#he can try to rule kindly and equitably

[manaquisition]

In Hushed Whispers: Briefing and talk with Alexius

Cullen: We don't have the manpower to take the castle. Either we find another way in, or we give up this nonsense and go and get the templars. Cassandra: Redcliffe is in the hands of a magister. This cannot be allowed to stand. Josie: The letter from Alexius asked for the Herald of Andraste by name. It's an obvious trap.

We need to stop arguing [2] How nice of him: Isn't that kind of him. What does Alexius say about me? Alexius made his move

- [2] Leliana: He's so complimentary that we are certain he wants to kill you. Josie: Not this again. Cullen: Redcliffe Castle is one of the most defensible fortresses in Ferelden. It has repelled thousands of assaults. If you go in there, you'll die and we'll lose the only means we have of closing these rifts. I won't allow it. Leliana: And if we don't even try to meet Alexius, we lose the mages and leave a hostile foreign power on our doorstep. Josie: Even if we could assault the keep, it would be for naught. An Orlesian Inquisition's army marching into Ferelden would provoke a war. Our hands are tied! Cassandra: The Magister-... Cullen: Has. Outplayed us.

There must be a way: We can't just give up. There has to be something we can do. I don't think it's over Let's get the templars

Cassandra: We cannot accept defeat now. There must be a solution.

[1] Contact the Arl: Where is the arl of Redcliffe? I'm sure he'd help us get his castle back. This isn't worth the trouble We need another way inside

[1] - Josie: After he was displaced, Arl Teagan rode straight for Denerim to petition the crown for help. I doubt he'll want our assistance once the Ferelden army lays siege to his castle. Leliana: Wait. There is a secret passage into the castle. An escape route, for the family. It's too narrow for our troops, but we could send agents through. Cullen: Too risky. Those agents will be discovered well before they reach the magister. Leliana: That's why we need a distraction. Perhaps the envoy Alexius wants so badly. Cullen: Focus their attention on [PC] while we take out the Tevinters. It's risky, but it could work.

Dorian opens the door rather forcefully and marches into the room as if he owned it. Scout Jim is trying to catch up with him. Dorian: Fortunately, you have help. Jim: This man says he has information about the magister and his methods, Commander. Dorian walks up to the Inquisitor's right and looks around the war table. Dorian: Your spies will never get past Alexius's magic without my help, so if you're going after him, I'm coming along. Jim stands in the open door like he wasn't sure how it worked. Cullen (to the Herald): The plan puts you in the most danger. We can't in good conscience order you to do this. We can still go after the templars, if you'd rather not play the bait. It's up to you.

- The scene fades to black and shows the 'confirm operation' dialogue with Leliana giving the UI the side eye -

[Note: Choosing the mages will make it impossible to work with the templars] Redcliffe Castle and the mages who could close the breach are under the control of Magister Gereon Alexius, a Venatori cultist with an unhealthy interest in [PC] and the power to reorder time itself. He has 'kindly' invited [PC] to the castle - alone - to negotiate. It's an obvious trap, but Leliana and her agents can infiltrate the castle and remove the Venatori threat while Alexius's attention is diverted. A dangerous game, but it's our best chance.

The herald and her party members except Dorian walk away from a wooden double gate (around 4x3m) with two regular-sized doors. For some reason the gate is adorned by a huge Inquisition symbol, the door opens right through the symbol's centre on the blood channel of the sword. Two member of the Venatori await them, they're wearing the same outfit as Alexius earlier, just that their hoods are white and the armoured parts are copper. On top of their faces they're wearing black masks with some sort of antlers or perhaps plumbing. There is low-key ominous background music.

Herald: Announce us.

A blonde human (blue eyes, dark eyebrows, clean-shaven, young-ish) in a blue tunic and green breeches walks forward. "The Magister's invitation was for [Mistress] [Herald] alone. The rest will wait here."

1. Then I'll stay here 2. They're negotiators 3. They go where I go - "Where I go, they go"

- 3 - the man looks at the Herald, who hints a shrug and doesn't move an inch. Then he nods his head, bows lightly after that. The party of 3 follows him, a third Venatori falls in behind them from next to the door and the two with the masks following after.

The herald walks over a green carpet and ascends a set of flat steps towards a throne under a dais leading to a balcony that is flanked by two elephant statues. Fiona is standing on foot of the stairs to the right, Alexius is on the throne, and Felix is standing to his right on the left side of the arc to his father's right hand. The blonde civilian keeps himself to the far right of the carpet. The Venatori guards distribute themselves among the pillars to the side of the room.

Servant: My Lord Magister, the agents of the Inquisition have arrived. Alexius, whose right foot is resting over his left knee, gets up, the chair creaks. Alexius: My friend! It's so good to see you again! <He walks forwards until he stands on top of the first flight of stairs> And your... associates, of course. I'm sure we can work out some arrangement that is equitable to all parties.

Fiona steps forward: Are we mages to have no voice in deciding our fate? Alexius: Fiona, you would not have turned your followers over to my care if you would not trust me... with their lives.

