#depending on which group they're from. a large number of them are white.

[sangfielle]

this feels like an offensively bad way to divide these things

[nolanhattrick]

if you want to go more into the utah thing, pls do

okay, so i feel the need to preface all of this with

tij iginla deserved to be drafted high in the first round. i'm glad he went high in the first round. he worked hard to earn the place he was drafted. that being said, i do not think his technical ability is the only reason utah drafted him.

let's take a look at utah's owners.

the smiths are mormon, and follow most standard hypocritical mormon doctrine. they have five children and live in provo. can't find much on ashley but ryan went to business school at BYU provo because his dad worked there before he got cancer and also that's what good little mormon boys are expected to do after they go on their colonizer missions to brown countries.

link to the archived deseret interview, written by the mormon church

he often speaks to church officials about money and tech, since he owns multiple businesses in the tech space and owns four sports franchises. the above link is an interview he did with a mormon elder about allocation of church funds. from the horse's mouth, they admit to hoarding billions of dollars and wanting to convert essentially the entire african continent to mormonism for clout.

now. this is where we get into tij's selection.

if you aren't as autistic about mormon history as i am, tl;dr up until about like pshhh iirc it was like 10 or 15 years ago it was literally like not possible for black mormons to hold positions of power in the church. mormon children were taught that dark skin was a sign of being "cut off from god" (lamanites) and depending on where you lived, that if you weren't white, you wouldn't be able to reach the highest level of heaven (in mormonism there are different tiers of the afterlife - three levels of heaven [celestial, terrestrial, and telestial] and then "outer darkness" which is basically just hell. you can only reach the celestial kingdom if you're the perfect mormon and pretty much anyone goes to the telestial kingdom, even like. rapists and murderers. you go to outer darkness if you defy god to his face basically. mormons are wild. yes i am judging you) which is like beaten into you from birth to be the worst fucking thing in the world because if you don't reach the highest level of glory you're separated from your family in the afterlife, and that would suck! that's what you spent your entire life trying to do! so by default getting denied that simply because you produce more melanin is. rancid!

so. career mormons, as i call them - or mormons that come from long lineages of pre-established mormons, especially utah or texas or idaho mormons (like ryan's family, and i'm going to assume ashley's family) - they very very very often have deep racism beat into them practically since birth. they might not think so, but it's there, and it comes out at the wildest times in the wildest ways. like, i grew up in an area with a LARGE mormon minority. a group of mormons tried to lynch one of my friends as a "joke". they literally tried to fucking lynch him. one of the only black kids in the area. because they thought it was funny, and couldn't conceptualize why that was wrong or why that action - committed by that specific religion, too - carried immense weight.

moving onto the hockey part of the ask.

i stared at coyotes stats for way too long last night.

tij iginla is a left shot forward.

we all know arizona was uhh. not the greatest when they made their exit from the league. tij put up some gorgeous numbers when he finished out this year in the w, and if he does well at development camp i think he does have a very good chance at being a name on the roster. i do.

i don't think he was the smartest choice for them technically, though.

like, come the fuck on.

and like i get that they're. they still have all summer. it's whatever. but out of their thirteen forwards, nine are left shots. they are not hurting for him!!

and like. okay. you could argue like. of those, bh and bo38 are rfa at the end of this season, mc53 and ak15 and mm63 and jm22 are ufa next season, they're practically bled dry for RWs.

and they have signed defensemen since day one of the draft. unsure how td33 is going to do with his injury over the summer, but if he comes back they'll be at the numbers they need.

i still don't think he was the pick utah needed technically. i don't think he was the perfect fit. i think the owners decided for the franchise and were able to justify it well enough with his numbers to themselves and everyone else to make it work, but i really truly deep down think that part of it was "look at us we are a brand new team. we are two perfect people that wear cool youth pastor clothes to fancy pants events. we're so hip and chill, we're going to make this black kid's dreams come true by drafting him higher than his dad. we're going to make him the face of the Utah Hockey Club" and then IMMEDIATELY put him in a fucking jersey that says property of. like that is deranged.

i know from an outsider's perspective this all can seem very reach-y but when you have lived with these people and been inside their minds and been raised inside the culture it is all very very thought out. it's deliberate. everything these people do is intentional. so i really honestly can't see these people doing this for any other reason than to make themselves look good. yes, i think tij is a very talented hockey player that deserved to be drafted high in the first round. but i think he belongs somewhere else, somewhere that will treat him well and somewhere he will be safe. because i guarantee you, he is not safe on that team. not when ryan and ashley smith own it.

[duckapus]

Southern Magnamiel:

"Chaos!"

A miniature blizzard saturated in darkness cuts through the mountain air, blowing apart a particularly large crowd of ghosts before they can do anything to the family of cats and pair of Lakitu tourists they'd cornered. As the strange spell finishes, its caster is revealed; a lanky brown cat in strange half-armored red and white clothes and a ragged cape. She turns to address them.

"There's a guard house two streets west, you'll be safer there."

The group makes haste after taking a few brief moments to thank her for saving them, and once they're gone she glares up at the unnatural storm.

After she'd found Tiresias's note, Dapple's fine-tuned adventurer's instincts had intuited that things were about to go to shit, most likely due to whatever the hell Damian must have been doing that involved messing with everyone's heads so they'd ignore the massive red flags he'd been waving around. So, she'd begun making her way through the mountains towards Devos, changing into her old outfit (though not her old species) since her usual dress isn't exactly Proper Adventuring Attire.

And of course, a few hours in, all hell breaks loose, and quite literally from the looks of it. A thick layer of sickly green clouds hangs over the entire continent, blocking out the sun, with the only breaks in it being nine swirling, glowing vortexes that are hemorrhaging ghosts. Mostly cats, of course, but a massive number of the various monsters and magical creatures that inhabit Harmonia as well. If she remembers her geography lessons properly, the nearest of them is somewhere above the border between Magnamiel and Luminos, while the largest is in the middle of Devos, maybe a bit to the west. That one makes the most sense as her target, especially since she'd been going there anyway.

