#even non religious is essential to living a decent life

[udurghsigil]

not to sound anti-science or anything but i feel like a big reason for general human suffering right now is because we know too many of the secrets of this world

[nfldunn]

     𝙸 𝚆𝙰𝚂 𝙷𝙴𝚁𝙴—𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖎 𝖒𝖆𝖙𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖊𝖉     roswelltask 002     ( @rocketfm )

𝑂𝑅𝐼𝐺𝐼𝑁𝑆 & 𝐹𝐴𝑀𝐼𝐿𝑌.

Full Name:   Gunner Raleigh Dunn

Reason for name:   Mostly stereotypical toxic masculinity, Gunner’s father wanted a “strong” sounding name for his son, believing that it would make him strong.

Nickname(s):   Gun, Dunn, QB, Midas

Date of Birth:   November 1st, 1988

Age:  32

Gender + Pronouns:   Cis-Male, He/Him

Place of birth:   Rockport, Massachusettes

Parents:   Sandra Burns-Dunn & Brock Dunn

Siblings:   N/A

Relationship with family (close? estranged?):   Estranged. Only currently speaks to his cousin who lives in England, as far as biological family is concerned.

Pets:   N/A

𝑃𝐻𝑌𝑆𝐼𝐶𝐴𝐿.

Height:   6 feet, 1 inch

Build:   Athletic, Muscular

Nationality:   American

Ethnicity:   3/4 White, 1/4 Filipino / Spanish / Catalan / Basque / Chinese

Distinguishing Facial Features:   Jawline & Strong, Sometimes Messy Eyebrows

Hair Color:   Dark Brown

Usual Hair Style:   Messy, usually with a minimal amount of product because he runs his hands through it a lot.

Eye Color:   Dark Brown

Complexion (freckles, acne, skin tone, birthmarks, scars):   Lightly Tanned, Almost-Olive Skin. A few scars on his hands and also spread over his back and shoulder.

Disabilities (physical or mental, including mental illnesses):   Anger Issues & Intermittent nerve issues in his injured shoulder that can, at times, leave him in a sling from pain.

What do they consider their best feature?:   His Biceps

Worst they’ve ever been injured (what, how did it happen)?:   While the injury that ended his career was by no means the only time he’d been injured badly enough to put him in the hospital, it is the only injury that truly left him with a lasting impact. It was during an important game for the season, when, upon one of his teammates getting their hands on the ball, he’d made the decision to tackle a member of the opposing team because he was in the best position to do so, and save the ball from the other team. But the momentum from the tackle had sent them off the field, and upon realizing where they were heading, he’d shifted his and the other player’s position in the air so he took the brunt of the impact when they collided with something on the sidelines. The impact, mostly focused on his shoulder, effectively shattered the bones there, and he’d needed to be surgically pieced back together like a jigsaw puzzle.

𝐴𝑃𝑃𝐸𝐴𝑅𝐴𝑁𝐶𝐸.

Favorite outfit:   Decently tight jeans, white t-shirt, and a leather jacket

Glasses? Contacts?:   N/A

Personal Hygiene:   Two showers a day - one when he wakes up, and one after his daily workout. He also has a skincare routine that he does every day, twice a day.

Jewelry? Tattoos? Piercings?:   He doesn’t usually wear jewelry, but he does have his ears pierced. He has a large tattoo that covers most of his back of a tree - with an intricate root system beneath the “ground” that’s visible, that says “no tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.” He also has a tattoo of a raven on his non-injured shoulder, with a dragonfly right next to it, and delicate script forming a bracelet around his left wrist that says “you say i killed you - haunt me, then.” because the man is a classical novel nerd. And, finally, he has a roman numeral ‘thirty two’ tattooed on his ribs, near his heart, for his jersey number.

What does their voice sound like?:   I’m not even gonna try to explain it, okay, it’s low and gravelly and y’all can listen to it yourself if you really wanna know. The mans straight up sounds like he’s got a sore throat 100% of the time.

Style of speech (loud, mumbler, articulate, etc.):   He generally speaks fairly quietly - loud enough to be heard, but generally on the quieter side, unless he’s pissed and starts yelling.

Accent?:   Classic New England accent. But he also has a tendency to drop the ‘g’s from the end of his words, in a more typical Southern habit.

Unique mannerisms/physical habits:   He has a habit of flexing his hands into fists whenever he’s thinking, but generally, he doesn’t have a ton of habits that are unique to him.

Left handed or right?:   He’s ambidextrous, meaning he can use both of his hands equally as well, and doesn’t have a particular instinct towards using either of them.

Do they work out/exercise?:   Almost obsessively. He works out every single day, and usually can’t be caught dead skipping a day.

𝐵𝐸𝐿𝐼𝐸𝐹𝑆 & 𝐼𝑁𝑇𝐸𝐿𝐿𝐸𝐶𝑇.

Known Languages:   English, French, Filipino, & Spanish

Zodiac:   Scorpio

Gifts/talents:   He has always been a very talented football player, a natural almost as soon as he’d started playing, and is also quite gifted at chess, though that’s something that no one really knows about him.

Religious stance:   Agnostic/Athiest, if not a bit antagonistic towards the idea of a higher power.

Political stance:   Liberal, but like with most things, he doesn’t speak of it in public, so no one would really know. Many people in the past assumed he was a conservative because of the sport he played, even though it couldn’t be further from the truth.

Pet peeves:   Quiet, easily intimidated people.

Optimist or pessimist:   Pessimist

Extrovert or introvert:   He has a “switch” he can turn on and off as the situation needs. He’s generally an introvert, but when put into a situation where being an extrovert would help, he can put on an act to become one without much struggle.

𝐼𝑁𝑇𝐼𝑀𝐴𝐶𝑌 & 𝑅𝐸𝐿𝐴𝑇𝐼𝑂𝑁𝑆𝐻𝐼𝑃𝑆.

Relationship status:   Single

Sexual orientation:   Bisexual

Ideal mate/qualities they look for in mate:   He generally gravitates towards stronger, more dominant personalities, though it’s been so long since he’s been in a relationship that it’s generally not something he even thinks about anymore. Someone who’s outgoing and can spar with his prickly mood swings is usually who catches his attention, though.

Ever been in love?:   Once, and while it ended amicably enough, it ruined his views on relationships.

What’s their love language?:   Both physical touch and gift giving.

Most important person in their life?:   It’d been his grandmother at one point in his life, but now that she has passed away, he doesn’t really have anyone - a bit of a lone wolf type.

𝑉𝑂𝐶𝐴𝑇𝐼𝑂𝑁.

Level of education:   College degree in Classic Studies, with an emphasis on Classic Literature

Profession:   Sports Reporter at Rocket Radio Station

Past occupations:   Professional Football Player

Dream occupation:   N/A

Passions:   Football, Reading, Chess

Attitude towards current job:   It keeps him occupied for a little every day, and is about as close as he’s comfortable getting to his past career, which he appreciates, but he’s not exactly passionate about it.

Spender or Saver? Why?:   He’s a little bit of both. He doesn’t have to worry about money, mostly due to smart investments back when he was famous, but he doesn’t necessarily go around just spending money to spend money. If he wants something, he buys it, and doesn’t really have to think much on it.

Which is more important – money or doing something they love?:   He’s never had to choose, because the thing he loved made him money - but if he had to choose, if he could only have one, he’d choose doing something he loved.

𝑆𝐸𝐶𝑅𝐸𝑇𝑆.

Phobias:   N/A

Life goals:   To fade into oblivion, now

Greatest fears:   Intimacy

Most embarrassing thing ever to happen to him/her:   Gunner, for the most part, has no shame - so he generally doesn’t find very much, if anything at all, embarrassing.

Something they’ve never told anyone:   His animosity towards his father had started forming at a young age, mostly culminating in screaming matches between the two when he was a teenager, and that was why he left Rockport for college and never even considered turning back.

Biggest regret:   Not trying to make a long distance relationship work with his high school boyfriend, when he left for college.

Compulsions:   N/A

Police/Criminal/Legal record:   Nothing that actually landed on a record, but he did spend brief stints in “Family House”, a place for kids (mostly deemed “out of control”) to go when they couldn’t manage to get along with their parents, essentially giving them a safe place to go outside of their home and to give both parents and child a break from the tension, as a substitute for the foster system, but he only ever spent a few days there at a time.

Vices:   Alcohol

𝑃𝑅𝐸𝐹𝐸𝑅𝐸𝑁𝐶𝐸𝑆.

Hobbies:   Chess

Favorite color:   Charcoal Grey

Favorite smell:   Motor Oil

Favorite food:   Steak and Fries

Favorite book:   Pride and Prejudice

Favorite movie:   Uncut Gems

Favorite song:   (I Just) Died In Your Arms by Cutting Crew

Coffee or tea?:   Coffee

Favorite type of weather:   Thunderstorms

Most prized possession:   His collection of Super Bowl rings

Most used word or phrase?:   Fuck

[allogenes-arc]

𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖆.    ––––     regarding  etymology.

looking into the history of lisa’s name,  specifically her last name “minci”,  we can find some information which i think alludes a little to her character.  from surname database :

❝   Recorded in over two hundred and fifty spellings and found throughout the western world, this famous surname is of regarded as being of medieval Spanish origin. It derives from the Roman (Latin) "Dominicus", meaning "belonging to the lord god", from "dominus", lord or master.   ❞ 

obviously,  this is just a name,  but as someone relentlessly obsessed with reading into things,  let’s make some assumptions.  number one,  and i suppose the least assumptive,  lisa likely holds the teyvat equivalent of spanish origins.  i think mihoyo has essentially grouped all of europe into mondstadt,  so this doesn’t really imply any difference in terms of her being born and raised in mondstasdt in at least my canon and the canon i understand  ––  it moreso comes into play in non - fantasy verses.

in another meta,  one of these days,  i’ll venture in on an analysis of the religious atmosphere of mondstadt,  but for now all i need to express is that mondstadt prizes two things,  the knights,  and their cathedral.  this leads us to believe that religion plays a major role in the every day lives of those residing within mondstadt,  at least,  or most especially,   for the city residents.  and also understanding that mondstadt is culturally based on what would seem like germanic / generalized european influences,  i think it’s safe to assume their steadfast dedication is at least vaguely thematically tied to catholicism.  again,  this is all for another meta  ––  i just saw a good opportunity to begin mentioning it.

moving onto personalized assumptions about lisa,  based on her religiously themed name  ( names, actually!  which i’ll get to  ––  i’ve made her middle name sence,  and then lisa means many things,  like “oath to god” / “devoted to god” / “my god is bountiful” ),  i like to assume her upbringing held a definite devotional aspect.  with her studying at sumeru arcademia,  lisa was exposed more distinctly to further ideologies / dieties / etc.  it’s common knowledge about the basics of all the archons,  and i imagine she held a decent understanding of adepti and the equivalents within various nations,  but her academic career and her personal thirst for information definitely saw that knowledge growing exponentially in her young adulthood.  

ultimately,  as much information as she was able to consume,  the nature of the gods,  and the nature of visions  ( as a reminder,  the elemental gifts granted by the gods to mortals ),  was elusive.  absolutely elusive.  it proved to be the most crucial question,  for her,  the most out - of - reach mystery.  how fitting,  then,  that she might hold such a damning name,  that celestially she be fated as a scholar of god,  as devoting,  even if unintentionally,  her life to an oath :     UNDERSTAND. 

❝  For whatever reasons, the gods gave humans the key to changing everything, but they did not explain the cost involved. Lisa grew fearful of the truth. The Vision that hung from her neck became to her a bottomless pit filled with sweet delights, lingering at the back of her mind.  ❞

all in all,  understanding lisa’s names gives us insight into the irony of her plight.  to be born,  nearly,  with an inherent closeness to the gods by the nature of her parent’s naming her,  and yet to be tortured,  ceaselessly,  by the fact that she could never understand the extent of Celestia. 

*               LISA SENCE MINCI.      –––      lisa,   meaning oath to god,  devoted to god,  my god is bountiful.    sence,   meaning holy.    minci,  meaning belonging to the lord god.

[questionsonislam]

Is it permissible to make tawassul while praying and asking the help of awliya of Allah?

Seeking assistance is something and wasila (tawassul) is something else. Seeking assistance means asking for help. Wasila (tawassul) is a means to the end.

It is not permissible to ask for help from non-living things or a creature without intelligence even if it has a lot of service like the sun or the moon, even if it is holy like the Kaaba and the Black Stone (Hajar al-Aswad).

As for asking for help from people with intelligence, if the person is not a believer and a person with good deeds, it is not permissible to ask for help from him whether he is present or not. However, if he is a person with good deeds it is permissible to ask for help from him in order to ask intercession (shafa’ah), whether in his presence or near his grave.

Although the dead person has gone to the world of barzakh (veil), he has a kind of life peculiar to him. Our Prophet (PBUH) stated the following: "Prophets are alive in their graves." (Ibn Majah, Janaiz 65) Another evidence that prophets are alive in their graves is that Hazrat Prophet (pbuh) met the spirits of all of the prophets in Masjid al-Aqsa and greeted every prophet he met and those prophets replied his greeting. He also said the following about the polytheists who died during the Battle of Badr: "You cannot hear more than those; but they cannot answer.”

According to the people of tariqah (religious order) today, the help of a wali (saint) with a rank, whether he is dead or far away, can be asked for. He has the authority to help. Especially the people of tasarruf (authorized to do extraordinary things) can help both when they are alive and after they die; their help goes on.

As for wasila, as we have just mentiond, it is something to be used as a means to reach the end. There are some kinds of wasila:

1- To use the names of Allah for tawassul: Ibn Majah narrated the following from Hazrat Aisha: ‘The Prophet said the following in a supplication, " O Allah, I ask from you for the sake of your clean, nice and holy name"’

2- To make the supplication of the person as a wasila for whom tawassul is asked.

3- To make tawassul by using the personality of a great man with good deeds as an intermediary. For instance, to say something like ‘O Allah! I make the Prophet or Hazrat Abu Bakr a wasila in order to realize this wish of mine. Hazrat Umar made Hazrat Abbas (the Prophet’s uncle) a wasila in the supplication for rain by saying: “O Allah! We make the Prophet’s uncle a wasila, send us rain." (Bukhari).

