#but i think my issues with it stem from the fact that its a 2012 animayed kids show

[rgbfall]

Ok I am like halfway through s2 of 2012 TMNT and ngl it's kinda growing on me haha

[mrmrswales]

Exclusive: the ‘profoundly powerful’ moments that shaped Duchess of Cambridge’s children’s charity work by Camilla Tominey

It all started with secret visits the public never got to see. Newly married, and with the world’s press chronicling her every move – down to the details of her designer dresses – the Duchess of Cambridge resolved to go "below radar".

Acting as Prince William’s "plus one", rather than a fully fledged solo royal in those early days, the newest addition to the Royal family knew that she wanted to find a cause she could champion as impactfully as Diana, the Princess of Wales’s landmine campaign; it was simply a question of where to find it.

Having already announced her first patronage of Action on Addiction, a charity working with people with drug and alcohol problems, Hope House, a women-only rehabilitation centre in Clapham, south London, seemed as good a place as any to start.

It was October 2011 when the then 29-year-old Duchess paid the first of several, incognito visits in a bid to find out what had sent its clients on a downward spiral of self-destruction.

According to Rebecca Priestley, who accompanied the Duchess on the visit and would go on to spend five years as her private secretary, it played a pivotal role in her decision to put childhood at the heart of her philanthropic endeavours.

Speaking on the record for the first time, Mrs Priestley, who is now an executive coach, recalled:  "I remember going up to Anglesey, where they were living after the wedding, to have a conversation with the Duchess about her royal life."

At that point, she had the philanthropic world at her feet. She could have done anything she wanted in the charitable arena. Typically, she had put a lot of thought into it already. Addiction was an issue she was instinctively thinking about – but she was also genuinely interested in understanding what support was there and what role that played in the bigger picture of mainstream societal issues."

With the Duke having flown to the Falklands for a six–week tour of duty with his RAF search and rescue squadron, Mrs Priestley put a programme together to support the Duchess’s desire to "listen and learn"."A lot of it was behind the scenes, just talking to people and hearing where it was that they needed more help.  The one thing that united all of the women at Hope House was that the derailing had started so early on. They could trace the problems in their adult lives back to childhood."

A subsequent private visit in February 2012 to Clouds House, a treatment centre in East Knoyle in Wiltshire, served as further confirmation that the early years should be a key area of focus. But it was during a later meeting with female inmates at a detox unit at Send Prison in Woking when the penny well and truly dropped.

"It was a profoundly powerful moment,” recalled Mrs Priestley. "You go in there with this preconceived idea that these women have done things wrong, that it was their fault. Then one woman started speaking to the Duchess about her earliest memories of seeing needles on the floor of her home."

She had always thought addiction was a misunderstood issue, but after this, she became concerned that there was a pre-destiny about those affected – an inevitability about it. These women were born into it and there was very little chance of escape."

The experience set in train a sequence of events that will next week culminate in the Duchess, 39, stepping up her ambition in driving awareness and action on the impact that early childhood can have on society at large.

She will launch a new initiative through the couple’s Royal Foundation to further explore the science around early childhood, raise awareness of the issue and foster collaboration and partnerships across relevant groups.

According to Lord Hague, who became chairman of the Royal Foundation last September, the "ambitious" new project will be equal in stature to William’s £50 million Earthshot Prize, launched last year with Sir David Attenborough to find workable solutions to climate change and environmental problems.

"The Duchess truly believes this is one of the great issues of our time," said the former Tory leader. "This is the central plank of her work in the way conservation issues are for the Duke. It’s a hugely significant moment."

While politicians are often in a rush to make a difference during the comparatively short time they have in office, royals are there for life, which perhaps explains why Kate has taken 10 years to get to this point.Having been instrumental in launching the Heads Together campaign with William and Prince Harry in 2016, designed at tackling the stigma and changing the conversation on mental health, it was not until 2018 that she convened a steering group of experts to look at how cross-sector collaboration could bring about lasting change.

In January, she delivered a landmark speech after her Five Big Questions on the Under Fives survey garnered over 500,000 responses.

"People often ask why I care so passionately about the early years," the mother-of-three said.

"Many mistakenly believe that my interest stems from having children of my own. While of course I care hugely about their start in life, this ultimately sells the issue short. If we only expect people to take an interest in the early years when they have children, we are not only too late for them, we are underestimating the huge role others can play in shaping our most formative years, too."

Pointing out that the social cost of late intervention has been estimated to be over £17 billion a year, she added: "The early years are therefore not simply just about how we raise our children. They are in fact about how we raise the next generation of adults. They are about the society we will become."

According to Eamon McCrory, Professor of Developmental Neuroscience and Psychopathology at University College London, the Duchess "has a vision of how she can help transform how we as a society view and invest in the early years for the benefit of society".

Describing her interest in "the role the brain shapes our early experiences and how that sets us on a path to adult life", he explained: "When you look at very young babies and infants, on the surface they don’t appear to be engaging in complex emotions so there's a tendency to underestimate the millions of synapses that are being formed every minute. But science is telling us we have to look under the bonnet.

"There’s no question that for the Duchess, this is a lifetime piece of work. The last five years laid the foundations, now we are entering a more proactive phase.” Described by one source as “thoughtful, professional and determined to do a good job,” there is a sense that Kate has never been in it for the early wins, but the long haul.

As one well-placed insider put it: "She took the job very seriously right from the very beginning. She continues to want to get it right and do her very best - for the institution, for William and the importance of the work she’s doing.

"She doesn't just want to rock up for a picture opportunity, which is why she used to get quite frustrated with all the early focus on what she was wearing. She really cares about this stuff."

Another source said she was "much more fun" than people give her credit for, pointing out how she has grown in confidence having found a cause that she is not only passionate about - but also well informed.

As Lord Hague put it: "She’s been reading the books and had trustees reading the books. People assume her interest in the early years is because she has children – actually it comes from all the adults she’s met." The other key influence has been Kate’s own idyllic childhood.

Brought up in leafy Bucklebury in West Berkshire by her entrepreneur parents Michael and Carole Middleton, pictured below with the royal family, the Duchess has never made any secret of how fortunate she has been to be brought up in a loving and supportive family.

"She always recognised that she benefited from such a great start in life," added Mrs Priestley.

"That’s why sport and the outdoors has always been a key theme for her. She was always asking how those sorts of experiences could be made accessible to others."

For Dame Benny Refson, president of the children’s mental health charity Place2Be, where the Duchess has been patron since 2013, Kate’s grounded upbringing has proved an asset.

“The Duchess listens and people feel heard and valued. It’s nothing to do with privilege. The groups she meets in challenging areas in London don't look at what she's wearing. What makes a difference is that an important person has shown a genuine interest in them. She can relate without passing judgement, which is so important."

Having started out as a reticent public speaker, the Duchess has finally found her voice – and next week she will have a lot more to say.

[rtvents]

Negativity and website anon again.

I do agree that part of the problem stems from acting like RT is the same small company that they were even a decade or 15 years ago and that comes from both sides.

I have only been watching RT since 2018 so I am probably not the best person to talk about this lol. But RT sorta prides itself in having a close connection with its community, which isnt necessarily a bad thing, but it does often come off like they are still this small internet company nobody knows about when they have grown exponentially since they first started.

For the flip side, I think a lot of people who watch or have watched RT struggle with accepting the change and still want to treat it as that small indie internet company that nobody knows about. Like I will give it to RT, I believe they are trying to be as transparent as they can when it comes to changes and issues that arise. But now we encounter the problem of people trying to hold them to a standard of a small indie internet company when that isnt a realistic standard. The whole animation department debacle that came to light last year was horrible no matter the standard and I hope they have been working more internally to fix that. But with the things that come out about individual employees (Im not specifically talking about AK or RH), it seems like people are acting like the whole company knew each other so well that it everybody at RTs fault. But in reality they have hundreds of employees and there are going to be some shitty people. The best RT can do as the business they are is fire these individuals or terminate their contracts with them, which they have done. But some people still seem to lump the whole company in with a shitty individual sorta like RT is personally responsible for that former employee being a shitty person.

Basically, RT needs to be held accountable with it in mind that they are a business, not a small internet company where we know all the employees, what exactly they do, and how exactly they internally function. And some better boundaries might need to be established from RT with the community. I love that they care and have such active interaction with the community, but they cant interact with the community the same way they could years ago.

-Elephant 🐘 (Nickname for my asks)

As for the website thing, I just personally never had an issue with using the website and I use the android app on my phone almost daily. It even usually saves my place in the video. The most issues I have had using the site is their playlist/autoplay system (which is shit I agree with that) and when I try to use it on my laptop its a bit slow. But my laptop is sorta shit anyways so I never really chalked it up to mainly the website. So I guess thats were my frustration with the site/app talks comes from.

I can understand people being frustrated especially in your case and I apologize if I came across rude in my first ask about it. RT definitely needs to put more time into in website and apps interfaces so it works better for everyone. Like it shouldnt be a issue where it works fine for some people and not for others. And it seems to be a significant amount of people with what your saying that its more on the interface of the site/app than individuals.

-Elephant 🐘

Answering the very last thing first lmao but you didn’t come off rude at all!!! Just wanted to reassure you on that one!!

Oh I totally agree. I’ve been watching since 2012 or earlier I think and you sometimes have to remind yourself how much this company has grown. 

The one thing I don’t get when it comes to the RH/AK thing is the fact that people expected others in the office to know? Like even in a tiny company you just have no idea what your coworkers are doing outside the office. I don’t think RT/AH/FH can be blamed at all. Though I do believe this year has been a wake up call on how they handle fans and boundaries. I.e. actually speaking up about the racism in the community. 

I’m very glad they’ve set up a place for fans to bring up any issues they are facing when it comes to cast. I think it’s something that will protect both the cast and the fans. 

[teetlesandnimjas]

Actually FUCK IT IM GOING ON THIS RANT NOW. YOUVE ALL HEARD IT BEFORE BUT I DONT CARE IM MAD

SO 2012 Mikey is an ADHD-coded character. I don’t know if this was on purpose or not, either way it’s extremely obvious in his actions and speech. Quick note, I am also ADHD, so this rant will be a little bias, sorry. I have seen 3 seasons of this show, so I’m not uninformed. I had to stop watching MAINLY BECAUSE OF THIS:

IN THE SERIES NOT ONCE IS IT ADRESSED THAT MIKEY HAS A GENUINELY DIFFICULT TIME CONTROLLING HIMSELF AND HIS BRAIN, AND HES NEVER BEEN HELPED ONCE! HE’S ABUSED AND TREATED LIKE A BURDEN! And I didn’t want to get “mad” or “uncivilized” but you have to admit that MIKEY GETS BEAT UP AND MADE FUN OF JUST FOR WHO HE IS. He doesn’t have a filter, that’s obvious. Yeah, he can be a little brat, but it’s not his fault. You think he wants to be HIT OVER AND OVER AGAIN? He makes a mistake? Smack! He starts talking a lot? Smack! His attention seeking behaviors- more on that later- start to kick in? SMACK! He JUST FUCKING EXISTS AS HIMSELF? SMACK! And the worst part is ITS SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY? THIS IS A JOKE? No this is horrible! It’s- dare I say it- ABUSE! I know siblings roughhouse and playfully banter, but this isnt roughhousing, this is one sided and cruel. Mikey, who can’t control himself and his energy no matter how hard he tries, constantly RUNS AWAY from Raph, Leo, AND MAYBE EVEN DONNIE AT ONE POINT. The worst of it is Raph, yeah, OBVIOSULY. You put an “annoying” filterless teen in a room with a hotheaded asshole, not too good. But that’s still his brother. Raph also isn’t completely evil and horrible, he has genuine anger issues that could be solved with some quick education and a better outlet. BUT YOU’D THINK HE WOULD SPARE SOME KINDNESS FOR HIS F A M I L Y. It gets ridiculous! His solution for everything is HIT MIKEY. Now I don’t want to make assumptions, but one of my issues with my dumb dumb electric meat blob is the self-worth issues. I feel bad for what I say and do, because I can’t help it. Thankfully I have coping mechanisms and my ways of helping myself so I can work on staying quiet when I need to, and not feeling such loathing when I don’t. Yknow who DOESNT know what to do, and isn’t even sure why he’s like this and probably thinks he’s A SCREW UP BECAUSE THERES LITERALLY A WHOLE EPISODE ABOUT THAT? Mikey. AND YKNOW WHO DOESNT HELP? HIS FAMILY. YEAH THEY GREW UP IN THE SEWERS BUT YOUD THINK THE S C I E N T I S T WOULDVE NOTICED. But, no, Donnie verbally berates and belittles him. Leo’s okay, he does chase him around at only one point I can think of, and (albeit a headcanon that Leo’s autistic) he felt that Mikey disrespected something important to him, and yknow what fine as long as you apologize and don’t do it again, yeah whatever. It’s just ONCE. Raph hits Mikey EVERY EPISODE. AND ITS A J O K E??? N O. This genuinely influences young kids, especially young boys who were the target audience of the show, and this can HURT SIBLING RELATIONSHIPS. This normalizes the hitting and the yelling and the abuse. I don’t think siblings should roughhouse at all, and when they do it should be taken seriously and be treated as if two unrealated kids fought. A little fighting is natural, but THE LEVELS THE SHOW GOES TO HURTS. IT HURTS ME. I didn’t grow up with 2012, my parents wanted me to be all girly, but I watched 3 seasons about a year ago. And I hated the treatment of what I saw as a relatable character. Anyways stan Mikey, kill Raph, agree to disagree.

Oh and now because MIKEY ALSO HAS MASSIVE ATTENTION SEEKING BEHAVIORS here’s a mini segmant. I believe he is like this because of things like he wants constant attention and focus on him. He has a generally loud presence and he doesn’t try and hide it. The reason he probably doesn’t mask is because 1. He really can’t, he’s too exhausted to try because at this point nothing helps, and 2. Because he wants attention. And sadly that means negative attention too. A mix of ADHD and constant dismissive and negative behavior to you makes for a FUN RIDE when people aren’t giving you attention. And that’s really unhealthy. This probably stems either from or into self-esteem and anxiety issues. And I don’t want to say it’s HIS FAMILY’S FAULT but he spent 15 (or 16?) in the sewers with ONLY HIS FAMILY. If he needs constant attention and reassurance (and is infantalized which I ALSO HATE) then it’s probably because he didn’t receive enough positive attention when he was younger. In fact people even phrase things like “Attention-Seeking Behavior as a Symptom of Psychological Distress” which considering the show was “angsty” or “dark” I’m surprised they didn’t look into. If the show really wanted to be interesting I think they should’ve kept Mikey as an important character and not just comedic relief.

[elodieunderglass]

Hey Elodie. :) so I was reading your moss post and I had a question: you know those algae lights that they want to put everywhere? How does that work? If the CO2 goes to making biomass of a plant, how is algae so good at making O2 when there isn't a ton of it physically? I mean presumably it is pretty good at it cause afaik that's where the O2 on earth came from to begin with?

(in reference to my general grumpiness about people’s claims that moss sequesters more carbon than is physically possible)

To engage with this post, you’ll first need to know that photosynthetic organisms absorb carbon dioxide and break the molecule apart. Carbon dioxide consists of a carbon atom and two oxygen atoms. These organisms keep the carbon atom and release the two oxygen atoms. This is how plants turn carbon dioxide into oxygen. The carbon atom goes into their biomass. Right now, there is too much carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, caused by the burning of carbon, which reacts with oxygen when burned to form carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This is making the atmosphere too hot. As our economies depend on burning carbon, people do not want to stop doing it. Many people are now interested in “absorbing the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere” in order to survive on the planet. The problem is, as I point out, that the atoms of carbon have to go SOMEWHERE. Carbon dioxide doesn’t just magically turn into oxygen - the C atom is still there. And when plants break CO2 down, they need to do something with the carbon - they use it to grow. The C atom goes to making the biomass of the plant. If you see a product that claims to use plants to suck enormous amounts of CO2 out of the air (I argue) you should look for the biomass that it will produce. If you can’t see where the carbon went, it’s probably not real.

