#Mentis E.G.

[drdemonprince]

This was several days ago but it was still bugging me (autistic) so I have to be a little pedantic about your tags on the pop neuroscience post: https://www.tumblr.com/drdemonprince/742517045406613504?source=share

The post is 100%. Pop neurosci is complete bullshit. All this "dopamine"/other neurotransmitter stuff people talk about especially.

With your tags though, please don't conflate the entire field of neuroscience with fMRI. For sure, 90% or more of fMRI is total bunk, I am with you. But there are many methodologies besides fMRI. And decades of neuroscience research that is real science. Including actual experimental methods that can establish causality, unlike fMRI. Much of that is done in lab animals. (Don't want to get into animal research ethics here but there is plenty of humane, non-horrifying animal research in neuroscience, although most of it does end with the animal being humanely euthanized. Of course some people hold the position that we should never raise, keep, or euthanize animals for research purposes, which is a valid position that I don't happen to agree with.)

Almost all of what the field of neuroscience actually knows about neurotransmitters is from animal research. So when you say we have no experimental data on that - not true, we totally do, just not much of it in humans.

We even do have a way to look at real time neurotransmitter release in living human brains, by injecting people with e.g. a radioactive dopamine-receptor-binding chemical and then do PET imaging to visualize the movement of the radioactivity in their brain while they do tasks/view stimuli. As their own dopamine floods an area, the radioligand is displaced (it's designed to be a weaker binder to the receptor than natural dopamine) and you can infer dopamine release in that area. It's indirect, correlational, and does involve some fancy math (but not as bad as fMRI). But it is a method that has produced meaningful findings. Nora Volkow is one of the scientists who used that methodology to study cocaine addiction among other things. Her research combined with neuroscience using lab animals contributes to the modern understanding of dopamine's role in drug craving and drug-seeking behavior, and how dopamine has nothing to do with the pleasure or high from the drug.

There are other valuable findings from human research that are not fMRI. Including stuff done on people getting brain surgery (kinda "poke this and see what happens", but it does establish causality); TMS which experimentally disrupts certain areas; studies of people with brain damage; and histological and anatomical studies of human brains donated to science postmortem, where you can look neuron by neuron which you can't do with fMRI or other imaging or EEG. And, fMRI/imaging has produced a LITTLE bit of worthwhile stuff. Just...not much, I agree.

I think coming from social psychology you may have been mainly exposed to "social neuroscience" which is generally fMRI about social psychology stuff. And often being done by social psychologists with not enough neuroscience background, not that fMRI is done rigorously by those people either, but it doesn't help. But that is not all of neuroscience! I used to do neuroscience and taught it to college students for 10 years. It is so much more than hogwash fMRI, I promise!

Thanks for the message. If you'll bear with me being mildly pedantic back (Autism), since we were discussing the topic of anti-psychiatry, I think there being no real studies of neurotransmitter activity in humans as it relates to any kind of psychiatric drug/treatment in field is tantamount to there being no useful ecologically valid knowledge on it. Lab animal research just does not generalize well enough to ground anything that psychiatry is doing or prescribing or that is being reported in the popular press.

And I would certainly chalk up "poke and see what happens" style brain surgery as being under the "exploratory, not science" banner that I already mentioned. To say that we can establish causality with that kind of methodology is just not true. It's also just not generalizable. There is so much we don't know about variation in brain organization.

You are absolutely right that my main area of direct involvement was working in a social cognitive neuroscience lab with an FMRI and an EEG, doing absolute fuckall nonsense, but that's not all that I have familiarity with or training in. Your notes are well taken, and I sincerely thank you for them and I'm sure a lot of people will find them interesting, but I think we're still very much in the dark ages in understanding this stuff, and that stance of mine does incorporate those methodologies.

[alienguts]

Fluff Alphabet (Ash Williams x GN!Reader)

Warnings: None

A/N: I haven't really had the energy to put out full fics lately thanks to the good old menty I, and now I have a cold again.

A = Attractive (What do they find attractive about the other?)

Ash loves every single part of you; you're the most beautiful, hottest thing he's ever seen in his entire life. He has his days when he acts as if you hung the moon.

B = Baby (Do they want a family? Why/Why not?)

Absolutely not. Ash's 'lifestyle' doesn't lend itself to children, it's just way too dangerous. If something happened and you ended up with a child in your lives, he may soften up to the idea of having a family.

C = Cuddle (How do they cuddle?)

Ash will cuddle any way possible and as much as he can. He likes being able to stand behind you with his arms around your waist, sitting on the sofa together, lying in bed, sharing a bath. He'll take any chance he can to be close to you.

D = Dates (What are dates with them like?)

Ash isn't a rich man so dates are often very simple. You have your favourite spots around town to go to, such as bars and diners, and they're often very cheap places. He wishes he could take you to more extravagant places, but he knows you don't mind that much.

E = Everything (You are my ____ (e.g. my life, my world…))

Ash's pet names are often very corny so when he breaks out the 'love of my life' stuff you know he's being sincere. Words aren't always easy for him.

F = Feelings (When did they know they were in love?)

Ash isn't the best at recognising his feelings, but he does know when he likes someone. Love is a little more difficult for him. He was in denial for a little bit, but once he gave in he was happy he did.

G = Gentle (Are they gentle? If so, how?)

Ash is dumb and loud, and absolutely a himbo. He never wants to do anything to hurt you or upset you, but he does have a habit of running his mouth. If he does upset you, he'll immediately try to make it up to you.

H = Hands (How do they like to hold hands?)

Considering that Ash only has one hand, he does like to hold yours. There have been moments when he hasn't been wearing his fake hand and you've grabbed his wrist, but he's never offended by it. It makes him feel better about having lost his hand.

I = Impression (What was their first impression?)

Unfortunately for some, Ash is a man who is ruled by his impulses. As soon as he saw you, he knew he had to have you.

J = Jealousy (Do they get jealous?)

Ash likes the say that he doesn't get jealous, but he absolutely does. He has no problems with you talking to other people (and it would be a massive red flag if he did have a problem with it), but if someone tries to get handsy with you, you can expect him to start hovering.

K = Kiss (How do they kiss? Who initiated the first kiss?)

Ash loves to kiss you and, naturally, he's very good at it. He knows exactly how you like to be kissed and how to lead you into it.

L = Love (Who says ‘I love you’ first?)

Words don't come easy for Ash, so you're more likely to say it first. He wants to say it, but his brain and his mouth aren't always connected.

M = Memory (What’s their favourite memory together?)

As painful as it was, Ash will always remember the first time he opened up to you about what happened at the cabin. He hates talking about it and tries to bury his feelings, but being able to tell you about it was liberating for him.

N = Nickel (Do they spoil? Do they buy the person they love everything?)

Ash would love to spoil you, but he doesn't have the money to do it. Even if you tell him that he doesn't need to buy you things, he still wants to. He'd save all of his salary to be able to get you something nice.

O = Orange (What colour reminds them of their other half?)

Warm colours like pink and red remind Ash of you. Sometimes he looks at the sunset on his way out of work and thinks that you would like seeing it.

P = Pet names (What pet names do they use?)

Pick a pet name, any pet name because Ash will have called you that. His most often used one is 'baby', but he does break out an occasional 'kid', which is pretty cute.

Q = Quaint (What is their favourite non-modern thing?)

Ash still loves his vinyl records and he's unlikely to give them up, no matter how un-stylish they become later on in the decade, or how expensive they end up being.

R = Rainy Day (What do they like to do on a rainy day?)

The weather doesn't really bother Ash too much, especially if it's just a little drizzle. He'll just get you both dressed up in raincoats and boats to do whatever you were going to do in the first place. If it's torrential rain or a blizzard, you'll just stay at home instead.

S = Sad (How do they cheer themselves/others up?)