4- To make tawassul by using the good deeds as an intermediary: For instance, to say something like “O Allah! I make this hajj or worship that I performed for you a wasila; relieve me of this misfortune or trouble”.

The kinds of wasila we listed above are present in Islam. It is not possible to deny them. The person to be made a wasila does not necessarily have to be superior to the person making tawassul. The Prophet (PBUH) said to Hazrat Umar, who wanted permission to go and make umrah, “Brother! Do not forget to pray for us”. He also ordered Hazrat Umar to tell Uways al-Qarani to pray for him. However, to imagine the prophet or any person independently and ask his help may cause a person to become an unbeliever. One should be careful about it. That is, it is permissible to think and to know that that person is a beloved slave of Allah and he does those things by the permission of Allah and to ask.

According to Ahlu Sunnah scholars, it is permissible to make tawassul as long as one does not go beyond it.

Those who regard wasila as completely haram are kharijites and and those who imitate them.

The information that angels protect people is present in the Quran itself: “For each (such person) there are (angels) in succession, before and behind him: they guard him by command of Allah”(ar-Rad, 13/11). That truth is pointed out in the verse.

The protection of the angels is not polytheism, similarly, the help and protection of other creatures should not be polytheism. However, we should not raise them from the level of being a means, a cause to the level of creation. It is a necessity of our belief that “there is no real creator other than Allah in the universe.”

Is there mediation, wasila in religion?

Wisdom is one of the indispensable elements of life and success; it is also a leaven and an important law in the management and control of all of the beings.

Men make achievements and maintain them by observing that rule and principle called wisdom.

Wisdom makes cause, means, wasila necessary between the Creator and the creatures.

The loftiness and greatness of the creator, the relationship and the balance among the beings are related to wisdom. In addition, the fact that beings serve as proof to their creator, the fact that they are searched and studied like a book by qualified people, and the most important of all, the fact that men are tested and tried for their achievements in the world and in the hereafter, depend on wisdom and a serious relationship with wisdom.

Men who have been given wisdom are the most honorable and valuable beings.

Based on this principle, the general term denoting the phenomenon of relationship between beings, things, man and the creator is wisdom.

In the connections between non-living things and living things,

in the veils between being created and creating,

in the causes between illness and health,

in slavery and its consequences,

in the relationship between conveying the message and guidance.

in the consequences and relationships of agriculture, trade, art and worship, wisdom is essential; and the causes, wasilas and means are the prerequisites of wisdom and they will always be present naturally.

Here, although the existence of means is necessary in terms of wisdom due to divine power and greatness, the oneness and majesty of Allah eliminates their effects. Wisdom necessitates that they remain only as means.

So, means are an essential of creation due to Allah’s name, the Wise.

So, the means like those are existent and necessary in our religion naturally.

For instance, the means of hidayah (guidance) are prophets.

The means of Allah’s orders to His prophets are the angels.

The means of pre-eternal speech are the Books and Pages.

The means of manifestations are miracles and arts.

The means of forgiveness and reward are bounties and Paradise.

The means of suffering and punishment are measures and Hell.

The means of worshipping and slavery are worships.

The means of approaching Allah are knowledge and taqwa (piety).

So, there is no place, state and time without means.

The most important point of the things that we have mentioned so far is as follows: Those means should not be something more than a wasila; they should be transparent and decent; they should not hide and cover the realities; in particular, they should strengthen not break the relationship between the slave and Allah.

If the means that exist between the realities and the people as a necessity of wisdom become dense and break the connection, then wisdom disappears and obstacles emerge. The means loses its property of being a means.

For instance, if a teacher enters between a mathematics book and the students, he integrates the students with the book. He increases the love. He also strengthens knowledge. Teachers form a great amount as means.

Artists are means of transferring the skill between the apprentices and art. Otherwise the arts and skills would cease and die.

Similarly, great religious people are transparent means to ensure and maintain the relationship between Allah and the slave. If they stop acting as intermediaries, the slave will spoil the relationship and break the connection.

However, being an intermediary is not something easy. The most important thing is to be capable and qualified.

That is, a teacher should act as an intermediary between the mathematics book and the student. However, if the teacher is a music teacher, it won’t do any good.

A doctor, who is a transparent means, should act as an intermediary between the patient and the illness in terms of wisdom. However, if an engineer instead of a doctor acts as an intermediary, he will only serve the angel of death.

Glasses become intermediaries between the eyes and things. Hearing aids become intermediaries between the ears and the sounds. As intermediaries, they serve those with ordinary eyes and ears to see and hear better.

Similarly, if qualified and capable people become intermediaries between the realities and ordinary people, they increase those people’s knowledge and virtues. Their spiritual lives become orderly and tidy. Ordinary people cannot see the naked realities and cannot perceive them. They can understand the realities only through some means.

The similes, metaphor and usual examples in the Quran are holy and transparent means like eyeglasses or binoculars between men and the realities that are difficult to perceive.

Therefore, to deny the means (wasila) means to deny wisdom, help, benefit, order, goodness and affair. It is an attitude contrary to creation and reality.

However, as there are always exceptions and misuse, the means deteriorated and misused in time; and bad examples reached present time. While it is necessary to correct, put into order and change them, it will be consciencelessness to wear mediation down and to deny it wholly and radically.

It will be a great mistake to prefer its demolition although it is possible to correct it.

So, mediation is a divine approbation that establishes the connection with reality like transparent glass, and that puts the relationships in order.

As it is present everywhere, there is and will be mediation in our religion. However, intermediaries that are very dense like priesthood, that confine the interest and respect only to themselves and break the relationship with Allah are a kind of hidden polytheism. Mediation like that does not exist in man’s nature and creation; it does not and cannot exist in our religion.

To see the means from the point of view of the evaluations above will protect us from excessiveness and negligence in terms of thoughts and attitudes, will drive all of our feelings and thoughts to the medium way, will provide our life with direction, peace and happiness.

[prehistoricalcats]

I'm really interested in your Cats universe! It seems like you have them living like humans but humans also exist? Can you describe your universe a bit more, if you'd like to? :)

I'd love to!

I must warn you though, this is a very in-depth universe, and even focusing on specific points and trying to simplify things as much as I could, I still managed to make to this about a mile long. Damn I wish Tumblr mobile let me do a read more cut

First of all, yes the Cats are anthropomorphic, and yes humans also exist in this universe. Anthro Dogs, Rats, and Mice all definitely also exist, and I'm considering a few other anthro races like Hyenas and maybe like Rabbits and some others, but haven't put too much thought to that yet.

Just for reference, if it's capitalized (Dog, Cat, etc) it's the anthro race, if it's lower case (dog, cat, etc) it's the fourlegger

Some Basic Terminology:

Non-human beings/non-human people - collective term for all anthro races

NHP - non-human person(s)

Furfolk - common English slang for non-human beings, not politically correct but still pretty widely used. There is also a version of this word for each specific race, Catfolk, Ratfolk, etc. (Note: Mice and Rats often are collectively refered to as Rodents or Rodentfolk)

Fourlegger - regular dogs, cats, etc. Used mostly by NHPs to differentiate between them and NHPs

Bald-bodies - humans. Used by NHPs, considered derogatory by most (nearly everyone uses it anyway)

Kit - kid, child, teenager (for Cats). Short for kitten

Tom - you know this one, an adult or teenage male Cat

Mot - an adult or teenage female Cat, an alternative word for "queen"

License Name - once called the "family name" back when it was still quite common for Cats to work for a human family in a residential household. Essentially this is the name that humans assign to Cats because Particular Names are often "too hard" for humans to remember/pronounce. It's their "official" name that appears on most legal documents, including their "license" which is essentially a registration card and number that all Cats are required to have. Most Cats have a license, and a license name, by age three, some get theirs as infants. Sometimes the parents have a say in what the license name will be, sometimes not. Sometimes a Cat will prefer their license name, some prefer their Particular Name, others don't care and will respond to either.

The Junkyard - a slum, mostly populated by Cats, on the outskirts of the metropolitan area of an unnamed imaginary British city, comprised partly of makeshift shelters scattered throughout an actual dump/landfill/junkyard, and partly of several large shantytowns built on the unused land surrounding the dump

Some biology stuff:

Okay brief anatomy lesson before we begin

(For real though, please at least glance over that link before continuing, it is fairly brief and it makes what I'm about to try to explain a lot less complicated)

I've had to do some fantasy science to work out how Cats can have retractable claws without becoming less dextrous than humans (because I need them to be able to play instruments made for human hands). What I've essentially gone with so far is that Cats have extra bones in their hands/feet, which would make them unlike any other known tetrapod either living or in the fossil record, so the science side of me rebels at this, but the art side of me says it's a story about bipedal talking felines with mystical powers it's already science fiction they could have duckbills if I wanted them to (I don't), and so I think this is a decent compromise. I can go into further detail about the way the claws work later on if you like, but this post is already going to be pretty long so for now I'll just say that you can describe the claw as an extra joint attached to the end of the distal phalange.

Cats are super bendy, for the same reason that (fourlegger) cats are bendy. They have extra bones/joints in their spines. Cats have 7 cervical, 13 thoracic, 7 lumbar, 5 sacral, and 19-23 caudal. They have more sacral bones than fourleggers because they're bipedal.

Cats are habitual bipeds, like humans. But unlike humans, they are perfectly comfortable wandering around on their hands and knees. Though the bipedal stance is more comfortable and usually perfered by adults especially, most non-elderly Cats are still perfectly fine crawling on the ground on their hands and knees. You're generally more likely to see kits and young adults doing this, but older adults do it to. If they want to move fast or run, they use a bipedal stance. Beyond that it's just whatever feels right for the situation.

Some culture stuff

Cats and other NHPs (except Rats) don't need clothing to cover their privates. I'm not going to go into the anatomy of how that works. For now let's just imagine it's the fur that's hiding it. They do wear clothes, especially in winter, but it's not so much for modesty as it is for functionality and fashion. Basically clothes for Cats are for three purposes: to protect from the elements (cold, rain, sun, etc), to shut the outraged humans up, and to look good. It's pretty common in the summer to see Cats wearing nothing but some arm/leg warmers or other fashion accessory, and a belt/rope around their waist to store things on in the absence of pockets,(even if they also have a bag)

If you've ever owned or seen or been around a male rat you probably know why I say "except Rats" and I'm not going to get into it here, just know Rat men always where pants/trousers

Cats exist globally and have a variety of different cultures, often greatly influenced by the human culture of that region, but one of the most universal elements of Cat culture is the idea that "It's considerably dishonorable for a Cat to use anything but their own claws (and teeth in many cultures) in combat against another unarmed Cat." Translation: Cats generally frown on using weapons, though many recognize the need to know how to use them, because humans use weapons, and a claws against a machete or a cattle prod or a gun isn't fair. By the same line many modern Cats consider it okay to use weapons against a (dishonorable) Cat that pulled a weapon on you first, though many elders still frown upon this.

The relationship between Cats (and other NHPs) and humans isn't very good, and the relationship between different types of NHPs isn't much better. There's a social hierarchy that puts humans (especially white straight cis male humans) at the top. The hierarchy goes humans > Dogs > Cats > Rodents

About the Jellicles

The Jellicles are the name of a specific tribe that once was primarily a religious tribe. Back a really fuck long time ago when Deuteronomy was still a kitten, the Jellicles lived off the land and practiced their religion (still working out the details of that sorry but I do have a few things)

The Jellicle Choice is a real thing, though I haven't decided if it started with Deuteronomy or if he was the next in a line sorta kinda but not exactly like the Avatar. The Jellicle Ball is held every year and people used to come from all over hoping to be picked. The humans didn't like this mass gathering, and the space they had in their own territory couldn't quite handle it anyway, so the Jellicles had to start keeping the Ball's location a secret until the day of, to keep the attendance numbers down somewhat. A Choice isn't made every year, though there's always a chance one will be made, and they've had a dry spell for the past 20 or 30 or so years before Grizabella. They don't have to keep the locale a secret anymore, most people don't bother coming and some even think the Jellicle Choice is just a myth. Few people remember when the Jellicles were primarily religious

Deut was trained as a shaman from early childhood, and groomed to be the next leader since he was ten, but he's always been a performer at heart. At some point after taking over as lead, he met (a very very young) Gus and invited him into the tribe. With Gus's help he organized plays and small musical performances, slowly and gradually getting other members in on it as well, until putting on plays every now and then was just a part of Jellicle life. And it was a good thing too, because by this point the tribe had been forced to give up their land and had to move to an industrial slum in the nearest city. No longer able to live off the land, they turned to performance to make a living. This was all well before Skimble/Jenny/Jelly/Spara (Jr)/Griz were born. These days the Jellicles are known primarily as a tribe of performers. Every current member that was born into the tribe except Deut was brought up as a performer

The play we see is an actual play being put on by the Jellicles as a dramatization of the events of That One Particular Jellice Ball™ which happened three years prior to the current timeline.

I think that covers the basic rundown. You can also see this jumbled mess for my first attempt at explaining all this crap lol.

Oh yeah and before I forget, I haven't decided yet if "Peke" and especially "Pollicle" refer to a certain culture of Dog, a certain body type, or two specific gangs ("packs") that just happen to be mostly comprised of a certain culture and/or body type of Dog. But they do exist in this universe. At the very least they are fictional gangs made up for the Rumpus Cat comics (yeah he's a comic book hero in this), or else real gangs or cultures/types of Dog written into Munk's Rumpus Cat fanwork play.

There's also a very important event that I really need to go over at some point but it's a really heavy topic and this isn't the best time like politically to post it right now, or even for me emotionally to write it out. But I do need to get this out at some point...

[rotationalsymmetry]

(From last night: I was possessed of enough sense to hit save draft rather than post. Clearly I have less sense today.)

So, there’s stuff going on here, if you’re done with Harry Potter/JK Rowling discourse then maybe you don’t want to read this. Especially if you’re in a place of not wanting to hear about how hard it is to let go of HP stuff. Totally valid to want to avoid that. Also, fair warning, this is long and not all that coherent.

I mean, this is immediately in reaction to a post on Roddenberry, but it’s not really about Roddenberry.