Path now set, she takes off at a run.

-------------

Eastern Devos

...Yeah not sure what to actually put here so I'll just say that Tonio and Piper are making good use of their new ghost-hunting tech and fighting their way across the kingdom towards either the castle or the seal, depending on where Damien/Disc is at the moment. They're being guided by Tonio's "intuition" (aka undiagnosed clairvoyance), so they've got a good idea of where they need to go but I don't.

------------

Cilcia's Capital

"Hold your ground, men!"

The battalion of royal guards do their best to keep formation in the face of their spectral enemies, bravely defending the civilians behind them with blade and shield and song as they evacuate to the designated shelters. They're vastly outnumbered, however, the force spread thin across the sprawling city, and they're slowly but surely losing ground.

And then a massive blur of greens and browns surges in, the telltale glint of polished steel on either side of it, and dives straight into the spectral tide, sending the ghosts into a frenzy that causes most of them to take their attention off the soldiers.

After several moments of chaos punctuated by unholy shrieks and the clashing of blades, the ghosts scatter, revealing the battalion's savior.

What they see is a brown, vaguely birdlike creature as tall as a building, draped in a heavy green cloak with a matching (and rather stylish) wide-brimmed hat. A light brown scarf with ragged ends trails behind it, waving in the wind, and in its three-clawed hands is a pair of long bladed weapons with oddly shaped handles... recognizable to some as the separated halves of a massive pair of gardening shears. When the creature is first revealed, one of these blades is stabbed clean through the ghost of a Cymbal Troll, which seems to be absorbed into it.

It looks out over the group, its glowing blue eyes seeming to pierce into their souls, then nods once and runs once more down the street, leaving them to wonder exactly what sort of god just saved them.

As he runs, ClearAll grumbles under his breath. Just his luck that he'd decide to come here for a change of scenery the exact same day that some moron decides to start up some kind of ghost apocalypse. And worse, if he's correctly reading the code signature of the static interference that's blocking his portals, he knows exactly which moron it is. It had admittedly taken him a few minutes to recognize the signature, but to be fair it'd been well over a decade outside the computer and relative centuries inside, and the program in question hadn't been particularly memorable apart from the company they kept. Even now he couldn't remember the poor fool's name.

Rolling his eyes, he briefly goes over his list of priorities. Firstly, the thing he's been doing; traveling through the city and aiding anyone who's being overwhelmed by the ghosts, mostly by gathering the wayward souls into his shears to deposit into this world's afterlife once it's re-sealed. Steps two and three are to actually do said re-sealing and kick the moron's ass, the order depending on which makes sense to do first at the time, hopefully with the aid of this world's heroes.

He'd love to go beyond an ass-kicking, frankly, but while he feels that the moron's time has long since passed his programming disagrees. Of course, given just how many powerful people this scheme would piss off, he felt confident in predicting that their time is at least fast approaching.

His gaze flicks to the side, detecting a mass of incoming deaths that Need Not Be, and he shifts trajectory and readies himself for another bout.

------------

Luminos Castle, moments after the ritual

As the bizarre green clouds roll in, Ash tears his gaze away from the panicking Admin and her patient, closing his eyes to get a good look at what's happening in the sky with Aura Sight, and gasps.

"Incoming!"

Less than a second later, the vortexes appear and the ghosts come pouring out. While most of them spread out across the continent, large clusters seem to specifically target the Capital cities of each kingdom (except, rather expectedly, in Devos and Desiderio), and as a result the castle is about to get absolutely swarmed.

There's a series of flashes as the three Trainers let out several of their Pokémon.

Miku is the first to start dishing out orders, turning her attention to her oddly green-tinged Dragonair, "Night Concert variation G-7, with light show. Cover as much of the castle as you can."

Dragonair nods and shoots out through the nearest open window, and soon enough the air around the castle grounds comes alive as she weaves together an intricate, maze-like array of barrier moves, Tailwind, Aurora Veil, and even a few seemingly randomly-placed bubbles of Trick Room. While this blocks the main bulk of the spectral swarm, at least for now, several are either fast enough to have gotten past before the full blockade was up or crafty enough to make their way through without having to brute-force it.

Which is where the rest of the group comes in, having already gone outside to meet the ghosts head on.

"Golduck, Bob-ulk, Flash Cannon barrage!"

Exactly as Jet had ordered, the rage-fueled kappa and oversized purple mortar shell fire dozens of orbs of silvery energy up into the swarm which detonate as they hit, causing the weakest of the ghosts to dematerialize entirely and the rest of them to be scattered and disoriented. This makes them prime targets for the projectiles of the other Pokémon, though some ghosts seem to resist or outright ignore some attacks.

With another round of Aura Sight, Ash works out what's going on, "Guys, it looks like some of them have an extra type! It's probably based on what kind of magic they specialized in when they were alive."

That fits with my observations, comes a telepathic reply, Most of the ones that are ignoring our electric attacks are wearing Monaxian fashion, from what I can see.

The telepath in question is Jellibelum, Ash's fully evolved Donandan Water Starter. The Jellyfish part is now as large as Bob-ulk with eight tendrils coming off of it, four coming from the bottom "lip" of the bowl and acting as legs, while the other four come from the sides (as defined by the way the goldfish is facing) and all eight have three finger(or toe)-like phalanges positioned around an opening at their bulbous ends. The goldfish part's brainlike crest is significantly larger, and now attached to the jellyfish by what look like nerves, while the main body is now long and thin, with the tail fins atrophying to almost nothing (they're not exactly all that necessary now that the two organisms are one and the fish outright can't leave the bowl), while the dorsal fin is now long, white, and drapes horizontally like a cape, though with the pectoral fins doing something similar it all comes together to look more like a labcoat.

