#YES ALL THE THINGS YOU FEEL COMPELLED TO SHARE YOU ALSO KNOW ARE IMPLICIT IN THE FUCKING POST

[killbenedictcumberbatchagain]

mansplainers are so fucking annoying bro you are Literally adding nothing at all please shut the fuck up

[max1461]

An observation:

I find that, when discussing the concept of tolerance (especially in its political incarnation, but also more generally), people tend to frame it in a very particular way that is somewhat foreign to me. Tolerance is presented as something that does not really come naturally to anyone, but that some people are compelled to engage in by their moral compass. Like, the assumption seems to be that by default, we'd all constantly be up in each other's business being judgmental or hateful or whatever, and those of us who don't do that must simply be restraining our natural urges because we believe that they're wrong.

You see this sentiment implicit in the way a lot of right-wingers frame their opposition to certain forms of liberal toleration ("we're rebels, free from the liberal mind-prison of having to tolerate everyone all the time" etc etc.). You also see it in how a lot of left-liberal or left-ish people talk about their own values of tolerance ("unlike those right-wingers who give in to hate, we're going to be the grown-ups in the room and respect people who are different from us"). Judgement, sectarianism, and dislike of the Other are presented as seductive urges we all share; to practice them is hedonic and rebellious, to resist them is mature and restrained.

I fundamentally cannot relate to this understand of, let's say, the emotional experience of tolerance.

[this part lapses into mild tangent, but I think it's worthwhile]

I get the impression that for a lot of people, the act of value judgement is like... actively enjoyable? Or something they otherwise seek out?

When encountering a New Thing, it seems that many people's immediate reaction is to try and decide if it's a Good Thing or a Bad Thing. There are of course people who are critical of this gut tendency, and stress the need for nuance in one's analysis of things etc etc. But I find that even these people still tend to act as though the appropriate course of action when presented with something novel is to assign it a value judgement, they just demand that the judgement be more complex than "Good" or "Bad". Maybe they even argue that before making the judgment, you are obligated to spend time and effort learning about and contemplating the thing in order to come to an informed assessment. But, again, they still tend to take it as a given that the eventual goal is to decided the The Goodness Of The Thing, and to act accordingly.

I have trouble relating to this set of desires. I tend to find the act of value judgement itself to be basically... a hassle? Like, just, on a very basic level as a cognitive task it doesn't feel good to me. I find it draining very quickly. Answering the question "How Do I Feel About This Thing?" is not any fun.

(sidenote: I do not find it similarly draining to think up reasons why someone else might approve or disapprove of a thing, which suggests to me that the task I dislike is not producing value judgements, but evaluating them.)

Of course, I recognize the necessity of value judgement: if you want to have any ethical system at all, you need to be able to look at potential courses of action and give them some measure of ethical evaluation. You need to be able to say "it would probably be good if I did this, and not so good if I did that" etc. You've gotta be able to say "the Nazis were bad, actually". I am not arguing that we should all abstain from value judgement or anything like that. It would seem that value judgement is a cognitive task we're all ethically obligated to engage in, at least some of the time.

Therefore, for me, the act of value judgement is something that I do out of duty. It's a drag. I do it because I have to. When I encounter a New Thing, my default reaction is generally to go "huh, well there's that thing I guess". I might also ask myself "do I find this thing interesting", and if the answer is "no" I ignore it, and if the answer is "yes" I try to learn about it. But if the New Thing is the sort of thing that seems clear to have some ethical implications, I also ask myself "is this good or bad (or some mix of the two, etc.)", and try to act accordingly. I just don't really enjoy that part.

[back on topic]

This is were my alienation from a lot of discourse about tolerance comes from, I think. Being judgmental of people, or hating them, or being angry at them or whatever requires a value judgement. It requires me to decide "these people are Bad, they've done something Wrong, etc". And all ethics aside, I just have an active distaste for doing that. What comes most naturally to me is a kind amoral absolute tolerance. "Who cares what anybody else does".

As I've moved farther to the left politically, I've actually become less tolerant, and I think this is one of the reasons that it's a mistake to associate tolerance with the left.

When I was a teenager, I was basically a sort of secular political quietist. My general take was "the government will always be basically bad and corrupt, but they'll also do some good things too, like keeping the roads paved. The best thing to do is ignore the system as much as you can, circumvent it if it gets in your way, and focus on producing intellectual achievements that will outlive you and make the world lastingly better that way." Honestly, I still think certain aspects of this are very reasonable. I've just become more of a utopian as I've aged.

Anyway, at that point in my political evolution, I was in an absolute sense probably the most tolerant I've ever been. Whether speaking about cultural differences, ideological ones, or immutable traits, my general attitude was "who cares, it's all the same anyway". (also I was an edgy teenager, so I expressed this belief by becoming ironically pro-cannibalism, but I digress). As I got older and moved to the left, most of the changes involved become less tolerant of things. Less tolerant of injustice, less tolerant of hierarchy, etc. I can't really think of anything that moving left made me more tolerant of. And, just to clarify, I think this is probably a good thing.

For me, becoming a leftist was essentially the process of saying to myself "I know it's a drag to judge things, but actually you have to do it anyway sometimes". This is the exact reverse of the framing I described at the beginning of this post. The easy path for me was always non-judgement, and maturing involved realizing that I did, in fact, probably have to judge certain things.

[cryptovalid]

The weird politics of the Blip

The more the MCU fleshes out the events after Avengers: Endgame, but especially in Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the less sense the geopolitics of the MCU makes to me. In this essay I will be sharing my perspectives on politics in the MCU. If you’re not interested in that sort of thing, don’t feel obligated to engage. Also, by the very nature of this essay it will involve spoilers for the MCU and discussions of topics like state violence and terrorism, so consider this a trigger warning.

It’s an understatement to say that the world would change radically if half the population would randomly disintegrate, and I understand that speculating on the consequences of those people coming back after five years is no simple task. There might even be story considerations I am unaware of.

But the idea that the world’s governments would immediately start forcibly removing people from the homes they lived in for five years, to accommodate people who were declared dead five years ago sounds really strange to me. Let’s explore this.

If you were the survivor of a disaster that cut the world’s population in half, what would this look like to you? You’ve presumably went through a lot of hardship and trauma in the years following. You’ve sold some of the things belonging to your deceased loved ones, or bought stuff from other people in a similar situation. You may have relocated, started a new family. Grieved.

And suddenly those people you literally saw turn to dust in front of you just appear again, like nothing happened? Literally in the same befuddled state in which they died. 

And I have to stress: they died. there is no way to suggest that a person can be atomized and still be alive.

So why would you even trust that this was the same person? In a very real sense, it’s an identical copy of your deceased loved one. Similar to teleportation, this should cause us to wonder if they were truly resurrected, or merely cloned. What kinds of rights do they have, being legally deceased? Would we even know if these were impostors, if the situation changed them somehow?

I’m not saying there’s no answer to these questions, just that people should disagree on this. People would have high-minded philosophical, scientific and religious debates. Conspiracy theories and fistfights. This is by far the most world-changing event ever recorded. It should have massive ethical, political and spiritual implications.

And what I think we should think about is that these people who returned have nothing. They have no memory or lived experience to prepare them for this different world, all of their material possessions belong to someone else now, and by definition, all political, economic and military power is held by those who stayed, who now have a material conflict of interest, because if they acknowledge that you are the same person and deserving of the things you had 5 years ago, they have to give it back. Even without the administrative nightmare this would represent, the returned have nothing. Even their work experience is practically meaningless, especially in high-paying jobs. 

What would happen if Steve Jobs somehow magically returned, having no idea what Apple had been doing in the last couple of years, and demanded to be put back in charge of Apple? It’s not exactly an easy ‘yes’, is it? The world’s power balance would be forever shifted. 

I’m not saying everybody would be unsympathetic to the plight of the people who unblipped. But I am saying there would be a massive movement or series of movements opposed to giving them back their stuff. And I’m saying that movement would not only be popular but also backed by every powerful business interest and government.

Because realistically, the unblipped would be the refugees. They are the ones who would have lost everything, fighting an uphill legal battle to even be recognized as alive and as the same person they were 5 years ago. They would be the ones in camps, waiting for supplies.

Ironically, they would be the ones most hurt by the status quo returning to normal, as there is no way to keep massive famines and shortages from happening in this situation without international coordination. 

So why did the MCU decide on the opposite idea? There are two arguments I can think of: one narrative, and one political. On a narrative level, speculating on a changed world is complicated and risky. If Marvel wants to make stories relevant to us in our world, they have to more or less get back to a status quo we would recognize before it would complicate their properties going forward.

