#but if you set those aside and tackle different problems that are more accessible to you now

[mrtheinsatiable]

Starting to realize I've been unnecessarily resistant to a lot of ideas because I was just looking at them from an angle I didn't like

The idea of a "purpose driven life" is one of those things. The whole "I was Created for a Purpose" thing didn't vibe with me and also kind of pissed me off and that was pretty much the only context I had for the idea for a long time. And even the more secular version where I create my own purpose didn't work either because I've never felt like I had any particular calling or thing I Have to Do. It also feels dehumanizing to think of it that way, to a certain extent, to have a specific purpose or use like a tool or an object.

But actually a purpose driven life doesn't have to mean Having a Purpose it can just be "doing things on purpose." Life becomes a lot easier and also more fulfilling when you act with intent instead of just letting yourself loose in the day. It's hard to get your shit together when you're winging every second. A sense of purpose doesn't actually need to be deeper than that, I think, to positively influence your life

[scripttorture]

I have no idea if you can help me, but I am working on a short story that starts after a Sami girl is recovering from being tortured by Christian police after her father is put on trial for witchcraft. This is during the witch trials in Norway. I wanted to focus on recovery in the community and her animistic religion. However, I don’t know what kind of torture she could realistically be recovering from and if, aside from punishment, it should religiously motivated. Do you have any English links?

I put this one off for a long time hoping that the virus situation would improve enough for me to a) have less stress at work and b) be able to access the university library in my town. It doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.

 Norwegian history in the 1600s isn’t my strong suit. So my focus here is going to be advice on how to research this. I’ll also include the bits I found and some tortures so common that you can throw them in to virtually any setting without it standing out or being inaccurate.

 Before I get any further I don’t know anything about Sami culture. I’d strongly recommend trying to find Sami sensitivity readers if you haven’t already. Because it can be bloody hard to get accurate information on some of Europe’s oppressed minorities and I’d say the Sami fall squarely into that category.

 Historical research is fraught with pitfalls and when you’re starting out it can be really difficult to figure out which sources to trust. This only becomes worse when you’re working across a language barrier. And when the focus is torture it gets even more difficult.

 Torture has always been a hot button issue.

 The fact that virtually every culture has a history of torture doesn’t change that. Cultural ideas about what was ‘more painful’ or ‘more brutal’ or ‘shaming’ have all played a role in what was deemed ‘acceptable’ cruelty. So has the idea of who is an ‘acceptable’ or ‘deserving’ victim.

 And that means that misrepresenting the typical tortures of different countries, cultures, religious groups or past regimes has been part of political practice for literally hundreds of years. It is a very easy way to direct people’s hate and elicit an emotional response.

 I can’t stress enough how important it is to consider an author’s motivations, biases and abilities when you read historical sources.

 Think about whether an author was actually there for the events they describe. Think about their political and religious positions and what they may have to gain by pushing a particular message.

 Apologies if some of this comes across as teaching you how to suck eggs, but I know a lot of people don’t get this lesson in their history classes. So sources-

 Historical sources can be broadly categorised into primary and secondary sources. A primary source is something produced at the time. A secondary source is something produced later.

 Both can be untrustworthy/biased but a primary source gives you information about how events/practices were interpreted at the time, while a secondary sources tells you how they were remembered later.

 Primary sources can be things like diaries, court records of witch trials and objects produced in areas like Finnmark (northern Norway where most of the witch trials took place) at the time. Secondary sources might be things like how the witch trials are discussed in Norwegian history books and local history or stories about the witch trials that are told today.

 By reading about this in English you’re mostly being limited to secondary sources. The danger here is that secondary sources can misrepresent the time period they’re describing, deliberately or not. Authors make assumptions about how historical people lived, thought, what their actions meant and how their beliefs influenced their actions.

 Primary sources can also misrepresent what happened (deliberately or not) but with primary sources they are at least displaying the biases and concerns of the time.

 Generally historical research is about the collation and interpretation of primary sources. Which is a lot of work, requires a degree of expertise and often demands fluency in several languages.

 That level of work and knowledge appeals to some authors of historical fiction. But it isn’t for everyone. There’s nothing wrong with choosing to rely on history textbooks and the like instead of digging through transcriptions of things written back in the 1600s.

 Here’s the problem when you’re doing that for another country: English language sources are often very very biased in favour of other English language sources.

 This means if some bored academic in the 1930s made up a bunch of fan theories based on very little evidence it will probably still be used as a source today.

 And without having another language (with access to other sources it provides) it can be really difficult to spot that kind of fuckery.

 I am not saying that you need to learn Norwegian and believe me as someone with only one spoken language I understand how tackling a new one can be crazy intimidating.

 But I think you do need to know Norwegians. Particularly Norwegians with an interest in history.

 That’s all general stuff about researching historical periods in different countries.

 For torture in particular… I’m not gonna lie it’s a sack of angry snakes.

 Both primary and secondary often have considerable motivation for lying about torture. Historical accounts routinely downplay or outright lie about the damage different tortures cause. They are heavily judgemental about victims.

 And they run in to exactly the same issues we have trying to study use of different tortures today with the added difficulty that accounts from torturers are preserved far more frequently then accounts from survivors.

 It’s only once you start getting to the 1900s that you really start to see multiple survivor accounts of events. For the 1600s as a general period I can think of witness accounts and multiple accounts from torturers or their bosses in various countries. But the testimony of survivors is very very rare.

 This is an issue because we know from modern research that torturers routinely lie about what they do.

 There were laws in most European countries in this period that cover torture. They tend to define a sort of ‘accepted practice’: what torturers were supposed to do and for how long. And don’t get me wrong these are useful historical sources.

 But we know from comparing similar torture manuals used in the 1930s (and indeed more recently) to multiple accounts from torture survivors that torturers do not follow their own rules. I see no reason why torturers today would be less likely to follow ‘the rules’ then their historical predecessors.

 Looking up the laws of the land at the historical time period you’re interested in is a good place to start. But it won’t actually tell you everything that torturers did and it may not represent the most common tortures.

 It will give you a list of things that were definitely used at the time in that place though. Which isn’t a bad place to start.

 Look for history books that cover crime and punishment. If you can’t find one broad enough to do that (or give you a helpful summary of laws at the time) then I’ve found that accounts of specific historical figures in the relevant area/time often contain some of that information.

 The next major pitfall when researching historical torture is the bane of my existence: euphemisms.

 A lot of historical sources use vague or euphemistic terms for different tortures and then leave it up to the reader to figure out what they mean. This was probably perfectly clear at the time but now… less so.

 To use an example from something I’ve been trying to research for a while now I can tell you that the Ancient Egyptians definitely used torture. They say as much in surviving accounts of their justice system. They used it to punish, force confessions and attempt to gain information.

 They definitely beat people with sticks. They say they did, in multiple accounts. There are also wall carvings and paintings that show prisoners of war and enslaved people being menaced with sticks.

 However, I can’t find any definite suggestion that they used falaka, ie beating the soles of the feet with those sticks.

 Did they just hit people at random? This seems unlikely from a practical viewpoint as that’s a very easy way to kill someone. Did they ignore the feet and concentrate on other areas of the body? Did they use falaka and also beat other areas? Do I bring too much bias into this question because I’d love to find a historical point of origin for a torture that’s common throughout the Middle East today?

 Historical sources often just don’t contain the details we need to be certain about what torture they’re describing. Terminology is often vague. Descriptions can be contradictory. Often the only way to be certain is to come across an illustration or surviving device and even then this does not necessarily represent common practice and either piece of evidence could be contemporary propaganda rather then something that was actually used.

 When you’re talking about historical torture it is essential to find multiple sources and make sure they agree.

 Vague terminology like ‘water torture’ can cover a host of different sins. Finding a vague term or euphemism multiple times doesn’t even tell you if this was the same practice carried out in different areas or different practices with superficial similarities.

 If a source doesn’t give you enough information to be sure don’t use it. If a source suggests the meaning of a euphemism based on no clear evidence from the time period don’t use it.

 What I’ve found in my own small collection of books on witchcraft is very sparse on details.

 One of the older books I have suggests that there were almost no witch hunts or witch trials in Scandinavia which is complete bollocks. The book was published in 1959, so I’d suggest being wary of English language sources from that date and earlier.

 A much more recent (2017) Oxford University Press book on the subject gives an estimated 400-500 executions for witchcraft in Norway during the period of 1601-1670.

 This might seem like a small number compared to the thousands that were executed throughout the Holy Roman Empire but it seems a significant number given that the Norwegian trials were so concentrated in a small, sparsely populated region.

 Unfortunately this book is a very general overview of the perception of witchcraft and magic throughout Europe from the ancient world to the present. So it doesn’t really give any details of the kinds of tortures a Norwegian accused of witchcraft might endure.

 The author of the chapter on the witch trials was Rita Voltmer, University of Trier in case that’s helpful. She has published several papers on witch trials and the use of torture and at least one on witch trials in Norway. However a lot of her work is in German.

 These two papers/chapters in particular may be of interest: the english language document on torture and emotion in witch trials and the German paper on Norwegian and Danish witch trials.

 Several of the books I’ve got access to confirmed that Norway burnt witches and provided stories focused on shapeshifting and causing storms at sea. They also confirmed the use of torture in witch trials but nothing so helpful as the kind of tortures employed.

 I found multiple references to ‘water torture’. One of these implied that the particular torture was waterboarding alla the historical Dutch method. But the same source said this caused vomiting or possibly diarrhoea which seems to imply pumping.

 At a guess I’d say pumping is less likely because waterboarding can cause vomiting and so far as I know pumping wasn’t common anywhere in Europe during this period. However absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

 ‘Water torture’ could also potentially refer to: a temperature torture, near drowning, a method of sleep deprivation or even dehydration. Without more detail it’s really hard to say which of these is being referenced.

 I found one mention of ‘burning torture’ a reference that I think referred to tearing the flesh with hot pincers based on the description of a torn wound. However given I only found this referenced once and I’m unsure of the source I found it in, I would not say this is a good one to pick.

 Which leaves me with common tortures.

 Whatever the time period, whatever the place, beatings the most common torture. Easily.

 If your character gets repeatedly hit, whether it’s clean or not, you are not being historically inaccurate. And I’ve got a lot of posts on beatings generally and clean beatings that can help you write that.

 Starvation and dehydration are also both really common regardless of culture and time period. So are temperature tortures or exposure though I think different countries have favoured different methods at different times.

 Torturous cell conditions were incredibly common across Europe historically. Lack of sanitation, wet cells, inadequate bedding, over crowding and conditions amounting to a temperature torture were all really common. They were also often happening alongside starvation.

 I have a masterpost on starvation and tags covering temperature tortures, exposure and prisons. I think the ‘prisons’ tag should give you most of the posts covering poor cell conditions, ‘historical torture’ and ‘historical fiction’ may also be helpful to you.

 I’m sorry I couldn’t come up with anything more specific.

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

Edit: So this should be my week off the blog but I’ve seen a lot of the responses to this. Most of them are extremely helpful, thank you to everyone who knows Norwegian that is offering to help.

However: if your instinct is to say that any torturer, historical or recent, is ‘honourable’ and follows a code of conduct then this blog is not the place for you. I don’t tolerate that kind of apologia or people using my work to spread it. 

[the-melting-world]

The Empress | Side B: “The Wolves”

Art by @markmefistov

~ In which a humble gardener looks for answers…

The Trio Appearances: Kipling | Khleo | Ozy

Arcana LI appearances: Asra | Nadia | Muriel 

Track Origins: “The Wolves” by Ben Howard

Not sure if this is the right track? The full album can be found here: The Empress

cw: none

~ 1.7k words

Asra and Kipling go to the palace library to see if there are any books on grey magic. They agree to meet Nadia for tea afterwards.

Kipling had a feeling that this visit to the library was going to be a lost cause. And she was right. The gardener didn’t know how long she and Asra sat in silence, leafing through tome after dusty tome under the soft lamplight.

“There’s nothing here, Asra,” Kip huffed. She didn’t want to give up, but she thought it would be best to save herself the disappointment of going through the whole damn library.

Asra dogeared the page of the book he was holding before setting it off to the side and scooting a little closer to Kipling. He brushed a swirl of curls off her shoulder and pressed his forehead against it.

“Kip, come on. Don’t give up now. We can keep looking as long as we need to. There’s bound to be something.”

Kip shook her head. “Asra, no. There’s not even anything that mentions or even hints at the existence of grey magic. And I know exactly why.”

Asra lifted his head. Kipling wanted to gaze into his purple eyes and just let herself get lost in them. But what good would that do? It wouldn’t make her problems go away.

“Why?” The magician asked.

Kip sighed. “There were families on my island who had a lot of money, a lot of power, and a lot of sway over… too many things. They took away all of our records of magic. They employed our finest professors so that upcoming umbras only had the dying elders to rely on. They banned umbras from going to school with the other kids. There was a monastery on a hill where we were all contained.” Tears threatened to spill over as Kipling kept going. “We were only allowed to come down on certain days. We couldn’t stay for long at the market or the festivals or anywhere. Not even the beach…”

Asra tried to wrap his arms around her, but the gardener pressed a hand to his chest.

Asra held her hand instead. “Kip… did no one try to stop this?”

Kip exhaled slowly. “It happened slowly over decades until it was just normal. The people responsible feared umbras enough to cut us off from everything and make sure our magic did not grow beyond that hill.”

Asra waited while Kip insisted on wiping her own eyes. “So when I tell you that there’s nothing about us or our magic outside of the Melting World, I mean it.”

Kip could tell Asra wanted to comfort her. She could feel his concern morphing into waves of anxiety. How long would it have to be this way, Kipling wondered. She and Asra seemed to be in this constant state of worry and confusion regarding her magic. When was it going to stop? When would they be allowed to go back to normal?

“Come on,” Kip whispered, putting those thoughts to rest. “Nadia must be waiting on us with tea by now.”

Kipling walked with Asra hand in hand to the parlor where the Countess served tea and entertained small groups of guests. When they entered, Kip squeezed Asra’s hand before letting go to greet Nadia. The gardener found it a little surprising that the Countess was already at the door. 

Kipling came forward, perhaps a bit too quickly, to embrace her tall, statuesque friend. But Nadia, ever understanding and perceptive, warmly welcomed Kip and absorbed all of the weight behind her burdened breaths. 

While they were still hugging, Nadia said, “Kipling, Asra? There is someone here that I want you to meet.” 

Kipling withdrew and looked up at Nadia in uncertainty.

Her smile was tentative, but still warm. “He arrived unexpectedly. Usually, I wouldn’t permit someone to interrupt the time that I’ve set aside for us, but this man says that he has access to information on grey magic, which I know is something that you, Kipling, have been searching for.”

Kipling’s chest constricted with a sudden, uncomfortable heat. An Elder? Could it be possible that someone from her homeland traveled all the way here?

When Kipling was ready, Nadia guided her and Asra to where the tea was set up. All the while, Kip’s mind raced. Her chest thundered with anticipation.

“Kipling, Asra, I would like to introduce…”

Kipling couldn’t take another step. She saw the back of someone’s head. It could have been anyone. But then they turned. 

No.

Then they stood up.

“An ambassador from the Republic of Floating Isles and an expert in grey magic.”

Kipling took in the long, bejeweled dreadlocks, one of which was starkly white against the rest. The visitor had warm brown skin like hers and a murky green gaze that felt too excitable, too clever for this world. 

“Oz’mandias Sese Mar XIV.”

And that scar. Straight across the bridge of his nose. A jagged brushstroke over his handsome face.

Nadia chuckled, “Did I get all of that correct, Oz?” 

The very same scar that Kipling gave him ten years ago.

“Yes!” Ozy said without looking in her direction. “That’s how you say my name.” His eyes never left Kipling’s.

“Ozy?”

Kipling barely realized she had spoken. She had no idea what kind of reaction Asra and Nadia were having right then. All she could focus on was the boy – no. The man now – from her childhood. How time had matured his features, and yet kept everything that made him the smartest, most talented grey mage she knew. The differences sent Kipling’s mind in a tailspin. 

How could Ozy just look at her like that? With just as much fondness and warmth as he did on the first day they met. How was it possible? After what she did? After the things she said?

“Kipling?” Nadia must have finally noticed. “Do you two know each other?”

Ozy’s gaze dropped in what Kipling knew was uncertainty. He hadn’t told the Countess. 

Asra’s hands were on Kip’s shoulders. She knew he wanted so desperately to protect her, but he didn’t know how and he didn’t know what from.

“Nadia,” Kipling’s eyes were wet, “Ozy is my cousin.” 

Ozy looked up suddenly. Clearly, he wasn’t expecting Kipling to say those words. And just as suddenly as his hazel eyes locked with hers, Kip’s sight became overwhelmed by water. Her entire body in fact. Another portal had opened without her permission. Once again her emotions had wrenched open a hole in the fabric of reality. 

Only this time, she wasn’t asleep.

***

Please let this be a dream. Please let me be dreaming. Please…

Kipling opened her eyes to the sound of someone humming. She saw grass first, then flowers. Daisies. She rolled over and saw endless pink and blue sky.

The humming grew louder.

Kipling sat up and looked around for the source. Across an uneven blanket of hills and daisies, she saw a figure kneeling in the flowers, their back turned to her. Kipling started to get up, but she didn’t need to. Some strange gravity pulled her closer, as if she were riding along an unseen belt.

The humming grew. More figures came into focus. The one kneeling was petting something in their lap. That something was a body. Relaxed and half stretched out on the flowers, their head resting on the leg of the first. 

Kipling blinked. It couldn’t be.

The one horizontal, being stroked by the other, had brown curls that looked dipped in gold dust. Daisies and poppies and baby’s breath scattered about them, catching the light. The head turned to soak up more of that light on their face. Kipling’s heart skipped at the glimpse of their cheek. Their freckled cheek.

“Khleo?” Kip wondered out loud. 

