here is the viewership increase when Wilbur's fire alarm went off :(

Viewership Breakdown at Peak by Individual

So, not the most diverse viewership. The most watched person at peak in MCC14, Tommyinnit, only had 21.1% of total viewership. Even if you combine that percentage with the runner-up Dream's numbers, you only get 38.4% of viewership going to them. There is not a single team from MCC14 who captured nearly 57.5% of the viewership. The most they could do was 39.9% (Green Guardians). Absolutely insane degree of domination.

Top Five (Unrouned) 1. Technoblade (360.8k) 2. Wisp (82.2k) 3. Grian (45.5k) 4. ItsFunneh (44.9k) 5. Joey Graceffa (23.5k)

Bottom Five 26. Burren (78) 25. SeaPeeKay (333) 24. Spifey (403) 25. AyChristeneGames (498) 26. InTheLittleWood (521)

Wisp's numbers were so hugely different from last time (0.1% to 13.1%) that I actually sought out people who watched him to confirm he really had over 70k viewers. He did. This probably has to do with having fewer big names to compete with and being on a team with Tommy and Tubbo. Plus, he’s more familiar to the Minecraft community than Joey Graceffa, so fans of Tommy and Tubbo would be more likely to watch Wisp to see their faves. This isn't meant to belittle Wisp or to attribute his viewership entirely to Tommy or Tubbo; MCC is an unfair measurement of the usual popularity of a creator.

Viewership Breakdown at Peak by Team vs Survey Data

The predicted viewership graph was generated using data from a poll I ran on Tumblr and a poll run by u/Epic_Ninja_Dude123 on r/MinecraftChampionship.

Difference from predicted counts (Pred. % vs Actu. %) Lime Llamas: +9.1% (7.8% vs 16.9%) Green Guardians: +6.3% (0.9% vs 7.2%) Purple Pandas: -6.3% (6.7% vs 0.4%) Orange Ocelots: -5.1% (5.5% vs 0.4%) Red Rabbits: -4.1% (6.2% vs 2.1%) Blue Bats: -1.9% (2.5% vs 0.6%) Aqua Axolotls: +1.3% (2.5% vs 3.8%) Pink Parrots: +0.9% (64.5% vs 65.4%) Yellow Yaks: +0.5% (0.0% vs 0.5%) Cyan Creepers: -0.3% (3.2% vs 2.9%)

Standard Dev. for MCC14: 10.22 Standard Dev. for MCCP21: 2.89

Thrilled by these statistics!! The MCC14 survey had nearly triple the sample size (862) as this combined survey, but still ended up closer to actual counts. Real life proof of what they tell you in stats classes! A representative sample is the best kind of sample to have. Something I did not consider when using the survey for MCC14 is its source, a blog on Tumblr that talks heavily about Technoblade and Philza, which obviously biased the audience who took it towards the Pink Parrots (Philza, Fundy, Wilbur, JackManifold). Not a surprise we did better this time but really neat to see logic in action! lol

Another interesting thing about the survey: Reddit and Tumblr do vary a little in taste. It's easier to just show you:

What's missing? I chose not to calculate average/median viewership for the creators involved due to the large gap in data. It wouldn't be correct most likely.

So, how did you do this and how did you mess it up?

(I, the writer of this post, mostly do the analysis part of this project, not the programming. Apologies if any programmers are reading this and it doesn't make sense. :[ )

Our initial plan was do do just what we did to collect the MCC14 data but for YouTube instead of Twtich. (For MCC14 we used a Python program to request the viewership data directly from Twitch using their API.) This was much easier said than done. Unlike the Twitch API, which allows you to get stream information very easily just using a streamer's name, YouTube API doesn't have a "front door" way of getting this stuff. So, we went in the "back door."

First thing we had to do was manually collect the user ID for each participant. The next step is where the first error occurred: we needed to get our program to recognize the user ID as a user ID, which was done by writing a rule. This was stuff like how long the IDs were and what symbols were included in the IDs. We failed to include a symbol that was present in five of the participant's user IDs, so the program didn't recognize them as IDs and didn't run them through the part of the program which found the stream ID and collected viewer numbers. This is why that data was missing for SMajor/Noxcrew, ItsFunneh, Squaishey, ASFJerome, and Mefs in the first 30 minutes.

Another big way in which the YouTube API differs from the Twitch API is that YouTube has a quota system. Every action you can take with the API has a certain number of points connected to it, and you're only given so many points to spend a day per application. We thought we were only making one call to get viewer data for every streamer, but instead we were making a separate call for each streamer. That destroyed our quota pretty quick, resulting in the 45 minute gap in data collection. This problem was solved by moving our code into another application which granted us more quota.

This is an important lesson in testing your programs thoroughly before use!

On the bright side, the YouTube API is much more active than the Twitch API, which would update streamer numbers seemingly at random and not all at once. The YouTube API updated numbers roughly every 15 seconds and updated for all streamers, not just a few. That's why our graphs are higher resolution this time!

Here is the raw numbers: Click me!

Let's talk about next time

SO. Obviously this time around was not super ideal, which is partially on us for not testing more. (At least this was not the only scuffed thing about MCCP21. We were just being on brand, if you think about it.) However! Good news! The quota won't be a problem next time as MCC15 won't be Youtube exclusive.   We have already fixed the YouTube program we used this time around and have begun to merge the two. We might even be able to collect YouTube subscribers and Twitch followers by next time but we're focusing on making sure we get all the data next time.

Thank you all so much for reading! Again, any and all critique and questions are welcome! :]

[marjanefan]

‘It’s only a tin full of Humans’- an Analysis of ‘Sardines’

Spoilers- please only read after watching 'Sardines'

Sardines was the first ever episode of ‘Inside No.9’ to be both filmed and broadcast (if I am correct it was the pilot episode for the show). The episode is a terrific statement of intent. It illustrated how Pemberton and Shearsmith would use a single location to skilfully tell a complex story and how they would manage to take the narrative of each episode in surprising and frequently dark directions.

Shearsmith and Pemberton have spoken about the fact that the original intention was to write an episode to see how many characters they could fit into the wardrobe. They managed a very impressive twelve. To this day this remains the largest cast of named characters of any Inside No. 9 episode. You can absolutely enjoy the episode for the way the wardrobe gets more and more full and the social comedy of the interactions this causes. It carries on the tradition of dark social farces of Alan Ayckbourn. Pemberton and Shearsmith have both appeared in stage productions of Ayckbourn plays (indeed Pemberton actually appeared in Ayckbourn’s ‘Season’s Greetings’ alongside Katherine Parkinson) . Their long-time producer Jon Plowman suggested the dark ending.

The game of Sardines in this episode acts as a metaphor for the claustrophobia of the relationships between the characters. It is symbolic of people get trapped in a social situation with people they would rather avoid. Rebecca is forced to interact with her fiancé Jeremy’s ex -girlfriend Rachel and confront the fact he has not moved on from her. It is symbolic for the fact that several of the characters have secrets or agendas they want to hide from others that will eventually be revealed by this enforced closeness (such as Mark and Elizabeth who want to use Andrew to get a business deal). But most importantly it acts as a metaphor for the claustrophobic relationships caused by a significant secret involving several characters that is revealed at the end of the episode.

The ostensible plot of the episode concerns the character of Rebecca (played wonderfully by Katherine Parkinson) who is celebrating her engagement party. While Rebecca is the central character and we have a plot centred on her growing discomfort at her fiancé Jeremy’s apparent closeness to his ex girlfriend Rachel who is also attending the party, the episode actually turns out to be about something very different…

For it turns out the apparently mild mannered and socially awkward Ian (Tim Key) has decided to use the party as the occasion to take his revenge for the for abuse he suffered as a child. Tim Key is excellent as ‘Ian’ and he is absolutely chilling in the final moments of the episode.

But ‘Ian’/Pip (as I will call him) was not the only victim. The implication in is that Rebecca’s brother Carl ('We weren't all that lucky, were we John?') and John (Marc Wooton) were also abused by Rebecca and Carl’s father Andrew (brilliantly played by Timothy West). ‘Stinky’ John will not wash because the smell of soap reminds him of the abuse he suffered. John’s unwashed smell upsets the other characters not just because it is unpleasant but that it is an unconscious reminder that there is something amiss in these characters past (he quite literally creates a ‘stink’). It also explains Carl's fear of intimacy and his anger when Stuart confronts him about it (and why he gets annoyed when Stuart discusses the smell of carbolic soap with him). We also see he is deeply uncomfortable being back in his childhood home.

There are some clues early on that ‘Ian’/Pip is not what he seems. He makes several morbid jokes such as the date of Rebecca’s wedding being 11/9 and his initials being RIP. These are not just a product of his social awkwardness. They foreshadow his later murderous actions. He also acts in a creepy manner toward Rachel when asked if he is dating anyone (‘I’ve had some experiences’ could refer to his abuse)

It could be argued that ‘Ian’/Pip is the Id to Carl’s Superego. They look alike, are dressed similarly and both wear glasses. When ‘Ian’/Pip accidentally calls Rebecca a bxtch and apologises, Carl jokes he is right. ‘Ian’/Pip ‘misinterprets’ Rebecca’s explanation of Carl and Stuart being partners. This causes Stuart to explain in no uncertain terms what the nature of their relationship is (something Carl himself is unable to do). Carl is the one character that shows any sympathy or anger on Pip’s behalf at the end and he tries to talk to him when his identity is revealed. ‘Ian’/Pip starts singing the Sardine song (written by Spike Milligan) to reveal his identity and Carl’s anger when his father sings this song shows he also associates it with his abuse. It is no accident that ‘Ian’/Pip’s revenge happens at the very location that the abuse of several characters occurred. We see Carl’s discomfort at being in the room (which Rebecca picks up on). He also says he hid in the wardrobe as a child. So ‘Ian’/Pip’s actions also reflect Carl’s own anger at what happened to him and the people who hurt him.

Andrew is shown to be a powerful overbearing character. He thinks nothing of bullying everyone, forcing Stuart, Lee and John into the wardrobe (probably sealing all the characters fates), belittling Carl and shattering Mark’s business hopes. He refuses to admit he did anything wrong and cares nothing about Carl’s discomfort at his behaviour. Perhaps Andrew is so keen on the game of Sardines as it reflects how he enjoys controlling the actions of others and keeping them in a space where he has ultimate power. Similarly Rebecca seems keen on the game and forcing others to play it because it allows her a measure of control over them and events. She cannot control the situation with Jeremy and Rachel but she can make them play this game. As several reviewers have also noted Sardines is a children’s game so it says something about Rebecca she seems so keen on it and the other guests that they go along with the game. Geraldine mentions Rebecca and Carl’s sister Caroline, who is married with young sons, is not attending the party. Rebecca’s discomfort when this is pointed out may indicate Caroline is aware of Andrew’s abusive behaviour and does not want him around her and her children. She quite literally refuses to play the game and put herself into this claustrophobic unhealthy situation (saving herself from the assumed final fate of the characters in this episode).

The episode does include some pointed class commentary in the treatment of Geraldine (Anne Reid). She had been Rebecca and Carl’s nanny and assumes that she has been invited as a guest to honour her role in their life. She is not aware she is still perceived as a servant as she had actually been invited to serve drinks. Ian may be rude when he demands she serve him champagne but at least he is not being hypocritically polite like Rebecca. The other characters make fun of her appearance (‘feed the birds’) even though she has probably gone through a lot of effort to appear well dressed for the party. It is worth noting ‘Ian’ makes a pointed comment ‘Shouldn’t she be using the staff toilet?’ about the other character’s attitude toward Geraldine. Geraldine remains blissfully unaware of how the other characters real feelings toward her and even sides with Andrew against the accusations ‘Ian’/ Pip made about him. This shows her lack of awareness of how the family she worked for actually view people who are not of the same class as them. In the end she gets punished along with the other characters by ‘Ian’/ Pip for this. Indeed his actions seem to be punishment toward the type of people who allow people like Andrew to operate.

It is worth analysing the relationship between Carl and Stuart. We have to assume they have been together for a reasonable period of time as they live together and are at the old married couple stage of bickering. Why would the highly repressed Carl choose to be with a man who is so extravert in his behaviour and open in his sexuality? Carl seems almost embarrassed and ashamed of Stuart during the events of the episode. Perhaps there is a clue in when Stuart explains his relationship with Carl to ‘Ian’ (When he says ‘We’re queer dear, get used to it’ it seems as much aimed at Carl as ‘Ian’). Carl doesn’t need to bother to explain Stuart’s role in his life or be public about his sexuality because Stuart does it for him. Could it be that Carl got together with Stuart because he knew that this would happen? This places a huge emotional burden on Stuart of being ‘out’ on behalf of both of them. He also has to deal with the hurt of Carl refusing to be more public about their relationship. When Carl calls him his ‘flatmate’ Stuart reacts by leaving the wardrobe and his hurt is evident. This explains some of why he acts so outrageously. He is both trying get Carl to be more open about being gay and to acknowledge they are a couple in front of others. Indeed, Stuart is the one character in the whole piece who is open in his sexuality and who is comfortable discussing sex.

This is symbolic of Stuart’s more open and outgoing nature. Stuart tries to put the other people in the wardrobe at ease by joking with them like he does with Geraldine and Rachel (even if his jokes may be inappropriate!). Stuart is also the one character (seemingly) who cannot be contained by the wardrobe and he leaves it at least three times. He does not have any hidden agenda in attending the party unlike several of the characters. Stuart is also obviously from Northern England and presumably working class in contrast to rest of the party attendees (bar Geraldine) who are southern and upper-middle class. Did Carl chose to be with a partner who was from a completely different background because of his feelings of discomfort at his own background?. It is also interesting Stuart does not wear a suit like all the other male characters (bar Ian who is considerably younger than the other men). Shearsmith is just fabulous as Stu, managing to convey the vulnerability beneath Stu’s camp exterior.

Stuart has also had to deal with Carl’s fear of intimacy without having any explanation. Carl is so locked in his pain he finds it hard to reach out to Stuart . Pemberton invests the line ‘You have no idea!’ with such power- indeed his performance as Carl manages to bring out all the pathos and repressed anger of the character (Worth noting Reece Shearsmith confirmed in a twitter exchange with Charlie Higson Carl’s look is based on the personas of the artists ‘Gilbert and George). Both have been unable to communicate in a healthy manner about the issues at the heart of their relationship. But according to a tweet Reece Shearsmith sent shortly after the episode was broadcast, there was a section where Carl and Stuart were reconciled

https://twitter.com/ReeceShearsmith/status/431805111888003072?s=20

While this section has never been aired it may be supposed it built on Stuart's realisation of what Carl had been through as a child and its impact on him and Carl’s realisation of the pain his behaviour was causing Stuart. This mutual realisation would have hopefully offered them a way to move forward together and communicate more openly. It would have also shown they did genuinely care for each other and want their relationship to work. It is a pity the BBC has not released the scene as a DVD/Blu Ray extra. It would have made the eventual resolution of the episode even more powerful.

It is worth noting that 'Sardines' was filmed around the time of revelations about historic child sexual abuse involving powerful men in the UK. This primarily focused on figures in entertainment in the 1960s/70s (Operation Yewtree) but would also involve investigations into MPs and other figures of authority (such as Operation Midland and Operation Athabasca that looked at Cyril Smith and his associates). When discussing this episode in the South Bank show about their career Steve Pemberton said he and Shearsmith were keen to treat the topic sensitively and with care. Certainly the episode shows the long term damage to several men of both the abuse they subjected to and the fact their abuser was allowed to silence them.

The episode seems to be saying that failure to address such abuse ends up destroying all involved- the abuser (Andrew), the bystanders who turned a blind eye (such as Geraldine) , those associated with the abuser (Mark and Elizabeth who want to get a business deal through Andrew), those who were too young or powerless to do anything to help (Rebecca) and even the abused themselves (Carl and John). If Andrew had not been allowed to get away with what he did to Pip and been made to answer for what he did earlier, Pip Carl and John might have found some resolution and peace. Pip would also not have taken the form of revenge he did.

This is just my analysis and reading of the episode. It remains one of my favourite episodes of Inside No.9

[realitista]

It may be a cult, but we should know what they want.

Conservatism (big C) has always had one goal and little c general conservatism is a myth. Conservatism has the singular goal of maintaining an aristocracy that inherits political power and pushing others down to create an under class. In support of that is a morality based on a person’s inherent status as good or bad - not actions. Of course the thing that determines if someone is good or bad is whether they inhabit the aristocracy.

Another way, Conservatives - those who wish to maintain a class system - assign moral value to people and not actions. Those not in the aristocracy are immoral and deserve punishment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4CI2vk3ugk

https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/conservatism.html

Part of this is posted a lot: https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288 I like the concept of Conservatism vs. anything else.

*****

A Bush speech writer takes the assertion for granted: It's all about the upper class vs. democracy. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/06/why-do-democracies-fail/530949/ “Democracy fails when the Elites are overly shorn of power.”

Read here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/conservatism/ and here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism#History and see that all of the major thought leaders in Conservatism have always opposed one specific change (democracy at the expense of aristocratic power). At some point non-Conservative intellectuals and/or lying Conservatives tried to apply the arguments of conservatism to generalized “change.”

The philosophic definition of something shouldn't be created by only adherents, but also critics, - and the Stanford page (despite taking pains to justify small c conservatism) includes criticisms - so we can conclude generalized conservatism (small c) is a myth at best and a Trojan Horse at worst.

*****

Incase you don’t want to read the David Frum piece here is a highlight that democracy only exists at the leisure of the elite represented by Conservatism.

>The most crucial variable predicting the success of a democratic transition is the self-confidence of the incumbent elites. If they feel able to compete under democratic conditions, they will accept democracy. If they do not, they will not.

And the single thing that most accurately predicts elite self-confidence, as Ziblatt marshals powerful statistical and electoral evidence to argue, is the ability to build an effective, competitive conservative political party before the transition to democracy occurs.