The second reason, I think, is that to truly explore a world like this is radical and potentially a liability for Disney, both in terms of their audience and their relationship with the US military.

Of course any real discussion on policy in this situation requires the heroes to at least pay lip service to a political opinion, which could cost them a lot of fans. We are talking about the legitimacy of borders, of private ownership. Any examination of the edge cases will cause people to have Strong Opinions of their own. In a crisis like this, can people squat in empty houses? Do these people have human rights and refugee status, and how should those be protected in the real world? Can any state justly displace people and if not, are these people allowed to disobey the government or even fight them?

Since the US military subsidizes Marvel’s use of military hardware, it has script approval. So that can also explain why they can’t make the US government the bad guy or present a truly different world where the US military is rightfully no longer in control. 

Who can legitimately deprive people of things they need to survive in a crisis like this? What’s more important: the right to own a house and keep it empty if we so choose, or the right to live in a house? 

If we get too deeply into it, Karly’s position (in theory) seems very compelling, like Erik Killmonger’s before her. And so, they have to make her (like him) a hypocrite who goes too far, so it doesn’t seem like the MCU is advocating violence against the state. 

Karly’s ideology is muddled by the writers because the violence she performs has no chance of actually achieving her goals of global solidarity. It feels tacked on to make her less sympathetic. Realistically, someone like Karli would be holding political rallies, sit-ins. Writing op-eds, staging marches and organizing her community into self-sufficiency. Possibly getting into fights with the cops during evictions or protests. If you read Falcon and the Winter Soldier as a kind of allegory for American politics, then Walker represents Trump, Sam represents Obama, and Karly represents... whatever conservatives think socialism/BLM is?

So it feels like FatWS is trying to thread the needle: Nationalism is bad, but so is statelessness. A state should have integrity, and benevolence. And it can have those things, if represented by the right people. Then, the violence is just and measured. It’s barely even violence at all.

I’m kidding of course, the kinds of solutions the MCU offers are basically ‘Co-Intelpro, PMC’s and neighbourhood watches... but run by morally perfect people’. It’s the way a propagandist would represent clandestine domestic espoinage or police brutality: Sam and Bucky would never kill anybody defenseless, and they would never interfere with legitimate polical movements. Because the writers create a perfect world where it’s always clear what everybody’s intention is before the fighting starts, and non-lethal violence is a reliable default option, no more morally problematic than some rough-housing by rambunctious kids.

I know I can trust Sam and Bucky because the writers would never give them realistic implicit biases in a way that would endanger their moral character. They are perfect because they are not real.

The robots, aliens and wizards are not the only unrealistic thing about the MCU. we have to be aware of how artificial the politics are, even if we want to suspend our disbelief. Or else we end up trusting politicians when they embrace a fundamentally immoral status quo, and let thousands die to maintain it (I know, a WILD hypothetical that will surely never come true, but worth keeping an eye out for.)  

The politics that a blip would realistically set in motion are so different from our own, that it would call into question the legitimacy of private ownership and the state. In order to avoid upsetting its fans and its financiers, the MCU has to return to a status quo where those political realities can be taken for granted.    

[eldritchteaparty]

Chapters: 7/20 Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Sasha James, Rosie Zampano, Oliver Banks, Original Elias Bouchard, Peter Lukas, Annabelle Cane Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Fix-It, Post-Canon Fix-It, Scars, Eventual Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, I'll add characters and tags as they come up, Reference to injuries and blood, Character Death In Dream, Nudity (not sexual or graphic), Nightmares, Fighting

Summary: Following the events of MAG 200, Jon and Martin find themselves in a dimension very much like the one they came from--with second chances and more time.

Chapter summary:  Frustrated by his physical condition and his lack of connection to the Eye, Jon asks Martin to visit Hill Top Road with him.

***

Chapter 7 of post-canon fix-it is up!

Read on AO3 at link above or here below.

Tumblr master post with links to previous chapters here.

***

Over the next few days, Jon continued to struggle. He remained insistent on going into the Institute every day, but even with Martin’s encouragement he had trouble finishing entire meals.

“It’s all right,” Martin told him more than once. “I know you’re trying. Just keep trying.”

Jon would nod. If they were at work, he would catch Martin’s hand between his, just below the edge of his desk, and Martin would quietly tell him about his morning. At home, he would lie back on the couch with his head in Martin’s lap. Martin would come up with something to talk about, unrelated to the entities or the archives or anything that had happened to them. He started saving up topics that occurred to him just so he could have them on hand: a movie he remembered, a funny reddit post, a weird bug he found in the stacks. It wasn’t like Jon really cared; he watched Martin talk more than he listened, anyway. He seemed contented, and that was what mattered. Sometimes he was able to eat more afterward, if he didn’t fall asleep.

***

“Are there still more interviews to be done?” Jon asked Martin one morning, late that week, as they were walking to the office.

“I don’t know,” Martin answered. “I imagine there are. I don’t think Tim’s followed up with any since the ones we did. And I think Sasha’s been around the office the whole time.”

Jon nodded.

“Wait.” Martin reached out a hand to stop him; they faced each other on the pavement. “You're not considering doing them, are you?”

“I am.”

“Why?”

“Because I need to do something different.” Jon took Martin by the elbow and urged him to keep walking. Martin sighed, but did as he wanted.

“Is it—” Martin measured his tone very carefully and started over. “Is it because what you’re doing isn’t working?”

The Eye, you mean?” Jon looked up at Martin. “No, that’s not why.”

“But also, it isn’t working. Right? You would tell me, wouldn’t you?”

“Nothing’s changed,” Jon confirmed. “But that really isn’t it. I’ve… I’ve run out of information. I’m just going further and further back, through anything describing events and people involved in all of it, and it’s pointless. There was nothing here before we came. Nothing real.”

“Yeah?” Martin asked, recalling that he had done most of the talking between them that week. “I assume you’ve looked into—well, let’s start with Jonah Magnus. What was his deal?”

Jon shrugged. “Him, Robert Smirke, Mordechai Lukas—I’ve looked into all of them. They all existed, they were obsessed with the same ideas and concepts, perhaps because of the pull from our dimension… but there was nothing on the other side of those ideas. Not here.”

“I see.” Martin nodded. “And you think the interviews will give you more?”

“Maybe. It’s the only evidence we’ve had of real connections with individuals. You met Oliver Banks. Tim’s discussions with his police contacts—it was Callum Brodie, by the way. They won’t officially release his name, but it was easy enough to find on social media.”

“So that’s what you want to do, then—look for avatars?”

“Yes,” Jon answered. “They pose the greatest threat, and I think they require the most—advancement in their patrons.”

Martin considered. “You’ll let me go with you?”

“I won’t even pretend I could manage alone right now,” Jon said. “I could go with Tim, I suppose, but he wouldn’t go if you said no. That means it’s your decision.”

“Jon.” They were coming upon the Institute now, and Martin stopped him one more time. “Can I ask—if you just let go of all this—what would happen?”

“What do you mean? Happen how?”

“To you. What would happen to you? Would you get better? Would you get worse? I know you don’t know, but—what does it feel like?”

Jon considered. “You’re right, I don’t know. But… it also doesn’t matter. I can’t just let go. I need to do what I can to fix it, whatever that might be. Don’t ask me to let it go. Please.”

“All right.” Martin had already assumed the answer would be something like that. “Then we do the interviews.”

“Thank you,” Jon said quietly, as Martin put his arm around him before walking into the building.

***

Martin asked Sasha if they could do the interviews. She seemed surprised, but was agreeable enough, probably because Martin was the one doing the asking—it provided an implicit indication that Jon was feeling well enough to go, and Martin felt a bit like he had lied to her just by asking. Tim was a little more skeptical when Martin asked him for the contact forms. He ignored Martin and addressed Jon directly across the office.

“You know, Martin and I could still go.”

“No,” Jon said. “It’s too—it’s better if I’m there.”

“You sure?” Tim tried again. “Look, I don’t really know what the issue is, but if you’re worried about Martin, don’t be. Frankly, he’s doing much better than you are, and we’ve—”

“That’s not it. I just want to be there myself.”

Now Tim looked back at Martin and raised an eyebrow, and Martin shrugged.

“All right then,” Tim said, and reached for a drawer on his desk. “There’s a couple that will bring you down toward Crawley, if I remember, and a couple more that are spread out up north.”

“Can I look at them?” Jon said. “I’d like to see what they’re regarding.”

“Knock yourself out,” Tim said, handing them to Martin.