Ash isn't very good at cheering himself up, but he's the best at cheering you up. He's always ready with hugs and reassuring words and would give you anything you wanted if it helped.

T = Talking (What do they like to talk about?)

When he was first flirting with you, Ash would talk about himself a lot. But not in an earnest or endearing way, more like trying to make himself seem like the coolest guy in the room when he's actually a dork.

He's more of a listener now, but he will tell you things about his friends from the past every now and then.

U = Unencumbered (What helps them relax?)

Ash has absolutely zero qualms with giving in to his most base desires when he needs to relax. His time-tested way of chilling out is to break out some weed. And, yes, he'll share with you if you ask nicely.

V = Vaunt (What do they like to show off? What are they proud of?)

Ash doesn't show off a lot, but he's pretty proud of his chest and he likes that you like it. He doesn't work out as often as he should, but he always makes sure to keep it in good condition for you.

W = Wedding (When, how, where do they propose?)

You'll have been together for a long time before Ash proposes. He needed a lot of thinking to make up his mind and be 100% sure that this is what he wanted to do. He wanted his proposal to be extravagant and romantic but he doesn't have the money for that so he settles on getting the best ring he can afford and taking you out to one of your favourite date spots.

X = Xylophone (What’s their song?)

Ash is a classic and hard rock kind of guy and he finds it hard to pin down what his favourites are. He likes whatever sounds good to get stoned to.

Y = Yes (Do they ever think of getting married/proposing?)

Ash would like to get married because it's part of a fantasy of having a 'normal' life, but it's not always realistic for someone like him. He'd think about proposing to you for a long time but whether or not he'd do it is up in the air.

Z = Zebra (If they wanted a pet, what would they get?)

Ash claims that he's a dog person, but a dog is too high maintenance for him and a cat would be too. He's more suited to taking care of a goldfish or a lizard.

[outworldxwasomi]

@heamatic​ had arrived for their appointment.

"Come to consult with the elder gods again, Raiden." Marco grinned with a light hearted chuckle. He put a hand on Raiden shoulder and led him into his 'Office'. "Though I must tell you the one elder God you wish to see isn't here so you are just stuck with little ol me...that won't be a problem will it?"

[fluentisonus]

Im sorry, your what essay!?

it's about the use of Meat (& food etc) and the language around it in persius' satires! he does a lot of very interesting stuff with it, both in terms of poetry (both wholesome and unwholesome) as food, and in terms of the body and the natural world around it as flesh that is consumed or wasted. really fascinating stuff

see for example:

haec [pulpa] bacam conchae rasisse et stringere venas ferventis massae crudo de pulvere iussit.

i.e.:

This flesh [of ours] that commands we scrape the pearl from the mollusk and strip the veins of red-hot ore from the raw dirt

pulpa -- flesh, here for the living human body but usually to do with sacrificial animal meat

bacam -- pearl in this case but also a word for berry

venas -- veins; we have this in english for veins of metal too but it's no less visceral

massae -- ore, but also a word for a 'lump' of something foody, e.g. dough (or maybe something bloodier)

crudo -- raw, but often with a gory or bloody quality

so the body is Meat but the landscape it is destroying is also Meat. the words here are also very violent & visceral, the pearl is "scraped" from the oyster, the veins of ore are "stripped" from the "raw" earth -- all of this is very reminiscent of butchering, including the human body doing it which is made of butcher's meat

all this resulting in this fantastic quote by everard flintoff:

“The picture is by now almost nightmarish. It is as though there is no hope for man. Meat himself, he turns everything round him into meat."

or here's another fun one:

conpositum ius fasque animo sanctosque recessus mentis et incoctum generoso pectus honesto.

i.e.:

A spirit made of what is right and just and recesses of the mind what is sacred, and the breast stewed in noble reputation.

conpositum -- this isn't culinary really but taken with the rest does feel a bit like it's coming together in the way a recipe would lol

ius -- this can mean either "law"/"justice" or "broth"; many puns have been made on this one!

incoctum -- literally "boiled in" or "stewed", related to coquo ("to cook")

pectus -- breast or heart. often metaphorical but feels very physical here

so the spirit is made of what is right and just but. it is also made of Soup, and the breast, despite being in the middle of a discussion about spirit (i.e. what's in the breast) comes across as very meaty in the way it is being "stewed" (into a soup itself)

(persius also refers to his own poetry in a very broth-like way, he calls it decoctius i.e. "boiled down" or "concentrated" in a comparison to other poets, implying that what he writes is healthy & nourishing unlike the unwholesome mishmash (sartago loquendi ... in linguas, literally "frying pan of speech on their tongues" other poets come up with)

there's a lot more of this too and it's v fascinating to think about imo!

[echoesofthefall]

The first phenomenon arousing one's interest are the nabi-guilds, which the Israelites took over from the Canaanites, and which are so clearly depicted in the Books of Samuel. Samuel himself was called a rō'æh, a seer (I Sam. IX: 9). Also, a seer could show shamanistic features, as demonstrated by the seer (ḥōzæh) Bileam, who was "falling down, but having his eyes uncovered", probably in trance, Num XXIV: 4 & 16. More characteristic were, however, the nabis, who were active at Canaanite cult places, where they used to gather in flocks. They used different means to bring themselves into ecstasy: harp, tambourine, flute and lyre are mentioned in I Sam. X: 5. When the spirit came upon them, they prophesied and it is even so expressed that they were "turned into another man" (I Sam. X: 6). When the nabis were in this condition, "turned into another man" and filled with God's spirit, they spoke the oracles which the spirit gave them. When the king needed divine assistance to start a new task, e.g. a war, he used to call his nabis, as it is told in the O.T. about King Ahab in the 9th century B.C., I Kings XXII. The nabis were ordered to get in contact with the divine world, and in addition a definite answer was expected from them, namely a "yes" to the plans of the king King Ahab liked to have his band of nabis in this way, but he also wanted to hear the opinion of Micaiah, the son of Imlah, in spite of the fact that this prophet used to predict evil for the king, I Kings XXII. One may easily get the impression that the king (and the narrator) considered the nabis as men who were themselves masters of their oracles and who could accordingly turn them in the direction which was wanted. If that was so, the purpose of the work of the nabis was identical with that mentioned above, in connection with the definition of shamanism. In the narrative about the prophet Elijah's struggle with the Baal prophets on Mount Carmel it is told that these nabis used to limp around the altar in a characteristic dance. "They cried aloud, and cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out upon them", as the narrator tells, I Kings XVIII: 26-29. They here obviously used means that were intended to cause ecstasy. The purpose of the ecstasy was to get into contact with the divine world.

Arvid S. Kapelrud, Shamanistic Features in the Old Testament

[kwameafrica]

Anton Wilhelm Amo: The African Philosopher in 18th Europe

“Anton Wilhelm Amo (c. 1700 – c. 1750) – born in West Africa, enslaved, and then gifted to the Duke of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel – became the first African to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy at a European university. He went on to teach philosophy at the Universities of Halle and Jena. On the 16th of April, 1734, at the University of Wittenberg, he defended his dissertation, De Humanae Mentis Apatheia (On the Impassivity of the Human Mind), in which Amo investigates the logical inconsistencies in René Descartes’ (1596 – 1650) res cogitans (mind) and res extensa (body) distinction and interaction by maintaining that (1) the mind does not sense material things nor does it (2) contain the faculty of sensing. For Amo, there is an impasse between the mind and sensation because the mind is immaterial (active) and sensation necessarily needs to occur upon something passive and material (body), which means sensation could only ever be cognized by the mind and through the body. This makes Amo ontologically more Cartesian than Descartes. For information on Amo’s narrative and an English translation of his dissertation, visit this link.“

source: Anton Wilhelm Amo: The African Philosopher in 18th Europe | Blog of the APA)

“(...) Amo begins the second chapter of his dissertation with a “State of Controversy” in which he positions his argument as an antithesis to Descartes and others. He begins via Descartes’ response to Elisabeth dated the 21st of May, 1643. Amo quotes Descartes’ reply, saying: “For as there are two things in the human soul on which all the knowledge that we are able to have of its nature depends, one of which is that it thinks, the other that, united to a body, it is able to act and to suffer together with it.” Amo concludes that Descartes’ distinction and union depends upon the fact that the mind, i.e., the soul, acts (meaning it is active) and suffers (meaning it is acted upon or passive). If this is the case, then Descartes’ ontological distinction that immaterial minds are purely active and material bodies are purely passive seems, by definition, to mean something entirely different. Ontologically distinct substances, for Amo, necessitate impassivity, which is the title of his dissertation.