Anyway! Ah! It’s a good question! but there is a ton of algae physically! And it does make biomass! Lots of it! PLANETS FULL OF IT! It’s its best trick. And it grows very quickly, too. The fact that algae still produce a huge chunk of the oxygen we use today is a big clue to the fact that there is Really Quite A Lot of It. Anyone who has ever had an aquarium can attest to how quickly algae can increase its biomass. That’s where the carbon goes! Into the biomass! That’s where the oxygen comes from! It’s discarded as a product of all that growth! There’s a huge amount of it!

I’m just going to dump this whole quote from a relevant paper here:

There are several reasons for the greater biomass yields of algae versus land plants. Generally, algae have higher photosynthetic efficiency than land plants because of greater abilities to capture light and convert it to usable chemical energy (Melis 2009, Weyer et al. 2010). Under ideal growth conditions algae direct most of their energy into cell division (6- to 12-hour cycle), allowing for rapid biomass accumulation. Also, unlike plants, unicellular algae do not partition large amounts of biomass into supportive structures such as stems and roots* that are energetically expensive to produce and often difficult to harvest and process for biofuel production. In addition, algae have carbon-concentrating mechanisms that suppress photorespiration (Spalding 2008, Jansson and Northen 2010). With algae, all the biomass can be harvested at any time of the year, rather than seasonally. In contrast, only a portion of the total biomass of terrestrial crops (corn cob, soybean seed) is harvested once a year

* this means that instead of slowly growing into a more complicated structure, like plants do, algae just doubles and doubles and doubles. FYI, moss is a plant. algae is not. algae can casually double its mass even caring, and that’s where the carbon goes: literally into LITERALLY doubling the biomass, INCREDIBLY quickly. Moss will not. Moss will grow, become more complicated, and eventually flower - all quite slowly, in comparison.

Anyway, here is a picture from the paper, showing the Biomass. you can see exactly where the carbon is going. There is so much carbon being made here, they’re literally turning it into ... oil?

Yeah... oil. Algae fuel is considered to be a reasonable replacement for fossil fuels. (starting link here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel). Algae fuel is used as reliable gimmick in science fiction, as a renewable fuel that spaceships can generate as they go - the handwaving possibilities are endless: ‘ooh, here’s a thing that takes the waste breath of human crew and makes fuel and oxygen out of it. hurray!’

So you may be like, “oh Elodie, but surely burning carbon-based fuels contributes to climate change, because it releases CO2, so uhhhh why would you bother replacing fossil fuels with a slightly fresher version of the same product?”

and I’m like “YEAH I KNOW RIGHT? the argument is that because algae removes the CO2 from the air, and burning the oil releases the same amount of CO2, it’s argued that it’s a carbon-neutral fuel. the carbon goes in, the carbon goes out. The algae puts it into the atmosphere and it takes it back out. it’s always the same carbon.”

WHICH. THE MATH CHECKS OUT, BUT I DON’T LIKE IT. The argument for developing algae fuels is that the math works out as carbon-neutral, and that it reduces reliance on the oil industry and its geopolitics, as every nation on Earth can easily grow and refine their own oil. BUT I STILL DON’T LIKE IT.

Anyway, the trick here is to look for the biomass. In the diagram above, YOU CAN SEE WHERE IT IS. The carbon goes from the carbon dioxide into the algae, where it can be made into carbon-based fuel. The carbon is THERE. it is FOUND. The peer-reviewed, heavily researched industry is so confident in the math, and the carbon, and the physical laws of photosynthesis that algae can genuinely be called a carbon-neutral fuel. The carbon has been AUDITED. the mass is KNOWN.

So what about those “algae lamps that [THEY] want to put everywhere?” I know exactly what you’re talking about. They are glowing street lamp things full of algae and they have the amazing claim of “fixing as much carbon dioxide as 200 trees.”

Those appear to be bullshit. Sorry.

However, on Tumblr, you will find a lot of posts about the algae lamps. I know. I’ve seen them. And I really wanted to believe in them! I may have even reblogged one! But then I just couldn’t find any more evidence about them. And neither could these science bloggers who tried to track down ANY ANSWERS AT ALL in 2012, https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/04/streetlight-powered-algae-actually-possible/1854/ and again in 2015. https://www.zmescience.com/science/biology/the-green-algae-street-lamps-that-suck-up-co2/

The algae were reported on in 2012 and 2013 as a funky startup invention, but apparently, only one lamp was ever made. The inventor, an utterly obscure man known as Pierre Calleja, does not appear to have a scholarly record and his scientific qualifications are a bit murky. A few scientists appeared to have asked, “Since algae grows so quickly, what will you do when they overgrow the container/ block the light?” and “Anyone who has maintained an aquarium know that removing the algae - even if you want algae! is part of maintenance; won’t these require a huge amount of maintenance?” and there was no answer. There was definitely no peer-reviewed research. The claim of “fixing as much carbon as 200 trees” (by generating equivalent biomass) cannot be backed up because all of the actual materials have disappeared from the web. The TED talk he did is gone. The startup has vanished. The website is gone. Considering that it attracted millions of dollars of investments, that’s sad news for stakeholders, but normal for a startup based on an idea easily blocked by the question, “don’t you need to clean it.”

Calleja reappeared in the news in 2017, having left the lamp startup (the article has some explanations - apparently the issue was ‘finance people’) and now he wants to make vegetarian smoked salmon out of algae. https://thefishsite.com/articles/algae-can-spearhead-a-culinary-revolution So I think it’s fair to say that the lamps didn’t work and aren’t going anywhere and have disappointed a lot of people and wasted a lot of money. However, I like his new project better. It’s obvious where the biomass is going. It’s going into the fake meat! Carry on, Pierre!

“They” are not going to put them “everywhere” because there is no secret panel of “Them” who, like, Decide Things. There was one inventor, a few reporters who talked about him, no scientific research, no marketable product was ever created, and now the creator is trying to generate fish. Just because that post has 6 bajillion notes on Tumblr doesn’t mean it’s real.

(It’s a bit awkward because two of the science communicators who reported on the lamps are friends of mine, and I know that they simply reported on it in good faith as an interesting bit of pop news, based on the now-vanished TED talk. The tumblr post in the screencap claims its source as Jess’s 2012 snippet from the Grist, which was just meant to be a cheerful description of a cool Youtube video of Pierre Calleja’s TED talk... which has now vanished from the internet entirely. She wasn’t reporting on research, just pointing out a cool video. But yeah, the ‘‘‘‘‘source’‘‘‘‘‘‘ for the Tumblr post we’ve all seen is ... literally just my friend, mentioning a cool TED talk she saw. in 2012. Which is now gone. Because the startup folded with its tail between its legs. And people are using it as a ‘source’, which I don’t think is fair!)

[mineofilms]

2020… My Life… Everything Else Is Just Blurry…

Where to begin… I have been a type 2 diabetic since 2013. I got diabetes from excessive partying/drinking, originally. I continued to behave like this till June 2020. Granted, I wasn’t going as hard, in general, over the years, but each year and hardship I found myself going back to those old vices more frequently.

When the pandemic struck SWFL my drinking went up about 400%. No joke. I trained 4 days on and drank the other 3 days, hard. I did that from March to late June.

I caught Covid-19 around June 26th. By July 11th I needed to be hospitalized for Diabetic Ketoacidosis (where the body produces excess blood acids; ketones. This occurs when there isn't enough insulin in the body. It can be triggered by infection or other illness.) & Pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas. It happens when digestive enzymes start digesting the pancreas itself.) I was in ICU for 36 hours and in the hospital for 5 days. I lost 21 lbs over that time.

3 days after I got home from the hospital, Macular Edema (blood vessels in the retina burst and bleed into the eyes), set in. That took about a month to heal only for Diabetic Retinopathy (those same blood vessels that burst heal and are inflamed).

Usually requires anti-inflammatory shots into the eye ball and laser surgery to burn away some of the excess scar tissue. These cost thousands of dollars without insurance, which I do not have. I have read that they can heal on their own, but it takes about 8-12 months. I am in month 4.

However, I actually cannot confirm if that statement about them healing on their own is actually true or not. Some notes in journals say yes while other, more creditable sites, say no. One must get treatment.

Now let me be clear that Covid-19 did not cause my Diabetic Ketoacidosis & Pancreatitis. My lack of proper care for my diabetes caused these. I was already in the yellow and when I got Covid-19 it just put me in the RED. I now, at this point, required medical care or I would die. Those are the facts about me getting Covid-19, my Diabetic Ketoacidosis & Pancreatitis…

Flash-Forward to now… I got my blood sugars down to near normal (high) levels. This means my blood sugar is still high, but for me, I used to walk around at 400. 500-600 is diabetic coma. 80-120 is considered normal. I walk around between 130-230, currently, fasted.

I have not had a drink since June 26th. I will never drink again. I can’t.

1) Alcohol has thoroughly ruined my adult life in all sorts of areas besides this. It got me sick to begin with among, other, things.

2) If I drink I could be back in the hospital with Diabetic Ketoacidosis & Pancreatitis, again.

3) I made a deal with GOD. If I have to live through this (I prayed to die that night) that I would never drink again.

What kind of dick lies to GOD lol? A decade ago I would have… I hated everything about the concept of GOD. Now, I have come to terms that if there is or there isn’t; it doesn’t matter. I value me, my beliefs. Why not carry myself with that respect. I do not need to tell or share my beliefs with others. I care not for such things.

I am solely worried about my mental, physical, emotional, sexual and spiritual health.

I did not quit drinking because of addiction issues or any of that business. I made the choice because if I didn’t my pancreas would fail and I would be dead in a few months. That is how bad my pancreas was… I do not see myself as someone that is doing all this for attention. I have barely even made mention of this whole story on my social media. I have told people in direct messages, but I do not post everything that is happening in my life on social media.

Granted this Tumblr account is considered social media, but I do not use it for that purpose. It is strictly for my BLOG entries. I do not follow people on Tumblr. I post, get my URL and share it that way. Its not in your face on Facebook or anything, but one can click the link and go read about the crazy things in my head.

Taking care of my mental, physical, emotional, sexual and spiritual health is a full time job in and of itself. Now, currently I cannot work. I can only drive during the day. I cannot see well enough to drive at night.

I have other medical issues stemming from this and it is quite the laundry list. However, I think I gave you all enough to think about.

I am back in great shape now. Since I quit drinking and got back from the hospital I went from 119 to 163 lbs. I have not been this big since 2012. Right before I believe my Diabetic State started. My strength is coming back with a vengeance too. I am putting up more weight than I have in nearly a decade.

I have had to make serious and big changes to EVERYTHING in my life.

My computer is now changed from dual 22 inch monitors to one 46 inch monitor. I have to make changes like this just to see well enough to do some things on the computer.

I am still very blind. My vision has decent days and some days I cannot see much of anything. I cannot see my phone without a magnifying glass. I just got my eyes looked at several times cause my power keeps shifting and now my current glasses setup does not exactly help much. My computer glasses are ok for this, but my normal bifocals are pretty useless.

However; I do feel like I can write a little bit more now. I have a few blogs I want to write and then go right back into the novel. This might be the only realistic possibility of me being able to work to earn my keep. Normal 9-5, Monday-Friday are out of the question, indefinitely.

Not only am I not well enough for the grind, physically. My mental health is very questionable. I have had issues for years now. I have had about 20 jobs in 15 years. I have done a real number on my mental health over the years. Always trying to do more, work harder than the next person so I can make that “good money” that some always throw in my face. I did the work. I put in the time, but only to be messed with. Yes, I have that sort of mental issue.

One tries to mess with me. Mess with the positive shit I am doing. I lose my head pretty quick. I have repeatedly demonstrated over the course of my life that I have no restraint at all when it comes to that feeling of being seriously fucked with and have them look at you like; “What are you gonna do about it?”

Well that is it… I always do something about it. Even when I know I shouldn’t. It is my worst impulsive trait that I cannot get a handle on. Ever since I was a kid. I wanna say. It started when I was 11 or so.

I have made huge strides in changing my life, my thinking and how I fit into the scheme of things. I have become more an introvert than an extrovert. Even before the pandemic I was going out less and less. Doing things less and less. It got to a point to where I only went out when I could drink and/or the band was playing. I was already becoming less social. So this is nothing overly drastic about that UNLESS you count Facebook activity.

I have not advertised much on my Facebook and for good reasons… I posted about my 6 months of sobriety and the responses I got were all about, pressing on and “the struggle.”

I pulled it down. There was no struggle here. I am not a keep on keepin’ on mannnnnn… Type of Personality… No… I quit drinking so I can live another 10-15, hopefully more, years.  I just went through a friend dying from literally drinking himself to death. I know what people go through with their addiction struggles. I have my own reservations about how I feel about said subject matter.

Needless to say I did not appreciate how people view me on Facebook. I no longer post blogs their either. I post here on tumblr and put a link on my Facebook if anyone wants to read. That is about it.

I know people do not read more than a handful of sentences that ends with a weird hashtag or snapchat handle. I get it. It is also my fault because I have not told the Facebook wall/timeline of my mental and medical conditions and struggles. I reserve those conversations to be personal.

So if you want to know stuff, then let us get personal. Pretty much that simple. I do not do FAKE FRIENDS…

I try to be transparent. In the past it was easy, but now everyone has an opinion that they call facts. I do not know how many people I blocked on Facebook for being so damn ignorant or attention seeking.

I know I do not do attention seeking things. When I write it is with intention to say something. I would say 1600+ words on these subjects merits a little more than “attention seeking” behavior…

Things are looking up. I have done soooooooooo much. With so very little and make it look like I have a lot and that everything is fine. No. God Damnit… Everything is not fine. I am kicking ass trying to make something fine but not everything. Everything will never be FINE… Not ever. However, I can strive for it. I can continue to put in that work and just ignore the dumb shit. Which I am becoming pretty good at. I am still me. I am still blunt. If I rough feathers that is just my way of getting those people away from me.

Goodbye 2020… You will never be forgotten and your mark has definitely been left…

2020… My Life… Everything Else Is Just Blurry… By David-Angelo Mineo Words 1,738  12/30/2020

[dorianthey]

debunking jk rowling’s “research” one statement at a time:

note: I will not be looking at JK Rowling’s anecdotes. I’ll only be pointing out flaws in data and retelling of events.

Image: “For people who don’t know: last December I tweeted my support for Maya Forstater, a tax specialist who’d lost her job for what were deemed ‘transphobic’ tweets. She took her case to an employment tribunal, asking the judge to rule on whether a philosophical belief that sex is determined by biology is protected in law. Judge Tayler ruled that it wasn’t.”

- Judge Tayler was asked to rule on whether a philosophical belief that gender is determined by biology is protected in law, not sex. This is why he ruled against Maya Forstater.

- Maya Forstater was a visiting fellow, meaning her placement wasn’t permanent and her contract was renewed on a year-by-year basis. The company she was working for, the Centre for Global Development (CGD), took issue with her insistence, both on Twitter and in real life, that she refer to transwomen as men and they believed she was fostering a hostile work enviroment. At the end of her contract, the CGD chose not to renew it. Judge Tayler made it clear that Maya Forstater retained her right to freedom of speech but that there were no grounds for her to demand that the CGD renew her contract.