I think there’s maybe an issue with people wanting a fast, easy answer to “what do we do about (creator being a jerk/bigot/rapist)” and...well, I won’t say there aren’t fast and easy answers but I will say they aren’t good ones.

After watching Lindsey Ellis’s take, 3 months after it came out, my partner and I are getting rid of our Harry Potter DVD’s and stuff. (I’m not explaining why very well here, so if you wanna know why, I suggest watching Ellis’s video. I’m not sure she explained it well either? But after watching it, something clicked.)

I’m still not sure that’s even the right thing to do, and yeah it came batched with me being hypersensitive to other problems with other works right afterwards. (I really, really am having issues with finding a bright line that isn’t “no canceling ever” and also isn’t “cancel everything that does one single thing wrong.”) I don’t know. I don’t have the answers. It felt right right then. It might be right.

It’s also kind of a big deal. The Harry Potter world became a part of our lives. “Accio remote control” (which, by the way, is a very effective spell if you have a sufficiently indulgent partner) and hours long dissections of characters based on the Sorting Hat Chats approach. Some amazing fanfics. It didn’t work its way into our lives overnight, and it’s not going to be gone overnight. It feels like a hole being torn in my world. (That sounds melodramatic, but I think it’s accurate. Worlds aren’t just made out of walls and tables, they’re also made out of culture and art and ideas. Stories. Fictional characters. Metaphors that shape how you see the world. To a large extent who I am is made up of the stories I’ve read, much as my body is made up of the food I eat.)

It is... not just “nostalgia” or whatever. It’s trying to take out something that’s been absorbed into who you are. It is a changing of the self. Which is not to say it’s not worth doing — change is what people do, changing oneself for others is the essential nature of love— but it is not some trivial thing.

(Uh, you know, not like “you need to change your hobbies for a romantic partner,” but more like “when your kid comes out as gay and your religious beliefs are homophobic, something’s got to give” or “maybe you can live without peanuts on your plane flight because your preferred snack could be someone else’s anaphylactic shock.”)

And this is not, it can’t be, any work of fiction that doesn’t get everything perfect is gone. It’s. Yeah. But yeah. I mean, what she’s been saying is really, exceptionally bad. In terms of its capacity to cause harm to people. Trans women and others. And she gets her power, her influence, her platform from her fans — this is different from liking the work of someone who’s dead and isn’t actively creating more harm. So.

It’s a thing.

A lot of people I think are just kind of coming into this looking for, either it’s definitely OK to continue on as normal without really changing anything or else everybody who doesn’t throw out the whole thing right away is an asshole, and it’s just not that simple. (Def “announce ‘death of the author’ loudly and continue as normal” is not really how anything works.) It’s one of those things where how you come to the decision is at least as important as the decision itself, I think. You take your time. You listen. You see people. You take the time to really understand.

Oh, and yeah, I’ve been in kinda defensive mode around this. I’m not sure right now how bad what I’ve been saying was, I think I probably was right about some things, I’ve got a really bad tendency to have what I mean to say and what I actually say not line up well when I’m feeling defensive. Idk. So if you’ve been reading what I’ve said before and it doesn’t seem to line up with me saying we’re getting rid of our HP stuff, well, I’ve evolved on the issue, OK? And yes, you’re right, it doesn’t line up. I am human and fallible and I mess up sometimes. (I think I am getting somewhat better at recognizing when I’m feeling defensive and not posting publicly when I’m in defensive mode? I’ve definitely been getting better at avoiding back and forth argument in online spaces. It is a work in progress.)

This is not a little or trivial thing.

And it shouldn’t be a little or trivial thing.

I have...trans women and transfeminine non-binary people in my life, but not necessarily on close terms and I haven’t been asking trans people that I know personally how they stand on this. (Although, I could go digging around on FB a bit.) I do, very much, want the world to be safer than it is now for trans women and trans not-exactly-women who are vulnerable to transmisogyny. I certainly don’t want things to get worse.

And. I have been on losing fights before, and I’m pretty sure that “cancel JKR” — making it so that association with Rowling will cost businesses more than it gives them — is at this point in time a losing fight. I’m probably not going to be championing it so much as not actively getting in the way of it, if that makes sense. People just aren’t there yet. I think. Not enough people.

Although. I could be wrong. And sometimes fighting gets something other than the apparent aim — the fight for AIDS research was in many ways a defeat, in that yes *now* there’s decent treatments for people who can afford them, but not before massive swathes of queer men died. but it was still crucial for the community.

Eh. No fast and easy answers. Keep listening. Keep engaging.

To me at least, this is coming out of a center of compassion, so any action I take has to be consistent with that, y’know?

[euphoriarps]

❊ ◜SOUTH ORLANDO .// demographics

population //. ~350k median age //. 39.1 median household income //. 70k languages spoken //. english, spanish, hatian creole

❊ ◜SOUTH ORLANDO .// kissimmee 

population //. 68k median age //. 33.8 median household income //. 38k careers of residents (most popular) //. server, food service, bartender, cook, hospitality, personal care, construction, management, healthcare, administrative  about kissimmee;; exit the walt disney world resort coming from animal kingdom and you will enter into kissimmee. towns like kissimmee are the reason that walt disney bought up so much land to make up the walt disney world resort, wanting to avoid his guests from being able to see the low end hotels and kitschy souvenir shops you find in kissimmee. kissimmee is a popular destination for cast members and team members alike to reside in (even though it’s requires a drive on I4 to get to universal) because rent is moderately affordable and because it is very easy to access things. 192/irlo bronson memorial highway runs through kissimmee and connects the town to haines city, davenport, four corners, and if followed for long enough can take you straight to I-95 to allow access to southern florida. kissimmee is where you’ll also find old town, which houses a 365 day a year carnival, an old-timey photo studio, and a year-round haunted house. old town is kind of on the questionable side, but orlando residents still frequent it nonetheless. rent in kissimmee averages about $1300 a month for a decent sized apartment. it’s a little bit more affordable, but that’s the benefit to living in a giant fucking tourist trap. 

❊ ◜SOUTH ORLANDO .// celebration 

population //. 8536 median age //. 41.1 median household income //. 83k careers of residents (most popular) //. arts/entertainment/recreation, art/design/sports/media, management, business/finance, sales about celebration;; celebration is land that was quite literally bought by disney for the sole purpose of housing executives and playing home to the corporate offices. everything in celebration gives off the vibe of wealth, from the neatly manicured lawns to the white picket fence lifestyle the residents aim to portray. a great many of the long-term residents in celebration carry some level of importance to the walt disney company, but other affluent and wealthy residents have found homes here in the years following its establishment. it’s a mind boggling transition turning off 192 from kissimmee and pulling into celebration, but it is a fun place to drive around and admire the houses. property value averages around $500k and a standard apartment averages about $1500 a month. 

❊ ◜SOUTH ORLANDO .// lake buena vista/williamsburg

population //. ~8,259  median age //. 43.6  median household income //. 51k careers of residents (most popular) //. management, education, office & administrative, sales, arts/entertainment, transportation about lake buena vista & williamsburg;; lake buena vista is ... a weird animal to talk about. technically speaking, it’s not a neighborhood where people live at all, being dominated by 25,000 acre walt disney world resort. however, housed in the walt disney world resort is golden oak ... a high-end, disney designed community housing florida elite, disney executives, retired imagineers, and even a few celebrities. you have to be willing to sacrifice a couple million and maybe an internal organ or two in order to say you live in golden oak, it being incredibly exclusive and difficult to get property in. if you do succeed in nabbing a home, however, you do get free disney admission for life. so that is pretty cool. outside the bounds of disney, there are apartment complexes that attach “lake buena vista” at the end of their mailing address, but disney will claim that is “simply orlando.” the population of lake buena vista is truly hard to estimate, many of the apartment complexes being inhabited by young adults partaking in the disney college program, the international college program, or the cultural representative program. essentially, underpaid college age students come to florida ... hoping for opportunity, and instead they serve as cheap labor for a rat. there are a select few apartment complexes that house non college program residents, nameless cumberland park and discovery palms ... but they’re pretty much 90% cast member dominated ... so what is even the difference? hop onto the start of international drive, however, and you will be taken directly to williamsburg towards seaworld. cast member, team member, and seaworld ambassador dominated ... williamsburg is an odd mix of luxury, resort-style apartments and more affordable apartment homes. williamsburg is so built up at this point that there are very few housing neighborhoods in this area ... but a ton of apartment complex. and seaworld. and restaurants. and hotels. and general international drive nonsense. essentially, think of lake buena vista and williamsburg on the same level as kissimmee ... a tourist trap, only classier. 

❊ ◜SOUTH ORLANDO .// doctor phillips 

population //. 12k median age //. 44.8k median household income //. 78k careers of residents (most popular) //. management, education, healthcare, sales, administrative, architecture/engineering, arts/media/entertainment  about doctor phillips;; doctor phillips the community in orlando is not to be confused with the doctor phillips performing art center, located in downtown. it’ll take you about twenty to thirty minutes via I4 to get from one to the other if you make that mistake. doctor phillips is the area surrounding universal, spanning the first chunk of sandlake road, a part of international drive, and a portion of turkey lake road. doctor phillips is where you’ll find the rialto, an apartment complex located directly above a shopping center with small retailers and popular restaurants. bento cafe is a particularly popular restaurant among the universal team members that work just down the street. take turkey lake to universal boulevard and it’s a straight shot into the universal orlando resort and citywalk. you can follow universal boulevard to kirkman road and that’ll essentially take you to west orlando and metrowest / millenia / oakridge. doctor phillips leans on the more upper-middle class to upper class side of things, though it does have its parts that are slightly less affluent. a home in doctor phillips will run you about $300k on average. you’ll find the orlando florida temple in the doctor phillips / lake butler area, an ostentatious religious institution of white marble, the second largest church of jesus christ of the latter day saints in the eastern united states (following washington dc). 

❊ ◜SOUTH ORLANDO .// lake nona/hunters creek

population //. 23k median age //. 36.4 years median household income //. 65k careers of residents (most popular) //. management, education, computer science, sales, office/administrative, food service, transportation, healthcare  about lake nona & hunters creek;; there are large residential areas surrounding the orlando international airport; two such residential areas located near the airport coming in the form of lake nona and hunters creek. from hunters creek it’s only fourteen minutes to the airport, and from lake nona it’s only ten. . . residents of both areas able to observe the planes coming in to land at the airport. populations in both of these areas, particularly hunters creek, having been skyrocketing in recent years and hunters creek has been expanding and developing at a rapid pace. it seems as if you can blink and a new housing development or apartment complex is springing up, followed shortly thereafter by shopping centers and restaurants to serve the growing amounts of residents. lake nona is primarily inhabited by small families, neighborhoods ranging from middle class to on the wealthier side depending on what part of the community you’re driving through. houses average around 400k, but can skyrocket to the multi-millions if you’re not careful. hunters creek is a little bit more on the affordable side, dominated by theme park employees and members of the service industry. houses go for an average of $200k, but the rapid growth has skyrocketed rent prices to an average of $1500 a month. 

[mocsbylexan]

Matoran Morphology Section 6: Voya Nui

At this point in the study, we must take a moment to acknowledge a special popluation of matoran that lived in the very center of the Southern Continent, under the shadow of Mount Valmai. The matoran of Voya Nui have a long and frequently traumatic history, a large portion of which is recorded very clearly in the state of their bodies.

Form: The exact details of these matoran’s history will be discussed in the appropriate section, but it is important for you to know that at some point in the early history of the universe, every single one of the matoran who came to live in Voya Nui was essentially ripped apart and rebuilt from scratch in an incompetent attempt to “repair” them. This resulted in the the malformed and stunted bodies you see in the images above. Worse still, the botched repairs went so far as to significantly modify the matoran’s core form, causing permanent damage that will be very difficult to fix even in the long term.

Almost every Voya Nui matoran is at least slightly unique in build, with no more than 2 or 3 ever being totally identical. However there are some general traits that most or all of them share. They are significantly smaller than other matoran (beat out only by Metruans for the title of shortest non-diminished matoran build), and appear to be generally made of less total material by mass, making them lighter and also somewhat more fragile. About 90 percent of Voyans also have a significant hunchback, with their neck and sometimes their shoulders located at the midpoint of their torso rather than the top. Finally, Voyans never have functional eyeglow. Ironically, they are known to frequently have glowing nodes or patches adorning other parts of their body, but the eyes are never one of them.

Other slightly less common features of the Voya Nui body include:

Pincer hands: Observable on our vo-matoran model. Very small and elongated hands with an unorthodox form, only having four fingers arranged opposing each other in sets of two. Hands like this are not unheard of in matoran outside of the Voyan population; turaga in particular often have a similar hand structure.

Fused hand tools: Observable on our ce-matoran model, particularly in fig. 6-7. Many Voyans have tools or weapons fused directly onto the ends of their arms that either supplement or completely replace their hands. Our model used to have hooks on both of her arms, but she has since had one arm modified.

Tiny “heads”: Observable on our ce-matoran model, particularly in fig. 5. A very small number of Voyans, rather than having a head, have a sort of small box on top of their neck joints with few of the features associated with a head. It appears that vital organs such as the brain have been moved to the matoran’s chest unit, while the original head has been replaced by a unit which usually contains nothing more than a mask mount, a mechanical voice box, and audio/visual sensors. This rather gruesome (by the Voyan’s own admission) modification occurs more frequently in those matoran without a hunchback.

Functionality: Voya Nui matoran are, as a rule, physically weaker than other matoran types in almost every way. Their greatest functional asset is that, for the more mobile matoran, their small size and light weight allows them to be either very fast or very quiet and stealthy when they need to be. It’s rumored that Voyans are currently in high demand among unlawful organizations for employment as spies for these very reasons. Not all Voyans can take advantage of this though; mobility varies greatly among the population, some matoran having quite strangely constructed limbs that necessitate abnormal or assisted ways of walking. At the very least the Voya Nui body is consistent: Voyans rarely encounter random malfunctions.

It is worth noting that for most of their history, each and every Voyan owned a unique set of twin tools, with various strange abilities designed to help them survive the harsh environment they lived in. Some Voyans have discarded their tools since the Rejoining; others have been unable to because their tools are built directly onto their body. But many still voluntarily hold on to their tools, for various emotional or practical reasons.