There were no names they recognized, and Jon didn’t think any of them looked particularly promising, but Martin was able to get ahold of two of them and set up appointments for that afternoon. The discussions were frustrating for everyone involved. For one thing, Jon hadn’t quite come to terms with the fact that things went very differently when people weren’t compelled to tell their stories, and Martin had to keep reminding him to be patient. For the same reason, it was hard to tell what was what; one of the stories might have been legitimately Corruption-related, but it could have also been a very bad case of health code violations combined with an active imagination.

“How did you know before if they were real or not?” Martin asked, as they were headed back on the train. “Like, in the beginning?”

Jon leaned back in the seat next to him with his eyes closed. “Well, when they were written down, there was the fact that I couldn’t record them except on the—on the tapes.”

“Right.” Martin frowned. “Obviously we’re not doing that again, but maybe we could try recording on our phones or something and seeing if it works?”

Jon gave a slight nod of his head. “Maybe. We don’t know if it will be the same, though. We don’t really know why that was. Maybe it was all Web, from the beginning.”

“True.” Martin turned it over some more. “Well, when you were talking to people directly how did you know?”

“I just did,” Jon sighed. “I didn’t think of it as anything more than a feeling until later.”

“And you couldn’t tell today?”

“No. Not even a hint.” Martin was relieved to hear it, although he opted not to share that with Jon.

They rode in silence for a while. Martin was surprised to see Jon had not fallen asleep when he checked on him.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

Jon opened his eyes and turned to Martin, then to the back of the seat in front of him. Martin prompted him again.

“Jon? What are you thinking?”

“Come to Hill Top Road with me.”

“What?”

“Come to Hill Top Road with me,” Jon repeated.

“Why?”

“I need to know if I can feel anything there.”

“Why there?”

“When we came here—” Jon stopped and thought for a moment. “It’s hard to explain, but it’s where the separation—the barrier between us and them—would be the weakest.”

“Then it sounds like we shouldn’t go there.” Martin turned in his seat, and Jon finally looked at him. “It kind of seems we should actively avoid going there. Like, ever.”

Jon took Martin’s hand in his. “I just need to know. You—you could be right. About the Eye. Maybe it’s not coming back for me. Maybe it’s done with me.”

Martin breathed out slowly, a careful, measured exhalation. “And what if it is done with you?”

“Then…” Jon paused again. “Then I need to accept it.”

“And if it isn’t?”

A little bit of life came back into his voice. “Then it isn’t, and like I’ve been saying, it’s better to know and get on with it.”

Martin wasn’t sure he agreed, but he kept silent.

“Come to Hill Top Road with me,” Jon entreated him again. “Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Martin exclaimed loudly, and a woman two seats up across the aisle looked back at them. “Oh—sorry. Sorry.”

He waited until she had smiled and turned back to try again, more quietly. “Tomorrow? Really?”

“Yes. In the morning, first thing. Tell Sasha we have therapy.”

“If we go…” Martin sighed. “If we go and you don’t find what you’re looking for, will you—will you try to let it go? I don’t mean everything, we can talk to Tim and Sasha, we can do whatever you want, just—will you try to live without it?”

Jon considered, a troubled look in his eyes.

“I’m not asking for a promise, Jon—I don’t want one. I’m just asking what you’ll do.”

Jon took a deep breath. “I’d like to try. I think I would try.”

“All right.” Jon had won. Martin squeezed his hand, more to reassure himself than anything. “I’ll go with you. Tomorrow morning. I’ll tell them when we get back.”

“Thank you.”

Then next time Martin checked on him, Jon had fallen asleep.

***

Jon’s alarm went off the next morning right around sunrise, before Martin’s usual waking time. Martin was surprised by how much energy he seemed to have; he wanted it to be because he was feeling better, but he suspected Jon was running on fumes and willpower.

“Not going to shower first?” he asked, when Jon stepped out of bed and immediately went to the closet.

“No,” Jon answered. “I’d like to leave as soon as we can.”

“Well, you are going to have breakfast,” Martin grumbled, sitting up and trying to blink away the sleep.

“Martin—”

“That’s not debatable. I couldn’t get you to eat anything last night.” They had ended up taking a cab back from the train station, and Martin had worried for a moment that he was going to have to carry Jon up the stairs. “Use some of that energy to—go pour yourself some cereal or something.”

“Fine.” Jon started to leave the bedroom. “Do you want anything?”

“Nope.” Martin groaned as he started to stand up.

“Well, if I have to, then you should—”

“I ate dinner last night. And part of someone else’s dinner that I didn’t want to go to waste. And it is way too early right now, and—”

“Fine. I get it. I’m going.”

After Martin was dressed, he joined Jon to find him scraping at the bottom of a bowl of cereal.

“How full was that?” he asked, suspicious.

“Overflowing.” Jon regarded him from his seat on the couch.

“Really?”

“No. I don’t know, normal?”

“Look, I’m sorry,” Martin sighed. “I’m still really worried, ok?”

Jon softened his gaze. “No, I’m sorry. I’m—I’m nervous. I just want to get this done.” He put one last spoonful into his mouth, and it made chewing and swallowing look extremely distasteful. “Are you ready?”

“As ready as I’m going to be,” Martin said. “Let’s go.”

The train ride out was long, and they had to switch to a bus line in Oxford. They barely spoke, but it wasn’t a particularly uncomfortable silence. Part of it was probably the early hour, although Jon seemed more awake and alert than Martin had seen him in days. He was probably anxious about what they would find; Martin was, at least, so it was easy to imagine Jon was feeling the same.

When they arrived, they stood together, side by side, staring at the front door. The house that occupied the property was the same as he had imagined it from when the other archive staff had visited it before the apocalypse. Apparently built as student housing, no one had ever actually moved in. The front porch was covered in cobwebs. Martin broke the silence they had maintained during the walk from the bus station.

“I don’t like this.”

“Me neither,” said Jon.

“Yes, but—I mean I don’t want to go in.”

“I understand. You can wait for me out here.”

“No, that—” Martin looked down at Jon, who continued to stare at the house. “I don’t want us to go in. Either of us.”

They let the silence take over again. It went on long enough that Martin wondered if they could just stay on the front lawn indefinitely, if he didn’t say anything; it seemed like it might be the most reasonable option. Unfortunately, Jon did eventually speak again.

“Martin, I really do understand if you—”

“No. If you’re going in, I’m—I’m going too.”

“I am sorry.” Jon started to step toward the house, but Martin caught him by the arm.

“Wait. Where is—where is Annabelle? Where has she been?”

“What?” Jon asked, turning to look at him.

“I know we haven’t talked about it, and maybe this is a bad time to bring it up—but she came here with us, didn’t she? To this dimension.”

“Presumably, yes.”

“Where would she go, if not—if not here? I mean, even without what you said about it—just look at it. It’s got to be crawling with spiders.”

Jon furrowed his brow before responding. “She could be here. It’s possible.”

Martin’s pulse quickened. “Well then—wouldn’t we want to not be here? Isn’t that a good reason to stay out?”

“I’m not concerned.” Jon shrugged, leaving Martin in disbelief.

“Can I ask why not?”

“It’s just a theory, but—” Jon walked a few paces and sat on the front step. “I think—I think the entities are getting stronger, regaining their power, in the order that the fears evolved and separated from one another. The dates I’ve pieced together from Sasha’s notes, the avatars—”

“What?” Martin was dumbfounded. “What do you mean?”

“Right. When I—after I killed Jonah, there was a, um…”

“A statement?”

“Yes.”

“Of course there was.” Martin shook his head and moved to take a seat next to Jon.

“I’m sorry I didn’t—”

“It’s all right.” It still hurt every time he remembered Jon had gone up to the tower without him, and Jon knew it. “Go on.”

“They were born in our dimension. They grew there, as one being at first. Then, as animals and humanity developed and changed, and their fears became more specific, more distinct, so did the entities themselves. The Hunt, the End, the Dark—they were first.”

“I see.” Martin thought. “And we’ve seen Oliver Banks and now Callum Brodie. What about—”

“I suspect we want to avoid anything having to do with Daisy, if we can.”

Martin’s eyes unintentionally drifted to the scar that still stood out vividly on Jon’s throat before he caught himself. “And where does the Eye fit in?”

“Soon. If I’m right.”

“Ok.” Martin now realized there had been a deeper layer to Jon’s recent desperation. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“I honestly thought it wasn’t important. But now—you brought up Annabelle, and—”

“Right. So where does the Web fit into this theory?”

Jon considered. “If I’m right—if I’m right—we have time. If she is here, she’s likely much weaker than I am. She would have more to fear from us than the other way around.”