Anyway, with their new strategic knowledge they make reasonably short work of the ghosts inside the castle grounds, and with the blockade holding for now (especially with Dragonair continuing to refresh and redesign it even as the ghosts keep picking away at it) most of them head back inside to discuss what the hell is going on, and hopefully figure out a plan. Though a few Pokémon do stay outside to help the guards with any ghosts that do make it through, including Ash's Kirlia and Krookodile (because Dark Type) and Jet's Eevee (because Normal Type's ghost immunity).

(Also, Ash finds out about the interference that Disc is causing (whether intentionally or not) when he tries and fails to open a small portal so he can transfer in more of his Pokémon, and it's then confirmed when one of Melody's aides shows up to inform them that the Hyperlink Gate isn't working.)

[mitigatedchaos]

Ah, hmn...

During World War 2, liberals, Fascists, and Communists fought each other to the death in Europe, in the process reducing large tracts of European cities to bombed-out rubble. While some number of the soldiers, officers, and officials would have been "non-ideological" (in practice, participating out of simple particularist loyalty or fear of punishment), a number of them would have fought and died out of legitimate ideological belief.

Many of these participants would have been white, European, and male, acting to kill other white, European males.

Likewise, ideological movements are hardly limited to Europe, and people have made ideological allies and fought alongside each other across ethnicities and races. (If you're Yan Xishan for instance, you might recruit Japanese soldiers who had previously invaded your country, who subsequently fight to the death against the Communists of your own nationality, a position that doesn't make sense if the only thing that matters is race.)

That is, the total range of opinion within a race is greater than the difference in average opinion between races.

What are the implications? Suppose we're setting out to construct a body of work to understand society.

If we only include works written by people of one specific race (such as, say, Asians), this means we're probably leaving out some information. However, because race is dominated in opinion by things like ideology or individual character traits, knowledge, and beliefs, after adding only a few works for race we would cover more differences in perspective by switching to something like class, occupation, or ideology.

(Or to put it another way, there's a rapid decrease in the marginal gain in information, in representing the perspective space, from adding more racial works as opposed to competing ideological works.)

The goal of racial representation being to increase viewpoint diversity (as otherwise it would simply be a particularist project better served by racial national separatism, particularly if own-race content is for some reason a psychological requirement) and thus gain a broader understanding of whatever situation is being studied, race should therefore be only a small element for consideration when selecting works, and only a small minority of works should be selected specifically on the basis of race.

For the intention to capture the general opinion held by members of a racial group, it would be more appropriate to 1) use polling, rather than selecting written works which represent the opinions of individual authors, and 2) note the minority disagreement within a poll - there are few things "all" members of a racial or ethnic group agree to, and no ethnic group is a monolith.

How is that?

I don't think the wording is right for the particular audience that needs to shift away from standpoint reduction (skipping author content in favor of reducing them to a handful of identity categories, particularly race, sex, and sexual orientation - implicitly e.g. "all books written by men are automatically the same") because I'm much more rationalist (in the Yudkowsky sense), so someone would need to rephrase it to help them better save face and maybe "own the chuds" somehow (even though it has nothing to do with them).

If they're the kind of people we need to reach, they're not going to talk about "marginal information gain" in "representing the perspective space," because nine times out of ten, if they did, they would already be us and we wouldn't need to formally spell out the argument.

But the rephrasing needs to be careful not to compress down into intersectional mush with no effect. It needs to cut through the protective haze.

Obviously all the worst offenders of standpoint reduction aren't doing it for upright moral reasons; you're not going to convince someone whose paycheck depends on identity being the sole reason to prefer their work over someone else's. Likewise, I expect a lot of "um, that's what we already believe" from people who don't believe that; but in a group that makes decisions primarily by social consensus that may also be the means by which they pivot to a new position.

[deusluxuria]

johnny how does spine???

( warning: medical stuff )

( Don't be ableist or go "ew" or "oh no that is so sad that he's disabled" I'll eat you. )

For fanfiction info and whatever.

This info is subjective and not a matter of "you have to perceive Johnny this exact way." It's just a lil guide or starting point that might be helpful if you want to know more about Johnny's most-likely type of paraplegia.

There are a number of factors going on effecting the variables when it comes to gunshot wounds, spinal injury, and paralysis. So I'm gonna simplify it and get into basic stuff that doesn't require having a PhD or knowing firearm ballistics and all that.

(That being said, when it comes to writing about the experience of ableism, you need to be talking to disabled people and reading about their experiences. Remember that disabled people are a marginalized group.)

There's only so much we can figure out canonically. Spine injuries vary a lot, and then there are inconsistencies with Johnny's disability throughout the story. Araki likes to "not sweat the small stuff" (in his own words).

I like to just stick to the information we have in the beginning, since we get the most from there.

These are two excerpts from one of the first few chapters of the manga, showing approximately where in the spine Johnny was injured (just about above elbow level).

And here's a diagram showing the spinal column, and about what "above the elbow" means for Johnny's bodily functions. The T9 vertebrae is the closest to where that might be, so it can be assumed that Johnny's spine is effected from there-downward. Again, this varies depending on the person and multiple factors of the injury.

Digestive:

Johnny has no bowel control (which means it's a given he also has no urinary control). And according to how other characters say he has no sensation below the waist, either that's true or he has very minimal sensation.

Johnny is rich, so he can pay his medical bills. And his main dilemma in the story is that he's got a toxic self-ableist ego, so he probably would have gone for the prosthetic route, with colostomy surgery & catheters. As opposed to a bowel program or using diapers / other receptacles. Prosthetics also make more sense in context, since he's in a horse race and being chased by violent assholes, and so he wouldn't be able to visit a doctor or look after his hygiene just whenever.