Conservatism, manifest as a political party is simply the effort of the Elites to maintain their privileged status. One prior attempt at rebuttal blocked me when we got to: why is it that specifically Conservative parties align with the interests of the Elite?

*****

There is a key difference between conservatives and others that is often overlooked. For liberals, actions are good, bad, moral, etc and people are judged based on their actions. For Conservatives, people are good, bad, moral, etc and the status of the person is what dictates how an action is viewed.

In the world view of the actual Conservative leadership - those with true wealth or political power - , the aristocracy is moral by definition and the working class is immoral by definition and deserving of punishment for that immorality. This is where the laws don't apply trope comes from or all you’ll often see “rules for thee and not for me.” The aristocracy doesn't need laws since they are inherently moral. Consider the divinely ordained king: he can do no wrong because he is king, because he is king at God’s behest. The anti-poor aristocratic elite still feel that way.

This is also why people can be wealthy and looked down on: if Bill Gates tries to help the poor or improve worker rights too much he is working against the aristocracy.

*****

If we extend analysis to the voter base: conservative voters view other conservative voters as moral and good by the state of being labeled conservative because they adhere to status morality and social classes. It's the ultimate virtue signaling. They signal to each other that they are inherently moral. It’s why voter base conservatives think “so what” whenever any of these assholes do nasty anti democratic things. It’s why Christians seem to ignore Christ.

While a liberal would see a fair or moral or immoral action and judge the person undertaking the action, a conservative sees a fair or good person and applies the fair status to the action. To the conservative, a conservative who did something illegal or something that would be bad on the part of someone else - must have been doing good. Simply because they can’t do bad.

To them Donald Trump is inherently a good person as a member of the aristocracy. The conservative isn’t lying or being a hypocrite or even being "unfair" because - and this is key - for conservatives past actions have no bearing on current actions and current actions have no bearing on future actions so long as the aristocracy is being protected. Lindsey Graham is "good" so he says to delay SCOTUS confirmations that is good. When he says to move forward: that is good.

To reiterate: All that matters to conservatives is the intrinsic moral state of the actor (and the intrinsic moral state that matters is being part of the aristocracy). Obama was intrinsically immoral and therefore any action on his part was “bad.” Going further - Trump, or the media rebranding we call Mitt Romney, or Moscow Mitch are all intrinsically moral and therefore they can’t do “bad” things. The one bad thing they can do is betray the class system.

*****

The consequences of the central goal of conservatism and the corresponding actor state morality are the simple political goals to do nothing when problems arise and to dismantle labor & consumer protections. The non-aristocratic are immoral, inherently deserve punishment, and certainly don’t deserve help. They *want* the working class to get fucked by global warming. They *want* people to die from COVID19. Etc.

Montage of McConnell laughing at suffering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTqMGDocbVM&ab_channel=HuffPost

OH LOOK, months after I first wrote this it turns out to be validated by conservatives themselves: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/16/trump-appointee-demanded-herd-immunity-strategy-446408

Why do the conservative voters seem to vote against their own interest? Why does /selfawarewolves and /leopardsatemyface happen? They simply think they are higher on the social ladder than they really are and want to punish those below them for the immorality.

Absolutely everything Conservatives say and do makes sense when applying the above. This is powerful because you can now predict with good specificity what a conservative political actor will do.

*****

We still need to address more familiar definitions of conservatism (small c) which are a weird mash-up including personal responsibility and incremental change. Neither of those makes sense applied to policy issues. The only opposed change that really matters is the destruction of the aristocracy in favor of democracy. For some reason the arguments were white washed into a general “opposition to change.”

* This year a few women can vote, next year a few more, until in 100 years all women can vote?

* This year a few kids can stop working in mines, next year a few more...

* We should test the waters of COVID relief by sending a 1200 dollar check to 500 families. If that goes well we’ll do 1500 families next month.

* But it’s all in when they want to separate migrant families to punish them. It’s all in when they want to invade the Middle East for literal generations.

The incremental change argument is asinine. It’s propaganda to avoid concessions to labor.

The personal responsibility argument falls apart with the whole "keep government out of my medicare thing." Personal responsibility just means “I deserve free things, but people more poor than me don't."

Look: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yTwpBLzxe4U

*****

And for good measure I found video and sources interesting on an overlapping topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vymeTZkiKD0

*****

Some links incase anyone doubts that the contemporary American voter base was purposefully machined and manipulated into its mangle of abortion, guns, war, and “fiscal responsibility.” What does fiscal responsibility even mean? Who describes themselves as fiscally irresponsible?

Here is Atwater talking behind the scenes. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/religion/news/2013/03/27/58058/the-religious-right-wasnt-created-to-battle-abortion/

a little academic abstract to lend weight to conservatives at the time not caring about abortion. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-policy-history/article/abs/gops-abortion-strategy-why-prochoice-republicans-became-prolife-in-the-1970s/C7EC0E0C0F5FF1F4488AA47C787DEC01

They were casting about for something to rile a voter base up and abortion didn't do it. https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/02/05/race-not-abortion-was-founding-issue-religious-right/A5rnmClvuAU7EaThaNLAnK/story.html

The role religion played entwined with institutionalized racism. https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisladd/2017/03/27/pastors-not-politicians-turned-dixie-republican/?sh=31e33816695f

https://www.salon.com/2019/07/01/the-long-southern-strategy-how-southern-white-women-drove-the-gop-to-donald-trum/

Likely the best:

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133

I'll leave it at that. Anyone who can read these and come away doubting the architecting of the contemporary American Conservative voter base is a lost cause (like the Confederacy).

Via Gray Idolon on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/kxtuwh/its_no_longer_a_political_party_its_a_cult_former/gjci4ua/?context=5

[teenyfish]

Marine Biology Story of the Day #14

So…it’s been a while.  

I don’t know if anyone else is dealing with crippling anxiety, but I sure am right now.  It’s just one of the joys of being a liberal scientist living deep in a rural red state. You literally can’t escape the Trump Fuckers down here, it’s everywhere you look. Hell, I can’t even sit in my living room without seeing our neighbors dumb flag flying on their flag pole or be forced to watch one of these weird boat parades that have been popping up everywhere lately.

I’m tired.  I’m scared. But I’m also 100% over this shit.

So, instead, I’m trying to pour myself into my work.  And I want to put quality content on this blog, and I’ve just been procrastinating on it for weeks because I want whatever I write, whatever I tell you about to be good enough for the reblogs, but tbh, that’s not the point of this.  The point of this is teach people about the scientific process and how REAL research is done.  It’s a ton of work, it’s usually monotonous, and there’s a lot of writing and editing involved.

That being said, I officially, after 3+ years of work, have my first manuscript accepted into a peer reviewed journal.

If you had asked me 4 years ago if I had thought I would ever be published. I would have said no.  And that is because the place I was working for chipped away at my confidence so completely that I thought I wasn’t worthy of working in this field.  Academia be like that sometimes.

But now I’ve started working for Texas Parks and Wildlife, which in most ways has been a dream (minus living in small town nowhere America, see complaints above).  The organization is actually really awesome to work for and I have so much more leeway when it comes to designing my own projects and working on things that I actually WANT to work on.  Not to mention, my boss is awesome and is super supportive.  

So today, I think I’ll talk about a study that I just wrapped up lab and field work for in September.  I’m currently working on the data analysis at the moment.

SOOOO TPWD developed a huge stock enhancement program back in the 1980’s when they noticed that the population of a popular game fish, red drum, was on the decline.  Stock enhancement basically means they breed adult wild red drum, they allow the eggs to hatch and rear the larval fish to a size deemed big enough that they can release them into Texas estuaries to help bolster the population.  Red drum stocks have actually improved since this this hatchery program was implemented.

Red drum are gorgeous charismatic predators, and they get the drum name from the sound they use to communicate. Check out the sound here. 

Part of my job is to figure out how to make the hatchery program better through wet lab experimentation.  Basically, the questions I try to answer are: How do we grow these fish faster, with least amount of mortality, and with the best, robust fish?

So, when I first got here, I found two issues with our red drum hatchery program.  1) Fingerlings (very young juvenile fish) are released at a very small size of 35 mm. INTO THE WILD. Now, the size of a fish is very directly tied to their mortality…larger fish experience less predation and have better metabolisms to deal with temperature and salinity changes, which leads us to the second problem 2) The hatchery program releases red drum at times opposite of when these juvenile fish would actually be present in the wild. Red drum spawn offshore in early winter, and the baby fish move into bays Dec-Mar…but we release OUR hatchery fingerlings Mar-Nov.  The reason for this is because we don’t want the hatchery fish to compete with wild red drum, which makes sense, but we are introducing these fish to a wide range of temperatures and salinities.  As you know, Texas is hot as fuck in the summer and salinity in some bay systems is classified as hypersaline lagoons, which is almost like pure brine (this is due to hot temps evaporating water from the bays and leaving salt behind).

Now fish, as “cold blooded” animals, don’t make their own heat, so their metabolism is controlled by environmental temperatures.  All fish have an optimal temperature for growth, in which their growth rate is the highest, and then their growth and metabolism starts to decline toward their critical thermal maximum (CTM) in which their metabolism just starts shutting down and they die.  This is why temperature is so important in fish biology, and larger fish typically have higher CTMs an therefore better survival.

(an example of how metabolism is impacted by temp.  In this case, optimal temp is around 20 degrees Celsius, and CTM is around 23-25 degrees Celsius)

So how did I test this?  Well, I chose body size and “Season” as my two variables—I chose Spring (May), Summer (August), and Autumn (November) to see how the temperature and salinity of our local bay system would impact fish growth.  And, within each season, I tested both a small size class (35 mm and under) and a large size class (36 mm and over) to see how initial body size upon release would impact the fishes’ growth.  

(diff b/w two size classes)

I ran these trials in my wet lab with sea water pumped in from our coastal bay system and I would adjust temperature daily to reflect the water temperatures recorded from the bay.  I would receive hatchery fish that were ready for “release”, tag them, measure and weigh them, and then release them into their experimental tanks (if you want to learn more about how I tagged them, check out this post).  I had one tank with small fish, and one tank with larger fish, because if they were mixed it’s likely that the big fish would cannibalize the smaller fish. The fish lived in these faux habitats for 21 days, and I would remove mortalities (dead fish) daily.  They were fed 10% of their body weight to keep up with the estimated 0.1 g/day growth rate described in the literature.  

At the end of each study, I removed all fish, measured and weighed them again, and read their tags.  Once I knew what fish they were, I could match them up with their start weights and get an idea of their growth rate over the 21 days.  

So, the data analysis is still a work in progress, and I’m going to run some more complex models, but here are some of my preliminary results.

First, here is our survival of fish for each trial.  Like I said, fish did die before the end of the trial (young fish tend to do that), and this graph basically shows that overall, the larger size class had much better survival than small, especially during warmer months.  

This figure basically shows the CHANGE in length (x axis) vs the CHANGE in weight (y axis) of the smaller size class (above) and the larger size class (below).  I’ve scaled the figures so the axis have the exact same scale.  The colors/shapes of the dots represent the “Season” of the trial (Autumn, Spring, or Summer).  You can see that the large size classes had a much greater change in growth across all trials, and had the greatest growth during summer. 

So this is just the beginning of data analysis, I want to do a more in depth look at temperature, size, and salinity in statistical modeling, but this is kind of the preliminary lay out of the data.  Basically what I think this data is telling me is that we need to release fish at larger initial release sizes, because they have much better survival and growth compared to fish with smaller initial release sizes.

And the whole goal of the hatchery program is to make sure our fish survive in the wild.

If you want to take a peep at my accepted journal article, I’ll make sure to post a link when the article actually comes out online. The journal I submitted to (Marine and Coastal Fisheries) is an open access journal so everybody should be able to read it FO FREE.  Next post I will be outlining another hatchery program study that I am excited to be working on in the near future (hint, it’s gonna involve flounder metamorphosis, which is a real bizarre process).

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to comment or contact me!

[arcticdementor]

Something strange happened to the news over the past four years. The dominant stories all resembled the scripts of bad movies—sequels and reboots. The Kavanaugh hearings were a sequel to the Clarence Thomas hearings, and Russian collusion was rebooted as Ukrainian impeachment. Journalists are supposed to hunt for good scoops, but in January, as the coronavirus spread, they focused on the impeachment reality show instead of a real story.

It’s not just journalists. The so-called second golden era of televi­sion was a decade ago, and many of those shows relied on cliff-hangers and gratuitous nudity to hold audience attention. Across TV, movies, and novels it is increasingly difficult to find a compelling story that doesn’t rely on gimmicks. Even foundational stories like liberalism, equality, and meritocracy are failing; the resulting woke phenomenon is the greatest shark jump in history.

Storytelling is central to any civilization, so its sudden failure across society should set off alarm bells. Culture inevitably reflects the selection process that sorts people into the upper class, and today’s insipid stories suggest a profound failure of this sorting mech­anism.

…

Culture is larger than pop culture, or even just art. It encompasses class, architecture, cuisine, education, manners, philosophy, politics, religion, and more. T. S. Eliot charted the vastness of this word in his Notes towards the Definition of Culture, and he warned that technocratic rule narrowed our view of culture. Eliot insisted that it’s impossible to easily define such a broad concept, yet smack in the middle of the book he slips in a succinct explanation: “Culture may even be described simply as that which makes life worth living.” This highlights why the increase in “deaths of despair” is such a strong condemnation of our dysfunction. In a fundamental way, our culture only exists to serve a certain class. Eliot predicted this when he cri­tiqued elites selected through education: “Any educational system aiming at a complete adjustment between education and society will tend to restrict education to what will lead to success in the world, and to restrict success in the world to those persons who have been good pupils of the system.”

This professional managerial class has a distinct culture that often sets the tone for all of American culture. It may be possible to separate the professional managerial class from the ruling elite, or plutocracy, but there is no cultural distinction. Any commentary on an entire class will stumble in the way all generalizations stumble, yet this culture is most distinct at the highest tiers, and the fuzzy edges often emulate those on the top. At its broadest, these are college-educated, white-collar workers whose income comes from labor, who are huddled in America’s cities, and who rise to power through existing bureaucracies. Bureaucracies, whether corporate or government, are systems that reward specific traits, and so the culture of this class coalesces towards an archetype: the striving bureaucrat, whose values are defined by the skills needed to maneuver through a bureau­cracy. And from the very beginning, the striving bureaucrat succeeds precisely by disregarding good storytelling.

…

Professionals today would never self-identify as bureaucrats. Product managers at Google might have sleeve tattoos or purple hair. They might describe themselves as “creators” or “creatives.” They might characterize their hobbies as entrepreneurial “side hustles.” But their actual day-in, day-out work involves the coordination of various teams and resources across a large organization based on established administrative procedures. That’s a bureaucrat. The entire professional culture is almost an attempt to invert the connotations and expecta­tions of the word—which is what underlies this class’s tension with storytelling. Conformity is draped in the dead symbols of a prior generation’s counterculture.

…

When high school students read novels, they are asked to identify the theme, or moral, of a story. This teaches them to view texts through an instrumental lens. Novelist Robert Olen Butler wrote that we treat artists like idiot savants who “really want to say abstract, theoretical, philosophical things, but somehow they can’t quite make themselves do it.” The purpose of a story becomes the process of translating it into ideas or analysis. This is instrumental reading. F. Scott Fitzgerald spent years meticulously outlining and structuring numerous rewrites of The Great Gatsby, but every year high school students reduce the book to a bumper sticker on the American dream. A story is an experience in and of itself. When you abstract a message, you lose part of that experience. Analysis is not inherently bad; it’s just an ancillary mode that should not define the reader’s disposition.

Propaganda is ubiquitous because we’ve been taught to view it as the final purpose of art. Instrumental reading also causes people to assume overly abstract or obscure works are inherently profound. When the reader’s job is to decode meaning, then the storyteller is judged by the difficulty of that process. It’s a novel about a corn beef sandwich who sings the Book of Malachi. Ah yes, a profound critique of late capitalism. An artist! Overall, instrumental reading teaches striving students to disregard stories. Cut to the chase, and give us the message. Diversity is our strength? Got it. Throw the book out. This reductionist view perhaps makes it difficult for people to see how incoherent the higher education experience has become.

…

“Decadence” sounds incorrect since the word elicits extravagant and glamorous vices, while we have Lizzo—an obese antifertility priestess for affluent women. All our decadence becomes boring, cringe-inducing, and filled with HR-approved jargon. “For my Ful­bright, I studied conflict resolution in nonmonogamous throuples.” Campus dynamics may partially explain this phenomenon. Camille Paglia has argued that many of the brightest left-wing thinkers in the 1960s fried their brains with too much LSD, and this created an opportunity for the rise of corporate academics who never participated in the ’60s but used its values to signal status. What if this dropout process repeats every generation?

…

The professional class tells a variety of genre stories about their jobs: TED Talker, “entrepreneur,” “innovator,” “doing well by doing good.” One of the most popular today is corporate feminism. This familiar story is about a young woman who lands a prestigious job in Manhattan, where she guns for the corner office while also fulfilling her trendy Sex and the City dreams. Her day-in, day-out life is blessed by the mothers and grandmothers who fought for equality—with the ghost of Susan B. Anthony lingering Mufasa-like over America’s cubicles. Yet, like other corporate genre stories, girl-boss feminism is a celebration of bureaucratic life, including its hierarchy. Isn’t that weird?

There are few positive literary representations of life in corporate America. The common story holds that bureaucratic life is soul-crushing. At its worst, this indulges in a pedestrian Romanticism where reality is measured against a daydream, and, as Irving Babbitt warned, “in comparison . . . actual life seems a hard and cramping routine.” Drudgery is constitutive of the human condition. Yet even while admitting that toil is inescapable, it is still obvious that most white-collar work today is particularly bleak and meaningless. Office life increasingly resembles a mental factory line. The podcast is just talk radio for white-collar workers, and its popularity is evidence of how mind-numbing work has become for most.