She wondered… and yet she doubted. Kipling looked harder, realizing that body didn’t belong to Khleo. It wasn’t long enough, echoing Kip’s shape more than what she remembered of her friend. And this person’s arms… 

Kip stood up this time. She needed to get a closer look.

“Khleo? Can you hear me?”

The one kneeling looked up. The face of a woman and a lion – Kipling wasn’t sure how it was possible.

You broke a lot of things.

The woman, the lion, the sphinx stood up slowly, lowering Khleo’s head off her lap as she did so. She blocked Kip’s path to her best friend.

You broke things. You came from broken things. Beautiful things. All around you. All broken. 

Kipling didn’t want to look at this creature that just kept getting bigger and scarier and breathing hotly against her face.

And now you expect to touch?

The hum from before was a roar now. The woman’s maw was so sharp and closing fast. 

You will not come here and touch my things. I will not let you. They are mine and they are too beautiful for you to break!

Kipling screamed.

The roar drowned out into a gargle as gallons of seawater rushed in from all sides. Kipling yelped as she was tackled to the left, out of the path of the charging lion. The tunnel of water warped her surroundings. She was leaving that place with the lioness and all the other beautiful things that Kipling wasn’t allowed to touch.

The slap of zero gravity pulled Kipling back to her senses. It was short-lived and soon she was back in the Countess’ tea parlor, holding on tightly to her savior. She didn’t hear Nadia or Asra, so she assumed she and Ozy were alone.

“Ozy?” Kip forced herself to lean back some and look up at him. She couldn’t believe it. He was still not angry with her. 

“So you met Strength? Funny that portal took you there.”

Kip shook her head. “A Major Arcana?”

Ozy smiled gently. “Yes. Khleo’s. Strength can be very uh… territorial over them.”

Kipling took a moment to breathe. Her brows pinched as she turned over Ozy’s words. “Them? What do you mean?”

Ozy playfully tugged on her ghost lock. “Or she.”

Kip scoffed and shook her head. “Ozy, Khleo’s not–”

“Not what, coz?” Ozy dipped his chin. “Different? Didn’t you see her arms? It’s been ten years.”

He let that sink in.

“You, me, Khleo. We’ve changed a lot.” He leaned forward and plucked a cup off the table. “So let’s drink this tea before it gets too cold!”

Ozy took a leisurely sip. And then he smiled too wide, too inappropriate for the occasion.

“Because we need to talk.”

[clickbliss]

Spelunker HD Deluxe brings a legendary kusoge wrapped up in a modern package

by Amr (@siegarettes)

Spelunker HD

Developer- Tozai Games

Publisher- ININ Games

Switch, PS4

Despite preceding it by decades, Spelunker is more likely to draw comparisons to games like Spelunky, which draws direct influence from Spelunker, than the other way around. Spelunker’s harsh, unexpected deaths can be seen as the predecessor to modern roguelike platformers, and plenty of the elements that made it into a cult hit continue to influence modern titles. Spelunker’s one of those titles that forms a missing link in the chain of history. A game like Lode Runner, or Wizardry, that had reasonable success in the West, but became the basis of plenty of imitators in Japan. 

Unlike Wizardry or Lode Runner, Spelunker isn’t held up in popular memory for its compelling gameplay or endlessly replayable structure. No, Spelunker is remembered for being the ultimate kusoge, and with the release of Spelunker HD Deluxe, it’s finally wrapped around to drawing influence from its imitators. 

Spelunker appears to be a regular platformer of the PC era at first. You play as an explorer, diving into ancient cave systems, navigating puzzles and picking up gold and raiding ancient treasures. Each stage has you heading to different parts of the stage to collect keys, then doubling back to open up the doors to the next area, dealing with a set of hazards along the way. 

What makes Spelunker stand out is that you’re playing as the most fragile protagonist of game history. The titular Spelunker will meet instant death if he so much as sprains his ankle, and that’s not an exaggeration. Walk off a lift instead of jumping and you’ll die before you even have time to hit the floor. Move too far to the side of a rope you’re climbing--dead. Get crapped on by a bat--dead. Your character might have all the equipment he needs to explore a cave, but that doesn’t mean he’s equipped for it. 

What follows is a loop of shock, frustration and anger, where you curse the bullshit limitations the game has put on you, scream at their unfairness, then swear you’re gonna finish this stage despite this. And as you continually get to grips with its expectations, it gradually gets easier to complete a stage and you find yourself running through earlier stages with ease, the controls becoming surprisingly fluid when you have the confidence. 

For anyone familiar with the rapid fire deaths of modern indie platformers, Spelunker HD will feel immediately familiar. It’s got that same rapid fire pace of punishment and iteration, and remains compelling in the same way. The only thing that keeps it from feeling wholly modern is the structure. Spelunker HD simply asks you to complete way too many stages in a row before marking your progress, and replaying earlier stages quickly becomes tiresome, especially as they ramp up in complexity of layouts. 

Spelunker HD’s structural problems stand out even more given the earlier release Spelunker Party, which adapted Spelunker World, the free to play sequel built on the mechanics of Spelunker HD (which is of course an adaptation of Spelunker on the NES, an adaptation of the PC game). Absurd genealogy aside, Spelunker Party was built on more bite sized levels structured for multiplayer, making it a much better fit for both portable play and multiplayer, allowing you to more consistently tackle and progress through stages. Spelunker HD is more archaic in both structure and graphics, sticking more closely to the original game, and showing its origins as a PS3 downloadable title.

That doesn’t necessarily make it less worthwhile, just less immediately accessible, which will probably suit fans of its harsh, unforgiving platforming just fine. HD Deluxe also brings in new Endless Cave NEO mode, closing the loop on its influences by adding in an endless cave system with ever changing layouts. It’s not quite Spelunky, but rather a tunnel that slowly closes the screen on you, daring you to outwit the next set of obstacles before you’re crushed, and see how long you can survive. 

If I’m honest, it’s not the most compelling addition, and on its own doesn’t make a great case for anyone who’s played the previous versions of the game--which to be fair is probably isn’t a huge group. As a complete package then, Spelunker HD Deluxe lands somewhere between the original game and Spelunker Party. Party makes a more compelling case as a multiplayer game that requires coordination and fits into smaller sessions. HD works better for people who want to experience the original with modern features, complete with the option to return to NES style graphics. 

Whichever game you decide to go with, you’ll be sure to be cursing up a storm. 

[per-ineptia-ad-astra]

fixing The Menagerie

The circumstances behind The Menagerie pose an interesting writing problem: how do you take an already shot, totally completed episode for an earlier version of a TV show that differs considerably from the version that actually made it to air, and turn it into an episode that you can use now, as part of that later version, in a way that actually makes sense for your audience? That would be challenging enough without the additional problems that 1.) you can't reshoot any of the original episode because you no longer have access to the sets, costumes, most of the cast, etc., and 2.) the whole reason you're doing this in the first place is because you can't get a completely new episode out in time to meet your air date, so whatever your framing device is it has to be something that can be shot and finished very quickly--and cheaply, because at absolutely no point in the making of this show has there been spare money to throw around.

When I recapped The Menagerie (eons ago, it now seems) I said in the conclusion to the second part that I thought the framing device used wasn't as effective as it could have been. So, I figured I’d put my money where my mouth was and see if I could come up with another one. Before I start I want to put out the same disclaimer I used for the Return of the Archons post: I am not a professional TV writer (or a professional anything) and I intend this only as a fun exercise and not an angry and serious screed about the writing quality of TOS, which I do very much love for being what it is. I can only offer what, in my opinion, would make a more enjoyable episode, which may not necessarily be what you would find to be a more enjoyable episode. And if you already greatly enjoy The Menagerie as it is, you probably won’t want to read this.

For the purposes of this post, I’m going to take The Cage itself as written. It has its own problems, and that might be worth its own post at some point, but I’m not going to take it on here. We’ll assume The Cage exists exactly as it was produced, and the problem now is entirely focused on how to turn it into an episode—or two—of TOS.

(And, just to get it out of the way: I’m not going to talk about how either The Cage or The Menagerie play into Discovery, AOS, or the rest of Star Trek in general. It’s obviously a very important episode backstory-wise, but for this, right now, I’m just going talk about it purely as a TOS episode.)

So, with that out of the way, let’s talk about The Menagerie for a moment. What’s wrong with it?

Well, the framing device could certainly have been worse. It’s not terrible. Hell, Part I even won a Hugo, so, guess I’m up against the Hugo committee on this one. But, there are a number of things that I find awkward about it.

In a general sense, there’s the way that, once the flashbacks start, the story is attempting to maintain two separate threads of tension: the flashback story, with the tension being on what’s going to happen to Pike, and the present-day story, with the tension being on what Spock is doing, why he’s doing it, and whether he’s going to wind up getting the death penalty for it. This second thread starts out well—by this point in TOS, we’ve gotten to know Spock well enough to know how out of character all this is for him, which makes the mystery quite gripping. However, once the flashback starts, the story struggles to maintain the tension of this second thread. The attempt to keep the present-day story as tense as the past story only results in breaks away from the action for scenes in the courtroom where something or someone stops Spock from showing the footage, which never results in anything because by the next commercial break they’re back at it. Most of these interruptions are either arbitrary (the screen goes off for no reason and then comes on again for no reason; fake!Mendez randomly decides he’s had enough and tries to stop things) or just not that interesting (Pike fell asleep), and with each one it only becomes more obvious that the only real purpose they’re serving is to pad out the framing story.

The resolution of the present-day story is also rather unsatisfying for a lot of reasons. After so much tension built up about what’s going on and why Spock is acting this way and is his life on the line and is Kirk’s career on the line and how’s he going to get out of this...it turns out that Mendez has been fake this whole time, so nothing he said or did since Kirk left the Starbase matters at all; Starfleet casually waves the whole thing aside with no repercussions, making all the build-up about Spock risking the only death penalty remaining in the Federation mean nothing whatsoever in the end; and we never really get a satisfactory answer as to why Spock insisted on carrying out his court martial the way he did. Sure, eventually the Keeper says the whole court martial was basically staged to stall Kirk so he wouldn’t focus on getting control of his ship back, but not only does that raise further questions—if Mendez was only ever an illusion sent by the Talosians, why did he try to stop the court martial several times? Why did the Talosians turn off the footage at a crucial point, and why did it come on again?--there’s also no reason given why Spock couldn’t just recount what happened himself, which could have taken up enough time if he was careful enough about it, instead of needing the Talosians to broadcast a video version of the events.

There’s also the simple fact that Pike’s ending is itself rather dubious. I suppose this one comes down to a difference of opinion between me and Gene Roddenberry (one of many) since both The Cage and The Menagerie end with a character going to permanently stay with the Talosians, with no concern at all expressed about the fact that the Talosians are cruel, torture-happy, and frankly insufferable wannabe-slavemasters who see humans as nothing more than brute animals to be caged, bred and make to work. I said I wasn’t going to tackle The Cage here so I won’t go off about its ending, no matter how much it pisses me off. But The Menagerie is also at fault here, because it needlessly repeats the exact same problem (with a bit less sexism, but still). The ending of The Menagerie gives us no sign that the Talosians have reformed in any way, and no explanation as to why they suddenly care so much about Pike to go to all this trouble for him. We’re just expected to believe that Pike’s gonna go have a nice happy illusion-life with them even though the last time we saw them they were trying to breed a race of human slaves. Really, Gene? Really?

On that note, the treatment of disability in both The Cage and The Menagerie bothers me a great deal. The effect of Pike becoming disabled is to essentially strip him of all his autonomy. I mean no disrespect to Sean Kenney here, but if they’d replaced him with a mannequin it wouldn’t have made any difference at all to the episode, because in The Menagerie Pike is not a character, he’s a prop. We’re assured repeatedly that Pike thinks and feels as much as he ever did, but we have to be told that by other characters because the episode certainly never takes any opportunity to let us in on any of it. Here’s the sum total of what we know Pike thinks about the events of The Menagerie:

1. He doesn’t want to visit with Kirk and McCoy at the beginning of the episode but allows Spock to stay.

2. He tells Spock “no” when Spock tells him his plan.

3. He keeps repeating “no” the rest of that day, which everyone is confused by but no one makes any effort to understand.

4. He falls asleep at one point.

5. He votes for a guilty verdict for Spock during the court martial, when asked.

6. He says “yes” when asked if he wants to go live with the Talosians.

Pike is treated with sympathy and the respect due to his rank and history, but mostly he’s an object of pity. We’re told he can move his chair himself, but he appears to be confined to one small hospital room that’s not even set up for his needs, and he spends the entire episode being moved around by other people. Everyone talks about how bad his situation is, but only Spock attempts to do anything to improve it—and he does so knowing that Pike doesn’t want him to do it. When Pike tells him “No,” Spock doesn’t ask any questions, he doesn’t try to find out what part of this whole thing Pike is objecting to, he just overrides Pike’s objection on the assumption that Pike is only concerned about Spock doing something so very illegal, a concern he pretty much disregards. He turns out to be right—as far as we can tell—but for all the information Spock has at the time, Pike might have been saying, “No, I don’t want to live with the Talosians.”

It doesn’t need to be that way. Pike’s condition is certainly very severe, but as I mentioned in the recap, there are plenty of other things that could have been done for him, or at least attempted. And even if none of those were done, there are other ways that the episode could have developed his character, or at least treated him like a character. Spock’s discussion at the beginning of the episode could have been a mind meld that allowed us to hear Pike’s thoughts on the matter. Spock could have heard his objections and addressed them, and he and Pike could have come to come to an agreement and actually become co-conspirators instead of Pike spending the entire episode as a helpless hostage to Spock’s plan. We could have gotten a scene of Pike and McCoy interacting after Spock tells McCoy to look after Pike—McCoy’s not only highly suspicious at that point and unlikely to be greatly put off by Spock's order to not ask Pike any questions, he’s also the one who gives a whole speech about how cruel it is that Pike “can’t reach out, and no one can reach in”--so give us a scene where he does reach out! We could have had a scene of Kirk talking with Pike—he’s certainly got plenty to ask the man about, both in general and in regard to the current situation. All he has to do is put a little extra work into how to frame his questions. The Talosians could have delivered a message from Pike at the end, or one of them could have astral-projected in earlier to have a telepathic exchange with him. We could have seen Pike express himself by moving his chair, turning towards or away people when they talk to him, interjecting a “yes” or “no” into a conversation instead of only replying when asked something, or repeating a response incessantly to show that he’s emphatic about something. (Yeah, we kinda get the latter when he’s saying “no” over and over early in the episode, but that’s only treated as a “what could he possibly be trying to communicate??? oh, if only we knew!” moment.) There were so many ways Pike could have been treated as a character, as a person, instead of a plot element who exists to be pushed around in his chair and have speeches made about how tragic his situation is.

Both The Cage and The Menagerie end with a character who is disabled choosing to spend the rest of their lives isolated from the entire rest of humanity on a barren planet inhabited by jackass aliens because, as everyone around them nods and solemnly agrees, that’s a better fate for them than living among human society. To be clear, it’s not Pike and Vina seeking solutions to their problems that I object to. If Vina wants to be represented by what is essentially an avatar of her own choosing, or if Pike feels that an illusory world offers better quality of life for him, that’s entirely their right. But when life with the Talosians is set up as a situation so horrible that we see four characters literally willing to die rather than remain on Talos 4, and then have two disabled characters say “actually it’s better this way if I stay here,” you kind of wind up with a message that looks a lot like “being disabled is a fate worse than death.” I doubt that was intentional, at least not entirely, since we see other disabled characters in TOS who are treated considerably better—but there it is, all the same.

This is not to say that there’s nothing of value in The Menagerie’s framing story. The tension between Kirk wanting to trust his friend but being forced to act in authority over him because he’s undeniably done something very seriously against the rules, and he won’t tell Kirk why, is great while it lasts. Spock’s character is expanded considerably by showing us that there are some things he places above his honor and obligations as a Starfleet officer—and indeed above his own life. We see a bit of his history, a glimpse of a relationship with a former captain that he respects so much that Spock will put everything on the line to secure a better future for him; and we see how much he respects and values Kirk, that he foregoes the chance to explain himself—and thus gain an ally and aid in his cause—because to do so would put Kirk in danger as well. And we get that great little moment where Spock tells McCoy to call security on him and McCoy has absolutely no idea how to react. And we get backstory! And kind-of-continuity! Okay, it’s not much backstory, but by TOS standards it’s practically a goldmine.

I don’t want to throw all that away. But I think there must be some way to address the problems without totally losing the good parts.

It’s only fair, though, that any attempt to improve the episode should keep in mind the circumstances it was made under. I don’t know enough about budgeting and producing TV in the 1960s either generally in or in this specific case to know exactly what was available to them when it came to producing The Menagerie, so I’m just going to try to deduce roughly what we might have to work with based on what what was in the finished episodes:

Much of Part I and all of Part II take place in preexisting sets, either the Enterprise ones or the shuttlecraft interior set. The new sets include the Starbase 11 exterior—which is mostly a matte painting—Mendez’s office, Pike’s hospital room, and the Starbase computer room. The computer room is a redressed Engineering set; I suspect the hospital room is also a redressed existing set, but I don’t know for sure. It’s quite simple regardless, and is clearly mostly using existing pieces (the bed and the chair). Mendez’s office is likewise set up with pretty standard preexisting TOS set dressing pieces, with the exception of some cut-outs outside the window standing in for the Starbase exterior.

Discounting any background extras we have five new characters: Commodore Mendez, Piper, Chief Humbolt (the computer room guy), Lt. Hansen, and Pike himself. Of these, only Mendez and Pike have much significant screen time. So, we can assume that hiring an extensive guest cast is probably not on the table here.