History:  Some of the following information is unconfirmed and is still in the process of being investigated by scholars. One can never be too cautious when dealing with the relationship between history and myth.

There is a dark figure from matoran legend who’s name even most agori are familiar with by now: Karzahni. It may surprise you to learn that Karzahni has been confirmed to be, in some capacity, real, and he is directly responsible for the history of Voya Nui. The legend goes that Karzahni’s original purpose was to fix malfunctioning matoran who were sent to him, but when those matoran never came back, the turaga of the universe eventually stopped sending matoran to his realm. Unknown to the world at large, Karzahni was not very good at his intended purpose, and his attempts at repair only made the matoran weak and malformed. Using the variety of builds on display in the Voyans, we can actually track the progress of Karzahni’s thoughts and see how his attempts at fixing matoran evolved over time. Eventually, tired of failure, Karzahni granted all of the matoran in his realm special tools and sent them away to live on the Southern Continent, so as not to be reminded of his ineptitude any more. This is what created the original village of Voya Nui.

As mentioned in the previous section, a large region around Voya Nui was completely ejected from Mata Nui’s body during the Great Cataclysm, creating the island of Voya Nui in the sea of Aqua Magna. Many Voyans died in the Cataclysm, and the survivors found themselves stranded on a harsh land with few resources for survival. As if to add insult to injury, another disaster occurred where one of the two cities the Voyans built for themselves sunk into the ocean. Their experience on the island was capped off by getting involved in the battle for the Kanohi Ignika waged by the now famous Toa Mahri, shortly before the beginning of the Reign of Shadows.

Nowadays, the matoran of Voya Nui have found decent success in integrating into modern society, a life that they say is much more comfortable and peaceful than what they had before. Unfortunately, though many of them would like to modify themselves to repair the damage that Karzahni did all those many millennia ago, their build is so strange that even many of the most seasoned biomechanics have had trouble safely rebuilding them. It will likely take a lot of time and many advances in biomechnaical science before the Voyans are able to completely wipe away their physical history.

Acknowledgements: Our volunteer models for this section are Zaren, Vo-Matoran Voya, and Keti, Ce-Craftsman Voya.

Chronicler’s Notes:

Turaga Giiku’s on to me again. This time about not queuing up posts to keep on schedule over the religious festival. For the love of Artakha.

Its really weird that Zaren kept her profession secret. Matoran from before the Rejoining tended to be really proud of their work and attach a lot of their identity to it, partially because of the influence of Metru Nui’s workaholic culture. You’ve probably noticed that in the formal naming conventions of the period that this study uses; a matoran’s profession and the place where they gained that profession were always a part of the name. I wonder if she had a reason for remaining more anonymous.

[berniesrevolution]

THE GUARDIAN

There is a global struggle taking place of enormous consequence. Nothing less than the future of the planet – economically, socially and environmentally – is at stake.

At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, when the world’s top 1% now owns more wealth than the bottom 99%, we are seeing the rise of a new authoritarian axis.

While these regimes may differ in some respects, they share key attributes: hostility toward democratic norms, antagonism toward a free press, intolerance toward ethnic and religious minorities, and a belief that government should benefit their own selfish financial interests. These leaders are also deeply connected to a network of multi-billionaire oligarchs who see the world as their economic plaything.

Those of us who believe in democracy, who believe that a government must be accountable to its people, must understand the scope of this challenge if we are to effectively confront it.

It should be clear by now that Donald Trump and the rightwing movement that supports him is not a phenomenon unique to the United States. All around the world, in Europe, in Russia, in the Middle East, in Asia and elsewhere we are seeing movements led by demagogues who exploit people’s fears, prejudices and grievances to achieve and hold on to power.

This trend certainly did not begin with Trump, but there’s no question that authoritarian leaders around the world have drawn inspiration from the fact that the leader of the world’s oldest and most powerful democracy seems to delight in shattering democratic norms.

Three years ago, who would have imagined that the United States would stay neutral between Canada, our democratic neighbor and second largest trading partner, and Saudi Arabia, a monarchic, client state that treats women as third-class citizens? It’s also hard to imagine that Israel’s Netanyahu government would have moved to pass the recent “nation state law”, which essentially codifies the second-class status of Israel’s non-Jewish citizens, if Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t know Trump would have his back.

All of this is not exactly a secret. As the US continues to grow further and further apart from our longtime democratic allies, the US ambassador to Germany recently made clear the Trump administration’s support for rightwing extremist parties across Europe.

In addition to Trump’s hostility toward democratic institutions we have a billionaire president who, in an unprecedented way, has blatantly embedded his own economic interests and those of his cronies into the policies of government.

Other authoritarian states are much farther along this kleptocratic process. In Russia, it is impossible to tell where the decisions of government end and the interests of Vladimir Putin and his circle of oligarchs begin. They operate as one unit. Similarly, in Saudi Arabia, there is no debate about separation because the natural resources of the state, valued at trillions of dollars, belong to the Saudi royal family. In Hungary, far-right authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán is openly allied with Putin in Russia. In China, an inner circle led by Xi Jinping has steadily consolidated power, clamping down on domestic political freedom while it aggressively promotes a version of authoritarian capitalism abroad.

We must understand that these authoritarians are part of a common front. They are in close contact with each other, share tactics and, as in the case of European and American rightwing movements, even share some of the same funders. The Mercer family, for example, supporters of the infamous Cambridge Analytica, have been key backers of Trump and of Breitbart News, which operates in Europe, the United States and Israel to advance the same anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim agenda. Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson gives generously to rightwing causes in both the United States and Israel, promoting a shared agenda of intolerance and illiberalism in both countries.

The truth is, however, that to effectively oppose rightwing authoritarianism, we cannot simply go back to the failed status quo of the last several decades. Today in the United States, and in many other parts of the world, people are working longer hours for stagnating wages, and worry that their children will have a lower standard of living than they do.

Our job is to fight for a future in which new technology and innovation works to benefit all people, not just a few. It is not acceptable that the top 1% of the world’s population owns half the planet’s wealth, while the bottom 70% of the working age population accounts for just 2.7% of global wealth.

Together governments of the world must come together to end the absurdity of the rich and multinational corporations stashing over $21tn in offshore bank accounts to avoid paying their fair share of taxes and then demanding that their respective governments impose an austerity agenda on their working families.

It is not acceptable that the fossil fuel industry continues to make huge profits while their carbon emissions destroy the planet for our children and grandchildren.

It is not acceptable that a handful of multinational media giants, owned by a small number of billionaires, largely control the flow of information on the planet.

It is not acceptable that trade policies that benefit large multinational corporations and encourage a race to the bottom hurt working people throughout the world as they are written out of public view.

It is not acceptable that, with the cold war long behind us, countries around the world spend over $1tn a year on weapons of destruction, while millions of children die of easily treatable diseases.

In order to effectively combat the rise of the international authoritarian axis, we need an international progressive movement that mobilizes behind a vision of shared prosperity, security and dignity for all people, and that addresses the massive global inequality that exists, not only in wealth but in political power.

Such a movement must be willing to think creatively and boldly about the world that we would like to see. While the authoritarian axis is committed to tearing down a post-second world war global order that they see as limiting their access to power and wealth, it is not enough for us to simply defend that order as it exists now.

We must look honestly at how that order has failed to deliver on many of its promises, and how authoritarians have adeptly exploited those failures in order to build support for their agenda. We must take the opportunity to reconceptualize a genuinely progressive global order based on human solidarity, an order that recognizes that every person on this planet shares a common humanity, that we all want our children to grow up healthy, to have a good education, have decent jobs, drink clean water, breathe clean air and live in peace.

Our job is to reach out to those in every corner of the world who share these values, and who are fighting for a better world.

In a time of exploding wealth and technology, we have the potential to create a decent life for all people. Our job is to build on our common humanity and do everything that we can to oppose all of the forces, whether unaccountable government power or unaccountable corporate power, who try to divide us up and set us against each other. We know that those forces work together across borders. We must do the same.

Bernie Sanders is a US Senator from Vermont

We asked Yanis Varoufakis to comment on Bernie Sanders’ piece. Here is his response:

Bernie Sanders is spot-on. Financiers have long formed an international “brotherhood” to guarantee themselves international bailouts when their paper pyramids crash.

More recently, xenophobic rightwing zealots also formed their very own Nationalist International, turning once proud people against another so that they control their wealth and politics.

It is high time that Democrats from across the world form a Progressive International in the interests of a majority of people on every continent, in every country.

(Continue Reading)

[woohooligancomics]

Webcomic Whimsy: Furry Experience!

Welcome to the Woohooligan Weekly Webcomic Whimsy! If you're a webcomic author and would like a review, you can see my announcement and review rules here.

Title: Furry Experience

Author: Ellen Natalie • Patreon • Facebook • Twitter

Site: Smack Jeeves

Genres: Comedy, Drama, Furry, Mormons

Rating: G (?)

Updates: Saturdays

My Starting Point (requested by artist): Page 182 (I'm not sure if they're arranged in chapters -- the archive doesn't seem to have chapter numbers)

Synopsis (from the About page): Three roommates attending college in Utah Valley. Between their different backgrounds, beliefs, and friends, there's sure to be lots of comedy and drama before anyone earns a diploma.

This starting page is probably a decent example of what you can expect from Furry Experience. Obviously the characters are anthropomorphic animals, as you'd expect from the title. The main characters are college roommates, so you would expect that kind of sit-com-esque, day-in-the-life humor. And the art is of good enough quality that we're not scratching our heads about what's going on here.

Ultimately, yes there's a good bit of comedy and a little drama in it, but the drama seems rather tame and the comedy seems very much of the family-friendly variety. I think where the story really excels is in a kind of smooth-seas, non-threatening character development. The characters never seem especially challenged by the events in their life, despite plenty of displays of emotion, and there are lots of scenes of friend and family bonding. To be honest, a lot of it feels to me like the TV commercials the Mormon church sometimes airs, where something ostensibly portrayed as bad seems to have happened, like the kids got their dress clothes all dirty, and just as the parents are about to lay into them, they start a water-fight with the garden hose instead.

I seem to always be waiting for something more outlandish or more personally challenging to happen to one of the characters and it never really does. Maybe it's just me, maybe I'm conditioned to expect that from the TV shows I watch. In any event, if you like friend and family bonding and g-rated humor, this might be for you! :D

The first several pages of this story arc is all three of the roommates continually changing the whiteboard to pass the dishes chore onto each other until Cat, who I presume is a dimwit stereotype, reaches the conclusion that the whiteboard is cursed, rather than that her roommates have been changing it.

Some people might not like me saying this, and fuck them. I like the fact that the cast is weighted on women. I counted fourteen female characters to six male on the about page. The reason I say I like this is because culturally, we've been programmed to expect the cast to be heavily male weighted. This programming is so strong, that when you ask people to estimate the number of women in a room, they usually will say "about half" when the room is actually only 20% or one in five women. Despite its sexist origins, Star Trek: the Next Generation did a better job featuring a 6-to-3 cast ratio in the first season, before Yar died, leaving the ratio 6-to-2. To be fair, Furry Experience isn't even that heavily weighted, the men are slightly less than one in three, so it's comparable to ST:TNG's first season.

The whiteboard joke ends abruptly after a few pages once Cat destroys it, and without showing any further bickering over the dishes chore, so those several pages are essentially a really short comedic subplot or a really long self-contained comic strip.

Then we're on to the next story which starts with Ronnie and her friend Vikki visiting a book-store at the mall. I have to agree with Ronnie here, I've been inside Mormon book stores and I'm not sure I would call it "culture". Mormons are if anything extremely conservative, so aside from picking up on some of their religious idiosyncrasies, the Mormon bookstore would actually restrict the amount of alternative views you're exposing yourself to, not expand them. I personally was raised Mormon (I'm Unitarian / positive agnostic), and my mother was Mormon until some time in my mid thirties. She still refuses to believe anything a liberal says, but takes on face value anything said by a conservative, like for example that Trump never said "grab them by the pussy" (even though he and his wife both admitted it on TV and during the debates), because the whole tape was manufactured as a part of a grand conspiracy. As far as she's concerned, the conspiracy is more believable than the idea that Trump said it, despite the fact that there are numerous TV apperances showing Trump bragging that he wants to fuck his daughter. :-/

But I'm off topic... Ronnie and Vikki are going to the Mormon book store. If you're unfamiliar with Mormonism, Utah is like the Mormons' Vatican... Well, Salt Lake City is, but also most of Utah. Mormonism is such an entrenched part of the state that it's actually somewhat difficult to live in the state without being Mormon, because you can't go or work anywhere without the Mormons in the office giving you crap about the fact that you drink coffee. (They have a religious prohibition on coffee like they do alcohol and cigarettes.)

Honestly, it's hard for me to say much about the following page except "agreed".

So they leave the book shop and they're talking about hanging out the rest of the evening and of course, like I said, it's hard to live in Utah if you're not Mormon, the subject comes up again.

Yes, that's really a thing, Mormons are supposed to have a "family home evening" (most of them do it on Monday), in which they have a gospel lesson... but because it's super hard to maintain that amount of bullshit for such an extended period of time (they all just spent three hours at church the day before), most of them don't manage to have their gospel lesson ready and then feel guilty and go out to eat somewhere with their family instead. And this isn't even mentioning the host of extracurricular church activities they're supposed to engage in, like their weekly study-buddies with other church members.

So the discussion about where to hang out leads to some mystery about what Vikki is hiding at her apartment.

Ronnie decides to stalk Vikki to find out what's wrong with her apartment, and thanks to the laws of sit-com world, what's wrong is that all three of Vikkie's roommates aren't just practicing Mormons, they even bought the "god is watching you" poster from the previous page.

Ellen told me that this series included furries, comedy, drama and Mormon's in that order. So I'm taking her word for it that most of the content isn't specifically about Mormonism, but she did start me out right in front of an arc about how annoying it is to live in Utah if you're not. Vikki's roommates are all attending "Furry Young" university in Provo (Brigham Young is the university owned by the Mormon church) and have stereotypically conservative, female career goals like school teacher, nursing and housewife.