Forty years ago, Christopher Lasch wrote that “modern industry condemns people to jobs that insult their intelligence,” and today employers rub this insult in workers’ faces with a hideously infantilizing work culture that turns the office into a permanent kindergarten classroom. Blue-chip companies reward their employees with balloons, stuffed animals, and gold stars, and an exposé detailing the stringent communication rules of the luxury brand Away Luggage revealed how many start-ups are just “live, laugh, love” sweatshops. This humiliating culture dominates America’s companies because few engage in truly productive or necessary work. Professional genre fiction, such as corporate feminism, is thus often told as a way to cope with the underwhelming reality of working a job that doesn’t con­tribute anything to the world.

There is another way to tell the story of the young career woman, however. Her commute includes inspiring podcasts about Ugandan entrepreneurs, but also a subway stranger breathing an egg sandwich into her face. Her job title is “Senior Analyst—Global Trends,” but her job is just copying and pasting between spreadsheets for ten hours. Despite all the “doing well by doing good” seminars, the closest thing she knows to a community is spin class, where a hundred similar women, and one intense man in sports goggles, listen to a spaz scream Hallmark card affirmations.

…

The bureaucrat even describes the process of rising through fraud­ulence as “playing the game.” The book The Organization Man criticized professionals in the 1950s for confusing their own interests with those of their employers, imagining, for example, that moving across the country was good for them simply because they were transferred. “Playing the game” is almost like an overlay on top of this attitude. The idea is that personal ambition puts the bureaucrat in charge. Bureaucrats always feel that they are “in on the game,” and so develop a false sense of certainty about the world, which sorts them into two groups: the cynics and the neurotics. Cynics recognize the nonsense, but think it’s necessary for power. The neurotics, by con­trast, are earnest go-getters who confuse the nonsense with actual work. They begin to feel like they’re the only ones faking it and become so insecure they have to binge-watch TED Talks on “im­poster syndrome.”

These two dispositions help explain why journalists focus on things like impeachment rather than medical supply chains. One group cynically condescends to American intelligence, while neurotics shriek about the “norms of our democracy.” Both are undergirded by a false certainty about what’s possible. Professional elites vastly overestimate their own intelligence in comparison with the average American, and today there is nothing so common as being an elitist. Meanwhile, public discourse gets dumber and dumber as elitists spend all their time explaining hastily memorized Wikipedia entries to those they deem rubes.

…

The entire phenomenon of the nonconformist bureaucrat can be seen as genre inversion. Everyone today grew up with pop culture stories about evil corporations and corporate America’s soul-sucking culture, and so the “creatives” have fashioned a self-image defined against this genre. These stories have been internalized and inverted by corporate America itself, so now corporate America has mandatory fun events and mandatory displays of creativity.

In other words, past countercultures have been absorbed into corporate America’s conception of itself. David Solomon isn’t your father’s stuffy investment banker. He’s a DJ! And Goldman Sachs isn’t like the stuffy corporations you heard about growing up. They fly a transgender flag outside their headquarters, list sex-change tran­sitions as a benefit on their career site, and refuse to underwrite an IPO if the company is run by white men. This isn’t just posturing. Wokeness is a cult of power that maintains its authority by pretending it’s perpetually marching against authority. As long it does so, its sectaries can avoid acknowledging how they strengthen managerial America’s stranglehold on life by empowering administrators to en­force ever-expanding bureaucratic technicalities.

…

Moreover, it is shocking that no one in the 2020 campaign seems to have reacted to the dramatic change that happened in 2016. Good storytellers are attuned to audience sophistication, and must understand when audiences have grown past their techniques. Everyone has seen hundreds of movies, and read hundreds of books, and so we intuitively understand the shape of a good story. Once audiences can recognize a storytelling technique as a technique, it ceases to function because it draws attention to the artifice. This creates distance be­tween the intended emotion and the audience reaction. For instance, a romantic comedy follows a couple as they fall in love and come together, and so the act two low point will often see the couple breaking up over miscommunication. Audiences recognize this as a technique, and so, even though miscommunication often causes fights, it seems fake.

Similarly, today’s voters are sophisticated enough to recognize the standard political techniques, and so their reactions are no longer easily predictable. Voters intuitively recognize that candidate “de­bates” are just media events, and prewritten zingers do not help politicians when everyone recognizes them as prewritten. The literary critic Wayne Booth wrote that “the hack is, by definition, the man who asks for responses he cannot himself respect,” and our politicians are always asking us to buy into nonsense that they couldn’t possibly believe. Inane political tropes operate just like inane business jargon and continue because everyone thinks they’re on the inside, and this blinds them to obvious developments in how audiences of voters relate to political tropes. Trump often plays in this neglected space.

The artistic development of the sitcom can be seen as the process of incorporating its own artifice into the story. There is a direct creative lineage from The Dick Van Dyke Show, a sitcom about television comedy writers, to The Office, a show about office workers being filmed for television. Similarly, Trump often succeeds because he incorporates the artifice of political tropes. When Trump points out that the debate audiences are all donors, or that Nancy Pelosi doesn’t actually pray for him, he’s just pointing out what everyone already knows. This makes it difficult for other politicians to “play the game,” because their standard tropes reinforce Trump’s message. If the debates are just media spectacle events for donors, then ap­plause lines work against you. It’s similar to breaking the fourth wall, while the rest of the cast nervously tries to continue with their lines. Trump’s success is evidence that the television era of political theater is ending, because its storytelling formats are dead.

In fact, the (often legitimate) criticism that Trump does not act “presidential” is the same as saying that he’s not acting professional—that he is ignoring the rules of bureaucratic advancement. Could you imagine Trump’s year-end review? “In 2020, we invite Donald to stop sending Outlook reminders that just say ‘get schlonged.’” Trump’s antics are indicative of his different route to power. Forget everything else about him: how would you act if you never had a job outside a company with your name on the building? The world of the professional managerial class doesn’t contain many characters, and so they associate eccentricity with bohemianism or ineptitude. But it’s also reliably found somewhere else.

Small business owners are often loons, wackos, and general nut­jobs. Unlike the professional class, their personalities vary because their job isn’t dependent on how others view them. Even when they’re wealthy or successful, they often don’t act “professional.” It requires tremendous grit and courage to own a business. They are perhaps the only people today who embody what Pericles meant when he said that the “secret to freedom is courage.” In the wake of coronavirus, small businesses owners stoically shuttered their stores and faced financial ruin, while politicians with camera-ready personas and ratlike souls tried to increase seasonal worker visas.

…

Ever since Star Wars, screenwriters have used Joseph Campbell’s monomyth to measure a successful story, and an essential act one feature is the refusal of adventure. For a moment, the universe opens up and shows the hero an unknown world of possibility, but the hero backs away. For four years, our nation has refused adventure, yet fate cannot be ignored. The coronavirus forces our nation to confront adventure. With eerie precision, this global plague tore down the false stories that veiled our true situation. The experts are incompetent. The institutions told us we were racist for caring about the virus, and then called for arresting paddleboarders in the middle of the ocean. Our business regulations make it difficult to create face masks in a crisis, while rewarding those who outsource the manufacturing of lifesaving drugs to our rival. The new civic religion of wokeness is a dangerous antihuman cult that distorts priorities. Even our Hollywood stars turn out to be ugly without makeup.

[iamaliberalartsstudent]

Modern Languages' Tips for Creating a Great Work-space at Home

Last week, Georgia Institute of Technology announced that it is closing its campus and converting to a fully remote environment for the rest of the semester. This means teaching all our courses online and advising our master's students remotely as they work independently on their Final Projects.

Students are working on a variety of projects, from documentaries to research papers, from ethnographic research to translation. Right now, they are preparing to defend their projects in a 30-minute presentation at the end of April. A good work-space at home will definitely be important.

So to help them (and myself prepare), I asked some fellow professors to share some strategies for working from home.

1. Get a designated work area.

It's easy to think you can work anywhere, because technically, you can. Writers are notorious for working everywhere but the office: at home, on a couch, in cafes, in train stations, on trains, or even wandering through the park with a voice recorder.

Because writing is so psychological, it's important to have a space that mentally prepares you for work. Try to find a space that you use exclusively for work, so your mind knows to focus when you sit down. And when you leave the space, you can more easily think about other things (For example, experts advise against working in bed, because it can make it more difficult to fall asleep).

2. Limited on space? Create mental boundaries.

I don't have space for a home office in my apartment, so I'm using my dining table. My working setup can be opened and then put away, so I know when I'm working, and when I'm done for the day.

There are many ways to get in the mindset. For me, it's always been putting a cup of coffee or tea to the left of my laptop and having something to write on. For many people, it's doing their morning routine and getting dressed for work. It could be anything: putting in your headphones, saying a catch-phrase, starting a timer, or opening your project folder. Do whatever works for you!

3. Plan out a daily routine.

Starting March 30th, you will have classes online. You may also have other responsibilities, depending on your living and family situation. Plan how you will use your time: When will you be in class? When will you do homework? When will you work on your project? Don't forget to include time to relax and get away from your screen!

NPR suggests: "Get ready for work every morning like you are going to physically go into work. Dress up, do your hair — whatever you'd normally do. This puts you in a professional mindset....If you're the type of person who never takes a break at home, set a timer to take time for lunch, and turn off your work....Try to maintain normal work hours, and shut things down when you would normally leave the office."

If you're working on multiple projects, it helps to work on the same project at the same time every day. For example, if you're juggling your Prospectus and three other courses, you might want to decide that no matter what else happens, you will work on your Prospectus from 6:00 - 7:00 pm every day.

Check out the daily routines of 20 famous writers on Brain Pickings.

4. Make sure you have reliable internet.

With everyone online at the same time, internet speeds could slow down, so make sure you have reliable internet access. Check out https://gatech.service-now.com/continuity for IT support through Georgia Tech.

5. Get ready for video conferencing.

You will probably have meetings and classes via Bluejeans, so take a moment to prep your webcam. You may want to find a private area with a neutral background, where you can have meetings with your professors. Have a good pair of headphones. Test it out with friends to see if there's background noise. Will it still work if your family member is doing a Skype meeting in the next room?

Note that Bluejeans looks different in the app and browser versions, and in the laptop and tablet versions, so try them out and see which one you prefer. Download Bluejeans here: http://bluejeans.gatech.edu/

Remember that Bluejeans Meetings are at gatech.bluejeans.com (reversal of the above URL). Don't forget to hang up when you're done!

6. Set goals, and celebrate your accomplishments!

A three-month project like your Master's Project can feel overwhelming. Break it down into "bite-size," measurable tasks that take 20, 40, 60 minutes to complete.

These might be:

Search the internet for articles on X topic and save them to a folder.

Take notes on a book chapter.

Write an analysis of a scene in a film.

Edit a page you wrote yesterday.

When you've finished a task, Reward yourself! Acknowledge and celebrate the moment: take a 5-minute stretch break, have a snack, watch a video of unlikely animal friendships (don't get sucked in, though; time yourself if you need to).

7. Aim for 4 productive hours per day.

Lelia Glass, Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Georgia Tech, writes:

"Set a timer when you work. Any time you check emails, read Twitter, get coffee, wash your hands, etc, pause the timer. Pause it as often as you want, but keep working until you get to a real hour.

Once you reach your goal, relax, knowing you really put in quality time on your work.  This is how I wrote my dissertation from a couch in San Francisco over the course of nine months or so."

Dr. Glass says she uses this method to "do about 4-5 hours of writing per day." Turns out, the average human brain can only stay deeply focused for a maximum of 4-5 hours per day. So if you've worked for four hours productively, you've done an amazing job!

Creating protected blocks of time, like an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, can help you prioritize your current top project. And remember, once you've reached your goal, take a break!

8. Take breaks!

Just as important as a designated work area is a designated space for time off. Whether it's your favorite couch, your bed, or the act of closing your email and washing out your coffee cup, it's important to step away and give your mind a break. Dr. Glass suggests going for a run, cooking a healthy meal, and video-chatting with family and friends.

9. Don't worry if you're messy.

The middle of a project is always messy.

We live in messy times.

And if all else fails, remember Einstein's words: "If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?"

Sources:

"The Daily Routines of 20 Famous Writers," Brain Pickings, https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/11/20/daily-routines-writers/

"8 Tips to make working from home work for you" npr.org/2020/03/15/815549926/8-tips-to-make-working-from-home-work-for-you

Managing Large Writing Projects, Inside Higher Ed. insidehighered.com/advice/2009/04/24/managing-large-writing-projects

Special thanks to Lelia Glass and Jinyi Chu for sharing your work-spaces and tips!

By Jenny Strakovsky, Assistant Director of Graduate Studies

[mutantsrisingrpg]

Congratulations GRACIE! You’ve been accepted as ENCELADUS with a FC change to GEMMA CHAN.

Welcome back, Gracie! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: your app for Dana does such a good job at portraying the balance between human and mutant in Dana and how her mutation impacted her mutant life so strongly. I always feel for her when reading your writing because she feels like such a real person and truly she doesn’t deserve all she’s been through. I especially love the hints of a direction you plan to take her in now that the scene has changed! It’s refreshing to see someone mourn our dear Benjamin Granger, and I wonder what the changes in Kings Collective have in store for Dana.

Welcome to Mutants Rising! Please read the checklist and submit your account within 24 hours.

Out of Character Information:

NAME/ALIAS: Gracie

PRONOUNS: She/Her

AGE: 25

TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY LEVEL: EST & on a number scale, probably a 4-5, so about 5 replies throughout the week, if not more. I do work full-time but with ‘rona, I am WFH until further notice.

In Character Information:

DESIRED ROLE: Dana Ramone

GENDER/PRONOUNS: cis female & she/her with FC change to Gemma Chan if possible, thank you!

DETAILS & ANALYSIS:

Dana is a contradiction in and of herself. She is constantly walking a tightrope between control and the lack-thereof, between who she was, who she could’ve been and who she is. She has always been soft but her embrace is no longer warm and inviting – it’s timid and terrified. She’s got an underlying current of fear running through her, a fear that one day she’ll not be able to catch all the broken pieces of the life she once dreamed of and that they’ll shatter once they slip through her fingers. She can no longer draw someone close without pause or hesitation– she has to think through every action now and try to predict her own reactions. She used to be so certain, so self-assured –– not proud by any means, but she used to be confident in her ability to heal. Now, even as she sutures up a wound, she’s wondering if the next moment she’ll be unintentionally opening it up again with a flare up. That’s what she calls them. Flare ups. When her hands begin to tremble and she feels power welling up inside of her like a wave before it crashes and she can’t keep it in.

She misses who she was before. When sunshine meant good days and rain meant bad ones. Now she can’t even trust the weather. She can’t even trust herself. She does her job because she’s always done her job but, even three years later, Dana still wants to do her old job at the hospital. She wants her old identifiers: MD. Surgeon. Wife. Human. Now she must live with: Level Five. Divorced. Mutant. It’s a ringing in her ear that won’t go away – a constant reminder of everything she’s not anymore. And everything she is even if she wants things to be different.

Dana adapted, slowly but surely. She cares about her fellow members. She cares about doing a good job. She’s got a big heart, always has, and that hasn’t changed just because she’s considered dangerous now. It’s one thing she can’t let change. Because if that changes then she’ll have let this new ability change everything about her. She’s still clinging to who she was. Who she knows herself to be. And she’s channelling it into the work she’s doing now. People don’t expect her to get the job done, they see her soft nature, they see her struggling for control, they see everything she’s fallen short of but when there’s a body on the table, when one of their own is suffering, they see a new side of her. She takes a breath and begins to work. Calm and collected and if she ever feels the trembling start then she talks through what needs to happen.

She may not know who she is anymore, she’s still trying to figure that out, but Dana knows she’s a healer and she holds onto that like a lifeline, drawing her in from the stormy sea that’s her life now.

BIO:

Life is a series of before and after.

Dana’s first before was the year she was born.

It was the year her father and his new wife were trying to have a child. It was the one thing her father knew he wanted more than anything. To have a child with his new wife. Her father had never really known what he wanted in his life – it was one of the reasons why he and his first wife divorced. Despite having a young daughter, Angela, there were too many differences to settle, too many that even their mutual love of their daughter wouldn’t let them overlook.

So they separated and, eventually, her father married Stephanie – a young, ambitious resident who wanted a child early on in their relationship so she could continue her career. Stephanie hadn’t been planned, and her parents always reminded her of the fact, and so she was determined to plan their lives to a tee –– have a child, go back to work in a year, live the life she knew her own parents never could. It was what she wanted most and so that’s what Dana’s father wanted most.

They tried for nearly two years before Stephanie was willing to consider adoption. And though hesitant at first, when they adopted Dana – a small, bright-eyed baby with laughter on her lips and a curious gaze following wherever she looked –– it was impossible not to love her.

Dana’s first after were the years following her adoption. The years in which she grew up a kind, curious child who loved books and pillow forts and nature and picking wildflowers. She saw her sister occasionally, but she knew they were different, even from an early age. It wasn’t the fact that they didn’t look alike, nor the fact that Dana spent her weeknights in dance class and her Saturdays at swim – she knew they were different because of how people looked at Angela. Because of the words she heard floating around: mutant. Dangerous. Different.

Her parents let her see Angela, of course, her father especially liked his daughters to spend time together but the more time she spent with her, the more Dana wondered if she’d ever get an ability like her sister. And the more time she spent with her sister, the more she realized that Angela wasn’t too fond of her.

It was another before for Dana. Before she realized that her sister wouldn’t be her best friend and they were destined to leave separate lives. Eventually, circumstances created a wedge between them and they started seeing less and less of each other.

Her next after was one of growing up and following in her mother’s footsteps. Dana had always been an intelligent young mind, curious about the world around her and the inner workers of practically everything. As a child she would ask her mother endless questions about the human body and as she grew older, those questions turned into requests for books, an interest in science and, eventually carving a path to medicine herself. She’d always been curious but she also always wanted to help people, like she saw her mom do on a daily basis. And when she was seventeen, having graduated high school a year earlier than most, she pursued her higher education at the University of Chicago. She remained there until she was twenty-five, graduating with a medical degree and a residency at Northwestern Memorial Hospital where she hoped to become a neurosurgeon.