Most of the original cast from The Cage are probably not available. Pike we know is definitely out—Jeffrey Hunter wasn’t willing to come back after The Cage failed, and probably would have been too expensive to hire for two episodes anyway. Leonard Nimoy and Majel Barrett were, obviously, still working on TOS, so presumably we could incorporate past-Spock and Number One if we really needed to. Since Malachi Throne was also on hand for The Menagerie, we could record new dialogue for the Keeper (as The Menagerie did indeed do), but presumably no new footage (Throne voiced the Keeper, but they and all the other Talosians were portrayed onscreen by female actors). I don’t know if any of the other original cast could have been gotten back, but since they weren’t, let’s assume we can’t use them.

Let’s also assume that all of the sets, costumes, makeup, etc., from The Cage are inaccessible. In reality I’m sure at least something was still kicking around in storage somewhere, or was reused for TOS, but there’s no point in trying to figure out exactly what, so for simplicity’s sake we’ll say anything we might want to use from The Cage has to be recreated from scratch, and if it can’t be then we can’t use it.

Because the entire reason this is going on in the first place is because the effects work was making TOS run behind schedule, we can’t have much in the way of effects for The Menagerie, especially post-production effects. There’s a shot of the planet Starbase 11 is on, a matte painting for the Starbase 11 exterior, a couple uses of the transporter, Pike’s chair and makeup, some shots of the Enterprise and the shuttle flying around in space, and some things being shown on screens—and I think that’s more or less about it.

So. If I was told that I had to take The Cage and wrap it up as a TOS episode with the above restrictions in mind, here’s some things I would keep in mind:

If we look at this from a starting-from-scratch perspective, it seems to me that if you have an episode that you need to incorporate into your main show that has an almost entirely different cast, and one of the characters from your original episode, who has never once been seen or even referenced in your main show, is played by an actor that you can’t get back, the simplest thing to do is to not show that character. We don’t actually need Pike himself to be onscreen for The Menagerie. That he would be at least mentioned in some capacity, sure, but we do in fact have the opportunity to avoid putting some poor dude through five hours of makeup by simply having Pike remain offscreen. We'll probably wind up putting someone else through five hours of makeup, but we'll get to that in a bit.

For me at least, if the Talosians are going to re-appear, they either need to still be villains in some sense or we need to know that they have begun to change their behavior in some way. To have them simply show up again and be treated as friendly after everything that happened in The Cage, with absolutely no acknowledgment of the fact that they did do everything they did in The Cage...it just doesn’t make sense, and it’s much too distracting for me to get past.

Although I’ve set the rule that I’m not going to change The Cage itself, The Menagerie being a sequel to those events opens up the opportunity to follow up on the ending of The Cage in a different direction. In other words, I’m going to rescue Vina, because her fate in The Cage really, really bothers me.

Insisting on the preexisting footage being literally shown as a video in-universe has always felt pointlessly awkward to me. It’s so weird that the characters have to stop and go, “Hang on, what? Where’d this come from? This can’t possibly be security footage. Why does it have different camera angles?” to forestall the exact same questions the audience were probably having at that point. And, as I said above, there’s really not a good explanation as to why the footage did have to be shown in that manner. It seems to me that it would be much simpler to have the flashback footage be just that: a flashback. A story which is being recounted, but not literally shown, in-universe. By doing so you avoid having to open up a bunch of dead-end plot threads about why the footage looks the way it does and is being shown the way it does. I think we can give the audience at least enough credit to assume they’ll understand that if a character starts recounting an event, and the scene cuts to footage of that event, that footage is a representation of what the character is saying, not literally something being shown in-universe.

I’m not going to bother with the whole “going to Talos 4 warrants the death penalty!!” thing. It doesn’t make a great deal of sense to begin with, and it never actually pays off in The Menagerie. We can manage a better source of tension than that, I think.

All of this would ultimately take my version of The Menagerie in a pretty different direction than the actual episode, I admit. It's a rather drastic change, but, if I was tasked with writing a framing story for using The Cage in TOS, here's how I'd do it:

The Enterprise is out tooling around doing their usual business when Uhura picks up a distress call from a ship stranded in space. It’s very faint, distant, and there’s something odd about it, but of course they’re gonna follow up on it because that’s how they roll. So they head off in the direction of the call, but the funny thing is that as they get closer, Uhura says that the source of the distress call appears to be moving around. They follow it, send some hails, and finally get back a scratchy, staticky response: it’s coming from a ship that’s been heavily damaged, and the crew is no longer able to steer it, so it’s drifting erratically through space. Kirk has Uhura send a hail: “We’ve received your signal. Keep broadcasting it and we’ll find you.”

They keep following the ship. It’s difficult—the call is weak, and the Enterprise has to go carefully or risk overshooting it. After they’ve been chasing it for a while, Spock points out that they should be wary of entering a nearby star system, because it contains a planet all Federation ships are warned to avoid. Kirk, of course, doesn’t want to give up on the damaged ship, but Spock steps over to his chair and quietly says, “Captain...I should warn you that it may be the lesser of two evils to abandon this ship, rather than risk going too close to Talos 4.”

Kirk, of course, is stunned to hear Spock say this, and asks what makes Talos 4 so dangerous. Spock says it would take rather a long time to explain. Kirk says that Spock almost sounds like he’s familiar with the place, and Spock replies, “More than familiar, captain. I’ve been there before.”

[dramatic sting, cut to commercial]

Since it looks like the damaged ship will take a while to track down, Kirk has McCoy, Scotty and Spock convene in a briefing room to hear Spock’s story. Spock gives a short introduction: “What I am about to tell you, gentlemen, occurred as I said thirteen years ago, when the Enterprise was under the command of Captain Christopher Pike. I’ve pulled up the log entries of Captain Pike pertaining to this time to provide his own perspective on the matter, as it was he that had the closest encounter with the Talosians. At the time, the Enterprise had only recently escaped a disastrous encounter on Rigel 7 which had resulted in the deaths of three crewmen and injuries to several more, including myself. Some of the injuries were beyond the capacity of the ship’s doctors to treat, so we were en route to the Vega colony for treatment when we began receiving a distress signal...”

Spock’s voice-over fades out over a transition to the Cage footage. We watch that--perhaps interspersed with the occasional bit of narration from Spock, or a question from Kirk or McCoy or Scotty--until about the point where the landing party encounters the fake survivors' camp and Pike is captured by the Talosians. Then Spock is suddenly interrupted by Sulu calling Kirk to the bridge. Everyone hurries up to the bridge, where Uhura reports that the distress call has suddenly disappeared. Sulu says it's not just that: somehow, he doesn't understand how or why, his sensors are suddenly showing that they're not on the same course or even in the same place that they were only moments ago. Somehow, they've wound up in the Talos star system--and they're heading directly for Talos 4.

"It is just as I feared," Spock says gravely. "This has all been a trap."

Kirk orders Sulu to change course, and he tries—but somehow the ship doesn’t divert even a little. It’s like the helm just isn’t responding. Kirk does all the usual things, telling Scotty to do something, etc, nothing’s working, and then Uhura reports that they’re receiving a hail. And it appears to be coming from Talos IV.

Naturally Kirk tells her to put it on. The voice on the other end is staticky and faint. "Greetings. Is this...the Enterprise?"

"This is the Enterprise. I'm Captain James Kirk."

Silence for a moment. Then the voice on the other end, obviously surprised, says, "Captain Kirk? Not Captain Pike?"

"Captain Pike no longer commands this vessel."

There's a long pause. "I see. We were...in error. We apologize for the deception, Captain Kirk. It was important that we bring Captain Pike to this planet, but we feared that his...past experiences here...would leave him unwilling to come close enough to hear our message.”

“That would be a most logical decision for Captain Pike, were he here,” Spock says coldly. “Considering the nature of those experiences.”

“You speak as though you are familiar with what transpired here before, then.”

“I am First Officer Spock. I was present aboard the Enterprise as Science Officer during the events thirteen years ago.”

There’s an even longer pause. When the voice returns, the signal is even more crackly than ever. “Our apologies, this communication is...difficult to maintain. We must wait to deliver the message in full until you are...closer to our planet. However...until then...you may be assured, Spock...that this time...” [pause for more crackling] “This time...the intent of the Talosians...is peaceful.”

The signal cuts out, and Uhura can’t get it back. The ship appears to still be locked on course for Talos 4. With seemingly nothing else to do for the moment but wait, everyone goes back to the briefing room, where Spock continues recounting Pike’s story.

At some point, Spock has to pause so everyone can go take a break, and everyone else files out of the room while he remains behind for a moment, staring at the computer contemplatively. Then suddenly, we hear a voice saying, “Spock--” and Spock turns around in surprise. We can’t see exactly what he’s looking at, only a soft glow at the edge of the camera, and then the scene cuts away.

Kirk’s grabbing a nap in his quarters when he’s woken by an urgent message: they’re still some way from Talos 4, but the ship appears to have stopped moving all on its own. He hurries up to the bridge, where Sulu tells him that it seems like they’re having some kind of computer error with the helm, but they can’t track it down yet. In the middle of all this, Uhura whirls around and exclaims, “Sir! Shuttle bay reports Mr. Spock has knocked out the tech on duty and is boarding one of the shuttles!” Kirk yells for security to get down there, but they are, of course, too late: Spock rigged the shuttle bay doors to open automatically and flies out before they can stop him.

Stunned and confused, Kirk orders Uhura to raise the shuttle, which she does.

“Spock, are you out of your mind?!”

“Negative, captain. My reasoning is quite sound, though I regret I cannot explain it to you just yet.”

Kirk yells for the tractor beam to grab the shuttle, but Sulu can’t get the tractor beam to respond either.

“You need not be concerned, captain. I believe it is well within Mr. Scott’s abilities to repair the computer in due time.”

“You did this to the computer?”

“It was necessary. You will find the transporter similarly incapacitated. I could not risk you coming after me, or stopping me. Not yet.”

“Spock—do you know what you’re risking by doing this? You were the one who warned me not to go near Talos 4!”

“Yes, captain. And it is because I know what the Talosians are capable of that I am doing this. Either they are telling the truth, in which case there is no danger...or they are not, in which case it is better that I alone risk doing this.” A pause. “Jim...wait 24 hours for me. If I do not contact you by then...you must leave in all haste.”

“I’m not leaving you behind!”

“You must. 24 hours.” And with that, Spock ends the call. As Uhura’s trying fruitlessly to reestablish contact with him, she suddenly looks up and says, “Captain...we’re receiving a message from...Fleet Captain Pike?”

“What?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well...put him on.”

So Uhura puts Pike on speaker, and Kirk says, “We’re, er, in the middle of a bit of a situation, sir...what can I do for you?”

“I might ask what I can do for you, captain. Mr. Spock left a message requesting that I contact you.”

Stunned pause for a moment. “He did what?” Kirk finally says.

“About an hour ago. I regret I wasn’t able to return his call earlier, but it’s the middle of the night here...Kirk, what’s this all about?”

Kirk sighs. “It’s a long story, captain, and I don’t entirely understand it myself. Uhura, patch this into the briefing room...it’ll take a while to tell.”

A little later, we see Kirk and McCoy sitting in the briefing room as Kirk finishes up explaining everything to Pike. “What do you make of that, captain?”

“I’m not sure what to make of it, Kirk. I can’t imagine why Spock would want to go to Talos 4. All Federation starships have been warned away from there ever since our encounter with them, and Spock’s well aware of that.”

“Yes...Captain, I confess I’m not familiar with the entire story of that encounter myself...Spock was telling us about it before he, er, left, but he hadn’t finished. Could you enlighten us about the rest of it? We do have your logs, of course, but you might have more information--”

“Yes, I see what you mean. I’m not sure I’ll be able to help, but I can at least tell you what I know...”

Pike continues telling the story where Spock left off. Around about the point where Pike and the others escape from the cell, there’s a call from the bridge reporting that their sensors show that the shuttle has landed on Talos 4. Frustrated, Kirk wonders once again just what Spock thinks he’s doing down there.

We then cut to a shot of what looks kind of like the barren landscape of Talos 4, only this time there seems to be a small surface settlement among the cliffs. Then we see Spock entering a small, plainly decorated room with windows looking out to the rest of the settlement. “I am here, as agreed,” he says, and then the camera turns to show us a figure wearing a robe and a hood sitting at a table in the middle of the room.

“Welcome, Mr. Spock," the figure says. "Won’t you sit down?”

Back aboard the ship, Pike finishes telling Kirk and McCoy the story.

“So...that’s all of it?” Kirk says.

“Yes. We left Talos 4 and never looked back. Never heard anything from the Talosians, either, but Starfleet marked the place as too dangerous to visit just in case.”

“Poor Vina,” McCoy murmurs.

Pike sighs. “Leaving her there is one my greatest regrets. She seemed determined to stay, but...Even put in a request to go back, once, but Starfleet wouldn’t allow it. Too risky. I often wonder what happened to her. If she was really happy with them after all. But, as you may have gathered, Kirk, none of this explains just what the devil Spock thinks he’s doing--”

He’s interrupted by a call from Uhura: “Captain—message coming from Mr. Spock!”

“Put him on! Spock, what’s going on? Are you alright?”

“Quite well, captain. Has Captain Pike contacted the ship yet?”

“I’m on the line right now,” Pike says. “Spock, what do you think you’re playing at?”

“Ah, captain. I have someone here who wishes to speak to you.”

We then cut back to Spock sitting at the table with the figure, who takes his communicator and says, “Hello...captain.”

Pike is too stunned to speak for a moment. “Vina...? Is that you?”

“The very same. I’ve missed you.”

“I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

Between them, Spock and Vina explain just what is going on. There's been a change in Talosian society since the Enterprise left. Not all of the Talosians agreed with the plan to breed a slave race to begin with—others felt that they could, and should, attempt to reclaim the surface themselves. The incident with Captain Pike brought matters to a head, and a rebellion erupted shortly afterward. Once in power, the new leaders dedicated their efforts to repairing their ancestors’ machines and establishing a colony on the surface.

The reason the Enterprise was lured back to Talos 4 was Vina: she's had medical problems as a result of the crash and the botched surgery, and it's been getting worse for years, to the point that she likely won't live much longer if she doesn't get proper treatment. The new Talosian leaders wanted to make up for what their predecessors had done and gave her the best care they could, but simply didn't have the human medical knowledge to fix the problem. So Vina asked if they could help her get home, instead. The Talosians were concerned, however, that the Federation wouldn't believe a genuine call for help, given their history, so they hatched the plan to lure the Enterprise, and Pike with it, back to Talos 4. They've been waiting for quite a while, listening to subspace chatter, hoping the Enterprise would come near. Once it did, they put out the illusion of the damaged ship to bring the Enterprise close enough that they could maintain an illusion over the helm controls, making sure the helmsmen were not altering their course as they thought they were.

When they discovered that Pike was no longer aboard the Enterprise, they instead sent a telepathic message to Spock, hoping that his own experience with the Talosians would make him see the difference between their current society and the old one, and thus be more likely to believe them. They had to wait until the ship got close to Talos 4, because the new society of Talosians have been deliberately letting their psychic powers weaken, attempting to break the addiction to illusion that was holding them back from reclaiming the surface. They were able to keep up the illusion of the damaged ship for a while, but couldn't manage that and the illusion on the helm and extended contact with the Enterprise at the same time, making the whole thing very nearly fall apart at one point.

Kirk demands to know why Spock ran off on his own, and Spock explains that while he found the Talosians' message plausible, a risk remained that this was all an elaborate set-up. They might have been attempting another pass at the plan that failed thirteen years ago. If that was the case, Spock would be the least risky member of the crew to make contact with them, since as a non-human he wouldn't be suitable for their plans. Since he knew Kirk would never agree to that, he took the shuttle and hacked the ship's computers to ensure that they wouldn't be able to follow him, at least for a while. He now feels confident that this is not a trap, though, as the Talosians' powers have weakened enough that his own mental defenses are strong enough to mostly see through them.

So Vina accompanies Spock back to the shuttlecraft, and they fly back to the ship. Vina's taken to Sickbay while Kirk confronts Spock about stealing the shuttlecraft. Spock says he'll accept all punishment, but felt he had to do it--he saw what almost happened to Pike on Talos 4, and couldn't risk the same fate happening to Kirk. But he also felt he owed it to Pike to investigate Vina's story, and help her return if that was truly what she wanted. Kirk lets the whole matter go, because of course he does, telling Spock not to try that shit again because he can't lose his best officer and all that.

Kirk and Spock go to visit Sickbay, where McCoy reports that with proper Federation medical care Vina's prognosis is good. Kirk wants to talk to her, but McCoy tells him to wait because she's got another visitor. Kirk glances around the doorway and sees Vina sitting up in bed looking at a video monitor, from which Pike's voice is coming. Kirk smiles and says he'll come back later.

Everyone goes back to the bridge, and with the computer damage now fixed, they're preparing to leave, when Uhura reports that there's a call coming from Talos 4. Kirk has a short conversation with the Talosian on the other end, who is glad to hear that Vina will be alright. They also ask that Kirk relay a message to Pike, extending their apologies for what he went through, which Kirk assures them he will. He then adds that the Federation would likely be willing to open trade negotiations with the new Talosian government, and the Talosian says they may take them up on that. And with that, the ship flies off.

Most of this story would only require the existing Enterprise sets, and potentially some brief shots of the shuttle interior. The only new locations needed would be the Talosian settlement exterior, which could be a matte painting, and the inside of the building where Spock meets Vina, which wouldn't require much dressing. The only non-main-cast characters would be Pike, Vina, and the Talosian that contacts the Enterprise. The Talosian is a voice-only role. Pike is also a voice-only role, and would require someone who can approximate Jeffrey Hunter's voice, but it's a lot easier to find a sound-alike than someone who's a sound-alike and a look-alike--plus Pike would be thirteen years older than in The Cage, which allows some leeway. I don't know if Susan Oliver would have been willing/able to come back to play Vina, but if she wasn't, a hood, wig, careful camera shots and some old-age makeup would probably serve well enough to disguise another actress. The only special effect needed is a bit of glowiness for the Talosian that appears to Spock just out of frame.