Image: “Months later, I compounded my accidental ‘like’ crime by following Magdalen Berns on Twitter. Magdalen was an immensely brave young feminist and lesbian who was dying of an aggressive brain tumour. I followed her because I wanted to contact her directly, which I succeeded in doing. However, as Magdalen was a great believer in the importance of biological sex, and didn’t believe lesbians should be called bigots for not dating trans women with penises, dots were joined in the heads of twitter trans activists, and the level of social media abuse increased.”

- Magdalen Berns wasn’t just a “brave young feminist” who also held strong views on “the importance of biological sex”, that was her whole thing. Her YouTube channel and Twitter were built around attacking transpeople under the guise of feminism. She even called Blaire White a “he”. That’s how far gone she was. She wasn’t your average “gender critical” feminist.

- Fun fact: Magdalen Berns also believed that the trans rights movement in the UK was the product of lobbying by Jewish billionaires, so take that as you will.

Image: “The fourth is where things start to get truly personal. I’m concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning (returning to their original sex), because they regret taking steps that have, in some cases, altered their bodies irrevocably, and taken away their fertility. Some say they decided to transition after realising they were same-sex attracted, and that transitioning was partly driven by homophobia, either in society or in their families.”

- Detransitioners are a miniscule amount of the population. Only 8% of people who identified as trans detransitioned (trans people only make up close to 1% of people so its actually 0.08% of the total population) and only 0.3% do so after surgery.

Image: “Most people probably aren’t aware – I certainly wasn’t, until I started researching this issue properly – that ten years ago, the majority of people wanting to transition to the opposite sex were male. That ratio has now reversed. The UK has experienced a 4400% increase in girls being referred for transitioning treatment. Autistic girls are hugely overrepresented in their numbers.”

- A 4400% increase? It’s almost as if once trans people have access to gender clinics, they’re going to try and transition. Of course there’s been 4400% increase. It was unbelieveably difficult to get referred for trasitioning treatment before. The numbers were next to none. Now that its accessable, people are taking advantage of their resources.

Image: “The same phenomenon has been seen in the US. In 2018,  American physician and researcher Lisa Littman set out to explore it. In an interview, she said: ‘Parents online were describing a very unusual pattern of transgender-identification where multiple friends and even entire friend groups became transgender-identified at the same time. I would have been remiss had I not considered social contagion and peer influences as potential factors.’”

- Woah, it turns out “entire friend groups” were trans??? It’s almost as if people become friends with people who have similar lived experiences to them. You know how so many LGB kid think they’re the only one who isn’t straight in their friendship group, but then it turns out that the majority of their friends were LGB? It’s the same thing.

- Littman’s paper has been widely discredited for poor data. For one, it doesn’t actually survey trans youth, its surveys parents. On top of that, it surveys parents from biased websites with such charming titles as “4thwavenow”, “transgendertrend” and  “youthtranscriticalprofessionals”. Its bad data, plain and simple. She goes on to talk about how Littman was “subjected to a tsunami of abuse and a concerted campaign to discredit both her and her work”. Yeah, that’s because her work was bad. It should be discredited.

Image: “The argument of many current trans activists is that if you don’t let a gender dysphoric teenager transition, they will kill themselves. In an article explaining why he resigned from the Tavistock (an NHS gender clinic in England) psychiatrist Marcus Evans stated that claims that children will kill themselves if not permitted to transition do not ‘align substantially with any robust data or studies in this area. Nor do they align with the cases I have encountered over decades as a psychotherapist.’”

- I like how she doesn’t refer to a study, she just refers to claims a disgraced psychiatrist made.

- Of course, this is just blatantly wrong. Here’s a link to 51 peer reviewed papers that show that gender transition has a positive effect on the wellbeing of trans youth and 4 with mixed or null results: https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equality/what-does-the-scholarly-research-say-about-the-well-being-of-transgender-people/

- Some studies literally show that parents affirming their child’s gender identity can reduce the chance that they’ll make a suicide attempt in a year from 57% to 4% (http://transpulseproject.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Impacts-of-Strong-Parental-Support-for-Trans-Youth-vFINAL.pdf). Affirmation and support is so important for keeping trans youth here.

Image: “I want to be very clear here: I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people, although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria. Again and again I’ve been told to ‘just meet some trans...”

- The “extensive research” she is referring to is a study that lumped together gender non-conforming (GNC) youth and transgender youth. Wow, cis GNC people exist? Science, you sexy beast, you’ve done it again. Trans people only make up about 1% of the population. Most GNC youth are just going to be GNC, not trans. It all pans out.

- The big study this all stems from also considered all the people who did not respond to the follow-up call (30% of participants) as “desisters”. It’s not good science.

- Something else that I need to say is that not all people who are referred with gender dysphoria in their youth transition then. That’s why puberty blockers exist, so kids can have more time to think about their gender before getting bad dysphoria when they start puberty. Blockers are completely reversible too, by the way. Things start moving again once you stop taking them.

The rest of her piece is largely anecdotal and I will not be “critiquing” her past dealing with abuse and assault. While I can understand people cussing her out on Twitter, I draw the line firmly before trivialising the trauma this woman deals with and thus, I will no longer comment. That being said, keep in mind that not everyone who comments on her anecodotes is attacking her or dismissing her issues.

Here it is. Do what you will :)

[wellesleyunderground]

[TW: Suicide] A WU Conversation on Suicidal Ideation - Part I

According to a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report, suicide is the second leading cause of death in the United States among those ages 10 - 34. While the increasing suicide rate nationwide has been reported, there is also a population of people who have experienced thoughts of suicide or suicidal ideation (SI) but perhaps haven’t necessarily acted on those thoughts. It can often be isolating or uncomfortable for those who experience SI to broach this topic with family or friends due to the stigma surrounding these types of thoughts but also possibly due to feelings of fear or shame. Wellesley Underground would like to tackle this topic head on and start to have conversations about what it is like to be a person who has had or continues to have thoughts of suicide. We reached out to the Wellesley community with a series of questions and are sharing these alum experiences with the hopes that others may feel less ‘not normal’ in hearing from their W siblings who have been in a similar place. Responses included members in classes ranging from 1994 to 2017 with their current industries including academic research, non-profit administration, higher education and law among many others. 

Here is part one in our two-part series. 

How did you first realize that the thoughts you were having constituted suicidal ideation? What age were you approximately?

“19 - I explicitly and specifically planned the least inconvenient death for others to manage.” L, Class of 1996

“Somewhere in my 20s. It's hard to say because it was so much of my thought process.” Anon, Class of 2000

“27. I was sitting in a mall parking lot; I had just finished some last minute Christmas shopping. I burst into tears because I realized I couldn’t drive home. If I did, there was a real chance I would drive my car off the highway and into a tree. I guess I had been ruminating on this strategy in the back of my mind for a while. And suddenly it burst through all the layers of my consciousness. I was very aware of it as a real option, and I felt capable of it, and I also really, really *wanted* to do it. But I also didn’t want to do it, so I just sat in my car. I felt like it would be really alarming/cruel/dramatic/ridiculous to call a loved one to help— and say what? Hey, I know this is out of the blue, but can you come pick me up so I don’t kill myself? So I just sat there, maybe for an hour, until the urge had softened a bit.” D, Class of 2012

“16 or 17 years old” Anon, Class of 2014

“I knew I wanted to die at an early age. Suicidal ideation? That terminology didn't exist at the time.” Anon, Class of 1994

“I remember reading somewhere online about suicide ideation being different from being suicidal. Almost immediately I thought to myself, I think that's what I'm doing. This was last year, I was 24.” Anon, Class of 2017

“I was in 5th grade when I first starting thinking about suicide. I was on the playground thinking about how I would kill myself and I even verbalized it to some kids-- I remember thinking that drinking perfume would kill me and I planned on doing that and even told some kids.” Anon, Class of 2008

How would you describe your experience in terms of having passive versus active suicidal ideation (or both)?

“I would say I have fallen on the passive side of SI for the better part of 20 years of so. It felt more active about 2 years ago after I experienced a traumatic event but for the most part I have sort of hovered in the passive "I'm not really attached to being alive" space.” CH, Class of 2009

“I have attempted suicide once about 6 years ago and have thought about it on and off for many years.” Anon, Class of 2014

“I’ve never been actively suicidal. I’ve never had a plan, *and* been like “Ok sis, today is the day! Let’s do this!” For at least the past four years, I’ve existed somewhere on a passive spectrum that goes from “I really wish to not be alive, and I know how I would make that happen if I ever decide to” to being someone who has no plan but who does daydream like “What if I had a freak accident today and died? That would be fine.” to being someone who is generally cool with being alive, but who takes solace in the fact that one day I won’t be.” D, Class of 2012 

“Most of my experiences have been with passive suicidal ideation. Recently, I went through a period of about a month where I dealt with active suicidal ideation.” Anon, Class of 2017

“I have had both. Usually when its active, its very painful and something has triggered an extreme response-- when i was in college it was getting a bad grade, having a bad fight with someone I love. I feel a lot of shame and doubt myself (am I being dramatic, am i trying to get attention) things of that nature. My depression is very much tied to my period -- in the days right before my period I tend to have suicidal ideation. If I haven't been taking my medication, if something upsetting has happened, if I've had too much alcohol, this combination can lead to active ideation. Otherwise, on a monthly basis I have passive suicidal ideation where I think perhaps everything would be better if I was gone.” Anon, Class of 2008

What’s going on? In your head, in your life? 

“This was before my first intensive therapy and part of what prompted it. I was in grad school, and it was so disappointing after Wellesley. I was depressed and lonely. I had moved to a new city for my grad program.” Anon, Class of 2000

“At different times in life, it differs. Some of it was an intense desire to be with others who had died, to not have to continue with the pain in daily life. If I could die without causing pain to others, I would.” Anon, Class of 1994

“I feel most suicidal when i feel lonely.” Anon, Class of 2014

“I'm 33 and really am fighting against this narrative in my head that says where I am, who I am is not good enough - that I should be prettier or more charismatic, that I should be partnered or have a graduate degree or should have moved out of my hometown or have more stamps in my passport. I know rationally that I have experienced a lot of trauma that has played a part in where I am currently in life but it's hard to quiet that voice that can't accept that reality and also acknowledge what I have been able to accomplish.” CH, Class of 2009

“The first ones were triggered by emotional loss. More recent ones stem from exhaustion and depression.” L, Class of 1996 

“I am currently a graduate student getting a PhD in biology. I am still dealing with anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation, but these issues have become much less intrusive on my life. I currently have stable groups of friends and a significant other who give me a lot of support when things get hard.” Anon, Class of 2017

In thinking about your experience with SI as well as your feelings about yourself and your life overall, what factors or life events do you think contributed to or exacerbated your suicidal ideation?

“At the top of the list is just brain chemistry. I have severe PMDD. My normal current of slight melancholy sometimes morphs into suicidal ideation in the 7-10 days before my period. When I reflect on my most serious phase of suicidal ideation to date, environmental factors definitely contributed. I had a lot going on. I was navigating one very unhealthy romantic relationship, and dealing with the deeply painful end of another. I was applying to grad school. I was in a toxic living situation. Donald Trump had just been elected president. One of my close friendships was under strain. And I had decided to “take a break” from my organizing community, which was one of my most important sources of social support, at probably the exact wrong time.” D, Class of 2012

“Romantic relationships ending, overwhelming nature of parenting and working full time, underlying untreated depression and anxiety.” L, Class of 1996 

“Isolation and people judging me for my mental health exacerbated my suicidal ideation.” Anon, Class of 2014

“Lack of a local support network, loneliness, isolation, emotional abuse from childhood.” Anon, Class of 2000

“I don't have a strong sense of self worth and I tend to be highly critical of myself. Prior to college, I also didn't have any very strong relationships. I am not emotionally close/open with my parents or siblings and I didn't have strong friendships. These things exacerbate(d) my suicidal ideation because I can convince myself that I wouldn't be missed.” Anon, Class of 2017

“Family dysfunction, multiple traumas, not feeling loved or valued, being financially responsible for adult family members, sacrificing my goals/dreams due to family obligations.” CH, Class of 2009

“My personal experiences with suicide (in two years a close family friend, a teammate in college, and my best friend's college friend committed suicide), years of mounting depression.” Anon, Class of 2017

____________________

If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts, here are some resources: 

National Institute of Mental Health 

Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC)

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP)

Canadian Mental Health Association 

International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP)

[anneapocalypse]

Anne watches MCU: Captain America through Age of Ultron

My trek through the Marvel Cinematic Universe has continued but I really slacked off on making posts about it after the first, uh, three, so here's a catch-up post!

And as a note, I am watching the films in release order, but for simplicity's sake I'm grouping some origins and sequels together here.

Spoilers for everything through Ultron, as well as some mentions of Civil War and Captain Marvel.

Crossposted from dreamwidth.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) & The Winter Soldier (2014)

Captain America to me marks a turning point in the MCU, the moment when these films reach a level of sincerity and groundedness that will become a standard in superhero films. And as such, the Captain America series is one of my favorites within the Marvel universe. World War II has also long been an interest of mine, so it's no surprise that I enjoyed the first film so much.

And when Steve reawakens in the modern day and becomes one of the Avengers, carrying on the ideals that made him who he is, I love that too. I would say Winter Soldier is as much an Avengers movie as it is a Captain America movie (the same has been said of Civil War) because once Cap enters the present day, you can't really have Cap without the Avengers.

In the hindsight of having recently seen Civil War, think this is partly because Steve, more than any other Avenger, is defined by his relationships to other people. His friendships, his rivalries, his loyalties—these are what make Steve Rogers who he is, both in the past and in the present. Steve's whole life is shaped by his friendship with Bucky Barnes. His first thought upon waking up in another time is not of the world he has lost but the people he has lost. And his new friendship with Sam Wilson is easily one of the most delightful moments in The Winter Soldier.

I will say that my primary disappointment with The Winter Soldier was that it wasn't really an origin story for Bucky Barnes. There is not a lot of character development for Bucky himself—it is still very much Steve's story. But the focus is again on Steve's relationship with his old friend, and his refusal to give up on Bucky ultimately saves them both.

And I think that focus on relationships is also what makes Captain America a favorite for me.

The Avengers (2012)

I really wish I had written about this movie when I first watched it, because my memory of it is now very much colored by having seen Age of Ultron and Civil War since. Attempting to set that aside, I did enjoy this movie when I watched it, though not quite as much as I enjoyed Captain America.

The Avengers is absolutely not a standalone film. This is definitely the point at which the MCU truly becomes a shared universe, and the origin stories we've had so far are really not optional for understanding these character dynamics.

The tension between Steve and Tony does make sense, both for the characters themselves and as a kind of meta commentary on the evolution of the Marvel universe: Tony Stark's layers of defensive irony set against Steve Rogers' straightforward sincerity.

There are other character beats that work for me in this movie as well. We get the best character development for Natasha, given that she doesn't get her own movie. (CRIMINAL.) That she successfully plays Loki, out-tricks the Trickster, is a truly beautiful moment. Ruffalo's Bruce Banner establishes pretty clearly that he is not Ed Norton's Bruce Banner. And Tony/Pepper manages to grow on me a little bit.

Loki as a villain is... okay. I think it's pretty clear by the end that his plan was never really about dominating Earth, but about causing chaos—which he does, pretty successfully, and in the hindsight of Civil War, said chaos has some far-reaching effects. That part works for me. On the flip side, I really hate mind-control MacGuffins; I think they're a lazy means of getting characters to do whatever the plot requires without having to justify the characterization in any way or deal with the aftereffects, and in my opinion Marvel overuses this trope to death.