When the discussion turns to the typical Mormon attitude that "of course everyone wants to get married", the story does briefly touch on one of the more awkward and imo hilarious aspects of Mormon religion: if you don't marry on earth, you get to marry one of god's soldiers in heaven! :P

It seems a little odd to me personally that Ellen sidestepped the fact that the Mormon church is polygamist, so it wouldn't matter that those soldiers had already married, because they would get to be wife #3 or 8 or whatever and should be just as happy with that. :P But damnit, Ronnie, don't use the G word in front of the roommates, it really upsets them, and Vikki still has to live with them.

I mentioned all the extracurricular churcch activities, right? Basically the Mormon church expects its members to fill every waking moment with church doctrine in some form. On the toilet? Great opportunity to brush up on Leviticus!

Okay, that's actually a sweet moment between Ronnie and Vikki, and as much as I think Vikki's approach was off, at least now I understand why she was going to the Mormon bookstore. This page was originally published in 2012... I don't know, it seems to me like using Google on your smartphone would be an easier way of learning the Mormonisms than frequenting their bookstore. Google? Why? I have libraries!

So Vikki's roommates want Ronnie and Vikki both to participate in their "family home evening" (which, when you're not living with family, necessarily beccomes "roommate home evening"), which involves praying, singing hymns and a lecture about the importance of marrying in the Temple (a place non-Mormons aren't allowed to go, so obviously you have to marry within the religion to do that). As this is about as appealing as sand-papering your eyeballs, Ronnie gets them out of it by suggesting a "more interactive" activity so she can get to know them better: doorbell ditching! Which, to Vikki's surprise, the Mormon girls are toally into! Because when Mormons do it, they leave cookies, so... for all their faults, at least they're engaging in random acts of diabetes. :P (Fun fact, Mormons use more sugar in their cooking, are heavier set, and have more diabetes than just about any other religion.)

And then rather than buy cookies at the store (it's Monday, they're allowed), they start baking cookies at the last minute to go doorbell ditch them. The point of this page is primarily about how jargon-laden Mormonism is and, although I'm unfamiliar with these specific terms, I don't doubt them.

This story wraps up with a sentimental exchange between Ronnie and Vikki, which seems to me to be much of the flavor of the series as a whole: yes, there's your typical sitcom humor, but the overall tone feels to me less "let's make this hilarious" and more "even Lifetime movies have comic relief". Obviously that's a personal opinion and mileage varies.

The following story centers on one of the few male characters, Hunter, who's also college age, though still living with his parents. He's decided to make (nude) modelling for college art classes his full-time job, which sets the story up for tension between Hunter and his mother.

It isn't apparent until the following page that Mom is aware that Hunter's job is getting nakedy naked in the colleges of the world's most sexually repressed city ... seriously, there's probably more fucking in the Vatican than in Salt Lake. Probably a lot more. Anyway, Mom doesn't like it, that's why she's helicopter-momming Hunter and calling to set up job interviews without his consent.

And like I said before, this is where the story gets real Lifetime on us, with Mom talking about Hunter's entirely non-sex job like he's an alcoholic or a drug addict and this is an intervention.

I definitely have some questions about the pirate job. If we're talking movie or theater, that might be pretty cool, but it would be so much cooler if someone's hiring crew for a replica of the Queen Anne's revenge to terrorize rich people on their yachts in Lake Erie. It's probably disappointingly, a mascot job for a seafood restaurant or worse pirate-themed tax prep. "We be takin' deduction ARRR!"

Yes, he's deep undercover in Salt Lake City, trying to recover state secrets stolen by the Illuminati and hidden in the Mormon temple. Okay, that may not be as funny to you, but it's hilarious to me... after growing up with my Mormon mom, who's now a non-denominational pagan (ask me about her salt altars) who obsessively watches atheist YouTube channels. :P

Honesty, yes... that goes over great with Mormons who're so sexually repressed their sex organs have literally shrivelled up and become vestigial. Seriously, these people think kissing on the lips is a sin.

Oh! Hunter's family are mormon, wow... I sort of assumed they were the rare non-Mormon family in Utah... When I was younger, I think my mom's reaction to me being naked for money would have been on the order of apoplexy or a stroke. But I can certainly relate to the sleazy sales company -- I've been on a few of those interviews, even tried to work those jobs once or twice. Ugh! The only bright side there is that when you do eventually go to hell (and you will), the job will have prepared you for it.

Yes, an hour is a typical amount of training in a lot of telemarketing jobs, and they're just as evil as the door-to-door sales job. I'm pretty sure I saw Stabby's owner on the cast list page, so I guess not all the characters know each other.

Called it! I really wish it had been actual pirating on Lake Erie. :-(

Meta joke! It must be about a webcomic I haven't read. I have no idea why Panda-Joel works as a joke.

Anyway that story ends with Hunter getting a concession job at a movie theater to replace Luke (Joel) and the end of the tension with his mother is that the job is great because it's mostly at night and fits neatly into his existing schedule so he can work both jobs and save up to potentially move out. Mom appears stunned at the news, which I'm guessing is supposed to mean she's not entirely happy with him moving out (and we know she wasn't happy with the art-modeling job he's still keeping). So I think the "punchline" there was "be careful what you wish for". As a former Mormon, I can't tell you how Mormon that whole thing feels. It's all so... mundane and uncomplicated. I'd have tried to end that story with a more challenging, possibly even surreal punchline, like the introduction of Stabby.

Artist insert. There's usually a single-page joke between stories and they're all labelled "filler page #". This one is 28.

I like the fact that the whiteboard changes mid-scene when it's obvious nobody's touched it. It may have just been a callback to the haunted whiteboard from the previous story, but I just think it's a cool bit of meta humor in general. I did the same thing with writing on the walls of the women's bathroom in the Pit (hell's bar, run by Azrael, who's Grumpy Cat's dad).

Again, this is Salt "No Sex Period" Lake City.

And just like they have a prohibition on sex, they also have a prohibition on ... you know, fun.

Tricking your kids out of things they want is really the job of being a dad if we're being honest.

Like I said before, the strip seems to focus primarily on friend-and-family bonding, sort of a furry, colorized Leave It To Beaver. So if you like family-friendly sitcoms, give Furry Experience a look!

If you are a webcomic author and are interested in a review from me, you can check out my announcement and my review-request rules here.

If you enjoyed this and want to help me make more reviews, you can contribute on our Patreon or if you're short on funds you can also help by checking out and sharing my own comedy and laughtivist webcomic, Woohooligan!

Thank you for sharing yourself with us! Sam

[scripttorture]

Thanks for coming back so quickly. If I could ask another question, do you know roughly what the rate of survival was even in those non-lethal forms? And also what was the attitude if someone died during/after torture that was intended to punish not kill? Thanks.

It’s difficult for me to put a figure on that whichis why I didn’t originally. I can discuss the contributing factors and takea guess, but this really is just a guess. It’s also nudging into @scriptmedic’sarea more than mine.

 There are a lot of factorsthat feed into the fact our life expectancy now is much much higher than lifeexpectancy in the Middle Ages.

 A quick illustrative example of just how huge the gap is: Alfred theGreat of Wessex. He is the only monarch England has ever called ‘Great’, helaid the groundwork for unifying England and was the only Saxon King toeffectively hold the Vikings at bay. He’s also believed to have had Crohnsdisease.

 We think he died around 899 ADat the age of about 50. But we don’t actually know because his death wasn’t recorded.

 One of the most popular explanations for that is that 45-50 was simply howlong people lived. His death from ‘old age’ was expected and so not recorded.

 That was for a rich man who we can assume didn’t suffer from prolongedperiods of malnutrition.

 I’d say the three most important advances since the time period you’retalking about have been nutrition,sanitation and antibiotics.

 Some, but not all, of these advances can be mapped on to writing abouthistorical periods generally.

 One of the things I mention, but don’t dwell on, in theMasterpost on Starvation is the higher rates of infection that accompanymalnutrition. In a time period where periodic bouts of starvation andunder-nourishment were the norm thatmeans assuming that virtually everyone below the absolute elite would be more prone to infection and lessable to fight off infection.

 The diet of ordinary people could also be incredibly monotonous, whichincreases the chances of diseases associated with lack of particular nutrients,such as rickets, anaemia etc. Those conditions could also make a character morevulnerable to infection.

 I’d say generally these points about nutrition and starvation apply to most cultures and time periods globally.While we are now much closer to eradicating starvation and diseases of malnutritionwe are not there yet.

 If you’re trying to figure out the chances of a character surviving besure to factor in their access to food, not just over the past few days but recentmonths and years.

 And then there’s sanitation which er-

 You know what? I’m just going to quote a description of an English homein the Middle Ages (via T Deary’s HorribleHistories: Measly Middle Ages)

 ‘The floors are commonly of clay,strewn with rushes under which lies undisturbed an ancient collection of beer,spittle, grease, bones, droppings of animals and men and everything that isnasty.’

 People rarely washed. Human and animal waste was everywhere. Water thatcould be used for drinking or washing was often contaminated with human waste. Bandageswere not always cleaned, rarely boiled and the majority of people probablycouldn’t afford enough clothe to change them regularly anyway.

 I’d like to stress that situation wassolvable with the available technology at the time. Not every historicalculture was this soaked in filth. The comparative cleanliness of towns andcities in the Arab world at the same time (and indeed parts of Africa) wouldhave resulted in lower rates of infection and higher rates of survival.

 But you asked for Europe and frankly at that time there was no wastedisposal. Human and animal waste was everywhere. Butchers dumped the entrailsof slaughtered animals in the streets. Rubbish was left to rot.

 People washed irregularly at best and there was no real sense that handsshould be clean before touching wounds or that implements and bandages shouldbe clean.

 The chances of foreign matter getting into an open wound were incrediblyhigh. The chances of that matter being some kind of bacterial culture were also incredibly high.

 So even before we get into the lack of decent treatment for bacterialconditions there are two massive factors suppressing the victim’s immune systemand encouraging infection to take hold.

 And there was really almost no effective treatment other than treatingsurface symptoms and hoping. This was a time when the usual treatment wasliterally prayer.

 I’ve spent most of the morning looking for percentage survival ratesfrom infections in the era pre-antibiotics. The numbers I’ve found vary hugelydepending on the type of infection and the particular bacteria causing it.

 I’m finding death rates anywhere from 11% to 80% for common bacterial causing infection in cuts and burns.

 That’s among people who were fed in periods where basic sanitation was morecommon.

 And we haven’t really gotten into the fact that the tortures we’rediscussing are highly damaging in and of themselves. These are serious woundsthat can kill regardless of infection, especially because torturers are not ‘skilled’people. They don’t pay particularattention to the damage inflicted on victims or stop and think if may be they’vegone ‘too far’. Instead they tend to just keep going.

 Blood loss would also have been a pretty big cause of death, especiallyfor amputations and flogging.

 So I’d say a conservative estimate would be a 35-40% death rate fortorturous punishments that weren’t intended to be lethal.

 For more serious injuries caused by torture that figure would rise. Andit would rise again for people who were more severely malnourished.

 A death rate of up to two thirds wouldn’t be unrealistic orunreasonable.

 The does not mean you have tokill your character.

 I don’t think there’s anything wrong with us writing character survivingin situations where the odds are stacked against them, but I think it is important to acknowledge when that’sthe case. There’s nothing wrong with having your character get luckyoccasionally, especially when it comes to fighting an infectious disease. Justacknowledge that they were lucky.

 Which leaves me with the final point- what did people at the time thinkof this death rate?

 I’m going to have to keep the answer to that relatively shallow becauseI don’t know a lot about Christianity and the answer is heavily bound up in thereligious thought of the time.

 Essentially ideas about punishment and justice were bound up in the religiousideas of the time. Suffering was seen as retribution in part because it broughtpeople closer to God.

 The prevailing idea was that everything happened according to God’s willand for a reason. Therefore if someone died during a punishment they weresupposed to die.

 In some circumstances this seems to have been seen as a proof ofinnocence or redemption. God stepped in to take the good soul to heaven. Inother circumstances it seems to have been taken as proof of guilt.

 I honestly don’t understand enough about the religious thought at thetime to provide an analysis of that.

 But in terms of building a fantasy world- well that’s not necessarilysomething you need to delve in to. Very few fantasy books actually make theirworld’s religion Christianity. That means you have the scope to decide foryourself how a character’s death or survival would be viewed. That meansthinking about the religion, social order and justice system.

 It could also mean thinking about conflicts between those systems andcounter-cultural movements. There were a lotof ‘heretical’ sects during this period of history and a lot of cultsvenerating particular saints or purported events.  

 My own fantasy stories aren’t based in this period but one of the thingsI’ve enjoyed doing is using minority cultures in the world to providealternative points of view on events. That’s definitely something that can beused in regards to torture and different ideas of justice or morality.

 I don’t have any sources I could confidently recommend on religion inthe Middle Ages. Davies’ The OxfordIllustrated History of Witchcraft and Magic might provide more information,although on a very particular area. Deary’s HorribleHistories series is also an incredibly good source on both torture and medicaltreatments. Scott’s A History of Tortureis…useful in parts if you can stomach the amount of racism in his writing.Amber recently released two volumes on the history of torture and the historyof punishment which I haven’t read in their entirety yet. Both contain sectionson historical Europe though I have my doubts about the attitude and sources in The History of Torture.

 The best source, as ever, is accounts from the time. Descriptions oftrials and punishments. I’m unsure where the place to start looking for thosewould be. I know that earlier sources (ie 1000 AD and earlier) are harder tocome by for England particularly, in part because many of the primary sourcesburnt during the Great Fire of London. Sources for the 1200s, 1300s and 1400sare more numerous and may be a better period to concentrate on as a result.

 If I come across anything that stands out as particularly useful I’ll besure to add it to the Sources page.

 I hope that helps. :)

Disclaimer

[chochmah-binah-daas]

The months since elul 5777 has been a hugely transitional time for me for so many reasons. I’ve been meaning to write about this since, well, late elul, early tishrei but I never had the energy to do so. I broke this up into chunks for easier reading but this is still quite an essay…

I know this is long but please like if you read even a part of this and if you have any insights or advice to offer me, my askbox is open and I’d love some support of any kind!!