She’d worked so hard for so long and had rarely had time for a personal life, something her parents had warned her about when she expressed a desire to go down this path. That changed when she met Alistair McGovern. He was a few years ahead of her in his residency, but of the same mind that she had –– that all of this work was so they could be equipped to help those who needed it most. So many of their fellow doctors were there to make a name for themselves, to get a big job to pay off some big loans but not Alistair. Not Dana. He was easy to love and they fell for each other within a few months of meeting.

But despite her love for him, she was always uneasy with his family. The McGoverns were a prominent family in Chicago politics, supporting anti-mutant legislation and “protective” measures for the city’s human inhabitants. They weren’t too crazy about her either, having learned about her sister but as long as Angela wasn’t brought up at family dinners, both parties could live in harmony.

They got married when she was twenty-nine and their lives just fit together. They had matching schedules, they worked in the same place, they had the same dreams and goals and plans. They didn’t want to have kids just yet, they wanted to enjoy their lives together. And they did for several years.

If only Dana had known that their time together leading up to her thirty-third birthday would become before.

They went out with friends for her birthday, celebrating, dancing and drinking – nothing out of the ordinary but that night she began to fill a bit off. It was small at first. A bit of vertigo (surely just a result of one drink too many), a headache (the music was loud) and cold sweats (she hadn’t eaten much that day and had had several long shifts leading up to it). Every strange feeling was easily identified by Dana and any worry dispelled by logic. By science. By medicine.

But the feeling persisted. She wasn’t sick. They thought that maybe she was expected. It hadn’t been in the plan but stranger things had happened. They’d deal with it together, Alistair assured her but the five tests she’d purchased two days later turned out negative and still, the disquieted feeling in the pit of her stomach persisted. It was like a ringing in her ear – she could forget about them occasionally but once she noticed them, it was nearly impossible to ignore.

Still, she took some time off, just a few days she’d had saved for years of not taking any time off, and after four days the symptoms subsided. She went to work the very next day, feeling lighter and better than she had in nearly a week. There was surgery scheduled and she’d never have gone in had she been feeling off. After all, operating on the brain took an almost robotic like precision that Dana excelled at in the OR. It was what she was known for – remaining calm and staying on track, even when the unexpected happened.  At least, that’s what she’d always thought.

After, she’d look for the signs – for any sign of how she would’ve known what was to come. What might’ve happened. How she could’ve prevented it.

But before….she couldn’t have known. There was no way to predict that in the middle of surgery her hands would begin to shake, no way to know that those tremors would spread to the rest of her body and that she’d have to call for an emergency stop as she dropped her tools to the ground and began to shake uncontrollably. There was no way to know she should’ve warned her colleagues when she collapsed, no way to tell them to get away from her, that this wasn’t a seizure or a stroke. That the moment they huddled around her, trying to help, they’d be blasted back with a tremendous wave of energy emanating from Dana.

She couldn’t have known the events that would follow –– that the after would be hospital security rushing in as her colleagues were knocked unconscious by the blast, as alarms began going off while their patient began to code on the operating table. Later, she would learn that the only reason she wasn’t immediately detained and imprisoned was because of Alistair, and his family.

Her employment was terminated at the hospital, her files shared with the government and her credentials stripped. Even with all of this, her husband stayed by her side. Or he tried to. He really tried. He knew she hadn’t known what she was and he fought tooth and nail against his family to make sure they knew that.

She was his wife. He loved her. She was a healer, who’d killed a patient and two colleagues, landing several others in the ICU. She was a doctor, who’d had all her certifications and titles stripped. She was a good person. She was a good person. She was a good person. It’s what they both clung to in the midst of everything. But being a good person wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to ignore how her hands would shake for days. It wasn’t enough to stop watching her warily, for fear of a random burst of energy coming his way. It wasn’t enough to keep them in the same bed, both tossing and turning with different fears. Love wasn’t enough to deal with all of this. He divorced her six months after her powers manifested.

Another before. And this one hurt like hell. Another after. She was lost. A ship at sea, unmoored and drifting in the dark abyss her life had become. While Alistair tried to keep things quiet, tried not to make her life any harder, word got around. Eventually, Dana found herself without recourse, without a path and with the knowledge that all the years she’d poured into being a healer had amounted to nothing, all by her own hand.

But where one journey ends, another begins. Despite Northwestern’s attempt to cover it up, news had spread throughout Chicago that one of their best surgeons had been a mutant and, eight months after that first incident, she was approached by Kings Collective. They wanted her to be their doctor.

She was wary at first, the thought of joining a criminal organization a bitter taste in her mouth. But nothing was more bitter than the fact that she could barely help herself, much less others. Still, that calling she’d had from a young age –– the one she couldn’t ignore, compelled her to help others. She knew that this was the only way she could continue doing so, and hoped that maybe being a doctor again would heal the sting of the past months. She accepted their offer and has been their doctor for nearly three years now.

Things were going well or, as well as could be with the unrest in the city but when Benjamin, a man she’d worked closely with and who’d been one of her saving graces after everything happened, was killed –– she knew trouble was coming. Without much time to mourn the loss of someone who’d helped her more than she could say, and without the time to make any real plans, she and the rest of Kings Collective set off for Miami.

They haven’t been in the city long and she can already tell peace is just an illusion. The “peace” she thought she’d had, sticking to medicine, sticking to helping others, was gone. As Kings Collective attempts to stake their claim on the city and to make a mark for themselves, she knows that it won’t be long before she’s asked to help make that happen. Levels had never meant much to Dana before. Hers only served as a reminder of the pain she could cause and the lack of control she had to keep that from happening.

But she knows that being what she is…doing what she does…it’s worth something, especially when breaking new ground. If they want to claim a piece of the city for themselves, Dana knows it’s going to be all hands on deck and she’s struggling now, with whether she can balance having hands that heal against hands covered in blood. She hasn’t had to indulge the latter yet, but images it’s only a matter of time.

EXPANDED CONNECTIONS:

Angela – I would love to explore their dynamic and how they grew up/viewed each other more in depth. Also, how they view each other now, Dana with her new understanding of what it is to be a mutant/what Angela’s dealt with her entire life and Angela with what Dana is dealing with, also them being on opposing sides.

Cain – I think the difference between them is interesting, especially since Cain is so hardened by life and Dana is determined not to have the same thing happen to her. The fact that they are both doctors but only one of them wants to truly heal is so dynamic, especially since they are in opposite organizations. I think it could be fun to explore that dichotomy and whether or not it gives Dana a new perspective on her position.

EXTRA:

Hands shake after using her powers

Emotions heighten it

Meditates

ASMR is the shit

Listens to classical music when she operates on anyone

Jogs around lake michigan every morning / helps her feel centered

Kept her wedding ring but has it buried away somewhere

Doesn’t like to hear about plans if they involve Alistair’s family –– she finds it hard to be objective and has made it known that no one should tell her anything if that’s the case.

Has kept brief contact with Alistair –– he’s engaged now. She doesn’t resent him for any of it.

Has had limited contact with Angela since her sister joined the Jem family. Has thought of reaching out but doesn’t think it’s a good idea.

Has thought of tracking down her birth parents but doesnt think it’d do any good now –– too much time has gone and they could be dead or in prison with other mutants. It won’t change what’s happened and could only hurt her more.

Mother and father were supportive once everything happened but she can tell her mom’s still nervous around her and hates it. She’s secretly glad for the move, thinking that maybe it’ll help keep her parents safe, without her around.

[theculturedmarxist]

DAVID BARSAMIAN: One of the heroes of the current right-wing revival… is Adam Smith. You’ve done some pretty impressive research on Smith that has excavated… a lot of information that’s not coming out. You’ve often quoted him describing the “vile maxim of the masters of mankind: all for ourselves and nothing for other people.”

NOAM CHOMSKY: I didn’t do any research at all on Smith. I just read him. There’s no research. Just read it. He’s pre-capitalist, a figure of the Enlightenment. What we would call capitalism he despised. People read snippets of Adam Smith, the few phrases they teach in school. Everybody reads the first paragraph of The Wealth of Nations where he talks about how wonderful the division of labor is. But not many people get to the point hundreds of pages later, where he says that division of labor will destroy human beings and turn people into creatures as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be. And therefore in any civilized society the government is going to have to take some measures to prevent division of labor from proceeding to its limits.

He did give an argument for markets, but the argument was that under conditions of perfect liberty, markets will lead to perfect equality. That’s the argument for them, because he thought that equality of condition (not just opportunity) is what you should be aiming at. It goes on and on. He gave a devastating critique of what we would call North-South policies. He was talking about England and India. He bitterly condemned the British experiments they were carrying out which were devastating India.

He also made remarks which ought to be truisms about the way states work. He pointed out that its totally senseless to talk about a nation and what we would nowadays call “national interests.” He simply observed in passing, because it’s so obvious, that in England, which is what he’s discussing — and it was the most democratic society of the day — the principal architects of policy are the “merchants and manufacturers,” and they make certain that their own interests are, in his words, “most peculiarly attended to,” no matter what the effect on others, including the people of England who, he argued, suffered from their policies. He didn’t have the data to prove it at the time, but he was probably right.

This truism was, a century later, called class analysis, but you don’t have to go to Marx to find it. It’s very explicit in Adam Smith. It’s so obvious that any ten-year-old can see it. So he didn’t make a big point of it. He just mentioned it. But that’s correct. If you read through his work, he’s intelligent. He’s a person who was from the Enlightenment. His driving motives were the assumption that people were guided by sympathy and feelings of solidarity and the need for control of their own work, much like other Enlightenment and early Romantic thinkers. He’s part of that period, the Scottish Enlightenment.

The version of him that’s given today is just ridiculous. But I didn’t have to any research to find this out. All you have to do is read. If you’re literate, you’ll find it out. I did do a little research in the way it’s treated, and that’s interesting. For example, the University of Chicago, the great bastion of free market economics, etc., etc., published a bicentennial edition of the hero, a scholarly edition with all the footnotes and the introduction by a Nobel Prize winner, George Stigler, a huge index, a real scholarly edition. That’s the one I used. It’s the best edition. The scholarly framework was very interesting, including Stigler’s introduction. It’s likely he never opened The Wealth of Nations. Just about everything he said about the book was completely false. I went through a bunch of examples in writing about it, in Year 501 and elsewhere.

But even more interesting in some ways was the index. Adam Smith is very well known for his advocacy of division of labor. Take a look at “division of labor” in the index and there are lots and lots of things listed. But there’s one missing, namely his denunciation of division of labor, the one I just cited. That’s somehow missing from the index. It goes on like this. I wouldn’t call this research because it’s ten minutes’ work, but if you look at the scholarship, then it’s interesting.

I want to be clear about this. There is good Smith scholarship. If you look at the serious Smith scholarship, nothing I’m saying is any surprise to anyone. How could it be? You open the book and you read it and it’s staring you right in the face. On the other hand if you look at the myth of Adam Smith, which is the only one we get, the discrepancy between that and the reality is enormous.

This is true of classical liberalism in general. The founders of classical liberalism, people like Adam Smith and Wilhelm von Humboldt, who is one of the great exponents of classical liberalism, and who inspired John Stuart Mill — they were what we would call libertarian socialists, at least that ïs the way I read them. For example, Humboldt, like Smith, says, Consider a craftsman who builds some beautiful thing. Humboldt says if he does it under external coercion, like pay, for wages, we may admire what he does but we despise what he is. On the other hand, if he does it out of his own free, creative expression of himself, under free will, not under external coercion of wage labor, then we also admire what he is because he’s a human being. He said any decent socioeconomic system will be based on the assumption that people have the freedom to inquire and create — since that’s the fundamental nature of humans — in free association with others, but certainly not under the kinds of external constraints that came to be called capitalism.

It’s the same when you read Jefferson. He lived a half century later, so he saw state capitalism developing, and he despised it, of course. He said it’s going to lead to a form of absolutism worse than the one we defended ourselves against. In fact, if you run through this whole period you see a very clear, sharp critique of what we would later call capitalism and certainly of the twentieth century version of it, which is designed to destroy individual, even entrepreneurial capitalism.

There’s a side current here which is rarely looked at but which is also quite fascinating. That’s the working class literature of the nineteenth century. They didn’t read Adam Smith and Wilhelm von Humboldt, but they’re saying the same things. Read journals put out by the people called the “factory girls of Lowell,” young women in the factories, mechanics, and other working people who were running their own newspapers. It’s the same kind of critique. There was a real battle fought by working people in England and the U.S. to defend themselves against what they called the degradation and oppression and violence of the industrial capitalist system, which was not only dehumanizing them but was even radically reducing their intellectual level. So, you go back to the mid-nineteenth century and these so-called “factory girls,” young girls working in the Lowell [Massachusetts] mills, were reading serious contemporary literature. They recognized that the point of the system was to turn them into tools who would be manipulated, degraded, kicked around, and so on. And they fought against it bitterly for a long period. That’s the history of the rise of capitalism.

The other part of the story is the development of corporations, which is an interesting story in itself. Adam Smith didn’t say much about them, but he did criticize the early stages of them. Jefferson lived long enough to see the beginnings, and he was very strongly opposed to them. But the development of corporations really took place in the early twentieth century and very late in the nineteenth century. Originally, corporations existed as a public service. People would get together to build a bridge and they would be incorporated for that purpose by the state. They built the bridge and that’s it. They were supposed to have a public interest function. Well into the 1870s, states were removing corporate charters. They were granted by the state. They didn’t have any other authority. They were fictions. They were removing corporate charters because they weren’t serving a public function. But then you get into the period of the trusts and various efforts to consolidate power that were beginning to be made in the late nineteenth century. It’s interesting to look at the literature. The courts didn’t really accept it. There were some hints about it. It wasn’t until the early twentieth century that courts and lawyers designed a new socioeconomic system. It was never done by legislation. It was done mostly by courts and lawyers and the power they could exercise over individual states. New Jersey was the first state to offer corporations any right they wanted. Of course, all the capital in the country suddenly started to flow to New Jersey, for obvious reasons. Then the other states had to do the same thing just to defend themselves or be wiped out. It’s kind of a small-scale globalization. Then the courts and the corporate lawyers came along and created a whole new body of doctrine which gave corporations authority and power that they never had before. If you look at the background of it, it’s the same background that led to fascism and Bolshevism. A lot of it was supported by people called progressives, for these reasons: They said, individual rights are gone. We are in a period of corporatization of power, consolidation of power, centralization. That’s supposed to be good if you’re a progressive, like a Marxist-Leninist. Out of that same background came three major things: fascism, Bolshevism, and corporate tyranny. They all grew out of the same more or less Hegelian roots. It’s fairly recent. We think of corporations as immutable, but they were designed. It was a conscious design which worked as Adam Smith said: the principal architects of policy consolidate state power and use it for their interests. It was certainly not popular will. It’s basically court decisions and lawyers’ decisions, which created a form of private tyranny which is now more massive in many ways than even state tyranny was. These are major parts of modern twentieth century history. The classical liberals would be horrified. They didn’t even imagine this. But the smaller things that they saw, they were already horrified about. This would have totally scandalized Adam Smith or Jefferson or anyone like that….

BARSAMIAN: ….You’re very patient with people, particularly people who ask the most inane kinds of questions. Is this something you’ve cultivated?

CHOMSKY: First of all, I’m usually fuming inside, so what you see on the outside isn’t necessarily what’s inside. But as far as questions, the only thing I ever get irritated about is elite intellectuals, the stuff they do I do find irritating. I shouldn’t. I should expect it. But I do find it irritating. But on the other hand, what you’re describing as inane questions usually strike me as perfectly honest questions. People have no reason to believe anything other than what they’re saying. If you think about where the questioner is coming from, what the person has been exposed to, that’s a very rational and intelligent question. It may sound inane from some other point of view, but it’s not at all inane from within the framework in which it’s being raised. It’s usually quite reasonable. So there’s nothing to be irritated about.

You may be sorry about the conditions in which the questions arise. The thing to do is to try to help them get out of their intellectual confinement, which is not just accidental, as I mentioned. There are huge efforts that do go into making people, to borrow Adam Smith’s phrase, “as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be.” A lot of the educational system is designed for that, if you think about it, it’s designed for obedience and passivity. From childhood, a lot of it is designed to prevent people from being independent and creative. If you’re independent-minded in school, you’re probably going to get into trouble very early on. That’s not the trait that’s being preferred or cultivated. When people live through all this stuff, plus corporate propaganda, plus television, plus the press and the whole mass, the deluge of ideological distortion that goes on, they ask questions that from another point of view are completely reasonable….

BARSAMIAN: At the Mellon lecture that you gave in Chicago… you focused primarily on the ideas of John Dewey and Bertrand Russell [regarding education]…

CHOMSKY: … These were highly libertarian ideas. Dewey himself comes straight from the American mainstream. People who read what he actually said would now consider him some far-out anti-American lunatic or something. He was expressing mainstream thinking before the ideological system had so grotesquely distorted the tradition. By now, it’s unrecognizable. For example, not only did he agree with the whole Enlightenment tradition that, as he put it, “the goal of production is to produce free people,” — “free men,” he said, but that’s many years ago. That’s the goal of production, not to produce commodities. He was a major theorist of democracy. There were many different, conflicting strands of democratic theory, but the one I’m talking about held that democracy requires dissolution of private power. He said as long as there is private control over the economic system, talk about democracy is a joke. Repeating basically Adam Smith, Dewey said, Politics is the shadow that big business casts over society. He said attenuating the shadow doesn’t do much. Reforms are still going to leave it tyrannical. Basically, a classical liberal view. His main point was that you can’t even talk about democracy until you have democratic control of industry, commerce, banking, everything. That means control by the people who work in the institutions, and the communities.

These are standard libertarian socialist and anarchist ideas which go straight back to the Enlightenment, an outgrowth of the views of the kind that we were talking about before from classical liberalism. Dewey represented these in the modern period, as did Bertrand Russell, from another tradition, but again with roots in the Enlightenment. These were two of the major, if not the two major thinkers, of the twentieth century, whose ideas are about as well known as the real Adam Smith. Which is a sign of how efficient the educational system has been, and the propaganda system, in simply destroying even our awareness of our own immediate intellectual background.