His Impassivity is grounded in the following three theses:

(1) The human mind does not sense material things: His first proof asserts that things determined from first principles have constitutive parts, meaning they are divisible, and divisible things receive passions. The body (material) has constitutive parts making it divisible and necessitating its reception of passions. Spirit things, like the mind, cannot be divided, and thus do not have constitutive parts. Therefore, sensing cannot be a part of the mind because it is not divisible; but based on the body’s divisibility, the reception of sensation is a necessary condition of the living and organic body.

(2) The faculty of sensing does not belong to the mind: Secondly, Amo explains that “everything that lives necessarily senses; everything that senses necessarily lives”, assuming to live and to sense as “inseparable predicates”. Furthermore, “everything that lives exists, but not everything that exists lives”; thus living is not a predicate for existence, exempting the faculty of sensation from being a predicate for existence. He offers the example of a spirit and a stone explaining that neither lives but both exist. The stone, while existing, is less likely said to gain knowledge through sense impingements, meaning it doesn’t have the faculty of sensing. The mind, being a spirit thing, “is always in itself understanding and operating spontaneously and intentionally toward a determinate end [i.e., an end it has determined for itself] of which it is conscious”. The mind does not gain knowledge through sense impingements but through the understanding. Consequently, spirits exist like the stone but operate in/on themselves with understanding, and material things can exist and not live (i.e., not have the faculty of sensation) like a stone, or can exist and live (like a body).

In an effort to further support his claim that the mind doesn’t have a faculty of sensing, Amo invokes a circulation of the blood proof, similar to Descartes’ in the Passions of the Soul and the Discourse on the Method. Amo maintains that the body, through the circulation of the blood, necessarily receives the principle of life, i.e., life and the circulation of the blood are “inseparable predicates”. The mind, being immaterial, could never intertwine, like the body, with the principle of life. Furthermore, since the circulation of the blood and life/sensing are “inseparable predicates” then the mind could not have the faculty of sensing. The mind’s inability to sense is predicated on its activity; making it unable to receive passions – except through the understanding – because the mind cannot contain the faculty of sensing.

(3) Sensing and the faculty of sensation belong to the human body, which is organic and living: Amo’s third thesis follows from the previous two, and places ‘to live’ and ‘to sense’ in the same, divisible and material subject. He asserts, “whatever can be killed necessarily lives” and “to be killed is to be deprived of life.” Organically living bodies sense and possess the faculty of sensing; and then can be killed. The human body, which is living and organic, can be killed, unlike the mind. Amo’s final thesis is self-evident if theses (1) and (2) are correct; and ultimately, provide evidence for his assertion that only living and organic bodies receive sensations and have the faculty of sensing. Amo, by holding faster to Descartes’ ontological distinction, defines himself as more Cartesian than Descartes.

In Descartes’ sailor-in-the-ship example from the Sixth Meditation, Descartes explains that the mind does not just understand or perceive pain but actually feels the pain because of its union with the body, saying, “For if this were not the case, then I, who am only a thinking thing, would not sense pain when the body is injured; rather, I would perceive the wound by means of the pure intellect, just as a sailor perceives by sight whether anything in his ship is broken.” For Descartes, if at the union the mind isn’t active and passive, then one’s mind could never know pain but only ever be aware of it. Thus, for one to know pain, the relation of one’s mind to his or her body necessitates something more intimate than causal manipulation.

Amo accepts that the mind acts together with the body through the mediation of a mutual union, but he denies that the mind suffers together with the body. This commerce, not commingling, between the mind and the body does not allow the mind to really feel any sensations or suffering, which only occur to/on the body–which is alive. The mind perceives sensation by way of the body, which it cognizes, and applies these perceived ideas in its operations. The body does not substantially interact with the mind, even though it is essential to the mind’s representation of ideas, and thus to the mind’s effect on itself and its intentions. Amo is making a strong distinction between the material parts of the body, which sense and are alive, and the soul. The soul is an immaterial, spirit thing; by definition, it cannot receive any sensations and is not alive. So yes, the soul is only aware of what happens to Descartes’ ship while the brain and body, being alive, have experiential knowledge of the ship; allowing humans to think that the soul is more than aware of its pain and suffering, when truly, for Amo, the soul only has ideas of bodily pains.

For Descartes, the mind and body, which are distinct substances, interact and commingle at the pineal gland, producing the passions of the soul. Amo responds with a “No.” For Amo, ontologically distinct substances are necessarily distinct. Consequently, sensing necessarily belongs to the body because without a body, one cannot sense. There is impassivity between the mind and sensation because the mind is immaterial and sensations necessarily need to occur upon something passive and material (the body), which means sensations could only  ever be cognized through and occur on the body.

Here, one experiences the success of Amo’s critique and a unique enhancement of Descartes’ mind/body interaction; yet the history of philosophy has seemingly neglected Amo and he is almost non-existent in the works of his contemporaries who must have known about him–the African teaching philosophy in early 18th Century Europe. Today’s philosophical community has the power to amend these and future contextual lapses by widening the definition of canonical and philosophical. What will we do?

Dwight Lewis, a Doctoral Candidate at the University of South Florida (Tampa, FL), works under Roger Ariew and Justin EH Smith in the History of Philosophy. His research focuses on concepts of human difference (e.g., race and gender), underrepresented philosophers, and early modern philosophy generally construed. He will defend his dissertation, Amo’s Philosophy and Reception: from the Origins through the Encyclopédie, in the Spring of 2019. “

source: Anton Wilhelm Amo: The African Philosopher in 18th Europe | Blog of the APA)

[lemonadeandlanguages]

Using trop, très, beaucoup, si tellement, and assez

All of these adverbs express intensity, but they cannot always be used interchangeably.

1. Beaucoup

Beaucoup can be translated to “a lot” and is used with verbs.

e.g.:

Il a beaucoup mangé. – He ate a lot.

2. Trop/Très

These two are both used with adverbs and adjectives. However, it is worth noting that they have different meanings, and therefore can’t be interchanged without changing the meaning of a sentence. Très means a lot or very, while trop means too much (and usually carries a negative connotation).

e.g.:

Elle est très bavarde. – She talks a lot.

Elle est trop bavarde. – She talks too much.

Très and trop can also be combined with other adverbs to indicate intensity (très bien, très mal, beaucoup trop, un peu trop).

e.g.:

Il a très bien réussi son examen. – He did very well on his exam.

Elle lui a beaucoup trop racconté. – She told him way too much.

Note: In casual French (mostly in France), trop is sometimes used to indicate intensity, but without any negative connotation. In this case, it translates to “very”.

e.g.:

C’est trop cool! – It’s very cool!

3. Si

Like, trop and très, si is used with adverbs and adjectives. It can be used in exclamatory sentences or in sentences expressing a consequence. It translates to “so”.

e.g.:

Cette ville est si belle! – This city is so beautiful!