As for the fate of Pike himself, I don't want to erase a disabled character, but I also don't really feel that Pike's appearance in The Menagerie does any justice to him as a disabled character. Did Gene always envision that kind of fate for him or did he simply seize upon it as a plot device in a desperate moment? I don't know, so in the end I decided to leave it more or less open. There would be considerable leeway for multiple options that would still allow him to serve the same role in this episode: he could be commanding another ship, he could retired and settled down somewhere, he could have suffered an accident as he did in canon and spend this entire episode talking through a voice synthesizer. Imagine whatever one feels most suitable to you.

This is only my own take on the story. I know it would have considerable repercussions to later Star Trek canon and I'm not going to make the claim that those repercussions themselves would be better than what actually happened. It's certainly a more hopeful ending than The Menagerie, on the whole, which may not be everyone's cup of tea. But it was an interesting exercise.

[fashion-fitness-fantasy]

6 Weeks Into My Fitness Journey vs. 6 Weeks Into My Quarantine

I started to use quarantine as an excuse to work on my fitness because despite having so much on my plate to challenge myself mentally, I have nothing physically engaging to do as of now. If I can’t leave my house, then I figure it’s the best time to start trying to lose the weight I gained while being a stressed out student (maybe even go back to my high school dancer self...fingers crossed). There is literally no temptation to eat outside and make unhealthy choices at this point for me, so here goes nothing (it also helps that I live in a home with a family full of vegetarian health nuts, so my options are only healthy at the moment). So, here I am 6 weeks into my fitness journey & my quarantine, and I am 14 pounds lighter, doing yoga everyday relentlessly, and having revelations I didn’t know I needed.

I have gone through nearly 7 straight years of higher education, and still have 3 more to go. First with 3 years of a biology undergrad, then 3 years of PT school, and now 4 more years of medical school. I had so many bumps along the way to getting into medical school and graduating from my other programs, that stress eating became my way of coping with how hard everything had gotten. It had gotten to a point where food was the only solace I had in a world full of monotonous studying, daunting exams, countless failures big & small, and endless critique from professors & admissions administrators, who held the keys to my future in medicine.

Basically, a ruthless education system with a “we’ll gladly break you down, but you’ll have to build yourself back up” philosophy. A system that makes you grovel and beg endlessly, despite all of your merit and hardwork, just to gain access to it...let alone succeed in it. By the end, you’re left in Seligman & Maier’s classic “learned helplessness” state with your self-esteem riddled in the dust. But hey, at least you got the keys to prestige and can feign your stolen dignity by putting Dr. in front of your name. Funny how after knowing the psychological concept, you can still fall prey to it. The only difference is now you know what you’re suffering from, but you have no idea how to bring yourself out of it...which some would argue is worse. But here’s the best part....I brought it all on myself. I could have walked away, but why didn’t I? Oh right! I said it was my dream. Silly me...

So, naturally, the only thing I felt I had in control to make myself happy was food, and I started to gain weight along with my stress. It’s simple math: unhappy/stressed me + fast-food + studying - activity = sedentary unhealthy lifestyle mentally and physically. And one of the first things I learned in PT school, an anthem really: “A sedentary lifestyle will kill you. Movement is medicine.” You can subtract the fast food, and add in activity easily, and you can see results. The problem is to maintain those results and those habits. You have to figure out not only how to subtract the “unhappy/stressed me”, but change it into “happy/balanced me”. I’ve found that this is where most people get lost. Changing a variable in this equation is not as easy as math would make it seem. And, it’s by no means a novel idea. My generation is all about championing mental health. We are all highly aware of the self-care mantra everyone has been touting recently. And yet, having the knowledge to understand it, and being able to use it still proves to be so difficult that most people don’t bother. Or, if they’re anything like me, they start and stop so many times it would make your head spin.

Being a physical therapist and medical student, I feel like an absolute hypocrite. Hell, while going through PT school alone, I felt like an absolute hypocrite. Here I was learning about how to help others maintain not just their fitness, but their health as a whole, and I was directly defying that simple science (and I would dryly laugh with my friends as most of us were guilty of it). But let’s be honest, there is nothing simple about that science. They fool you into thinking its merely just calories in vs. calories out. But, what about the mindset? What about tackling what got someone to that point in the first place? There’s nothing simple about that. They teach us these theories on motivational interviewing and helping someone come to terms with their triggers and setting realistic “SMART” goals. All these theories are fantastic...as theories. Getting yourself to apply them is a whole other battle. And as a PT, getting your patients to apply them, while you yourself find the theories inconceivable, is a layered problem that I don’t even know how to begin to explain. 

When I started quarantine, my body was literally grasping at straws, craving for unhealthy carb-loaded, fried food. I longed for paninis & soups from Panera, large sodas & fries from McDonald’s, burrito bowls from Chipotle, and...well you get the idea. It was a routine for me. Go to school, come back home exhausted, stressed, or defeated from having swallowed the “constructive” (inner me would say crushing) critiques of my professors, and reward myself for my hard day’s work with a fast food meal. In that hour of eating, my misery was sated enough to work for the rest of the day without complaint. It was a system that got me through 7 years of stress. A system I felt guilty about, but don’t worry, because the food quelled that emotion too. At least, it did. Right up until the next morning, when I saw myself in the mirror and promised myself I wouldn’t do it again, only to break that promise that very day. Some days I could keep my promise for a week...even two...and then shit inevitably hits the fan. And suddenly (yet not unexpectedly), I find myself needing to eat out just to stop myself from breaking down entirely. Essentially, I always broke my promise. And just like that I tormented myself in this cycle, each year getting just a little bit worse. So subtle that I couldn’t even see what I was doing to myself.

Those broken promises added up not only to my weight gain but a deep mistrust in myself, which of course, showed up in other areas of my life too. I second guessed myself on the people I surrounded myself with, on clinical decisions for my patients, on exams, on whether I was capable of improving on the critiques I was receiving, on who the hell even allowed me into this field in the first place...??? And with each kind person, each correct clinical decision, each passed exam, each improved critique, and each authority figure telling me I belonged, I gained a deeper fear that the fall I was about to take was now going to be from a higher pedestal. In other words, I developed a severe case of imposter syndrome (a silly term my friends and I joke about having but deep down know it’s not really funny at all).

My triggers, my stress, my pain, and my award-winning cynicism aside, I see this quarantine as a universal intervention to give me time to breathe. I see it differently than what I saw it as 6 weeks ago, when I started. No longer a prison, and more a safe haven. A beautiful pause on a once dangerously high speed car chase of a lifestyle.

I still have a long way to go to get my health back to what it was before my years of higher education weighed down on me (figuratively & literally), but writing this is the farthest I have gotten in a very long time. It literally took a pandemic to uproot me from my unhealthy lifestyle, that I had dug myself into over the past 7 years, but I am happy that something good came out of something so horrific. And hopefully, as the pandemic dissipates, and the world resumes some semblance of normalcy, I can take what I’ve learned in this social distancing era with me.

[bluedoraemon]

The new normal of our education system

"education is a passport for the future to those who prepare it today."

WHAT IS ONLINE EDUCATION?

Online Education, why we have online education? we have online education because online education enables the teacher and the student to set their own learning pace, and there's the added flexibility of setting a schedule that fits everyone's agenda. As a result, using an online educational platform allows for a better balance of work and studies, so there's no need to give anything up. And also because of the pandemic we should have a online education/learning because we can’t go out of our house because is dangerous outside so they prefer online education.

The purpose of online education is the main aim of online education is to help students earn higher education no matter where they are located. The key benefits of online education are low costs, no traveling required, self-paced coursework, and time flexibility.

 I have 5 benefits of online education/learning as you can see in the picture there are flexibility, accessible, global knowledge, cost effect, and the better opportunities. there are so may benefits but i choose that 5 because for me that’s the best benefit i can see in the online learning.

Is online learning is good or bad? it depends because online courses, especially college online courses, can be quite beneficial for a busy student. ... Online classes can often be more cost-effective than traditional classes and can be done at a pace the student is comfortable with. For middle and high school students, the logistics of online courses can also be beneficial.

I have a advantage and disadvantage of online learning 

Advantages: 1. You are safe inside your home - With Covid-19 cases escalating by the thousands every day, it won’t be surprising if we just decide to stay inside our homes for the next couple of years.Online learning reduces the risk of contracting the virus. Students only need to go turn on their gadgets and enter their virtual classrooms. It’s education without leaving your home!

2. You don’t need to commute or travel - This is probably the biggest advantage of online learning in the Philippines. You don’t need to catch a ride at the crack of dawn just to make it to your 7am classes.There’s no need to queue at the bus station or at the MRT and waste precious hours. You also don’t need to spend money for transportation or parking fees. This money can go to other important expenses or priorities.

3. You get to enjoy more time with your family - Online learning also means an increased time shared between children and their parents.There is a more active participation as parents create a positive learning environment and support their children with whatever they need for the online learning set-up.And because there’s no need to travel to and from school and sit through hours of traffic, you also have more time to spend with each other throughout the day.

4 You have the freedom to learn wherever you want - As long as there is a stable and reliable internet connection, of course! You can study anywhere you want in the house that is conducive to learning. Whether it’s in the living room, the lanai, or your bedroom, it’s a lot cozier and more comfortable than your usual chair and desk in the classroom.

5. You can get enough rest and sleep - With online learning, you can set your alarm, do your morning routines, and then turn on your computer to start your day of learning.During your lunch break, you can enjoy a delicious home-cooked meal. And when classes are over, you can rest or even take a nap before you tackle your homework.In short, you can study and relax in equal measure.

6. You can take advantage of available technology - In the classroom, almost everything is prepared by your teachers. All you need to do is show up for class, pay attention, and learn something.With online learning, you are responsible for the tools and apps you will need to be able to follow the lessons, participate in discussions, and submit your assignments.If you’ve never used an app before, you need to learn how to create an account, as well as navigate the app.Online learning also encourages you to be resourceful when it comes to research and presentations by using alternative methods and making most of what you have at home.

Disadvantages:

1.There can be a lot of technical difficulties - Aside from the issue of slow and unstable internet that causes videos to freeze and streaming to be disconnected, there may be problems with ambient noises that can be too distracting. Like dogs barking, tricycles passing by, construction noises from the neighbor, just to name a few.And because students are at home, there’s also the tendency to feel sleepy and lazy.

2.Not everyone can afford resources for online learning - Internet subscriptions, laptops, smartphones, and tablets are not exactly cheap. Students who are from the marginalized sector definitely won’t be able to afford these.

3.Some teachers / professors / instructors are not tech-savvy - Not all educators are adept at using the latest technology. Maybe they haven’t had the need to because they utilize other tools and methods to teach. Or maybe their schools are not equipped with it.

4.Classroom interaction is only online - Students and teachers only get to talk on video calls and social media platforms. This is very different in an actual classroom where they can sit together, chat, share a joke, huddle for group activities, and many more.With online learning, you only get to interact with what you see and hear on your screens

[seasaltmemories]

Persona 5 Royal Review/Analysis

So I didn’t have a ps4 when the original persona 5 came out, so royal was my first experience with the game, as a result, I will be talking about spoilers for both the original content and Royal bc a lot of the additions seem mixed in aside from just the third semester stuff

let’s get the summary

Prepare for an all-new RPG experience in Persona 5 Royal based in the universe of the award-winning series, Persona! Don the mask of Joker and join the Phantom Thieves of Hearts. Break free from the chains of modern society and stage grand heists to infiltrate the minds of the corrupt and make them change their ways! Persona 5 Royal is packed with new characters, confidants, story depth, new locations to explore, and a new grappling hook mechanic for stealthy access to new areas. 

So one of the things that I picked up really early on into my playthrough was that Persona 5 feels like a very adolescent piece of media, like yeah it is about highschoolers, but more than just its cast and setting, it seemed really fixated on capturing and adolescent mindset, there is this fresh awareness to the injustices of the world and a burning desire to fix it without much understanding of how to even began to tackle those problems, and the fact it stuck so hard to to that worldview made me a lot more forgiving of its flaws then I might have otherwise been, not that there isn’t stuff to critique about the way it tackles controversial issues, but at the same time i just had this mindset of, “well of course they aren’t going to get everything right, what can you expect from teens?”

Anyone who knows me knows I am a pretentious blow-hard, but I think P5 is a perfect example of just how important style is to anything.  So much of the pure glee and joy I got when I booted up the game came from the fun presentation and commitment to the phantom thief aesthetic, I have a lot of thoughts on gameplay that seem to be contradictory to the general consensus but to keep things brief, all the “sneaking’ around a palace, grappling from places, ambushing enemies, and performing all out attacks just all gave this sense of being cool and stylish that was great, even if the writing stronger, without those fun flourishes I don’t think I would have enjoyed my experience as much

I also think the more than any other game, persona 5 does a great job of making me thinking “just one more thing” you got a lot of confidants to fill and stats to raise to fill them so there is always something to do, at most during the story sections things sometimes dragged, but i was eager to finish them to get back to finishing my goals, for as long as the game was, this made it feel so much more manageable

Unpacking an entire 110 hour playthrough is kinda an overwhelming task, so instead I’m going to talk about my four favorite characters and hopefully that will cover some good amount of material

1) Goro Akechi- one of the first things I knew about this game was what a controversial character this bastard was and it turns out I fell on the side that loves him bc I think I have a thing for traitor characters, I have to say though for most of the game I wasn’t sure how I felt about him, I knew his true role going in, so it was hard to get attached to Detective Prince Akechi as most of his interactions with Joker felt like an act, however his Rank 8 confidant link, when he not only pulls out a gun on you and challenges you to an one on one fight but also freaking throws a glove to challenge you in a duel I was like “oh so you’re a little bitch boy then!” and never turned back

To me part of what makes him so compelling is just how stubbornly he is set on his path straight to Hell, a lot of ppl were moved by his tragic backstory but honestly it does little for me, I think it is important to consider, but you have to remember he approached Shido about his powers first and basically volunteered to be his personal assassin, still it is hard to ignore that sense of lost potential, in a way I can see how getting to pretend to be a part of a safe and welcoming team environment almost made things worst because he just kept feeling like, “why wasn’t I allowed to have this earlier” and just too tied to his current path of self-destruction to waver from it, like even the fact the Phantom Thieves and he had the same goals regarding Shido in the end, he couldn’t side with bc that would mean acknowledging all the murder he did was for nothing, so they just continued to be another target on his list, made all the more dangerous bc of the affection he held for them

That said I don’t think I would have liked him so much without Royal’s updates, I mentioned Rank 8 being a key moment for me but aside from that, the fight with him in Shido palace had so much going on, it kinda dulled the weight of any one of the numerous revelations, 3rd semester kinda brought in the perfect amount and balance of the different sides of Akechi, the minute he appeared I swear me and my brother cheered in joy, obvious spoilers for the rest of it

I had seen 3rd semester Akechi called “feral” and while he is still as horny for murder as ever, i don’t really think that fits, there is still a sense of restraint to his actions, yet he doesn’t mask his true intentions and feelings so much, what I like is that his rudeness and outbursts come off as very deliberate and planned, as if he enjoys exposing the contrast between his “pleasant” reputation and his true bitterness, and with the reveal that oops he is supposed to be dead, you still have that determined “don’t be a fucking pussy, just pull the trigger,” attitude, I really like the dynamic that forms between a Joker that just wants the best for him and an Akechi that just emphatically refuses to be saved in anyway, he is an easy character to woobify but I love how canon just at every turn doesn’t let you ever see his true vulnerability even if we all know it exists down there, also just something about hearing him curse is always so much fun and delightful

TLDR: I have a lot of feelings about this edgy bastard and may or may not already have a playlist for him

2) Makoto Niijima- another character I had an interesting relationship with, while from the start she seemed like my type, the overwhelming love for her kinda made my hipster side apprehensive, however predictably I was won over and I did romance her in the end (what can I saw my Joker is into brunettes)

Part of what makes her stick out so much to me, is how the game felt much less afraid to show her unlikable in comparison to other characters, i usually don’t complain or really notice this but more than any other game series I’ve played, there is definitely a lot of self-insert fantasy elements involved, ppl rip the newer FE games apart for that, but I never really saw it as the terrible as the cast had dozens of life changing interactions with other characters, the fact most of the interaction we see are through Joker’s eyes, and the fact that he is the catalyst to changing several adults’ lives made this element a lot more noticeable

But not only does Makoto take an antagonistic role at first, but they let her be so smug and annoying that I probably hated her with the same passion as the characters themselves, yet even when she comes over to or sides, her flaws are still pretty open, like when trying to help out Futuba, she definitely had that air of, “neurotypical trying too hard to make you normal” that was understandable but still annoying, and I appreciate it bc it made the contrast between her good points all the sharper

I kinda wanted to roll my eyes at first at her archetype as an honors student, bc yeah i was a nerdy student who didn’t know how to connect with my peers and just kinda subconsciously sucked up to adults bc I didn’t know what else to do, but in comparison to the teeming tragic backstories involved, you can see a stark difference in scale, yet Makoto is just carrying all this familiar teenage girl anger that reminds me a lot of Serena from Arc V, and getting to see her embrace it is very cathartic, I also really enjoyed her confidant which was surprising after seeing everyone tear into it so much, I feel like a lot of ppl’s confidant’s centered around other ppl and it didn’t just start off with the Eiko stuff, you see her Makoto want to change from the sheltered snobbish life she has kinda trapped herself in and rediscover her dream of being a police commissioner, I also found it fitting for her to also kinda figure that out through her own little investigation and to see that exploration of justice explored through her acting with a third party

The fact she is related to Sae also gives her interesting relationships we get to see from a different POV, and a greater investment in arcs outside her own, it just naturally gives her the feeling of being more well-rounded to have it spread out, and while her romance stuff did have the same sort of fantasy elements (that I greatly self-indulged in) overall I never felt like Joker was “saving” her in some way but growing and exploring along sides her