BARSAMIAN: In that same Mellon lecture, you paraphrased Russell on education. You said that he promoted the idea that education is not to be viewed as something like filling a vessel with water, but rather assisting a flower to grow in its own way…

CHOMSKY: That’s an eighteenth century idea. I don’t know if Russell knew about it or reinvented it, but you read that as standard in early Enlightenment literature. That’s the image that was used… Humboldt, the founder of classical liberalism, his view was that education is a matter of laying out a string along which the child will develop, but in its own way. You may do some guiding. That’s what serious education would be from kindergarten up through graduate school. You do get it in advanced science, because there’s no other way to do it.

But most of the educational system is quite different. Mass education was designed to turn independent farmers into docile, passive tools of production. That was its primary purpose. And don’t think people didn’t know it. They knew it and they fought against it. There was a lot of resistance to mass education for exactly that reason. It was also understood by the elites. Emerson once said something about how we’re educating them to keep them from our throats. If you don’t educate them, what we call “education,” they’re going to take control — “they” being what Alexander Hamilton called the “great beast,” namely the people. The anti-democratic thrust of opinion in what are called democratic societies is really ferocious. And for good reason. Because the freer the society gets, the more dangerous the great beast becomes and the more you have to be careful to cage it somehow.

On the other hand, there are exceptions, and Dewey and Russell are among those exceptions. But they are completely marginalized and unknown, although everybody sings praises to them, as they do to Adam Smith. What they actually said would be considered intolerable in the autocratic climate of dominant opinion. The totalitarian element of it is quite striking. The very fact that the concept “anti-American” can exist — forget the way it’s used — exhibits a totalitarian streak that’s pretty dramatic. That concept, anti-Americanism — the only real counterpart to it in the modern world is anti-Sovietism. In the Soviet Union, the worst crime was to be anti-Soviet. That’s the hallmark of a totalitarian society, to have concepts like anti-Sovietism or anti-Americanism. Here it’s considered quite natural. Books on anti-Americanism, by people who are basically Stalinist clones, are highly respected. That’s true of Anglo-American societies, which are strikingly the more democratic societies. I think there’s a correlation there…As freedom grows, the need to coerce and control opinion also grows if you want to prevent the great beast from doing something with its freedom….

… Sam Bowles and Herb Gintis, two economists, in their work on the American educational system some years back… pointed out that the educational system is divided into fragments. The part that’s directed toward working people and the general population is indeed designed to impose obedience. But the education for elites can’t quite do that. It has to allow creativity and independence. Otherwise they won’t be able to do their job of making money. You find the same thing in the press. That’s why I read the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times and Business Week. They just have to tell the truth. That’s a contradiction in the mainstream press, too. Take, say, the New York Times or the Washington Post. They have dual functions and they’re contradictory. One function is to subdue the great beast. But another function is to let their audience, which is an elite audience, gain a tolerably realistic picture of what’s going on in the world. Otherwise, they won’t be able to satisfy their own needs. That’s a contradiction that runs right through the educational system as well. It’s totally independent of another factor, namely just professional integrity, which a lot of people have: honesty, no matter what the external constraints are. That leads to various complexities. If you really look at the details of how the newspapers work, you find these contradictions and problems playing themselves out in complicated ways….

[anniekoh]

elsewhere on the internet: talking about racism

This set of articles has been languishing at the back of the queue for three years! 

Political Correctness Wanted Dead or Alive: A Rhetorical Witch-Hunt in the US, Russia, and Europe

Anna Szilagyi (2016, Talk Decoded)

Possibly the most common way of attacking political correctness, is to label it “tyrannical”. Covert speech strategies may also support this construction. For instance, anti-PC politicians often utilize adjectives for fear (including “afraid”, “frightened”, “scared”, “terrified”) to describe how PC affects the behavior and feelings of people. The former leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage claimed: “I think actually what’s been happening with this whole politically correct agenda is lots of decent ordinary people are losing their jobs and paying the price for us being terrified of causing offence.” Suggesting that the British are “terrified” because of political correctness, Farage urged his listeners to think of PC in terms of intimidation.

At the same time, the fearsome vocabulary provides a background for anti-PC populists to present themselves as “brave” and “courageous” “saviors” of their “victimized” societies. The next quote by Nigel Farage exemplifies this trend: “I think the people see us as actually standing up and saying what we think, not being constrained or scared by political correctness.” In a similar fashion, Geert Wilders  declared: “I will not allow anyone to shut me up.”

Why White People Freak Out When They’re Called Out About Race

Sam Adler-Bell (2015, Alternet) @SamAdlerBell

Sam Adler-Bell: How did you come to write about "white fragility"?

Robin DiAngelo: To be honest, I wanted to take it on because it’s a frustrating dynamic that I encounter a lot. I don’t have a lot of patience for it. And I wanted to put a mirror to it.

I do atypical work for a white person, which is that I lead primarily white audiences in discussions on race every day, in workshops all over the country. That has allowed me to observe very predictable patterns. And one of those patterns is this inability to tolerate any kind of challenge to our racial reality. We shut down or lash out or in whatever way possible block any reflection from taking place.

Of course, it functions as means of resistance, but I think it’s also useful to think about it as fragility, as inability to handle the stress of conversations about race and racism

Sometimes it’s strategic, a very intentional push back and rebuttal. But a lot of the time, the person simply cannot function. They regress into an emotional state that prevents anybody from moving forward.

...

RD: I think we get tired of certain terms. What I do used to be called "diversity training," then "cultural competency" and now, "anti-racism." These terms are really useful for periods of time, but then they get coopted, and people build all this baggage around them, and you have to come up with new terms or else people won’t engage.

And I think "white privilege" has reached that point. It rocked my world when I first really got it, when I came across Peggy McIntosh. It’s a really powerful start for people. But unfortunately it's been played so much now that it turns people off.

The Language of “Privilege” Doesn’t Work

Stephen Aguilar (2016, Inside Higher Ed) @stephenaguilar

I believe that “privilege” is a sterile word that does not grapple with the core of the problem. If you are white, you do not have “white” privilege. If you are male, you do not have “male” privilege. If you are straight, you do not have “straight” privilege. What you have is advantage. The language of advantage, I propose, is a much cleaner and more precise way to frame discussions about racism (or sexism, or most systems of oppression).

... does giving up a “privilege” seem incoherent? It might, because generally privileges are given and taken by someone else. They are earned, and are seldom bad things to have.

Now try shifting your language to that of advantages. Ask yourself, “What advantages do I have over that person over there?” That question is much easier to answer and yields more nuanced responses.

Kimberlé Crenshaw on intersectionality

Bim Adewunmi (2014, New Statesman) @bimadewunmi

“I wanted to come up with an everyday metaphor that anyone could use”

“Class is not new and race is not new. And we still continue to contest and talk about it, so what’s so unusual about intersectionality not being new and therefore that’s not a reason to talk about it? Intersectionality draws attention to invisibilities that exist in feminism, in anti-racism, in class politics, so obviously it takes a lot of work to consistently challenge ourselves to be attentive to aspects of power that we don’t ourselves experience.”

...

“Sometimes it feels like those in power frame themselves as being tremendously disempowered by critique. A critique of one’s voice isn’t taking it away. If the underlying assumption behind the category ‘women’ or ‘feminist’ is that we are a coalition then there have to be coalitional practices and some form of accountability.”

The Persecution of Amy Schumer: Political Correctness and Comedy

Teo Bugbee (2015, Daily Beast)

We have developed highly advanced ways of recognizing and articulating when we feel offended, but very few ways of making something productive out of our own hurt feelings.

I’ve questioned if my choice to overlook what’s hurtful in Schumer’s comedy for the sake of what’s insightful is a sign that I’m complicit in the faults of white feminism, not valuing the importance of others’ feelings on this matter enough. This argument of apathy gets used often on social media to raise awareness around issues of race, sex, gender, and other topics surrounding justice and a need for change, and it is often useful, but it can also be a blunt instrument. Where I’ve landed for the moment is that not all marginalized people feel the same way about every issue—even on social media, but especially outside it—and asking everyone to respond in the same way to the same joke takes a simplistic view that flattens the complexity of marginalized communities just as much as it does the white, cisgender mainstream.

However, if we’re going to ask audiences to keep in mind the multiplicity of responses that a person might have to a work of art before they attempt to control someone else’s opinion, then it’s only fair that comedians follow the same rule.

What’s Wrong (and Right) in Jonathan Chait’s Anti-P.C. Screed

J. Bryan Lowder (2015, Slate)

One of the main problems with the constellation of leftist ideas he bemoans is that many of the people who use them most loudly do so out of context. Concepts like “microaggressions,” “trigger warnings,” and “mansplaining” originally had specific meanings and limited uses, often within the academy. They described or were meant to address specific situations or phenomena, and more important, they were intended to function as diagnostic tools of analysis, not be used as blunt, conversation-ending instruments. Believe it or not, most of these “PC buzzwords” are actually useful from time to time:  “Straightsplaining” is a real (and very annoying) thing, and it’s often a productive way of thinking about an interaction. But it’s also not always a useful or fair way to characterize a disagreement between a queer person and a straight interlocutor. Precision is what’s needed.

Additionally, though it is impossible to say this without sounding condescending myself, a lot of the abuse of PC rhetoric comes from young college students who have not yet grasped the difference between a measuring tape and a sledgehammer. Of course, given that contemporary mainstream politics offers little for those hopeful souls who want to make truly radical change in the world, you can’t really blame them for gravitating toward a mode of critique that at least feels somewhat empowering. Here, first-year, is a framework by which you can reveal the (screwed-up) hidden structures of the world and use your newly honed textual close-reading skills to mount offenses against those structures—go for it. What works on a novel doesn’t necessary translate to a complicated, changeable human being, though, so it’s no surprise that the deployment of microaggression and cissexism and other social justice lingo can sometimes come off as strident and simplistic. It often is.

But then, so is crying that only Reason can save us from the illiberal wolves waiting in the wings of our great system, which has a “glorious” history on social justice, by the way.

Want To Help End Systemic Racism? First Step: Drop the White Guilt

Sincere Kirabo (2015, thehumanist)

The point of identifying and exposing inconsistencies within the social systems and cultural norms of the United States isn’t to make whites feel guilty, but to garner greater empathy that will inspire change. The main problem with white guilt is that it attempts to diminish the spotlight aimed at issues germane to marginalized groups and redirects the focus to a wasteful plane of apologetics and ineffective assessment.

This is why some don’t like discussing racism, as those more sensitive to these matters sometimes allow guilt to creep into their thought processes, effectively evoking pangs of discomfort. This can lead to avoidance of the primary issues altogether, as well as the manifestation of defense mechanisms, including denial, projection, intellectualization, and rationalization.

Many are acquainted with the concept of Catholic guilt. Catholic doctrine emphasizes the inherent sinfulness of all people. These accentuated notions of fault lead to varied degrees of enhanced self-loathing. I liken white guilt to Catholic guilt: both relate to a sense of inadequacy emanating from misguided notions. Though the latter is anchored in an imagined source, they both speak to feelings of remorse and internal conflict that does the individual having them no good.

Keep in mind that the call to “recognize your privilege” does not translate to “bear the blame.”

[what-stop-the-presses-rly-means]

Anonymous

Davey Jacobs x gender neutral reader modern au

Warnings: slight swearing

———————–

I sighed as I doodled little flowers in my notebook. It had only been two hours since my shift started, but it felt like ten. When I applied for this job at the campus library I was thrilled. I would get to work with books, be in a quiet and calming environment, and I could work on homework in my down time. What I had not been prepared for, however, was the sheer amount of boredom I’d be feeling. I did the reading for my classes and got a jumpstart on my research paper. There weren’t many people in the library today so my job was to sit here and wait. Now I just wanted something, anything remotely exciting to happen.

As if some deity had answered my prayers, a familiar boy walked through the front doors. I watched Davey make a beeline over to a shelf, face looking determined. It made me smile. Whenever he was on a mission, it was like nothing else mattered, he focused solely on the task at hand.

I met Davey when I first started working here a couple months ago. He came to the library almost every day for one reason or another. At first it was just offhand comments about the books we were currently reading or whichever classes were kicking our ass. After a while, the conversations lasted a little longer and became a little more personal. (I learned that he is the third generation of his family to go to this school, he’s switched his major four times because he’s so unsure what he wants to do and he’s afraid to let his family down if he picks the wrong one, and that he has a younger brother that he absolutely adores.) And now, even though it hasn’t been said out loud, I would call us friends. Sure, we haven’t talked outside of the library, but that was fine, I liked it this way.

Thinking he’d probably take a while, picking the perfect book, I leaned over my notebook again. This time, as if my hand had a mind of its own, I was doodling hearts all over the paper.

Then a soft voice startled me out of my reverie. “Excuse me, Miss. I’d hate to distract you from the work you’re so incredibly invested in, but I’d like to check out a book.” I looked up at Davey, who gave me the most charming smile, and couldn’t help but smile back.

“What? And actually do my job? Who do you think I am?”

He laughed. “Careful. Draw one too many hearts and someone might accuse you of being in loooove.”

I rolled my eyes. “And wouldn’t you just love that? Is your life so devoid of anything exciting that my possible love interest is entertaining to you?”

“You know very well that both of our lives are devoid of excitement. Why do you think we spend so much time in the library?”

“Rude! I happen to work here. What’s your excuse?” He blushed a little bit.

“Books can be exciting. They’re full of adventure and action. The most incredible stories come from places like this.”

I reached out and patted his shoulder. “That’s all fine and good, but just make sure you don’t use that line on anyone else. They may not appreciate it as much as me,” I laughed.

He rolled his eyes. “Okay, can I check out this book so I can walk away from you and never come back?”

“Oh honey, you could never leave me if you tried. But yes, you can check it out.” He kept his hands behind his back and raised his eyebrows expectantly. “Okay, let me guess.” I narrowed my eyes at him and pursed my lips, pretending to think. This was a little game we played every time he selected a book. I guessed correctly about half the time. “I’m gonna guess you picked out a book for AP Literature because you’ve been worried about your grade in that class. Shakespeare, obviously. And I’m gonna go with Romeo and Juliet. You know the story, of course, but you’re gonna spend hours trying to ‘read between the lines’ to fully understand the story before you write your paper.”

He gave me a bewildered look. “How… did you know that?” I leaned back with a satisfied smile.

“Because I know you and you’re not too hard to figure out. Some people like to use the power of seduction to impress people. I like to use the power of deduction.” After a moment, the smile dropped from my face. “And now that I’ve said that out loud I realize how dorky that sounded so I take it back. Also, I saw you walk over to the Shakespeare section so it wasn’t a difficult guess.”

Davey let out an uncharacteristically loud laugh, earning a shush or two from the few people studying. He blushed again and put the copy of Romeo and Juliet on the counter.

“You know, a lesser man would’ve said you cheated. But I’ll give you this one.”

I scanned the book. “Ah, but a greater man wouldn’t have been so predictable to begin with. You know everyone in your class is gonna write about this play, right?”

He put the book in his messenger bag. “Yes, but by the time I’m done I’m going to know the ins and outs of Romeo and Juliet so well, you’ll think Billy Shakespeare wrote the analysis, himself.”

“Well, I hope you’re right. See you tomorrow when you ultimately decide to use a different book.” I wiggled my fingers at him in a wave. He rolled his eyes good naturedly and saluted me.

“Yeah, yeah, see you then.”

I didn’t think it was possible, but the next day was even slower. There were more people in the building, sure, but everyone was doing their own thing. No one wanted to check anything out. To make matters worse, Davey hadn’t come in today. He might be staying away to make a point that I don’t know him that well and that he will stick with the book. But even so, he sometimes came in just to talk.

I needed to calm down. He’s probably busy, like every other student around here. He doesn’t owe me anything. I hadn’t realized just how much I relied on his little visits. It was weird to depend so much on a person that I didn’t even know outside of work. Were there some legitimate feelings there? Maybe. I hadn’t really thought about it. He was just the cute guy that talked to me about our shared interests. And made me laugh. And was really sweet and funny and charming. Oh crap.

Well, it didn’t matter either way. He definitely didn’t feel that way about me. I was just someone he could have a nice conversation with before he left to go on and do bigger and better things. All I do is go to class and sit in this chair, waiting for someone to say more to me than, “I’d like to check this out, please.” He probably had a bunch of genius friends who write novels and discuss politics. They probably have exciting, fulfilling lives day-to-day. What’ve I got?

So it’s settled. In the span of five minutes I’ve discovered new found feelings for my non-friend, and then squashed them down as soon as I knew what they were… And I wonder why all I’ve done since I started college was go to class and then the library.

My shift was almost over so I cleaned up my station and walked over to the book return to put away the last of them before I left. Down at the bottom, underneath a large dictionary, was an envelope.

“What the-? Did someone think this was a mailbox?” I picked it up and turned it over. My breath hitched when I saw my name written on the front. Looking around, as if the sender was still going to be around, I sat back down and opened it. Inside was a nice piece of stationary and the handwriting was neat, as if the person took the time to put some care into writing it:

“O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!

It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night

Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear-

Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.

So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows

As yonder lady o’er her fellows shows.

The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand

And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.

Did my heart love till now?

Forswear it, sight,

For ne’er saw true beauty till this night.”

That was it. No explanation, no name, nothing. Were they talking about me? It was obviously addressed to me. This had to be a prank. That’s the only explanation. Some asshole saw me sitting here like some lonely loser and thought they’d have a laugh, seeing me gush over some anonymous love letter.

I was about to get up and throw it away, but I couldn’t. What if, by some small miracle, it was real? What if someone actually quoted this declaration of love to me because they actually like me? Could that happen? In real life?

I carefully folded the paper back into the envelope and placed it in my bag as I got up to leave.