Son œuvre d’art était si magnifique qu’elle a remporté tous les prix. – Her work of art was so amazing that she won all the prizes.

Si can also replace aussi in negative and interrogative sentences.

e.g.:

Le repas n’est pas si mauvais qu’elle le prétend. – The meal isn’t as bad as she claims.

Comment peux-tu être si certain qu’il ne ment pas? – How can you be so sure he isn’t lying?

4. Tellement

This word modifies verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, and like si, can be used in exclamatory sentences or in sentences expressing a consequence.

e.g.:

On a tellement marché au cours de nos dernières vacances à New York! – We walked so much during our last vacations in New York!

Cette robe est tellement belle que je dois me l’acheter. – This dress is so beautiful that I have to buy it.

There are two ways of writing sentences with tellement. When it is used with que, it introduces a subordinate clause expressing a consequence. When the sentence is affirmative (i.e. not negative), it’s necessary to use the indicatif or conditionnel for the verb conjugation. However, if the sentence is negative or an interrogative sentence, then it is the subjonctif that is used.

e.g.:

Jean nous a tellement menti que je ne lui fais pas confiance. – Jean has lied to us so much that I don’t trust him. (affirmative + indicative présent)

Sacha n’est pas tellement fatigué qu’il ne puisse pas aller à l’école. – Sacha isn’t so tired that he can’t go to school. (negative + subjonctif présent)

Tellement can also be used without the que. In that case, it is placed next to a proposition expressing the cause. Unfortunately, this does not have an English equivalent, so both constructions are translated the same.

e.g.:

Il surprend ses parents tellement il est intelligent. – He is so smart he surprises his parents. (lit.: He surprsies his parents he is so smart.)

5. Assez

This word means “enough” or “rather” and is used with verbs, adjectifs, and adverbs.

e.g.:

Il a assez travaillé cette semaine. – He has worked enough this week. Elle est assez fatiguée après sa pratique de hockey. – She is rather tired after her hockey practice.

In some cases, assez can also be used to indicate intensity.

e.g.:

J’aime assez ce vin que vous avez acheté. – I rather like this wine that you have bought.

 NOUNS

Some of these words can also be used to mark intensity with nouns. However, they require placing a de between them and the noun. These words are beaucoup, trop, tellement, and assez.

e.g.:

Elle a beaucoup de toutous. – She has a lot of stuffed animals.

Samuel a trop de bonbons. – Samuel has too many candies.

Il y a tellement de monde au centre commercial aujourd’hui! – There are so many people at the mall today!

Elle a assez d’argent pour souper au restaurant. – She has enough money to dine at a restaurant.

[saudahart4001]

susan sontag: illness as metaphor

·         ‘The solution is hardly to stop telling cancer patients the truth, but to rectify the conception of the disease to de-mythicise it’ - p.9

-          Medical upbringing means diagnosis always frank but in a away more comforting due to lack of the unknown

-          Doctors would never talk in such vague yet blunt terms ‘four sugar tea’

·         Interesting additional death culture reading -> ‘From Here to Eternity’, by Caitlin Dougherty

·         Comparison of cardiac, cancer and TB & shame involved. Think that this has subsequently changed due to contemporary ideas around health, plus this example is from a culturally monolithic understanding, since so much of medicine and medicine ethics in the modern day are to do with race and ethnicity as well.

·         Noble TB death vs. humiliating cancer death (p.15) -> the Victorian fainting, pallor is TB seen in many many works of Victorian writing and media.

-          Interesting how cancer is now a heroic struggle, you are considered a fighter, to overcome it is to be a stronger/better person than another, upon survival pity because deification.

·         Interesting for me to see these form a non-medically experienced perspective of overimagination (end of chp. 2)

-          Now cancer in youth is seen as a tragic way to die, an inevitable end from an unjustly given death sentence. 100% been aestheticized

·         ‘you give up and resign… then you shrink’ -> common in medical field, the reason why spouses often die so close to eachother

·         P.24, ‘‘the ideal of perfect health… o sonly scientifically interesting’; what is really interesting is sickness’

-          Morbid curiosity, attention, sympathy, labels

·         Insanity -> The social oxymoron of mental health being romanticised and yet something weak and shameful

·         Hidden passions/sins causing illness attached to the churches ideas of guilt, shame, suffering and sin to the mortal human form.

·         ‘depression is melancholy minus its charms – the animation, the fits’ (p.38)

-          Strange understanding of depression, but again this is a dated paper, Manic depressive episodes are the ‘ugly’ ‘scary’ ‘psycho’ side of depression often not talked about.

Post reading questions I asked my Dad (medical professional)

1.   The frankness of diagnosis

Very very frank so patient isn’t left confused or with unanswered questions OR with a false sense of hope/security, sugary tea is often given since many people go into shock and need the sugar to recover. Its neither harsh or soft, its honest, you would never not tell the patient assuming they are compos mentis, it is often requested but it is simply unethical.

2.   Tb and whether it is still dangerous

TB can still be fatal if it is drug resistant or if it is in any organ other than the lungs, e.g. the brain but also there isn’t the drawn out melancholy aspect that caused the metaphors of the Victorian era, it is a very fast acting illness.

3.   Theory that failing mental health has a negative immunological effect

Depressed or similarly mentally ill people are often negligent of and do not engage with their health care or treatments, as such it is the behavioral aspect that causes a higher death rate as opposed to a direct immunological effect. The immune system has been known to have positive responses in terms of recovery when a healthy mindset and positive memories are being made. Not sure why.

[stringcoin0-blog]

Erica Wagner's Chief Engineer: Washington Roebling, The Man Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge

One of life’s more delightful surprises comes about when something one has expected to be at best no more than a pleasant chore turns out to be a positive pleasure. I must admit that when Peter Aigner asked me to review this book my first thought was that it was a brave soul who would dare to follow McCullough’s vintage account, even if the passage of nearly fifty years held the promise of new sources and fresh perspectives. My second thought was along the lines of “OK, enough of the ‘Great Men’ already!” After all, Washington Roebling didn’t build the Brooklyn Bridge any more than a movie star makes a movie: what about the second gaffer or the assistant third grip or any of the hundreds of others whose names we briefly catch at the end of the movie, if we even bother to watch them roll by? But then I was also curious about “the man in the window” — in McCullough’s felicitous phrase — the house-bound invalid who supervised the last six years of the construction of the bridge from the confines of his office at the back of the Roebling’s home at 110 Columbia Heights in Brooklyn. And the book’s author was indeed able to draw on sources that were not available fifty years ago, mostly importantly Washington Roebling’s private memoir of his father’s life, which turns out to have been as much a memoir of his own life as that of his father’s, at least up until his father’s death in 1869. Our sense of history has, I think, also changed: fifty years ago my mother’s mother, who was born in 1881, could still repeat the Civil War stories told by her grandfather, who had been a captain in the Union Army; today not only she but her children also are gone, and even her grandchildren are getting long in the tooth. The span of Washington Roebling’s life, which saw New York emerge as one of the great cities of the world, has by now passed not only from the realm of living memories but also from the living memories of those memories. And of course today we can read about those by-gone days on our mobile devices via a wireless connection to the internet while flying across the country at 500 miles per hour at an altitude of 30,000 feet, which does, somehow, change our perspective on history in ways that at present we can only guess at.   Chief Engineer does give us a lively account of the actual construction of the bridge and the trials and tribulations of all kinds attendant upon any engineering project of such magnitude, but appropriately enough, the bulk of this account takes up less than a fourth of the story, and even so is interwoven with the events of Wahington Roebling’s “non-bridge” life. Chief Engineer is not a technical account: readers wanting to know, e.g., the details of how the bridge’s cables were “spun” would be well-advised to search out Roebling’s assistant Wilhelm Hildenbrand’s 1877 Cable-Making for Suspension Bridges, with Special Reference to the Cables of the East River Bridge, or, for the construction of the towers, Roebling’s own 1873 Pneumatic Tower Foundations of the East River Suspension Bridge (scans of both are available on-line at archive.org). But for this reader, at least, the greater interest of the book lies in the cast of family characters surrounding his own life: his father, his mother, his brothers — especially the youngest, Edmund — and his first wife, Emily Warren.