Hawkeye as a character is absolutely wasted in this movie, as we have no idea who he is before he is controlled by space magic.

This ties into a larger issue with the Avengers series that, again, feels much more prominent after seeing Civil War: the Avengers aren't a team. Not really. They're a group of solo superheroes attempting to work together. This would be fine for a first Avengers film if the plot were about building them from a group of loners into a real team. But this film isn't about that. It's about dividing them before we've really seen them united. We are told, and not shown, that Natasha and Clint are close friends; beyond that, who on this supposed team actually have a reason to care about one another? And by the end, what has this film really accomplished in terms of building a rapport and making the Avengers feel like a team?

I think the fact that they end the film sitting around a table eating shawarma in stone cold silence says it all.

Iron Man 3 (2013)

The third Iron Man movie begins to bring Tony Stark a little more in line tonally with the other Avengers. Tony loses none of his distinctive character, but his experiences are treated more seriously in this film, with Tony suffering from PTSD. It also explores how the events of Thor and The Avengers have challenged Tony's arrogance as a former lone-wolf superhero driven by technology and his own extreme wealth.

By this movie I'm pretty well over Tony/Pepper. Pepper loves Tony, she cares about him—but she never seems happy with him, only constantly stressed, and as a viewer who loves Pepper, it's honestly not fun to watch. This is something I think Nolan's Batman series better understood; there's a reason Rachel doesn't wait for Bruce. The genius billionaire superhero is a terrible boyfriend. Marvel, unfortunately, doesn't really want to acknowledge that. For Pepper to be happy with Tony, Tony needs to change, and Marvel doesn't really want to change Tony. For Pepper to leave Tony means the hero doesn't get the girl, and Marvel doesn't want that either. So we're left with this tiring, unsatisfying relationship, and I'm super over it.

To add insult to injury, Pepper gets superpowers and doesn't even get to keep them.

The MCU has a Women Problem, and it's really, really obvious in this film. I do like parts of it very much; it's undeniably enjoyable to watch, and I like a lot of what it does with Tony. But it's also representative of some of the cracks in the Marvel fresco as a whole.

Thor: The Dark World (2013)

Darcy is the most fun character in the Thor movies at this point, and to be honest I kinda like her more than Jane.

The Dark World is another fish-out-of-water story, only this time it's Jane that's the fish. I didn't hate this movie, but it didn't make a huge impression on me, as evidenced by the fact that I can't find any notes for it. :P I enjoyed the stinger of Loki being alive at the end (I knew he was going to be, but it was still fun to watch), and I was pissed they killed Frigga (one of my favorite characters in the Odin family).

And once again, we have a female character infused with a force of tremendous power and she isn't even allowed to keep it. Are we noticing a pattern here, whereby with men, superpowers are celebrated no matter what kind of horror they went through to get them or even how much they hate themselves for having them (hello, Bruce Banner), but for women, superpowers are a horrible curse they need to be rescued from?

Yeah, Marvel has a women problem. NEXT!

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) & Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (2017)

Along with Captain America, Guardians is tied for my favorite series within the MCU. It is unapologetically fun, yet still sincere in its own way, striking a fresh and unique tone for the MCU.

These two movies are excellent and in my opinion, do a much better job of showing a band of loners becoming a team and building a rapport and learning to trust one another than Avengers did.

There is no character among the Guardians I don't love, and the restraint with which Quill and Gamora's relationship is handled (in that they build a friendship, rather than making Gamora Peter's prize for becoming the hero) is damn refreshing. Drax is simultaneously hilarious and sincere—in fact his humor comes from his innate sincerity. Rocket Raccoon exemplifies the kind of insecurities all the characters must overcome to work together. And both Gamora and Peter show self-reflection and growth in the second film, Peter by facing down his own ego, Gamora by acknowledging what her sister Nebula went through without denying her own suffering.

These films, especially 2, are all about relationships, including complicated and troubled relationships, and that's probably why I love them.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Age of Ultron was a weird watch for me.

There were things I liked about it a lot, Natasha's relationship with the Hulk and Clint finally getting some long-overdue character development especially. And yet I came away from this movie feeling more tired than anything else. There were some good character moments, but the story did nothing for me.

Most of all, though, I think my exhaustion stems from how deeply formulaic the Marvel films have become at this point. They're just really, really predictable. I'm already tired of AI-centric plots not thinking of anything more creative to do with their premise than "It tries to wipe out humanity/take over the world I guess." This story feels utterly phoned in.

And even in terms of relationships, this film doesn't really hold up. For one thing, the whole setup of the film is the continued tension between the Avengers, most prominently Steve and Tony, which has never really been resolved. Tony going rogue and activating Ultron isn't so much a betrayal of an established trust as it is simply highlighting the fact that there isn't any.

Meanwhile, Natasha and Bruce are bungled... badly. Much has been said about the conversation in which Natasha seems to be saying that being infertile makes her a monster. A generous reading can attribute this to bad dialogue, appearing to frame the "monster" remark around Natasha's infertility when she is meant to be remarking on the fact that her greatest strength is as a highly efficient killer. But in light of Marvel's Women Problem, that reading really isn't any better. In some ways it's just as bad or worse, as it once again frames power in a woman as a curse rather than a gift. Either way, it's not really a valid comparison to Bruce's specific angst, which is unique to him: he is possessed by a power he not only never wanted, but cannot control.

(No wonder people are confused when Carol Danvers doesn't have to be brutalized to become powerful, or hate herself for being so. It breaks the rules. And thank the gods for it.)

One bright spot in this film is the introduction of Wanda Maximoff, the most powerful heroine we've yet seen in the MCU. Vision, by contrast, feels like a fairly pointless character to me. I feel like everything he did could've been done by someone else, and he's only here because he's in the comics.

I’ve also watched both Ant-Man and Civil War this week, and took copious notes this time, so expect posts for those films soon.

[emritcheson]

Is Mortimer Beckett and The Book of Gold Really That Bad?

(Full disclosure: this post contains mild spoilers for discussion’s sake.)

So I am a big fan of the Delicious series and the many spin-offs that have launched from its universe, now formally known as GameHouse Original Stories.  Yes, they sometimes seem like they’re hyper-marketed at that Hallmark Channel crowd, but they are the cream of the crop of modern casual games, I promise.  That said, not every game that comes out of GameHouse Studios is a masterpiece.  But just because it’s not a masterpiece doesn’t mean there isn’t good to be found or fun to be had.

Enter Mortimer Beckett and The Book of Gold, released in 2017.  For those unaware, Mortimer Beckett was not originally a GameHouse IP, instead starring in his own series of hidden object games developed by Paprikari from 2007 to 2012.  I played the first in the series, Secrets of Spooky Manor, and dabbled with others, but I am by no means an aficionado on Mortimer Beckett lore.  Actually, I’m not big into the hidden object genre period.  I can tell you, though, that this game feels very different to the traditional Mortimer Beckett series.  Paprikari still worked as the developer for Book of Gold, but the overall style and flavor is extremely influenced by GameHouse.

I can only assume GameHouse acquired permission to use Mortimer’s character around the same time they acquired Sally from GamesCafe’s Sally’s Salon series.  These were two fairly well-known faces in casual gaming for many years, and for those characters to suddenly be picked up by a new company and breathed new life was a strange move to witness.

Not to say it was a bad one.  I was an am a dedicated Sally fan and Sally’s Salon - Beauty Secrets blew my expectations out of the water.

Book of Gold on the other hand...well, that’s why we’re here.

Before I even played the game, the first things I noticed were the consistently negative ratings it received across distributing websites.  Now all things considered, I wasn’t expecting perfection, but these scores were abysmally low.  I thought, “it can’t be as bad as that, right?”

And after playing through the whole thing in one night, I will proudly go on record to say that this game does not deserve these low ratings.

Buuut it’s not perfect, either.

So let’s talk.

First, the elephant in the room - the gameplay itself.  As previously stated, Mortimer Beckett is a hidden object series.  GameHouse is best known for their time management games that occasionally have hidden object mini games sprinkled through the levels.  Mini games and main gameplay mechanics are two very different things, mind you.

That said, I think the translation of the gameplay went very well.  Better than I was expecting, at least.  You’re given a scene in which you must find pieces of different objects that will help you in your current situation.  Then, once those pieces are put together, you can use those objects in the scene to complete small puzzles.  Even with my limited hidden object experience, I can tell that this style of finding pieces of things is quite unique.  

In fact, this was my biggest complaint back in Secrets of Spooky Manor: the pieces that some objects broke into seemed arbitrary and unnatural, making it harder to find what I was looking for.  In Book of Gold, the objects are broken up where they naturally have different “sections” (for example, if you’re looking for a screwdriver, it would be in two separate pieces: the handle and the bit) and gameplay is smoother as a result.

There are also three different kinds of challenge levels throughout the game in which you have to complete certain tasks within a time limit.  These provide a nice sprinkle of adrenaline rush as the main levels have no time limit and you’re welcome to stare at and contemplate them as long as you wish.  So all in all, the gameplay is pretty solid.

Let’s discuss the plot.  Mortimer Beckett moves to Snuggford after inheriting a museum from his Uncle Jerome (a staple character of the series until now, I understand).  In his last letter, Uncle Jerome mentions something called the Book of Gold which apparently possesses mystical qualities, and warns Mortimer to keep it safe.

Even as someone with very little preexisting attachment to this character, I found Mortimer very charming and enjoyable, in that “I don’t really know what I’m doing but I’m going to make the best of it anyway, and probably embarrass myself in the process” kind of way.  It was also refreshing simply to play as a guy, as GameHouse Original Stories pretty much exclusively feature women protagonists.

Speaking of which, while this is happening, Kate O’Malley (Delicious Emily’s sister-in-law) is having something of a life crisis and desperately looking for some kind of adventure to get her out of her “boring” hometown.

This is good for two reasons.  One: Kate is a character seen very little of in the Delicious series.  Other than she’s Patrick’s sister and she used to work as a perfume salesgirl, we didn’t know much about her until Book of Gold.  The writers really gave her some agency this time around, where previously she felt kind of cardboard.  And two: Snuggford is often viewed as a very idyllic small town with emphasis on supporting local businesses and fostering community with others.  It’s oddly refreshing to see a protagonist character have a negative view of this place.

Anyway, the two run into each other, shenanigans ensue, and an adventure does indeed begin.

Now if GameHouse is known for anything besides time management gameplay, it’s their heterosexual romantic subplots.  And as much as I was hoping for a platonic partnership this time around, I have to say I ended up liking Kate and Mortimer more than I expected.  It is a bit tropey and shoved down your throat at times, but I think their personalities play off each other quite nicely - Mortimer the somewhat bumbling scholar and Kate the confident risk-taker.  In the end I was genuinely rooting for them.

The story itself as a whole is...fine.  Not amazing, not terrible, but fine.  It has good intentions but, as I said, falls into tropes and shenanigans rather than raising the stakes.  And when the stakes are raised, it fails to explain why and generally lacks urgency.

The best parts of the story in my opinion are the more character-driven scenes.  Stemming from Kate’s desire for adventure, there is an underlying emotional theme about whether or not you’re satisfied with your life and where you are in it.  I think this is handled better than the immediate plot, but could still use some tweaks.  Overall, the writing has the same wonkiness I would expect from any story that hasn’t truly found its groove yet, but it does enough to keep you intrigued.

I absolutely cannot knock GameHouse for trying to do something new, especially in this cash cow of a universe they’ve built for themselves.  They’ve been using basically the same formula for the past ten years or so, and it makes sense that they would want to branch out into other things while still attracting their core audience.

Unfortunately, this game has some very apparent growing pains.

My biggest issue without a doubt is the art.  It’s inconsistent, there’s no other word for it.  Some sprites are completely 2-D, others are completely rendered in 3-D.  Sometimes it’s 2.5-D.  Sometimes it’s 2-D heads stitched onto 3-D bodies.  Some characters look very disproportionate when standing next to others.  Not to mention a lot of reused assets from other games.  I can’t show it for spoiler reasons, but there is a scene near the very end of the game where the character cutting-and-pasting is so painfully obvious and so sloppily done that I almost had to close my computer and take a lap around the house to compose myself.

Also, this game has far less music than I expected.  Despite a swingin’ noir-style theme song written by Adam Gubman, most cutscenes carry out with only generic background white noise for company.  And let me tell you, when a dramatic scene is going down and the only thing you can hear is the muffled voice of an airport intercom?  It feels wrong.  And also lends to that lack of urgency I mentioned earlier.

And as much as I hate to, we have to talk about the “exotic” themes.

For the most part, I would describe GameHouse as having “lukewarm sensitivity” to cultures that are not North American or European.  They have good intentions and for the most part their characters are pretty well rounded, but their research still leaves a little bit to be desired.  I think the Inuit tribe from Delicious - Emily’s Hopes and Fears is the best example of what I’m talking about.

However, I would not put Book of Gold in that same sensitivity tier.  During the third chapter, Mortimer and Kate travel to South America (it’s never specifically stated but since Machu Picchu is clearly visible in one of the scenes, it’s pretty safe to say they’re in Peru) and end up getting lost in the jungle.  Kate is more or less kidnapped by a group of natives, whose leader speaks what can only be described as “cave man English” and invites her to join his harem.  When she refuses, he threatens to kill her if she doesn’t complete the puzzles set before her.  Then, when Kate manages to escape, the tribe leader leans over to one of his guards and says, “Those tourists are so gullible,” indicated that it was all an act.  I still have no idea what to think about this entire section.

There’s also a great deal of Arabian influence in the second half of the game, as the main villain claims to be a sheikh, but I would say that it’s more there for visual interest than anything else.  The side characters you meet in this arc aren’t particularly memorable, and aside from avoiding a sandstorm and racing camels at one point, the desert setting is just kind of...there.  It’s not as bad as it could have been, but it certainly wasn’t doing the game as a whole many favors, either.

To wrap this up with a bow, if you disliked this game simply because it was different and not the “signature GameHouse experience” you’ve come to expect, I feel sorry for you.  If you disliked this game because it doesn’t feel as polished as it could have been and the graphics are a bit of a train wreck?  Yeah, I get you.  But I still found this game enjoyable despite its flaws.  And if you’ve been avoiding this game because the bad ratings scared you off, pull on your big girl panties and manage your expectations.

I really hope that GameHouse sees Book of Gold as a learning experience and not a failure, because I think there’s some genuine potential here.  With some tweaks and polish (and clearer art direction), I would happily accept another game like this.

[hackedmotionsensors]

Im not updated enough w the ships but did stony get wincested? I mean like. In the SPN fandom the biggest ship if not only at first was wincest, and then a new ship appeared called destiel and totally overpowered it? Thered be the common drama of ship wars but i wanted to know if thats what happened?

lol I guess!?!?! Kind of. I don’t think it was so much of an overpowering as it was a massive butting of heads. SteveTony is still a very big ship but Stucky is also a very popular ship though fairly new since most of it stems only from MCU. Kind of different than a ship encompassing only a TV show.

So here’s what happened. The full damned story. Probably fft. its gonna be a long one folks so strap in. This isn’t really a call out but if you were curious as to why there’s so much damned fighting in the marvel fandom over really dumb shit this is an unbiased as possible explanation. Beware. I think the whole thing is dumb but I got some extra time right now.

Back in 2006 and 2007 Marvel Comics decided to have an event. You probably heard about it and they made a big movie about it. Civil War. Civil War was promoted as being a huge rift that cut down through the lines of the Marvel 616 Universe. Do you register and be accounted for your actions as a super human, or do you protect the privacy of yourself and your loved ones in an effort to fight without the limitations of government and the fear you might be policed and punished just for having powers AND put your family at risk of Supervillains (many who are tech geniuses) accessing your information and attacking your loved ones.

