#It really was survival of the fittest at recess time.

[summerreign4077]

[valravn72]

A Manifesto On The Intersectionality of Disability:

How Care For The Disabled and Divergent Allows Us To Rewrite The Systems of Oppression That Plague Our Society and How Acceptance of Self Diagnosis Is Ultimately A Tool for Liberation

TLDR: The idea that your experiences and existence are not justified or valuable until an elite group decides they are is dehumanizing and is the fundamental reason for injustice

This also applies to transmedicalism, Western Science in general and pretty much any imperialist documentation of the world that you can think of

Unfortunately, people really need to hear this so please listen closely

You know that whole stereotype about how “collecting disorders” and self diagnosing with several disabilities means that someone is ‘faking?’

*Clears throat*

If you have one disorder, you’re more likely to have others. That’s how being sick works. This shouldn’t be surprising.

We live in a world that intentionally makes it so that disadvantages breed more disadvantages, this is the ideology behind the revoltingly outdated ideology of “survival of the fittest”

People behave as if this is just about probability and people with one health issue have as equal a chance at having other issues everyone else.

This is a ridiculous assessment.

It isn’t the goddamn lottery. The whole “it’s happened too many times to be a coincidence” thing doesn’t apply here. Or rather, it does, because it isn’t a coincidence.

And this applies to you too. It applies to anyone. If any group is being systematically harmed, silenced and invalidated then that means you could be too and it means they are being mistreated using the same ideologies and systems of thought that is applied to all the other groups.

So let’s dissect this.

Here is why no disabled people are “faking” if they seem to have an endless amount of self diagnosed issues and how ableism applies to all of us and results in the harm and dehumanization of everyone.

Exhibit A: People Can Have Problems In General

My mom has auto immune issues. She had a flare up when she was pregnant with me. This impacted my health.

This probably could’ve been stopped, or at least alleviated more easily, if the doctors weren’t trying to medically gaslight her. I love the medical system. /s

Sometimes a parent’s illness can alter the pregnancy and the development in the womb. The way the body functions is the main factor of the development of the child, so if the body isn’t functioning as expected the child will not develop as expected.

Sometimes a parent’s illness will cause a great amount of stress during pregnancy, which affects the way the body functions and also may lead them to unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as use of alcohol. (This, again, could be less of a problem if people didn’t find self medication necessary in contexts of medical neglect.)

Sometimes a parent’s illness interferes with the biological resources that they have available to take care of the child (for example: nursing), which can affect the development of the child

Sometimes a parent’s illness interferes with their ability to provide for themself monetarily which in turn makes it difficult for them to provide for their child, which can affect the development of the child

Sometimes, parents pass on the genes of their illnesses, or genes that predispose you to have illnesses

Sometimes, those genes were only recessive in the parents and therefore entirely invisible, or they caused a predisposition to getting an illness, but they never encountered the situation that would have caused the predisposition to come into effect.

My point here is that people don’t just pass on specific illnesses, they can pass on the state of disability entirely, and not just through genetics. If you have a long history of family trauma, then this can also pass illnesses through the generations. It is not unreasonable to be generally sick when you are descended from someone with a specific sickness, and this does not make you melodramatic or sensitive.

Exhibit B (part 1): Problems Can Get You More Problems (because people suck)

TW: descriptions of ableism

A lot of the time when someone tells you that you’re more likely to get a post traumatic disorder or a personality disorder if you are, for example, autistic, what this really means is that autistic people are more like to get traumagenic disorders because autistic people are more likely to be traumatized.

This isn’t because we’re inherently more sensitive or something (though hypersensitivity can be a symptom of autism), it’s because society treats us like shit.

It’s been theorized that a primary cause of BPD is a childhood of trauma via invalidation. It’s no wonder to me, then, that a group of people whose feelings are constantly dismissed for being unreasonable and who are made to feel guilty for their issues are more likely to develop BPD. Same with women. It has nothing to do with women being more prone to “hysterics,” or whatever you find it more suitable to call it, but it does have everything to do with the fact that we think of them that way. BPD is a learned pattern of behaviors and thought processes that are maladaptive coping mechanisms to brain becoming accustomed to and cedían of the state of being heavily invalidated. Funny, then, that we then use its presence to further invalidate those who suffer from it.

This goes along the same lines, but if you treat people like shit for being disabled they’re going to end up even more fucked up. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” and all that bullshit as well as the idea that you have train people out of being disabled through pain or force them to endure pain to get them used to it. I can put this simply. What doesn’t kill you convinces you that the world is out to kill you and that you deserve it which causes your body and mind to attack itself. This is helping no one. It may seem like it makes you stronger but really it makes you disassociate from your emotions, which makes you less likely to express them sure but believe me that lack of awareness will come back and utterly ruin your life. A good example of this is the book Hyperbole And a Half by Allie Brosh, in which the author describes insulting and shaming herself in an attempt to rip herself out of her struggle with depression and executive dysfunction. All that this really achieves is causing her to stop feeling her emotions, and to no longer feel comfortable alone with herself. She’s excited at first because she always wanted to stop having unreasonable feelings and turn into what she calls “a stone cold badass,” and she also feels that she must hate herself to keep herself in check, but this quickly devolves into an intense feeling of emptiness that makes her depression worse as well as makes it harder to be sufficiently self aware as she both has no idea how she is feeling and only knows how to respond to negative emotions by hating herself, which is does not fix the problems that those emotions signify.

If the world seems evil then sometimes people become convinced that they must be like the world or they will break

Stress, trauma and pain all affect the nervous system and the brain which affects the body and the rest of your health. This is why being stressed gives you a headache, hard mental effort makes fatigue worse and disassociation comes with physical sensations. The brain is part of your body. Even more than that, the brain manages your body. When your brain struggles the body struggles. Chronic illness can often emerge from trauma.

Exhibit B (part 2): Problems Can Get More Problems (because they’re problems)

If your body is deteriorating, then that probably is going to affect you.

Untreated illnesses can get worse

Untreated illnesses that don’t inherently get worse can get worse from over exertion

If you’re a spoonie, it is very easy to over exert yourself. Especially as a reaction to internalized ableism

When your body deteriorates, it cause harm to other faculties of function, which means you’re going to get more illnesses. This is also true of your brain. Because. It’s. Part of your body.

Exhibit C: Having Problems Makes It Harder To Get Diagnosed With Problems

It’s hard to express your pain if you are too fatigued to muster the energy to explain

It’s hard to express your pain if you have brain fog and can’t remember a clear timeline

It’s hard to express your pain if you have alexisthemia and inherently have difficulty expressing emotions

It’s hard to express your pain if you are part of a demographic that doctors consider “attention seeking”

It’s hard to express your pain if you are part of a demographic that is inherently easier to manipulate into believing that they are faking (e.g. autistic people are easier to manipulate and easily develop imposter syndrome and internalized ableism)

It’s hard to express your pain if you have been conditioned to believe that no one will give you help

It’s hard to express your pain if you have been conditioned to believe that you deserve it

It’s hard to express your pain if you have been made to believe that it’s your fault

It’s hard to express your pain if you have been made to believe that you are a burden on society

It’s hard to express your pain when you associate vulnerability with being harmed

It’s hard to express your pain if you go semi verbal when you try and doctors don’t believe you

It’s hard to express your pain when your guardian or partner has been allowed to have too much control over you and won’t let you

It’s hard to express your pain when doctors convince you that you have to lose weight to expect to be treated with sympathy and therefore give you an eating disorder

It’s hard to express your pain when you know that all the ways to heal require energy and resources that are inaccessible to you

It’s hard to express your pain when you know that treatment could harm you because your other illnesses will not be taken into account

It’s hard to express your pain if you are a part of another demographic that doctors are biased against and don’t take seriously (poc people, women because they’re too sensitive and have too many problems, autistic people, people with personality disorders, men because they aren’t allowed to be sensitive or have problems, lower class people because they don’t have enough money, children and younger people, older people, trans people, nonbinary people… okay honestly no one is safe here literally everyone falls on this list the only way to not fall on this list is to be dead. It isn’t even completely doctors’ faults they live in the same propaganda filled imperialist dogma hell of a society that we do and also consume such things from their textbooks such as that infamous medical idiom about zebras. Some of them are part of these demographics and either have internalized issues or are pick mes. There is literally no winning here!)

Exhibit D: Not Getting Diagnosed With Problems Can Get You More Problems And Self Acceptance Is The Only Path Towards A More Just Society

Medical trauma is traumatic

Not getting treated causes your illnesses to become worse

Internalized ableism breeds self destructive behaviors

Not understanding why you have difficulty with something makes it hard to self advocate

Not understanding why you have difficulty with something makes it hard to self accommodate

Not understanding yourself in general makes it hard to know and express your emotions

Not understanding yourself means that what you say about yourself seems to have just as much logic and weight as what the people who hurt you say about you

Not understanding yourself is terrifying and lonely

Not understanding or believing in the reason you need accommodations convinces you that you are undeserving of them

Not understanding yourself means you can’t properly express your identity. Not properly expressing your identity means that people can assign you any identity they want. This can cause distress and dysphoria

Not understanding yourself means not understanding why you have value

Not understanding yourself means an inability to gain solidarity and a proper support system

Not understanding yourself means other people may understand you more than you do yourself and therefore are more able to manipulate you

Not understanding yourself means you don’t understand the reasons that you do things, why you like things, why people treat you the way they do, why you experience an identity in a certain way or why you think or speak a certain way

Not understanding yourself means it’s impossible to get the most out of life

Not understanding yourself means that your ability to have an identity is dependent on the superficial validation of authority figures

Not understanding yourself means that you can never love, support, advocate for or heal with your community

Not understanding yourself makes it easy to dissociate

Not understanding yourself makes it easy to rationalize abuse

Not understanding yourself makes it hard to stand up to abusers

Not understanding yourself makes it easy to gaslight you and convince you that you are hysterical

Not understanding yourself means that you can’t practice and experiment with love and compassion in a situation where you can’t accidentally harm anybody else by taking care of yourself

Not understanding yourself means an inability to unlearn thought and behavior patterns that can result in the harm of others

Not understanding yourself means not being able to imbue parts of your life with meaning

Not understanding yourself makes it hard to find purpose

Not understanding yourself makes it hard to value the love that others have for you

Not understanding yourself means not understanding where you fit in the world

Not understanding yourself means not accepting that it’s okay to have flaws

Not understanding yourself leads to resentment towards others for suffering from the weaknesses you suffer from

Not understanding how your weaknesses emerge leads to resentment towards others for having different and more difficult weaknesses for similar reasons

Allowing yourself to find self understanding means asserting that your suffering does not need to be validated by authority figures to be real, that you do not need to prove that you are deserving of an identity and that your identity is real whether or not the widely known, visible, medically documented and negative symptoms of your disorder are recognized, identified and legally validated

Allowing yourself to find self understanding means asserting that only you can verify what you are feeling

Allowing yourself to find self understanding means asserting that your experience doesn’t need to inconvenience someone to be real

Allowing yourself to find self understanding means asserting that self advocacy is okay

Allowing yourself to find self understanding means asserting that all diagnosis is caused by an observation and therefore all diagnosis is valuable in its attempt whether it is accurate or not

Allowing yourself to find self understanding means asserting that those who cannot have their experiences understood any other way are still valuable if they follow the same pursuit

Being compassionate with yourself for your weaknesses means accepting that others can be weak and still deserve to live

Being compassionate with yourself allows you to understand and express your experiences which allows others to learn from them