Martin sighed. “Any chance we can just burn the place?”

“Tempting.” Jon grinned just enough for Martin to see it. “In the long run, though—”

“Yeah, yeah—it would probably just make things worse.”

“Shall we?” Jon asked, starting to rise to his feet.

“If you have to.”

“I do.”

The front door gave way at a light touch; the knob and deadbolt were completely useless. It seemed like the sort of place that had been broken into so many times that the owners had simply stopped replacing them. The inside of the house was at least as covered with webs and dust as the front porch.

“Well,” Martin said, “I hate this.”

“I don’t love it.” Jon reflexively reached for Martin’s hand. “Come on.”

They walked further into the depths of the house, which was quite large. There were multiple small rooms, which made sense for student housing, and a larger sitting room; it looked like there was a kitchen in the very back. He was so busy looking up to make sure he didn’t accidentally walk into anything, that he jumped about a foot when Jon stomped his heel against the floor.

“Jon, why would you—”

“Spider,” Jon said.

“Oh. Carry on, then.”

“Remember when you used to get upset with me for—”

“Don’t.”

Jon squeezed his hand, and Martin had the odd feeling that he was somehow more comfortable now than he had been for a while. They looked around them from what appeared to be roughly the middle of the floorplan.

“Should we go upstairs, or—”

“Look,” Jon cut him off, and pointed to the floor. Beneath the dirt and footprints of previous trespassers, Martin could see an unmistakable pattern in the wood stain that ran across multiple boards, beyond the edge of the room they were currently in. It gave the appearance of a long, dark, jagged crack. He may not have noticed it if he hadn’t been looking for it, but he couldn’t see anything else now.

“Do you think that’s—where it is?” Martin asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Jon started to pull Martin toward it, but Martin stayed where he was.

“Do you really have to stand right on it?”

“Just give me a moment.” Jon slipped his hand out of Martin’s before he had a chance to protest. Martin held his breath and gave him five seconds, then ten seconds.

“Anything?”

“Wait.”

Twenty seconds. Thirty seconds. He was counting each of them.

“Jon—”

“Wait. Please.” Jon was growing tenser, more anxious.

A minute.

“Jon, I don’t—”

“I told you to wait.” Jon snapped at him this time.

The momentary sting was quickly replaced by concern; that just wasn’t like Jon. He bit his lip, unsure what to do. If he insisted on interrupting him, tried to convince him to leave, Jon might not feel like he really gave it enough of a chance—or worse, he might blame Martin for the failed attempt to find whatever power he was seeking. He’d be too kind to say anything, of course, but they would both know.

He decided to continue waiting, as long as he could make himself. He pressed his hand to his mouth as a reminder. The house was so quiet; it occurred to him he should have been able to hear sounds from outside, but something about the place seemed to be swallowing them up before they could reach them.

In the stunted silence, Martin had the sudden feeling they were not alone.

Before he could make up his mind to disrupt him again, Jon spoke.

“There’s nothing,” he said meekly.

“What?” Martin asked.

“There’s nothing,” Jon said again. “I don’t feel anything. I really thought—” He cut himself off, his expression a mix of loss and confusion and sadness, and Martin was filled with a deep, distressing pity for him.

“Hey,” he said, crossing to Jon, forgetting his trepidation toward the mark on the floor. It seemed meaningless now, nothing more than an ugly accident at the lumber factory. He pulled Jon into his arms. “It’s going to be all right. We’ll figure it out.”

Jon didn’t answer, but he allowed Martin to hold him, eventually letting the weight of his head fall against Martin’s chest.

“I’m sorry,” Martin said quietly.

“Are you?”

“Yes,” Martin answered. “Part of me is relieved, I’ll admit, but I don’t want you to be miserable, Jon. Honestly, I don’t. We’ll do whatever we need to do to help make this better, ok?”

Jon fell silent again, and in that silence Martin remembered the feeling he’d had just before Jon had spoken.

“Jon—can we get out of here? Sit outside? We can talk there. On the porch, even. I just have this feeling like—like we’re being watched.”

“What?” Jon pulled away enough to look up at his face.

“Not like—watched, I don’t think that even feels like anything. I just mean—like, regular being watched. If that’s a thing.”

Jon concentrated for a moment, but quickly gave up. “All right. We can go.”

Martin felt a second wave of relief wash over him. It’s over, he thought to himself, at least for the time being. He released Jon from his grasp, turning him gently toward the door—the faster they could get outside, back to the fresh air, the better for both of them.

A few steps, though, and Jon stumbled. Martin, instinctively reaching to support him, assumed at first that he had stepped wrong or tripped over something—but that wasn’t right. Jon was heavy in his arms, and Martin nearly fell himself trying to stop Jon from hitting the ground.

Ok. Martin collected his thoughts as quickly as possible as he gently set Jon down. He’s fainted. That wasn’t great, but it wasn’t entirely unexpected, given how he had been feeling and his inability to eat. I just need to give him a minute and he’ll come around.

That wasn’t right either, though, Martin quickly realized, because Jon had stopped breathing.

Shit, shit, shit. He had taken a CPR class many years ago, but he hadn’t thought about it in almost as long. What were the steps? He knew Jon wasn’t choking, and he remembered something about checking for a pulse, although he didn’t remember if you were supposed to do that right away or—

Do something.

He reached for Jon’s neck, pressing two fingers against his carotid artery. He waited.

I’m doing it wrong.

He readjusted. Still nothing.

“Shit.” Panic started to well up inside him again. Breaths? Chest compressions?

Call for help.

He pulled out his phone and started to dial, but quickly realized he had no reception. He held it up, moving it around, even standing again to see if he could get a signal, but no matter where he moved he couldn’t get a single bar of service. He thought about going outside to try there, but couldn’t stand the thought of leaving Jon alone in this place.

Chest compressions.

He knelt next to Jon, placing one hand on top of the other the way he thought he remembered. He pressed the heel of his palm against Jon’s sternum, just inches away from the scar he had put there only months ago.

Don’t.

The scar where he had driven a knife through muscle and maybe bone—he didn’t think it was supposed to be so easy to do that, but the cracking sound—

Don’t, not now.

—the cracking sound and then suddenly it had been so much easier, the knife went in and there was that single gasp of pain, and then he’d pulled the knife out because he couldn’t stand to leave it in, but all the blood came with it—

I killed him.

Jon was dying. The tape unspooled; the tower crumbled around them, and Martin held on. Jon lay dead in his arms as the world disappeared around them, and he held on. He held on for so long.

God, it hurts.

“Martin—”

I’m so sorry.

“Martin, let go.”

Martin opened his eyes and tried to remember where he was. His pulse was racing.

“Martin.”

He was sitting on the floor with Jon—Jon needed him to let go. He did, and Jon immediately took a deep breath. Martin still couldn’t quite remember where they were.

“You were dead.”

“No,” Jon answered, still breathing hard. “No, I just blacked out. I think I’m ok.”

“No. I killed you. There was—there was the knife—where did it—”

Jon, understanding, reached for Martin’s face. “Look at me. We’re at Hill Top Road. We came here together.”

“What?” Martin tried to remember, and eventually the details of their current situation came back to him. He looked around at the house. Jon was so pale. “Oh god. Jon, are you all right?”

“I think so. I think I just blacked out.”

“You weren’t breathing. I swear you weren’t breathing, and I couldn’t find a pulse—”

“Are you sure? Or were you…”

“I—I think so?” Although now that he thought about it, Martin realized he couldn’t be completely sure. “Maybe?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m—I’m ok now. I’m breathing.”

Martin looked around again. He hated this place. “Let’s leave. Please. Right now.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

It was harder to help Jon to his feet than either of them expected. His energy from earlier in the day had vanished almost entirely, and he leaned hard against Martin as they walked toward the door. The porch, which had previously seemed as dreadful as the house, now felt like a sanctuary as the sun streamed onto it through the support columns. It was almost unbelievable that nothing stopped them from reaching it, and Martin collapsed onto the wooden deck as soon as they did.

He made sure Jon had a relatively comfortable spot to lie, and then dragged himself to the steps, pulling his knees into his chest and blocking the light from his eyes with one arm. He stayed like that until he’d relaxed enough to reach into his pocket for his phone again. He had a little reception out here, at least. He scrolled through his contacts until he’d pulled up Sasha’s number.

“Hi Martin,” she answered cheerily. “Everything going all right?”

“Sasha, hey,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm. “Listen, I’m sorry to do this—”

“Martin, I can barely hear you. Is everything all right?”