A colostomy involves a hole (aka "stoma") being surgically made directly to the colon from the abdomen. A removable colostomy bag (aka "stoma bag") is attached to the hole, and is used as a receptacle for fecal matter to be emptied into automatically.

[ID: simple diagram showing the structure of colostomy surgery, & the location of the stoma & where the colostomy bag hangs. /end ID] [ID: simple stock photo showing a person slightly lifting up their shirt to show their colostomy bag, which is opaque, white flesh-tone color, & about the size of a large adult's winter mitten. /end ID]

This can make bowel movements easier for some paralyzed people as opposed to diapers or bowel programs, because emptying into a colostomy bag requires a lot less muscle function, is easier to change and clean, and needs less prep before bathing, showering, exercise, sex, sleep, etc.

Similarly, a catheter bypasses some of the distance and muscle control needed for urinating. A small, thin tube is inserted into the urethra and guided to the bladder. Urine automatically empties from the bladder, through the tube, and into a drainage bag, which is kept strapped to the person's thigh or calf, or secured to their wheelchair or underneath their bed.

[ID: simple diagram showing the structure of a catheter & thigh drainage bag, as well as what the extension to an overnight drainage bag might look like. /end ID] [ID: simple stock photo of an opaque white drainage bag cover, strapping the bag to the person's thigh. /end ID]

If someone uses a diaper, they'd simply change it whenever it's used, or otherwise whenever they're able to.

Because Johnny rides horses and does various dangerous, strenuous things in SBR, if using prosthetics, he might have his colostomy bag secured to his torso in some way (such as tying a piece of fabric around his torso). He might also have more padding to these prosthetics to protect them from being punctured, or worse, ripped out.

When he was shot, the bullet also may have perforated his intestines (along with his gallbladder and a kidney), which would have made a colostomy procedure necessary anyway. When he's shown in the hospital, he has a cloth wrapped around his pelvis, and acknowledges in distress that he's lost bowel and/or bladder control. So we can guess that his intestines are at least mostly intact.

[ID: Part of a panel from the Steel Ball Run manga, showing Johnny from the waist-down, in a hospital bed with a white cloth folded around his pelvis and bandages around his abdomen. /end ID]

Pain:

Johnny has the right idea about strapping his ankles up next to his saddle. People without paralysis tend not to realize just how heavy the human body is. With no muscle control in his legs, they would be way too heavy, and his back would be injured if he were to just let his legs dangle, especially while riding on horseback at high speeds. That would most definitely break his legs.

One thing about a transition between having muscle control and then being paralyzed is that previously non-paralyzed people might not understand right away that their paralyzed body parts still need to be taken care of. Even if those parts don't feel pain.

Johnny would likely have back, neck, and shoulder pain after being paralyzed, at least for a while. At least until he re-learns how to take care of his body from the waist down. Treating his legs like dead weight would put strain on the rest of his skeleton.

[ID: A panel from one of the first few chapters of Steel Ball Run. Johnny from the side, showing how he has changed the structure of his horse saddle and has his ankles strapped to his sides, so he's seated on his horse in a kneeling position. /end ID]

Sexual:

It's possible to experience orgasm with paralysis. There are types of non-genital orgasms, and then, strong or prolonged, repetitive stimulation to the errogenous zones of sensationless genitals can still cause orgasm that's felt from the waist-up (paralyzed folks may find the use of strong vibrators to be especially beneficial). Prostate stimulation may also be significantly more effective than genital stimulation.

Some people also have increased sensitivity from the waist-up if they're paralyzed from the waist-down (i.e. Johnny would feel notably more pain when injured, say, on his arm, than Gyro would).

A person can also have phantom sensations and experience pleasure & arousal from visual stimuli alone.

Sex with paralysis might need extra lubricant, since natural biological lubrication can be less prevalent with pelvic paralysis.

The way sexual stimulation feels to a paralyzed person is likely impossible for a non-paralyzed person to imagine. And it of course depends on the person and the unique way of how they experience sex in general.

Going by Johnny's personality, mainly with his loss of self-confidence, after his injury, he would likely only have sex with someone whom he trusts very deeply.

Reproductive:

With a uterus and viable ovaries, it's just as possible to get pregnant with pelvic paralysis as it is without. There can also still be pain during childbirth.

Viable testicles are a different story. It's very difficult to get someone pregnant when the person with testicles has pelvic paralysis. There would need to be help from a doctor. In context, Steel Ball Run doesn't stick to historical accuracy. But if it were, there's no way disability services around 1890 were existent enough for people with testicles to have medical help conceiving children when paralyzed at the pelvis.

If George is the biological child of both Johnny and Rina, it would make more logical and historical sense if Johnny had a uterus and was the one who gave birth to George, alongside Rina having testicles and being the one who impregnated Johnny. But that all depends on your headcanons, like what I said at the beginning of the post.

thank you for tuning in to "how johnny spine does" or something, goodnight lol

[timefortrees]

Hi! I'm not sure if you answer this type of question, but if you do, would you mind taking a look at the fungus growing on a Laurel I was pruning today? It was a little worrying, because I first noticed the white stuff on this one branch that is still partially alive, so I was concerned it may be harmful. But I also noticed it in a few other places, and now I think it's exclusively growing on dead wood. If you don't mind - could you look at these photos and let me know if you recognize the species or type, or just whether it looks like something we should take out to avoid harm to the rest of the bush?

Thank you!!

So this is the first branch, it was pretty aggressively cut back and I think the part with fungal growth is the wood that once fed the branch that was cut off, but it was kinda worrying because it looks like it's growing inward and not just on the surface.

There were a couple fruiting bodies like this, I think the first one is bigger and about 1.5 inches long, but there were a couple others that were quite small.

Some examples of what it looked like growing in other spots

And then these mushrooms are growing in a few places as well, they're sort of light grey and have a soft, kind of furry texture on the top. Haven't identified them yet.