Being compassionate with yourself allows you to understand how systems of oppression work to use you to oppress other groups

Being compassionate with yourself allows you to understand how systems of oppression work to manipulate you into oppressing other groups

Being compassionate with yourself allows you to understand how systems of oppression work to use your existence to justify the oppression of other groups

Being compassionate with yourself allows you to feel outrage at how systems of oppression have used you to harm others instead of outrage at minorities for making you aware of your privilege

Being compassionate with yourself allows you to understand who the real monsters are

Understanding your mistreatment means understanding that the suffering of others from the hands of authority figures means that authority figures have the capacity to do that to any group and that it could just as easily be you

Understanding your mistreatment means not normalizing abusive workplace practices

Understanding your mistreatment means not normalizing abusive medical practices

Understanding your mistreatment means not normalizing abusive legal practices

Understanding your mistreatment means not normalizing abusive educational practices

Understanding your mistreatment and being compassionate with yourself means understanding that a society is only as prosperous as those within who are the most vulnerable

Understanding your mistreatment means understanding that different perspectives are what make a rational, just and healthy society

Understanding your mistreatment means understanding that throwing others under the bus to appease those who mistreat you is a betrayal of yourself and of others

Understanding yourself enables empathy, compassion, sympathy and reason

Understanding yourself puts you in a position where you may help people who do not have the freedom to understand themselves

Understanding yourself means being able to contribute to the community around you

Exercising empathy, compassion, sympathy and reason towards others helps you learn to do so for yourself and vice versa

If those who are deemed the most impure, decrepit, degenerate, worthless, incapable and unintelligent by society can be treated with love and respect and given the opportunities to heal and grow and help each other then that means that no matter what you can as well

Understanding yourself means understanding that you owe nothing to others in return for the gift of human rights and well-being

Understanding yourself means understanding that the goal of a species is to ensure that all of the species is allowed to prosper, not just the elite

Understanding yourself means understanding that you do not owe anything to society, you give back to society because you want to make a world that is more than worth living in

If we abandon the sick, then that means that we establish the practice of allowing anyone that falls under hard times to suffer and waste away

Wolf packs walk with their sick and elderly in the front, so the strong in the back can protect from ambush from behind

Allowing others to be sick and ridiculous and unreasonable and weak and vulnerable and sensitive and damaged and resentful and antisocial and unstable and foolish means that when we are in their place we too will be treated with care

The hospitalization and prison systems are supposed to be meant to protect, contain, rehabilitate, heal and restore, not punish.

Your value is not determined by your productivity and getting by without sickening yourself should be the baseline for how one navigates life

We’ve learned to place numerical values on everything as a result of capitalism, and destroy anything that reduces the count

All of this came from imperialism and the need to justify the extinction and abuse of groups who did not adhere to imperialist, misogynistic, ableist, racist, colorist, ageist, sexist, queerphobic and white supremacist dogma

We need to restore our priorities.

Also, as a side note, are we really going to act like Western Science is completely unbiased these are the people who claimed that people were only gay in Ancient Greece because they (NSFW) really needed to clean their anuses. Sometimes scientists are wrong and the point of science is to go back and make sure that things are right. We can’t do that if we spend all our time gatekeeping academics and telling people that they aren’t allowed to make observations because they aren’t experts. If everyone who wasn’t an expert wasn’t allowed to make observations then we would have no experts. A great deal of the famous psychologists we admire so much came up with their theories from self observation. The only difference was that they were cishet white men who died before the 1990s. If you assert constantly that modern culture is low brow and unintelligent and refuse to give people access to higher forms of education unless they adhere to your outdated values then:

1. The new understandings of the modern era will never be implemented and you will become disastrously biased

2. People will associate education with being mistreated

3. Art will never advance because all the elitists will never move on to different mediums, will not accept new people into their field and will never take inspiration or advice from those within different mediums and everything will continue to be a monotonous eco chamber of the same era of cinema aesthetics until the end of time

4. You are going to become irrelevant.

5. You will never have any new perspectives from new groups of people and will therefore be horribly biased in your future assessments of the world no matter what you do.

Anyway my conclusion to this rant is that awards shows should have more genres and mediums and that everyone should be reading Babel in school.

Also, lowbrow culture is a part of culture and if you refuse to acknowledge it in academia then any analysis you have of culture is inherently false.

Also Xenogenders can be scientific fuck you

[theoriginalladya]

“making an effort to spend time together” for Reyes and Kaidan? 👀👀

from this list

On AO3 here

Well, my friend, this was the FIRST prompt I'd tried to finish before the other one took over to start the drabbles that are now affectionately known as Reylenko! LOL So, here you go. Precious Cargo has been updated with the full installment as well.