The word “Dickensian” almost unavoidably springs to mind: the portrait of John A. Roebling that emerges from his son’s memoir is that of a monster who beat his wife and children — four sons and three daughters survived into adulthood — so often and so mercilessly that they lived in constant terror of him; who when he wasn’t beating them subjected them to the most hideous torments of his quack belief in “water cures” for all ailments of body, mind, and soul; and who later in life engaged a spiritualist medium to establish communications with his deceased wife, even though, as Washington later wrote in his memoir, he had treated her so horribly that “the poor woman was glad to die, even at 48.” The “dysfunctional family” has been around at least since Helen ran off with Paris, and was apparently still thriving in nineteenth century America, as it no doubt still is even today. In any event, it’s hard not to feel some sense of poetic justice when Roebling Sr. dies an agonizing death from a tetanus infection after rejecting proper medical treatment in favor of another of his bogus “water cures” when his toes were crushed in a ferry slip accident while inspecting the site of the Brooklyn-side bridge tower on June 28, 1869.

The middle two of the four Roebling sons survived well enough — at what psychic cost we will surely never know — to be able to run the Trenton, New Jersey, firm that, following their father’s death, was known as the John A. Roebling’s Sons Company, a steel wire mill that later supplied the wire for the Williamsburgh, Manhattan, George Washington, and Golden Gate bridge cables. The youngest brother, Edmund, was not so fortunate. Erica Wagner tells us that sometime after 1917, when, in Washington’s words, Edmund was “a harmless white haired old man of over 70,” a doctor engaged on behalf of the estate of his recently deceased brother Ferdinand had declined to say whether Edmund was compos mentis. Apparently this had been something of a life-long concern. Washington later explained that Edmund’s sad situation arose “from his surroundings from boyhood— No real home, no friends, no ties of relationship, no wife, no occupation, not sufficient force of character to rise above the circumstances and perhaps too much money when young.” He, would, however, survive Washington by some four years, dying in 1930. Washington Roebling’s sisters play no prominent part in Chief Engineer, but the same cannot be said of his wife Emily Warren, whose assistance in supervising the construction of the bridge during the years in which her husband was an invalid was indispensable, rising to the status of becoming what her biographer Marilyn Weigold called the bridge’s “surrogate chief engineer.” Erica Wagner recently told The New York Times that she “didn’t think the Brooklyn Bridge would be standing, were it not for [Emily Roebling] … She was absolutely integral to its construction.” It should come as no surprise that the eldest son of the monstrous father should himself be a difficult man to live with, even without the burden of his chronic illness and the responsibilities for the bridge project it imposed on his wife. Erica Wagner quotes a letter to her son John written on her wedding anniversary, January 18, 1896, saying that “Your father has been married 31 years today. I twice that long.” After the completion of the bridge, however, she was able to establish something of a life of her own beyond the reach of the Roebling family curse: she became involved with a number of civic organizations, travelled widely, and took the Women’s Law Course at New York University, from which she graduated with honors in the spring of 1899, not quite four years before her death at age 59 in 1903. Her 1899 feminist essay, “A Wife’s Disabilities,” written for her NYU course, is still notable for its arguments for women’s rights.

Emily Roebling’s role in the construction of the bridge was a consequence of her husband’s crippling attack of “the bends” in 1872 resulting, in his own words, from his “imprudence in remaining too long in the caisson on Saturday last.” The caisson was a highly pressurized structure that made it possible to work underwater to excavate the riverbed for the bridge towers’ foundations; though little understood at the time, “the bends” were the result of decompressing too rapidly on returning to the surface, which allowed atmospheric gases that had been dissolved into the body’s fluids by the pressure in the caisson to reemerge and to form bubbles that pressed painfully, injuriously, even fatally on the body’s joints and tissues. Erica Wagner tells us that Emily “was not always entirely convinced by her husband’s complaints” and that “much of what ailed him would remain mysterious.” The suspicion, however, lies not far off that whatever part of his suffering was due to “the long term costs of working in compressed air,” another part may have been due to the long repressed pressures of having been the dutiful son of a monster  — a genius of a monster, perhaps, but a monster nonetheless.

Erica Wagner is a wonderful writer and Chief Engineer is as entertaining as it is engrossing, so much so that I am reluctant to register a few complaints about the book itself. Publishers have become so shy of footnotes, bibliography, figure captions and lists of picture sources, as well as indexing, that in their attempt to minimize what they fear are, for the lay reader, the forbidding aspects of a proper scholarly apparatus, too much is lost for those who read a work like Chief Engineer for more than its entertainment value. Alas, Chief Engineer is no exception to this lamentable trend, which puts the burden of sorting out which note belongs with which part of the text on the reader. While the color illustrations are well-done and well-captioned, with sources given, the black and white illustrations in the running text are of only variable quality, sources are not given, and in one instance, a photograph of Washington Roebling seated with British Admiral Jacky Fisher, even the caption has been dispensed with — and the reproduction is so murky one could scarcely begin to recognize either of the two men or to tell the one from the other. This is, I suppose not the author’s fault.

There are also occasional minor errors of a kind that while surely unavoidable in a work of this breadth are nonetheless disconcerting. The Catholic World article on the “The Sanitary and Moral Condition of New York City” on which the author relies for her evocation of slum conditions in New York (Manhattan) at the time the work on the bridge was about to get underway appeared in volume VII (1867) and not, as the note in the back would have it, volume VIII (1869). And it is a mistake to take such a source at its word: the number of seven or eight story tenement buildings in the city at that time — if indeed any existed at all outside the Catholic World writer’s quite properly indignant imagination — must have been very small, too small to be presented as typical. Even in 1903, when the number of tenements in Manhattan had more than doubled, less than one percent were more than six stories tall.

The Roeblings, father and son, may have seen Rossini’s Barber of Seville and Donizetti’s Don Pasquale performed by a travelling opera group in Pittsburgh sometime around 1858, but they could not have seen La Bohème, at least neither Puccini’s well-known nor Leoncavallo’s lesser-known opera, both of which had their premiers in 1896. If they saw a Bohème it could only have been Théodore Barrière’s hit play of 1849, which was based on Henri Murger’s stories of Parisian life in the Latin Quarter in the 1840s, collected in 1851 as his novel, Scènes de la vie de Bohème.

But I cavil, perhaps unnecessarily, as these are minor slip-ups — there are surely a few others too that readers with expertises and interests different from my own will wince at, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I’ve made a few myself even in the brief space of this review. None of them can alter the overriding fact that Erica Wagner has given us a wonderful if disturbing portrait of a man, a family, and a time in New York’s history — and America’s too — that is both informative and a genuine pleasure to read.

Source: https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/erica-wagners-chief-engineer-washington-roebling-the-man-who-built-the-brooklyn-bridge

[findasongblog]

Find A Song about relapse into depression

Eyemouth - Black Breath

From the new EP Spiral out now.