Overall, a great character and while i think best girl debates are dumb, I will not stand for hearing her described as worst girl

3) Ann Takamaki- honestly before I got this game I expected her to be the “main girl” with a lot of popularity and focus so seeing how little love she gets was heartbreaking for me, bc she is part of what made the early phantom thieves so enjoyable

I’ve heard the discussions about the issues around her sexualization and I think things on that access come out to be a wash, the developers kinda brush near some interesting ideas about the struggles women face with sex and attraction but don’t really know what to do with that, and so I think trying to trace and overall arch one way or another about her and her body issues is kinda a lesson in futility

in the end though what made her click for me is just how much fun her personality is, like I feel like in other stories her cheerfulness might come off as generic, but the fact that she is introduced so depressed and sullen makes her attitude shift come off as refreshing, like we know she can be serious, but the fact she isn’t being repeatedly sexually harassed by her teacher gives her like plenty of reason to goof off and enjoy herself

Again despite all the criticism I really enjoyed her confidants, the Mika stuff was honestly barely a blip in the thing and most of it alternated between her shooting the breeze and just having fun and still dealing with that lingering guilt and issues surrounding Shiho and just not having been able to save a close friend when she really needed her, I think the contrast is very much needed, especially to keep things from feeling like wallowing, which i felt was a problem with some other confidants

In the end though the main reason i didn’t romance her was bc as much as I liked her as a character, I didn’t want her to be with Joker specifically, i wanted to support her and see her finally confess her feelings to Shiho and the two of them go ride off into the sunset lol, still there’s a reason I reached rank 10 with her first

4) Takuto Maruki- lol so in this section I’m going to basically go into all my 3rd semester thoughts, again the first leg of his confidant was kinda dull, but I was prioritizing him bc of the deadline, once we got into his personal past that is where I got interested

On one hand part of the charm was just getting to see a more adult story, while there are other adult confidants I found the grad school and like academic stuff relatable, plus like the little moment with the steamed glasses was very funny, he’s just a down to earth guy and his kindness is genuine

However when he stepped up as the antagonist in the third semester, that’s when he got interesting, I found the conflict itself of a dream world to be kinda simple, aside from the fact obviously we need to oppose this for a plot to happen, Persona 5 is all about this humanist approach to personal growth and change, most of what I found fascinating about Maruki was the kinda self-martyring narcissism to his approach, like aside from treat the phantom thieves with kid gloves at time and just doing his best to avoid being a bad guy, there is this simmering resentment he masks and tries to replace with his desire to basically save the world, rather than deal with his own drama and baggage he tries to invest his energy into solving other problems

And you can see some of the parallels between him and the phantom thieves that points out some of hypocrisy of themselves, calculating the exact risks and harms of altering ppl through the Metaverse is hard to do due to a variety of factors, personally I don’t even have other Persona games to look to, but in general while it is for the greater good, the phantom thieves basically impose their will onto ppl who didn’t consent to that change, and in the end they decide to oppose Maruki purely based on their desires to not live in it, the game doesn’t do much with it, but I found the contrast more interesting than the Holy Grail one, plus his boss battle was more fun bc you actually got to use the main mechanic of the game, exploiting weaknesses and baton passing

But yeah all this comes to a head at the latter half of the boss fight where he just is so desperate and refuses to lose, it is like abundantly clear that this dream world is much more for himself than it is for anyone else, it is a desire to turn all his trauma into something more meaningful than just pain, and nothing shows that more clearly than the fact he fistfights a high schooler even after he has basically lost and tries to let himself die rather than face the consequences of his lost.  All in all I think he was the my favorite antagonist and palace holder

Some last thoughts I couldn’t fit elsewhere: Casino was my favorite palace, while weak story-wise, Okumura was far from my least favorite palace gameplay-wise and his boss fight as frustrating as it was might be my favorite for engaging with the player, if anything my least favorite palace was Futaba’s, my favorite showtimes are probably Morgana/Ann, Makoto/Ryuji, and Joker/Kasumi, Caroline and Justine are a delight and I really miss them, Tycoon is addicting and distracted me from being able to beat the game for a while

I got more hot takes I might elaborate on in length in the future, but in conclusion this is another rec where I can see and understand ppl being disappointed in some of the writing and its quality but at the same time i think there is still value ppl are too quick to dismiss and definitely multiple reasons to still enjoy it, I think this is going to stick with me for longer than I first thought it wound

[ithinkfi2-blog]

Long Term Financing Goals: 5 Simple Steps For 2020

Long term financing goals... Doesn't sound as exciting as long term stay at the beach, does it? Truth is, long term financial goals don't offer immediate rewards. Rather, you have to look at them like seedlings turning into a robust vineyard. If you want to stop working at some point or avoid a potential crisis when unemployment hits, then you simply have to embrace certain types of financial goals as friend, not foe. When the COVID crisis hit, over 14 million Americans faced the unemployment line. How many of those Americans do you think had six months' worth of income stashed away? Not many. Most of us live paycheck to paycheck, with little to no savings and zero retirement planning. That's not living on the edge. That's living in the quicksand. If you're still gainfully employed during these tenuous times, we encourage you to embrace five financing goals that will leave you well-positioned to tackle anything from dental trouble to a million-dollar retirement savings plan. Let's take a look.

1.  Diminish Debt

Debt is like a revolving door. If you can never seem to get out of it, then you're doing something wrong. Credit cards come with a ton of great perks, like cashback on purchases, airline miles, and more. But, it's not wise to carry a huge revolving line of credit. It's also unwise to merely pay the minimum balance each month and allow interest payments to accrue. If you can't pay your card off at the end of each month, you probably don't want to keep swiping it. The thing about credit card debt is it's kind of like pouring sand into a jar with a hole in the bottom. It prohibits people from saving for them because, how can they build a savings fund when they're so far in the hole to someone else? So, if debt's your problem, the first thing you want to do is stop accruing more debt. Then, it's time to see how you can scale the mountain. Here's the best way to armor up and take down debt:   

Track your spending (down to the penny). See where you're wasting money that can be directed toward your "get out of debt" plan. A daily dollop of self-control can stack up greatly in the monthly scheme of things. Consider your convenience store runs, coffee stops, and weekly lunch dates to start. 

Create a budget. Allocate every penny of your weekly or bi-weekly paycheck. Hold yourself accountable to that budget. If you need to eliminate the vacation fund for a year, do it. If you need to forego your $50/week restaurant budget, do it. Releasing yourself from the burden of debt is worth tightening the budget for at least a year. 

Check your interest rates. Things like student loans and mortgage payments typically come with low interest rates. It's not uncommon to see anywhere from 3% to 5%. Credit cards, however, can soar upwards of 19%. That's why you're going to want to go after those kinds of debt first. Paying too much interest is like throwing away money each month. So, that high-interest rate card needs to be tackled first.

Check your balances. The other factor that matters is your balance. Once you know which cards have the highest interest rate, you're going to want to tackle them in order from worst to best. Sometimes, the impulse is to get rid of the cards with small balances first. But, you actually want to go in the opposite direction and take down the biggest offenders first.  

  Why does this work? Well, let's look at the numbers. Say you have three major debts. If you're able to up the ante and allocate 20% of your monthly income to this endeavor, you're looking at a pretty good strategy. For someone who earns $3,000/month, that's about $600/month. What you want to do is direct $100 to one, $100 to another debt, and $400 to the largest debt. As you pay off one, maintain that same $600 and use it to attack the remaining two, then the last one, and then... dare we say it... you're free.    

2. Spend Less, Save More

We know, we know. How cliché. But, the thing about clichés is that they're often repeated because they're often true. If you're still living paycheck to paycheck, be afraid, be very afraid. Given the tenuous times we live in, families need to have an emergency fund set aside for at least six months. If you and your spouse have things like restaurants and pocket money in the budget, slash them right away. Make 2020 the year that you feel proud that you've been able to account for every dollar in your budget. What else can you do to spend less and save more?   

Stop the unnecessary shopping. If you need to delete the Amazon app form your phone, do it. If you remove the instant gratification temptation from your fingertips, you may be more successful. Stop "hunting for bargains," too. We tell ourselves we actually saved money when we spent $25 on a sweater that was marked down from $75 (when we didn't even need the sweater). 

Pay with cash only. If you need to drive down to the local Walmart or Target to pick up a few household items, limit yourself to a certain amount of cash. This will do a couple of things. First, it will prohibit the impulsive shopping. Second, it'll force you to only buy the things you need. Plus, there's something psychological about handing over cash vs. swiping a card. You feel it more and will be, in a perfect world, less tempted to go overboard.

Shop Smarter. Whether you're a household of two or seven, grocery shopping is expensive. So, it's time to shop smarter in this arena. Shop according to the sales ad and don't be afraid to clip your coupons and use them at the checkout line. Fifty cents here and twenty cents there adds up to tens of dollars over the course of a month and guess where that can go? To that debt you're trying to eliminate. 

  With the ability to save more, you're opening yourself up to a host of scenarios that will give you tremendous peace at night. First, you can establish a thousand-dollar emergency fund. This is for anything from dental work to ductwork in the house. It's also for the four new tires your vehicle is going to need at some point. Second, you can establish a safety net. COVID has been a major wakeup call for those of us who live paycheck to paycheck. Imagine you were able to save six months' worth of income? That would make the nail-biting stop almost instantly. If you pull down $3,000/month, that's $18,000 and no small feat. But, if the worst thing were to happen, and you become unemployed, you don't have to drop down into panic mode. Instead, can sit pretty on nearly $20,000 that can be economically balanced if tough times hit.   

3. Get Ready for the Golden Years

The days of pensions are fading further and further into the distance. And Social Security was never designed to be someone's primary source of income upon retirement. So, that needs to be supplemented if you want to be able to enjoy your retirement more fully. An IRA is the standard way to meet your retirement goals. And there are two different options here:  

Traditional IRAs offer tax-deferred growth. That is, like an HSA, your contributions are tax-deductible in the year you make them. 

Roth IRAs allow you to withdraw funds without a tax burden. So, if you think you'll need to withdraw from your IRA sooner than later, then you might want to pay your taxes upfront and have access to it whenever necessary. 

  We used 20% as a viable example of getting out of debt. So, what's a good goal for an IRA? Well, let's start with the best-case scenario. Right now, the IRS caps the maximum contributions to traditional and ROTH IRAs at $6,000/year, or $500/month. Folks over the age of 50 are allowed to save $7,000/year. If you've shoveled out of all your debt and have the wherewithal, definitely opt for $500/month because, in retirement, how long do you think you'll go on soaking up the sun and playing with your grandchildren? Twenty years? Thirty years? Well, in 30 years, if you earn $3,000/month, that's just over one million dollars. See why it's smart to start young and go hard? Of course, $500/month simply isn't a viable option for many families. We love to play around with IRA calculators to see what's right for people. But, remember, the sooner you start, the more wiggle room you'll have. If you're ready to start making waves in a retirement fund, then contact us today to open your very own IRA.    

4. Hinder Your Healthcare Burden

Have you ever considered a health savings account (HSA)? It's a portable savings account that allows you to nestle away money for healthcare completely tax-free. The money you deposit into an HSA rolls over each year, alleviating any sort of "use it or lose it" stress. It's completely controlled by you, not your employer and you get to call all the shots on how the money is allocated. Some people liken HSAs to "medical IRAs." That is, you grow the account slowly over time and only take it out whenever you see fit. If, ten years down the line, there's a major medical expense, an HSA can help prevent you from sinking into tremendous debt. But, even in the day-to-day as you're saving, there's an immediate benefit to an HSA. Whatever contributions you're able to deposit into your account, they're completely tax-deductible. If you work for a company that's willing to contribute, their contributions are not included in your taxable income, either. These amounts are capped, however, at $3,550 for individuals and $7,100 for families. However, when you hit 55, you're allowed to squirrel away an extra $1,000, free and clear. If you think this is right for you, feel free to download our HSA application today.    

5. Consider a Side Hustle

If you're ready, willing, and able to tackle debt and save more but simply don't have the finances for it, then make 2020 your year of the side hustle. In the days since the COVID pandemic, more and more people are starting to work from home. Is there something you can do on the nights and weekends from the comfort of your own home? Sure there is! If numbers are your game, then you should know there's a real need for virtual bookkeepers. If organization is your talent, then you should also scan the online ads for virtual assistant positions. If your fingers type as fast as fingers can go, then you may be able to work as a transcriptionist from home on nights and weekends. Teaching English online is another viable option. Also, the almighty Amazon posts remote jobs to their Career Services page and customer service, as a whole, lends itself to the remote lifestyle. If you have time to binge watch Netflix, then you have time to earn a few extra hundred each month.   

Long Term Financing Goals You Can Meet

Each of the goals listed above are considered long term financing goals because they can't be achieved with the swipe of a card or the deposit of a singular paycheck. But, that's okay! It's like planting a garden. You start with a tiny, little seed and then, over time, harvest six-foot sunflowers. There's no way around it, you simply have to diminish your debt first. For some, that may be a three-year endeavor. And that's okay! This is a goal and it's not meant to be met in three or four months. Then, once you get your personal savings and retirement plan up and running, you're truly going to feel wonderful. This feeling of satisfaction doesn't carry the same punch as a new pair of high heels or a new golf club. It carries a better punch because you'll be proud of yourself as you watch something grow. If you're looking to start an IRA, money market account, personal savings account, or HSA, we hope you'll get in touch with us today! We'll pair you with just the right tool to meet your long-term financial goals. Here at iThink Financial, we've built ourselves on this motto: people helping people. We're a credit union that fosters healthy financial management and wants to see our customers flourish, not drown in faulty debts and loans. Come join us for any one of our webinars and seminars where we help people do just that! Whether you need to build a better budget, save for a home, or want to plan for financial crises, we're here to help you formulate the best game plan and use all the resources at your disposal.

Get more information here about Atlanta Georgia Credit Union.

[conversci]

People Conducting Research - Kamlesh Pawar

Meet Dr Kamlesh Pawar: a research fellow at Monash Biomedical Imaging (MBI). As an imaging scientist and engineer, Dr Pawar is working to improve the quality of images generated from Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans. His research uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) and deep learning methods to improve image acquisition, reduce scanning times for patients and decrease the amount of data required to generate images from scans.

MRI has been a revolutionary technology in the medical and research sectors, and can provide critical information relating to organ function, anatomy and diagnosis. The scanning process requires a magnetic field and radio waves to take cross-sectional images of soft tissue, and can do so at almost any angle. MRI is commonly used for brain imaging to detect, locate and diagnose tumours.

Scans can take between a few minutes to an hour in duration, depending on the diagnosis and region of the body. At MBI, the advanced research technology platform contains a range of different scanners, including advanced MRI machines. These are routinely used for animal, human, and pre-clinical research. This gives Dr Pawar direct access to a vast array of data for his work.

A current setback with MRI scanning is forming images off a moving object, as patients unavoidably move during the scanning process. This movement generates distorted images and artefacts that can blur important structural details of tissue. Dr Pawar is developing AI and deep learning methods to correct these motion artefacts. To achieve this, he uses trained deep learning networks to perform one-to-one image mapping. This involves comparing and matching data containing artefacts, with corresponding images that do not contain any. The AI technology is able to generate a final image that has the motion artefact removed.

Not only is Dr Pawar trying to improve the quality of MRI data, he is also interested in reducing the time to acquire it in each scan. By cutting down scanning time, it not only makes it better for patients, but it also reduces the number of motion artefacts generated. To create a final image, a significant amount of data is required, thus, Dr Pawar developed a tool that requires four times less data to make a final image. For this project, he is also using deep learning and AI methods to reconstruct images and reduce the acquisition time.

Dr Pawar is also taking advantage of MBI’s capabilities to develop automated brain tumor segmentation technology. He describes it as a system that can analyse large amounts of data to detect positive cases in patients. The technology will not only allow fast detection, but also precisely identify the location of the tumour in the brain. Such a tool could be of great use to further treatment options, and provide important information for radiologists.

Since his research of reducing scanning times and improving image quality can have an immediate health benefit to the community, Dr Pawar is looking into ways to translate his work into regular clinical usage. For this he recently attended CSIRO’s ONPrime program which teaches scientists how to attract the resources they need to create an impact with their research.

Amongst his research journey, Dr Pawar was drawn to biomedical engineering and imaging because he loves the nature of the work. It requires broad knowledge and expertise in a range of fields, including mathematics, programming, physiology, and anatomy of the brain. He is often required to find the underlying mathematics of a technique or toggle with programming problems to meet a desired outcome. Dr Pawar particularly finds the field of deep learning very interesting because there are endless possibilities and fascinating problems to solve each day. 

Dr Pawar began his research journey by studying his undergraduate and master’s degrees in biomedical engineering. He then shifted his focus to complete his PhD in the field of electrical engineering, but his project still had a biomedical application, specialising in MRI. Up until this point he had been purely in an academic environment, so he next set out to work for two years in industry. There, he was exposed to deep earning and AI methods within different contexts to his previous research. He was developing image processing technology for applications such as face detection and autonomous driving.  Switching to industry was a key point in his career, as it enabled him to work on different problems, but still use similar programming and mathematical foundations. It was also a period where he grew a profound fascination for AI and deep learning, that has shaped his current research.

Dr Pawar also highlights that the fast-paced nature of working in industry also taught him valuable lessons that he applies in academia today. Now when faced with a difficult research problem, he finds he has a greater capacity to tackle it more quickly, as in industry, there are more established deadlines to meet. He learnt to not give up so easily when faced with such difficult tasks.

When asked what advice he would give to young researchers, Dr Pawar highlights that academia can be full of ups and downs. It’s definitely not an easy path, but the most important advice he can give is to be patient and keep finding ways to keep motivated. Sourcing internal motivation in those periods where you are demotivated is an important skill. He also recommends keeping up to date with developments and literature slightly outside of your field. It can provide a broader perspective of new technologies, and inspire new research directions.  