Thank you so much for asking about them!!! They really are fun to write!

~~~

There were certain aspects of his job he didn’t particularly care for; anyone could say that about their work, he supposed, but Reyes Vidal prided himself for his attention to detail, his professionalism, his ability to get the job done and make it worth the pretty penny he charged to get it done.

What he was discovering these days was, despite the increased payout at the end of the job, the extra time necessary to give his full attention to all of these little details would be far better spent shared with his lover. 

Kaidan Alenko’s arrival in Heleus – while unexpected but appreciated more than the man would likely ever know – brought with it the usual aspects of a relationship; find a job, find a place to stay, earn a living in order to survive.  It was supposed to have been “living the dream,” but ended up more “survival of the fittest.”  Between an alien race that wanted them dead or worse, another alien race’s leftover technology, and some of the best and worst of the Milky Way transported to Andromeda, the only thing about life that was guaranteed these days was that there was never a dull moment.

Reyes’ boyfriend brought with him a unique set of skills, as well.  Skills that men like Director Tann should appreciate more, in Reyes’ considered opinion.  Still, Tiran Kandros snatched the former Alliance marine into service before Kaidan had a chance to experience disappointment, and for the moment at least, satisfied himself and his sense of duty by assisting the turian with the organization and operations of the APEX strike teams.  Unfortunately, that meant he spent more of his time on the Nexus than with Reyes on Kadara. 

That wasn’t to say Kaidan never had time to get away from it all for a while – he did, and on those rare occasions, he often spent it with Reyes on Kadara.

Assuming, of course, Reyes was there. 

With Zia Cordier and several of his other rivals out of the way, Reyes’ business had increased tenfold, which resulted in even less time to spend together.  He was a man who could fully appreciate the benefits that came with his now stellar reputation, but the downside was certainly taking its toll.

As he strode through his Draullir base now, purpose marking every single heel clack, his focus was on his destination, though he fully expected to find disappointment at the end. There had been a window of opportunity, a hope – and if anyone had ever taught him the meaning of that word, it was Kaidan Alenko – that they could have at the very least a few hours to themselves before the other man left, more time than they’d had in the past six months combined. But Reyes had missed that window by over two hours. Two fucking hours instead spent evading both Kett and Initiative patrols on his way back to Kadara instead.

There had to be an end to it somewhere, didn’t there?

Reaching his suite of rooms, he threw the doors open and was greeted by complete and utter darkness.  No hint of a light, not a sign of the man he so desperately wanted to see. 

Sighing, he ran his free hand through his hair while tossing his helmet onto the nearby chair doing his best to shove his lowering morale into the far recesses.  “Honey,” he muttered, a sound that was anything but pleasant or content, “I’m home…”

More silence greeted him…

…until it didn’t.

The faintest rustle of fabric, the softest hint of a groan from the direction of the bed.  Hope blossomed in Reyes’ chest – damn, he really had it bad, didn’t he? – in the half second before realization followed on its heels. 

“Mi cariño?” 

It came out as a whisper, barely loud enough to be heard over the hum of the ventilation system, but it was enough to elicit a pained response.  “Reyes?”

Reyes secured the door behind him as quietly as he could before moving deeper into the room.  He left the lights off, more terrified of the pain they might cause to the man lying in their bed than fearful of any injury he might sustain on his way across the room in the dark.  He went slowly, kept his boots on this time – his toe still ached after the last incident – and eventually found the edge of the bed.  Gently patting his way around, he toed off his boots, removed his armor, and only then climbed onto the bed.  “Kaidan, mi amor?” he murmured, hand searching for Kaidan’s.  “You are still here?”

Another groan – soft, affirmative maybe? Well, who else would be hiding in Reyes’ room in the dark? – reached his ears as he finally found Kaidan’s hand and took it in his.  The static shock that passed between them thanks to the other man’s biotics was the last bit of evidence Reyes needed, though it wasn’t necessary.  “Mi amor,” Reyes whispered as he lowered himself onto the mattress while Kaidan shifted to snuggle close in his arms, “la migraña?”

“Yeah…”

“How bad?”

“Bad enough.”

Shit.  From past experience, he understood that Kaidan must be well into this one, too, if he was lying in bed in the dark curled up beneath the blankets already.  “I came back as soon as I could,” Reyes said by way of apology as he drew the bed clothes over both of them.

“…I know…”

Kaidan’s voice trailed off into steady, deep breaths with only the occasional hitch from what Reyes assumed was pain. 

It wasn’t the kind of reunion he’d been hoping for and it certainly hadn’t been planned, but as he laid there holding Kaidan, he considered their current circumstances. 

Though he didn’t have one hundred percent proof – their relationship was new enough there were still many things they had to discuss and motivations were in that category – he was fairly certain Kaidan made the voyage to Andromeda because of him.  It was an idea that left Reyes more than pleased; like an unexpected but most appreciated gift.  Then again, it was difficult not to see it that way.  Unlike his previous relationships over the years, including Zia, with Kaidan he had found something…more substantial.  Solid.  The potential for something longer-lasting.

Kaidan shifted against Reyes, settling his head on Reyes’ chest as if listening to his heartbeat.  A flutter in Reyes’ chest arose unexpectedly, surprising but not wholly unexpected at this point.  Sighing softly, he slid his arm to carefully hold the man close.  They were going to have to discuss this more in future, especially if they both wanted a future together – which seemed the likely outcome of their current association. 

Ah, well… what was the point of being his own boss if he couldn’t set his own rules, hmm? 

[fouralignments]

Blood of the Covenant + 1 & 6?

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?

I’m taking this question as what inspired you?

I believe it came from trying to help RogerBz14 fic ‘The Same Eyes in Different People’ with the Apocalypse portion of the story. Though Rogerbz14 wasn’t feeling inspired by Dark Phoenix I already had some critiques of X-Men: Apocalypse. But one of the things that kept popping up was Sabah Nur as critique of both Charles and Erik’s philosophy through mutant culture; it wasn’t simply enough to get equal rights weather that be through peaceful or violent means, but needed culture of written tradition, oral history etc. distant from humanity. In Sabah Nur’s mind Erik isn’t that radical he’s just a more militant version of Charles. This is before House of X, came out.

At the same time, I was taking my intro into Peace Studies and American History from 1865 to Present. This entire semester, I had amazing professors, who actually gave a damn about how they taught and was somewhat challenging without too much homework.

But, anyway I had this dream of the last scene of Blood.

The way that I write novels is that I get a bunch of scenes going, give a summary of each, place them in order and fill in the gaps. One of my thoughts originally was this story was going to be a modern AU.

But, I didn’t know what the story’s through line. I knew it was going to be Dadneto, focusing on Erik and Pietro’s relationship together. I was still trying to figure what Sabah Nur’s philosophy was that was the anti-thesis to Erik’s

I was thinking of questions and thoughts and ideas that weren’t really explored in the Dadneto community

1.     Pietro’s Americanization in X-Men Universe. Turning that into a strength, rather than a weakness of his character. Pietro rediscovering his heritage. Why and how did he lose it in the first place? (I knew this was going to be tragic).

2.     Upon re-watching X-Men: Apocalypse. Why did Sabah Nur have Erik destroy the surface of the Earth? Instead of just killing all humans. I do have to admit it is different than blue laser beam wreaking havoc on the Earth. For me it didn’t make sense, and X-Men: Apocalypse didn’t really explore Sabah Nur’s underlying philosophy other than just survival of the fittest.

3.     Exploring mutant culture, politics, and methods of change. I knew both Erik and Charles’s philosophies get explored A LOT in the movies. However, I wanted to give depth to Raven and Hank’s. They don’t all have to agree with one another to work together.

4.     Exploring Sabah Nur as a character. I actually took inspiration from prior versions of Magneto.

But theses ideas became crystallized during the 7th lecture of my American history class.

Also, during this time, I became an avid reader. I read books like America at War with Itself, American Nightmare: Facing the Challenge of Fascism, You Have the Right to Remain Innocent, The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics, The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade, The Nationalist Revival: Trade, Immigration, and the Revolt Against Globalization, Fair Food: Growing a Healthy, Sustainable Food System for All; Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, The Anatomy of Fascism.

I get inspired from what I read. Even what I watch like: Prometheus, Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Stargate: SG-1, Jurassic park (novel and movie), Andromeda Strain (novel and movie), X-Men: Apocalypse, John Carpenter’s The Thing, The Prince of Darkness, They Live; Leviathan, Young Sherlock Holmes, Lawrence of Arabia, Newsies, Inuyasha, and The Void.

Then on, I wanted to shine a spotlight on aspects of the trilogy that other writers weren’t focusing like the cold war, historical events and giving them more emphasis.

 6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?

 It’s my first trilogy! It’s a serious attempt at longer form fiction. Slow burn. Very slow burn. But, it’s also an attempt at suspense and angst, which have been part of some of my other works. Not to this degree. I really want to create a sense of dread that something bad, something terrible is going to happen to Erik.

 Just how I’m writing it, I’m trying to weave plot points and Chekov’s gun into my description.  Now not everything is a Chekov’s gun. But one of my biggest pet peeves in writing is things not being set up and paid off. So in a way, its very layered and I want my audience to go back and re-read my chapters because there will be mysteries later; its all interconnected. I just hope I don’t confuse anyone, because I don’t want this to be too monolithic by just focusing on Dadneto.  

I kid you not, my first fic, Mir Veln Zey Iberlebn was basically a practice for this trilogy. I didn’t feel confident in myself to write an entire trilogy. So, if a familiar scene pops up that the reason why.  

Here have a gif of Quicksliver: 

[tobesensation-9]

In Time Pt. 2 (Hwiyoung x Reader)

Synopsis: There was always something going on between you and Kim Youngkyun. Whether he was your sworn enemy, your best friend, or your lover. ‘In Time’ tells the story of how the two of you faced different stages of your lives together and how the two of you ultimately get to be that special person for each other.

‘In Time’ pt.1 

Time and time again you'd try to walk home or walk to school in peace but you'd be appraoched by none than other than your ‘saviour’. You knew he was going to try to use this as a way to bother you, you thought. I should’ve just spoken up and not let the principal to rely on his word.

“Hey y/n”. Youngkyun catches up and walks beside you, smiling. You never really noticed his smile before, it caught you off guard. Maybe you just noticed it, he had tried being so nice to you for the past few weeks, and because you were so annoyed with his nice gestures, you never looked him in the face. 

“What? Is there something on my face?” He touches his face instinctively. 

“Oh...uh no.” 

You catch yourself from staring at him and look down at the sidewalk. 

You didn't want to admit it  yourself, but this guy was starting to grow on you. You didn't like it. 

A few years earlier 

In the fourth grade you used to have a huge crush on one of Youngkyun’s friends. Unlike how he used to treat you, his friend was considerably more sweet to you.

You would hangout with them all the time at recess, and even was able to play with each other after, since they lived in the same neighborhood as you. But one day, when the two of you were playing at the park in your neighborhood, Youngkyun appeared and he looked angry.

“Ya!”

“Oh ‘Kyun what are you doing here?” Your crush greets him, perking up at the sight of his friend.

“Yeah what are you doing here?”

He looks at you but doesn’t even acknowledge you, and continues to talk to your crush, “Why do you keep hanging with her? She’s no one you need to be playing with. You should be playing with me.”

Although your crush stayed with you that day, it brought on days and days of Youngkyun bothering the two of you. Until it got to point where your crush, stopped talking to you. When you tried to say hi to them at school or in the neighborhood they’d pretend you didn’t exist.

Present

Although you guys were older now, things like that and more makes you super self-conscious. With him turning into a completly different person in high school after years of that just didn’t make sense.

“Hey uh....y/n.” He stops suddenly in the midst of your walk.

You stop and look at him, “Uh, yeah?”

“I know you don’t want anything to do with me. And I know you’re probably wondering why I’ve been trying to be so nice to you, right?”

“Actually no. Wondering what we’re gonna have for lunch?”

He just stares at you confused. “But don’t you always take your lunch?” He motions to your book bag, where your lunch is.

“So your stalker and a psychic,” you I’m me to yourself.

He snickers at your comment, you guys he heard you.

“I just want to let you know that even back then, when I was acting like a complete brat, I really wanted to be your friend.”

What?

“Why did you just ask?”

“Well to be honest, yeah I should’ve, but after all that I did you probably wouldn’t have even said yes,” he shrugs.

“Well...yeah I wouldn’t have. Who would’ve done that, have someone be so mean to you all this time and then suddenly stop that and be friends?”

“I know. So I figured I’d just act normal about it and just act like a friend, and not be a immature idiot about it.”

“I mean you said idiot not me, but you totally were. A brat. An idiot. A pain in my ass.”

“Are you done?”

You laugh. “For now, I’m still thinking of some stuff. I’ve had years to come up with names for you and you’ll finally hear them all.” You start walking again and he joins.

“Well that’s great. This is gonna be exciting.”

Once the two of you become friends, all the growing like together and petty child’s play became blurry. The two of you started to hangout all the time, varying if it came to studying, to bike riding, to having dinners at each other’s homes, the two of you almost did everything together. Including going to the same college.

You were the more logical and responsible type, loving math and science while Youngkyun was more in touch with his sensitive side and loved the liberal arts. The two of you would always complain to each other about the general education courses you’d have to take that had appealed more the others major.