Eyemouth formed in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 2014, as a continuation of the band Estrange. The music had by then changed from an electronic driven style to a more organic direction, as a variation of musicians got involved on different instruments like e.g shaman drumming, vibraphone, mellotron, santur and trombone. While retaining its foundation in electronica, the band infused an atmospheric and almost psychedelic rock sound. In early 2015 Eyemouth released their debut Ep Black and Blue Latitudes, and later that year this was followed by another three Ep´s called Non Compos Mentis, Noera Genesis and The Flood. In late 2017 they released their first full (digital) album A Newly Planted Grain. (press release)

[mikeyd1986]

MIKEY’S PERSONAL BLOG 146, March 2019

Over the past few days, I’ve started to feel very rundown with significant sinus issues a dry throat and nasal congestion. I wondered whether I should cancel my appointments with my support worker and occupational therapist today but decided against it as I wasn’t sick enough to be bed-bound. Plus when I’m not feeling 100%, I tend to throw everything I can think of at my body to help it recover: herbal remedies (Vitamin C, Zinc, Echinacea, Garlic, Liquorice, White Willow), cold flu & sinus tablets (Phenylephrine Hydrochloride, Paracetamol, Chlorpheniramine Maleate), sore throat lozenge, tissues, water and bed rest.

On Tuesday morning, I attended my first social outing with Mentis Assist called the Op Shop Tour. Meeting new people can generally be a daunting experience for me and that’s how I felt in the waiting area inside the Mentis Assist office. There was another 4 participants (Brenden, Julie, Pauline, Carol) and 2 support workers (Sam and Brendan) who facilitated today’s activity. Everyone was very down to earth, understanding and inclusive even though we all had very different personalities.

Brendan drove us around in a mini-bus along the Mornington Peninsula coastline from Safety Beach to Rye. It was quite scenic looking out at the beach, boathouses, caravans and local shops in each of the towns. Sam tried to break the ice with us all by playing a game of “I spy with my little eye”. Being the quietest person in the group was something I was trying to accept and embrace. I can also get quite self-conscious and appear “lost” to others.

The fact that I was still congested and had sinus issues added an extra layer of difficulty but I tried to not let it bother me. Plus we all had a good chuckle in between stops. When it comes to Op Shops, I generally focus on specific areas of the store such as music, movies and books as they reflect my interests. My attention span doesn’t take long to stray but thankfully we only spent about 10-15 minutes browsing at each location.

We stopped by “Shazza’s Takeaway” for lunch located in an industrial area somewhere in Rosebud. The poor girl behind the counter basically got bombarded by the lunchtime crowd including a few tradies, truckies and bus drivers who pulled up there. She did eventually get some assistance. I ordered a burger with the lot and a bottle of water. The group continued to exchange personal stories outside while we were all eating our lunches.

I think I mainly saw today’s outing as a chance to mingle with others who have experienced significant mental health issues and therefore will have compassion towards others. Plus I really crave social company, even if I don’t really say too much. I think that it’s really important to be around other people to avoid social isolation and true loneliness. I did get a little overwhelmed with all the NDIS jargon I had to contend with as I hadn’t signed my service agreement yet but hopefully that will sort itself out in the coming week. https://mentisassist.org.au/what-we-do/our-programs

On Wednesday morning, I went to see my GP Dr. David Tai Kie at First Health Medical Centre Casey Central. What was originally going to be an appointment to get my blood test results now turned into needing a medical certificate and antibiotics prescribed for my sinus and congestion issues which have persistently stuck around for the past couple of days. https://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-1531-3295/amoxicillin-oral/amoxicillin-oral/details

But back to the blood test results: the main areas of concern were my iron levels dropping from 100 to 56 ug/L over the past six years. While its not in the red zone yet, it’s still something I need to keep an eye on and it could also explain my constant tiredness and low energy levels during the day. So basically I need to eat more iron-rich foods. https://www.labtestsonline.org.au/learning/test-index/iron-studies

The other thing was my Thyroid Function Test. I got a borderline result of 0.45 mIU/L for the Thyroid Stimulating Hormone. It may suggest hyperthyroidism due to high stress levels but it is only just under the normal range so I don’t have any reason to panic about it. My GP suggested that I should do a follow-up TSH blood test in two months to see if there’s any cause for concern and rule out any thyroid-related issues. https://www.labtestsonline.org.au/learning/test-index/tsh

On Thursday morning, Mum and I attended the CHILL OUT: How To Keep Your Cool In Stressful Situations information session at Balla Balla Community Centre in Cranbourne East. Presented by Troy Macris from the City of Casey, this presentation is a follow-up to the Be Well mental health session from last year. Today’s session focused more on ways to deal with and manage stress in our everyday lives. https://www.ballaballa.com.au/programs-activities/special-interest/

Firstly, Troy got everyone in the group to brainstorm ideas about What Is Stress? We came up with a list which includes: anxiety, depression, overwhelmed, worrying, feeling pressured, fear, physical illness and uncertainty. However, the universal definition of stress relates it back to a biological and psychological response to a threat which is also known as the fight or flight response. This was very useful back in the caveman times when humans had to share their environments with dangerous predators such as sabre-toothed tigers.

In modern times, stress is often thought of as an unpleasant or negative experience as well as an indication that something isn’t right. However, there are several benefits to having stress which includes: increased alertness, gives us energy, boosts memory, helps up to perform under pressure and allows you to escape from life threatening situations. Stress and growth also tend to go hand in hand.

The first thing to recognise when it comes to stress is Reading The Signs e.g. health declining, headaches, irritation, heart palpitations, avoidance, rashes, inflammation, disrupted or poor sleep. The next thing is to Know Your Triggers e.g. making deadlines, people, relationships, feeling stuck, work-related, being late, impacts of chronic illness, frustration, disabilities.  

The final step is How Do We Deal With Stress. One way is to use The Serenity Prayer which is: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. The power of acceptance means less suffering. It takes courage to step out of your comfort zone and this provides more opportunities. Wisdom is gained though learned experience.

Another way to deal with stress is to Engage in Healthy Relaxation Habits. These include:

Taking 5 deep breaths e.g. using a guided meditation or mindfulness technique

Go outside into nature e.g. walking in the park, talking the dog out for a walk

Talking about it with somebody e.g. GP, counsellor, friend, family member

Be creative e.g. art, music, writing, drawing, colouring

Having faith e.g. religious belief, spirituality, feeling connected with others

Seeing the funny side e.g. making a joke, embracing our imperfections, having a laugh

On Friday night, I attended my Boxing small group fitness class at CinFull Fitness. Considering how unwell I’ve been feeling for most of this week, I honestly didn’t know if I’d have the energy to come along to a class. But I’ve been missing the gym and the other clients a lot while I’ve been in my sick bed (in recovery mode) and I was starting to feel physically better today. So I figured I’d make the effort to come tonight.

It was just myself, Fiona Sack, Ashlie Bingham and Samantha Nio Hellesoe in the class tonight. I was feeling more fatigued and puffed out than usual probably because I hadn’t been to the gym in over a week. But my performance was surprisingly really good. I felt like I was connecting well and hitting the pads with a decent force amount of force. We were doing some lunge pulses and squats with combos of 20 jabs and 20 uppercuts, standing on 10 and 15kg plates and that’s when we were all feeling it. OUCH!

We finished the class by doing a series of combos: jab, cross, jab, uppercut with pauses and movement. Plus 10, 20 and 30 reps of jab crosses, uppercuts and highs. I was physically shaking and breathless by the end of the class but felt really good that I managed to go out to at least once class this week. Hopefully my immune system will be stronger going into next week and I’ll be able to get back into my fitness routine again.

“I made a stupid mistake. And my world crashed down all around me. Oh, I made a stupid mistake. And I threw it all away, threw it all away. I got lazy on the wrong side of love. Now I'm searching every face, every crowd. For you, for you, for you, for you.” Darren Hayes - Stupid Mistake (2011)

“The airline lost my luggage, still got all this weight. And all the things I’m done are showing up again. Something it’s like nothing is going my way. Even though I know I’m getting up on that stage. I got reason to believe, just the sight of you is getting the best out of me.” Sigrid - Sight of You (2019)

[benrleeusa]

[David Post] Sex, Lies, and Constitutional Law: The Stormy Daniels Settlement Agreement

Here's what we now know: First, that Ms. Daniels (aka Stephanie Clifford) was paid $130,000 a few weeks before the 2016 election. Michael Cohen, one of the Trump lawyers, has admitted making that payment - though he insists, risibly, that he did so out of his own pocket! {File Under: "Not remotely credible!"}

Second, we now know that there was a written contract between Daniels and Trump* - entitled "Confidential Settlement Agreement and Mutual Release; Assignment of Copyright; Non-Disparagement Agreement."