Aside from his work, Dr Pawar likes watching Discovery documentaries. It provides for him interesting knowledge in a range of different fields that helps feed his curiosity.

Dr Pawar is excited about the future of MRI. Within the engineering domain, AI and deep learning is the new frontier. He is confident that new products and technologies can be used for a wide range of applications, particularly for diagnosis, ease of use, as well as provide new innovative knowledge to biomedicine.

Christina Gangemi | Science Communication Officer 

[observenature]

Acceptance

“Is everything ok?” said the young grasshopper.

The lily turned its petals down and said “Can I share something real with you?”

“Yes.” said the young grasshopper.

I believe that words have the power to resonate in a mind, and that when a mind senses that resonance in another, a community is born.  These thoughts are my tuning fork; trio tones of joy, fear, and excitement, jointly holding the baton that conducts the cacophony. All of what follows are my anecdotal impressions, nothing more – I’m sorry that this is the truth (an indictment as I see it).  

The world is full of so much possibility and beauty, and so much ugliness and petty squabbling. It’s sad to think that with our collective resources, intellect, and technology there is so much we might have accomplished – cured most of the major diseases, understood the brain, reinvented ourselves physically and mentally, left our home rock and explored the wild and humbling beauty of the Cosmos.  I suppose that those things might still happen, but it also seems that we are peaking too early, using up too much of our resources, and we have a will to destroy ourselves and irreparably alter our planet long before we grasp our uniqueness, all because we are fundamentally enslaved to our amygdala. I dream of a world where we put aside our very minor differences and realize that not so deep down, we are all very similar. We all feel the pain of living, the emptiness of loss, the longing for love and connection, the joy of friendship, the satisfaction of accomplishment, and the power of Nature. Our evolutionary legacy leaves us beholden to a set of brain chemistries and circuitries that reinforce selfish behavior, that bias our perception toward continual scarcity, amplify apophenia until we see diety and monster in the mist, and intoxicate us with power and greed – we have all those things in common too. We posture, pivot and pontificate to project an image of certitude, because to stare directly at the random and uncertain complexity of it all would crush anyone. Hunter S. Thompson said:  Life is beautiful, and living is pain.  

It amazes me that we are all here on this small planet, burning the most abundant energy source any life form on it has ever known, to go about our daily lives, to build large screen TVs that suck up our precious time and sell us a lie of happiness we don’t need. Consider for a moment that we can now instantly know where we are on Earth and we can instantly communicate with a single person or group. On a whim we have access to nearly the entire sum of all human knowledge. We know the age of the Sun and when it will die. We have seen the edges of the Universe and clocked its growth by the afterglow. We created machines to whisk us from one end of the planet to another, we harness the power of the atom, and we are in labor to give birth to powerful and unmoored digital intelligences, that will, in their own right, soon see us as the tools, rather than vice versa.  All of this in the name of technological, economic, and geopolitical ‘progress.’

“But to what end?” said the young grasshopper.

So that we can surf the world addicted to data and dogma that we believe will finally answer the questions that nothing and no one can -- the intangible and ineffable “why’s” of existence. We spend our communal energy – our most valuable asset – believing that other people we call gods have wisdom that we don’t, that paradise is earned by obedience and unlocked by death rather than by expressing gratitude for the only and greatest paradise we will ever inhabit -- our home, this world, the Cosmos expressing itself. The nebulous notion that technology, whose mindless implementation and adoption accelerated these trends, will save us is tantamount to thinking that the best way to put out a fire is to make sure that there is nothing left to burn. We have opened Pandora’s box and confused raw technical capabilities with informed stewardship. And the belief that supernatural forces will guide us through these, the most challenging of times, is a fairytale born of justifiable ignorance and confusion, it warps our objectives and dangerously disconnects us from the here, the now, and the other. It attempts to define virtue by what we should not be, and gives lip service to the formative actions of compassion, patience, and thoughtfulness. Both worldviews wrestle to make sense of, and find security within, the master dynamical system whose chaotic trajectory is, fundamentally, unpredictable. Both believe that it can be understood and guided to a place of certain security, rather than accepting and reveling in the undeniable links that chain freedom to security, and suffering to autonomy.

“But to what end?” said the young grasshopper.

So that 100 or 1000 or 1,000,000 years from now we will have selected against the curiosity that leads to real progress and spent the resources that could have enabled the transformation in our species and our quality of life that we imagine lies just outside our reach. This is the greatest and saddest generation of which to be a part, and I can’t help but look at the long arc of history and see that we have been struggling, time and again, with the same problems.  We still have not figured out how to equitably steward our resources with collective action, we still have not figured out how to live in a degree of harmony with the Natural world on which every aspect of our survival depends. We still have not learned to cherish and protect the diversity that defines and stabilizes all living systems. We still have not learned that whatever our circumstance, our forms have needs that require care and balance. We still have not learned that the magic of Life stands on feet of mystery and knowledge – we were not intended to, nor are capable of, dealing with the full sensory and information experience of existence. And yet there are those that vigorously call for us to fight the other, to amplify our differences so that we no longer see other humans as humans, to pass observable truth through a lens of distortion, to disfigure and sharpen our discourse until the barb can pierce dignity, and they rape our world at any expense with no consideration for our own future nor the future of those that come after us.  We place too much value on pleasure to risk progress. And much as I would like to say that I am part of the solution, which I suppose in some areas I am, I know well that I, we are all the problem. In little choices every day we waste and use and think only of our pleasures and progress now – almost no one is playing the long game. We are essentially never willing to sacrifice a momentary and clearly visible personal gain for a potential but uncertain greater good -- that is the fundamental issue.

What will be left when we have used all the fossil fuels, and there is no energy source abundant enough to propel us into the next “greener” technological era of our existence? What will happen when we have devalued and destroyed objective physical truth and hard-earned expertise to the point when no one has the knowledge or will to tackle the problems of governance and environment that loom supremely large on the stage of civilization? What will happen when our specters convince us that creativity, non-conformity, and any observable difference are threats?

I don’t know, but I do know that things will look very different, that the world population as such will not be able to continue at its current size and state.  I know that Nature will eventually force us to pay Her heed, when the forests burn, the farm land is depleted, and the medical advancements of the last 200 years are for not because we misused our discoveries and forgot our methods.  It’s tempting to think that we’ll just start over, but that surely cannot be.  We will have spent all the abundant energy, the solar panels will be long cracked and inefficient, the cars will be planters, the nuclear power plants dark forests, and this thing we call civilization will have died back to a scraggly weed of its former self.  It’s not a question of ‘if’, it’s a question of ‘when’.

I want to find the silver lining in all of this.  Will our descendants look back and marvel at what we accomplished?  Yes.  Will they ponder incessantly as to why we didn’t or couldn’t take the steps to avoid decline? Yes.  Will they learn from our mistakes and embrace a wider view of humanity and commitment to each other? Maybe.  Will they build a new civilization that respects natural limitations and recognizes that dogma has no place in a free society?  I don’t know.

The system has made us weak and we are knowingly cultivating a culture that values only the most vapid pursuits of momentary validation and material wealth, while discouraging the introspection that asks – If more people behaved as I do, would that move us toward a more tolerant and sustainable world?  I no longer seek to blame any one person, organization, or government -- we were all bestowed these brains with systematic faults that we sum to “human nature”.  I think the point might be that we are here together, and like every thinker and leader of thought on the right side of history has tried to tell us – we need to look out for each other, we are all we have in the vast pointless emptiness.  I look around and see unavoidable failures in our system – choice structures like the Tragedy of the Commons – that have no solution because we are incapable of shifting our view from short to long, from me to us. The world is falling apart because we all see it happening, and we all feel like we’re on this sinking ship, most of us can’t figure out where the water is coming from, but there are gushing leaks all around us.  I believe we are living at the peak of civilization on Earth.  The juggernaut of civilization, really, the billions of choices made by the masses and the few pivotal decisions made by the powerful for their own benefit, all sadly make sense.  We have created a system that constantly shows us the material wealth we should strive for, while empowering no one to act beyond their own needs and desires.  Sometimes, I wish there was a God or a galactic super race that would come to save us from ourselves, but I have no faith in either.  

So here we are, the third wet rock from an average star, on the out skirts of a typical galaxy, and no one will hear our laughing or screaming or pleading or self-expressions through music, no will see our art, or take satisfaction in our discoveries, no one will sit on our mountains and in our forests to find peace and wholeness among the spontaneous and awesome self-organization of this world, no one will come to say ‘hey, here’s a better way.’  It’s all on us and if that reality cannot motivate us to be better people and a better civilization, if that does not thrust us into a period of deep self-examination, then nothing will.  So maybe it’s ok, given those realities, that we continue with business as usual, that we recognize that inequity is as natural as gravity, that we chant the mantra of maximization, and everyone suffers in a life punctuated by moments of love and joy and we whiz through space and search for meaning as strange and animate assemblies of the same atoms that are found throughout the Universe.

The only actions to take are to marvel at the continually unfolding beauty and dance when we can to the harmony and natural structure that permeates everything. And our greatest ideal – altruism – manifests as our desire to enable others to take those actions. The same struggle for existence, the master algorithm of Evolution that shaped us from molecules into ephemeral sentient forms will disintegrate us back into molecules. And one day, when time has lost its meaning and space has grown inanimate and cold, there will be peace. I don’t know how many times the Universe has tried or will try this experiment, but I do know that it will keep trying.  And maybe this is the best yet, in the incomprehensible complexity of it all, this is the truest expression of the natural order, this is the Cosmos in all its uncoordinated omniscience and omnipotence learning, flowing, evolving, making mistakes, this is the only way it can be.

I articulate this all in the hope that I can move on and live my life blissfully aware of what almost surely lies ahead, that this too shall pass.

They sat in silence for a time, swaying with the breeze, sunlight moving in dappled patterns over their forms.

“I hope that in other labs of the Cosmos, the experiments are yielding different results.” said the young grasshopper.

“Me too,” said the lily. “Me too.”

[scoutception]

Final Fantasy I review: a pragmatic evolution

Final Fantasy; one of the largest and most influential game franchises out there, and my personal favorite video game series. It’s kind of surreal to think that it started out as what was basically an unlicensed Dungeons & Dragons adaptation from a failing company that only approved it to try to top Dragon Quest, like so many others back then. For all the faults it had, like being so utterly buggy that it artificially increased difficulty through things like mages not actually being able to gain more power for their magic, and several spells not even working, period, it pulled through with an innovative team building system, a great soundtrack that would help cement Nobou Uematsu as one of the great video game soundtrack composers, and a much more developed exploration system compared to Dragon Quest, giving you access to vehicles like an airship. For this review, however, I shall be reviewing the PSP version of Final Fantasy I, which is quite a different experience, for reasons I shall tackle shortly. Otherwise, in we go.

Story

The story is about a world home to 4 elemental crystals of earth, fire, water, and wind, which once blessed the land and its inhabitants with peace. However, the Four Fiends, the Lich, Marilith, the Kraken, and Tiamat, have since corrupted the crystals, depriving the world of their blessings and causing the appearance of monsters across the land. Despite the bleakness, however, the people keep faith in one thing: a prophecy stating that four Warriors of Light will appear one day to restore the crystals and defeat the Four Fiends. 400 years after the first of the fiends appeared, the Warriors of Light finally arrive at the town of Cornelia, where they are tasked by its king to save his daughter, Princess Sarah, from Garland, a traitorous knight, who has taken her to the Chaos Shrine. Afterwards, the king builds a bridge in gratitude, allowing them to skip over to the next town and beat up some pirates for their ship. Most of the “plot” of this game takes the form of fetching key items and chains of deals that stand in the way of you actually taking the fight to the Fiends, with the worst taking place right after getting the ship, involving almost every single area you can even visit at that time. It was probably a bit more interesting at the time, especially compared to Dragon Quest, but it’s a huge drag nowadays.

After killing all of the Fiends, the game decides to pull a twist: as it turns out, an evil force 2000 years in the past is still stealing the power of the crystals, originating from the Chaos Shrine. After traveling through a time portal, and killing all the Four Fiends again, the game pulls a bigger twist: they find Garland at the bottom of the shrine, having been sent back in time by the Fiends. Using their power to transform into the monster Chaos, he then used his power to send them into the present, creating some time loop that allows him to live forever. After defeating him, the Warriors of Light are returned to the present, having retroactively prevented any of the disasters from taking place, even ensuring Garland would never betray Cornelia. Doing this erases their memories of their journey, but the legend of it still lives on.... somehow. It’s not exactly a deep plot, but it can still be decently entertaining to go through, especially with the vastly improved translation of the later versions, which gives quite a bit of dialogue a surprising amount of charm.

Gameplay

The gameplay of Final Fantasy I is about the most standard NES era RPG you could get. You travel on a world map, exploring towns and dungeons and getting into random encounters, with the battle system also being a very standard turn based system, selecting all your party’s actions at the beginning of each turn, and having choices of attacking, using magic, using an item, defending, or attempting to escape. You gain the use of a ship, a canoe, and eventually an airship which pretty much invalidates any other form of travel for navigating the world map, though the ship can only dock at certain spots, and the airship can only land on grass tiles. This can pose a problem to a new player, as the continents are large and often force you to land farther away from your goal than you might expect. This is doubly bad as the game initially seems to lack a map feature, which can make navigation very difficult sense the map loops when you reach an edge of it. While there is actually a map you can access on the world map, which even displays the locations you’ve discovered, you can only bring it up by hitting a button combination the game never outright tells you, only being mentioned, and backwards, at that, by some brooms in an early area (it’s ok, it’s the home of a witch), which could be passed off as random nonsense if you’re not in the mood to think laterally.

The most interesting gameplay feature FF1 has to offer is its party building system. Instead of just gaining predetermined characters as you go on like, say, MOTHER, or only having one character, like Dragon Quest itself, you have 4 party members all the time that you select at the start of the game, picked from 6 different classes: the Warrior, the very standard physical fighter with great attack and defense, whose only real downside is being very reliant on equipment, the Monk, who is pretty much the opposite of the fighter, being a physical fighter who specializes in fighting unarmed, to the point of equipment actually lowering his attack and defense after a while, making him very cheap to use, and very broken after the first few levels. There’s also the Thief, which is bad on defense, but is good for attacking and has superior speed. The second half of the classes are magically focused. The White Mage specializes in healing and support magic, though they also have offense in the form of the Dia line of spells, which is effective against undead, and Holy, one of the major attacking spells of the series. The Black Mage, conversely, focuses on offensive magic, though they also have access to some very good buff, though they’re perhaps the most vulnerable of any class, with abysmal HP growth, at that. Lastly, there’s the Red Mage, the jack of all trades, master of none. They can use swords, have good defense, and access to both white and black magic, though they’re worse at all of those than the classes that focus on them individually, and can’t use most of the later game spells or equipment, though since you’re stuck with your chosen classes all the way, they’re never an outright burden, and plenty of people find them great regardless.

Aside from leveling up from fighting random encounters, you power up your party by buying equipment, or finding it in dungeons or other areas, and buying spells from towns. There’s 8 spell tiers in all, with all having 4 different spells per tier for both black and white magic. However, the spellcasters can only know up to three spells for each tier, with the red mage having to use those spaces for both white and black magic. Some tiers have better spells than others, with most spells more complex than simple healing or damage usually not being worthwhile. However, a lot of spells and equipment available around the time you get the airship is not actually usable by your party members, and this is because of a sidequest offered by Bahamut, the king of the dragons, to go within the Citadel of Trials and retrieve a rat tail. Doing so will cause for your party members to class change, aka basically promote into stronger classes. The Warrior becomes the Knight, the Monk becomes the Master, the Thief becomes the Ninja, the White Mage becomes the White Wizard, the Black Mage becomes the Black Wizard, and the Red Mage becomes the Red Wizard. This grants them better stat growth and access to stronger equipment and spells, and the Knight and Ninja gain white and black magic, respectively.

The NES version of FF1 is infamously difficult, but over the many ports, starting with the Playstation version, and most notably advanced with the GBA version, the game became much, much easier. Whether it be the fixing of damaging bugs or the ability to save anywhere instead of the world map, which, granted, was only sensible considering portable console, to switching the spell system from each tier only being usable a certain amount of times before needing recharging at an inn, something borrowed from Dungeons & Dragons, to switching to a much more traditional MP system, to just a general rebalancing of the classes, it makes for a much easier game to get through. Too easy, honestly. You gain experience much, much faster, so as long as you fight the majority of the encounters you get into, you’ll quickly end up overpowered. It’s very easy to reach level 99, and much of the best equipment is easy to get. However, I don’t think the easier difficulty, and the general simplicity of the gameplay, are necessarily bad things. On the contrary, it makes the game very easy to pick up and play through, and it’s surprisingly fun despite how simple the combat is. This, I think, is the saving grace of the game, and even if that doesn’t satisfy you, the bonus content added in the later ports are the highlights of the game.

The GBA version added four bonus dungeons collectively called the Soul of Chaos, unlocked after each Fiend you defeat. These dungeons consist of a set amount of different, and often wacky, floors that load in a randomized order. While the first two dungeons are fairly standard and short, stuff begins picking up with the third, and the fourth is a 40 floor gauntlet of fun and creative little challenges and maps. In addition, each dungeon contains cameo bosses from Final Fantasy 3-6, complete with remixes of their boss themes for the PSP versions. These include Shinryu and Omega, who are the hardest bosses in the GBA version, and Gilgamesh, one of the most famous characters in the series. All in all, these dungeons are actually really fun to go through, as long as you’re properly leveled, and are definitely refreshing compared to how most RPGs handle bonus dungeons. On that subject, however, is the Labyrinth of Time, added in the PSP version. It consists of time puzzles, 30 in all, though you only do so many in each run, that ends with a fight against a newly added superboss, and the usurper of the title of hardest boss in the game, Chronodia. The catch is that Chronodia has 8 different variations, with different rewards and bestiary entries for each, and which one you encounter depends on how many puzzles you finish in time, and how many you only complete after running out of time, causing a fog to roll in that saps you of your HP and MP, and allows random encounters while in the puzzle areas. While creative, the Labyrinth of Time is overall maddeningly difficult and not fun. This is one to skip if you value your sanity.