That was the premise. What it ended up being was a huge divorce between Steve and Tony. Like LEGIT it read as this HUGE divorce. They’ve fought many times before but they always sort of end up back together as buds. Now as fandom we took that full stop as they are clearly in love. They are divorced.

And now Steve is dead. LETS FIX IT. So since 2006-2007 a huge wave of new fans started writing fanfic. Started doing fanart. We got horny Commander Rogers when Steve eventually came back. Tony wiped his brain and we got fics from that. Steve creates his own team and refuses to give Thor and Tony to Luke to use as Avengers.

Then in 2008 Iron Man 1 is released. A bit later Captain America is released. Having known about the comics before and the rift between the two this is where yours truly gets involved. *Smash bros voice LYDIA HAS ENTERED THE HORNY GAME* 

Captain America being released is also I believe the start of Steve/Bucky. Because in this universe Bucky isn’t a small child/teenager (A Robin to Cap’s Batman) so its less gross. (All things being honest I definitely drew bottom steve with young Bucky hohoho ho)

So then in 2012 Avenger 1 is released. And there’s a fresh wave of MCU fans. A lot came over from being 616/Ultimates fans but a lot were brand spanking new fans. 

And then Winter Soldier was released. And it was a big gay romance between Cap and Bucky and the power of LOOVE!!!! AND FRIENDSHIPP!!!!!! Like in the WInter Soldier comics Steve has to use a cosmic cube to free Bucky’s mind and in the movie all it took was Steve Can-do attitude and his pure kokoro.  Its great.

However. This is when TENSIONS RISE. Stucky being a relatively new ship and SteveTony being a fairly old ship have one common denominator and that’s Steve. And its the typical well this ship is better than that ship. This ship is older than that ship. This ship has more MEANING than that ship. This ship is PROBLEMATIC. And its been going on to this day. It escalated again when Civil War came out. Becaus Civil War is supposed to be a Steve movie but reads as an Avengers movie. But the big point of the movie is like in the comics the splitting of Steve and Tony. A big damned divorce. Now is that divorce a divorce because they can’t find a common ground, or is it that Steve’s love for Bucky over-rides his rational thought and makes him fairly hypocritical because well shit he just loves Bucky so much. He says it to Wanda “Rumlow said Bucky and I...”

It was a movie just asking for shipping wars to happen.

So that’s WHERE this stems from. But here’s the issue. I have no doubt there are plenty of SteveTony fans causing just as much shit as anyone else. But at least from my experience, the Stucky fans have been far and wide more aggressive in harassing artists, even artists who don’t speak English as a first language, harassing the actors, harassing the comic book writers and artists who don’t have anything to do with movies, claiming that they’re homophobic for wanting to have a story with Bucky (who is still in love with Natasha [and that’s a whole other ship war there]) team up with Hawkeye (who is also still mostly in love with Natasha) to hunt down Natasha. When the author said “Hey this story doesn’t have gay people in it unfortunately but here are a list of comics that have gay characters in it” they ignored them and continued saying they were being transphobic. Because the person happened to be a trans man and disagreeing with them was transphobia. Which had nothing to do with what had happened at all. They’re the same fans that in person and over radio harass Sebastian Stan so much that he has to hide who he’s dating. 

They’re the same types of fans who call me a hateful cunt (which..probably true lbr) but I haven’t done anything recently. They’re the types of fans who come up to me at a con and whisper “Are you a stucky or a stony fan” And I (Because I was raised right) tell them “Oh I like both but I have a preference for Stony”. And then the person walks away. I’ve had friends tell me of their own horror stories at artist alleys where Stucky fans will open a book (clearly labeled as stevetony) go “UGH GROSS” and then put it down.

They’re the types of fans who refuse to watch an Iron Man movie but will say things like “I wish Tony would get captured and tortured by Hydra so he would know what Bucky felt like” (Which...omg that’s literally the first 20 minutes of the first iron man and the start of the MCU my dude)

They’ve attacked Thorki (and other ships and don’t get me wrong I get why people would complain about Thorki. Thorki;s generally know and don’t care about those complaints)

They’ve made entire articles on CBR, on Polygon on other internet news pages, as editors they’ve had some feisty tweets that causes some fans to worry that storylines they were enjoying (ex: Bucky/Natasha’s relationship) will get lost and destroyed in favor of a ship.

Now generally. This isn’t anything unusual. These fans exist in every fandom. And I have Stucky friends, (My BFF, one of my coworkers) and we get along just fine. Because we’re old ass ladies who realize that a ship doesn’t define our life. I think Stucky has some of the most jaw droppingly beautiful artwork this fandom has produced.

They just unfortunately have a lot of bad apples that seem to have only time to hassle other people and try to tear down other fans and have the loudest voices.

Also I’m 1000000% not saying that SteveTony fans probably don’t start as much shit as the rest but from my experience and from what I’ve seen SteveTony fans only ever bitch about Stuckys after the fact. After they’ve been hassled or saw something that was really rude or very non-canon complaints (if that last bit makes sense)

Oddly enough it kind of died down a little with the MCU killing half of the cast including Bucky (he’ll be fine I’m sure). But occassionally someone gets a lot of built up energy and wants to come into my ask box and tell me that I’m an elitist shipper.

PERSONALLY. I like to think of SteveTony and Stucky as Coke and Pepsi. You’re going to have a preference for one or the other. And you’re either gonna tell the waiter “I’d rather have a water” instead of the opposite one that you like, just agree and order what they have bc honestly who cares its basically the same or you’re going to be rude to the waiter, complain the entire time, leave a bad review on yelp and not tip him.

[initiare]

BASICS:

Name: Manon, but I’ve gone by the alias of Sae on the internet since I was about 12 or 13. It’s really stuck and caught on so much over the years that it’s as commonly used as Manon is, if not more (both online and offline). Age: 29.  Pronouns: She/her.  Sexuality: Hetero. Zodiac sign: Cancer.  Taken or single: Single.

Four Things About This Blog:

1. Still unsure of how this worked exactly, but I’d decided to make a blog for Jace before I’d ever read (or seen) anything about him directly. A friend of mine had been in the fandom and I’d heard about him through her, enough that I’d peeked at a few basic bits on the wiki. And then one morning I woke up with this intense yet unexplainable urge to make him, this character that I knew next to nothing about. I read the first three books within a week and then I decided to launch him. I’ve never had a muse arise to the occasion quite in this manner, but then again, isn't this Jace we’re talking about? Nothing about him follows the status quo.

2. If I’d picked up the books without ever having heard anything about any character in specific prior to reading, I would’ve still likely found myself drawn to Jace’s character— but I would’ve made a blog for Valentine instead. They both appeal to me for different reasons, but ultimately, I’m very glad that I made Jace and I don’t regret not having made a blog for Valentine for a single instant.

3. I’m an exceedingly opinionated person with very set norms/values and they definitely make their appearance within my OOC posts, and they’re not always popular opinions ‘round these here Tumblr parts by any means. However, I don’t let them influence my perspective when it comes to writing for Jace (or any of my muses). Of course, I may recognize some or many aspects, but I make it an effort and personal challenge to look at everything from as many angles as I can as to obtain the widest picture of any character’s behavior or any situation.

4. Despite them not being in full view as they used to be, my tags have been described as being the ‘arteries’ of my blog(s) and I couldn't possibly agree more. If you don’t read them, you’re easily missing out on 80/90% of my meta’ing. My posts tend to have some coherency to them, some logic, but in my tags you find my incoherency and that’s my heart and my passion. That’s where I’m most alive.

Three Mun Facts:

1. I recognize that I’m incredibly headstrong and it’s both my gift and curse. While it’s gotten me in the occasional trouble because I realize that I’m being too stubborn a bit too late, there have been and are a lot of moments where I’ve used it to my advantage and I profit from it immensely in numerous ways. So while I could condemn it as a flaw, it very much hits the extremes on both ends of the spectrum.

2. I’ve got fire for a heart, I’m not scared of the dark; you’ve never seen it look so easy. Okay, so two days ago, I had a day of massive cleaning. This always goes hand in hand with music playing, I sing and dance (of which I can only successfully do the latter). Youtube went through related videos, it somehow got to One Direction. I used to unfairly hate them on principle because I heard them everywhere and everyone loved them; in the same light, Harry Styles was always the one I disliked the most because he was everyone’s favorite. Since that day, I’ve listened to their non-Zayn stuff a fair bit and it’s catchy, I guess I’m a very late fan. All good. Nobody can drag me doooowwwwn.

3. A lot of my thick skin stems from being able to properly put the right weight to people’s words. And I'm able to do that because I value’s people’s actions infinitely more than I do their words. It’s so very easy to say or type ‘yes’ or ‘no’, but if your actions don’t reflect your state of mind or your statements, then I lose respect. We’re all guilty of falling short of this every now and again, myself included; we’re all human after all, but once or twice doesn’t equal constantly.

EXPERIENCE:

How’d you start: Tumblr back in August of 2012 is when I started in the world of RP’ing. I made Tatia Petrova from TVD (I went by the url herbloodlacedtheirwine). I never really dabbled much into the world of writing before that, except little snippets in early high school as to practice and try to further my English. Platforms you’ve used: Tumblr. Best experience: While the TMI/TSC fandom definitely has its bad apples and I’ve been in fandoms where things were consistently calmer, I do find my best experience to have been here because of specific individuals I’ve met while here. However, my Tumblr experience has overall been really good since my Ezio blog. I had a field day writing him and people seemed to really appreciate my input on his character. Beyond that, his blog was also from which I released my themes and I’ll forever remember all the positive feedback I've gotten on them. Despite this site not easily showing it, there are a lot of people with a heart of gold out there. Worst experience: I’ve never exactly found myself in a really bad situation that I can refer to it as the ‘worst’, as I tend to nip things in the bud but I’m also someone who mentally catalogs things quickly, it’s how I deal with things. That and awarding stuff the weight it deserves and not a shred more— numerous things that I use to generally avoid things from getting very bad or affecting me more than I want them to.

MUSE PREFERENCES:

Original or canon: Canon every time. Favourite face: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Jamie Campbell Bower, Toby Regbo. Least favorite face: Actors or actresses that play the main protagonists in usually a show, as they tend to become over-used FCs.  Note: I have zero problem with these actresses or actors themselves, I just get tired of seeing everyone use them even outside of canon characters played by them. —To name a few examples in past and present: Nina Dobrev, Ian Somerhalder, Emilia Clarke, Katherine McNamara and Dominic Sherwood.  Multi or single: Running a multi isn't something for me, but I don’t mind writing with them in whatsoever way. Kudos and respect to multi muse blogs for having the mind to be so organized, though. I couldn't do it.

WRITING PREFERENCES:

Plots or memes: Plots, although I enjoy responding to memes on Jace as crack and light type of threads so fit him quite well, they’re a nice change from the immense angst that can be done in threads. Best time to write: I used to think the night, but looking back at threads and timestamps; apparently some of my strongest writing was done in the afternoon or early evening. Problem is, I don’t always have time to write a lot during those times. An issue? Yes, yes it is. Do you like your muse(s):  I rarely make new muses, when I do, there’s a reason. So yes. How long (months/years?): For my current blogs? Jace’s blog was created in November 2017. Francis was made... July 2017 and Ezio in May of 2016. I’ve made no other muses since Ezio and any before him have been permanently archived. Fluff, angst or smut: Angst/fluff, I’ve no interest in smut as it’s written on Tumblr.

Tagged by; @takeseffort tagging; @deusidvult (come on Shae, please make me feel less bad for writing so much by outdoing me), @beastmade, @leuthros, @audacatrix, @edomson, @snakedhand. Who else do I usually tag, uhm, @cainmarked, @xncertainty. Anyone else? Say I tagged you. <3

[emilysarsam]

Contested soundscapes of urban informality: Soho’s rickshaw drivers

Authoritarian structures of governing work hard to challenge the existence of informal activities in the public realm. Creative or personal construction of public space is quickly met with suspicion, and in some cases even persecution and arrest, as “irregular” activities are often considered nuisances or associated with idleness, homelessness and crime. Our understanding of public spaces in cities seems to be shrinking in flexibility as our common perception of streets’ functions is often limited to that of transit.

Through this research project, I aim to explore the informal nature of pedicabs in London and attempt to identify issues that people face who work in this sector. In particular, I will be focussing on music’s role in both ameliorating their working conditions as well as oppressing their profession.

“Pedicabs”, or “rickshaws”, are three-wheeled bicycle taxis which operate through a legal loophole that emerged through the Metropolitan Public Carriage Act from 1869. This act classifies pedicabs as stage carriages and authorises them to ply for hire, as long as they run without motors. Spokespeople from TfL have claimed that they collaborate with the police “to deal with unsafe and antisocial pedicabs on the Capital's streets. Pedicabs are the only form of public transport in London that is unregulated and our powers are extremely limited, but we are doing all we can to enforce against dangerous and nuisance riders” (Rea 2017). According to the London Pedicab Operators Association, a voluntary association which represents the interests of the pedicab industry in London and has brought forth a code of practice for the profession, TfL refuse to engage in negotiations with them about the regulation of pedicabs (Chester 2015). The council of Westminster has enforced a legislation which forbids pedicabs to play music after 9PM, a law which has, according to testimonies from pedicab drivers, been exploited by the police to arrest undocumented workers and seize their pedicabs. They also claim that it encourages pedestrians and locals to file noise complaints in an attempt to further stigmatise the profession. Statements such as, “pedicabs are responsible for congestion issues, the overcharging of tourists and threatening of their safety” are common in British mainstream media (Hellier 2016). In December 2012, Boris Johnson attempted to ban pedicabs, insisting that "although there are a number of responsible pedicab companies, the fact is that these vehicles jam up the capital's roads and consistently fail to ensure the safety of their passengers” (TfL 2012). The common assertion that they contribute to congestion should be scrutinised as it overlooks the city’s flawed transport infrastructure which can be dangerous for both cyclists and pedestrians. Rickshaws however, could decrease congestion and pollution in London, which in January 2018 already reached its annual limit (Gabbatiss 2018). Pedicab drivers believe it is their right to play music at a moderate volume during working hours, as it uplifts their own and customer’s spirits. This targeting of defenseless and informal actors, by condemning them as “nuisances”, has proved to function as a method of ridding the streets of all unregulated activities and distract from more crucial issues that arise through economic development in urban hubs which would require systemic change to be improved (Wagner 2018).

Industrial production has created considerable constraints on our capacity to perceive public space from a variety of perspectives to a perspective of a space which is “organized for and by consumption” (Lefebvre 2003, P.20). I find a great deal of parallels between my observations of Soho’s streets and Henri Lefebvre’s understanding of the street in “The Urban Revolution”, which seeks out to uncover the street’s potential of facilitating social encounters. With the invasion of the automobile, social interaction in the streets is disappearing as urban life becomes increasingly functionalised, while its ludic and informative functions are overlooked. He also discusses the notion of movement within cities, which can both be forced and repressed by authorities who attempt to restrict the lingering and assembling of bodies, conditioning us to suspect people who use the public space for social or economic recreation and regard them as irregular (P.21).

Public space is defined by a sense of formality and public etiquette, which I consider a form of regulation and control over our individuality and creativity. Pedicabs don’t seem to fit this idea “formality” and are therefore confronted with hostility from political authorities who fear to lack power over their control. My research has lead me to believe that by playing music, pedicabs can transform our perception of public space in the urban environment, in particular streets, and create possibilities for social encounters and the exchange of knowledge. Through sharing my observations, I hope to illustrate that Soho’s streets can be regarded as an interactive theater where agents’ roles are liminal and shift between performers and spectators. Furthermore, I strive to shed light on the way that music is being instrumentalised by policy makers to target pedicab drivers and threaten their livelihoods. Instead I propose an alternative method of inquiry, in this case through dialogue about music, to identify the profession’s issues and struggles, in the hopes that government bodies such as TfL find ways of cooperating with pedicab associations and support them in developing a regulation system which will improve the precarious situation of the sector.