“Yeah—it is. Mostly.” He was too miserable to think up an actual lie. “Jon’s not feeling well today. I think—I think we’ll need the whole day off.”

“Did you say—is Jon ok?”

“He’s—” He looked at Jon where he lay in a patch of sunlight, eyes closed, taking shallow breaths. “He’s—I don’t know. He’s not great.”

“I’m—I’m sorry to hear that. Do you need anything?”

“No. We’ll manage.” He wasn’t sure that was true, but he had no idea what kind of help he could even ask for.

“You’re breaking up, but—please keep me updated? I’ll check in later.”

“All right.”

Martin ended the call.

[veridium]

For part two of the story, click here.

For the Commander and the Inquisitor, passing the days since their fight has proven difficult. Cullen seeks understanding, but Amarantha is unsure of whether she can be who he wants her to be, and meet him halfway across such an intrinsic divide. He finally finds her int he Undercroft, and the fragility of the situation is finally brought to bear. 

A few days had passed since their conflict in the courtyard. While the two had remained Professional, both Josephine and Leliana noticed – not that there was tension – how hard they were trying to remain not tense, not adversarial. It concerned them, especially Leliana, for the sake of the Council, but both trusted the two to resolve the issue on their own in due time. They both trusted the Inquisitor’s and the Commander’s dispositions to not care for toil or drama.

At least, they ardently hoped.

The afternoon light caught on Amarantha’s olive skinned face for just a moment as she paced through its path on the inside of the Undercroft. She was reading logistics from Dagna’s latest experiments with spirit Runes on the Mage staffs. Perhaps it was time to move onto something more lethal and flammable, for the sake of upcoming plans for expeditions to Emprise du Lion.

Amarantha wore her resting clothes, a hunter green coat embellished with silver accents, and slacks made of a thin but sturdy hide. Perhaps Deepstalker. Her hair was down, but the strands around her face were pulled back and pinned in the back. Thoughtfully, she flipped through the pages of papers.

The Undercroft door opened, and her gaze traveled and saw a robust stature of armor and fur. It was Cullen, of course, notoriously looking as if he were a brooding romance character. Amarantha’s chest stiffened. Perhaps it would be like all their other interactions the past several days: dismissive, but efficient.

“Your Worship, what do you think?” Dagna’s voice was heard from behind Amarantha. Her mind snapped back to business and she turned around.

“I think the progress is excellent, but I fear Emprise du Lion may call for more pyro. Harding’s initial reports from outside the region talk of peaks of ice and snow from their vantage point. The Mages and I would appreciate something to counteract whatever it is that lurks there,” she explained dutifully, folding the papers and setting them on the nearest table.

“Excellent. Fire…fire works…” Dagna remarked playfully. “I’ll get on that. When I’m done, you will be able to light up the mountain top like a sparkler flare,” she grinned gleefully.

Amarantha couldn’t help but smile softly at the Archanist’s vigor. “Very good, Dagna. You’re priceless,” she affirmed. “You should go get some of the lunch rations while they’re still there. I don’t want you overworking yourself without sustenance,” she said, leaning on one hip.

Dagna smirked. “Sera’s been sending me treats for two weeks now, but sure, perhaps some meat to undercut the immense amount of cookies.”

Danga took her work gloves off and walked up the stairs towards the door. Cullen had been standing and observing, waiting for the moment to approach the Inquisitor politely.

“Commander,” Dagna greeted as she walked past him. The door opened and closed behind her, leaving the two to consort alone.

Amarantha walked towards the railing of the Undercroft window. “I see your idea of a dimly-lit private meeting has come to fruition,” she remarked, placing her hands on the stone rail.

Cullen walked down the stairs, his heavy, anxious steps almost making the rhythm of marching drums they probably have muscle memory of.

“Inquisitor, if you have a moment,” he said, walking until he was about 10ft away, interested but respectful.

Amarantha looked over her shoulder and nodded solemnly.

“I’m sure you know what I wish to discuss, but, if you could let me have the floor before you give me your verdict, I’d be most grateful,” he said, eyeing her for some semblance of softness in her attitude.

Amarantha turned around, and sitting back on the stone, she crossed her arms. “Fine,” she replied.

Cullen cleared his throat, preparing for words he had pondered for hours and hours. Some he had kept with him since the moment she crossed him, others he had to carefully craft in order to get the message across. Maker only knew how it would all sound put together.

“Your Worship, I have contemplated what you said to me in the Courtyard. I understand that you come from a precarious position, not for your own actions, but for the context in wish you live. I, too, walk a path such as this. When I say that I think you are too big of a person to confine yourself to one or two dimensions of your identity, I’m speaking to myself as much as I am speaking to you. And for that, I wish to apologize. You do not deserve to fight both our rhetorical battles.”

Amarantha’s eyes narrowed, but not with anger or defensiveness. She wondered if this could be really it: a concession, from the Commander.

“So, on that front, you definitely have me. What I am still offended by is your double-standards. You say you cannot untie yourself from the experiences in which you’ve lived, but you expect me to counteract all of mine. I did not intent for our paths to be so antagonistic in quality, but here we are. We are leading one of the most important forces for change, for peace, in this Age,” his voice began to grow more passionate, more assured.

“Reducing me to something that I have worked hard to detach from, but still remain coercively related to, is beneath someone of your integrity and stature. I say this not to demean you, but to advise you, both as a Council member and a friend. You said yourself that we share something beyond our work for this cause. Is that worth nothing to you?” he opened the floor to her, not knowing what to expect. She could grow enraged and set this whole place on fire if she wished. No, Cullen, do not reduce her to a trope, he checked himself mentally. The anxiety was still there and they both knew it.

Amarantha sighed heavily, biting the side of her lip as she thought about what to respond with. The mannerism was alluring to Cullen, at the most inconvenient time. He looked away to preserve his intent to be cordial.

Finally, she stood back upright, and looked at him.

“Cullen, you are right in many ways. I am also sorry that this happened. It was irresponsible of me to provoke such an argument. I will take care not to do so again,” she took another tense breath. “As for your point about me judging you and your past, I hope you can understand that for me, the implicit power imbalance in our life paths compel me to feel defensive of my life and the lives of Mages here. You say I judge you harshly, and you are right. I do, and a lot of it comes from a visceral sense of injustice I have scarcely dealt with. Working with so many different people, with so many different agendas, has evoked a need to stick to my own convictions for the sake of being heard and not overwhelmed,” she spoke, her tone guarded.

“As you cannot blame me for your own inner struggle, I cannot blame you for mine. But this also means that for all intents and purposes, we are incompatible,” she walked closer to him, flanking him as she eyed his facial expression shift from one of hope to one of concern.

“Inquisitor—“

“You may call me Amarantha for this conversation, Cullen,” a warm response in an otherwise bleak moment.

“Amarantha,” he breathed, rubbing the back of his head. “You won’t even try? Surely there have been connections across politics and identities before that would be more abrasive than ours.”

Every nerve in her body railed against that assertion, yet her chest fluttered with weakness. It wanted to say yes, of course, we should try. But then, the instinctive flight or fight response from her mind also came into play. Her insides felt like a mess of conflicting emotions at war with each other over the fate of her heart and soul, something she felt only once before when she was named the Herald, and then the Inquisitor.

“Just because we can, doesn’t mean that we should,” she responded distantly.

“Amarantha, do not give me that response,” he said curtly, his chin lowering, gaze piercing back at her. Another heartbeat skipped.

She rubbed her forehead and circled around where she had been standing. “Then what, Cullen? We toss this all up in the air and see what lands on the right side? You are the one person I would trust to be strategic about something such as this. Where has your mind gone?” She was now arguing with him.

Cullen scoffed. He was running out of patience, not in an angry way, but in a way where he needed to stop talking and start showing.

“It has gone. You are right. And this is where it went.”

Swiftly, he closed in on her, arms going first to her waist and cinching her upper body into his. His lips went to her unexpecting ones, closed and sweet, but nevertheless hungry. She smelled of something deep and wild, like she grew herself out of a forest somewhere untouched.

Amarantha was dumbfounded. A nerve inside her knew what he was after as soon as he started his quick approach, but she didn’t move away. Her eyes closed once his lips were on hers. He was warm, strong, somewhere she could run to. A fortress within a fortress. Her arms wrapped around his neck, and for a moment, it was this. Coming undone.

She was relinquished to it, until something began to rumble inside of her soul. She knew this feeling, but she deeply wished it would return from whence it came. She tried to override it, but it kept growing. The flashbacks, the faces, the fury in the eyes of men. Her limbs, her bones, her muscles, all sought an escape route. Then, they took hold of her mind, and memories of violence flickered like firelight.