“UUUGHHHH! Why do we have to write a freaking essay about fucking children eating other!!”

Your sprawled all over Youngkyun’s bed, kicking around.

“I mean it’s survival of the fittest y/n. You’re the bio major you should know this. You know...un natural....natural something.”

“Natural selection idiot.”

“Yeah...that.”

You left yourself up and chuck your copy of Lord of the Flies across the room.

“Please get that and hurry up. Don’t touch anything or even breath when you go over there. He hates when you so much as breath on his side of them room, especially when he isn’t here.”

“Geez what’s up with that.”

“I don’t even know, but lately I’ve been too scared to use my shampoo and conditioner lately. He could’ve replaced it with Nair or something.”

You laugh, “Damn. But he did, I’m actually running low so lend that me.”

“Ha ha very funny.”

“I wasn’t trying to be, I was serious.”

He looks at you annoyed and you laugh harder.

*cellphone rings*

He finds his cellphone and smiles at the caller i.d., “Oh hey. What’s going on?”

He gets up and leaves the dorm room to continue the conversation.

You knew who it was, it was some girl he met at the college orientation before your first semester started. You were glad he had someone he liked, as far you knew, in high school he never liked anyone. It’s great to experience something like this. You also thought he might’ve liked you, which disgusted you at first the more you thought about it. Then disgust turned into denial, then it turned into little strings of hope. You tried to suppress the little strings of hope though, for the last two years you had.

But why would you want him to like you, it’s not like you liked him? Well at least you thought you didn’t.

Part 3 coming soon 😊!

[blackfemmecharacterdependency]

04. The Apex Begins

AU Grace and Simon story. Takes place in the instance that they never got on the train, but crossed paths and became friends. But, for the sake of anyone who wants to view it as a series, I’ll number them. 2468 Words TW for violence, mental health discourse, unresolved trauma

NOTE: I wanted to sort of put the concept of “the apex” into the story without actually having a cult of children. I think that the circumstances of the train led to the philosophy going that far, but I still think that in real world situations, both of these characters would both 1. be prone to violence and 2. develop an us vs them mindset.

Previous

This was who they were together. Grace and Simon. She would venture into town, figure out some excuse, and he would meet her. They traveled the city together, taking whatever they wanted, because rich people sucked and if you owned a business, you were rich and deserved whatever happened. They got into scuffles with people who seemed to disrespect one or both of them. They instantly went into defensive mode over each other. 

Neither was afraid to resort to violence, because that’s just what you did for friends. You did anything that they needed. You did whatever you had to do. That was a good sign of survival of the fittest. That was the proof that you were better than everybody else - that you were the apex of human evolution. 

If you had to answer to people and were afraid to challenge them and fight for yourself and your loved ones - you were less than nothing. You were a “null.” Grace and Simon had decided that they would never be like that, and they didn’t have to be, because they had each other. He thought she was a true queen, and she trusted him with her life. 

She lost her driver over it. That was one of the things that she did hate, because he sort of had to suffer for her to be able to have this solid friendship with Simon, and she loved her driver and everything...

But he wasn’t Simon, so he could be sacrificed. He had to be. She had come back to the car with a huge plug of her hair missing and she laughed it off and said that she had gotten caught on something on the train and accidentally ripped it out. That was actually partially true. 

A woman on the train got herself into a fight with Grace. She was some college lady, making faces whenever Grace and Simon were talking too loud and practically snarling at Grace. Simon began to imitate her, and she sat there growing red in the face, obviously noticing them, but whenever Grace joined in to make fun of her as well, she got irate. They called each other names and Grace dared the woman to hit her, so... she was willing to sort of take responsibility for the fact that the woman came through on the dare and slapped her right in the face. Grace laughed, but also charged towards her...

The woman had taken a handful of her hair after an argument that escalated into violence, into her punching the woman in the gut while she clutched Grace’s hair trying to get her off, and it didn’t end until Simon had dragged the woman off of the train in a choke hold and threw her down on the terminal, ready to stomp the life out of her. The woman shielded herself with both of her arms, praying that this boy didn’t kick her. Fortunately for her, he didn’t. He wanted to and definitely would have after the way that she’d attacked Grace, but Grace stopped him. 

She pointed to a surveillance camera, with her other arm blocking her face from it.  She and Simon took off running, leaving an almost passed out (obnoxious) college student with a bruised midsection and holding a plug of hair in her fist. Simon stole Grace a mask not too long after. He had nothing to lose as far as he was concerned, but her family was well known in this place and she did worry about them knowing about this part of her life.

The driver had been going through months of covering for Grace, but this missing plug of hair - he had to take action. She’d told her lie and her mother stressed over all of her beautiful hair that they had to shave off, but she spun in that Grace was doing “the big chop” and going natural… Grace was kinda into that. She often had curly styles, but her hair wasn’t that type of curly, so work went into her look. Work that she hopefully wouldn’t have to go through for a while, now that she was starting her hair journey over. In her video chat with Simon afterwards, he thought it was an amazing look for her, so she quickly got over it.

The driver spoke with her parents, admitting that he allowed her to spend time with a friend in town sometimes, (he didn’t give them details about Simon specifically), but that he honestly thought that she might need some professional help, because she always came back banged up or covered in something suspicious. She’d freshen up and change in the car and clean out the backseat with extreme diligence and tell them a lie about where she had been. Well… This was not only news to them, but HAD to have been fake news.

They weren’t sure why he would LIE this way about their perfect child, but they knew he was, because there was no way Grace would EVER stand up against them. 

“I think that she may need some serious help.”

“You are the help,” Mrs. Monroe told him.

“I’m not the kind of help that Grace needs…” He started.

“You’re right,” Mr. Monroe told him. “You’re obviously useless. Expect your last paycheck in the mail. We no longer require your services.” Whenever Grace was sent for, she passed the driver on the way to the living room. He looked sad and wished her well as they crossed paths. “Grace!” Her father called. She jumped and ran into the room. “We’ve let your driver go.”

She gasped and placed her hand over her heart, “Oh my God! What happened, Daddy?”

Her mother spoke, “He suggested that you need help. We gathered that he was insinuating psychiatric help, from the tales he was spinning about your behavior in the city.” Grace froze and touched the spot where the missing plug of hair had been. That must have been it. The thing that was about to lose her everything that she had formed with Simon… “Of course, we know that he is mistaken. We didn’t raise someone that weak or lazy.” Grace’s eyes were large and damp. She nodded. “IF you needed help… that would be very unfortunate. A lot of work would be down the drain.”

Grace’s throat was dry as she said, “I’ve told you everything that happens whenever I go into town. I;m not sure why he would say that I’ve done anything wrong. I would never embarrass you.”

Both of her parents advanced on her and she was frozen still, unsure of what would happen next. They both gave her a hug and told her that was the perfect response. “Imagine! Our daughter needing help, aside from the likes of the staff? I never thought that I would ever hear something so ridiculous,” her mother said, then quickly grabbed her by the chin harder than she knew was out of love and the threatening look in her eyes confirmed that much as she said, through the teeth of her smile, “And we’d better not ever hear such a thing about you again.” She nodded, terrified. 

Mrs. Monroe let go of her face and Mr. Monroe simply gave her a look, the look that told her he knew that she was lying and he was disappointed in her. At least he wasn’t saying so. But, Grace was both relieved and shaken up. 

So, they gave Grace a new driver, and Grace explained to him straight out of the gate the way it was going to work for them to function and him to keep his job. He was younger than her last driver, and didn’t mind letting her sneak off and enjoy herself. Her parents were total hardasses,so he understood her desire to get some time away sometimes. Plus, he had no idea the kinds of things she got up to whenever she left the vehicle. He didn’t know that the last driver was absolutely right and that she probably did seriously need some help. Unfortunately, she didn’t know it either. She just knew that she had to be more careful.

A mask helped, and because she had the body of a dancer, some counter culture street wear and a shaved head, people often seemed to think that there were two boys terrorizing them. Simon shaved the back of his head in solidarity, but she thought he did it to look “even more broody.”

Any time that Grace and Simon engaged with someone in conflict, Simon had a habit of taking something off of them and giving it to Grace. Her collection was getting pretty big. She kept all of the trinkets in her hope chest. The thing was just symbolic, anyways. She was never gonna get married and she wasn’t sure that her parents honestly expected her to.

Compromise only went so far with the Monroes. Grace had become brave enough to make suggestions in her sweetest voice without paralyzing fear, but she definitely still felt afraid whenever she did speak up. Being 14 and old enough to go to high school, she REALLY wanted to finally be able to go be with other kids! She wanted to meet other people and find out things that they had in common or whatever else teenagers did when they got to high school. And, fortunately for her, her father was sure that another recession was coming and didn’t mind saving a little on private instructors… 

HOWEVER, she definitely wasn’t going to be allowed to go to Simon’s school (the school she’d suggested). So, they enrolled her into the most prestigious private school in town. 

Whenever she found out that she would be going, she asked Simon if it was at all possible for him to go to that school too. After two full minutes of him laughing in her face, to the point of belly ache and tears, he cleared his throat, wiped his eyes and reminded her, “That place is for rich kids.”

It just so happened that she had read about this school and there were multiple programs in which less fortunate students could earn scholarships. She had known Simon for almost 4 years and had seen him be very good at many things that required mental intelligence and/or technical skill. He was good at creating things, building stuff, writing, photography.... There had to be something he was good enough at to gain a scholarship.

“There is literally nothing that I’m good enough at to get a scholarship into a school like that,” he said, while she was pacing and talking to herself about all of the things that Simon was great at, going down the list out loud to come up with a plan to get him into school with her. He rolled his eyes and went back to typing on the hand me down laptop that he’d gotten from her whenever her parents bought her a new one. Simon really appreciated that Grace thought so highly of his skills, but he knew that the school wouldn’t share her affinity for him or any of his skills. 

She sputtered air through her lips - a habit that she’d had for many years, and then she looked up and said, “Write an essay about your family.” He tensed up, frowned and stared at her. 

Grace smiled, put her hands behind her back and sauntered over to him. “It sounds painful right now, BUT this will not only give you a chance to get out some of the stress that you hold inside, keeping it all in, it’ll ALSO be just what those stuffy adults on the board need to have some mercy on us and let you into the school. I’ve read somewhere that it doesn’t help to hold things in. Think of it as... journaling, but for your future!”

Simon did journaling, sort of. He definitely wrote about his life, but translated it into fantasy, outside of his manifesto, of course. But, that wasn’t the point right now. “You think that telling people that I accidentally let my baby sister die, which caused my mom to become so angry at me that she devolved into this abusive and suicidal phantom that lives in our house, and made my father neglect me and her, up until he reenlisted in the military and left me to take care of somebody who absolutely hates me - is a good thing to tell a place with an upstanding reputation?”

She winced with every word he said. She had been around for most of that and had been the only person to see him through most of it. But, now, she was telling him exactly this. “I think that this kind of stuff, while atrocious and painful to US, is like a drug to them. They wanna take you and say, look how I’ve fixed this up. They want to take your pain and make it into a story that they can brag about.”

“And why would I want them to do that?” he asked, shivering at the thought of anybody else but her and Samantha to ever learn about his family issues. Journaling was one thing, but this was something different and it felt extremely uncomfortable.

“It’s not that you would want to do it. It’s that it would be a way for us to be in school together,” she said. 

“It’s asking a lot, Grace.” He set the laptop aside and shook his head, “I wanna be with you. You know I do, but it’s really asking a lot.”

She lowered her head, nodded, and flopped down on the seat next to him on her cushioned reading bench. “You’re right. I’m so sorry that I suggested that. I guess desperation made me weird. I don’t see the point of even going to school and meeting other people if I don’t have you there with me. You’re kinda like the other side of me that my parents never let bloom. Me in a new school surrounded by all those strangers without you… That’s gonna be like me navigating life chopped in half. I know that I can't be my best there without “us.” I guess I panicked and didn’t think about what it would mean for you to have to think about the way your adults have done you.” She clasped her hands together, sputtered out some air, and rested her lips against them, silently praying for some type of plan or something.

He didn’t like the condition she was in and now he felt guilty. “Okay,” Simon said. He reached over and covered her clasped hands with one of his own and pulled her into a hug with his other arm. “I’ll do it.” He was shivering and she wanted to tell him not to worry about it, that it was too much to ask and if he didn’t want to, not to do it for her benefit. But, she was 14, and very selfish. So, all she did was smile at him and push some strands of hair from his face. Their faces were really close, but she didn’t really ever think about stuff like that. There wasn’t any “personal space” between them. He was her other half and that meant his personal space was simply an extension of hers. He had other thoughts about it, but he certainly wasn’t going to say so.