Monday,  9. April

Our story begins on Old Compton Street, just outside of Prince Edward Theater, where a row of pedicabs are parked. It’s about 10PM on a very wet and cold day in April, and it’s the rickshaw drivers’ last shot at finding customers before business officially dies off for the day. Amongst the noise of passing people and cars, blaring music of clubs and bars, one can hear the occasional bike horn honk and phrases such as “hello Miss, rickshaw ride?” and “London is more beautiful from the back of a pedicab”. One pedicab plays Haddaway’s “What is Love” from a soundsystem and introduces himself as Milan. “I usually play classical music”, he says. Milan has travelled all around Europe and came to the UK almost 10 years ago to do his masters. He goes on to tell me about how slow his day was and that he’s only made 12 pounds so far. He says, “only Brits today. They’re the worst customers.” Their lack of trust in pedicabs mainly stems from a video which was published online a couple of years ago and shows a pedicab driver charging a tourist 600 pounds for a short ride. Milan says he can easily charge a couple hundred pounds for a half-hour ride from rich people who don’t know any better. I ask him if he thinks he attracts more customers through his music and he says, “of course, and through my decoration!”. His sound system is attached to the frame of his bike around which he has hung fake plants and attached a disco light which flashes in different colors. His carriage is decorated with more fake plants and stickers, one of a Qatari football team, he tells me “to attract rich Qatari customers”, and two stuffed pikachus which he places on the bike’s backseat.

By now, all of the other pedicabs have left to try their luck at Queens Theater down the road. Milan tells me to meet him there later. On my way to Queens Theater, I cross paths with Soho’s night crowd, promoters trying to lure people into clubs, tourists heading home from China Town, homeless people trying to knick a pound or cigarette from partygoers. Once I reach the theater, I hear a horn honk and turn around to find Milan on his bike. He immediately continues his storytelling. “Pedicabs are a tricky business”, he says, “most of us are documented but some aren’t, and it’s the undocumented workers who come out late at night to avoid the police and offer rides at unbeatable prices, stealing our customers”. “There are other ways however, to earn an extra dime or two”, he tells me that he gets commissions from brothels to bring people there. “I can also help customers get other things, if you know what I mean”, he tells me. I ask Milan if he would prefer his profession to be regulated? He says, “are you kidding me? No way!”. Regardless of the prejudice and legal issues around pedicabs, he prefers the sector to remain irregular as it allows him to make more money. Pedicab drivers who rent their cycles and work for authorised companies, such as Bugbugs and London Pedicabs, charge a regulated fee and are in favor of the sectors’s regulation which could protect them from stigma and discrimination which they owe to the few pedicab drivers who bend the rules. We’re joined by another pedicab driver who parks beside us. Milan begins to swear at him for hanging a price list onto his bike. Milan says, “that’s illegal”. I ask him, “what is”? “The pricelist!”. I wonder, “how can something be illegal when the profession itself isn’t entirely regulated?”. Milan says, “it simply is.” I wonder if, within this informal system, Milan has created his own set of rules which determine what is legal and illegal. It’s about midnight now and the streets are emptying. We say goodbye and Milan invites me to meet him tomorrow at the Comedy Store down the road on Oxendon Street where he’ll be watching the football match.

Thursday, 12 April

It’s another damp and chilly night in Soho when I meet Volkan from Turkey in front of Palace Theater. He’s listening to “Sweet Dreams” by the Eurythmics so I ask him if he always plays music at work. He tells me that it’s his favorite part of the job. It gives him joy and motivation and sometimes helps him connect with clients as he lets them play their favorite tracks through an aux cable. In his view, a pedicab ride is a way to experience and discover the city rather than a mode of transport. Just a couple of days earlier, the media had reported about a pedicab driver who tried to charge two tourists 150£ for a short trip from Selfridges to Knightsbridge. Volkan says that after each such incident he can feel the negative effect on his reputation. Two tourists interrupt our conversation and ask for a ride to Green Park. The minute Volkan drives off, I hear a bike horn and blasting classical music. “Hey you! This is from your country! Your national heritage!”. Milan’s back with “Dein Ist Mein Ganzes Herz” by Franz Lehár. I’ve never heard the song before and he tells me that I can’t possibly be Austrian if I don’t. He’s in a hurry to get somewhere and tells me to find him in Chinatown in half an hour.  Parked next to the theater, I find Zaman from Bangladesh. He’s got a beautifully decorated bike and a big set of speakers. I ask why they’re turned off and he tells me, “it’s past 9PM! If the police catch me, I can get a huge fine or my cab could get seized!”. Soho feels like one of the loudest spots in central London, where drunk people shout and stumble across the streets and music blares out of nightclubs. The sounds of motored vehicles pollute Soho’s soundscape but still pedicabs are targeted and prohibited to play music during their busiest working hours. Zaman obeys the law out of respect for the residents who wake up early to go to school and work. He comments on passing pedicabs that play loud music and worries that they’ll jeopardize his reputation. I ask him if he thinks that the council enforced this legislation to legitimise the arrest of pedicabbers which they suspect to be undocumented workers. Zaman tells me it’s possible, but he blames pedicabbers themselves for not caring enough to enquire about the law and avoid problems. I thank Zaman for chatting to me and decide to head down to Wardour St. to see if I can find Milan. I find him parked in the middle of the pedestrian zone, waiting for work along with four other pedicab drivers. Milan immediately clarifies that he’s not really friends with the other pedicabbers. “It’s not me, it’s them! I don’t know why but they think I earn more money than they do!”. I ask him, “why?”. “What can I say? I’m a business man!”. Milan has a special way of dealing with clients which I get to experience in full action. A very drunk man approaches him and babbles, in words which I can’t quite make out, that he wants to go somewhere to get something. Milan tells him that he can get whatever he’s looking for in Camden and that he can take him there and back for 20 pounds. The drunk man agrees and calls for his friend. Milan tells me to wait for him and that he’ll be back in 20 minutes. I try to comprehend how Milan will manage his trip in 20 minutes but agree to wait for him. Meanwhile I speak to Pressi, another pedicab driver, who’s parked on Wardour St. and drives the slickest rickshaw in town which he’s named “Impressia”. I have heard other pedicabbers speak about him, calling him “the guy with the nicest bike in West End” or

“the man with the best soundsystem in town”. He starts telling me about “Impressia", which has its own website and which he built from scratch in Bulgaria. He then shipped it to Finland where he worked and lived for a couple of years before coming to London.

He continues to tell me about his passion for the movie “Into the Wild” and how one of the movie’s quotes, “Happiness is only real when shared”, inspired him to start a Facebook platform through which people from Bulgaria could connect. He tells me that, besides his bike, the platform is his proudest achievement in life and has helped people to meet, marry and start families. Milan’s back with a honk and Pressi ignores him. He tells  me that Milan is jealous that we are speaking and jokes that I should ask him to be my boyfriend because he has 500.000€ in the bank. Milan keeps honking and puts on “Dein Ist Mein Ganzes Herz” again. I say “bye” to Pressi and join Milan. He tells me that he took the two drunk men up the road to some drug dealers, fooled them into thinking they were in Camden and brought them back after charging them 20 pounds. He then says, “man’s gotta make a living!”. Exploitations like these have come to shape the general perception of pedicabs in London. From all of the rickshaw drivers I spoke to, Milan’s behavior struck me as unique. Everyone else seemed to really fear for their reputation and livelihood and make an effort to work transparently, with an overall aim for the sector to become regulated and their jobs to be secured.  

Some names in this paper have been modified to protect the identities of the pedicab drivers.

A soundmap of pedicabs in Soho, London

www.soundcloud.com/3am3ali/contested-soundscapes-of-urban-informality-a-soundmap-of-pedicabs-in-soho-london

References

Chester, Tim. Rickshaw Wars: Behind the handlebars of London's secretive industry. Mashable. 13 August 2015. Accessed April 26, 2018.

https://mashable.com/2015/08/13/rickshaw-wars-london-pedicab-industry/

Gabbatiss, Josh. One of London's busiest roads hits annual pollution limit with 335 days left of 2018. The Independent. 30 January 2018. Accessed April 25, 2018.

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/london-busiest-roads-annual-pollution-limit-brixton-passed-2018-car-fumes-vehicles-uk-a8185416.html

Hellier, David. Transport for London Moves to Clamp down on Rickshaw Riders. The Guardian. The Guardian. January 1, 2016. Accessed April 25, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jan/22/transport-for-london-rickshaw-riders-uber

Lefebvre, H., & Bononno, R., 2003. The urban revolution. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Rea, Samantha. London’s Pedal-Powered Rickshaws: Scourge Of Soho Or Eco-Friendly Fun? Londonist. 6 November 2017. Accessed April 25, 2018. https://londonist.com/london/features/london-s-pedal-powered-rickshaws-are-they-the-scourge-of-soho-or-eco-friendly-fun

Roy, Ananya, and Nezar AlSayyad. Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives From the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia. Lanham, Md. ; Oxford: Lexington Books, 2004.

Transport for London. “Mayor Seeks Ban on Dangerous Pedicabs.” Transport for London. December 14 2012. Accessed April 25, 2018. https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2012/december/mayor-seeks-ban-on-dangerous-pedicabs.

Wagner, Kate. City Noise Might Be Making You Sick. The Atlantic. February 20, 2018. Accessed April 25, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/02/city-noise-might-be-making-you-sick/553385/

Wikipedia contributors. Soho. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Accessed April 25, 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Soho&oldid=837697240.

[your-dietician]

Adolescence, Stigma, and Owning Diabetes – Diabetes Daily

New Post has been published on https://depression-md.com/adolescence-stigma-and-owning-diabetes-diabetes-daily/

Adolescence, Stigma, and Owning Diabetes – Diabetes Daily

This content originally appeared on diaTribe. Republished with permission.

By Katie Bacon

Katie Bacon is a writer and editor based in Boston. Her daughter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in August, 2012, when she was six. Katie’s writing about diabetes has appeared on TheAtlantic.com and ASweetLife. Katie has also written for The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and other publications.

Adolescence can be a confusing time, and this is doubly true for teenagers with type 1 diabetes. At a stage when everyone is starting to figure out who they are, the teenager with type 1 must also decide how much they want diabetes to be a part of their identity. Katie Bacon, the mother of a teenager with type 1, spoke with a range of experts and peers who shared their expertise and experiences on this subject.

Our daughter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at six years old, just before she started first grade. At the time, it was important both from a safety perspective and from an emotional one that the people around her knew about her diagnosis. Along with her teachers and the school nurse, we let all her friends and their parents know, and they rallied around us to support her. She quickly owned having type 1. It became an important and immutable part of her identity, one she was proud to share with others.

Fast forward eight years to this past fall, when she was doing orientation for her new high school. After being surrounded by a group of familiar and supportive friends from kindergarten through eighth grade, here she knew almost no one. Not to mention that, in the era of COVID-19 – with masks, cohorts, and strict rules about socializing – it would be much harder to meet people.

During orientation she was asked to create a timeline of important moments in her life. While chatting about what she might write, I asked if she was going to include her diagnosis. Her response seemed to come completely out of left field: “Why would I put that down? I’m not planning on telling anyone unless I become really close friends with them.”

She made it clear that she was now much less willing to acknowledge having type 1 as she entered high school. Although she didn’t express it quite this way, it seemed that the reason stemmed from a desire to avoid being judged or stigmatized – she didn’t want to be known as the new girl with diabetes. So, we agreed that we would tell the school nurse, her teachers, and her sports coaches – for her health and safety, it was non-negotiable that they all know. We also agreed that it would be up to her to choose when (and if) she would tell her friends.

Still, it felt like my daughter was cutting away her safety net. I wanted to know if this shifting perspective on her condition was typical for teenagers, and I wanted some advice on how to help her through it. I reached out to Rachel Rifkin, a longtime friend who was diagnosed with type 1 at age ten; to Dr. Ananta Addala, a pediatric endocrinologist at Stanford Children’s Health; and to Dr. Persis Commissariat, a pediatric psychologist at Joslin Diabetes Center who also has type 1. Through their expertise and experiences, they helped answer my questions about disclosing teenage diabetes versus hiding it; about stigma, perceived stigma, and how to deal with it; and about how to let go a little bit while still giving our daughter support through this process.

One of the crucial parts of adolescence is identity development, when teenagers figure out who they are in relation to their family and their peers. At this developmental stage, people are particularly sensitive to being different in any way; and if they are different, they want it to be in ways that they’ve chosen. All of this is complicated, of course, by having a chronic disease that requires frequent visible action and identifiable devices to manage (insulin shots, continuous glucose monitors or CGM, insulin pumps, etc.).

Dr. Commissariat took on this topic as the lead author of a paper on identity and treatment adherence in teens and young adults with type 1 diabetes, which appeared in Pediatric Diabetes. She and her co-authors looked at the differences between those who “incorporated” their illness versus those who “contained” it or tried to keep it separate from the rest of their identity. “Those who incorporate their illness … take it into account in their daily life and are able to find ways to include the illness as part of their sense of self. Those who contain their illness may try to keep their illness hidden, worry about stigma, or try to … maintain a sense of self [that is] unburdened by illness, often ignoring daily self-management needs.”

What they found, Dr. Commissariat explained to me, was that people who tend to take a more “positive approach to making diabetes part of their sense of self – people who view it as ‘it’s my burden and I’m okay with it’ – tended to have lower A1C levels. They were a little more engaged in treatment.” In other words, those teenagers who managed to incorporate diabetes into their identity usually did better.

Because of this, Dr. Commissariat works with her patients to help them develop an identity that has “an appropriate degree of type 1 in it. I don’t think anyone needs to identify first and foremost as a person with diabetes. But the fact of the matter is that there are secondary issues that come up if we don’t take care of diabetes. So, you must identify with it to some extent. And I think what oftentimes becomes difficult for teenagers is finding that balance between being a ‘normal teenager’ and being a teenager with diabetes. Because on its face, they don’t really go hand-in-hand, but they should and they can.”

As I’ve witnessed firsthand with our daughter, adolescence can be a time when children want to move away from their identity as someone with type 1. When Rachel Rifkin was a teenager, she found herself transitioning from being relatively open about having type 1 to having it be something that she preferred to keep to herself. “I always did whatever I could to avoid people knowing about it. I always wore my pump in a back pocket. I never wanted to clip it onto the front of my pants or anything.”

In her practice, Dr. Addala has seen people go both ways. While she says that it’s more common for teenagers to “minimize the thing that makes them different, which is a very normal teenage developmental thing to do,” she’s also had patients who have embraced that difference. And in fact, in those individuals she sees a “further doubling down on the fact that diabetes is what makes them who they are; it’s a source of strength and pride and something that defines their character.”

But for those teenagers who aren’t willing to talk about or share that they have diabetes, both Dr. Commissariat and Dr. Addala try to understand the reasons behind the hesitancy. As Dr. Addala explains, “I try to see where the source of the apprehension comes from. Is it specifically that they don’t mind taking care of their diabetes or they don’t mind wearing technology, but they just don’t want other people to see?”

In these situations, Dr. Addala treads lightly and tries to respect the teenager’s feelings while gently encouraging them to open up. “I let them lead a bit when this topic comes up. They might say, well, I think I could probably tell my closest friend that I have diabetes. Or maybe they’re not willing to tell anyone, and I do my best to support them even in those cases. I’m trying to find out where their internalized stigma is originating from, and then see how far they’re willing to go in terms of who they share the information with. I generally use this approach because then they have some ownership.”