Sound & Graphics

The graphics of FF1, again, judging the PSP version, are actually really good. The characters look distinct, and the monster graphics especially are great, and represent Yoshitaka Amano’s designs for them very, very well.

The areas are also surprisingly well designed. From the ruins of the Chaos Shrine, and the complete version of it as the final dungeon, to the underwater ruins that house the lair of the Kraken, to, most notably, the flying fortress of the Lufenian civilization, home to Tiamat and far advanced compared to all the other locations, especially in the original NES version, where it’s a space station, of all things.

As for the music, it holds up amazingly. Aside from many of the most famous themes of the series, such as the Preude, themes like the town theme and the Chaos Shrine theme are amazingly atmospheric, and it overall still stands out as one of the best soundtracks in the series to me. Even if he wasn’t involved in the rearranging for the remakes, this was a significant step for composer Nobou Uematsu.

Conclusion

Despite how fond I am of this game, my recommendation rating depends. If you’re looking for a nice, easy to pick up RPG, perhaps as an introduction to the series, or to RPGs in general, I would give this a recommended. If you’re looking for much past that, however, I would give it a not recommended. As transformed as it is, it is still a very old game underneath, with unclear goals, very barebones gameplay systems, and with all the innovation it did have swept away over the years. Still, if nothing else, it’s a very respectable start to Final Fantasy. Until next time.

-Scout

[ghostmartyr]

Pokémon FireRed Nuzlocke [Part 3]

Third segment of grindlocke.

We’re about to board some boat, where lies our only source of experience before Surge’s Gym. Also our rival. Aside from one Diglett that demanded murder, we’ve kept to not fainting anything outside of battles.

Things are probably about to get even harder. Current team, we salute you.

I really hope there’s lots of people in here.

Youngster Tyler counts as a people. He has a level 21 male Nidoran. I. Crud, I want to try out Ismail. The Poison just makes me twitchy each time, even though I’ve got a decent level advantage. Ismail manages it in one shot. Yay Magnitude.

Lass Ann is on the right ship, and she has a level 18 Pidgey. The female Nidoran can feed Ismail.

...This just isn’t fast enough. I have to re-decide to focus on Heero and Allenby. Even though um. This. Person in this other room has a level 19 male Nidoran. And I can’t. Ismail needs to get some hits in eventually. She’ll take the level 19 female one, too.

Oh, his name’s Gentleman Arthur.

Gentleman Thomas is next. All these rich people with cruise tickets. And level 18 Growlithe. Ismail, you want a stab?

No, because one Bite takes her down to almost half health. What the fuck. Allenby, save the day!

Horsea! Level 17, that’s a Noin target. Level 17 Shellder is as well. But I’m going to switch into Allenby because Noin’s eaten two Leers. Yeah, Icicle Spear could have hurt. Allenby stays in to manage the Tentacool.

Never mind, Allenby is confused and poisoned. Noin, get back in there. Good girl. You made it to level 20!

Sailor Leonard doesn’t care about your effort, and has no interest in letting Allenby back upstairs to heal. He has a level 21 Shellder. I am uncomfortable. Heero and Ember make it work, though. And she makes it to level 26!

Sailor Dylan with three more level 17 Horsea for Noin.

Level 18 Tentacool. It knows Supersonic. Heero. I’m begging you. Thank you.

Staryu’s up next, so Noin is back up. Level 21 get.

Rocking.

Sailor Phillip wants to go now. He has a level 20 Machop that looks to be wanting some smacks from Allenby.

Sailor Phillip shares a room with Fisherman Barny. Level 17 Tentacool. Heero can take it. Noin takes the Staryu, though. As is only proper. Noin takes the Shellder, too.

That’s the lower deck. We’re not looking too shabby. I’d prefer better, but that’s me reacting to my standards where I’m allowed to have a bit more control over the leveling process.

Up the stairs!

I like how annoyed all the fishermen look. I would also wear that hoodie. Level 17 Goldeen. I’m betting it knows Supersonic. Heero makes it to level 27! Allenby will fight the other Goldeen. Even though they probably know Peck. Oh, his last pokemon is a Tentacool.

Gentleman Brooks has a single Pikachu at level 23. Hi Pikachu.

Gentleman Lamar goes back to Growlithe. Allenby, because Fire is useless against it. Ponyta is next. I... will try Ismail out for a turn. She lives to see level 19.

Lass Dawn has a Rattata. Also a Pikachu.

Up another set of stairs. Hoping I don’t pick the side of the hall that leads to Turq, because no, I don’t think I am mentally prepared for that. Awesome, found the way that leads out to deck.

His level 17 Machop asks for death. So does his Tentacool.

Sailor Edmond has a level 18 Machop. Heero makes it to level 28. Noin will tackle the Shellder. ...Any time my pokemon want to stop hurting themselves in confusion, they can. Just saying.

...I think that might be it for trainers on the ship.

Except for Turq.

Rival extraordinaire.

Heero up front.

Why did I think this was a good idea?

Okay, let’s see the damage.

Oh?

His Pidgeotto is only level 19. That’s a good start. Heero takes it out, and Turq immediately goes over to Wartortle. ...Noin, let’s. let’s see if you’ll be okay against that. You should be, right?

Wartortle is level 20. Has Bite. Bite packs a bite.

Noin stop flinching. Yes, he’s poisoned, but stop flinching.

Spending a turn on a Potion and letting the poison finish him off.

Kadabra next. Heero time. Raticate follows, and Allenby is up.

Wow.

We’re all alive.

Access to the third Gym achieved!

We’re going to teach Quatre the Meowth Cut.

Hello darkness my old friend.

Trainers before trauma. Let’s go.

Sailor Dwayne has a Pikachu. It is level 21. For the second Pikachu, Ismail is going to be given a chance. Because Thunder Wave is a thing and I hate watching Heero freeze in place over and over.

...Never mind, Allenby, save the defenseless wonder.

I’m a little worried about that. Ismail’s Defense is awful. Ground is really useful to have, and Dugtrio doesn’t need something like trading to evolve, but Defense that bad needs a higher Attack stat, maybe. I really don’t want to spend time training anything I can’t use.

Level 21 Voltorb. Heero food. Level 21 Magnemite. More Heero food.

Heero is level 29 now.

For the last trainer in the Gym, Ismail gets to be out first. That damage she always takes from switching is just really sad. ...Ismail vs. level 23 Pikachu. Eek. One Quick Attack takes out more than half her health. Magnitude 6 brought the Pikachu to red, but still.

...Oh, that guy probably had a name. Whoops.

Switch games. I prefer mine to belong to a different console.

I hate this Gym.

Door open.

The question is if I want to give Ismail a chance to grow, or just let Heero handle it.

It isn’t a question. Heero is handling it.

Where is Surge’s hidden war lore?

Level 21 Voltorb out first. And it’s gone. Pikachu next.

...I want Ismail to try. I am the wrong personality for doing this right. Oh, it’s only level 18. Good job, Ismail.

Raichu is Heero’s all the way, though. Level 24 and soon to be (hopefully) out of our way.

I hate Thunder Wave. And Double Team. Uh, Ismail, under the theory that it’s going to go for another Electric move this turn, get in now. Because your big sister Heero is a paralyzed mess and in the orange. Yes, again.

Yay, that worked.

But Magnitude missed and Quick Attack does more than half.

...Allenby, need a favor.

The level isn’t the problem with the Raichu. It’s the Double Team and not being able to take risks that could faint anything. That is one nasty creature. I am so glad it’s gone. I’m so glad I currently don’t have to wonder about what next time will be like.

So, what’s next?

I hate.

About those Repels, self...

Super, now I have five.

COULD YOU PLEASE FUCKING NOT.

Okay, good, running away worked. Uh. Heero, I know you’re the highest level, but we can’t have you in front while we’re down here, because if another level 29 Dugtrio spawns and has Arena Trap, you’re going to die.

Remember when Flash was an HM?

Meowth whose name I can’t remember, please tell me you learn it. Quatre! And you can! Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy?

Off to Cerulean again. By going the way I got there in the first place, because I just can’t go through the tunnel again. It has left me scarred. I would rather go through a tunnel full of Zubat that I can’t kill for exp. than go through that horrible place ever again.

For the sake of full context, I really love Diglett.

The first pokemon I ever trained legitimately to level 100 was a Dugtrio.

This run is testing that love.

We made it!

I don’t really know who I want in front at this point. Ismail needs levels to be anything close to helpful, but where those levels are earned is irrelevant, I personally want Noin to murder everything but that’s not the most useful, Heero could continue to kill all the things but maybe I could use less of that focus, and Allenby is always a favorite.

So I guess I’ll go by what trainer’s standing in front of me and whether or not I remember or care enough to switch who’s in front?

I sort of didn’t care, but also Picknickers have some variety to them so it matters less. Meh.

She has an Oddish. It is level 18 and I just. can’t. with Absorb wars. Heero time. For the level 18 Bellsprout as well. Noin and Heero can switch with the next Oddish again. With the next Bellsprout, Ismail’s getting some switch love.

And that gets Heero poisoned because of course it does.

Ah, Hiker Jeremy is next. Noin should have better fortune here. Unless he’s a Machop Hiker.

...Fucker.

The level 20 Machop hungers for blood with Seismic Toss. Which Allenby now wants to learn, and shall, because moves that automatically do some damage are a comfort in times of trouble. No more Low Kick.

Jeremy has an Onix. Ismail, go forth.

Ismail, don’t get Binded.

Sigh. Well, you killed it. Good job, kiddo. You and Allenby both get a Potion because we jumped a ledge that makes getting back to the Pokemon Center in Cerulean annoying.

Son, this is not how you say hi to strangers.

Camper Chris with the Growlithe. This is a job for Allenby! The Charmander that follows is a job for Ismail! Hey, that even works out!

Bug Catcher Brent is next, so Heero gets to be up front. Facing a level 19 Beedrill. Two of them, even.

Heero is level 30!

Grass reached on the way back to the Pokemon Center again. First thing that pops up is Ekans. Got that. Second is Spearow. Got that. Ekans. Rattata. Spearow. ...Yeah, fine, I’ll check if there’s even anything new this route.

Serebii says there isn’t. Sad face.

I am both glad and sad it’s not my job to comb through Pokemon games and assign every single character a new name. Level 20 Caterpie. Conner, why would you make your life this difficult?

Ismail, you can have the Weedle. Please don’t get poisoned. You didn’t! And you made it to level 21! ...Wow those stats make me worried. ...No, you are not learning Fury Swipes. That move is obnoxious.

Heero can step in and help with the level 20 Venonat.

He’s got a level 19 Rattata up front. Oh jolly gee. ...Should these maybe be Ismail food? The Sandshrew’s Noin’s, obviously, but he’s got two other things. Ekans. Ismail. Eat the poison creatures, my child. One more Sandshrew, and one more Noin fight.

Oh nice, does Quatre have pickup?

(I am an observant trainer raising my pets well.)

Persim Berry get!

Hiker Brice is our next contestant. In accordance, Noin’s up front for the level 20 Geodude. All two of them before Ismail goes up against the Machop. Fight won.

You people are allowed to say hi.

Oh, whoops.

Picknicker Caitlin with the level 23 Meowth! Ismail’s in front for this, and hopefully no one has to swoop in and help. What do you know, that worked. Good job, Ismail. Even if your HP and various Defenses make me want to cry.

Hiker Alan up now. Level 21 Geodude first. Another shot for Ismail.

This feels like it might be bad.

Aaaaand that would be why.

...

...

At the risk of sounding callous, I was starting to feel like this wasn’t going to work out, anyway. Better to know now, right?

Like I’m sad.

But not remotely surprised.

That 15 HP got lost to one Meowth Scratching her. I was dancing a fine line of providing chances and seeing if Ismail could even survive long enough to be of use.

Overly mean of me, perhaps. I think another day probably would have yielded different results.

Sigh. Noin to clean things up with the Geodude, and then the level 21 Onix that follows.

I’d kept everyone alive so far.

You tried.

Anyway. We made it to Route 10. We can catch a thing in the grass here. Not a Diglett. But. Well. I’m sure we’ll make do without.

Spearow. Spearow.

Voltorb!

Mood, my friend.

Your new name is Zaft.

You can be in the party instead of the box.

Good stopping point?

Good enough stopping point.

[system76]

Celebrating #AdaLovelaceDay with GNOME’s First Woman Coder

Ada Lovelace Day commemorates Ada Lovelace, who is considered to be the world’s first programmer. It serves to celebrate women in STEM fields, and entice the next generation of young women to bring their talents into the STEM workforce.

This year, System76 highlights the first woman coder of GNOME, Rosanna Yuen, who has been a staple in the GNOME community for decades.

Q: First, a little background about yourself for those who may not be familiar.

I am the Director of Operations at the GNOME Foundation. I have been a GNOME user since GNOME 0.13 (released in 1997) and have been using it ever since. At that time GNOME was little more than a panel and a few applications. My first contribution was co-creating AisleRiot — the GNOME solitaire game. We still ship it today and I’m proud to still have code in GNOME that people use.

Q: What first got you interested in coding? Who did you look up to along the way?

I was lucky to have had coding classes in elementary school starting in second grade. I loved the problem-solving aspect of it. I took a lot of computer classes through high school, but never thought of it as more than a hobby. It never occurred to me that it could be a possible career.  Maybe I needed to have more role models at that age.

Q: Back in 2016 you were the sole employee at the GNOME Foundation aside from the board. How did you tackle the challenge of being the only employee there?

I was also the only employee at the GNOME Foundation when I was hired! I have had the pleasure to have worked with three wonderful Executive Directors, and each of them have brought different strengths to the role. In the times where I was the only employee, the Board of Directors and general GNOME community has stepped up to help me fill in the gaps.

Q: Why did you first take a position there 13 years ago?

The first GNOME Foundation Executive Director resigned and someone needed to keep things running. I had volunteered to help sort out the paperwork and was expecting a child at the time. After my maternity leave finished, the Board of Directors offered to pay me part-time to keep helping to go through the paperwork, and the position has grown from there.

Q: What excites you about working there?

For a long time, as the only employee or one of two employees, I had the flexibility of defining my job. As GNOME grows, I have been learning new skills to keep up. GNOME is nothing without its volunteers. I love the energy and different skill sets and perspectives our volunteers bring. We have such a smart and sharing community, and I’ve learned so much from them. This motivates me and reminds me why GNOME is such a wonderful community.

Q: What future technologies are you most excited for?

I am looking forward to GNOME reinvigorating their focus on accessibility. It is an area GNOME excelled in in the past, and I am hoping we can once again make it a priority. I’m also enjoying seeing all the new apps showing up in flathub.

Q: Would you attribute the gender gap in the STEM field more to a lack of interest, or to a lack of opportunities for young women?

Representation matters. My STEM teachers in high school were female. They pushed me and I went to a college to study STEM. My college professors were almost all male. I no longer felt as secure in my abilities. The more diverse our teachers/professors/mentors are, the more diverse future generations in STEM will be.

Q: What would you say to encourage young women to enter a STEM field?

That’s a tall order! Young women should consider STEM fields because they solve real-world problems and better our understanding of everything around us.

I would love to see more young women enter STEM fields and especially contribute to the GNOME project. I would also hope that young women are able to follow their passions, wherever that takes them.

If you’re interested in starting a career in coding, graphic design, or other related fields, read about Outreachy, GNOME Foundation’s internship program, at outreachy.org.

Come celebrate Ada Lovelace Day with us on the System76 Facebook page by sharing your own STEM story with us!

[handyguypros1]

Best Corded Electric Lawn Mowers HandyGuyPros

If you want to have a well-manicured yard, a lawn mower can offer the perfect solution! Nonetheless, this does not mean that you can pick just any mower and expect it to deliver exceptional quality.

While there are many types that are available, one of the best would be corded electric lawn mowers. They are more powerful than those that are operated by a battery. To add, they do not let out fumes and emissions, unlike their gas counterparts.

Some people hate the idea of using corded electric lawn mowers because of the limitations in movement. Nonetheless, this can be easily resolved by choosing one with a long cord.

Wondering what to choose for the best corded electric lawn mower? Read on and we’ll let you know some of the best products to consider.

Top Corded Electric Lawn Mowers

Depending on your budget, the size of the lawn, and personal preferences, there are different brands and models available, including those that are briefly reviewed below.

Greenworks 25022 Corded Lawn Mower

If powerful mowing performance is what you are after at, this should be on the top of your list. It is known for its 12-amp motor that is capable of effortlessly tackling even a large area.

More than being powerful, it is also easy to use. Moving it around the lawn will not be a problem. Aside from being lightweight, it has 10-inch rear wheels and 7-inch rear wheels.

This model also excels in terms of versatility. For instance, it has 3-in-1 functionality – rear bag, side discharge, and mulching, making it easy to discard grass clippings.

The foldable handle is also a plus, which makes it space-efficient when kept in the storage room.

Lastly, like most of the models mentioned below, it has push-button start. This eliminates the need to pull cords or for complicated start-ups.

Greenworks MO13B00 Corded Lawn Mower

Like the lawn mower mentioned above, this is also manufactured by Greenworks. One of the main differences is that the cutting path is slightly larger at 21 inches compared to the 20-inch width of the model above.

Users will love the seven-position height adjustment, which can be easily configured depending on what a task requires. This means that you can use it for almost any grass type.

The power that is generated by this model is largely attributed to the 13-amp motor. Even for the toughest grass, it can deliver an almost effortless mowing performance.

Greenworks MO14B00 Corded Lawn Mower

If you are looking for a smaller alternative to the product that has been mentioned above, make sure to include this on your list. It has a cutting width of only 14 inches, making it one of the most compact corded lawn mowers.