* To be fair, we can only be 98% certain that Trump was actually a party to this contract. It's all very cloak-and-dagger; you can read it for yourself here.

On its face, the Agreement purports to be between "Peggy Peterson" and "David Dennison." But the Agreement goes on to state that these names are "pseudonyms whose true identity [is] acknowledged in a Side Letter." The Side Letter, in turn, says that "the person referred to as Peggy Peterson in the Settlement Agreement is Stephanie Gregory Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels." It then idenfies the person referred to as "David Dennison" - but that name has been blacked out (at least, in the publicly-available copies of the Side Letter that I have seen).

So I suppose that it could be somebody other than Trump; Mr. Cohen might have had another client who was willing to pay Daniels $130,000 in late October 2016 to keep quiet about something. But as far as I'm aware, nobody (including, notably, Mr. Cohen) has made that suggestion, and I am proceeding on the assumption that Mr. Trump - our president, and the Leader of the Free World - is the guy wearing the wig and fake mustache and calling himself "David Dennison."

And third, we now know exactly what the Agreement said, because Daniels has put it into the public record, appending it to a Complaint she recently filed in CA Superior Court seeking a declaration that the Agreement is invalid and unenforceable [more on this suit below].

The Agreement makes for very interesting reading; I recommend it. It's a pretty complicated and strange-looking little legal animal that Mr. Cohen cobbled together - complicated enough so that it makes one suspect that this was not the very first time Mr. Cohen had occasion to put a deal like this together, though I admit that is just rank speculation on my part.

The gist of the Agreement is that:

1. Daniels receives $130,000, in exchange for which she promises never to disclose, to anyone "any information pertaining to [Dennison/Trump] and/or his family . . . and/or friends," including any Dennison/Trump-related

"business information, familial information, any of his alleged sexual partners, alleged sexual action, or alleged sexual conduct, related matters or paternity information [uh-oh!], legal matters, contractual information ... private social life, personal lifestyle, [or] private conduct."

2. To the extent that any of that information is in tangible form - "letters, agreements, documents, audio recordings, images, electronic data, photographs, canvas art, . . . or art in any other form or other media" - Daniels also promises to transfer ownership of all such property, and ownership of all the intellectual property rights in such property, to Dennison/Trump.

3. Daniels also promises not to "disparage" Trump or his family, to anyone, ever.

4. Dennison/Trump, for his part, in addition to promising to hand over the dough, agrees that he will not sue Daniels for any efforts she may have made "to sell, exploit and/or disseminate" this information prior to the date of the Agreement.

Oddly, the Agreement requires Daniels to identify by name, in the Agreement itself, all persons to whom she had made a prior disclosure of any confidential information about Dennison/Trump. [See Sec. 4.2] She did so, listing four individuals, whose names are clearly legible on the copy of the Agreement filed by Daniels and now publicly posted: Mike Mosney, Angel Ryan, Gina Rodriguez, and Keith Munyan. I assume I'm not the first person to wonder how much of Daniels' story these folks can corroborate.

5. For any breach by Daniels, Trump can, due to the "irreparable nature of the injury he would suffer" in the event of such breach, claim "liquidated damages" from Daniels in the amount of $1 million per item disclosed.

6. The parties agree to "mandatory binding confidential arbitration," before an arbitrator who shall have "the right to impose all legal and equitable remedies that would be available to any of the parties in . . . any court of competent jurisdiction," to resolve all controversies under the Agreement. The parties - and this is in bold-faced type in the Agreement - have "no right of appeal or review of" the arbitrator's decision. (See Sec 5.2). One and done.

What to make of all this?

Well, just for the record we should note one other thing we now know: that Trump has been lying to us about this all along - when he denied that any "hush money" was paid, or that he was involved in any sort of deal with Daniels.

I know, I know - who cares about that anymore? Such a silly old norm: "telling the truth." Trump is, as we all now, a norm-disrupter, and he doesn't have to do things like telling the truth. He didn't have to "tell the truth" on The Apprentice, and look at the ratings he got there! But I'm going to continue to cling to the quaint notion that our public servants should tell us the truth.

And where, by the way, are the zealous guardians of the public morality heretofore so vocal in the Republican Party? Can you imagine - I mean really, can you actually imagine?! - what their reaction would have been had they discovered that Barack Obama had had an extramarital affair with a porn star and paid her $130,000, two weeks before the 2008 election, to keep quiet about it?! The silence on the part of the Republicans here is deafening. I suppose there are, historically speaking, more egregious examples of mass hypocrisy on this scale - but not many.

But beyond all that, there are some interesting little legal wrinkles here; you could easily spend a couple of weeks in a Contract Law class digging into this Agreement, and I'd bet it will make its way as an exam hypothetical in law schools all over the country later this spring.

Take Ms. Daniels' lawsuit, for instance. It asserts that the Agreement is invalid, and therefore of no force and effect, because one of the parties - Trump - didn't sign it.

It does indeed look like he didn't sign it; there's no signature next to the "David Dennison" signature blocks, on either the Agreement itself or the Side Letter (at least in the copies posted by Daniels).

But as every first-year law student knows, the general rule is that contracts are valid and enforceable without a signed writing. There are exceptions to that general rule: contracts that fall within the so-called "statute of frauds"** must be in writing and signed by the parties.

** Referring, as we generally do, to this requirement (viz., that certain contracts are invalid if not memorialized in a signed writing) as the "statute of frauds" is something of a confusing misnomer. In the U.K., there is an actual "Statute of Frauds," enacted in 1677, setting forth the writing requirement for, e.g., marriage contracts, certain contracts by estate executors, contracts transferring ownership of real property, and some others. [This statute, as it happens, was repealed in 1954]. In the US, this has long been considered part of the general common law, inherited from the British, which each individual State may modify (and has modified, either by statute or by decisional law or both). There are also dozens of other "statutes of frauds" scattered throughout the law; federal copyright law, for instance, provides that a transfer of copyright is not valid unless it is in writing and "signed by the owner of the rights conveyed," the Uniform Commercial Code requires a signed writing for all transfers of goods over $500, certain securities transactions must be in writing, and so on.

Though I won't pretend to any particular expertise on the matter, I am somewhat skeptical (as are other commentators) about Daniels' argument that Trump's signature was required under California's statute of frauds, and that the Agreement is therefore invalid and unenforceable.

However ...

1. While the Agreement may be valid and enforceable without Trump's signature, I don't believe it is valid and enforceable if Trump didn't know anything about it. Contracts do not always require a signed writing; but they do always require that the parties voluntarily undertake to enter into an enforceable agreement. [It's one of the reasons you can't enter into a contract with a 3-year old, a monkey, or someone who is non compis mentis.]

This puts Trump on the horns of a dilemma. If he says, under oath, what he has said publicly - that he didn't know anything about this arrangement with Ms. Daniels, and that it was just Michael Cohen acting on his own - then he plays right into Daniels' hands; if one of the parties didn't know there was any agreement among them, how can it be binding on anyone?

On the other hand, if he admits that he was a party to this contract, and knew of its existence and its basic terms, then he is exposed as a liar. It sets up the classic cross-examination question: "So which is it, Mr. Trump? Were you lying then, or are you lying now?"