Anyway, thanks for looking at these pictures, whether you can help or not! Hope you're having a good day!

Hey @weirdo-with-a-nametag

sorry for the slow response, I wanted to get in front of a computer so I could view the photos a little better than on my phone.

I'm going to number the photos 1-10, starting with 1 as the top left and 10 as the last (bottom right. Hopefully that makes sense!! ;)

Photos 1 and 2 appear to show a fairly typical white mould or crust fungus, maybe Cylindrobasidium laeve or Hyphodontia sambuci(although normally found on elder). It appears to be only colonising the deadwood or exposed wood, I feel it is a pretty common occurrence in such scenarios. Assuming it is only colonising the dead/exposed wood it is likely to be saprotrophic and won't spread into healthy tissue. I would certainly remove these dead branches though, it would help increase air flow through the specimen and help prevent the build-up of fungal inoculum within the bush.

Photos 3 and 4 look like they are on either a dead or damaged branch, the photos appear to show patches of missing bark in places which will affect this branch physiologically and weaken it should it still be a living branch. Again I would remove this branch is possible.

Photos 5,6, and 7 show the exposed wood of where a previous branch or subordinate branch has been removed. The small fruiting bodies on the exposed wood are likely to be saprotrophic in my opinion and won't be an issue at this stage. They will degrade and break down the exposed wood over time, but currently don't appear to be causing a problem.

I'm not sure on the fruiting bodies in photos 8,9, and 10 either at this stage. The central photo (9) appears to show them on a branch with lots of new foliage, indicating it is living, but there appears to be a sudden flat top, maybe it was cut there once? Could it be some kind of Trametes species? sorry I know that's a very large group of fungi haha, could also be one of the Postia species?

Sorry if this isn't much help, especially the fungi suggestions, I'm suggesting from a UK/ Western Europe perspective, the USA has some very different species so if you're in the USA and I'm horrifically wrong my apologies!

The thing with laurel is that it can take a really hard beating and grow back strong, I know the management of it will depend on it's location and purpose, but it might be worth removing all affected parts of the specimen, cutting it back hard, mulching and keeping well watered and support it in recovery. Normally I would be very supportive of dead and decaying wood, but in a hedge (assuming this is part of a hedge, laurel normally is in the UK) deadwood can lead to density and overcrowding which creates conditions that support pests and diseases, ultimately affecting the long term health of the hedge.

[boardnroom]

1  Trump Descending

“This is something which has never happened to a President before, it is all Democrat-inspired in a totally Democrat location, New York City and State, completely controlled and dominated by a heavily reported enemy of mine, Governor Andrew Cuomo.”

Trump

The administration of America is as complex an undertaking as ever seen in history. There is a common sense resistance to its enormity which is usually professed with anecdotal instances of waste, corruption, and stupidity. Its targets are chosen politically. 

But the concept of this administration, of the American state, of the American empire must admit that its size and complexity reflects the enormous contradictions of a political economy of private ownership in a world where the vast majority depend on just that economy while owning practically none of it.

When opponents within his own party as well as the other denounced Trump as unfit for office this is what they were talking about. Small-time moguls hatch their deals in a world that, while also capitalist, has little else to do with either the ownership or the administration of this system. They and he lack the hard won expertise or colossal wealth that are the usual qualifications for this post. He also lacks, despite claims, any level of political genius.

The policies by which America is administered are hashed out in constant competition between weighted points of private interest. Nevermind how they are weighted. At any one time a texture of agreement is in place and in the care of a system of officials whose reference is to this texture for acting rather than their private interests. Corruption, naturally, exists but it is just that, corruption, not system. 

System maintenance requires education. Positions require certification. The number of people involved is a large slice of the population, larger than the ruling class but far smaller than the working majority. As a class it lies between, on one hand, the owners of everything and, on the other, those whose work is supervised in its entirety or who otherwise fend for themselves. As a class it never included Trump, never recognized him as qualified, and never tolerated him. When the time came for him to cajole support for his putsch the response was unanimously negative.

Not that there is no support for him. Where his support extends into the police, the military, and Republican officeholders it is infra legal, positioned in an unofficial web to overthrow the established order. Why? What situation are we in where the White House can organize a coup, organize it with such a lack of skill, and have it fail almost entirely by its own hand?

Trump appears to have believed that by satisfying those who already own everything with tax cuts, loose money, and deregulation he would be given complete command over the administrative system. He could leverage his passionate support among the Kleinbürger to invent an election landslide. He could create enough chaos that an opening would appear through which he could march on Rome.

It never happened. Trump's mass base is frightened enough, their status is fragile enough, they are ready to call down heaven's wrath. But the bourgeoisie is not. For them safety is still found in the familiar.

2 Two Parties

We badly need a Republican Party. We need a two-party system. It’s not healthy to have a one-party system. 

Biden

Trump's failure leaves the Republicans in a mess. His reelection was conducted under the banner of a last ditch resistance to socialism. But the socialists haven't taken the field. The final battle he proclaimed is a crisis of capital. His opposition party, the Democrats, has a mass base that it can rely on for now and it has retained the confidence of capital. But a two party system, the American two party system, requires room for accumulation. Without it only one survives.

That was Trump's message in 2016. The Republican Party must become the single party or it will disappear. Their insurance policy was to be judges of demonstrable loyalty. Together with control of the countryside, support of extractive capital, and the repressive arms of the state, it would be enough within the 18th century remnant structures of America to turn the tide. To wipe away the power of the administrative state. But the instruments were not adequate. Both the Trump faction, unsurprisingly limited, and the party it struggled to master tripped.

The reelection campaign was able to successfully raise the spectre of an aggressive left by using the summer's demonstrations. Taking place everywhere other than where Trump's supporters were congregated, he could paint an image not contradicted by his listeners' experiences. Everywhere else it fell flat. Everywhere else he was seen as a liar who fucked up the pandemic. Instead the party has been forced to express its will to power as a refusal to acknowledge the vote against it. It dreams of conspiracy and it whips its persisting forces at the state level to squeeze its opponents numbers enough to cling to what is left of its position.