Dr. Commissariat points out that there’s an essential difference between being private about having diabetes and being secretive about it. As she tells her patients, “You don’t need to advertise it. But for safety purposes, it is important that at least a couple of your close friends know.”

She also talks about helping teenagers learn to communicate that they have type 1 in a way that feels manageable and builds confidence. She tells her patients: “I want to know exactly what you wish other people knew about diabetes. And then let’s find a way to teach people in a way that is not burdensome to you. Teenagers are trying so hard to not draw too much attention to themselves, so I often practice with them in our visits – how can we bring this up in a way that is not going to bite you in the back? That could mean having a serious discussion with your best friend, or that could mean something as easy as wearing short sleeves around people who don’t know you have diabetes, just so that they can see your CGM. Wait for people to comment on it. Use a passive disclosure strategy where you just pull out your pump and you take a bolus, and you don’t say anything unless somebody asks you.”

It’s especially helpful for teenagers to have a disclosure strategy when it comes to romantic or physical relationships. As Rifkin says, “With people you’re interested in, it’s a whole other web that you have to navigate in terms of what you tell people and when. And as I’m sure you can imagine, if you have a CGM or a pump, there are physical things on your body that may come up. It’s helpful to have a strategy for how you deal with that.”

Teenagers tend to be both self-centered and self-conscious, so when it comes to diabetes, it’s easy for them to assume that everyone is noticing it in a negative way. Rifkin remembers being in a movie theater one time when her pump started beeping. “I was so horrified. I was like, ‘Oh my God. Everyone must hate me right now. I’m ruining this experience for them.’ You don’t have a lot of perspective at that age. Diabetes seemed like such a big deal.”

Dr. Commissariat points out that all teenagers tend to think the focus is on themselves – even when it’s not. She tells her patients, “Your friends don’t care that you’ve had to go to the bathroom to take an injection. Your friends are like, ‘Okay, let’s go to the bathroom, then I can check how my hair looks.’” And she comments that those who do ask about it are probably asking because “they’re interested and they’re curious, and maybe those will be the people who will help you in the future.”

Another tip Dr. Commissariat gives her patients is to make sure that they talk about diabetes in the way they want others to see it. “If you don’t want it to be a big deal, don’t make it into a big deal because people are going to mirror you.”

For both Dr. Addala and Dr. Commissariat, part of the process is working with the parents on learning how to give their children the space to develop independence, as teenagers need to do. This can be a difficult transition, since diabetes requires so much oversight from both the parent and the child. As Dr. Commissariat says, “One of the major tasks of this developmental stage is to be independent and become less attached to your parents. But it’s really hard with diabetes to be less attached to your parents and be more like your friends when you’re managing something that takes so much responsibility.”

Dr. Addala focuses on helping parents try to see the situation from their child’s perspective. “So often part of the conversation is helping the family understand why a teenager might not want others to know they have diabetes. Where safety is concerned, it helps for the family to create boundaries around what is a true concern, and what’s just an added buffer in terms of safety.”

For both Rifkin and Dr. Commissariat, owning type 1 was a long process, one that continued into adulthood. Now, Rifkin says, “I’m a lot more open about it. I think it makes sense that those feelings that teenagers have of wanting to be private and not wanting to stick out at all fade over time, as people feel more confident in their own skin. These days I don’t feel like I have to explain it to anybody.”

Dr. Commissariat describes a long process of slowly pushing herself to make diabetes a more public part of her identity; she started by keeping her pump on display rather than keeping it in her pocket. Then she moved to bolusing and checking her blood sugar in front of people she knew and then also in front of people she didn’t know. Part of the change, for her, started when her nurse practitioner sat her down and said, “You’re not a diabetic, you’re a person with diabetes.” (Dr. Commissariat has since learned about research suggesting that this shift in labeling helps people become “more accepting of their identity with diabetes.”)

“When I look back on it now,” she says, “that statement suddenly clicks for me [in terms of] everything I went through. I thought diabetes was trying to define me, and that was my big mistake. I own it, it doesn’t hold me. When I allowed diabetes to be a part of my day and created my own definition of myself with diabetes as just a part of who I am and what I do, it wasn’t quite as burdensome anymore, but still annoying, no doubt.”

As for our daughter, after a year at her new school, my sense is that she’s still private about her diabetes, but she’s no longer secretive. A couple of her closest friends at her school now know, and that feels like a good start. At an event at the end of the year, after what felt like months where she hadn’t been willing to bolus in front of anyone, I finally saw her pull out her pump and give herself insulin right there in public – even if she was a bit off to the side. No one except me seemed to notice. I felt like she was beginning to establish that place for herself where she could feel like any other teenager. A teenager who just happens to have diabetes.

About Katie

Katie Bacon is a writer and editor based in Boston. Her daughter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in August, 2012, when she was six. Katie’s writing about diabetes has appeared on TheAtlantic.com and ASweetLife. Katie has also written for The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and other publications.

Note: Given the personal nature of this article, Bacon asked for and received her daughter’s permission to publish it.

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[naturecpw]

The Moral Cost of Cats

A bird-loving scientist calls for an end to outdoor cats “once and for all.”

Smithsonian Magazine - Rachel E. Gross

Do outdoor cats need to die? 

Pete Marra is haunted by cats. He sees them everywhere: slinking down alleys, crouched under porches, glaring at him out of wild, starved eyes.        

People assume that Marra, head of the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center and author of the book Cat Wars, hates cats. This is not the case. “I love cats,” he says, calling them “fascinating, magnificent animals,” that seem to have a “freakish love for me.” He’s even considered a pet cat, despite being mildly allergic. “This is the thing people don’t realize,” Marra told me at a café near his office in Washington, D.C. “I’m both a wild animal advocate and a domestic animal advocate. If my mother thought I wasn’t supporting cats, she’d be flipping in her grave.”        

It’s an understandable mistake. After all, Marra has made himself the public face of what sounds a lot like an anti-cat crusade. For years, the wildlife ecologist has been investigating the lethal implications of cats and urging that pet owners keep them indoors. He argues in Cat Wars: The Devastating Consequences of a Cuddly Killer, co-authored with freelance writer Chris Santella, the time has come for more drastic action: a concerted, nationwide effort to rid the landscape of cats. (The book is based on Marra’s personal and scientific research, and the views and conclusion are expressly his own and do not represent those of the Smithsonian Institution.)        

That effort will require an ugly reality: the targeted killing of felines. “No one likes the idea of killing cats," Marra concludes in his book. "But sometimes, it is necessary."        

Marra might like cats. But he also sees a bigger picture. In his day job, he and his team at the migratory bird center track the global movements of birds and tease apart threats to their existence. He knows that birds don’t just twit around pointlessly. They pollinate plants, spread seeds, control insects and protect environments from the effects of climate change; they are the glue that binds healthy ecosystems together. “Birds are critical,” he says. And outdoor cats, he and other ecologists have determined, are the leading human-influenced cause of dead birds.        

  In 1962, biologist Rachel Carson wrote that “in nature nothing exists alone.” Marra couldn’t agree more. Like Carson, he thinks of life on Earth as a complex tapestry in which each species represents a single thread. Outdoor cats threaten that tapestry. Their crimes include contributing to 33 extinctions around the world and counting, to say nothing of their potential to spread deadly diseases like rabies and Toxoplasmosis. They hold in tooth and claw the power to destroy that delicate web—like, well, a cat unraveling a ball of string.        

Americans own about 86 million cats, or one cat for every three households. That makes cats more popular, petwise, than dogs, and we haven’t even gotten to Internet memes yet. But not all pet cats are created equal. The majority of them—about two-thirds to three-fourths, surveys say—are your sweet, harmless, cuddly housecats, which seldom set foot outside. Marra takes no issue with these lap cats. Their instincts may be lethal, but they rarely get the chance to harm more than a house mouse. 

The other one-quarter to one-third, though, aren’t so harmless. These are outdoor pet cats, and they are murderers. Equipped with laser-quick paws and razor-tipped claws, these natural born killers are the stuff of every bird and small mammal’s nightmare. Often we love them for just this quality; the hard-working barn cat has nipped many a country mouse infestation in the bud. But sometimes their deadly instincts spell trouble for animals and ecosystems we value—and often, Marra argues, desperately need.        

Marra tells the story of Tibbles the cat, who traveled with her owner to an untouched island south of New Zealand in 1894. There, she single-pawedly caused the extinction of the Stephens Island wren, a small, flightless bird found only in that part of the world. Most cats aren’t as deadly as Tibbles, but your average outdoor pet cat still kills around two animals per week, according to the Wildlife Society and the American Bird Conservancy. The solution for these cats is simple, says Marra: Bring them indoors. The Humane Society of the United States agrees.        

 So far, so good. Now comes the real problem: unowned cats, which include strays and ferals. Born in the wild or abandoned, feral cats spend almost no time with humans; they’re basically wild animals. Stray cats, by contrast, often have a working relationship with humans. They might live in managed communities, where a human caretaker regular feeds and watches over them—“subsidizing” them, in Marra’s words—meaning their numbers can soar to rates they wouldn’t be able to otherwise. Whether stray or feral, these cats kill on average three times as many animals as owned cats, according to Marra.        

No one knows exactly how many stray and feral cats stalk the U.S. They are, by nature, elusive and transient. In a 2012 study, Marra used an estimate of 30 to 80 million; the Humane Society estimates a more conservative 30 to 40 million. Adithya Sambamurthy from the Center for Investigative Reporting’s The Reveal recently reported that unowned cats may rival the number of pet cats, placing them at about 80 million. That means, for every lap cat hunkering over his dish of Fancy Feast, there is another one prowling around for his dinner—like an evil twin, or a particle of antimatter.        

For these cats, there is no easy solution. This is where Marra’s unorthodox plan comes into play. As he writes: 

In high-priority areas there must be zero tolerance for free-ranging cats. If the animals are trapped, they must be removed from the area and not returned. If homes cannot be found for the animals and no sanctuaries or shelters are available, there is no choice but to euthanize them. If the animals cannot be trapped, other means must be taken to remove them from the landscape—be it the use of select poisons or the retention of professional hunters.                

Feral cat advocates and ecologists agree on very little. But one thing they both will say is this: There are too many cats outside. Feral cat advocates say these dense numbers threaten the welfare of cats themselves, which lead miserable lives colored by fights and starvation. Ecologists, meanwhile, worry about those cats’ victims—as well whether the cats might be spreading disease to humans and other animals.        

Management of these overabundant felines is where the two disagree. For many animal welfare advocates, the solution is TNR, or Trap-Neuter-Return. TNR is just what it sounds like: a policy that involves trapping stray and feral cats, sterilizing them and returning them to the urban wilds in the hopes that populations will decrease. In the past decade, TNR has gone mainstream in many cities, helped along by generous funding from pet food companies including Petco and PetSmart. The premise is simple: Cats live out their lives, but don’t reproduce.        

Becky Robinson, president of the advocacy group Alley Cat Allies and a major proponent of TNR, calls the method “effective, humane control.” “This is a benefit directly to the cats,” she told me over the phone. (Two communications staffers from Robinson’s organization were listening in our conversation, to give you an idea of the delicateness of the topic.)        

Some researchers have documented surprising successes with TNR. Dr. Julie Levy of the University of Florida in Gainesville and colleagues conducted one of the first long-term studies on the effectiveness of TNR, publishing their results in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association in 2003. They sought to quantify whether TNR could succeed in a specific population: stray cats colonies on the campus of the University of Central Florida.        

The researchers expressed doubts at the outset, reporting that “virtually no information exists to support the contention that neutering is an effective long-term method for controlling free-roaming cat populations.” Yet in 2016, more than ten years after their study concluded, just five cats remained on campus—and these are so old and sickly they had to be given geriatric care. Even Levy was taken aback by the results. “We keep seeing better success in the field than the models ever predict,” she says. However, much of the decrease can be attributed to the fact that volunteers often end up adopting cats—a phenomenon Levy considers an unofficial part of many TNR programs.        

Despite these kinds of successes, many ecologists say flatly that TNR doesn’t work. The problem is that, for TNR to succeed in large populations, at least 75 percent of cats in a colony must be sterilized. That rarely happens. The trouble is that negligent pet owners continue to abandon pet cats, which then join existing colonies; additionally, non-neutered stray cats can wander in. Like efforts at vaccinating schools against chickenpox, just a few stragglers can undermine an entire TNR program. Any short-term reduction in colony size is therefore quickly reversed, a group of researchers including Levy and ecologist Patrick Foley reported after studying nearly 15,000 stray and feral cats.        

For Marra, TNR is a feel-good solution that is no solution at all—a Band-Aid that has done little to stem the flow of cats. By refusing to look at the reality, he says, we are letting our “misplaced compassion” for cats get the better of our reason. That is why he and some other ecologists call for a more draconian approach: widespread removal of feral and stray cats, including euthanasia.        

The concept isn’t as radical as it sounds. Australia aims to kill two million cats by 2020 using “robots, lasers, [and] poison.” New Zealand, as I’ve reported previously, has long perpetrated mass warfare on possums, stoats and weasels in a bid to save its beloved birds. In America, too, we cull mammals—including gray wolves, which can prey on livestock and pets, and bison, our national mammal, which can spread bacterial infections to cattle. We even kill cats: American shelters put down more than 1.4 million cats a year, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.        

That doesn’t mean we’re comfortable with it. “That’s the aspect that is most alarming about the animal welfare groups, is the fact that often the only reasonable solution of getting rid of invasive species is lethal control,” says Stanley Temple, a wildlife ecologist who argued for the necessity of eradicating invasive species in a 1990 essay The Nasty Necessity. “And that is the single thing that they are so vehemently opposed to. Their hang-up, if you will, on death.” 

Given the unpopularity of eradication programs in the U.S., it would seem inadvisable for any researcher to make one part of his platform of action. But this, Marra says, is our only option. Now his challenge is to get others on his side. To do so he will need more than science—he will need to get people to empathize with birds, and to value species and ecosystems over individuals.      

Marra likes to say that birds saved him, which isn't far off. He was raised mainly by his mother, who worked full-time to support him and his three siblings after his father left when he was an infant. As a result, he enjoyed a relatively feral childhood. By the time he was six, he found himself wandering alone in the woods near his house in Norwalk, Connecticut, swimming in lakes, climbing trees and digging in the dirt for star-nosed moles, frogs and salamanders. He loved catching animals of all kinds—“anything wild,” he says now.        

The Westport Nature Center, a half-mile walk down the hill from his house, became a refuge. With its living wild animals and displays of taxidermied ruffed grouse, the center got Marra asking questions about how his surroundings came to be. One day, a naturalist at the center caught a black-capped chickadee in a mist net, and placed it in his hands. He remembers cupping the bird delicately, “looking into its eyes, feeling its feathers, feeling its wildness,” as he recalled at a Smithsonian event. Meeting the bird’s black marble gaze, a switch flipped in his brain.

“It was a remarkable moment that I’ll never forget,” he said at the event. “The aura of the bird almost entered my body. It was really kind of a transformational experience for me.” 

Throughout a tumultuous childhood, birds provided an anchor. “Birds saved me, because they were always this constant thread that I could come back to,” he says. “It was the one stable thing in my life.” When he went to Southern Connecticut State University to study biology, he quickly realized that dusty specimens in libraries held little appeal. “I was less interested in understanding the subtleties between plumages,” he says. “I was much more interested in watching live birds.”