—-

I had read and re-read the note a hundred times since yesterday. I still couldn’t believe someone took the time to write it all out and give it to me. I discovered it was a passage from Romeo and Juliet and my mind immediately went to Davey. But there was no way… right? He barely knows me and besides, he probably has a bunch of intellectual girls knocking down his door to even think about me. No, it couldn’t be him. Could it?

“What are you thinking about so hard?” I jumped a little in my seat.

“Do you make it a habit to sneak up on me at work?”

Davey smirked. “All I do is come to the check-out counter and use my inside voice. It’s not my fault you’re probably harboring some big secrets that make you act guilty.” I narrowed my eyes at him a little, deciphering whether or not he was joking.

“What kind of secret would I be hiding?”

He looked a little taken aback. “Like… you want me to guess? Is this our new game? Okay. Hmm. You’re really an undercover assassin that’s been hired to murder anyone who has a late fee?” I furrowed my brow at him.

“I’m gonna go with no. But good guess.”

“Okay, fine, let’s see. Last I saw you, you were doodling hearts in your notebook. You’ve been daydreaming more often. And you’re dressing in a nicer fashion.” I glanced down at the outfit I spent forever picking out this morning. “I’m gonna go with: You have a crush on someone.” I blushed a little, at which he smirked. “You’re not the only one who’s good at deduction.”

I cleared my throat. “Don’t get too cocky just yet. You’re wrong. Actually, you might be able to help me with something.” I reached into my bag and pulled out the envelope and handed it to him. “This was given to me yesterday. Well, I mean, I found it. What do you think it means?” I watched him open the letter and read it, looking for some kind of… something on his face. When he was done, he looked up at me.

“You mean, like, you want me to translate what it says?”

I gave him a bored look. “No… I looked it up on Google, I know what it says,” I mumbled. “I mean, what does the whole thing mean? Why would someone just give that to me?” He handed it back to me with a small smile.

“I’d say I was half right before. Someone has a crush, but it’s on you.”

I gave him a skeptical look. “How can you be sure? There’s no explanation. Just a few lines from a play.”

“I’m no expert, but if someone wrote on and on about my beauty, albeit through the words of Shakespeare, I wouldn’t take it lightly.”

“Okay, but what do I do about it? It’s not like I can return the favor. I have no idea who they are.”

“Just give it time. Maybe they’ll send more.”

“Oh, wipe that smug look off your face.”

“I will when you stop blushing.” I leaned over and hid my face in my arms. “Oh, don’t be like that. It’s cute, in a way.”

I waved him off without looking up. “Just go away and do whatever Davey’s do when they’re not in the library.”

I could hear the smile in his voice when he said, “So, drinking unholy amounts of coffee while nitpicking every paper I write because I’m a perfectionist and ultimately stressing myself out so much that I imagine running away to live in the Shire? I’m not scheduled to do that ‘til six.” I couldn’t help the smile that graced my face.

“Actually, I see you running more toward Hogwarts than anything,” I say, looking up at him.

He smiled. “Then I’d just stress over my magical tests.”

“Hey, at least they’d be about magic, instead of algebra or the history of the printing press.”

“Fun fact about the printing press-“

“And I’m leaving you now!” I got up to put some books away as he laughed behind me.

—-

It’s been over a week since I received the note and I had actually started to forget about it. I had given up the little hope that I had allowed myself to feel that I’d receive any more, after the first couple days. Now the note was lying at the bottom of my desk drawer back in my dorm instead of on me at all times. It was time to stop living in my fantasy world and get back to reality. Though it was ironic to think such things when I spent half my time in the library, surrounded by fantasies and did little to stop myself from daydreaming. But baby steps I guess.

I walked in a few minutes before my shift and saw Katherine, my coworker, talking to her boyfriend.

“Hey now, this is work time, not flirty time,” I laughed as I walked behind the counter to set my stuff down. “Hi, Jack.” The man leaning on the counter tipped his hat at me. Katherine turned to me, smiling.

“Oh, so you’re allowed to flirt with Davey damn near every day, but I can’t talk to my boyfriend?”

Jack raised his eyebrows. “Wait. Davey Jacobs? You got the hots for my boy, Davey?” I was in the middle of taking off my jacket and paused, looking over at the two of them.

“Yes, Davey Jacobs. No, I do not have ‘the hots’ for him. He just comes in and we talk.”

Katherine scoffed. “You’re being modest. He only comes in when you’re working- I once even saw him walk in, see it was me behind the counter, and leave- and you guys make googly eyes at each other the entire time.”

Jack’s smirk could cut glass. “Oh, I am gonna give him so much shit for that. That’s adorable! I’ve noticed he’s had more of a spring in his step lately. I left my clothes on the floor the other day and he didn’t even lecture me. He’s got it bad.”

“Okay, you’re both crazy, which means you’re perfect for each other.” I grabbed Katherine by the arm and lifted her out of my chair. “Go off and be crazy together now, and leave me in peace.”

“So you don’t want this letter that was left for you in the book return earlier?” She waved a small envelope with my name on it in front of my face. My eyes widened and I’m ashamed to say I lunged at it. She pulled back, laughing.

“First, admit I’m right, then you can have it. You owe me. It’s been killing me, not opening this all day.”

I sat back. “I’ll admit that you have been right in the past and that your powers of perception are brilliant at times, so it’s no wonder you think that you’re right this time.” Katherine glanced at Jack, who shrugged.

“I think that’s the best you’re gonna get.” She sighed and handed it over. It had the same neat handwriting. I was nervous to open it, especially in front of these two, but my curiosity outweighed any nerves. Just like the first one, this note was written on stationary and folded with care. With trembling hands, I unfolded it:

“But nothing I have seen in the world has supported your pronouncements that love is more powerful than my kind of magic, Dumbledore.”

“Perhaps you have been looking in the wrong places.”

Again, that was it. No signature, no reasoning for the word choice, no trace of who could have sent it. I let out a sigh and looked up at my little audience.

“Well?” Katherine asked, exasperated. I just handed the paper over to them. “A quote from Harry Potter?”

“The Order of the Phoenix,” Jack clarified. We both gave him weird looks. “Hey, I read! What do you think it means?”

I shook my head. “No idea. The first note quoted Shakespeare and now this.”

“Wait, hold up,” Katherine interjected. “This isn’t the first one you’ve gotten?”

“I mean, it’s only the second. They’ve been anonymously placed in the book return.”

Katherine squealed a little. “Oh my god, you have a secret admirer!” A loud “SHHH!” came from behind her. “Oh, shhh yourself!” She turned back to me. “What are you gonna do?”

“There’s nothing I can do! I have no idea who’s sending them.”

“I’ll bet I can hack into the security footage from the camera outside to see who’s been putting things in the return.” Jack and I gave her bewildered looks. “Hey, I can hack!”

“You don’t need to risk expulsion on my behalf. It’s probably better I don’t know.”

“Let me see the note again.” I handed it to Jack. He ran his fingers around the fancy border of the stationary and a wide grin split across his face as he handed it back to me.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing. You’re right, we’ll probably never find out. Anyway, we should probably let you get to work. Come on, Katherine.”

“But-“

“Come on.” He put his arm around her and started walking toward the exit. As he opened the door, they almost ran into someone.

“Oh, hey, DAVEY!” he said exaggeratingly loud. “FANCY SEEING YOU HERE!” Davey stared after them as they left. I groaned as I pulled out my notebooks.

“What was that all about? Did Jack say anything to you? Anything weird? I mean, more so than normal?”

“I don’t even know anymore,” I said as I looked down at my history notes that I had no intention of studying. “He’s always been weird, and he’s dragging Katherine down with him.”

Davey chuckled. “Yeah, but they seem happy. Love, however weird, is in the air. Embrace it.”

“Speaking of that…” I hesitated. Should I talk to him about it? He wasn’t too helpful last time, but his heart was in the right place. Screw it. I pulled out the envelope. “Guess who got another anonymous note? I swear, at this point they seem like clues for a scavenger hunt or something.” I handed it to him. He opened it and scanned the words pretty quickly.

“Hmm, not as eloquent as the last one, but still a fairly sweet message. Why do you seem so upset about all of this? Someone has reminisced about your beauty and compared you to the feeling of love. Isn’t that a positive thing?”

“It is. But I’m afraid to fall too deep into this. There are too many variables that could cause a negative outcome. What if they get to know me and I’m not like what they admired from afar? What if they’re wrong for me? What if it’s a creepy old man? What if it’s a prank and I’m falling right into their trap-“ Davey caught my hands that I had been flailing around and held them gingerly.

“Hey, calm down. In order: If they’re admiring you from afar, then they’re just going to be even more enamored by you once they get to know you. If they’re wrong for you, no harm no foul. But it would be their loss. If it’s a creepy old man, just let him down gently. And if that doesn’t work, call the cops. And if it’s a prank, though I doubt anyone would be so cruel, I’ll kick their ass for you.”

I quirked an eyebrow. “I always pegged you as more of the wise wizard than the knight in shining armor. But I’ll take it.”

“Hey, I’m no Dumbledore.” He gestured to the note. “But I’ll take that as a compliment. Anyway, be honest, what do you think of this person?”

I sighed. “I don’t know how to feel about them. How can I feel anything about someone who leaves me quotes from books? I don’t know anything about who they are other than the fact that they read and that they apparently find me appealing.” I laughed. “Which should be enough when I think about it. If I had any less self esteem, I’d be theirs in a heartbeat. I just wish they’d be a little more personal. Put themselves on the page. No, what I really wish is that they’d introduce themselves, but I’ll settle for just a little more personalization. That way I’m not just running through the million questions in my mind about them. I have enough to worry about with classes and studying, I don’t wanna have to worry about this too.”

Davey smiled at me sympathetically. “And you deserve that. If someone cares this much about you, it’s the least they could do.” He squeezed my hands, which were still in his.

“Thanks,” I whispered.

—-

Over the course of the next month I’ve received two more notes. They’re always the same: my name on the envelope, fancy stationary, and a passage of some sort. Nothing else. The third note was by Edgar Allen Poe:

“There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion.”

And the fourth was from Through the Looking Glass:

“I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently.”

They were all centered around love and beauty. That was the only common theme I could find. I spent countless hours reading them over and over again, trying to find a link between the authors or a hidden message. I found nothing.

It’s been another two weeks since the last note. This time I really started to worry. Was it really a prank? Or did they just lose interest? I shouldn’t get so worked up about a few pieces of paper that really could mean anything. Like I told Davey, I have more important things to worry about.

I was eating lunch under one of the big trees on the quad with a few friends from class. But I was thinking too hard to actually touch any of my food. I turned to the blond boy sitting next to me.

“Race, you’re a guy, right?” Race paused, sandwich halfway to his mouth, as his eyes darted around for a moment.

“Uh, last time I checked.”

I leaned in closer. “So would you say you understand the ins and outs of how guys flirt or try to get attention from someone they like?”

“I guess so.” He set down his sandwich and gave me his full attention. “What’s up? Has a guy been giving you mixed signals? Because if that’s the case, he’s probably not doing it on purpose. We’re not that complicated.”

I laughed a bit at that. “Kinda? Not really mixed, per se, more like not giving enough signals… sorta.” He gave me a questioning look, so I continued. “I’ve been getting anonymous love notes, if you can even call them that. Just nice quotes from books with no other information. What does that mean?”

Race smirked at me. “Ah, Jack did mention that you got yourself a little secret admirer. Now, this is a little out of my wheelhouse ‘cause I’m more of a straightforward kinda guy.”

“Yeah, no kidding. You hit on me the first day of class.”

“Yes, and you shot me down in a very cruel manner while I was vulnerable putting myself out there. I’m still waiting for an apology.”

“All you said was, ‘Nice ass, what’s your name?’ and I told you, ‘I know, and none of your business.’”

“Yet one week later we were friends. So you gotta admit it kind of works.”

I punched his shoulder. “We’re getting off track here. Am I wasting my time hoping that something could come out of this?”

“That depends on how you look at it. From what I can tell, this mystery person is the only one who can pull the strings on this little thing you guys got going. So you can wait for them to grow some balls and reveal themselves and do what you will from there. Or you can take all of this at face value and accept the compliments, let them brighten your day a little, but move on afterwards. Because you’ll drive yourself crazy if you try to get involved. It’s basically just a waiting game at this point.”

I nodded as I took it all in. “Thanks.” He placed a hand on my shoulder.

“No problem.”

“When did you get smart?” He used the same hand to push me over, making me laugh. I pushed him back.

“Hey now, no violence. Save that for someone who really deserves it.” Jack sat down next to us and turned to Race. “Oh, it’s just Racer. Yeah he probably deserves, it. Continue.” Race flipped him off and went back to eating. Jack looked down at the book in my lap.

“Seriously? You’re reading during your lunch hour? Don’t you get enough of that from class and work?”

“Shut up, this is a good one.”

He chuckled and rolled his eyes. “You sound just like Davey. You know, he’s been constantly reading. Every time I see him he’s got his nose in some poetry book. Either that, or practicing calligraphy. I swear, he’s an immortal being from the 1800’s or something.”

“Don’t hate. Some people happen to like the arts. It’s no different than you and your painting.”

He gasped and put his hand on his chest dramatically. “How dare you compare my favorite pastime with your nerdy nonsense! I am not one of you!”

I scoffed and looked back down at my book. “Yeah and you also read Harry Potter so you’re not far from it.”

“Circling back to what I said earlier, go back to beating each other up. You both deserve it.”

—-

It had been a long day. I was ready to go home and sleep for as long as possible before I had to get back up and do this all over again. It was just one of those days. I haven’t talked to Davey in forever because he was busy with schoolwork, and my other friends seemed busy with their social lives. I only really talked to Katherine, but it was only in passing as we switched shifts. But that’s how things go, I guess.

I was about to head out as I heard a faint thud come from behind me. Something was dropped into the return, but it was lighter than a book.

“No… It can’t be…” I peered inside and, lo and behold, there was another envelope. I gently picked it up and read my name. Making a quick decision, I stuffed it into my bag and walked back to my dorm. I’d gotten a bunch of these already, so why was I so nervous to read one now?

I walked in and quickly locked the door. Shucking off my coat and shoes, I sat on my bed and placed the note in front of me. Taking a deep breath, I opened it. Something caught my eye, something new. There was a sticky note on top of the folded note:

“Sorry this took so long. I wanted it to be perfect.” For some reason this made me even more nervous. The mystery person had never spoken directly to me like that before. Willing my hands to stop shaking, I unfolded it:

You don’t notice that you play with your hair when you’re nervous. But I do.

You don’t think people will like you if you talk about books. But I do.

You don’t realize your laugh is the best sound anyone could hear. But I do.

You don’t see how much you’ve changed my life. But I do.

You don’t think anyone notices you. But I do.

You don’t know that you deserve to be loved.

But I do.

I slowly lowered it onto my lap. Did they… did they write this? About me? For me? I had no words. I had said I wanted a little more personalization to these notes, but I never expected this.

My phone buzzed next to me, making me jump. When I saw the caller ID I answered.

“H-Hey, Kath. What’s up?”

“Hey, I don’t have much time, but I wanted to see how you were doing.”

“Jack? I’m doing fine. What do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing. I just wanted to make sure everything is good, see if you’ve gotten any more notes. Did you just so happen to get another note today?”

I furrowed my brow. “Uh, yeah… How did you know that?” I could practically see the giant smile on his face. “Just a guess. I definitely didn’t see a particular person put an envelope in their bag and walk with purpose in the direction of the library earlier. Not at a-“

“JACK KELLY!”

I pulled the phone away from my ear as Katherine screamed. There was shuffling on the other end before I heard Katherine again.

“Sorry about that. He stole my phone when I went to the bathroom. Don’t listen to him.” She paused. “Though I do really hope you are getting something out of those notes. And I hope they reveal themselves soon.”

“What are you guys talking ab-“

“Got to go, bye!” And she hung up. I glanced back down at the poem. The poem written about me. The poem written by someone who seems to know a lot about me. The poem that was incredibly sweet and from the heart. But who wrote it? Who’s been sending these notes? Who cared this much about me?

I thought back on the last month. I went over all the information I had about this situation in my head, including my friends’ weird behavior. And then my jaw dropped.

—-

The next morning I got up bright and early to go back to work. I waved to my other coworker as they left and got settled. I hadn’t been sitting for more than two minutes when Davey walked up to the counter.

“What are you doing here so early? You never come here in the mornings.”

“Hello to you, too. Wow, you haven’t seen me in days and the first thing you do is question why you’re seeing me now? That hurts. You wound me.”

I rolled my eyes and smiled. “Hello, Davey. I’ve missed you. My days were unbearable without you. Please never leave me again,” I said sarcastically.

“Damn straight. But if you must know, other than to see your beautiful smile, I’m here to grab a book before I head to my business lecture. I need something to read while I’m not paying attention.”

“Woah, you’re gonna blatantly, premeditatively ignore a lecture? What’s gotten in to you?”

He gave me a little smug smile. “I don’t know, just learning that there are more important things than worrying about grades.” I gave him a disbelieving look. “…Also, I read ahead in the textbook so I already know everything that’s going to be said.”

“Now, that I believe. What are you checking out?”

“What, you’re not going to guess?” He looked at me expectantly with his hands behind his back.

“Sorry, my head’s been all over the place lately. You win this game for once.”

His smile dropped. “Why’s that?”

I fiddled with my hair for a moment. Huh, I do play with it when I’m nervous. “I got another note from the mystery person. You know how I said I wanted them to be personal?”

“Yeah.”

I looked up at him for a moment, and then just handed it to him. He carefully unfolded it and took his time reading. When he looked up, he seemed to be choosing his words carefully.

“What did you think when you read it?”

“Well, it’s definitely an improvement,” I laughed. “It made me feel special. And it made me feel appreciated and loved. Like I wasn’t just some nerdy student who spends their time reading and doing schoolwork. Like I was someone worth knowing.”

He gave me a small smile. “You seem to really like this person now. Does this mean you’re divorcing me?”

“It’s already been filed. Expect the papers in the mail in 3 to 5 business days.”