At its size, you can expect that one of its best assets would be its maneuverability. It will be a breeze to move it around. Plus, it has well-designed wheels that can tackle different surfaces.

Lastly, it is equipped with a 9-amp motor. It might not be the most powerful, but it is pretty much decent for its size. It also helps to make the unit lightweight.

Greenworks 25142 Corded Lawn Mower

The 10-amp motor of this lawn mower is one of its best features, providing enough power for most small and medium tasks. Aside from the motor, the 16-inch cutting deck is also a plus to make the mowing task quicker.

For versatility, there are five cutting heights that are available. You can adjust it from a minimum of 5/8-inch to a maximum of 2-5/8-inch.

To make it easy to maneuver, on the other hand, it comes fitted with 7-inch wheels at the back and 6-inch wheels at the front. Regardless of the terrain, it will be a breeze to move it around.

Sun Joe MJ401E Mow Joe Electric Lawn Mower

The construction of this lawn mower is one of its best assets, which is made even more exceptional because of the affordable price.

It has a 12-amp electric motor that provides decent power. The 14-inch steel blade, on the other hand, makes it easy to deal with a larger area without exerting a lot of effort on your end. The blade is also not easily prone to wear and tear.

For the height, meanwhile, you can adjust it in three positions at a maximum of 2-2/5 inches for several cutting applications.

Lastly, there is a rear bag for grass clippings, which has a maximum capacity of 10.6 gallons.

Sun Joe MJ403E Corded Electric Lawn Mower

This is slightly more expensive than the product from Sun Joe mentioned above, but there is a reason for that. One would be the fact that it has a larger cutting capacity, which is 17 inches instead of 14.

The 13-amp motor also gives it a slight advantage in terms of power compared to the lawn mower that has been mentioned above from the same manufacturer.

For your peace of mind, you will also love how the manufacturer offers a two-year warranty.

Black+Decker BESTA512CM Compact Electric Lawn Mower

Value for money is one of the best things about this model as it offers 3-in-1 functionality. Aside from mowing, you can also use it for trimming and edging.

In terms of power, this corded electric lawn mower will not disappoint. It is equipped with a 6.5-amp motor, which is perfect for its size.

Aside from the powerful motor that is packed in a compact body, this model is also impressive because of the POWERDRIVE transmission, which allows it to handle even the toughest tasks without showing signs of difficulty.

It is also well-loved because of the cord retention system. This prevents the cord from tangling, which is also important for your safety.

Lastly, you will be in full control with the use of this compact lawn mower. The cutting height and handle can be adjusted as desired.

Black+Decker MM2000 Corded Lawn Mower

The brand name of this product should already provide you with enough reason to put it on the top of your list.

Looking at its features, one that will make it turn heads is the 20-inch cutting path, which is quite wider compared to the products that have been mentioned above. This can be a huge time-saver as it will allow you to cut more in a short period.

It has a grass collection bag with a generous size, which has a maximum capacity of 13 gallons. This will eliminate the need to have it frequently emptied.

Lastly, it has the Innovative EdgeMax Technology, which allows it to mow with exceptional precision.

Black+Decker EM1500 Corded Lawn Mower

Regardless of the mowing task that you wish to accomplish, this product can be the perfect companion. The cutting height can be adjusted in six different positions from 1-1/10-inch to 3-1/10-inch.

The low-profile design of this model is also a great thing, especially for accessing obstacles and under the shrubs.

The cord-wrap system also makes it impressive, allowing the cord to stay wrapped, and hence, making it easier for you to move and will prevent accidents.

Lastly, it comes with 15-inch wheels that are aligned to the blade of the unit, allowing it to cut more efficiently.

Earthwise 50518 Corded Electric Lawn Mower

With the 2-in-1 functionality of this model, it can discard grass clippings in two ways – mulch or side discharge.

There are also several features that will ensure your highest level of comfort when this product is used. For instance, the comfort handle has thick padding, which will minimize the vibration that your hand will feel.

To make it even more comfortable to use, the controls are mounted on the handle, as well as the safety key, making them easy to access.

It is also commendable because of the 12-amp electric motor that powers the unit. This is even made better by the 18-inch steel deck, allowing it to mow a larger area within a short span of time.

Earthwise 50214 Corded Electric Lawn Mower

Another entry from Earthwise, this can prove to be an excellent choice for small lawns. It is compact and lightweight, which will make it effortless to use, even for the novices in gardening.

The V-handle, an exclusive design by Earthwise, is another thing that sets it apart from many of its competitors. It has an ergonomic shape that will make it comfortable to hold, even for an extended period. You won’t easily complain of fatigue.

Looking at the technical specs of the product, it comes with an 8-amp motor, 14-inch cutting width, and single lever adjustment to customize height from 1.5 to 4 inches.

Wrap Up

To mow your lawn and keep it at its best appearance, a corded lawn mower will come handy! It is cheap, easy to use, quiet, and eco-friendly.

With the right lawn mower, including the brands and models that have been mentioned above, you will love to do gardening tasks since it can be accomplished in a breeze!

Source : https://handyguypros.com/best-corded-electric-lawn-mowers/

[gretamclaughlin]

Thirsty Nations: The World’s Water Crisis

For several weeks, we have been speaking about agriculture and its effects on the environment and human health. People need to employ alternative methods for a more sustainable and safer future. This week’s materials focus on water resources, availability, and pollution and their effects on ecosystems. Globally, water is unevenly distributed and contaminated for many individuals. People use water in an unsustainable manner, rendering it impossible for it to replenish itself. Although I will speaking about general water issues in this blog, I will be paying particular attention to those dealing with agriculture. We must handle the world’s water issues before it is depleted.

The textbook highlights how the water problem is an economic, security, and environmental issue, worsening as time goes on. Currently, a significant amount of our water supply comes from groundwater. Humans deplete aquifers too quickly for them to replenish themselves, thus rendering a semi-renewable resource non-renewable, and they drain surface water sources as well. Climate change aggravates the problem; it causes snowpacks to melt earlier and faster, and water is not available when people need it during dry seasons. Rather than conserving this depleting resource, people just move to the next area they can exploit. However, this method is bound to stop at some point in the near future because there will be no other sources to turn to. Without water, there is no life on earth, and people should treat it as so.

The long-term consequences of drying out water sources, building dams, diverting rivers, and more for human use outweigh the short-term benefits. Dams and reservoirs supply an ample amount of water for surrounding communities, and they increase water’s availability for irrigation and electricity. However, these practices destroy biodiversity and affect the geography of the land by creating sinkholes. Reservoirs do not last long either, filling up with silt within a few decades of being built. Additionally, diverting water from its natural path reduces its ability to clear out pollution, as is what occurs in the San Francisco Bay. These promising methods are often detrimental. However, few people understand or care; they only see the positives that come from exploiting water right now. Unfortunately, the effects of this ignorance are already being seen across the world, and it is affecting human health and agriculture.

A significant amount of our water footprints come from virtual water. Freshwater is used to produce food and other products like clothing and paper. According to María Del Mar Sánchez Espejo, the avocado trade is unsustainable concerning water resources (Espejo 2018, 24). Demand for avocados has increased greatly in the past 30 years, and it has caused virtual water to move from water stressed areas like Mexico and Chile to less water stressed areas like the United Kingdom and Japan. Therefore, areas where the avocados are being grown suffer from water depletion. Certainly, although a lot of water is used at the pre-consumer level, we are still personally responsible for a great deal of it, even if we are not directly using it. When eating an avocado, you waste water because of its cultivation. The individual can play a role in reducing this unsustainable water usage by carefully selecting what we consume. We have the power to adjust our habits, which will hopefully influence agricultural practices and industry as a whole.

Today, agriculture relies on irrigation, especially in dry regions. Irrigation makes up a significant percentage of water usage in the U.S. and is widely unregulated. According to The New York Times, agriculture companies, many coming from the Middle East, flocked to Arizona in the early 2000s (Shannon 2018). Although the climate is generally arid, these corporations exploited aquifers because of the state’s minimal groundwater regulations. These companies grow thirsty crops like nuts and alfalfa and have been drying out the water to the point that smaller farmers cannot survive. Non-farming families also suffer and cannot access enough water to meet their basic needs. California has another problematic agricultural system, and farmers rely on irrigation to grow crops that naturally would not survive there. Even in areas where government regulations exist, such as with the Colorado River treaty between Mexico and U.S. states, they are often inadequate in properly preserving water for the future, both for humans and other organisms. Increased climate change will only aggravate the problem.

Water pollution presents another issue, and agricultural activities are the leading cause of it for reasons such as sediment runoff and fertilizers. Animal wastes pollute waters and can cause fatal illnesses for those drinking the water, an issue that is even more profound in developing nations with little to no water treatment facilities. Further issues come about from industrial issues like the leaking of pathogens and chemicals into the water. Many of these problems relate to the previous blog posts, so I will be brief.

New solutions are emerging to handle depleting water including the treatment of wastewater, which is in tune with natural cycling processes. In California, there are a number of facilities that remove contaminants from wastewater (Water Education Foundation, n.d.). Water can either be purified for potable uses or nonpotable uses (like landscape irrigation). It is run through a variety of systems including grit chambers and disinfection processes. Different challenges arise, such as issues with pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, and other chemicals present in water. However, at the rate that the technology is advancing, I am confident that the agencies will be able to tackle these issues. California’s treatment system should serve as an example to other states and nations as a way to preserve water. We can recycle water and ensure that toxins are not being dumped into the environment, thereby reducing our reliance on unsustainable sources and cleaning up ecosystems.

Constructed wetlands can also treat wastewater, and they use natural cycling processes. Wastewater flows through a pipe and on top of soil or through gravel, and the plants in the system take in organic materials (National Small Flows Clearinghouse, n.d.). Solids and trace metals settle. This system effectively cleans many toxins out of the water and builds up ecosystems in the process, even if said ecosystems are human-made. There are some disadvantages, and engineers are still unsure about its ability to deal with some chemicals. However, constructed wastelands are clearly better than not treating water at all, and they cost significantly less than conventional systems. They also could be important to implement in areas that are located far away from wastewater treatment centers, so complicated and expensive transport systems do not have to be built, and more people will not have to deal with the effects of dirty water.

However, many issues remain with dumping trash and sewage into bodies of water, including oceans. Relatively recent regulations in the U.S. have limited the ability of companies and individuals to do this, but companies still contaminate water resources. In January 2020, Donald Trump rolled back the Obama Administration’s pollution restrictions, and he favored corporations, effectively removing protections on clean water (Davenport 2020). The Albatross film and Chris Jordan’s photographs highlight the depressing reality of water pollution across the world. We are killing our fellow organisms, and nobody seems to care too much about it. It stuns me how difficult it is for some people to just dispose of their trash in the correct manner, and I see it a lot at Fordham. People do not care about the environment enough to even adjust their actions the smallest bit, and they litter, do not recycle, and create unnecessary waste.

Significant changes should be made at the federal and global levels to ameliorate the water crisis. We need increased programs to monitor groundwater supplies through satellites. Through this method, scientists can analyze variations to the earth’s gravitational pull, which tell us about changes in groundwater supplies, surface water, and more. By monitoring this, we can take preemptive measures to prevent further degradation, such as issuing standards for water use for specific seasons. Ultimately, state governments are likely to be more responsive to these concerns than the federal government, such as how California regulates its water use. The government should also remove subsidies supporting unsustainable agriculture in arid regions. There is no reason for thirsty crops to be grown in these areas, and they put a strain on water supplies for the whole nation. If more natural crops are planted, the water issue will decrease. Therefore, greater subsidies for farmers for crops that are easier to grow in the climate may prove to be necessary. Subsidies can also be shifted to promote the farming of more thirsty crops in regions that can support them. This may require shifts in urban planning initiatives to ensure there is space for farming, and this will be difficult. However, the federal government can use policies like mandates to require spaces to open up farming (i.e. withholding federal funding for infrastructure if the Northeast does not set aside land for certain crops).

Irrigation presents another issue, and we should encourage farmers to use more efficient methods to prevent water waste. Drip irrigation significantly improves efficiency. In the film Symphony of the Soil, one of the farmers uses drip irrigation in California. He explains that this process allows him to save money because he does not have to pay for as much water. Certainly, if changes in irrigation systems are presented in this manner, being an initial investment that pays off, more farmers will support shifting their methods. Grassroots organizations will play a role in this by distributing information to farmers and local agricultural organizations. If major farming groups can understand this position, they will have a significant impact on agriculture in the U.S. In developing countries, it is important to promote using the traditional, low-cost irrigation methods that the textbook describes, which are often more efficient than industrialized ways. Organizations speaking to farming communities directly may expedite this process. Promoting the use of polycultures throughout the world, rather than monocultures, will reduce soil erosion and evaporative water losses, preserving the soil and decreasing reliance on such large quantities of water; waterways will be dually preserved. Comprehensive education is important to enact these changes. Farmers must understand the benefits of turning to more sustainable agricultural methods. Although there are often up-front costs, they will pay off in the future with reduced water and resources as a whole.

Agricultural companies must be regulated in the amount of land they can acquire in a certain region during a certain period of time. In Arizona, a handful of corporations were able to buy up land quickly. Thus, they were able to quickly set their agenda in motion and degrade resources. If the government can prevent these corporations from buying such large swaths of land, this fast-paced environmental degradation is less likely to occur and will give authorities time to review the companies’ actions. Of course, in the U.S., this could prove to be difficult with courts often being strict readers of the Constitution. However, if individuals can put pressure on the government, perhaps some progress can be made. These large land purchases infringe on people’s rights to resources, so perhaps this angle can be used to convince officials.

Widespread water conservation policies should also be enacted. Municipalities can begin instituting policies that restrict the amount of water residents consume and raise the cost of it. By instituting lifeline rates, households can use a set amount of affordable water to meet basic needs. After this limit is reached, they must pay higher and higher amounts for water; this is a user-pays approach. Therefore, impoverished people still have access to water. However, people who want to use an unsustainable amount must pay for it. Hopefully, this method will discourage individuals from overusing water and will make them more conscious of their environmental impact. Additionally, there must be limits on the amount of water that can be extracted from aquifers during a certain period of time. If people do not follow the regulations, they should face heavy fines. If policies like these had been implemented in Arizona, families and farmers would not be suffering. Instead, unregulated companies were able to drain the lifeblood of the region. Wastewater treatment plants should also be built across nations to recycle water and reduce the strain on groundwater and surface water. California provides an example of what this can look like, and we should learn from their treatment processes to make water usage more cyclical rather than linear. These treatment facilities should be presented in the light that they will save money in the long run by preserving water. On an international level, comprehensive treaties must be pursued to divide water usage rights among countries. The Mexican-American agreement is an example of poor policy because it allowed people to extract an unsustainable amount of water; other organisms were not considered. Treaties that consider entire ecosystems and ensure that water will be preserved at a sustainable level will be important in ensuring that future generations and other organisms have access to the same resources that we do.

Better and more comprehensive urban planning in communities is important in order to prevent soil erosion and runoff. If we work to concentrate people in cities, we can help preserve natural vegetation and ecosystems outside of these urban areas. Additionally, new communities should be built in a way that protects natural features. For example, cluster developments should be used, and this can be instituted at the municipal level through zoning laws. Covering cropland with vegetation and employing different farming techniques like conservation tillage also help in preventing erosion and runoff.

The U.S. must work with developing nations to improve their sewage systems. Throwing sewage into waterways is a public health disaster. Therefore, new methods can be introduced, like compost toilets, which will help reduce this problem. Low-cost, constructed wetlands are another possible solution.

Individuals should also make some changes in their lives. By not purchasing products that require a lot of water, not buying produce from arid regions that require a lot of irrigation, and supporting sustainable companies, people can effectively vote with their wallets. Companies will hopefully see this shift in public opinion and change their practices accordingly. Using low-flow showerheads and front-loading washers can also reduce household water usage. People should ensure that the pipes in their homes are not leaking, so no water is wasted.

At Fordham, improvements can be made to the sprinkler system. I have seen sprinklers running when it has just rained or even while it is raining. The maintenance staff needs to fix this problem to ensure that water is not wasted. Taking steps to prevent this would also save money and improve the quality of plants. Furthermore, the University should introduce more native vegetation as opposed to plants that require a significant amount of water. Native species require less attention, too, so it is a win-win situation.

Generally, a bottom-up approach is necessary to deal with water issues. After all, this has been the way that many U.S. environmental acts have passed. If people bring these issues to the population’s and the government’s attention, we can create real change in how we deal with water. This invaluable resource must be protected because without it, life on Earth cannot exist.

Word Count: 2545

Question: Is it possible for us not to rely on aquifers at all in the future?

Water Footprint: 917.9 m³ per year

Diagrams:

2015 water usage in the U.S. - states heavily using irrigation like California and Texas use the most.

Rise of water withdrawals nationwide (in billion gallons per day)

Drip irrigation system, which ensures that plants take in most of the water

Works Cited:

Espejo, María Del Mar Sánchez. 2018. “The Implication of the Avocado Trade for Global Water Scarcity.” MSc Thesis, Cranfield University.

Shannon, Noah Gallagher. 2018. “The Water Wars of Arizona.” The New York Times, July 19, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/magazine/the-water-wars-of-arizona.html.

Water Education Foundation. n.d. “Wastewater Treatment Process in California.” Accessed April 29, 2021. https://www.watereducation.org/aquapedia/wastewater-treatment-process-california.

National Small Flows Clearinghouse. n.d. “Constructed Wetlands Factsheet.” Purdue University. https://engineering.purdue.edu/~frankenb/NU-prowd/cwetfact.htm#:~:text=Constructed%20wetlands%20provide%20simple%20and,operating%20costs%20are%20very%20low.

Davenport, Coral. 2020. “Trump Removes Pollution Controls on Streams and Wetlands.” The New York Times, July 6, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/22/climate/trump-environment-water.html.