Children

I always wrote off the idea of having children, even to the point of being one of those people who thought it was funny to be somewhat hostile towards kids. I did have some legitimate reasons for this, mostly sensory issues, being that I’m autistic and am sensitive to many sensory experiences; however, most of it was me just stubbornly holding onto a general distaste for children. Through the course of my retail job, I found myself more and more warming up to the kids who came into the store to the point where I would go out of my way to make faces and wave at babies at the expense of doing my actual job (not to worry, my job was literally completely ineffective). As I realized just after the High Holy Days began, I didn’t just not hate children anymore, I liked them. I actively like and desire to have children now.

If someone had asked me if I really thought I never wanted kids, I would pretty adamantly say I didn’t, though sometimes I’d admit that I could see myself maybe adopting one child in the future. Now it actively pains me that I don’t have children. Plural. Children. My only image of my future self is me, happily married and raising at least 3 or 4 good Jewish children.

I’m only 23 so I know that I’m not expected by secular society to have kids but seeing my more observant Jewish cousins around my age pursuing marriage really gets me down a lot of the time. I want nothing more right now than to marry a nice gay Jewish man and adopt a few kids. This leads me to my next sections…

Career goals

I never settled on one single thing I wanted to do with my life. I was one of those kids who, probably due to being autistic, was always getting deeply invested in something and then flitting off to another after a couple months. For the last year or two I did have a decent idea in my head that I wanted to get a Master’s of Library and Information Science degree and work in a library or archive. I’m good at that kind of work. It allows me to be quiet and a bit neurotic about my workstation because I’d largely be working alone, away from the general public and most of my coworkers.

After my graduation, my mom and grandma suggested that I consider going to law school. I agreed to at least take the LSAT, which I will be doing in February and oy am I nervous!! My mom, who went to law school, says that she thinks I’d be great at it, that my mind is so well-suited to that type of thinking. I don’t disagree with her but I also can’t imagine myself doing anything with a law degree.

In fact, I can’t imagine myself doing anything in the future. People think I’m joking, but I really do just want to marry someone with a steady, well-paying job and be a house-spouse. I have a deep passion for learning but I have no passion for an actual career that comes along with any path of study. In a perfect world where my mental illness didn’t destroy my ability to read, I would love to go get an MLIS and/or a law degree. I’d even consider going to a yeshiva and studying Torah, Talmud, contemporary Jewish issues, all that. But once I’m out of school, I have no clue what I’d do besides sit at home with all that knowledge swirling around in my head.

Education is never a waste in my opinion, but also formal education is expensive and I’d never be able to afford it without having a prospective career in my future to provide the income for paying off the student loans.

Gender

I never understood the concept of gender. All I know is what language I’m comfortable with, how I like dressing, and what I want my body to be. I am AFAB (assigned female at birth) and I medically transitioned through hormones, chest surgery, and a hysterectomy. My pronouns are they/them or he/him. I am now legally male with a traditionally male name. On most days, I enjoy wearing skirts though I do occasionally choose to wear pants. I could never be cis-passing unless I stuck with wearing pants all the time, which would make me very uncomfortable. If you asked me to get dressed without thinking about it at all, my first choice would be to throw on a skirt, t-shirt, and cardigan. It’s comfortable, psychologically and sensory.

None of this changed during elul 5777; what did change was how my gender and my Judaism were connected. Before, they weren’t. Now, I am working on becoming shomer tznius which involved a major overhaul of my wardrobe, particularly the skirts and dresses. I got rid of almost all of my short and revealing articles unless they could be easily layered and bought a lot of long skirts, three quarter sleeve shirts, cardigans, and other tznius layering essentials.

When it comes to my religious observance, I mix and match though I do mostly connect with the mitzvos for men. In shul and at home, I prefer not to light the shabbos candles if there is a woman who would be able to do it instead. I wear tallis and tefillin to daven and I leyn torah. But I also enjoy occasionally wearing a tichel and being the one who cooks for shabbos, plus the aforementioned movement towards being shomer tznius.

Religious observance

I currently attend, and work for, a Reform shul. I adore my community and the rabbi there. It’s such a loving and supportive community with a small but fantastic group of regulars at Torah study. I’m fortunate in that my community has no problem with the way I present myself. They accept me as a queer Jew who expresses their queerness and their Jewishness in a unique way. But I worry about how other Jewish communities might react towards me, especially since I can see myself being much more observant than I currently am.

Ideally, I would have a kosher kitchen and fully observe shabbos. I would live close enough to walk to shul and I would make sure to raise my children with a strong Jewish identity, and of course a Jewish education. I don’t know if I could have that kind of life while being involved in a Reform community, largely because they don’t tend to celebrate every holiday and also when they do, it can be too lax for my tastes. For example, even in the winter our shabbos services don’t start until 6 or 7 PM, a solid 2 or so hours after shabbos actually begins.

As a queer Jew, who is very obviously gender nonconforming, I don’t know how I would fit into a more traditional community that would probably be more regimented in its separation of genders into a binary. I wear tallis and tefillin when I daven but I would be seen as a woman by some men so I would be immediately singled out as an other. I do wear skirts but I also have a deep voice and facial hair (and my name is Zack) so I’m automatically too male for women-only spaces. Not that I feel entitled to men- or women-only spaces, but I do fear how I could become more observant, when doing so tends to mean an increase in that kind of separation.

Relationships

This is probably the trickiest and most personal portion of this whole shpiel. I’m currently… somewhat in a relationship, I guess? When I transferred to HSU, I thought I was aromantic-asexual and I have since realized that I am neither of those and now identify as someone generally attracted to men. But soon after starting at HSU, I met someone else who identifies as aro-ace and we became really close friends, hanging out all the time in one of our dorm rooms. They were in a non-romantic, queer-platonic relationship with two people and suddenly, they started including me in this relationship. I didn’t mind this so much at the beginning but the more I come to understand my identity and my vague goals and dreams for the future, the more I realize that I just can’t go where I want to go in life and be tied to this relationship.

I know that the longer this goes on, the worse it will be to break it off but I’m terrified to do so, for various reasons I don’t want to get into here. As I said earlier, I want to marry a Jewish guy and have Jewish kids and live a Jewish life. I obviously can’t do that in a household with two pagans and a Catholic, none of whom want kids at all. I know I’m probably becoming one of Those Converts who gets super zealous about Judaism and defensive of their Jewishness but over the last year or so, and especially since elul, I have had this image in my head that I just can’t shake. And that image doesn’t include the people I currently feel tied down to.

[lovejustforaday]

2020 Year-end list - #1

SWIMMER - TENNIS

Main Genres: Twee Pop, Soft Rock A decent sampling of: Pop Soul, Psychedelic Pop, Dream Pop, Art Pop

I’ve been a casual fan of Tennis for a while now since their last LP Yours Conditionally dropped in 2017. The band has an established niche, making music that fuses twee pop sensibilities with the retro sounds of so-called ‘dated’ genres like soft rock, surf, and 70s pop soul. Someone who spends less time with their music might shrug them off as just another cute little indie band obsessed with the times long past, and I’ll admit myself that this wasn’t on my AOTY radar when it was first announced. But then they dropped the lead single “Runner” at the end of last year and I had the faintest feeling that this was gonna be a big moment for them, and it turned out that my intuition was right this time.

Swimmer is a gorgeous and delicate musical experience about a love that survives to the end of the world, an ornately decorated wedding cake laced with celestial hallucinogens. While I’m at it, here’s a quick hot take that’s sure to get me murdered by some boomers: this album is better than Rumours by Fleetwood Mac and pretty much all of ABBA’s greatest hits (both artists that I am also fond of). Tennis has been refining their craft and their sound for a decade now, and if past releases in their discography represent footsteps in the band’s evolution, then Swimmer is closer to a parsec of evolution.

The band consists of Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley, a quirky couple who celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary this year, which is essential context because Swimmer is largely a testament to Moore and Riley’s beautiful relationship and a mature reflection on what it means to spend that much time with someone and know them that closely. When I say the two are quirky, I mean that in the best way possible – Moore and Riley seem to be a genuine two of a kind, a pair of unabashed, offbeat love birds who would gladly leave their regular lives behind to spend months living on a sailboat together with only a few possessions (they did this twice, in fact).  I mean, they even dropped this LP on Valentine’s Day. They’re so genuinely nerdy with their love for each other; I want to say that this LP wouldn’t work nearly as well if it was anyone else’s relationship.

Regardless, the music of Swimmer still speaks for itself. Everything is a huge improvement of their last LP, with better production, incredibly infectious hooks, more ambitious songwriting, and a surprising amount of lyrical depth. Still largely maintaining the band’s guitar-driven, twee 70s pop fusion formula, this time they add little traces of sparkly psychedelia that are just enough to leave you feeling love struck. Riley’s guitar work is a big highlight, gliding around melodies and leaving little musical bits of fancy frosted sugar coating everywhere without ever coming off as flashy. The album has a retro sound, but it also has a distinctly modern quality with its honest reflection on darker subject matter and characteristically millennial elements of irony and subversion.

“I’ll Haunt You” begins the album with a gentle, wistful ballad examining the unlikely topic of mortality, as Moore reflects on her own signs of aging before proclaiming “I will haunt you when I’m gone” to her lover Riley. The saccharine twee pop veneer of Moore’s golden voice is so thick that it’s easy to miss the lyrical depth of many of these songs, betrayed only by the conviction of her words.  The mood picks up fast with “Need Your Love”, a lively soft rock composition with prog influences, featuring a major tempo shift between its verses and chorus that is ridiculously gratifying to hear each time it switches.

“Runner” is absurdly catchy, both a brilliant pop song and a shimmering sea of little stars that goes higher and higher as Alaina Moore reflects on her very religious upbringing and how it has influenced her perception of human desire. Apparently this track took Moore and Riley a full year of almost non-stop songwriting and editing to get the end result they wanted, and the care and work that was put into it really shows. Title track “Swimmer” is the only song where the darker undertones are fully reflected in the instrumental composition, with a gloomy psychedelic rock dirge about Moore’s fear of swimming and the time she and her husband went to release his late father’s cremated ashes into the sea. In this context, the water itself represents death.

The album reaches an epic climax with its finest song and penultimate track “Late Night”, a warm twee pop serenade that begins soothing the listener with its twinkling refrain, all while Moore philosophically ponders the topics of love, religion, sex, womanhood, and identity. The track eventually bursts into a whirlwind of ecstasy as she triumphantly declares “I am the master of my ship / My ship, the master of the sea” and “I think I'm finally feeling free”, conquering her fear of the water and likewise her fear of death, while asserting her freedom to live as she chooses. This was my other favourite song of the year besides Jessie Ware’s “Spotlight” – “Late Night” fills my heart with joy whenever I hear it and it makes me want to spin in endless circles of euphoria.

Finally, the album closes with “Matrimony II”, a soulful baroque pop song that celebrates the idea of love as a gravitational orbit between two celestial bodies as they pull closer and closer until they are mutually destroyed, beautifully mirroring the opening track’s reflection on the relationship between love and death. This song in particular was written by Moore in dedication to Riley to commemorate the anniversary of their wedding, and I think it’s the perfect choice for a closing track because it really ends the album with such an elegant thought.

In short, Swimmer by Tennis is a collection of indie pop songs that’s not that far from perfect. It’s so funny, this was only the second album from this year that I listened to and it ended up crushing everything else in its path.

It’s almost a miracle that during such a dreary year we were given an album that is so celebratory, so life-affirming, and so unafraid of what the future may hold. Truthfully, Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley have given me more than just faith in the future of the music industry; they have given me faith in the future of humanity with their good vibes and their determination to live as their own true authentic selves. So here’s to Tennis and 2020, here’s to the radical past, and here’s to a better future.

Edit: Bumping this down to a 9. Still the most exciting thing I heard in 2020, but in hindsight I think it flows a bit awkwardly at times (particularly the intro “I’ll Haunt You” which feels like it was cut short) and I don’t think this is quite up there with my other 10s. 2020 was kind of a slow year in music for me (crappy year in general obviously) so I wanted a clear decisive AOTY masterpiece. Looks like I didn’t get one this time, but I’ll be checking out some of the stuff I missed.

I still stand by this being better than most of the 70s soft rock it pays homage to, and indeed better than any other act right now that has been putting out similar 70s “kitsch” revivalism.

9/10

highlights: “Late Night”, “Runner”, "Matrimony II”, “Need Your Love”,  “Swimmer”, “How To Forgive”

[aliceviceroy]

1. Spirituality for dummies.

If your thinking is mired in shame and guilt (with perhaps a twist of drug abuse or suicidal thinking), then subscribing to a religion can help you climb to a higher level of awareness. Your mindset, however, still remains incredibly dysfunctional; you’ve merely swapped one form of erroneous thinking for another.

For reasonably intelligent people who aren’t suffering from major issues with low self-esteem, religion is ridiculously consciousness-lowering. While some religious beliefs can be empowering, on the whole the decision to formally participate in a religion will merely burden your mind with a hefty load of false notions.

When you subscribe to a religion, you substitute nebulous group-think for focused, independent thought.

3. Engineered obedience training.

Religions are authoritarian hierarchies designed to dominate your free will. They’re power structures that aim to convince you to give away your power for the benefit of those who enjoy dominating people. Religions don’t market themselves as such, but this is essentially how they operate.

Religions are very effective at turning human beings into sheep. They’re among the most powerful instruments of social conditioning. They operate by eroding your trust in your own intellect, gradually convincing you to put your trust into some external entity, such as a deity, prominent figure, or great book...Simply by convincing you to give your power away to something outside yourself, religion will condition you to be weaker, more docile, and easier to control. Religions actively promote this weakening process as if it were beneficial, commonly branding it with the word faith. What they’re actually promoting is submission.

Religions strive to fill your head with so much nonsense that your only recourse is to bow your head in submission, often quite literally. Get used to spending a lot of time on your knees because acts of submission such as bowing and kneeling are frequently incorporated into religious practice. Canine obedience training uses similar tactics.

Have you ever wondered why religious teachings are invariably mysterious, confusing, and internally incongruent? This is no accident by the way — it’s quite intentional.

By putting forth confusing and internally conflicting information, your logical mind (i.e. your neocortex) is overwhelmed. You try in vain to integrate such contradictory beliefs, but it can’t be done. The net effect is that your logical mind disengages because it can’t find a pattern of core truth beneath all the nonsense, so without the help of your neocortex, you devolve to a more primitive (i.e. limbic) mode of thinking. You’re taught that this faith-based approach is a more spiritual and conscious way to live, but in reality it’s precisely the opposite. Getting you to distrust your own cerebral cortex actually makes you dumber and easier to manipulate and control. Karl Marx was right when he said, “Religion is the opiate of the people.”