Davey clutched his chest dramatically. “I don’t know how I’ll be able to go on without you. Who will give me a hard time when I try to act cool? Who will make fun of me when I get too nerdy?”

I scanned the book he dropped on the counter. “I’m sure Jack will have that covered, don’t worry.”

“Yeah, but he’s not you.” I looked up at him. I couldn’t help the blush that spread across my face but I didn’t dare break eye contact. All traces of joking had left his face as we looked into each others’ eyes.

I cleared my throat and held the book out to him. “Here. You’re gonna be late, and you still need to order your morning coffee before you go to class.”

He blinked a couple times. “You think you know me so well.” He accepted the book, making our fingers brush and my heart speed up. “And you kinda do.” He smiled brightly. “See you later.” Giving me his signature salute, he walked outside.

I watched through the window as he opened the cover of the book, eyes widening, followed by a small smile. No doubt reading the note I placed inside:

I thought about what I should write over and over again. I couldn’t decide which book or poem to quote. I wanted to match your eloquence but nothing came to mind. So I’m writing down my current thoughts. We’ve got a lot in common. We both love books, we make the stupidest puns, and we get super stressed when it comes to schoolwork. But we are also both really bad at expressing how we feel straight and outright. So one of us is going to have to break the cycle. Why not me? I really like you, David Jacobs. There, I said it. You don’t need to decode this note, there’s no hidden meaning. So why don’t we cut the crap and skip ahead in the story to the part where we’re finally happy? (Though you can still send me poems. I really do like them.)

Followed by my phone number and a little message at the end: Now THAT’S how you leave a love note!

[allondonboy]

Medicine for the Soul (Ch 9)

Chapter 9 - Andante: tutti  (Ch 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

very much tutti. 

bind responsibly folks. if you need information my tumblr is open or please contact your binding person of choice

thanks for your patience with this little fic, feedback is always welcomed

thanks as always to @jjeanmorreau

J’onn gives them a list of accompanists to work through. It’s long, with maybe twenty names, and Alex lets the list sit on top of their pile of music for a full week before having a closer look. The issue, they realise as their stomach twists, is that they have to be open with whoever they choose. They have to make themselves completely vulnerable with whoever is playing the concerto with them.

And that involves coming out.

They haven’t bothered with declaring their pronouns to the rest of their academic year. It doesn’t affect how well they work in the lab because they never hang around long enough to have a conversation. They’re polite to the staff and the staff are polite back and somehow they’ve avoided any situation in which they hear themselves referred to in the third person. It’s a complete non-issue.

One-on-one, for an hour, maybe hours on end, is a different story.

Their accompanist will be the first time they’ve opened their social circle – even if it’s for the purely perfunctory purpose of entering a competition – since Maggie, and Maggie was definitely a special case of at-least-she’s-heard-the-terminology.

Before they know it, they’ve spiralled, and they crush up the list of names in a tight fist.

Lucy doesn’t really do affection and that’s probably one of the reasons they’re such good friends. There’s no time wasted with feelings when you can blurt what you’re thinking and know the other person will roll with it.

This is the one time Alex hesitates about talking to Lucy. The memory of Lucy coming out to them as bi plays itself on loop. It helps, knowing that Lucy was nervous about that. It makes it okay to be nervous about this.

Because they’ve done the reading and the research, and they have the back of a notebook full of evidence and analysis of their thought process, and they have a conclusion, underlined twice.

Non-binary.

It makes sense.

Lucy feels like the natural person to tell first. Secrets are part of her life, partly because so many people keep secrets from her, and if there’s one person Alex knows they can trust with this next jigsaw piece of their life, it’s her.

They’re still nervous, though.

What if Lucy is one of those people who can comprehend sexuality but not gender identity?

What if gay is okay, bi is fine, but this is a step too far?

What if their pronouns are where she draws the line in this friendship of over a decade?

Logically, there’s nothing in Lucy’s character that would result in the What Ifs becoming real. Alex has listened to enough of Lucy’s rants about how justice should be for all corners of the community to know that the chance of Lucy completely accepting them is greater than 95 %.

It’s then that Lucy pops up next to their shoulder with her bag on her back, waving a spare water bottle under Alex’s nose until they take it.

“Race ya,” is all she says in greeting before she takes off up the path with the grace of a mountain goat. Alex sighs and trudges after her.

It’s pure chance that Alex is walking past the practice room when its occupant stretches. Around their wrist is a woven bracelet in rainbow colours and another in what Alex knows with heart-stopping familiarity is the non-binary flag.

Alex pauses outside the ajar door. The person reveals themselves to be a pianist when they crack their knuckles and launch into a set of whirling scales. Alex stays outside for another half hour until the pianist stands, shovels their music into their bag and abruptly stops when they see Alex watching them.

“I need an accompanist,” says Alex bluntly. “How much do you charge?”

“Depends who it is,” the pianist says. They cross their arms and look Alex up and down. “What’s it for?”

“Concerto competition.” Alex doesn’t budge from the doorway.

The pianist nods. “Instrument?”

“Violin.”

“I’m Vasquez.” They hold out their hand and Alex shakes it firmly, and they can’t stop their eyes flicking down to Vasquez’s wrist.

“Alex. Danvers.”

“My card, Danvers. Now, I have class, if you don’t mind?”

Alex makes a mental note to get something to put their growing collection of business cards in as they take it and sidestep out of the way to let Vasquez past.

They don’t choose their moment. It just sort of happens as they near the top of the hill and pause for a snack.

“I want to start using they/them pronouns,” Alex says abruptly and Lucy keeps her eyes trained carefully on their face.

“Sure,” she says, an air of nonchalance about the word though it’s loaded with an invitation to expand.

“I’m non-binary,” offers Alex by way of explanation and Lucy’s gaze still doesn’t waver.

“That’s really cool, Al.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I’m glad you figured out whatever was on your mind.”

“Wait – you knew?”

The corner of Lucy’s mouth twitches in a part-smirk, part-smile. “Crinkle.”

Alex repeats it under their breath with a scowl.

“Yeah, like that,” Lucy points. “I knew something was bothering you. I didn’t know it was gender-related.”

“And you’re okay with it?”

Lucy smiles properly now, eyes soft and Alex feels like they’ve just been hugged. “I’m fine with it. You know, we’ve been through some tough shit together. It’ll take more than an identity crisis to get rid of me.”

Alex exhales loudly. “Thanks.”

“Thanks yourself.” Lucy digs into her bag and chucks Alex a bag of trail mix. “Who else knows?”

“Just you.” Alex watches her out of the corner of their eye. A flicker of confusion, then pride, passes over Lucy’s face.

“Did you want to have a play through now?” Vasquez waves them into their apartment and shuts the door, leading them through to a room at the back of the house which, Alex sees now, houses a gleaming upright piano, music stacked in piles all around the room. Alex fidgets with the strap over their shoulder.

“I only really came to give you this.” They hold out the accompaniment. Vasquez takes it and sits on the piano stool, kicking their feet out as they open it up. “Markings are inside.”

“Finally, a musician who knows what they’re doing,” Vasquez mutters and spins to lift up the lid and fold the music out in front of them. They wiggle their fingers and quickly play the first couple of measures with their right hand. Making a pleased noise in the back of their throat, they turn back to Alex who has their eyes closed, and coughs quietly. Alex’s eyes fly open.

“I’ve got a couple of hours free just now. You can put your case there.” Vasquez points to their rather large windowsill. “I’ll get a stand.”

Free of having to make the decision themselves, Alex does as instructed and takes a series of deep breaths as they apply resin to their bow, trying desperately to calm the panic that did its best to overcome them every time they even thought of playing in front of someone new.

“Have you thought about telling Kara? And your parents?”

“Kara yes, Mom and Dad no.” Alex sighs.

“From what I know about Kara, I don’t think she’ll have an issue with it,” says Lucy carefully.

“Is it fair to her for me to tell her, though?”

“Is it fair to you to not?”

“But can I ask her to keep it a secret? I mean, you know what she’s like with secrets, Lucy.”

“She’s okay with important stuff. You want to tell her at some point, right?”

“Yeah.” Alex sighs again and rubs their forehead. “I don’t like keeping things from her. But I don’t want to spook her.”

“Spook her?”

“I don’t want her to think that I’m not me anymore. I am still me.”

“She’ll know that, Alex.”

“How will she? She still has nightmares about the family she’s already lost. I can’t go to her and say ‘hey, the sister you thought you knew, the one who promised to protect you and love you no matter what? Well, she’s not who you thought she was.’”

“You said it yourself. You’re the same person.”

“Yes, but she doesn’t know that.” Frustration leaks into Alex’s voice and they hunch further into themselves. “She doesn’t know that I’ll still protect her and love her. She doesn’t know that I’m not abandoning her.”

“Give Kara some credit,” says Lucy. “She’s not going to think you’re abandoning her.”

“No? Lucy, she thinks I know everything. Not – not school stuff, not smart stuff, but she thinks I know everything about how this world works. So how can I confess that I am just as baffled by it, by my own mind as any other human being?”

“Alex,” breathes Lucy. Alex knows then that she’s seen straight through them. “None of this makes you weak.”

“I know, but…” Alex struggles for a moment. “The one thing I’ve always been able to rely on is my mind, and now I’m doubting everything I’ve ever known about myself and that is fucking scary.”

“But it’s also okay. Kara will get it. Doubting yourself is part of being human.”

“Oh yeah, Kara will get that,” snorts Alex. Lucy sticks her tongue out and some of the tension seeps out of Alex’s shoulders.

“Not my fault you have an alien for a sister. Some of us have flawed humans instead, thank God.”

Alex is silent for a moment. When they speak again, they can’t stop the panic clinging to their words.

“Lucy, how do I tell her I don’t want to be called her sister?”

They don’t hear Lucy’s reply the first time she gives it. They force their eyes to refocus on Lucy whose hand is squeezing their shoulder tight.

“You don’t have to stop being her sister. Gender neutral language is there if you want to use it, but you don’t have to.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been her sister,” says Alex. They stare at Lucy, who is still watching them with more patience than they’ve ever seen her exhibit. Their heart continues to pound. “Ever since she arrived, we’ve always been the Danvers sisters. People have taken us as a package deal. The Danvers Sisters, who should come with a warning. Y’know. All that stuff. A unit. But I don’t think I’ve ever felt like a sister, exactly. It’s not a wrong description, just not the best fit. So maybe sibling is.”

Being around Vasquez is comfortable. There’s no personal information exchanged at any of their meetings. They interact for the music only, and it’s freeing.

Alex doesn’t bring up gender, and neither does Vasquez, though Alex suspects they have an inkling. Alex runs into Vasquez’s girlfriend as they’re leaving a rehearsal one evening and they shake her hand with a tight smile.

They know for sure that Vasquez knows after their first attempt at playing while binding. It’s only then that Alex realises how long their break from the violin had been. By the time they’d found both the courage and the funds to buy their first binder, their violin had to have been collecting dust for a matter of years, so they hadn’t thought twice about scheduling a two-hour practice with Vasquez on a binding day.

Alex plays for half an hour before their side twinges and their bow stutters on the strings. Vasquez waits patiently for them to stretch and they continue, fingers hammering away, barely making it to the end of the movement before they have to stretch again. They think nothing of it until they enter a fast passage and the number of breaths they’re taking isn’t getting them the amount of air they need and they stop abruptly.

Their heart is pounding and their head starting to swim a little, and Alex takes three stumbling steps to the side to put down their violin and lean against the wall, breathing as deeply as possible and feeling more claustrophobic than they’ve ever felt in their life.

“Bathroom?” they manage to squeeze out, and Vasquez points them to it without a word. They fumble with their shirt buttons and grip the hem of their binder as tightly as they can, peeling it up until they can take an unrestricted breath in. They begin to relax, binder still tangled around their shoulders, arms around their head, and give two hefty coughs.

“You have to learn to breathe with the music.”

Alex frowns as they take in these new instructions. “Why?”

“Think of this piece, any piece, as a series of musical sentences. It makes no sense if you play it without phrasing those sentences, just as it makes no sense to perform a play in a monotonous voice.”

Alex doesn’t look convinced.

Eventually, Alex pulls their binder off. They stay in the bathroom, sat on the closed lid of the toilet, running the material through their fingers as they work out an escape plan.

Vasquez comes to the rescue when they knock, and Alex realises how long they’ve been in there.

“Danvers, all okay?”

“Yeah,” they reply shortly. Embarrassment runs up their neck, red.

“Do you want to borrow a baggy hoodie?”

Alex sits up a bit. “Please.” They listen as footsteps retreat and then return, and they pop the lock on the door to crack it open. Vasquez’s hand dangles a deep blue, almost unfairly soft-looking hoodie where they think Alex’s hands are and Alex takes it, gratefully.

As they pull it on and fold their binder into a small enough wad to stuff in their back pocket, Alex concedes to themselves that Maggie’s point, made as she set up in another bar, about meeting other people in the community being useful and nice might have been a good one.

“Have you ever watched a really, really good orchestra play? Have you noticed that before they start, everyone takes a deep breath, together? String players, percussionists, the conductor, as well as the musicians who need to actually blow into their instruments. That’s because it’s part of the music.”

Alex did the research before they bought the binder. They know the risks, the safety concerns, and as much as they hate it, they take a week’s break from binding while their ribs recover and they get their confidence in their playing back. It’s okay for the days when they don’t mind their chest not being so flat. It’s okay for lab days, where they’ve long made their peace with the fact that an eight-hour lab session followed by another five in the library is several hours’ binding too many – and anyway, their lab coat covers most of what they want to hide. The other days?

They’re hell.

There’s no reason, absolutely no reason at all why they should feel like this.

But they do.

It’s unsettling.

Both in how it just appears and how it feels, the sensation of something being not quite right and yet they can’t put their finger on what.

The dysphoria sets in early one morning before they’ve even properly woken up, and for the first time, Alex seriously contemplates skipping classes to hide under their duvet. Instead, they bundle up in far too many layers for the weather with their favourite beanie and jeans and brave the unsuspecting lecture theatre.

They barely last the day. As soon as their last lecture finishes, they’re rushing back to change into their baggy shorts and two-sizes-too-big hoodie. It’s the wrong size by accident, but when they wear it and slouch a little, it’s almost as good as their binder, and brings with it a sense of relief that nearly makes Alex cry.

Rao.

It’s

dysphoria.

And

and suddenly that makes so much sense because if there is one feeling that characterises discomfort or distress at the mismatch between what Eliza says and what their heart feels then this is it, this is it,

it’s dysphoria.

But having the label for this godawful feeling that they’ve had before doesn’t help and if anything, it makes it worse because there is nothing they can do.

Nothing.

So they go for a run.

They bind.

They contemplate, just for a moment, pulling out their violin but no, no, bad, bad idea.

They bind and they wear their favourite jeans that hide their hips and their favourite beanie that makes their jaw look sharper and their favourite shirt that hugs their shoulders and their hoodie, their faithful hoodie.

Their mind is fogged up and numb. It lingers for days, and they know Lucy has noticed now because Alex is not quite as sharp with their comebacks as they usually are, they’re not as bothered about the mud on the floor or the noise Lucy makes coming in early in the morning.

Maggie notices, and Alex fights the instinct to push her away and hide.

Instead, they try to do their best to explain. Maggie tries to understand. They’re sure they botch the explanation of what’s wrong amid disgusted mumbles about silhouettes and reflections and clothes that don’t hang the way they should.

It’s just one of those things, they suppose, that’s hard to understand if you’ve never experienced it.

Nevertheless, the discomfort sits on the back of their tongue and they curl up on their bed with the latest edition of Nature – the one piece of post Eliza is never late at sending on – and retreat behind the familiar shield of science. It helps, the tiniest bit.

Gone is the unease they’d felt at the idea of grieving in the room they shared with Lucy. In its place is the terror at being anywhere outside the room where they could be seen, and it completely slips their mind that they’re meant to be meeting Maggie at the library.

“Danvers?”

No.

No no no no Maggie can’t see them like this, no. Telling her about it and seeing her react to them as this wreck are two completely different things.

“Al, you in there?”

There’s scraping of keys in the lock and Alex wonders just for a second when they gave Maggie a key (and how they had a key to give her) but then two of their three favourite people are pouring through the door and the concern isn’t just on Lucy’s face but on Maggie’s too.

Concern, and not disgust.

Alex’s initial reaction is to dart off their bed and stand awkwardly by their desk, hand in their hair as though everything is fine.

They ignore the exchanged look that means Maggie and Lucy have seen right through them.

“Hey, guys,” they say. “Good day? How’re you both doing? Everything’s good here.”

“Cut it out, Alex.” They can tell Maggie means business in that take-no-shit way of hers. She folds her arms and shifts her weight onto one leg and eyeballs them, hard. “What can I do? To help you?”

Alex shrugs and folds their own arms.

“What do you usually do?”

“None of that’s working,” Alex grits out. “I – it – usually I can work my way through this but it’s not working, and I don’t know why.”

They slowly slip back onto their bed. Lucy and Maggie settle either side of them. The three sit in silence until Maggie gives a deep sigh, squeezing Alex’s knee.

“I have a friend – from my own support group, you really should give them a try – who’s dating someone non-binary. I can see if they’d be willing to meet you, or we could meet up the four of us, or something. It’s got to be better than this, right?”

She has a point. And even though they can think of very few things worse than having to talk about feelings with a stranger - even a stranger vetted by Maggie – the prospect of someone understanding what this feels like is quite attractive.

***

It turns out to be the thing that helps most in perhaps the most surprising way, because this non-binary acquaintance is actually Vasquez.

They didn’t know Maggie and Vasquez’s girlfriend knew each other.

Vasquez didn’t know that Maggie and Alex knew each other either, apparently.

Maggie goes to introduce Alex to Vasquez and Erin and sees the nods of recognition the three of them share.

Somehow Vasquez knows them well enough to let them take the lead and Alex stumbles through an explanation because gender and music in the same space? Unchartered, unsettling territory. Maggie, thankfully, doesn’t press it, but with the furrow in her brow, Alex can see her marking it as a conversation for later.