But the reason the Republican Party lacks credentials to govern a one party state is the weakness of its class base, not the faults of its leader. Despite proclamations to the contrary the party lacks ground in the working class. What it has is in contradiction with its satraps. Its classical ideological infrastructure is in contradiction with its new ideology and efforts are underway for a duplication of the entire mess. But the party cannot be both incipient fascism and bipartisan imperialist. Choosing Trump was a symptom of its decline, its continuing clutching to a fallen boss is unavoidable.

Within the GOP all reactionary currents are given shelter now. If capital loses faith in its own governing there is where it will find the troops for a fascist state. Some pieces of the bourgeoisie are ready for this but they lack, for now, a critical mass of support. And they have no assurance the critical mass will not be with its opposition.

So we are left with the one of the two parties that doesn't want to govern on its own. The nightmare that the GOP instilled in its voters of a Democratic Party controlled by the far left is false. As a party the Democrats are entirely faithful to capital and to empire. It is the Republicans who, by processing faith in a political-economy that doesn't actually exist, have broken with the political order that sustains American capitalism.

The one party rule of GOP prophecy is the expression of their own disqualification and the admission that the working class will not sustain capitalism in America without the historic compromises that are intellectual property of the Democrats. At the same time it is amongst the Republican rank and file that the fantasy of a seizure of power by a revolutionary party gathers its greatest enthusiasts.

But the Democratic Party will never give up the search for its political sibling. Without it the party is face to face with a class that will not cooperate with what will be asked of it as the pace of crisis accelerates.

But to see the outlines of this situation we need to look at the evolution of empire in the past century.

3  Three Empires

Milley told a group of senior leaders, "Here's the deal, guys: These guys are Nazis, they're boogaloo boys, they're Proud Boys. These are the same people we fought in World War II. We're going to put a ring of steel around this city and the Nazis aren't getting in."

attributed to Gen. Milley

This is the story of three empires. They are not the empires of kings and queens where one nation conquers and exploits its colonies alongside its rival empires. Although they are born of such empires. These are empires that each claim the entire globe. They arose when the old ones were discarded, undone by the great war. There were three because, as Vico has it, three is the number of excess. And, as they all claimed to be universal, three were indeed too many.

The first to fall was the empire of death. Defeat in the great war deposed the old monarch of its homeland but preserved the old social structure. It was stripped of all its conquests and left to embrace the only realm that remained, havoc. The cruelty that others were allowed in their hinterlands this one inflicted on its neighbors.

It was defeated by an alliance between the other two. Its land was divided and its claim to the world went underground. It emerges where imperial power is threatened, a demonic ghost of empire. Brought to its end by suicide it bequeathed the world, with its rockets, the scientific means for global suicide.

The next to suffer collapse was the empire of the party. It arose by deposing the ruling class of an imperial power, exhausted by the great war. Its universal claim was founded in the labor movement. They who were nothing were now to be all. But the great war had rejuvenated capital and the workers' party remained subordinate to it, either directly or by the necessity to compete with its power. The alliance of the party with capital defeated the Axis but left capitalism in place with its own universal imperial form, an empire of capital. 

The postwar confrontation between the two remaining claimants to universal political power took its form from the underlying confrontation between labor and capital. As long as capital is in the possession of a single class neither it nor labor can be independent of the other. Although the cold war always had the potential to destroy human civilization it was never a confrontation between cleanly divided opponents.

In the empire of capital there was also the party. The witch hunt was, and is, a pantomime of capital exorcising the demon of worker control that it can never shake because it is capital which has summoned it to begin. And in the empire of the party the administrative apparatus cannot relinquish its role in accumulation, an accumulation that, however separate, will remain subordinate to global capital.

This social falsehood stripped the party of its universal claim and led to its ideological breakup and political dissolution. But the party persists. As a system for capital accumulation it is even demonstrating success in comparison to its old rival. But it does so within the old national formation with no more claim to the allegiance of the workers of the world than the freemasons.

Which brings our attention back to America, homeland of the empire of capital and its political fairground. Here the party which was most dedicated to the witch hunt, which never failed to shout down its opponents as weak in the defense of the empire, which prayed nightly for the triumph of capital, that party has pledged itself to a figure who slanders the entire imperial superstructure. This is not by chance.

The abolition of the only remaining rival to world dominion was celebrated as the triumph of capital but just as capital requires labor to exist its empire lacks support with no opponent. The balance of military power remains as it was and continues to lose relevance economically. Political power, on the other hand, has been transformed. The former homeland of the party has publicly abandoned its claim. Over time it has adapted to a classical form of empire and maneuvers over a classic sphere of influence.

It is the empire of capital, now without global limits, that is the last to grasp its own disappearance. The claim to universal imperial authority was always no more than a claim, a false universal. It was sustained by the conflict with other false universals. When there were three empires they were made solid by the ability to make war. When there were two left standing war became impossible and they both began to dissolve. What now remains for the homeland of the only empire that has never been forced to admit it's gone?

The imperial scaffolding of American power remains. Its mass political support is split. Not as it was between two parties but between one party that encompasses its traditional ideological form and another that comprises its fascist negation. The refusal to admit that the world has shed its false empires is key to the survival of the Democratic Party. Its ruling class stratum relies on the economic advantage, to the extent it remains, of the US position at the head of a fractured capitalist alliance. Its voters count on the classical payoff of empire, marginal exemption from the austerity required in tribute from all those who it doesn't need to cement its political authority.

This alliance possesses an enormous ideological structure but its practice is accounting. And its accounts have adapted to a non-imperial world. Its ideology, however, whether sincerely believed or just recited, only keeps itself busy by controlling those political parties that are loyal to the alliance and can still rally mass support. In the old imperial heartland of America that's the Democratic Party.