She moaned under her breath, and while it sounded from the outsider’s ears that she was simply engrossed in the kiss, it was really her trying to let it all go. Once and for all, for herself, for this one thing.

Please, please just let it be, she said to herself. It was a war of a Mage’s soul, fighting itself, for the sake of itself.

Her body began to tense, and Cullen picked up on the change. He began to pull away, but as soon as their lips lost contact, an exasperated roar escaped from her mouth.

Then, crash.

Both of them fell backwards but managed to catch themselves before falling. A shield of ice erupted mercilessly from the floor, spikes and growths of wild, crystalline white drawing the line between them. Amarantha’s chest breathed heavily, distraught and devastated. Cullen looked at her from over the barrier with alarm. “What is the meaning of this?” he asked urgently.

Tears began to well in her ember eyes. “Cullen!” she exclaimed, her hands going to her chest in a posture of defense and insecurity.

He was so confused. Why this, if she trusted him so? Is this what a Mage’s limit is? Is this what her limit was, after all this?

She looked down at her ice wall, the wall that mimicked itself from the one around her heart. It was majestic, but terrifying, like it always had been. She had used it on enemies, both dead and alive demonic and mortal, but never once did she predict using it on a would-be lover, and a long-proven friend. Something was wrong, organically so, beyond her will.

She managed to provisionally compose herself enough to say her peace, though the tears began to fall.

“Cullen, I am sorry. I am sorry I must reject you for the crimes of lesser men,” she cried, the crying in her voice reigning supreme.

Cullen exhaled. So it was, then. He would try one last, doomed time. “Amarantha , please,” he implored softly, reaching his hand over the ice blockade that was only as tall as their torsos.

Her eyes widened a bit as she eyed his hand. There is was, the grand symbolism of it all: his hand, his heart, across the line of where her identity could ensure survival. A part of her soul detested him for even suggesting such a choice.

She breathed, hands anxiously turning into fists.

“Cullen, I can’t. This, all of this,” she motioned towards him, the mess she had made, everything.

“This will be the end of me.”

Cullen’s resolve went along with her as she hurried herself out of the Undercroft, door resolutely slamming behind her. Perhaps it was for the best. Perhaps one day they would ironically laugh about the time she stomped on his heart, and how he probably stomped on hers in return. He knew of only one sure thing: that her actions had inspired him to continue pushing for understanding, even if it didn’t win him her love. It could win him justice.

Amarantha felt like she flew across the throne steps and to the door leading to her chambers. She had barely made it to the other side of the door, shutting it just as harshly as the Undercroft door, when she slammed her back against it and slid down to the floor. Tears streamed effortlessly now, but she was otherwise quiet. She hugged her knees like a terrified child, trying to calm herself. All she could see was the shards of ice erupting first within her eyes and then before them.

The kiss’s residual vibrations still on her lips.

The look in his eyes as she left.

We were doomed, always doomed, my friend, she lamented to herself. Better this way.

[click2watch]

A Glimpse of Banking’s Future, Live on the Ethereum Blockchain

Michael J. Casey is the chairman of CoinDesk’s advisory board and a senior advisor for blockchain research at MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative.

The following article originally appeared in CoinDesk Weekly, a custom-curated newsletter delivered every Sunday exclusively to our subscribers.

At first glance, this week’s move by the investment bank Societe Generale to issue a security token-like bond in which it was both the issuer and the sole investor might seem like a pointless act. Not so much a peer-to-peer transaction; just a peer transaction.

But one element of the announcement suggests this was actually an important step in financial institutions’ sometimes fractious relationship with cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. You see, Societe Generale’s $112 million bond issue used smart contracts built not a private, permissioned blockchain but on the public, permissionless ethereum blockchain.

This was a baby step, for sure. But, let’s remember that this French bank belongs to an industry whose member institutions repeatedly posit that permissionless blockchains are unworkable for them.

Banks have made various arguments for why they feel compelled to use private, permissioned versions of this technology: because they are beholden to know-your-customer and other compliance rules that aren’t easily enforced in a permissionless environment; because their competitive interests require a level of privacy that can’t be assured in a transparent, public setting; or because public blockchain’s probability-based standard for confirming trade settlement falls short of what Wall Street’s lawyers call “settlement finality.”

Yet here was the 19th-largest bank in the world experimenting with the public model.

It would be way too premature to say that Societe Generale has discounted those industry concerns about permissionless blockchains – concerns that are more likely founded on fears of the threat to existing business models than anything else. But the French bank’s move could also signal an acknowledgment that banks’ can’t afford to turn their back on the disruptive threats and opportunities posed by permissionless protocols such as bitcoin or ethereum.

Societe Generale appears to be placing a side bet that the future evolution of digital finance will play out much as the battle for supremacy in next-generation communications technology did in the 1990s – lest it be left on the wrong side of history.

A bet that open systems win

At the end of the nineties, it had become clear that the public, open, interoperable Internet had beaten out private, closed, walled-garden Intranets such as Prodigy, AOL and France’s Minitel to define the new architecture for worldwide information-sharing. It has since become accepted wisdom that the Internet’s open, global system proved superior because it imposed no limit on network size or on the breadth of potential connectivity and because “permissionless innovation” enabled a global developer talent pool of unlimited size and collective brainpower.

It’s reasonable to assume, though by no means guaranteed, that history will repeat itself with the struggle over the future of financial systems. Yes, the unique sensitivities and regulatory framework surrounding finance creates a substantial barrier to entry that protects incumbent institution, those for whom closed, walled-garden approaches protect their competitive positions.

But at the end of the day, money is just information. Communities will tend toward free and open systems for using it.

Is that what Societe Generale is betting on? Perhaps. While the deal was an entirely in-house affair, the bank did make the bond’s terms pari passu with its other covered bonds, a category of debt that securitized by specific balance sheet assets. That means that future owners, whoever they may be, would have equal ranking and risk exposure as any investors in Societe Generale’s more conventional bond issues. And with a five-year maturity, there is ample time for the bank to take the more radical step of seeking outside buyers in a secondary market sale once it has a blessing from regulators.

Also important was the fact that rating agency Moody’s said it considers the use of blockchain technology “credit positive” in this case, in part because of increased transparency and a reduced likelihood of errors “arising from the complexity and the number of intermediaries involved in issuing covered bonds using traditional means.”

This positive assessment points to the generalized potential of security token offerings, or STOs, as a way to more efficiently issue, manage and trade traditional assets such as stocks, bonds, real estate and commodities.

Disruption to come

STOs aren’t as radical an idea as Initial Coin Offerings, or ICOs, which have fallen out of favor with investors following the collapse of the crypto-token market last year and as regulators have threatened actions against the many that have the characteristics of unregistered securities.

Whereas ICO issuers sought to avoid securities registration requirements by describing their “utility tokens” as an integral, commodity-like component of the decentralized networks they were building – a product, not a speculative investment — STOs are simpler and more straightforward. They represent a tokenized claim on some form of real-world asset, and they are deliberately intended to be treated as a security for compliance purposes.

Nonetheless, STOs still promise to be extremely disruptive to capital markets, with a big impact on investment banks such as Societe Generale.

STO-serving smart contracts could allow for automatic updates of share registries and cap tables with each trade, and enable more direct exchanges between buyers and sellers, with fewer intermediaries. Also, if it’s a permissionless system – if there are no “permissioned” incumbent financial entities functioning as gatekeepers of a private blockchain – there is nothing to stop startup service providers shifting many traditional back-end activities such as underwriting, custody and brokerage over to a decentralized network. These are services that investment banks, for the most part, currently provide.

All of this requires that the tech be sufficiently scalable, of course, and that regulators are happy with the kinds of cryptography-based custodial solutions on which it depends. However, it’s widely believed, by people in both crypto and traditional finance communities, that we will get there.

Seeking to control the process

What’s impressive about Societe Generale’s implicit position, then, is that it seeking to understand and have some control over a technology that will inherently threaten some of its businesses.

In doing so, it may be betting that banks like it will adjust to the new paradigm much as they did in the nineties when online stock trading and electronic marketplaces initially threatened Wall Street’s dominance of the securities industry.

Those systems, which made market prices more transparent, drastically reduced the commissions that investment banks could charge for trading, but they also promoted a surge in volumes that compensated for the tighter margins. In the end, the savviest banks invested in this new trading and matching technology and, in taking charge of its development, managed to retain a dominant position in capital markets.