Maggie and Erin head for the pool table while Vasquez settles opposite Alex at the booth. Alex can sense it coming – and it’s hard to not bolt, but they trust Maggie and they trust Vasquez to a point and if Maggie thinks this could help them, then, well. It’s worth a try, they reckon. In their head, they nod decisively, and they sit a little taller.

“Alright, Danvers?” says Vasquez casually and Alex nods again, leaning back and taking a sip of lukewarm beer. Vasquez leans closer, clearly not one to beat around the bush. “Erin said that Maggie said you wanted to meet more people like us.”

Alex stiffens despite themselves.

“I’m part of a group who do game nights and trips to the movies, stuff like that. It’s a group where none of us are cis.”

Impossibly, Alex stiffens more.

“You don’t have to make any proper commitment,” continues Vasquez as they study the collection of beer mats on the table, avoiding eye contact that Alex doesn’t want to make. “I can let you know when we’re meeting and you can decide on a case by case basis, if you’d like.”

Alex gives a shrug. They want it to be dismissive, but it ends up more curious.

“And listen. This kind of chat isn’t my forte either, but I know what it’s like to feel alone with…stuff like this, and I want you to know that I’m here for you as much or as little as you want me to be. It doesn’t change anything that happens musically between us. And we never have to speak about this again.”

“Sounds great,” manages Alex. Vasquez’s eyes twinkle at them in a relieved smirk.

“What do you say we go and show them how to really play pool?”

Alex gratefully follows them to where their girlfriends are setting up a new game. Alex leans into Maggie’s side and wraps an arm around her waist, leaning down to whispers a ‘thank you’ in her ear. Maggie squeezes their hand briefly and hip checks them as she hands them her cue.

***

“Why do you not talk about your music?”

It comes out of the blue as they walk hand-in-hand to Maggie’s room. Alex sighs.

“It’s not a criticism,” clarifies Maggie. “You’re intensely private about it, even with me. Even with Lucy.”

“Are you not?”

“How could I? I play in public more than anything else. I guess, I don’t have the luxury of privacy when it comes to music.”

Alex chews their lip. “Kara…and my mom. They’ve been the priority since Dad died, y’know? It never ends well if I express any sort of opinion at home and I think,” they say slowly, “that part of me still feels ashamed that I’m doing something that lets me be angry at the universe for taking Dad.”

Maggie hms beside them. “I’m sorry, Alex.”

“Oh, it’s, eh,” dismisses Alex.

“No.” Maggie spins them so she can look up seriously into Alex’s eyes. “The days of you pushing down your feelings are officially over, Alex.”

Alex doesn’t know what to do with that, so they just kiss her.

[jamesdazell]

Un Monstre Sacré

Un Monstre Sacré

ART AND REPRESENTATION

(2019)

Enamorado de ti, de tu vida y de lo que quieres.

- Frida Kahlo

1

   I’m tired of reconsiderig my story in the mind of the idealism of present fashionable criticism.

  Concentrate on what you have to say and the images which manifest themselves to you. Stories are more than their features, their meaning runs much deeper than its costume. Consider the representation and diveristy only if it tells your story better, makes your characters explore their themes better, adds to their own story. You can make whatever art you want to make. No matter if it goes against the idealisms of the day. Idealisms come and go, the whole of art history shows us, but no one has the right to shut down your own stories and interpretation of life that you need to express. We’re running close to a prescribed imagination, not a free one, where the manifesto is a total and political movement, not an arts movement. Full of ideals but not ideas. Right now its like the Puritanical movement, if not a bonfire of vanities, against those who transgress the ideals of the day. Make whatever art that has been revealed to you to make. Make art with whatever great inspiration you had to make it and do not apologise for how it is manifested.

  Your imagination is a cerebral reflex. Don’t apologise or criticise it for not representing the ideals of the movements of the day. I’m not bothered about representation in art as I think it goes against the whole job of art.

  Artists and writers are representations of the cultural history of their time (they're not the only that, but even that is informative about the time). Not everything about them is going to be golden, maybe everything will be bad taste and bad intelligence. But in any case, it is far far more important think with them as if in conversation and disucssion. Their purpose is to stimulate thought not to emboss on it on the minds who receive it.  To be honest it seems clear why the Bibles were so effective. Most people want to be told what to think and to have their own thoughts amplified back at them, they want to have something celebrate them, and to rise up in significance by celebration.

  No matter where or who the work comes from, I wouldn't favour anyone for their cultural representation but for the talent and ideas their work carries. Great work is recognisible immediately. It affects on a cross-cultural level. I'm always looking to become foreign to myself, both in culture and time. The act of de-culturising seem more to the task than to represent it. Foreignness might illuminate and ignite dormant aspects within me that my own culture may not. So it is better to be in conversation than to outright reject, because it mattered, and if it mattered enough to be remembered and preserved, and to be copied (often by hand) through the centuries or ever just the last hundred years, then it probably meant something on a deeper level that is beyond their cultural representations, into a deeper part of humanity, whether the good or bad side. So through them we can understand ourselves.

  The purpose of representative writers is more needed by institutions and publishers etc but in artist's work the aim ought to be to dissolve those differences and to find the human being in experiences and the stories we tell. Like Susan Sontag said in conversation with John Berger about story-telling, she doesnt need to be a Russian man in Russia, or even feel like one, to read Tolstoy. And any reading of it in that way would be a superficial reading. That's not what’s on offer in a work of that magnitude. Likewise to quesiton whether the lead in a story is a man or a woman. It doesn't matter in itself. It only matters to the dramatic nature of the story. There are so many possible ways to unravel a narrative, that the lead doesn't signify anything but a focus. The lead could be positive or negative traits, the purpose of a lead could be celebratory or negation. The point is the same as ever. To tell great stories.

   It annoys me when people say how sexist Japan is (and it always comes from the Anglosphere who have a terrible time of seeing themselves as they are). When Japan has such a great history of female lead characters (and female charaters in general) who are both heroic and admirable, that Japan should rather be an inspiration for telling female lead stories more than the west's tradition. What representative writing is doing (though is not saying) is suggesting that certain ideas and arts belong to different races, genders, sexualities. There are certainly particular experiences only certain people will be able to tell, but then you run in the problem that certain races, genders, sexualities, are supposed to tell stories in a certain stereotyped way because it represents them. Take class for instance; that a working class writer is supposed to write about working class life and in a stereotypical way. It makes no sense but to write with and read it with your own humanity. That is the point of reading and writing, to reengage with our humanity. Hemmingway innovated, but that style doesn't belong to his race and sexuality. At the end of the day, no matter how representative, all you're doing is telling a story and or making an artistic choice, and it needs to be coming from your deeper humanity, that dissovles boundaries and shows there isn't a difference between us. I don't believe there is necesarily homosexual art anymore than homosexual science. The purpose isn't to write autobiography. I would never begin to think of Lorca's poetry as a homosexual perspective. His poetry is universal, he transgressed those social, political, cultural representations. He dissolved as he defied them: as a human being. He humiliated them as he transgressed representation. He became everyone, on everyone's essential journey, a primordial everyone. That rather seems the ambition and the proper task. So, I can never see the seduction in representational writing.  Art’s very purpose is to liberate ourselves from the privilege of an authorial stance of representation. To dissolve differential representation back into a unity of a human being. To reveal, from the cultural political delusion, the communalness and universals of our being human.

2

   Characters exist to embody a theme to tell a story, they define their character by decisions and actions they make. Without that they would be autonomous, independant from the story, representing exactly what they are for the sake of being. We have a name for that: reality TV. Reality TV as the fulfillment of modern dramatic theory; the most naturalistic, identifiable, devised, post dramatic, audience participation, theatrical entertainment one can imagine, unfolding in real time along the lines of life without the logic of narratives.

   Turn on the TV and Reality TV is there either as the news, people eating, people dating, people’s jobs, people’s cultural aspirations, or people selling things on the market. A frieze of national life as an interactive game show. We even now demand that fictional characters are played by their representative real life identity. Reality TV is all people really want. Real life stories about real life people, played by real life people for real life people. There is no question who the ideal character is. Theres no point in having idealistic characters, because they have nothing to learn. They are in themsevles a fulfilment. What journey do they have to go through. What themes are they able to explore.  Reality is more conplex than there being good people whose attitudes we like and bad people whose attitudes we don't.

  Characters are representations of themes, they help explore themes. If the themes and meaning of the story is good, then the characters will be good. Then the representation will be justified. What matters is from how a deep an instinct, an interpretation, if for lack of a better word a soul the story sprung from.

3

Progressives in art: I always find progressives in arts, especially those who outright reject the past, to be a continuation of that same spirit, which they are sadly too ignorant to have perceived. It was rather that they have found a different expression, maybe a more honest expression of the same spirit. And the very idea that it was able to seem progressive was because the culture had changed underneath. That it was this time and not another. In in the final analysis of their progressiveness you see they were bondaged to the time their lived in that it hardly seems a progressive act at all but one that was merely an expressive of prevailing conscience of the time that had erupted in a few people. But there is no such thing as progess in the arts. Every activity in art is the art of a human or a group of humans. Their life is its own condition within a certain set of condiitons. They are representative only of the condition it was made. Their lifespan cannot be compared to the life of another in terms of progress. Neither has art a goal to measure progress upon. And if it did, are we further towards a goal now than in any earlier time? And any possible yes, then an earlier time must have had the same goal as the progressors in art to.... I give up. There is no progress in art. Everything is a representation merely of a human being, the community, or the age that it was made it, each with its own values and ideas that belong to being a human being, not the progress of human beings. For in fact nothing in humanity progresses, because the measurement of progress itself depends on parameters of leaning towards or away from our values, which can only be a subjective axiom.

  Anything "progressive" means an old aspiration conducted more openly and honestly; which appeals to all subterranean risings; perhaps a crisis which for a long time has been in conflict with a masterful way which, to the subterranean, now seems simply an old fashioned idealism. But it is only a re-expression. Even the masterful way was really their way but unfaithful to its condition. Whatever becomes progressive is merely a more honest approach, a step towards being more faithful to its impetus condition. Progress is a condition striving to express itself more honetly and value itself more openly. "Improvement" is arbitrary to the matter.

  Popular culture is often more conservative than so-called elite culture because it reflects a caricature of the general public, and so isn't intellectual curious or demanding enough to be ahead of the curve by the ideas it embodies. It perpetuates old ideals in flashy new colours.

   Now we're surrounded by ordinariness masking itself as extraordinary. The ordinary is no longer embarrassed before itself. It has even become critical of the extraordinary. Instead of being humbled by the great achievements of the past we are arrogant even before the future.

People now have so little historical minds. All those who want to break from the past are always the most ignorant of it. Art right now lacks an intellectual energy that has soaked up the intellectual thought of humanity and can say "this is an intelligent thought in 2020 that on its own merit could be in conversation with the thoughts past and knows where it would be placed in the lineage.” However, people are having anti-intellectual ahistorical attiudes. People are attacking history for not being diverse in cultural representation, are attacking the best minds for not being their Jesus figure of imitation, and have great disbelief in things which they cannot do themselves. There is no genius that belonged to this race or that, or this religion but not that, or this gender or that. We talk of them because of what they had done, and what that meant to the time, and to us, and that we dont talk about some of the people worth talking about is an historical expression of the time. There are many clever people, many talents, but the genius is the humanity within it, that they transgressed their “character” into something more fundamental either about ourselves or the world around us. That they dissolved their cultural and political position, and became a human being.

  However, people are now saying the literature canon needs revision. Kafka said on how to choose a book that literature should be the axe that smashes the frozen ice within you. Discover your books that mean the wrold to you. Read whatever you want, but don’t read a canon. Read whatever makes your heart beat, your breathing clearly, what positively changes your brain, and makes you feel at home in their words. Any really great writer will ascend beyond what they are. Discovering art should not be deprived to us. And we should not expect children to admire the artists and writers they were taught about at school, no matter if it is revised. These schooled artists will always be those artists they had to study and do homework on. On rarely will they become the artists they love.

  I dont think we should revise anything. An education is not being taught what to learn, its discovering your own thoughts. And real educatioin isn’t like stacking knowledge up in a warehouse but mixing wine in to water, it alters the whole composition. Being knowledgable is knowing more things - there are game shows for that - a real eduation requires much forgetting. We should be far more encouraging of independent guided learning. School should help develop general characteristics of the brain. The Greeks had their nine canonical of poets, the japanese had 36 inmortals of poetry (one for men and women). They dont have to be our favourites. No one has robbed you of that choice. But these canons tell us about the way people thought at a time. And no time, no matter how blind by its idealism can be, no time is the truth and end of a conversation. It is easy to look back and dismiss it, to avoid the harder choice of measuring up to its cultural affect.

   Every artistic decision has a psychologically relative world view. Artistic choices are reflexes. In art (rather in everything) nothing is purely theoretical. Everything is fully representational of your conditional perspective, and feeling of existence. You always have to wind it back to that. Everything else is a secondary effect. Ideas and attitudes are just reflexes. An art cannot be a definition of its form, but only of the condition of the artist who made it, which subsequently gives us some impression of the age it was made in depending on its context. No painting defines painting, no music can define music, no poem poetry, nor dance dance.

4

  People go to the theatre not to think but to see a caricature of their own views, executed with the technique of a children's toy commercial. Showing them everything they love. Now people read books this way too. In valuing books, people only want to see themselves reflected in them. Even when great books are in vogue, they choose to read them because they already know what they are about and going to say and they finish with the same mind as they had begun reading them.  People read 1984 because they already know what it is about, and what it is going to say. Most people simply want to amplify their own point of view.

  Right now stories are like a dramatised op-ed article, featurig their token selling point of diversity, with critics acting as the puritanical bonfire of transgressions of the ideals of the day. But the game is the same as always: to make incredible stories. To interpret life artistically. You have to research in order to find the right symbols for your work. Like going through layers and layers and doors and doors but you keep running into the same symbols. For a visual culture were actually really bad a symbols.

  So you have an idea, fine, but thats not enough, you have to be able to pull it off in the form of a great story. Its not enough just to say youre against something and that you made your work from an ideal. You have to tell great stories, or make great performances. Our story telling is becoming conceptual where the idea behind it is supposed to mean more than the actual merit of the work of art. Which shows our minds are becoming conceptual, less artistic, and more scientific. The concentration on the technique of great arts, of all great arts and great artists, is an insight and experience of reality much higher than that of science.

5

   There has been an increase in melodrama this century. All American television and film (that wasn’t but somewhat including the Marvel / DC films)  seems to have been melodrama (of course French cinema, and independant, has been for longer - its their penchant). Melodrama is sadistic. Its full of pathetic characters who if they werent so pathetic they wouldn't be in this mess. If not of their own fault then they deal with it in a pathetic way. The effect on me is not pity but frustration, like watching a sympathetic horror movie. Sympathy is a sin in art. It makes your characters pathetic and all i can think whilst watching them is if they werent so patheric they wouldnt be in this mess and this wouldnt be a story. If a solution is befitting and negates its whole existence, the idea of the story is bad. Its not their circumstance, its the sympathy that is requested. Melodrama is sadistic - and this is coming from a guy obsessed with Greek tragedy. Euripides wrote melodrama, he wrote romanticism, satyr play, and tragi-comedy, but Euripides did not write tragedy. Character drama/study is always melodrama because it depends on the investigation of the 'soul' the innermost of them. Tragedy is concerned with overarching events that reveal the religious (Dionysian - most closely today related to Shiva that they’re almost the same) nature of the universe, people as agents of action, but not people as characters.

6

  Art can be whatever.  Yes. But don't just go with your instincts like an amateur. You have to understand the meaning of choices, in order to change your instincts. To make your instincts artistic. Otherwise there's no difference between you and your audience. And you don't take them anywhere than they arrived. 

    Then there is the insistance on “accessibility” which can be unhealthy because it rejects the high bar and creates stereotypes of styles. It creates new idealism in the character of the work. And it gives marit of accomplishment just for showing up. Make accessibility wide but on the same basis of making great art In respect and recognition of where the high bar is set.

7

   The worth of a book, music, film today is merely judged by how much it is needed at the time it arrives. The public and the critic have the judgement of the tradesman weighing cattle at the market, as they estimate everything merely for value of supply and demand.

Frida Kahlo "I dont give a shit what the world thinks"

   Critics and social media seem to be having their own insular conversation and they go to movies or listen to music or whatever and judge it on how much they can continue to have that conversation whilst experiencing the work of art, which cannot exist on the merits of its own.

   Majoritism is to anoit bad taste and bad talent over good. To put amateurs in charge. I think less educated and amateur care much more about it.

"There is one good opinion which must always be of consequence to you, namely, your own." R. W. Emerson

  Social media has created the method audience. Instead of the method actor disagreeing with the director over the way a character is portrayed its the audience. Or maybe they feel themselves executive producers. But certainly anything but an audience. They complain as if theyve been forced to pay at gun point.

  The idealism our age has just put a chip on people's shoulder and given all a licence to have an attitude about everything. The opinions of the public dont matter, thats why they feel their deep rights to have them. I'm not an audience first type of artist. The public come to market, and the market sways, but it has no reigns on the artistic activity that has travelled further in its pursuit of ideas than they may have ever been. To make a work of art involves obliterating and exhausting oneself, in pursuit of techniques and ideas that inform the works direction and merit, and reassembling oneself. To dicard that for the public who come to market and place it on the weighing scale of ideals is a joke.

  Plesse be rude, derogatory, offensive, insensitive. Its a cruelest humanity that sacrifices its cruelty. It's against our nature. The 21st century is the conservative 40s and 50s, with the yuppies of the 80s, that overturned the free spiritedness of the 20s and 30s, 60s and 70s.

8

  Make whatever goddamn work you want to make, and that will be the work you made. Just be proud to have manifested what you had envisioned in whatever form you wanted to tell it and be proud it has your name attached to it. And dont take criticism from those who do not inspire you.. Being an artist is to be your own beast. Un monstre sacré.