In its postwar heyday the two party system provided stability to an unstable economic form. To hold the loyalty of organized labor and the administrative mass, the middle class of legend, it relied on levels of growth that are no longer possible. What is growing now is catastrophe. On the right catastrophe feeds a revival of allegiance to the empire of death, a preference for apocalypse over actual humanity. While on the left what is needed is sensed but only immanently. 

In our world three empires contended. The world has been assembled in the process. Any claims of victory falter before the accumulation of ruin that all can see. From three empires what is required now is a positive absence of empire. The process is underway at levels seen and unseen (when what is unseen becomes seen it indicates there is more to come). Our situation is unfolding but not incomprehensible provided we can read through the imperial filters that have been handed down to us.

“I believe humanity will continue to live and struggle with the difficulties that it faces. It has had many difficulties in the past, it has overcome them all. The difficulties that it faces today may seem to be immense, and they are immense, but the qualifications of people for settling their difficulties are as great, and are bound to be as great as the difficulties. I have to leave you with that; that the large majority of the population are against what is going on, they have no confidence in the regimes that exist. This is not Marxism, this is not socialism, this is not revolution. This is a common understanding of what is taking place in the world around us. This is what I’m speaking about. Mankind is faced with survival or destruction and I believe that the large majority of people will turn for survival and will in time take the steps that are necessary to recover what has been in danger in previous centuries, and which can continue if only we get rid of those who insist on maintaining power which they cannot handle.” 

C.L.R. James

[ex trivio - out of the street, from the mob; from trivium - the meeting of three roads]

[tortuga-aak]

IQ tests have a dark, controversial history — but they're finally being used for good

AP

IQ tests have wielded a great deal of power on society over the last 120 years. 

In the 1900s, eugenicists used the test to judge people for sterilization.

More recently, IQ has helped inmates avoid corporal punishment and kids get the right education.

Scientists still debate the merit of IQ, however.

John, 12-years-old, is three times as old as his brother. How old will John be when he is twice as old as his brother?

Two families go bowling. While they are bowling, they order a pizza for $12, six sodas for $1.25 each, and two large buckets of popcorn for $10.86. If they are going to split the bill between the families, how much does each family owe?

4, 9, 16, 25, 36, ?, 64. What number is missing from the sequence?

These are questions from online Intelligence Quotient or IQ tests. Tests that purport to measure your intelligence can be verbal, meaning written, or non-verbal, focusing on abstract reasoning independent of reading and writing skills. First created more than a century ago, the tests are still widely used today to measure an individual's mental agility and ability.

Education systems use IQ tests to help identify children for special education and gifted education programs and to offer extra support. Researchers across the social and hard sciences study IQ test results also looking at everything from their relation to genetics, socioeconomic status, academic achievement, and race.

Alberto G./FlickrOnline IQ "quizzes" purport to be able to tell you whether or not "you have what it takes to be a member of the world's most prestigious high IQ society."

If you want to boast about your high IQ, you should have been able to work out the answers to the questions. When John is 16 he'll be twice as old as his brother. The two families who went bowling each owe $20.61. And 49 is the missing number in the sequence.

Despite the hype, the relevance, usefulness, and legitimacy of the IQ test is still hotly debated among educators, social scientists, and hard scientists. To understand why, it's important to understand the history underpinning the birth, development, and expansion of the IQ test — a history that includes the use of IQ tests to further marginalize ethnic minorities and poor communities.

Testing times

In the early 1900s, dozens of intelligence tests were developed in Europe and America claiming to offer unbiased ways to measure a person's cognitive ability. The first of these tests was developed by French psychologist Alfred Binet, who was commissioned by the French government to identify students who would face the most difficulty in school.

The resulting 1905 Binet-Simon Scale became the basis for modern IQ testing. Ironically, Binet actually thought that IQ tests were inadequate measures for intelligence, pointing to the test's inability to properly measure creativity or emotional intelligence.

U.S. Navy/FlickrAt its conception, the IQ test provided a relatively quick and simple way to identify and sort individuals based on intelligence — which was and still is highly valued by society. In the US and elsewhere, institutions such as the military and police used IQ tests to screen potential applicants. They also implemented admission requirements based on the results.

The US Army Alpha and Beta Tests screened approximately 1.75 million draftees in World War I in an attempt to evaluate the intellectual and emotional temperament of soldiers. Results were used to determine how capable a solider was of serving in the armed forces and identify which job classification or leadership position one was most suitable for. Starting in the early 1900s, the US education system also began using IQ tests to identify "gifted and talented" students, as well as those with special needs who required additional educational interventions and different academic environments.

Ironically, some districts in the US have recently employed a maximum IQ score for admission into the police force. The fear was that those who scored too highly would eventually find the work boring and leave — after significant time and resources had been put towards their training.

Alongside the widespread use of IQ tests in the 20th century was the argument that the level of a person's intelligence was influenced by their biology. Ethnocentrics and eugenicists, who viewed intelligence and other social behaviors as being determined by biology and race, latched onto IQ tests. They held up the apparent gaps these tests illuminated between ethnic minorities and whites or between low- and high-income groups.

Wikimedia CommonsSome maintained that these test results provided further evidence that socioeconomic and racial groups were genetically different from each other and that systemic inequalities were partly a byproduct of evolutionary processes.

Going to extremes

The US Army Alpha and Beta test results garnered widespread publicity and were analyzed by Carl Brigham, a Princeton University psychologist and early founder of psychometrics, in a 1922 book A Study of American Intelligence. Brigham applied meticulous statistical analyses to demonstrate that American intelligence was declining, claiming that increased immigration and racial integration were to blame. To address the issue, he called for social policies to restrict immigration and prohibit racial mixing.