He blushed and grabbed his laptop. “I’m gonna work on it at home, though…” They told each other everything, but he didn’t necessarily trust himself to be presentable as he relived some of these things about his life. He didn’t want her to see him crying or having a tantrum or tugging at his own hair to redirect his pain. He wanted privacy to dissect his heart this way. He wanted discretion. He didn’t want to look weak. You couldn’t extend to the apex by being weak.

She was looking in the mirror and admiring her face, seemingly oblivious to the turmoil he was facing by agreeing to this. He understood. He often admired her face too, though he didn’t know how to tell her that the rest of them were a little luckier… She looked even prettier in front of you than she did in her reflection. She smiled at him and squinted her eyes, “What?”

“Nothing! I’m going now. Bye.”

“Until later!” she cheered. She had no idea how hard his night was about to be. She didn’t even ask… but he also didn’t tell her...

Next

[dubaistorage7-blog]

Self Storage

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Some astute Home sellers also have moved into rented accommodation awaiting the inevitable downturn in the housing industry. Self storage has meant they've been able to tailor the size of the storage requirement.  They will frequently rent a bigger unit on selling their own home and scaling down into a more compact unit when they've found a suitable property to rent that they've supplied themselves.

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A check list for comparing self storage businesses.

1. Is your chemical totally fenced?

2. What kind of safety process is used to alert a security firm of a possible intruder?

3. Is the CCTV really listed?

4. Is your CCTV system viewable remotely?

5. What are the accessibility and office hours? ( Accessibility and office hours may fluctuate where There's the facility to get the website Once the office is shut )

6. Is your office open seven days each week?

7. Are locks provided or do you need to give your own?

8. What's the top layer of the depot? Hardcore or compacted earth can be walked in to components which makes them cluttered

9. Is an insurance alternative available via the self storage firm?

10. Can be a dehumidification service given? In case the day you go in it rains daily!

11. Can be a fork lift service available for business clients?  Normally for a small charge per elevator.

References Self storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_storage

[livingbutamireally]

AY2019/2020 Y1S1 Module Review

AY2019/2020 year 1 semester 1 review

Started school around august after orientation camp in july, and had to study after doing nothing for months after a levels and finally had the taste of the rigour of this major.. semester 1 went by too quickly..

Modules taken this semester:

CS1010S

MA1101R

MA1521

BT1101

GER1000

CS1010S Programming Methodology (Python)

Prof: Ben Leong

Exam Dates: 2 Oct (Midterm) / 16 Nov (Practical Exam) / 27 Nov (Finals)

Weightage:

Coursemology – 25% (25%)

Participation – 5% (5%)

Midterm test – 15% (-)

Practical exam – 15% (20%)

Final assessment – 40% (50%)

(those in brackets are for those taking alternative final)

S in CS1010S is for science students, most students are either science students (DSA/ Life Science plenty) or BZA students.

Overall this module easily had the highest workload compared to other modules, having to rush missions every week, complete tutorials (this is pretty standard duh) and lecture trainings before deadlines for bonus points on a gamified platform. One could sit at their table wracking their brains for the whole day and still not be able to come up with a feasible code, or have their codes stuck with some bugs and not knowing how to continue. Really, without the help from fellow friends this module would be hard to get through. Luckily my TA was kind (and patient!) enough to explain such that my brain could get it. Ended up having to IP this module sadly… This module really requires your wholehearted devotion and really tests your patience i must say, especially for people who are not too intellectually inclined (aka me)..

They introduced a new scheme this semester aka Alternative Final, meaning you get to retake your midterm and finals by tabao-ing it into the next sem except you do your finals during the recess week instead of the finals, kinda like a half-retaking a module? Your grades for finals are IP-ed (in progress) rather than letter grades and the finals and midterms will be accounted for in the following half a semester albeit under different weightage components.

They said its a introductory module, but …………..

This year’s practical exam was particularly hard i think i had friends (even the zai ones) getting single digit marks… banked full in on the Method of Life question (Q5) of finals which is a giveaway question asking you how you can apply the concepts to other parts of your life and your main take-aways from taking this module (filled up the whole page and got full marks for it 4m) without this question i would have failed the paper..

Now i have to work hard the next sem… its kinda sad for us BZA students because CS1010S is a prerequisite for those wanting to take BT2101 and CS2030/2040 modules in the following semester (y1s2). Future students (esp BZA) please take the advice to consider this when deciding whether to IP…. because guess who didnt and regretted not thinking deeper…..

Ah one more thing to take note is the weightage is quite different for those IP/ alternative final people, theres higher weightage for the papers :_D

Ben Leong is a pretty good lecturer, hes solid in delivering concepts except my brain may be a little too slow for him.. Theres also lecture videos online that you can refer to and thousands of papers (with solutions!!) waiting for you to do.. something uncommon for many modules i heard? also, you get to see your final (scanned) paper through a website, in ben leong’s words “how cool is that?” he also uploads the mark scheme for your reference which is pretty cool imo. He’s a very interesting lecturer.

MA1521 Calculus for Computing

Prof: Leung Pui Fai

Exams: No midterms, just an online quiz (4 questions, most get full marks for), and the finals

Weightage: cant really rmb the weightage but i think its 40-60? i think tutorial attendance isnt graded..

They said this was just a repeat of H2 maths with more stuffs well boy i must say this wasnt as easy as they said.. okay maybe for me, ive always struggled with maths for a really long time. Surprisingly got a B for H2 Maths, i got a B3 for O levels really the blemish in my results. Got a B- for this module. Many people will say this is an easy module, you can trust them a little different in my shoes i guess. I didnt turn up for lectures for the half part of the semester since he talks a bit too slowly so i just watch the webcast sped up. But being a procrastinator i’m really behind on webcasts by the time the exams came.. i think i spent too much time on CS1010S and its still not enough.. if you dont have the discipline to watch them religiously at home, i would suggest you go for the lecture even though he may talk abit slowly but it forces you to not miss out on them. I dont really had the time (is it i wonder?) to do the tutorials either so i was also behind on them.. most of the time i just sat for tutorials and took the answers down to only work on them many weeks later (much regrets) so i didnt really understood what was going on as the TA went through. please dont be like me… the recess week was for sure not enough to revise/ learn all the content for all your mods for both midterms/finals so please dont be lazy like me…. this is the suffering i brought upon myself TT

Overall i think. it is not that hard a mod if you do your work consistently.. things got a little confusing towards the end i heard they dropped a whole chapter this semester glad they did.

MA1101R Linear Algebra I

Prof: Wang Fei

Weightage:

Finals (28 Nov, 2h)— 60%.

Mid-term test (4 Oct, 2h)— 20%.

3 homework assignments (4% per assignment) — 12%. 

An in-class Lab (MATLAB) quiz — 8%.

This was one of my most hardest period in my life and i say this on PERIODT. As if maths wasnt tough enough, this will really declare a survival of the fittest among your remaining brain cells. Friends told me maths came into their dreams… pls extinguish my soul. You must be thinking i am crazy for wanting to take 2 math mods in a sem right? ?

Yeahh no one really does that but it was my idea because i didnt want to do maths together with all the core core mods (BT and CS) next sem so i decided ah i should just get maths over and done with ( hAH real joke bc i couldnt clear CS1010S and i cant take 2k level mods for BT and CS and unlocked clown outfit because theres one more ST2334 core mod that involves probability and stats so much for thinking i will be over and done with for dealing with maths– someone tell me why did i choose this major again?)

Somehow along the way i realised the bell curve for this was surprisingly high i think those who chose this mod intend to delve even deeper in mathematics, mayhaps i joined the wrong major. The R in MA1101R actually stands for rigorous i didnt realise until my friend read the fine prints in the SOC Course Curriculum for BZA or sumn. Pure hell. There are 3 homework assignments (graded mind you) and most of the students get around 50++/60 i think i was the one of the rare few who flunked quite badly and always eyeballed by my TA (who is a prof for some 3k or 4k level maths, not for this mod though). I approached him for consults and for help and he was nice enough to sit me down and explain slowly. He’s pretty good at explaining slowly although he’s pretty fast in class (and most of the semester i had close to ZERO idea what was going on in class for pretty much most of the mods). Shockingly managed to pull out a C from my butt. The intellect of the students are no joke.. Homework assignments are every 3 weeks starting week 6 i think (so week 6, 9, 12) and i think are there to make sure you catch up with the work.

Oh lectures-wise, i sat for ½ of his classes, i really absorb almost nothing.. the rest of the lecture hall seem to get it though or so it seems. so i stopped attending my own lectures to watch the webcast for Prof Victor Tan too. His webcasts/lectures are really popular and it really owe it to his teaching, apparently he taught Wang Fei before and of course had over ten more years of experience. WF’s lecture turn-outs are comparatively less compared to VT. And on panopto (webcast platform) i think it was almost always 360++ views for VT as compared to a 80++/ was it 30++ for WF if i recall correctly. VT slides are also more concise and simple to understand where as WF’s ones are similar to the textbook. You are also required to purchase a textbook for this module costs around $20 from the co-op store in science and i urge you to purchase it asap when the profs announce they are made available bc they run oos quite fast.. the tutorial questions are from the textbook and the textbook is very simple and straightforward and put together by some of the lecturers/profs in school.

BT1101 Introduction to Business Analytics

Prof: Dr Sharon Tan, Desmond Ong

Weightage:

1. Online Quiz & Datacamp Assignments — 7%

Tutorial 1-4 — 8%

Tutorial 5 onwards — 15%

In-class Assessment (Written) — 10%

Practical Assessment — 20%

Final Assessment — 40%

In class assessment is held 2ish weeks after your midterms week so its kinda like your midterms?

Mm i would say this module is the most ?? its hard to put in words but if you read up the confessions page (NUSwhispers) regularly you would see many complaints that the mod is structured not as neatly as CS1010S its quite here and there everywhere and personal opinion, sometimes i dont know what i am supposed to learn but i guess its like that? The profs seem to value not wanting to spoonfeed and us learning on our own and stuff like that. I heard the mod was much harder in previous years and they simplified it a lot compared to in the past (which i really thank god) but its still a bit ?? They split it into two halves, first half of the sem is taught by Dr ST (Descriptive Analytics) and the next half by DO (Prescriptive and Predictive Analytics).

There are online videos to be watched every week even though you get lectures once every 2 weeks when Dr ST teaches and tutorials to be submitted to your TAs that are graded only after about 6/7 weeks. They leave comments (½ sentences someitmes shorter) and your marks received and thats about all so you dont really know where you went wrong since they are not marked paper and pen way. The tutorials are coding exercises for questions using the R language. They also used Datacamp to drill some of the basics of R for a headstart. Her workshop style lectures are a lot of on the spot learning how to code and stuff which i lag behind a bit because she goes a bit fast in order to cover everything. We learn new content via the online videos that we have to watch every week and theres quizzes for them too weekly iirc.

The next half by DO had no online videos (great!! and no quizzes!!) but weekly lectures and graded tutorials are due every 2 weeks(!!). There are still weekly tutorials but its only graded for every 2nd one, wow this saved me a lot of time phew. I didnt get to do the tutorials for those that are not graded but read through the questions so that i get a gist of whats going on, and somehow i really dont have the time to do it? CS1010S really absorbed a large chunk of my time cries. Finals was a oK it was not that bad i think. There are 20 MCQs and then about 4 structured questions? Closed-book with 1 A4 sheet cheatsheet.

Oh and the bad part about the tutorials are the tutors wont provide you with the model answers/codes so you’re really just on your own. You either get it or nah. :_D

GER1000 Quantitative Reasoning

Weightage:

1. Tutorial — 10%

2. 10 Weekly Quizzes — 20%

3. Project —35% (Presentation 10%, Final Report 25%)

4. Finals (28 MCQs, 2h) — 35%

No lectures so no profs, just weekly online videos and quizzes.

Tutorials are every odd/even weeks depending on the slot you chose.

Groups are arranged by the TAs beforehand.

This was pre-allocated for us so (grits teeth). Honestly a waste of time. One of the mods i neglected till the end to focus on other mods (which was worth it). The workload was manageable, of course (if not how to neglect). Every 2 week you meet together wiht your groupmates to discuss tutorial questions (each group will discuss 1 qn) and every tutorial class ended about 30min earlier. Nearing the end theres a group project report and slides to be done. Report is in the form of QnA so you just answer the questions and slides/ presentation is going through an article of a topic you chose (theres about 10) and you analyse the QR part of it what is good what can be better, etc. Theres also a bit of the stats part with probability and stuff but its a OK. Bell curve steep for finals (40 MCQ, 2h) but most finished in 1h and left the hall, i was one of the few who stayed till the end even though i was just staring at the paper into the depths of my soul for reasons unknown) It’s a lot about experiments not really the scientific/ calculations part of it but understanding about coming up with experiments, the pros and cons of carrying things out a certain way in loose terms something like the art of crafting experiments? makes you think a bit deeper how and what people think and not so dry i guess.

Epilogue