For example, the Old Testament and the New Testament in the Bible frequently contradict each other with various rules of conduct, yet both are quoted during mass. Church leaders also behave in direct violation of the Church’s teachings, such as by covering up criminal and immoral activities by their own priests. Those who try to mentally process such glaring contradictions as coherent truth invariably suffer for it. A highly conscious person would reject membership in such an organization as patently ridiculous. So-called divine mysteries are engineered to be incomprehensible. You aren’t meant to ever make sense of them since that would defeat the whole purpose. When you finally wake up and realize it’s all B.S., you’ve taken the first step towards freedom from this oppressive system.

The truth is that so-called religious authorities don’t know any more about spirituality than you do. However, they know how to manipulate your fear and uncertainty for their own benefit.

Although the most popular religions are very old, L. Ron Hubbard proved the process can be replicated from scratch in modern times. As long as there are large numbers of people who fear the responsibility of their own power, religions will continue to dominate the landscape of human development.

If you want to talk to God, then communicate directly instead of using third-party intermediaries. Surely God has no need of an interpreter.

5. Support your local pedophile.

In addition to being a serious waste of time, religious practice can also be a huge waste of money.

For starters when you donate to a major religion, you support its expansion, which means you’re facilitating the enslavement of your fellow humans. That isn’t very nice, now is it? If you feel the urge to donate money, give it to a real and honorable cause, not a fabricated one.

Religions offer a suite of special services to generate additional income. They’ll spout some gibberish while feeding you a crusty wafer, pronounce you bonded to a fellow human being, snip some of your excess skin, pour water on your head, proclaim your manhood, cast out your demons, pronounce your transgressions forgiven, and so on. When they can’t think of anything else, they make up some drivel like confirming you’re still loyal to them. The bill may read “suggested donation,” but it’s still a bill.

When you donate money to a religious organization, you’re doing much worse than throwing your money away. You’re actively funding evil. If you think that spending a billion dollars to defend pedophiles and rapists is a good use of your hard-earned cash, perhaps you should run for Pope. You could hardly do worse. At least Wall Street is honest about its greed and lust.

One of my Catholic high school teachers was later revealed to be a repeat child molester… written up in the newspaper and everything. I didn’t see any suspicious behavior at the time, and to be totally honest, I actually liked that teacher and was shocked to learn of his extracurricular activities. He was shuffled from one location to another by those who knew about his appetite for young flesh. I’m glad I wasn’t on the menu, but I feel sad for those who were. Methinks God should raise his standards… just a tad.

Why aren’t Catholic priests allowed to marry? This has nothing to do with what’s written in the Bible or with any benefits of celibacy. This rule was invented by the Church to prevent their priests from producing heirs. When the priests died, their property would go back to the Church, thereby enriching the rich even more. Apparently God needed more cash. It was a very effective policy, as the Church is now among the richest and most powerful organizations on earth. It’s hard to fail when you have a loyal force of lifetime indentured servants who work cheaply and then yield their life savings to you when they die.

Lay religious people (i.e. non-clergy), on the other hand, are encouraged to have lots of babies because that means more people are born into the religion, which means more money and a bigger power base. Condoms are a big no-no; they’re bad for business. Marriage is a big yes; it means more brainwashed babies will be made.

Would you seriously consider this sort of structure a “good cause” worthy of your hard-earned cash?

7. Idiocy or hypocrisy – pick one.

When you subscribe to an established religion, you have only two options. You can become an idiot, or you can become a hypocrite. If you’ve already chosen the former, I’ll explain why, and I’ll use small words so that you’re sure to understand.

First, there’s the idiocy route. You can willingly swallow all of the contrived, man-made drivel that’s fed to you. Accept that the earth is only 10,000 years old. Believe stories about dead bodies coming back to life. Learn about various deities and such. Put your trust in someone who thinks they know what they’re talking about. Eat your dogma. Good boy!

Congratulations! You’re a moron believer. You’ll be saved, enlightened, and greeted with tremendous fanfare when you die… unless of course all the stuff you were taught turns out not to be true. Nah… if the guy in the robe says it’s true, it must be true. Ya gotta have faith, right?

Next, we have the hypocrisy option. In this case your neocortex is strong enough to identify various bits of utter nonsense in the religious teachings that others are trying to ram down your throat. You have a working B.S. detector, but it’s slightly damaged. You’re smart enough to realize that earth is probably a lot older than 10,000 years and that pre-marital (or non-marital) sex is a lot of fun, but some B.S. still gets through. You don’t swallow all the bull, but you still identify yourself as a follower of a particular religion, most likely because you were raised in it and never actually chose it to begin with.

To you it’s just a casual pursuit. You’re certainly not a die-hard fundamentalist, but you figure that if you drink the wine and chew the wafer now and then, it’s good enough to get you a free ride into a half-decent afterlife. You belong to the pro-God club. Surely there’s safety in numbers. Two people can’t be wrong… although 4-1/2 billion supposedly can.

In this case you become an apologist for your own religion. You don’t want to be identified with the extreme fanatics, nor do you want to be associated with the non-believers. You figure you can straddle both sides. On earth you’ll basically live as a non-practitioner (or a very sloppy and inconsistent practitioner), but when you eventually die, you’ve still got the membership card to show God.

Do you realize how deluded you are?

Perhaps if you have to throw out so much of the nonsense to make your chosen belief system palatable, you shouldn’t be drinking the Kool Aid in the first place. Free yourself from the mental baggage, stop looking to others for permission to live, and start thinking on your own. If your God exists, he’s smart enough to see through your fake ID.

8. Inherited falsehood.

Is your religion based on the inspired word of God? No more than this article. Just because someone says their text is divinely inspired doesn’t mean it is. Anyone can claim divine inspiration. The top religions are decided by popularity, not by truth.

Even the central figures in major religions didn’t follow the religions that were spawned in their names. If they didn’t swallow the prevailing “wisdom” about gods and spiritual leaders and such, why should you?

9. Compassion in chains.

Religious rules and laws invariably hamper the development of conscience. When you externalize compassion into a set of rules and laws, what you’re left with isn’t compassion at all. True compassion is a matter of conscious choice, and that requires the absence of force-backed rules and laws.

The more we collectively abandon all religion, the better off this planet will be. This doesn’t mean we have to abandon all spiritual pursuits. It just means we must stop turning spirituality into something it isn’t.

10. Faith is fear.

Religion is the systematic marketing of fear.

Blessed are the poor (donate heavily). Blessed are the meek (obey). Blessed are the humble (don’t question authority). Blessed are the hungry (make us rich while you starve). Blessed are the merciful (if you catch us doing something wrong, let it go). Blessed are the pure of heart (switch off your brain). Blessed are the timid, the cowardly, the fearful. Blessed are those who give us their power and become our slaves.

That’s the kind of nonsense religion pushes on people. They train you to turn your back on courage, strength, and conscious living. This is stupidity, not divinity.

Religion will teach you to fear being different, to fear standing up for yourself, and to fear being an independent thinker. It will erode your self-trust by explaining why you’re unable to successfully manage life on your own terms: You are unworthy. You’re a sinner. You’re unclean. You belong to a lesser caste. You are not enlightened. Of course the solution is always the same — submit to the will of an external authority. Believe that you’re inadequate. Give away your power. Follow their rules and procedures. Live in fear for the rest of your life, and hope it will all turn out okay in the end.

When you practice faith instead of conscious living, you live under a cloak of fear. Eventually that cloak becomes so habitual you forget it’s even there. It’s very sad when you reach the point where you can’t even remember what it feels like to wield creative freedom over your own life, independent of what you’ve been conditioned to believe.

Fear in one part of your life invariably spreads to all other parts — you can’t compartmentalize it. If you find yourself frustrated because you’re too afraid to follow your dreams, to talk to members of the opposite sex, to speak up for yourself, etc., then a good place to start is to rid your life of all religious nonsense. Don’t let fear get a foothold in your consciousness.

Stop trying to comfort yourself by swallowing religious rubbish. If you really need something to believe in, then believe in your own potential. Put your trust in your own intellect. Stop giving away your power.

Dump the safety-in-numbers silliness. Just because a lot of people believe stupid stuff doesn’t mean it isn’t stupid. It just means that stupidity is popular on this planet. When people are in a state of fear, they’ll swallow just about anything to comfort themselves, including the bastion of stupidity known as religion.

*slightly edited*

[dweemeister]

Ready Player One (2018)

On a recent episode of CBS Sunday Morning, author Ernest Cline attributed his debut novel’s success as, “a testament to what happens if you be free about what you love and why you love it.” That novel, filled with 1970s and 1980s pop culture, is Ready Player One, now directed by Steven Spielberg (who, arguably, defined cinema in those decades), co-adapted to the screen by Cline and Zak Penn, and retaining the ideas Cline sought to express. After a run of topical dramas, this is Spielberg’s first legitimately “fun movie” since 2011′s The Adventures of Tintin (as much as I liked 2016′s The BFG, it is tonally scattered). Jaws (1975) and Jurassic Park (1993) scared the pants off of sensitive viewers; E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and Hook (1991) reached into childhood fears amid the entertainment. But of all of Spielberg’s “fun movies”, Ready Player One is the only one that is pure spectacle. Its nostalgia there for show, almost never in service of whatever themes the film happens to stumble upon. This pure spectacle is a fleeting, flashy thrill and little else – take the jump, because despite its weaknesses, there is no film analogous to Ready Player One.

It is 2045 and humans are addicted to the virtual reality world of OASIS. OASIS was designed by co-creators James Halliday (Mark Rylance; whose eccentric character has been deceased for some time) and Ogden Morrow (Simon Pegg; who left the developing company before OASIS became so widespread), who hid an Easter egg requiring three keys within his game. The Easter egg promises the winner ownership of OASIS. Living in a multi-tiered trailer park in Columbus, Ohio, is the orphaned Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), whose OASIS username is Parzival. He befriends one of the game’s best players, Art3mis (the avatar of Samantha Cook, played by Olivia Cooke) on his way to acquire Halliday’s three keys and unearth the game’s deepest secrets that millions have tried to solve. Faster than Wade can tell Samantha, “I wanna be your lover”, she rebuffs his requests to meet her in person because she fears that he will not like the real her.

Everybody wants to rule the world. One corporation, Innovative Online Industries (IOI), has essentially dedicated itself thousands of employees to find the Easter egg to gain full control of OASIS. The CEO of IOI is Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), and he finds himself in conflict with Tye’s friends – who name themselves the “High Five”. The High Five will also include (actual name/username): Helen/Aech (Lena Waithe), Zhou/Sho (Philip Zhao), and Toshiro/Daito (Win Morisaki).

One could spend much longer explaining the world inhabited by the characters, but Ready Player One is up to the challenge of excessive exposition as Penn and Cline’s screenplay spend about twenty minutes with Wade explaining what has happened to 2045 Earth (or, at least, Columbus). The screenplay also refuses to grasp any of the implications of the dystopia it presents – having not read the book, my hope is that Cline does examine those social aspects more. How did the widespread disillusionment in real life that, apparently, the whole world (?) is connected to OASIS come to be? Aren’t humans, even those who believe they have no power, more resilient than that? How can an enormous conglomerate be able to have what basically is a paramilitary that engages in domestic terrorism (police forces exist, if the ending is any indication, so do cops work one day a week or something in 2045)? Given trends in gaming today, are there microtransactions or something similar in the OASIS that creates a class structure replicating itself in the real world and allowing for certain in-game or real-life advantages by class?

Maybe it is just my imagination running away with me, but why the hell are all the best players in the world living in Columbus, Ohio?

One way or another, enduring science-fiction asks questions of its characters’ humanity and dares the reader or viewer to understand, question, and improve their own being. In cinema, Metropolis (1927, Germany) comments on class power struggles and how society is impoverished with a permanent working class; Planet of the Apes (1968) is a sharp allegory of religious and scientific tensions; A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) asks if a synthetic being programmed to simulate love can feel love. Ready Player One’s stake in cinema’s science-fiction tradition is not as weighty as those films, but there are pressing thoughts to be gleamed from the film.

The movie presents fandom that is corporatized, excessive, or taken in moderation, as well as providing an environment of pandemic video game addiction (now a disorder recognized by the World Health Organization). On corporatized fandom, Ready Player One presents audiences with IOI – a combination of video gaming as sweatshop work and individuals whose job it is to know everything about twentieth-century cinematic (I might be a decent candidate in this department but turning it into soul-sucking work is too depressing to think about), comic book, and video gaming culture. Something like IOI is laughable now, but the film stands on it, so perhaps we will not be laughing if something resembling it emerges in the decades to come.

Regarding excessive fan culture, one could argue the whole conception of OASIS is a monument to one man’s uninhibited obsession with elements of pop culture. Ready Player One – at least in this adaptation – is unwilling to examine how damaging one’s fandom, when taken to extremes, can be (the throwaway epilogue in the film’s final frames is not enough). Outside of Halliday’s story, how does one’s fixation on video games or movies or other art forms make actual life easier or more difficult? The epilogue’s reveal that Wade and Samantha no longer log into the OASIS every day makes one wonder how prepared they are to go without a virtual reality where they have essentially lived their lives. Perhaps that latter point belongs to a different movie or the fan-fiction writing corners of the Internet, but the fact that Ready Player One only superficially touches upon these points adds little else to this reference-heavy movie.

What non-readers of Ready Player One may have noticed is the presence of so many popular movie and video game characters. One begins to wonder about how much money was spent on licensing. Many detractors of Ready Player One, who aren’t gonna take it, have commented on how some of the references in the film are shallow, disrespectful of the original source materials. These critiques are mostly beside the point. Take the Iron Giant. The Iron Giant appears as Helen’s avatar in the climactic battle as she/it proceeds to punch the stuffing out of IOI’s mechanized tanks and Mechagodzilla. This goes against the character’s essence: that it will only use violence in cases of self-defense. True, but this is an Internet avatar and the OASIS not necessarily a strict role-playing environment.