A few years before, American psychologist and education researcher Lewis Terman had drawn connections between intellectual ability and race. In 1916, he wrote:

High-grade or border-line deficiency … is very, very common among Spanish-Indian and Mexican families of the Southwest and also among Negroes. Their dullness seems to be racial, or at least inherent in the family stocks from which they come … Children of this group should be segregated into separate classes … They cannot master abstractions but they can often be made into efficient workers … from a eugenic point of view they constitute a grave problem because of their unusually prolific breeding.

There has been considerable work from both hard and social scientists refuting arguments such as Brigham's and Terman's that racial differences in IQ scores are influenced by biology.

Critiques of such "hereditarian" hypotheses — arguments that genetics can powerfully explain human character traits and even human social and political problems — cite a lack of evidence and weak statistical analyses. This critique continues today, with many researchers resistant to and alarmed by research that is still being conducted on race and IQ.

But in their darkest moments, IQ tests became a powerful way to exclude and control marginalized communities using empirical and scientific language. Supporters of eugenic ideologies in the 1900s used IQ tests to identify "idiots", "imbeciles", and the "feebleminded." These were people, eugenicists argued, who threatened to dilute the White Anglo-Saxon genetic stock of America.

Jukie Bot/FlickrAs a result of such eugenic arguments, many American citizens were later sterilized. In 1927, an infamous ruling by the US Supreme Court legalized forced sterilization of citizens with developmental disabilities and the "feebleminded," who were frequently identified by their low IQ scores. The ruling, known as Buck v Bell, resulted in over 65,000 coerced sterilizations of individuals thought to have low IQs. Those in the US who were forcibly sterilized in the aftermath of Buck v Bell were disproportionately poor or of color.

Compulsory sterilization in the US on the basis of IQ, criminality, or sexual deviance continued formally until the mid 1970s when organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center began filing lawsuits on behalf of people who had been sterilized. In 2015, the US Senate voted to compensate living victims of government-sponsored sterilization programs.

IQ tests today

Debate over what it means to be "intelligent" and whether or not the IQ test is a robust tool of measurement continues to elicit strong and often opposing reactions today. Some researchers say that intelligence is a concept specific to a particular culture. They maintain that it appears differently depending on the context — in the same way that many cultural behaviors would. For example, burping may be seen as an indicator of enjoyment of a meal or a sign of praise for the host in some cultures and impolite in others.

What may be considered intelligent in one environment, therefore, might not in others. For example, knowledge about medicinal herbs is seen as a form of intelligence in certain communities within Africa, but does not correlate with high performance on traditional Western academic intelligence tests.

According to some researchers, the "cultural specificity" of intelligence makes IQ tests biased towards the environments in which they were developed — namely white, Western society. This makes them potentially problematic in culturally diverse settings. The application of the same test among different communities would fail to recognize the different cultural values that shape what each community values as intelligent behavior.

Going even further, given the IQ test's history of being used to further questionable and sometimes racially-motivated beliefs about what different groups of people are capable of, some researchers say such tests cannot objectively and equally measure an individual's intelligence at all.

AP Photo/Paul Sancya

Used for good

At the same time, there are ongoing efforts to demonstrate how the IQ test can be used to help those very communities who have been most harmed by them in the past. In 2002, the execution across the US of criminally convicted individuals with intellectual disabilities, who are often assessed using IQ tests, was ruled unconstitutional. This has meant IQ tests have actually prevented individuals from facing "cruel and unusual punishment" in the US court of law.

In education, IQ tests may be a more objective way to identify children who could benefit from special education services. This includes programs known as "gifted education" for students who have been identified as exceptionally or highly cognitively able. Ethnic minority children and those whose parents have a low income, are under-represented in gifted education.

The way children are chosen for these programs means that Black and Hispanic students are often overlooked. Some US school districts employ admissions procedures for gifted education programs that rely on teacher observations and referrals or require a family to sign their child up for an IQ test. But research suggests that teacher perceptions and expectations of a student, which can be preconceived, have an impact upon a child's IQ scores, academic achievement, and attitudes and behavior. This means that teacher's perceptions can also have an impact on the likelihood of a child being referred for gifted or special education.

Reuters/Stephen LamThe universal screening of students for gifted education using IQ tests could help to identify children who otherwise would have gone unnoticed by parents and teachers. Research has found that those school districts which have implemented screening measures for all children using IQ tests have been able to identify more children from historically underrepresented groups to go into gifted education.

IQ tests could also help identify structural inequalities that have affected a child's development. These could include the impacts of environmental exposure to harmful substances such as lead and arsenic or the effects of malnutrition on brain health. All these have been shown to have an negative impact on an individual's mental ability and to disproportionately affect low-income and ethnic minority communities.

Identifying these issues could then help those in charge of education and social policy to seek solutions. Specific interventions could be designed to help children who have been affected by these structural inequalities or exposed to harmful substances. In the long run, the effectiveness of these interventions could be monitored by comparing IQ tests administered to the same children before and after an intervention.

Some researchers have tried doing this. One US study in 1995 used IQ tests to look at the effectiveness of a particular type of training for managing Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), called neurofeedback training. This is a therapeutic process aimed at trying to help a person to self-regulate their brain function. Most commonly used with those who have some sort of identified brain imbalance, it has also been used to treat drug addiction, depression and ADHD. The researchers used IQ tests to find out whether the training was effective in improving the concentration and executive functioning of children with ADHD — and found that it was.

Since its invention, the IQ test has generated strong arguments in support of and against its use. Both sides are focused on the communities that have been negatively impacted in the past by the use of intelligence tests for eugenic purposes.

The use of IQ tests in a range of settings, and the continued disagreement over their validity and even morality, highlights not only the immense value society places on intelligence — but also our desire to understand and measure it.

Daphne Martschenko is a PhD Candidate at the University of Cambridge.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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