i guess thats a wrap–new semester starts soon :( i think this might be the first module/semester review tumblr blog but i hope this can be of help to anyone, to anyone at all. the owner of many of similar review blogs get really stellar results which i may be too out of league from so i hope this brings comforts to those who are doing not so well and encourage them because im not any different we exist, and we’ll survive.

CARPE DIEM 2020 LETS GEDDIT

[lifesobeautiful]

Building A Startup: What Every Aspiring Entrepreneur Needs to Hear

It’s July 2003 and you’re a sophomore Harvard student named Mark Zuckerberg. You’ve been playing around with a pet project. You’ve got no commercial aspirations for it. It’s just fun to code. It’s a “hot or not” photo comparison site. You call it FaceMash and your friends love it. Then, it finds its way onto the main Harvard servers and your education as a young entrepreneur begins.

Facemash shows you how an idea can go wrong and how an idea can be snuffed out — not because people don’t like it. They did. Its first four hours online attracted 450 students and 22,000 photo views. Facemash was snuffed out because it was deemed inappropriate in a number of ways by the Harvard administration.

Via playinglean.com

As the Harvard Crimson reported in November 2003, the charges against you are for security, copyright, and privacy violations and you’re staring down the barrel of expulsion from Harvard. There’s also an angry backlash from women, in particular, not least the Association of Harvard Black Women.

The charges are subsequently dropped but the experience teaches you that an idea is just the start. Although Facemash wasn’t a startup per se, if it had been, the regulatory issues and the backlash from women would have strangled it at birth. The idea that it generated, Facebook, would need to overcome significant obstacles, regulatory, financial, staffing, competition and so much more.

Survival of the fittest didn’t just apply to biological life

It applied to startups, too.

Zuckerberg and Facebook went on to achieve great things, but why do nine out of ten startups fail?

You have solid ideas and you know your markets. You know your ideas can make money. So, what happened to your vision?

Neil Patel offers an insider’s insight into what happens in his article, 90% Of Startups Fail: Here’s What You Need To Know About The 10%.

Patel summarizes that if a startup is already attracting a lot of customers, like Facemash, you don’t really need a business plan until you go out and get funding. Otherwise, it’s vital.

Planning from the start is among the key reasons your startup company will fail early. It sets the scene on your entire vision. Know your market universe. Know your strategy.

Bill Gross of IdeaLab also wanted to know why so many companies fail. He looked into some of his own successes and disappointments at IdeaLab and some of the where-are-they-now companies of recent times. He discovered something he didn’t expect.

Your timing, when you launch, at 42%, was by far the most important factor between a project that succeeded and one that didn’t.

“Your timing is vital,” said Gross. “Are you too early? Do you need to educate the market first? Or are you bang on time? Airbnb launched at the height of the recession when people found it really useful to rent a room or two out and draw in a little extra money. Or are you too late, there are already too many competitors?”

Second in the list was your team at 32%. Your people. The people who make the whole thing tick, their adaptability, the all-important customer experience. Gross says a company has to be prepared to be shouted at by unhappy customers. Things will go wrong.

It’s how a company reacts that defines the company. Gross quotes Mike Tyson, former world heavyweight boxing champion, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

The uniqueness of the idea came in 3rd at 28%.

Gross said he wasn’t surprised by Business Planning (24%) and Funding (14%) if a startup already has some traction. If your customers are demanding what you’re producing, you can develop a plan later and intense funding can easily follow.

If you’ve got no market traction yet, like the vast majority of startups, the Business Planning and Funding pieces are vital to your survival.

Your business plan will tell an investor if you and your idea are up to it. But, more importantly, it will tell YOU if you’re up to it. “It’s at this point,” says Gross, that “…sensible people see a bad idea play out on the page and just leave it alone right there.”

In three years time, what are your startup’s projected sales? How much do you need to spend to get those sales? How many people will you need to employ and train, how much server space? What are the costs of giving away the free version before you monetize it?

“You will find there’s a lot more than you thought,” says Gross.

Out of your business plan will emerge a map

Suddenly, there’s a real business opportunity. Your business plan covers it all — revenue models, ad campaigns, and how to design a seamless customer experience.

It will tell an investor two things:

You can run a fifty million dollar company.

Your startup will give them a Return on Investment (ROI) they can work with.

So, now that you’re funded, you take a moment to enjoy the feeling. You give someone a hug. Can this be your dreams coming true? You’re dizzy with the buzz it gives you. As Chris Herd writes on Hackernoon, “Welcome to the most exciting time in your life.”

Now, it’s time for you to crank up the engines. You do all the things you said you would in the business plan. There are deadlines, people to find, marketing agencies to meet, and prices to negotiate.

Neil Patel says “It’s now time to focus harder than ever. Ideas spring up everywhere but, unless it’s a free energy idea or London to Sydney in six minutes, do not bother your current strategy with it. Focus. Keep your eye on the ball. You’ve still got so many more obstacles to come.”

Before long, your idea will be copied. Products will hit the market that are cheaper than yours, maybe have a few nice ideas yours doesn’t. It’s inevitable. That’s why you chose the blitzkrieg option, saturate, colonize, and cling on to your market share with all you’ve got.

The nice ideas on those other sites? You were first to market. You’re the market leader. Build them into your future releases.

You were the first to set yourself as the first right from the start. Keep improving it, inventing, and creating new products with your brand all over them.

There is another factor that so many entrepreneurs ignore or simply don’t believe is important. It’s the fundamental essence of ‘survival of the fittest’.

If you invent a machine that can produce free energy, what are the big power companies going to do? Insist quite strongly you sell it all to them? Tie you up in lawsuits till you lose the will to live?

It doesn’t matter if it’s the biggest energy company in the world or a company just a bit bigger than you. If they lose market share, they’ll want you stopped. Life was just fine before you came along.

Patel says, “This is the stage where your whole vision can be torn up and stamped on and this is the stage where it’s most damaging. This is where all that hard work can vanish down the plug hole overnight.”

Your competition is fighting for its survival. You’re under attack. That photo of you on Facebook doing something nefarious? Your less than exemplary school record? It all finds its way into the media and your brand suffers.

When the co-founder of Facebook, Eduardo Saverin, underwent a week-long induction ritual at Harvard, he had to take a chicken with him everywhere he went. He couldn’t imagine later being accused of animal cruelty but eventually, the negative publicity was used as one of the reasons to write him out of Facebook. Zuckerberg had learned well from his Facemash experience.

This is survival of the fittest in its most corporate form.

It’s not fair, you say. It’s all going so well. Everything is on plan. You didn’t do anything wrong.

Or did you? You didn’t see it coming but you should have. And where in the business plan did it mention anything was fair?

Ever heard of a CDO? It’s a Chief Defence Officer.

In Sean Lyon’s book, Corporate Defense and the Value Preservation Imperative, Lyons explains how to bulletproof your corporate defenses. “These problems are very real,” he says. “If you haven’t addressed it, you have a significant weakness.”

Your CDO needs to engage anti-hacking measures and have strategic contingencies in place for anything that comes after you. It could be industrial espionage, a negative PR campaign. The bigger you are, the nastier the things they say about you. You will even need to watch out for sabotage from within.

Lyons says, “It’s not paranoid. It happens. It’s real. If you want your baby to get past childhood, realize what sort of world we’re in and get ahead of it.”

So, why do nine out of ten startups fail?

According to some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world, including Neil Patel and Bill Gross, it’s bad planning. You took your eye off the ball and natural selection wasn’t considered.

Bill Gross said, “The startup is one of the greatest ways we’ve got to make the world a better place. If you take a group of people with the right equity incentives and organise them in a startup, you can unlock human potential in a way never before possible. And to do that, you must miss nothing.”

Mark Zuckerberg’s human potential was unlocked with Facebook but Geoffrey James, writing for Inc.com had one more word of advice for all the future Mark Zuckerbergs out there.

“There is one thing and one thing alone that every great entrepreneur absolutely must possess: courage. When all’s said and done, you can plan and strive and do all you can but if you don’t also have the pig-headed courage of an entrepreneur, you won’t be an entrepreneur.”

If Mark Zuckerberg had a business plan for Facemash in 2003, he would have learned about the woes about to befall him.

Whether he would have done anything differently, only he can say.

See Also: 10 Unstoppable Entrepreneurs Share Their Advice For Success

The post Building A Startup: What Every Aspiring Entrepreneur Needs to Hear appeared first on Dumb Little Man.

This article was first shared from Dumb Little Man

[idombledore]

Natural Selection

It was July 2003 and a second-year Harvard student called Mark Zuckerberg had been playing around with a pet project. He had no commercial aspirations for it. It was just fun to code. It was a "hot or not" photo comparison site. He called it FaceMash and his friends loved it. Then it found its way onto the main Harvard servers and Zuckerberg’s education as a young entrepreneur began. Facemash showed how an idea can go wrong, how an idea can be snuffed out, not because people don't like it. They did. Its first four hours online attracted 450 students and 22,000 photo views. Facemash was snuffed out due to rules. It was deemed inappropriate by the Harvard administration. As the Harvard Crimson reported in November 2003, “The charges against you are for security, copyright and privacy violations and you're staring down the barrel of expulsion from Harvard.” There was also an angry backlash from women, in particular, not least the Association of Harvard Black Women. The charges were subsequently dropped but the experience taught him that an idea is just the start. Although Facemash wasn't a startup per se, if it had been, the regulatory issues and the backlash from women would have strangled it at birth. The idea that it generated, Facebook, would need to overcome significant obstacles, regulatory, financial, staffing, competition and so much more. Survival of the fittest didn't just apply to biological life. It applied to startups too. Zuckerberg and Facebook went on to achieve great things but why do nine out of ten startups fail? You have solid ideas. You know your markets. You know your ideas can make money. So what happened to your vision? Neil Patel offers an insider's insight into what happens in his article, 90% Of Startups Fail: Here's What You Need To Know About The 10%. Patel summarises that, if a startup is already attracting a lot of customers like Facemash, you don't really need a business plan until you go out and get funding. Otherwise, it's vital. Planning from the start is among the key reasons your startup company will fail early. Planning sets the scene on your entire vision. Know your market universe. Know your strategy. Bill Gross of IdeaLab also wanted to know why so many companies fail. He looked into some of his own successes and disappointments at IdeaLab and some of the where-are-they-now companies of recent times and he discovered something he didn’t expect. Your timing, when you launch, at 42%, was by far the most important factor between a project that succeeded and one that didn't. "Your timing is vital," said Gross. "Are you too early? Do you need to educate the market first? Or are you bang on time? Airbnb launched at the height of the recession when people found it really useful to rent a room or two out and draw in a little extra money. Or are you too late, there are already too many competitors?" Second in the list was your team at 32%. Your people. The people who make the whole thing tick, their adaptability, the all-important customer experience. Gross says a company has to be prepared to be shouted at by unhappy customers. Things will go wrong. It's how a company reacts that defines the company. Gross quotes Mike Tyson, former world heavyweight boxing champion. "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” The uniqueness of the idea came in 3rd at 28%. Gross said he wasn't surprised by Business Planning (24%) and Funding (14%) if a startup already has some traction. If your customers are demanding what you're producing, you can develop a plan later and intense funding can easily follow. If you've got no market traction yet, like the vast majority of startups, The Business Planning and Funding pieces are vital to your survival. Your business plan will tell an investor if you and your idea are up to it, but more importantly, it will tell YOU if you're up to it. "It's at this point," says Gross, that "...sensible people see a bad idea play out on the page and just leave it alone right there."   In three years time, what are your startup's projected sales? How much do you need to spend to get those sales? How many people will you need to employ and train, how much server space? What are the costs of giving away the free version before you monetise it? "You will find there's a lot more than you thought," says Gross. Out of your business plan will emerge a map. Suddenly there's a real business opportunity. Your business plan covers it all, revenue models, ad campaigns and how to design a seamless customer experience. And how to time it all to hit the market at the right time. It will tell an investor two things: 1. You can run a fifty-million dollar company. 