  In 1999, Marra took a job as a wildlife ecologist at Smithsonian's Environmental Research Center to be on the front lines of human encroachment on the natural environment. When West Nile virus began leaving a trail of dead crows, he started looking into bird mortality. In 2011, he published a paper in the Journal of Ornithology that followed the fate of young gray catbirds in the Maryland suburbs. Soon after leaving the nest, 79 percent of birds were killed by predators, primarily cats, which leave the telltale sign of decapitated victims with just the bodies uneaten. (Ironically, this bird gets its name not because it commonly ends up in the jaws of cats, but from its vaguely catlike yowl).        

The following year, Marra got more ambitious: He decided to tally up the national toll that outdoor cats take on wildlife. He and colleagues used mathematical models to analyze data from local cat predation studies going back more than 50 years. When they extrapolated the data to reflect national trends, they were stunned. According to their calculations, outdoor cats killed somewhere in the ballpark of 2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion small mammals in the U.S. per year—far exceeding any other human-influenced cause of avian death, such as pesticides or collisions with windows.  

When Marra saw the number “2.4 billion,” he knew that the claws were about to come out. He was right. On January 29, 2013, the same day the paper was published in the journal Nature Communications, the New York Times featured a front-page article highlighting his findings entitled “That Cuddly Killer Is Deadlier Than You Think.” The piece became the newspaper's most-emailed article of the week. It garnered more than a thousand comments online, ranging from outraged (“I'm tired of everyone putting down cats and trying to justify their extermination”) to pointed (“It’s the large bipeds who are the problem, not their cats”) to satirical (“Eat more cat!”). 

Marra read them all. Many were personal insults directed squarely at him. Some suggested that he should be predated or euthanized. Marra understands how emotional people can get about cats—he has entered into many a dinner table debate with his 15-year-old daughter, a long-time vegetarian and animal lover, over cat policy—so he tries to take these reactions with a grain of salt. Still, he admits, “it hurts.” When I ask him how he deals with the constant backlash, he laughs. “Good question,” he says. “It’s actually because I believe in what I do. And if I don’t do it—well, I’ve got one life. This is it. This is the now.” 

More bothersome than the personal attacks were the attacks on his research methodology. The most relentless was Peter Wolf, a vocal feral cat advocate who called Marra’s paper “garbage,”“junk science” and “an agenda-driven effort to undermine TNR” on his blog, Vox Felina. Wolf took issue with the levels of uncertainty in Marra’s paper, alleging that the numbers were “wildly inflated,” came from biased sources, and drew upon just just a handful of studies. “When seen in context, these astronomical figures alone raise questions of credibility,” Wolf wrote on his blog. “It doesn’t seem like science to me,” he told me recently.

It was, Marra admits, a wide range. He and his colleagues estimated that “free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually.” The reason for the discrepancy was the woeful lack of data on feral cat populations and their lifestyles. Marra worked with the limited data he had, synthesizing the results from previous studies and augmenting them with predation numbers from Europe, Australia and New Zealand. By including both the lowest and highest possible estimates for cat predation, he thought he was covering all his bases.  

In all the fighting and flying fur, Marra saw an opportunity. By the time his paper was published in Nature Communications, he was already thinking about writing a book. “I knew this had huge potential for creating a lot of controversy,” he says. “But also conversation. To me, it’s really about the conversation and trying to figure out: how do we come to some resolution on this thing?” 

Cats kill; that much is clear. “The science is all pretty bloody obvious,” as Michael Clinchy, a Canadian biologist focusing on predator-prey relationships at the University of Victoria, puts it. But cats also spread disease. Outdoor cats can transmit plague, rabies, feline leukemia and a mysterious parasite known as Toxoplasma gondii. The extinction of the Hawaiian crow, or ʻalalā, in 2002 is thought to have been caused in part by the spread of Toxoplasma via feral cats. “The diseases from cats is what’s going to change this whole equation,” Marra says. 

Cat feces, 1.2 million tons of which are excreted a year, are known to contain Toxoplasma. The single-celled parasite enters the brain and changes the behavior of prey animals like rats, which can show a strange attraction to cat urine. About 10 to 20 percent of Americans also harbor the parasite, which can be absorbed through contact with litter boxes, drinking contaminated water or eating undercooked meat. Once believed to hang out harmlessly in the human brain, some scientists now believe that Toxoplasma may actively change the connections between our neurons—shifting dopamine levels, altering personalities and even triggering diseases like schizophrenia in genetically susceptible individuals.

Marra calls Toxoplasma a contaminant on the order of DDT, the broad-scale chemical pesticide used to control insects and combat infectious disease up until the 1960s. (DDT lingers in the environment for years, where it can threaten human and animal health, as Rachel Carson documented in her book Silent Spring.) In fact, Marra thinks of outdoor cats themselves as a DDT-like contaminant—wreaking widespread, unnatural havoc on their surroundings. The difference, to him, is that DDT has never been known to wipe out a species, while cats have been implicated in at least 33 extinctions thus far. 

The Toxoplasma threat, Marra writes, makes outdoor cats nothing less than a public health issue. He recommends that the federal government take on the task of eradicating cats from the landscape, via the Centers for Disease Control. He imagines taxpayer-supported public education campaigns, billboards about disease dangers and the importance of keeping cats inside, and large-scale eradication programs in vulnerable areas like Hawaii. To Wolf and others, the idea of such a policy is “absurd” and “screams of desperation.” But to Marra, it’s simply a logical conclusion: “We need to minimize the impact humans have,” he says. “Cats are one of the impacts.”

Science might be able to tell us how many animals cats kill per year. But it can’t tell us what that means—nor what we should do about it. It is us who attach moral weight to cats, by projecting our fear and fantasies upon them. Tibbles was “doing only what her instinct told her to do,” Marra writes. We make cats into pets or pests; victims or villains; those who suffer or those who cause suffering.  

At the heart of this debate is a question not of data, but of aesthetics, principles and philosophies. That is: In a world fundamentally shaped by humans, who is to say whether birds and native wildlife have any more right to the landscape than domestic cats do? Should the goal be to rewind the urban landscape back to before the arrival of Europeans—and is that even possible?  

Conservation biologists have always called these kinds of shots themselves. “We’ve made a judgment that biodiversity is good,” says Temple. For Marra, cats represent yet another destructive footprint man has made on the landscape. To rid the country of their presence is therefore to restore some pre-human balance of nature, some lost sense of grace. It is to protect those creatures that cannot save themselves. “It is essential,” he says, “that we save these species.”        

In his closing chapter, Marra warns that Americans may soon awaken to dead birds and “muted birdsong, if any at all.” It’s another nod to Rachel Carson, whose defense of nature helped spark the modern environmental movement. Today we’ve come to recognize Carson as an environmental Cassandra; history has vindicated many of her inconvenient truths. But when Silent Spring first came out, her ideas were met with hostility from other scientists, who deemed her hysterical, alarmist and “probably a Communist.”

For Marra, it is clear that outdoor cats represent the Silent Spring of our time. Not only are cats the single worst threat to birds caused directly by humans, but they are also the easiest problem to fix, as compared to many-leveled threats like climate change. For him, it is obvious what we must do. Yet he is also starting to understand the challenge of making others see the world as he does. “To me, this should be the low-hanging fruit,” he says. “But as it turns out, it might be easier stopping climate change than stopping cats.”

Rachel E. Gross is the Science Editor for Smithsonian Magazine, covering stories behind new discoveries and the debates that shape our understanding of the world. Before coming to Smithsonian, she covered science for Slate, Wired, and The New York Times.

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Studentz ‘n’ the University: Reflections on how academic staff interact with BAME students. Written by Dr Ryan Arthur,FHEA

Abstract: The inequalities in higher education reflect those in wider society. Broader social and political realities find their expression on campuses impacting the experiences and actions of staff and students (Universities UK & National Union of Students, 2019; Miller, 2016; Singh, 2011; Richardson, 2015).  This opinion piece will utilise the powerful theme of exclusion that reverberates throughout John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood to frame the interaction between academic staff and Black and Minority Ethnic students.   Until very recently, it was an interaction that had received little coverage, let alone reflection.  However, the recent legislative and regulatory shifts in the UK prompted academic staff to reflect on the way they interact with their BME students (OfS, 2019; Universities UK & National Union of Students, 2019; Department of Education, 2018).  This piece speaks to these shifts as it seeks to understand if we care, show or know ‘about what’s goin’ on’ in our universities?

Studentz n the University: Reflections on how academic staff interact with BAME students.

This essay is inspired in part by the words John Singleton, the recently deceased filmmaker, placed into the mouth of the character ‘Doughboy’, ‘Either they don’t know, don’t show or don’t care about what’s goin’ on’ (Boyz n the Hood, 1991). These simple words, spoken by an individual that endured life on the periphery, depict the way our higher education institutions interact with its BAME students. This article reawakens several discussions from the 1990s that utilised Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood to relate to wider issues that impact black and brown communities (Nadell, 1995; Dyson, 1992; Collins, Collins & Radner, 1993; Doherty and Jones, 1991; Masood, 1996). Though Boyz n the Hood exudes several erroneous tropes that I as an adolescent could not appreciate, it does bring home the melancholy that exclusion fosters (Doherty & Jones, 1991).

Lamenting on the lack of media coverage of his brother’s death, Doughboy stated, ‘Either they don’t know, don’t show or don’t care about what’s goin’ on’ (Boyz n the Hood, 1991).  Despite the significance of Doughboy’s brother’s achievements, his passing was not acknowledged by the media.  His community was left to mourn and anguish in obscurity.   Tragically, Doughboy himself was murdered just two weeks later; Singleton poignantly filmed Doughboy vanishing, yet another unreported and invisible life lost.

Reflecting on this theme of invisibility, I would like to steer the conversation to BAME students who may see themselves as ‘invisible’ and unaccounted for in UK universities (Franklin and Boyd-Franklin, 2000). It is not uncommon to hear feelings of discomfort, isolation, suspecting that they are ‘unwanted’ or having a sense of not belonging (NUS, 2011; Miller, 2016). Students struck by such feelings may ponder about their universities, ‘Either they don’t know, don’t show or don’t care about what’s goin’ on’.

‘Either they don’t know…’

How could we not know the issues that affect our BAME students? Overwhelming evidence has been mounting since the 1990s (Singh, 2011). I would suggest that a subtle and disarming dissonance has lulled us into inaction; though we understand the broad themes that affect BME students, we overlook the immediate and present issues of BME students in our own classrooms (Miller, 2016; Singh, 2011). I would postulate that our overlooking stems from a lack of awareness of our own selves; to appreciate the issues that affect BME students, it is essential to know if our actions contributed to some of these issues (Cabrera, Franklin and Watson, 2016, Stevenson, 2012).  

This point dawned on me when I attended an education conference convened by a Russell Group university, a well-meaning and earnest academic asked the main panel how can I get to know the issues that affect BME students? A panellist brilliantly modified the question; how well do you know yourself? She continued to articulate that it was important for him to understand his ‘whiteness’ and directed him to a series of studies that unpacked whiteness.  

From my position in the audience, it appeared to be a clash of two worlds; the panellist’s redirection seemed to startle the well-meaning academic; this was not the quaint answer he sought. I’m assuming that he expected the panellist to detail avenues for BME students to express their grievances. Instead, the panellist placed the onus on the academic; judging from the panellist’s expression, her suggestion seemed entirely obvious to the point of exasperation.  Just as BME students constantly assess the implications of their otherness, so must we. All minorities are compelled to understand how they are perceived within their own spaces and in the spaces dominated by us. What the panellist asked the academic to do was what his BME students were compelled to do when they arrived in a space, not of their own.  

The sheer bafflement on the face of the academic was not the first time I experienced this bewilderment. A year prior, I walked into a lecturer’s predominantly BAME classroom to find that each student had a name card on their tables.  Continuing to use identifiers midway through the academic year indicated that the lecturer had failed to acknowledge his actions. I am confident that he meant no malice, his actions came out his unawareness of a prevailing belief in black and brown communities that some white people believe that they all act, think and look the same. Through using the identifiers for such a lengthy period, he inadvertently confirmed their perceptions; they were all just one mass of undifferentiated ‘others’. When this ‘revelation’ was put to the lecturer, a curious conversion ensued, after a moment of bemusement, two recognisable defences were mobilised (Kanjere, 2018).  Both defences often rear their heads when we are pushed to examine the implications of our actions; his initial stoic persona gave way to a real sense of vulnerability or fragility. He bemoaned that he could not help it if his unassuming and well-meaning actions were crudely misinterpreted. Our retreat to fragility is a protective measure to ensure our questionable practices leave the discussion intact. We can avoid the content of even the mildest critique by focusing on the ‘trauma’ that the critique causes. The second and perhaps the most formidable defence is the appeal to common sense and reasonableness. He argued that his actions were simply a means to get to know each of his students on a first – name basis, ‘how else are we meant to differentiate between the students?’ To recommend another course of action would be illogical and excessive, ‘the criticism is thus positioned as so unreasonable that it is unassimilable: it instead resides in the person of whoever has voiced it’ (Kanjere, 2018, p.7 -8). While we have these two defences at our disposal, we have every excuse to decide what we want to know.

  ‘Don’t show…’

Unfortunately, there is plenty of ‘show’. Show in the sense of a spectacle that starts at a particular time then ends abruptly. Its termination is often in conjunction with a new appointment or restructuring initiative, only to be brought back into existence repackaged with much fanfare. Individually, we don’t fare better. I see this in two matters, as part of our ‘show’, we are well-versed in ‘educationspeak’; we can talk at length about the tragedy of the award gap, facilitating student learning, enabling the student voice and meeting students where they are at, but our show is rarely acted out. Second, it is as if our show is broadcast within the watershed, so we use non-controversial and indirect language that obfuscates radical and direct action. ‘Diversity’, ‘difference’ and ‘inclusion’ are nice and acceptable umbrella terms that enable us to avoid more controversial ‘race talk’.  

‘Don’t care…’

I would like to think that we care about all our students. However, our care is mired by resource and time constraints that are often beyond our control (Powney, 2003). Our care is also hindered by our almost religious conception of the university (Biggs, 1999). A phrase I hear often is, ‘This is university!’ By this, we mean that students must adapt, we can’t change what we do too much. It is as if the university came down from the heavens fully formed and unblemished. From their inception, universities have adapted to their climate and demands of their stakeholders; why should this adaption come to an abrupt halt as large amounts of traditionally excluded students enter their halls?

This dogmatic notion of the academy mutes our concern for students who struggle to adapt.  Moreover, it puts the onus on the student and not the institution to adapt (Phillips, 2011; Singh, 2011; Miller, 2016). We place students in the deficit model rather than the institution. We refer to the gap between BAME students and their white counterparts as the ‘attainment gap’ and not the ‘award gap’. We critique student characteristics instead of our curriculum design. We have contracted out our caring to the university’s support services.  Perhaps the most troubling aspect is that we have become incredibly adept at focusing on everything except the institution; we focus on student’s positive outlook (Stevenson, 2012); their school performance (Stockfelt, 2017; Thiele, Singleton, Pope & Stanistreet, 2016); their homophily (Vaughan, Sanders, Crossley, O'Neill, & Wass, 2015); their indicators of struggling (Yates & James, 2006). For such reasons, care has been in short supply.

Epilouge

Reflecting on whether our universities know, show or care brings little joy. It is only made easier by the fact that I am not alone in my reflection. I have met many colleagues of every shade that work diligently to know, show and care for all their students. Observing their work reminds me of a touching moment in the closing scene of Boyz n the Hood; as Doughboy lamented the loss of his brother, Tre offered him the bittersweet consolation ‘you got one more brother left’ (Boyz n the Hood, 1991). Similarly, I have many brothers and sisters left.

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