Nevertheless, one’s personal sense of fandom always has some degree of appropriation. Understanding a person’s passions and the origin of those passions make for incredible emotional connections that can barely be described. Where Cline’s passion for largely 1970s and ‘80s popular culture is apparent, what about his characters? Halliday is a human compendium of knowledge and trivia of that period – its movies, television, video games, anime, comics, and more. But why does he love those things implemented into OASIS? Why is Wade’s ride a DeLorean? Is it because he identifies with Marty McFly from the Back to the Future series? Artemis has the motorcycle from Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira (1988)? Is she an enormous anime fan, and is Akira a personal favorite anime film? Spielberg, Penn, and Cline need not have crafted indulgent soliloquies for every reference, but the audience is bereft of understanding why these references from these past works appeal so much to Ready Player One’s characters. It does not help that the romantic kindling between Sheridan and Cooke (as Samantha, she is very much ashamed of a sizable birthmark… thankfully, not to Phantom of the Opera levels of shame) is iffy at best.

The BFG was the motion-capture dress rehearsal for Ready Player One. Almost everything that occurs in the OASIS was shot using motion capture – a process that is similar to regular film shooting for actors but is more demanding for visual effects teams. The results produced by these hundreds of visual effects artists for Ready Player One are commendable, but Spielberg regulars cinematographer Janusz Kamiński and editors Michael Kahn and Sarah Broshar (not a Spielberg regular, but co-editor of 2017′s The Post) are more at ease in the non-OASIS scenes in how they use lighting to evoke the decrepit nature of Wade’s neighborhood. Production designer Adam Stockhausen (Wes Anderson’s primary production designer since 2012′s Moonrise Kingdom) makes these towers of trailer homes feel lived in and not soundstage-bound or CGI’d into the film. Contrast that with the sleek, ultramodern headquarters of IOI – which somewhat recalls the aesthetic in the Tron series.

This is only the fourth Spielberg movie not to be scored by John Williams, who withdrew from the project after scheduling conflicts with his work for Dear Basketball (2017), The Post, and Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017). So in comes Alan Silvestri (1994′s Forrest Gump, 2012′s The Avengers), who worked with Spielberg when the latter served as producer on Back to the Future. Outside of the musical quotations Silvestri uses from Back to the Future and other films, his score successfully recalls the orchestral adventurism of 1980s action movies. Several are interspersed throughout, with the most commonly-used motifs – for Wade and Halliday, respectively – incorporated into the main titles. Lushly orchestrated and allowing strings, woodwinds, and brass jumping into the action-packed or romantic frays of the plot, Silvestri’s score is weakest when the cameras are inside IOI’s headquarters and the electronic elements reminiscent of a Marvel movie do little even to increase suspense.

Separate from the score is a ‘70s/’80s soundtrack that many viewers will be familiar with. A dance sequence using the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” echoes John Travolta’s moves in Saturday Night Fever (1977). Many other songs are included in the soundtrack, but they have already been name-dropped in this review to prove a larger point (ahem).

Having already criticized Ready Player One for its insubstantial callbacks, I may be guilty of shameful hypocrisy because of this paragraph. One musical omission that defined Ready Player One’s marketing campaign should have been implemented into the film. “Pure Imagination”, composed by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley for Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), played an important part in setting the tone for Ready Player One’s trailers. Whether integrated into the score or soundtrack, “Pure Imagination” is a widely-known song even to audiences who consider older movies not worth their time. I see Willy Wonka and Ready Player One as distant cousins: a young character embarks on an exhilarating, occasionally dangerous, adventure and – through their actions – will become the loving custodian of another person’s fantastical dream. Such a decision would not be unprecedented in a Spielberg movie. In Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), John Williams used “When You Wish Upon a Star” from Pinocchio (1940) in his score to underline the interstellar optimism and childlike wonderment in both films. Ready Player One never has a moment like that – where the film can make sense and explore the emotions behind what pieces of popular culture enabled the creation of the OASIS.

If this review seems like poop in the punch bowl, that is not my intention. As a self-identified nerd who shuns nerd culture, I enjoyed Ready Player One and got a kick out of identifying the movie and video game characters my eyes could catch in time – I had fun, and that is important in watching movies. If Ready Player One is nothing more than a celebration of how our popular culture tastes makes us who we are, then that is fine. Yet it never asks where such love comes from because that is the most exciting thing we can ever learn about another person.

My rating: 7/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

[l-in-c-future]

Book Reading: Lawless 

It is written by an exceptional legal professional of interesting background how she overcome and learnt from many challenges in seeking to help her clients and oppressed peoples in Afghanistan over more than 8 years of time.

When I first came across her speeches, she used music and dancing rythms as analogy to express how flexibility and creativity was needed to work things around in different situations at a very difficult country. It turned out that when I read her book, her DJ hobbies of able to choose and decide a list of right playsongs to suit different atomspheres helped her creativity and flexibility when she handled cases at various types of formal and informal parts of the judicial and arbitration system in a country where the concept of rule of law is still at embryo stage constrained by a very conservative social-political-religious culture.

It is so interesting that Ms Motley herself is not a typical stereotyped sort of people that the developing world-mind you-part of the developing world that carries heavy pre-conceptualised perceptions on outsiders, especially the West, in particulary USA.

She started her own story in the prologue that she is an American African lady grew up not really in one of the decent likeable areas (Milwaukee-Wisconsin) in USA. While crimes were common for young people as she witnessed, she suggested that even growing up in that sort of areas might already meant a negative social connotations about her background in her own country. And she was frank and honest about it-she never wants her kids to grow up and being sucked in the same bad environment. (It turned out later in her book that despite she worked very hard to provide for her family to move out and ABOVE, her husband felt sort to become a random teenage gun robbery shootings victim when he took their kids back for unversity classmates re-union catch-up. Shocking enough, Ms Motley discovered that the culprit was one of her distant relative on the trail date hearing. The kid didn’t really seem understood the consequences of his actions nor showing any much sense of regrets of what he did.)

For good or bad, the tough environment Ms Motley grew up has been preparing her for the great adventures with the right characters of toughness, boldness, courage and other live surving and professional skills that become essential pillars for later stage of her life. Probably if she wasn’t grow up in such environment and survived through while excelled in her professional career, this book would have never existed because she probably couldn’t handle the tough and challenging environment of building legal capacity of a dangerous country. Adding to Ms Motley’s interesting unusual background is that she was a Mrs Winconsin.  Here is a lady who had battled with where she grew up and became a beauty pageon contest successful candidate for Mrs USA represented her state. A lady one can immediately associates with both musculine sides of characteristic toughness and professional assertion but also fully polished by the congentiality, elegance and beauty of the feminine aspects of a woman. 

Through her descriptions of how she handled and brought sucesses to the cases in the book, these nice marriage of hard and soft attributes truly made a difference-differences of life and death, successes and failures that changed the future of her clients. People who saw her as their life-jackets.

I like that frank, open, easy to read English style in the book. Ms Motley doesn’t pretend that she is a ‘typical superior’ arrogance filled ‘Western experts’ that people perceived towards the Western experts. 

She began her adventures on her own difficulty and predicaments-”I need to earn sufficient money to move my kids out of Milwakee but my humble public prosecutor job doesn’t provide me the money I need. I was already struggling to pay bills by having a second evening teaching jobs to supplement income but here my husband decided to take full time study. Wherever places and jobs that could offer me a ‘way out’ I would consider.” She did. And it was how the stories of the book began. She DID NOT start as many typical Western experts being sent to Afghanistan (or similar parts of the world) because she was at higher starting point.

That was one of the key reasons as she mentioned from time to time in the book she had to stay on to feed her families, especially when her husband was shot in USA, their entire family savings over years of her hard earned works in Afghanistan had been used up mostly. She was faced with scarry HUGE medical bills of her husband that kept her on the treadmill.  In this sense, the feelings is very down to earth. She is not some out of touch pretended experts like her peers who never really stepped outside the typical heavily guarded barracades of ALL Western organisations and complex sites without going out to explore and understand the day to day REAL LIVES of Afghanistan. Sadly, her passions and the genuine professional driving forces for being authentic and down to earth was not much appreciated by some of her employers and peers. In the course of distress and disappointments, she made a very bold and courageous decision to start her own legal pro-bono legal practice. She became the first woman officially practicing legal professions in Afghanistan simultaneously as the first female legal professional from a foreign country. 

Both being blessed as from non-White ethnical background and Ms Motley’s proactiveness in understanding how to maneuouvr around the primative and informative legal and judicial systems of Afghanstan, she is less being perceived as hostile or imperialistic by locals. (She didn’t give herself credits to these but the ways she mentioned in the books senior people all the ways up to President’s office, the Presidents and people within the judicial and tribal systems were willing to meet and listen to her, allowed her to work within and among them fully reflected the reality.) Her communication, negotiation and interpersonal skills (thks to being a Mrs Winsconsin) are valuable assets that enabled her to help her clients in many difficult situations.

As she described the harshness of the challenges she had to deal with and overcome in Afghanistan, she was realistic, pragmatic, flexibile while not giving up hope for future improvements there-though she never say it is a nice fairy tale of sunny days ahead always. In this sense, she is not really fallen into the typical traps of Western countries-too much over or under expectations of what to achieve, get out of and get to because of their fantasy of heroism. Ms Motley had used her creative, flexibility, boldness, passions and extraordinary courage to demonstrate what a ‘hero’ (at least to her clients who she had successfully helped them out-both Afghanistans and foreign clients) very down to earth be prepared to rolled up your sleeves and to sweat and toil constantly.

At the beginning of her journey, she was driven by the desperation to feed her own family but what makes her respectful is that after years of her successful career in Afghanistan, she DEFINTELY has earned very high profile international repuation and goodwill, money and well connections-both internationally and locally back in Afghanistan- that are not comparable to many of her peers. She could have walk herself out of the harsh environment as MANY other typical international high profile foreign experts would have done so already) and make herself ways to earn even more money easier. Yet she chooses to stay. The reasons are clear: she is truly committed to her own passion and the dedication to help the disstressed, oppressed, deseperated and hopeless people-whether they are Afghanistan local people or her other foreign clientele-that sooner or later, one way or the others, somebody will find themselves completely caught up in a lawless primative governance and society environment. 

She is humble enough to see merits and demerits of just applying a Western approach to make the changes in absence of local context. She is prepared to understand how to make out the best legally possible outcomes for her clients WITHOUT compromising her professional integrity (which she insisted that she WOULD NOT play bribe to achieve the ends and she would ALWAYS look at ways within the existing Afghanistan laws, including Islamic laws and legal means within the existing systems to work her clients’ cases out or if not-she failed with integrity or simply walked out decently). She never show she is on ‘upper hands’ to change a country. She sees both what she had learnt from what was and what is within the existing system while bringing the changes to the ecosystem and people’s hearts gradually-probably she might aware of or not aware of the power of transformations she did. 

Persistence.  The book tells how STRONG such persistence becomes pillars of resilience for Ms Motley to stay on her commissioned path without transgression.  How exactly you can feel the strength of a woman? Imagine you work and live ALONE in a foreign place where the ways of life is VERY different from a well organised civilised society.... She described somebody broke into her home turning everything messy (like a typical TV drama or movie) to send her ‘the message’ that “we are unhappy that you took a case that embarassed us or not letting us know (from the most senior level of the government linking to the current President’s office)” in the middle of the night. As a result, she had to stay inside (locked herself up) her car, drove away to a safer street to sleep over and work over the night inside her car until dawn came. In another ocassion, she described she happened to stay in a hotel being attacked by gunfires only that she could manage to be informed of at the last minute. She supposed to be there to relax and had a good bath and some drinks in her little oasis. She literally ran out of her bathroom, still wrapped up in her bathrope, water still dropping from the body when she hid behind some furniture hearing exchanges of gun fires outside the her hotel room at the outside corridor, seeing men running here and there from the windows. And she had to keep ALL these to herself not mentioning anything to worry her family. On the other hand, she was happy to be contacted by her family and connections all around the clock no matther how big or small the matters were. Amazingly, she did not seem to be bother by these mostly in between her lines.

Despite she fought for many legal injustice, she still takes the brunt of victim that easily happens to a successful briliant beautiful gorgeous excellent woman-her own marriage. She didn’t say why her husband and her separated but it isn’t hard to figure out see years of living apart had taken the toll. (Guy! What can you still blame if you just sit COMFORTABLY in USA while your wife fought day and night to bring the LOT of money to feed you and your kids’ in upper middle class lifestyle-the American dream? And that when the guy was wounded and needed HUGE medical bills, the woman was willing to postpone the divorce.) I felt like reading every cases she shared-she probably be an angel sent by heaven to help a difficult country and to her own family. I cannot explain any reason why such determination never shake in years in such dangerous environment and she seemed to be protected divinely. You ask any folk, they would walk out a hundred times, let alone a woman.

I am not going into the details of her cases here because many of her cases shared in the book had probably been long published as international and local media spotlights. However, the person you can read in between lines- that kind of honesty, frankliness and down to the earth that makes a supposed to be ‘typically boring’ full of jardons legal book of bring out justice (actually Ms Motley said it is hard to find justice in a highly injust society, what she strives to achieve is the sense of justness as the best practicable possible outcomes) becomes very interesting to read. I felt like I was reading an adventurous novel of someone’s exotic careers.

At the day when I wrote this book reading-the Trump admin has announced withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan to release the armies to be ready for other difficult parts of the world. Yet, the way for building the capacities of a nation towards a more open modern society in Afghanistan had just begun-and the road is still VERY LONG ahead.  Troops can be witdrawn but the supports and the better approaches to build up the capacities of a country are kids of many long battles. Battling in people’s mindsets and mentality. Battling in finding the right approaches and engagements by wise, tough, humable, flexible, creative and down to earth people like Ms Motley who has commitment to her own passion to pursue possibilities out of the apparently impossibles. 

To the West-if you leave a vaccum, the devil and rogues will find ways to fill the cracks.

“Justness for me entails a common-sense approach to the law. It is about pratical thinking rather than theoratical constructs. I try at all times to take a 360-degree view. The first question is always, “What is going to move this situation forward?” “I can also appreciate the adventures that fighting for justness has taken me on and I am excited about where it will push me to go.”