2. Your startup will give them a Return on Investment (ROI) they can work with. So, now you're funded, you take a moment to enjoy the feeling. You give someone a hug. Can this be your dreams coming true? You're dizzy with the buzz it gives you. As Chris Herd writes on Hackernoon, "Welcome to the most exciting time in your life." Now it's time for you to crank up the engines. You do all the things you said you would in the business plan. There are deadlines, people to find, marketing agencies to meet, prices to negotiate. Neil Patel says, “It's now time to focus harder than ever. Ideas spring up everywhere but, unless it's a free energy idea or London to Sydney in six minutes, do not bother your current strategy with it. Focus. Keep your eye on the ball. You've still got so many more obstacles to come.” Before long, your idea will be copied. Products will hit the market that are cheaper than yours, maybe have a few nice ideas yours doesn't. It's inevitable. That’s why you chose the blitzkrieg option, saturate, colonise and cling on to your market share with all you've got. The nice ideas on those other sites? You were first to market. You're the market leader. Build them into your future releases. You were the first, so set yourself as the first right from the start. Keep improving it, keep inventing, keep creating new products with your brand all over them. There is another factor that so many entrepreneurs ignore or simply don't believe is important. And it's the fundamental essence of 'survival of the fittest'. If you invent a machine that can produce free energy, what are the big power companies going to do? Insist quite strongly you sell it all to them? Tie you up in lawsuits till you lose the will to live? It doesn't matter if it's the biggest energy company in the world or a company just a bit bigger than you. If they lose market share, they'll want you stopped. Life was just fine before you came along. Patel says, "This is the stage where your whole vision can be torn up and stamped on and this is the stage where it's most damaging. This is where all that hard work can vanish down the plughole overnight." Your competition is fighting for its survival. You're under attack. That photo of you on Facebook doing something nefarious, your less-than-exemplary school record. It all finds its way into the media and your brand suffers. When the co-founder of Facebook, Eduardo Saverin, underwent a week-long induction ritual at Harvard, he had to take a chicken with him everywhere he went, he couldn't imagine later being accused of animal cruelty but, eventually, the negative publicity was used as one of the reasons to write him out of Facebook. Zuckerberg had learnt well from his Facemash experience. This is survival of the fittest in its most corporate form. It's not fair, you say. It's all going so well. Everything is on-plan. You didn't do anything wrong. Or did you? You didn't see it coming but you should have. And where in the business plan did it mention anything was fair? Ever heard of a CDO? It's a Chief Defence Officer. In Sean Lyon's book, Corporate Defence and the Value Preservation Imperative, Lyons explains how to Bulletproof your Corporate Defences. "These problems are very real," he says. "If you haven't addressed it, you have a significant weakness." Your CDO needs to engage anti-hacking measures and have strategic contingencies in place for anything that comes after you. It could be industrial espionage, a negative PR campaign. The bigger you are, the nastier the things they say about you. You will even need to watch out for sabotage from within. Lyons says, "It's not paranoid. It happens. It's real. If you want your baby to get past childhood, realise what sort of world we're in and get ahead of it.” So why do nine out of ten startups fail? According to some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world, including Neil Patel and Bill Gross, it's bad planning, you took your eye off the ball and natural selection wasn't considered. Bill Gross said, "The startup is one of the greatest ways we've go to make the world a better place. If you take a group of people with the right equity incentives, and organise them in a startup, you can unlock human potential in a way never before possible. And to do that, you must miss nothing.” Mark Zuckerberg's human potential was unlocked with Facebook but Geoffrey James, writing for Inc.com had one more word of advice for all the future Mark Zuckerbergs out there. "There is one thing and one thing alone that every great entrepreneur absolutely must possess: Courage. When all's said and done, you can plan and strive and do all you can but if you don't also have the pig-headed courage of an entrepreneur, you won't be an entrepreneur." If Mark Zuckerberg had had a business plan for Facemash in 2003, he would have learned about woes about to befall him. Whether he would have done anything differently, only he can say.

[ibilenews]

Pains of Mother Africa, cries of Nigerians by Femi Fani-Kayode

First to come to Africa were the Arabs. They hunted us down like animals, captured us, castrated us, sold us into slavery and kept us in total bondage for 1300 years. What the Arabs did to Africans over that period of time makes everything else that they were subjected to after that by others, including the trans-Atlantic slave trade, look like childsplay.

Worse of all is the fact that in places like Saudi Arabia and Mauritania many black Africans still live in slavery till today. After the Arabs came the Europeans arrived and also enslaved us, shipped us overseas, subjected us to barbarous cruelty and bestial servitude and described us as nothing more than chattel with the brain of a quarter of a man.

After the Europeans came the Chinese. They have come in their full power and glory with their enticing and intoxicating massive bags of money, cheap loans, suspect grants, fake and deceptive smiles and evil intentions with a view to turning us into perpetual serfs, debtors, beggars and economic slaves.

Like a snake coiled around our hapless necks, they are snuffing and suffocating the life out of us more and more as each day goes by and they are turning us into their slaves and minions just as others that came before them once did. Sadly we may never be in a position to free ourselves from the bondage of their sinister and pervasive yoke or to pay off our debts to them. That is where we are today.

O Africa, who has bewitched thee? O mother Africa, who shall deliver thee? I have asked myself these two questions over and over again over the years and I still do not have the answers. Yet such is our pitiful plight today that it calls for some painful introspection and the sharing of some home truths.

In William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”, the character Cassius said, “the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.” Nothing could be more appropriate than these words when trying to analyse, decipher and comprehend the African condition and mind-set.

I apologise in advance if anyone is offended by my assertions in this essay but if we are really interested in making progress as a race and if we wish to change our dastardly ways and improve our fortunes then the truth, no matter how bitter, must be spoken. That is the purpose of this contribution.

The illustrious West Indian revolutionary and foremost intellectual, Marcus Garvey, who was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant minds in history, once wrote the following. He said, “having had the wrong education as a start in his racial career, the negro has become his own greatest enemy. Most of the trouble I have had in advancing the cause of the race has come from negroes”.

On his part another great thinker and formidable intellectual, the celebrated black American Booker T. Washington, aptly described the black race in one of his many lectures by stating that they were “like crabs in a barrel”. He said that none would allow the other to climb over the top and, in the event of any such attempt, ALL would continue to pull back into the barrel the one crab that makes the effort to climb out. I wholeheartedly agree with both Garvey and Washington.

The black man is his own worst enemy and in the case of the African this is even more pronounced and self-evident. Permit me to expand on this. There are a few exceptions to the rule but generally speaking the greatest weakness of the African is his inability to provide good leadership, his inability to demand for good quality leaders, his ignorance, his cowardice, his envy and his poverty. This combination and cocktail of deadly afflictions makes us nothing but expendable prey to the rest of the world.

The famous 19th century Arab slave trader Mehmet Ali wrote, “You do not need to destroy the black African because he always ends up destroying himself and his people for you…the minute ANY black African rises up, emerges, starts talking sense and telling the others how to escape our bondage and slavery it is his fellow Africans who he seeks to help that will undermine him, insult him, expose him, ridicule him, destroy him, sell him and kill him. That is the nature of the black African. He reasons more like a wild ape than any other creature on earth”.

Standing up for Africa is a risky business because those that will hate you most of all for doing so are the Africans themselves. They would rather listen to a heartless and savage beast and support and follow him than to someone that truly loves and cares for them, that treats them with restraint, dignity, respect, compassion and kindness and that wishes them well.

I do not know where this sickness of mind and malevolent and self-destructive disposition derives from but I suspect that it is a deep-seated case of self-hate and self-loathing and a touch of what psychiatrics describe as the ‘Stockholm syndrome’. The African always loves his slave-master more than he does his liberator. Worse still he resists the notion of good education and he barely reads. There are a few exceptions to the rule but this is true of most of them.

If you want to keep a secret from an African put it in a book or write it in a long essay. He cannot and will not read either of the two because he is mentally immature, chronically lazy, morbidly indisciplined and utterly shortsighted and because he sees no immediate personal gain or value in it. He would rather listen to music and dance for one hour non-stop or watch a football or a boxing match instead. To him that is far more important and gratifying than anything else. Simply put he is stirred and motivated by his excitable and primitive passions and not by reason or logic.

Nigeria, which was meant to be the leading light of Africa, has now become its irredeemable and irretrievable basket case and the laughing stock of the world. This is a “country” of 200 million hapless and ill-fated people who are still struggling with the very concept of nationhood and who have their own internal colonial system of bondage and servitude where one small race of non-indegineous and non-negroid people have enslaved all the others and laud it over them.

This is a country where genocide, mass murder, ethnic cleansing, islamist terrorism, poverty, the persecution of political opponents and religious minorities, failure, evil, incompetence, insensitivity and wickedness is not only perceived as being a normal way of life and system of governance but also encouraged and celebrated.

Like the proverbial zoo or jungle, only the strongest and fittest can survive or get to the top in such a hellish place and shithole of a country. There is literally no hope for the weak, the poor, the vulnerable or the decent in such an environment and callousness, doublespeak, deceit and impunity appear to be well rewarded.

If this were not the case how can one explain the fact that a so-called nation that once had the greatest, most progressive, most dynamic and most educated people in Africa will accept a barely educated and clearly unfit neanderthal like Muhammadu Buhari as its leader on three separate occasions and continue to support and hail him even after he openly insults them before world leaders and treats them like filth.

His Army has failed woefully in its war against Boko Haram because he has refused to equip them adequately;because he pampers and encourages the terrorists. His economy is heading for the greatest recession in Nigeria’s history due to his incompetence and inability to save money for a rainy day. His impoverished and desperate people are marching, robbing and rioting in the streets of Lagos, in the outskirts of Abuja and in one or two other major cities looking for food and threatening the worse if they cannot find any.

As anarchy looms and sets in on parts of the country, Nigerians are being attacked openly and robbed by massive rampaging and hungry mobs made up of very angry, desperate and wild young men and he has said nothing about it let alone try to put a stop to it. His Airforce bombed scores of innocent and defenceless civilians, including women and children, to death two days ago yet it was barely reported in the press, there was no sense of outrage about it from the people and no-one in the country really gives a damn.

He has locked down his people at home in the nation’s densely populated commercial and administrative capitals of Lagos and Abuja and one or two other provinces in an attempt to prevent the spread of the corona virus without providing any provisions, money, food, water and electricity for them and without offering them any meaningful palliatives even though he knows that they are suffering badly and that his country has been officially designated as the “poverty capital of the world” by numerous international institutions!

It takes a cruel and callous man to do this and turn his back on his people in their time of need. Worse still when it comes to the fight against coronavirus itself in the last 3 weeks he has only managed to test between 10,000 to 20,000 people for the disease in a country of 200 million!

As his citizens are tortured, humiliated, insulted, dragged out of their homes and hotels and made homeless in China and as they are being accused by the Chinese authorities of “creating” and “spreading” Covid-19, he encourages, supports and commends the Chinese Government for doing all this and he welcomes Chinese doctors into his country for an unknown and unstated purpose even though the Nigerian people and the Nigerian Medical Association have expressed their grave concerns and deepest fears about this and kicked and warned against it.

Yours truly was so disgusted and appalled by Buhari’s servile and cowering disposition towards the Chinese that he was constrained to tweet the following this morning: “The support and defence that Geoffrey Onyeama, Nigeria’s otherwise erudite Foreign Minister, provided for China yesterday, even in the light of the barbaric atrocities that Africans are being subjected to in China, was embarrassing, gutless and shameful. Must Buhari always lick foreign arses?”

I am still waiting for an answer to the question but needless to say I will not hold my breath. Things are so pitiful in Buhari’s Nigeria today that even the IMF has refused to touch her with a barge pole and has excluded her from the massive $21 billion USD bail-out and pay packet that they have just offered many other African nations as their contribution to fighting Covid 19 on the African continent.

If there were ever a country that could be best described as a nation of self-flagellation masochists it would have to be Nigeria. It is a country in which the world’s most cruel and heartless sadists are in power and the people appear to like it just like that.

Those that go by the name of IPOB and that have had the presence of mind, decency and courage to protest and say that they have had enough and wish to break out and establish their own country have been locked up, demonized, insulted, maligned and murdered and they have been declared as terrorists even though they never threatened or used violence to effect their purpose.

To say that you want to be free from bondage, tyranny and subjugation and that you wish to chart a new course for your ethnic nationality or tribe because the accursed Lugardian amalgamation and forced marriage union between the north and the south of 1914 has never worked has now become a mortal sin and an unforgivable crime in Nigeria and self-determination has become a dirty word. What a tragedy!

Africa does not need to be conquered because she has already conquered itself. Today Africans are slaves in Libya, they are treated like animals in the Middle East and China, they are barely tolerated in Europe and they are hated and treated with contempt and disdain in Asia and North and South America. All this yet they still believe that their leaders will lead them to the promised land and cut them a better deal in the world. This is nothing but delusion. What a sorry lot we are.

[annabatario-blog]

Articles