And while we're at it, notice that the Agreement (Sec. 8.6) has one of those absolutely ridiculous provisions that lawyers sometimes insert as "boilerplate" into contracts like this one:

"Each of the Parties represents, acknowledges, and declares that ... she/he has carefully read this Agreement, knows and understands this Agreement's contents, and signs this Agreement freely, voluntarily, and without either coercion or duress."

It's not the worst thing in the Agreement (see below), but it is pretty awful. It is not only ridiculous; it is of no legal force whatsoever because it is completely devoid of meaning. Suppose one of the parties has, in fact, not read or understood the contract; a representation placed in the very contract that he hasn't read or understood stating that he has read and understood it, is incoherent nonsense. Think about it: Suppose you're signing this contract because someone has a gun pointed at your head; what possible meaning could your representation that you're acting "without coercion or duress" have? You're only making that representation for the same reason you're signing the contract: because you have a gun pointed at your head. It reminds me of the hostage or prisoner-of-war videos, where the prisoner, hands tied behind his back, says "They're really treating me very well - and I'm saying that of my own free will."

2. There are many ugly things in this Agreement, but for my money, the ugliest is in Sec 4.3.6:

"Fore (sic) greater clarity [Daniels] will never discuss with anyone the contents of this Settlement Agreement, nor will she voluntarily confirm the existence of this Settlement Agreement."

This amounts to a contractual obligation on Daniels' part (though not on Trump's) to lie. It's very Trumpian in that respect; while he doesn't need to be contractually obligated to lie (because it comes so naturally to him), he imposes the obligation on others. To comply with this provision, presumably Daniels must say "No" when asked "Did you enter into a settlement agreement with Mr. Trump?" [And Trump's lawyers will no doubt assert that her filing the lawsuit (and appending the Settlement Agreement to her pleadings) is itself a violation of this provision.]

3. And that brings us to the First Amendment.

"Wait a minute!," I hear you cry. "The First Amendment? The First Amendment has no bearing on any of this. This matter involves private parties acting pursuant to private contracts, and everybody knows that the First Amendment only contrains the government from doing certain things (like abridging the freedom of speech), not private parties."

True enough - but let's think this through for a moment.

Trump's lawyer has now invoked the mandatory arbitration clause in the Agrement and obtained an order from an arbitrator stating that Daniels "is precluded from disclosing ... or actively inspiring anyone to disclose" any of the "Confidential Information" as defined in the Settlement Agreement, as well as from "disclosing ... or actively inspiring anyone to disclose the fact of the commencement or pendency of this Arbitration and any details relating thereto." (emphasis added)

[There it is again: an order to lie, issued on behalf of the President of the United States].

The arbitrator's order calls itself a "Temporary Restraining Order." This, too, burns me up. It's not a "Restraining Order" at all. Private arbitrators do not have the power to "restrain" people; that is a power reserved for courts and public authorities. Calling it a "Temporary Restraining Order" - in hopes, perhaps, that we (or Ms. Daniels) would confuse it with the familiar legal process that goes by that name (and which even has a nickname: the "TRO") - doesn't make it a Restraining Order; you can call a duck a dog, but it's still a duck.

A true "Restraining Order," temporary or otherwise, is a court-issued and court-enforced injunction; if you violate it, you can be held in contempt of court and actually "restrained" - i.e., thrown into jail. If it's a true Restraining Order, banks will hand over your money as directed therein, because they, too, face the prospect of "restraint" if they don't do as directed. Not so, however, just because some arbitrator has ordered you to pay money, and arbitrators cannot (yet) throw you or bank officers in jail for defying their orders; even if the arbitral agreement purported to give the arbitator the power to imprison you should you breach the contract, that provision would be deemed void on grounds of public policy (and the 13th Amendment prohibition on involuntary servitude).

An arbitrator's order, of course, can become a real, honest-to-goodness "Restraining Order," but only by enlisting the assistance of a court in the enforcement of the arbitrator's order. And of course, courts do frequently provide that assistance, and developments in the law over the past decade or so have made it easier to obtain enforcement of arbitration decisions.

And there's the rub - at least, for this particular order ("You may not speak about Donald Trump, and you must, if asked, lie about the existence of a Settlement Agreement"). It would be obviously and blatantly unconstitutional as a violation of the First Amendment if issued, say, by an executive government agency, or by the police. And if instead of it being an executive agency or the police ordering Ms. Daniels not to speak it were a federal or state court, why is that any less unconstitutional? The courts are part of the government, aren't they? So they have to abide by constitution restrictions on government action, don't they?

[Students of constitutional law will recognize this argument as coming from Shelley v. Kramer (334 US 1), a 1948 case in which the Supreme Court unanimously struck down enforcement of racially restrictive covenants in private homeowners' association contracts:

"Private agreements to exclude persons of designated race or color from the use or occupancy of real estate for residential purposes, standing alone, do not violate any rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. [B]ut it is violative of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment for state courts to enforce them." [Emphasis added]]

I don't think a President of the United States can go to court and obtain an injunction against Ms. Daniels ever saying a disparaging word against him, because I don't think the First Amendment would countenance it. Mr. Trump cares little for the First Amendment, but I don't think that view is shared, by and large, by our courts.

[outworldxwasomi]

@strykingshot​ has arrived for their appointment.

   “Katherine, right on time. Please make yourself at home.” Marco motioned to the leather sofa across from him. A chair materialized behind him as he sat down as if it been there since the beginning. "Or would you prefer I call you Kat?"

[k1645908mediawork-blog]

TB Week 5: Getting into the advertising industry

Working in advertising, the sole purpose is calling public attention a service/product with announcements that have been paid for e.g. television, billboards. Television is the most popular medium of announcements due to its large reach but it’s also the most expensive. The Superbowl gets an average of 100 million views which means companies had to pay over $3 million dollars for a 30-second ad. 

In advertising, to stand out from the rest, you need UPS ‘unique selling point.’ A good slogan tends to stick into people’s minds e.g. Head & shoulders “get rid of dandruff” (Mentis, 2017). Visuals are important too. On a newspaper, bright colours attract the eye but don’t overdo it. Less is more. I learnt not to repeat the headline on the art and use visual metaphors instead. A graphic headline is crucial as it will be the first thing a consumer will see and this is what will keep them reading or not. A headline for instance “Is Obama a terrorist?” would certainly grab my attention. There is no such thing as bad publicity. The more outrageous the headline, the better. However, careful not to get yourself sued. Potential customers love a good deal, from a free trail to bundle packages, it will be easy to lure them.

Our lecturer Paul Booth also gave us some tips. Find industry professionals that will take the time to look at your work and give you honest feedback. Rejection is something that will always happen in life, don’t take it personally. Lastly, always update your work as it will show the progression you have made.

(YouTube, 2017)

Refefer

Mentis, G. (2017). 11 Simple Tips to Creating An Effective Ad - Target Public Marketing. [online] Target Public Marketing. Available at: https://www.targetpublic.com/11-simple-tips-creating-effective-ad/ [Accessed 3 Apr. 2017]. 

YouTube. (2017). Why start your own advertising agency?. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EU9TfTJ8Rk [Accessed 3 Apr. 2017].

[outworldxwasomi]

@cryomistrss​ Has arrived for their appointment.

   “Do tell me if the room gets to hot for you? This is all about you being comfortable.” Marco nods as Frost entered the room. He stood in the corner with arms crossed with a notebook tucked in between. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and wrinkled his nose. “Stand...sit, whatever you prefer.” 

[outworldxwasomi]

@fiery-assassin​ Has arrived for their appointment.

Marco hummed as he sat idly in his chair, looking up just as the door to his office opened up. "You are busy man Takeda so I won't take up to much of your time, please have a seat." He smiled at the young man, pointing to the sofa. "No need to be nervous, you are among friends."