The death of banks might well be a thing to celebrate in the future. But the reality is that the market will for some time continue to value much of the expertise and market-making power that currently resides on Wall Street, even as it starts to demand that the functional back-end tasks of record-keeping, custody, trade matching and clearing and settlement be handled by smart contracts, digital currencies and distributed networks.

Corporate issuers of STOs will always need to find investors. They’ll also be keen to offload the risk that those investors won’t be found onto someone who’s willing and able to bear it. And they’ll pay a good price for those services. My guess is that this is where banks will continue to be very active.

Those that are out there, experimenting with the most radical, future-facing versions of blockchain and other disruptive technologies will be the most profitable in doing so.

Image Credit: Kiev.Victor / Shutterstock.com (SocGen Headquarters)

This news post is collected from CoinDesk

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[langstuff132]

MEN NEED TO STOP GETTING OFFENDED WHEN THEY LEARN WOMEN ARE SCARED OF THEM

The man who hurt me said he was sorry. Everything was fine at first, and the ensuing roughness didn’t even last long. He swore he thought it was “all just part of the fantasy.” I was upset, but I was more significantly confused; I was having trouble imagining how my cries could sound erotic in any way. The man obviously regretted causing me physical pain, but did not realize how frightened I was, how angry I felt that I wasn’t listened to.  

Amensalism is a type of symbiosis where one party’s neutral behavior causes the other party harm. A common example is humans walking on grass. This is how men tend to see sexual assault. Women tend to see it as predation. “But #NotAllMen have violent intentions! Sometimes it’s a misunderstanding!” Ok…that is true. Sexual assault is certainly not predatorial in every case, but it is not amensalistic either.

It would be generous to call it a competition where one party clearly has the advantage over the other. The dominant party fulfills their needs by whatever means possible, and through those means, they harm the other party. (Predators are those who are aware of this power imbalance and try to use it to their advantage.) This is why women’s rights activists tend to support Yes-Means-Yes legislation, policy that addresses the fact that men tend to see the absence of rejection as confirmation, and then women get hurt without the man feeling responsible. The issue, as  Cathy Young points out, is that women give consent in uncomfortable situations all the time out of fear. You wouldn’t say you “gave” your wallet to someone who was holding a blade against your chest. In sexual assault cases, the blade would be something like 12-inch height difference.  After the initial violation, The man rubbed my back until I calmed down (without asking if he could touch me, of course) —which I could never completely do, since I was acutely aware that my companion was someone who derives pleasure from causing pain. Or, perhaps, more true to the competition analogy, he prioritized his pleasure while neglecting my pain. This is why it bothers me when people belittle the woman who accused Aziz Ansari of sexually harassing her. I know #NotAllMen are psychopathic predators, but #YesAllWomen have been frightened into silence or have suffered for a man’s benefit.

Vocal, enthusiastic consent is hard for people to swallow; we often talk about it as if it’s an obstacle. It’s the biggest challenge facing men on the path to sex. I want men to understand that deciding to be alone with them in a bedroom is the biggest challenge facing women on the path to sex.

This also begs the question, in my case, of how this struggle turned into a kink for people? What “fantasy” was The man referring to? Why did my needs not matter and why do some people get off on that? Poor sex education is one of the biggest contributing factors to this epidemic. If a school doesn't teach abstinence-based sex education, they probably still make sex sound transactional and goal-oriented as opposed to an intimate experience shared between two people. Since we’re taught that sex is over once you orgasm or meant to get someone pregnant, men benefit because they tend to finish faster (and aren’t the ones who carry children). On top of this, women feel societal pressure to pleasure men, but men feel no such pressure. This is bad, not only because women are getting cheated out of orgasms, but because it perpetuates their objectification--more specifically, the notion that it is ok and even biologically natural to treat a human woman like a blow-up doll.

Sexual liberation and education would help this problem, and my generation is starting to figure that out, but we’re going about it in a potentially harmful way. Dr. Jennifer Johnson, a professor at the Virginia Commonwealth University, did a sociological study of about 500 young men that revealed pornography is becoming a primary source of sex education. I don’t see this statistic as being such a bad thing, since, as Dr. Christopher Ryan asserts, “Nothing inspires murderous mayhem in human beings more reliably than sexual repression.” It really depends what kinds of porn people are watching. Just like you wouldn’t teach your toddler to swim in the deep end, you wouldn’t want your 13-year old obtaining sex education from BDSM pornography. However, just like stealing mom’s wine coolers or drinking orange juice from the carton, unsupervised kids do a lot of things they aren’t supposed to do. Anyway, this is more pressing than a child’s lack of etiquette, since Dr. Jennifer Johnson mentions that pornography is widely recognized as being responsible to some extent for normalizing sexually violent, dehumanizing, or degrading behavior. When Fifty Shades of Grey came out, women’s rights activists from all sects and corners of the world were anxious that there would be an increase in domestic and sexual violence to follow.

Unfortunately, pornography is incredibly difficult to censor given the scale of its presence on the somewhat lawless internet. And who decides what erotica is a damaging amount of weird versus a normal or healthy amount of weird? Some people even use Dominant/submissive relationships to deal with trauma—it would be against my liberal sensibilities to judge someone’s method of recovery. Maybe they should just keep it in the bedroom and try not to encourage their lifestyle..? Yikes--we’ve heard that before, and we didn’t like it!

I don’t think I have the authority or experience to make any of these judgements; but I do think there are some clear red flags in the online Porn industry that it would be easy for them to remove. Large companies like Pornhub have shown a liberal and compassionate side by coming down on deep fakes. Deep fakes are objectively quite impressive, and the audience for them exists, but Pornhub considers them to be a form of sexual assault since the person depicted can not consent.

So then what about rape-fantasy pornography? Don’t they see that the liberating effects of erotica are dampened by the sexual violence that occurs as a consequence of normalizing this type interaction? Just like deep fakes, though an audience exists for pornography with “Gang-rape,” “Rape,” or “Attack/Ambush” in the freaking title, it doesn’t mean you have to publish it.

In a broader vein, a lot could change if the media felt more responsible for glamorizing violent behavior. Luckily, a movement  is gaining speed in Hollywood right now to slow down production on all these War-hero movies and leave behind antiquated, aggressive notions of masculinity. The mainstream media is starting to understand that even though an audience exists for these types of stories, their implicit messages do long-term damage to society, which is a compelling argument to just..write other stories. And, not only do we want more young, sensitive father archetypes, we need more projects that convey explicit messages about problematic socialization. David Schwimmer's six short films about sexual harassment tell men quietly, but also deafeningly, that the behavior they have been seeing as neutral--even romantic or seductive--for ages, is actually perceived as scary, awkward, and silencing. The men who aren’t aware of this need to learn, and the men who are aware...are predators.

(PS this is essay isn’t a cry for help or anything, Im ok!!  it was actually very therapeutic to write) 

[nebris]