Why Finland has the best schools? by William Doyle

Finland has a history of producing the highest global test scores in the Western world, as well as a trophy case full of other recent No. 1 global rankings, including most literate nation. In Finland, children don’t receive formal academic training until the age of 7. Until then, many are in day care and learn through play, songs, games and conversation. Most children walk or bike to school, even the youngest. School hours are short and homework is generally light. Unlike in the United States, where many schools are slashing recess, schoolchildren in Finland have a mandatory 15-minute outdoor free-play break every hour of every day. Fresh air, nature and regular physical activity breaks are considered engines of learning. One evening, I asked my son what he did for gym that day. “They sent us into the woods with a map and compass and we had to find our way out,” he said. In Finland, teachers are the most trusted and admired professionals next to doctors. “Our mission as adults is to protect our children from politicians,” one Finnish childhood education professor told me. “We also have an ethical and moral responsibility to tell businesspeople to stay out of our building.” Skeptics might claim that the Finnish model would never work in America’s inner-city schools. But what if the opposite is true? What if high-poverty students are the children most urgently in need of the benefits that, for example, American parents of means obtain for their children in private schools, things that Finland delivers on a national public scale.

Title: Why Finland has the best schools

Author: William Doyle

Journal/Publication: Los Angeles Times

Url/web address: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0318-doyle-finnish-schools-20160318-story.html

Main idea: The different reasons why the Finland schools offer the best education.

Evidences that support main idea:

1. School hours are short and homework is generally light.

2. Unlike in the United States, where many schools are slashing recess, schoolchildren in Finland have a mandatory 15-minute outdoor free-play break every hour of every day.

What if schools taught kindness? by Laura Pinger and Lisa Flook

Every school teaches math and reading, but what about mindfulness and kindness? Twice a week for 20 minutes, pre-kindergarten kids were introduced to stories and practices for paying attention, regulating their emotions, and cultivating kindness. The initial results of our research suggest that this program can improve kids’ grades, cognitive abilities, and relationship skills. Having classrooms full of mindful, kind kids completely changes the school environment. Imagine entire schools - entire districts - where kindness is emphasized. That would be truly powerful. Teaching kindness is a way to bubble up widespread transformation that doesn’t require big policy changes or extensive administrative involvement. If you had visited one of our classrooms during the 12-week program, you might have seen a poster on the wall called “Kindness Garden.” When kids performed an act of kindness or benefitted from one, they added a sticker to the poster. The idea is that friendship is like a seed - it needs to be nurtured and taken care of in order to grow. Through that exercise, we got students talking about how we might grow more friendship in the classroom. Students who went through the curriculum showed more empathy and kindness and a greater ability to calm themselves down when they felt upset, according to teachers’ ratings. They earned higher grades at the end of the year in certain areas (notably for social and emotional development), and they showed improvement in the ability to think flexibly and delay gratification, skills that have been linked to health and success later in life.

Title: What if schools taught kindness?

Authors:Laura Pinger, Lisa Flook

Journal/Publication:Greater Good

Url/web address: http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/what_if_schools_taught_kindness

Main idea: The importance and benefits of teaching kindness to the students.

Evidences that support main idea:

1. Students who went through the curriculum showed more empathy and kindness and a greater ability to calm themselves down when they felt upset, according to teachers’ ratings 2. They earned higher grades at the end of the year in certain areas (notably for social and emotional development), and they showed improvement in the ability to think flexibly and delay gratification, skills that have been linked to health and success later in life.

Don’t Trade Your Life For Temporary Things by Rick Warren

So much of what we waste our energy on will not matter even a year from now, much less for eternity. Don’t trade your life for temporary things. Jesus said, “Anyone who lets himself be distracted from the work I plan for him is not fit for the Kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62 LB) Paul warned, “Deal as sparingly as possible with the things the world thrusts on you. This world as you see it is on its way out.” (1 Corinthians 7:31 MSG)

What are you allowing to stand in the way of your mission? Whatever it is, let it go. “Let us strip off anything that slows us down or holds us back ….” (Hebrews 12:1 LB)

How can we do this? In one of his most misunderstood statements, Jesus said, “I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” (Luke 16:9 NIV)

Jesus did not mean for you to “buy” friends with money. What he meant was that you should use the money God gives you to bring people to Christ. They will then be friends for eternity who will welcome you when you get to heaven! It’s the best financial investment you’ll ever make.

You’ve probably heard the expression “You can’t take it with you,” but the Bible says you can send it on ahead, by investing it in people who are going there! The Bible says, “By doing this they will be storing up real treasure for themselves in heaven—it is the only safe investment for eternity! And they will be living a fruitful Christian life down here as well.” (1 Timothy 6:19 LB

Title: Don’t Trade Your Life For Temporary Things

Author: Rick Warren

Journal/Publication: Pastor Pick’s Daily Hope

Url/web address: 

http://pastorrick.com/devotional/english/full-post/don’t-trade-your-life-for-temporary-things

Main idea: We shouldn’t trade our lives for temporary things because all of these will not stay forever.

Evidences that support main idea: 

1. “Deal as sparingly as possible with the things the world thrusts on you. This world as you see it is on its way out.” (1 Corinthians 7:31 MSG) 2. “I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” (Luke 16:9 NIV)

The key to our happiness is connection, not competition by Mark Williamson

Charles Darwin is normally associated with the “survival of the fittest” theory. He also wrote that the communities most likely to flourish were “those with the most sympathetic members”, an observation backed up by research that we are wired to care about each other. But we have such a strong cultural narrative about the selfish side of humanity that we adopt systems and behaviours that undermine our natural co-operative tendencies. This starts in schools, where the relentless focus on exams and attainment instills in young people the idea that success is about doing better than others. It continues in our marketing culture, which encourages conspicuous displays of consumption and rivalry. It’s found at the heart of our workplaces, where employees compete with each other for performance-related rewards. This “get ahead or lose out” ethos [is] deeply flawed. In schools, helping young people to develop social and emotional skills [has] been shown to boost their performance. In workplaces, research shows that “givers” - people who help others without seeking anything in return - are more successful in the long term than “takers” - who try to maximize benefits for themselves, rather than others. For society as a whole, the World Happiness Report 2013, a major global study, found that two of the strongest explanatory factors for national wellbeing are levels of social support and generosity.

Title: The key to our happiness is connection, not competition Author: Mark Williamson Journal/Publication: The Guardian Url/web address: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/mar/20/key-to-happiness-connection-not-competition Main idea: Connection between people will help the world more than the competition. Evidences that support main idea: 1. This starts in schools, where the relentless focus on exams and attainment instills in young people the idea that success is about doing better than others. 2. In workplaces, research shows that “givers” - people who help others without seeking anything in return - are more successful in the long term than “takers” - who try to maximize benefits for themselves, rather than others.

Synthesis for the four articles

           When I'm choosing the articles that I will put into my journal, I also consider the content of them. I really want to pick those who can really inspire and at the same time educate me. I don't want to pick those articles which would just waste my time.I want the worthy and memorable ones because these qualities will really help me to have a positive outlook in life.

          For the four articles I've chosen, half of them are related to school and half are about life. I've picked these kind of articles because after reading them, they've motivated me to discover new things. We also need to explore new things because sometimes, we don't notice that we're already too focused on only one perspective without considering others too so the tendency is that our minds will not be open to diversity. 

          The two school related articles that I've picked were "Why Finland has the best schools" and "What if Schools Taught Kindness". These two articles said that schools shouldn't only focused on the academic performance of students. They must also consider the characters, the skills and how the students would face the life.If that happens, then no one will already need to suffer from depression because of failing grades and students will already enjoy studying. That's why Finland is one of the countries with the best schools because the approach of its education is different from others. This country really expose its students not just only inside their four-sided classrooms but also into the real world which really matters the most. Not just only in Finland where we can find good education but also in other parts of the world.There are also schools that teach students with very young ages about kindness.It's really a very good news to hear because children should already know how important kindness is.

          Another two articles I've chosen about life were "Don't Trade Your Life For Temporary Things" and "The key to our happiness is connection, not competition". These two were connected with each other because they both tackled about what life truly is. I know that sometimes, we're having a misconception that a good life is only about having a lot of money, obtaining high grades, buying beautiful house and car, and being famous. So, we tend to pull others down because of the competition and our desires that we must get that kind of life which is just ofcourse, a temporary one.But, these articles had shown that what's far more important in life are our relationships with others, the love we've shared and the kindness we've given because all of these are the things that will really last forever no matter what happens.

         I'm thankful that our teacher had given us this kind of task which is reading articles.Although it's a little bit tiring, what's important was I've learned new things.

Reflection on the syntheses of my other classmates and mine

          The syntheses of my other classmates were slightly the same as mine.They also putted some inspirational articles like what I did. Most of them were about the different topics about life.I'm really happy that we're all concerned when it comes on talking about the different aspects of life because knowing that there are some people who share the same interests as you will really boost your confidence.

          It's really a good thing that we have this kind of activity because with this, I can know the personalities of my classmates very well and how good they are in expressing their emotions into words.Although we're not on the same houses, I can still feel that we're connected with each other by the use of this blogging. This is really one of the best examples on why technology is a very powerful weapon nowadays. It can affect other people's lives even in just one click.

         Having this blog making really helped me and my classmates on discovering new things and made our emotions feel lighter because all of our feelings had already been expressed here.It kept us motivated and inspired to continue our lives no matter how hard it was because we knew that this kind of thing were existing.

[nuttylightobject-blog]

Stunning  lower

In different species, like the splendid fairywren, ladies benefit by mating with several males, Hence developing much more offspring of greater genetic excellent. After inspecting one by one the various theories, rejecting all other tips, it turns into required to confess the existence of the marine animal of huge electric power. Observe the main episode in the animated collection centered on a completely new breed of latest Yorkers: the downtrodden creatures -- rats, pigeons and even more -- native to Earth's least-habitable ecosystem. invertebrate - any animal missing a spine or notochord; the time period just isn't used for a scientific classification Here is the Tale of Jody, an unemployed young black guy, who's been residing together with his mom for various yrs, even though he is received a toddler of his personal. Romantically, he is owning ... See complete summary » Associations among ovulation price and embryonic and placental qualities in multiparous sows at 35 times of pregnancy survivor - an animal that survives in spite of adversity; "only the fittest animals ended up survivors from the cold winters" Editorial: Precision livestock farming: a ‘for every animal’ strategy utilizing advanced monitoring technologies The digestive chamber has two openings, a mouth and an anus, and There is certainly also an inside human body cavity termed a coelom or pseudocoelom. You will discover exceptions to every of such attributes, having said that—By way of example Grownup echinoderms are radially symmetric, and certain parasitic worms have really simplified system structures. Animals cannot manufacture their unique foods and have to feed on vegetation, other animals, or other natural matter. Animals are grouped for a individual kingdom in taxonomy. Having said that the invention that tracks very similar to these early trace fossils are made today by the enormous solitary-celled protist Gromia sphaerica casts question on their own interpretation as evidence of early animal evolution.[sixty one][62] During sexual copy, mating with an in depth relative (inbreeding) normally contributes to inbreeding despair. For example, inbreeding was discovered to increase juvenile mortality in eleven compact animal species.[34] Inbreeding despair is regarded as mainly on account of expression of deleterious recessive mutations. You are using a web browser we do not aid. To transform your knowledge be sure to try considered one of the following possibilities: Most known animal phyla appeared inside the fossil document as maritime species throughout the Cambrian explosion, about 542 million years back. Animals could be divided broadly into vertebrates and invertebrates. Vertebrates Possess a spine or spine (vertebral column), and sum to fewer than 5 percent of all explained animal species. They contain fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. animal jam memberships