The Individual and The Hive

“Liberal Humanism had once been a vital force and had changed human affairs for the better. But it inevitably fell victim to the Cult of The Individual and then fractured into ideological factionalism, individual narcissism and intellectual decadence. Its absolute rejection of Hierarchy doomed it to impotence.” a quote from “Apéritif á La Tour Rouge”, a Sisterhood short story.   The Cult of The Individual is clearly the predominant theme of the Modern Era. And it is a Lie. Here is the ineffable Adam Curtis speaking upon it in a UK Guardian article: "The way power works in the world is: they tell you stories that make sense of the world. That’s what America did after the Second World War. It told you wonderful dreamlike stories about the world … And at that same time, you were encouraged to rise up and 'become an individual’, which also made the whole idea of America attractive to the rest of the world. But then this very individualism began to corrode it. The uncertainties began in people’s minds. Uncertainty about 'what is the point of being an individual?’ The politics of our time are deeply embedded in this idea of individualism, which is far wider than Westminster [the British seat of government], consumerism or anything like that. It’s how you feel. People think, 'Oh, if it’s within me it must be true.’ But it’s not the be-all and end-all. It’s not an absolute. It’s a way of feeling and thinking which is a product of a particular time and power. The notion that you only achieve your true self if your desires, your dreams, are satisfied … It’s a political idea. That’s the central dynamic of our life.” And this is a more somber comment by a Susan W. in Morris Berman’s blog: “So much of our lives in America are compartmentalized it does result in loneliness. The way our communities are set up isolate us and make social interaction stilted. There’s not much spontaneity and people don’t know how to break this cycle and with 24 hour/day TV, the internet, long commutes and loss of real public space the soul continues to be drained out of Americans. It takes effort to see friends and build a social network that is comprised of real flesh-and-blood people rather than “profiles.” Both Huxley and Orwell recognized this process of dehumanizing people even though they saw the causes differently.” The Cult of The Individual is used by The Powers That Be to utterly dis-empower The Individual and it is my depressing opinion that most in The West, especially my fellow Americans, shall never escape that trap. A chap who calls himself Laszlo Q. V. St-J. Xalieri - a nom-de-blog I expect - speaks of this in his essay The Parable of The Hive, to wit: “The hive decides who gets to mate with whom and under what circumstances. The hive decides who gets the best food, the choicest real estate, and the cushiest jobs. The hive decides how you live and how you die. The hive decides what you eat for breakfast… The hive is an invasive species composed entirely of information, of narrative, that exists only for its own benefit, that nurtures individuals — or the opposite — in proportion to how the individual benefits the hive. It is in the best interests of the hive to teach you sacrifice. To make you accept it completely. The hive, by means of sacrifice and pooling resources, can survive when individuals would fare poorly. Individuals die, but society is preserved… It has predators and parasites. It has fake members that are immune to the narrative, that masquerade as valuable, favored cogs, that pervert the rudimentary defenses to foil and destroy the drones that would root them out. They insinuate themselves into the supply chains to bleed off resources for personal hoards, for prime real estate, for breeding privileges. They pervert the narrative itself to set themselves up as gods. What are the choices here? 1. To ensure survival as much as possible by making yourself invaluable to the hive, but, in the end, putting your fate in the hands of the hive and its narrative. 2. To reject the narrative entirely and live outside of the hive to the greatest extent possible, live and let live, but outside of the hive’s protections and occasionally running afoul of the hive’s defenses. 3. To become a predator/parasite, competing with other parasites for your share of hoarded resources and privileges by your own attempts to co-opt a portion of the narrative. 4. Erect a counter-narrative and create a hive that competes with or even preys upon the old hive, or perhaps establishes a symbiotic relationship with it via an exchange of resources or favors. Once you are aware of the hive, and its narrative, and the predators and parasites that prey on it, your choices are very limited. Keep your head down, try to escape, put up a fight, or autolysis. What will you choose?” What most in The West choose, especially my fellow Americans, is to operate in a gray zone between the first and second choices, thinking/believing that they are in a form of the second paradigm - but utterly in Denial that they are part of The Hive aka the myth of “Rugged Individualism” - while functionally operating fully in the first paradigm. That is the Tea Party mentality in a nutshell. Hipsters on the other hand are more aware of this, but blow it off with Irony. The shrinking and increasingly desperate Middle Classes tend to go for the first paradigm full bore, though still remaining largely in Denial about how thoroughly assimilated they actually are. Wall Street, the New Rich, et al have taken the third paradigm - the 'predator/parasite gods’ - to its insane extreme and will likely be the death of The Hive because of that. But such is inherent to the 'narrative’ of The Individual, its unavoidable Poison Pill, “Screw you, Jack; I got mine.” So then, what is the point of being an 'individual’? What Purpose does your life have beyond 'satisfaction of desires’, many of which are not even really your own? These questions invariably bring us to The Sisterhood and where it stands in all of this. Obviously we pick Door #4, “Erect a counter-narrative and create a hive that competes with or even preys upon the old hive, or perhaps establishes a symbiotic relationship with it via an exchange of resources or favors,” though we shall reverse the order by initially “establishing symbiotic relationship with it via an exchange of resources or favors,” and then subsuming the 'Old Hive’ entirely. “The central strategy here is The Viral Meme, the Idea that is so compelling and dynamic that that is spreads like wildfire. That Idea exists; a entirely new and modern form of Matriarchy. Our task is to create that Idea as a Practical Reality, a Practical Reality that becomes the microcosm of this new society, a Practical Reality that is vital, replicable, adaptable, and then plant it in the societies that presently exist. In many places, it shall flourish and expand. In some places, it will struggle and even be extinguished. But if we do our work effectively and remain true to both the practical goals and the Spiritual vision of this New Matriarchy, we will grow into and absorb even the most hostile social orders.” from The Temple’s Mission Statement. In the meantime we must operate in the third paradigm until we are stronger, as “a predator/ parasite, competing with other parasites for your share of hoarded resources and privileges by your own attempts to co-opt a portion of the narrative.” I understand that all this is a bitter pill to swallow. Some of you can likely hear Number Six shouting, “I’m not a number, etc,” in your minds. But that is a delusion at this point. Just pull out your wallet or purse. You are several types of number and by yourself you are powerless. Yes, Worst Fear confirmed. I am offering you a way to change this, my Sisters. It is a radical and even dangerous path and may be even a fool’s errand. But I truly believe that, for the many reasons elaborated upon in Liber Sorores, it is the only viable path out of the present death spiral, because it’s fairly clear the 'Old Hive’ is dying and all the other solutions are either warmed-over versions of the Old Hive’s socioeconomic or some type of neo-feudal reaction, various primitivist 'back to the land’ constructs that would require the extinction of hundreds of millions of humans in order to work. For decades now how many tens of millions of you, my Sisters, have woken up every day to a job you hate? To a life you hate? To feeling trapped and without Purpose? Even if one has the basic necessities of life, lack of Purpose can be Soul killing, a day to day void that slowly but steadily drains the life out of you. And now even the 'basic necessities’ are becoming hard to come by. Simple survival has become 'purpose’. But that is an animal’s life. If you have gotten to this far, you have likely read Liber Sorores in its entirety. You now know The Path Invoked, though you may not yet truly grasp it. To do so means to accept some unpleasant truths about ourselves. As a highly social Predator Species, we are biologically hard wired for Dominance, Submission and Hierarchy. Denial of that state of being is one of the worst and most hypocritical forms of Bourgeois Delusionalism, which is ever about making things Safe and Nice. Of course, being Humans, we make that paradigm very complex and sophisticated and far more subtle than it is in untrammeled Nature. We hide it in Ritual and Lies so that it becomes 'palatable’ to the Masses. But it is there if one looks close and honestly enough at day to day human interaction. Most urban dwellers never look each other in the eye; such is an implicit challenge. I personally have 'taken control’ of many interactions via this simple behavior and without having to establish overt Dominance. Just making steady eye contact often tells the other that I am Strong and Confident, aka Steady and Trustworthy. I have found this to be true even when my Social Status was 'less’ than the person I was interacting with. I quite successfully navigated my way through two years of homelessness doing so. And pointing out that I am a large white male who is attractive, intelligent and articulate merely underscores the power of the paradigm, though many of the techniques I used – such as NLP – are not limited to individuals of that class. But while I did this largely 'on my own’, I never did it as a pure Individual. Early on I became a member of a well respected homeless support organization, always cultivated persons of importance within The System and consistently acknowledged that I knew I was operating within said System, covertly with The Dull and overtly with The Aware. I was always part of a Group. As I said, human Hierarchy is complex, subtle and sophisticated. But have no doubt that it defines us. I have noted that some of loudest denials of this paradigm come from tenured academics – individuals of Authority and Power in a clearly defined Hierarchy – which I’d say sums up our basic dilemma rather neatly. And both ends of the cultural and political spectrum are guilty of this deception, though the Left is rather more self deluded in this regard. The Right tends to simply lie about it, which in turn yields the field, at worst, to Fascist Domination and, at best, making the social order prisoner of Modern Corporate Marketing Culture aka The Hologram, which is all about Safe and Nice. This attitude has been enshrined in The Cult of The Individual, which in turn renders those who internalize said construct ultimately powerless against any Group which seeks Control. The Hive will always defeat The Individual. Most humans will seek Safety and Comfort long before they seek Awareness. That is hard wired as a survival mechanism. Only an elite few have the Willingness and the Courage to become Awake. We are a social species. Hierarchy is in our nature. And Leaders are required. Refusal to accept that will lead only to frustration and failure. If you believe nothing else I tell you, believe that. The Cult of The Individual has crippled us as individuals, leaving us prey to the purposeless greed of The Corporate State. Only a positive overarching Goal for the entire Species can once again create the room for individuals to flourish because such a Goal allows each individual to contribute that which they are best at and are happiest with by removing uncertainly and therefore removing Fear. By knowing the Greater Purpose, each individual knows how and what they can contribute, whether that be in Engineering or in Art or even just sweeping up. All those things have Value. In return, the Social Order gives all its members that which they need to live and the ability to find where they can best be of Service, which is the Highest Good for all. It is only in this manner that The Hive may Serve The Individual as The Individual Serves The Hive and in that both may prosper. And only a Hive of Sisters is capable of doing so. 

Liber Sorores: Part Seven – “Summation” [unfinished]