1) Perhaps we should include her: If the Grand Enchanter wants to be a part of these talks, then I welcome her as a guest of the Inquisition. Fiona: Thank you! <she sounds a little surprised> 2) Because you simply ooze trust 3) Let's get to business

Alexius turns around and faces his throne, takes a few seconds to demonstratively seat himself again. Felix looks towards him and seems uncomfortable Alexius: The Inquisition needs mages to close the Breach and _I_ have them, so. What shall you offer in exchange?

1. We have connections: The Inquisition has many backers among the Orlesian nobility. I'm sure we can find suitable compensation. Alexius: I'm not sure what the 'Orlesian nobility' have to offer that I don't already possess. 3. Tell me about the Venatori 4. Nothing 5. I know you want me dead 6. Let's talk about time magic.

Felix: She knows everything, father. Alexius: Felix, what have you done? (in a tone as if he had told him the police might come calling)

1) He's concerned about you: Your son is concerned that you're involved in something terrible. Alexius: So speaks the thief. Do you think you can turn my son against me? (he sounds a bit paranoid) You walk into my stronghold with your stolen mark, a gift you don't even understand, and think you're in control? (the pitch of his voice is different, he seemed pretty reasonable in the Redcliffe tavern, but went full super villain while no one was looking)

2) Your trap has already failed 3) Why are you really here?

The Herald takes a step towards the throne, Alexius takes a step towards the herald, background music is still ominous, Felix keeps looking at his father but has changed from uncomfortable to unhappy

Alexius: You're nothing but a mistake.

1) Who killed the Divine? 3) What was supposed to happen? 6) What is the mark? - If you know so much, enlighten me. Tell me what this mark on my hand is for. Alexius: It belongs to your betters. You wouldn't even begin to understand its purpose.

Felix steps forward. Felix: Father, listen to yourself! Do you know what you sound like? Alexius half turns to look at Felix while Dorian appears from next to a pillar from the side. Dorian: He sounds exactly like the sort of villainous cliché everyone expects us to be. Alexius: Dorian (he does not sound surprised, more tired or annoyed) I gave you a chance to be a part of this. You turned me down. The Elder One has power you would not believe. He will raise the Imperium from its own ashes.

1) Who is the Elder One? - That's who you serve? The one who killed the Divine? Is he a mage? Alexius: Soon, he will become a god. He will make the world bow to mages once more, we will rule from boric oceans to the frozen seas. 3) You're a fanatic 6) What kind of power?

Fiona: You can't involve my people in this! Dorian: Alexius, this is exactly what you and I talked about never wanting to happen! Why would you support this? Alexius stands in front of his throne and looks down Felix: Stop it, father! Give up the Venatori! Let the southern mages fight the Breach and let's go home. Alexius: No. It's the only way, Felix. (He reaches out for his son's arms, upping intensity rather than volume) He can save you. Felix: Save me! Alexius turns away from Felix and towards the throne Alexius: There _is_ a way. The Elder One promised, if I undo the mistake of the temple... Felix: I'm going to die. You need to accept that. Alexius gestures with his left. Alexius: Seize them, Venatori. The Elder One demands this [woman/man]'s life.

Stabbing noises, behind every column a Venatori is being assassinated by an Inquisition scout, 5 in total. Alexius backs off a little, looking agitated. Herald: Your men are dead, Alexius. The music changes to something rather more dramatic Alexius: You... are a mistake. You would never have lived. He raises his right palm and conjures up a green cube on a chain. Dorian counters with something green and formless that looks almost like a rift. Dorian: No! He throws his pell at Alexius, whose hand turns into green crystal. Alexius is thrown off-balance and his spell goes off premature. It's a greenish ripple effect that spreads out, then the scene fades to black.

[duaneodavila]

BARBRI Take the Wheel, ‘SeRiouS’ly

Phew, I passed. As I wrote in March here, I took the February 2018 UBE in Washington state. Thank you to those who reached out with feedback on that article, even the person who called my “amateur unjust ripping” of the bar exam, or what I thought were musings, “deplorable.” Ironically, I did the best on the MBE, the part that I found most challenging and least like the practice of law. Because my BARBRI instructors openly discussed the difficulty to narrow down between the final two answer choices, I thought I was in good company with the ideas in my March post. And I do remember the notion of free speech somewhere.

That said, I thought it might help others to discuss how I prepped for the exam seven years out of law school, while working, and well over the average test-taking age. In a few words, I would describe my approach as brute force immersion with complete rule following.

Do Not Go It Alone

I do not mean to imply that you should not study alone because I did study by myself for a variety of reasons. Instead, do not go without someone or a program to hold you accountable. I knew that I was facing a large re-learning process because of the number of years and the intervening changes in some areas of law such as constitutional law and criminal procedure.  Therefore, I needed a program that would bring me up to speed, and I thought that I would cherry pick my tasks based on my own understanding of my weaknesses.

Instead, the BARBRI Personalized Study Plan (PSP) provided a list of tasks along with options to study early in the process and do extra work before the official plan starter.  Although I am lover of structure and rules, initially I resisted the notion that I would blindly follow this PSP. I bought some other study aids, like flashcards and a book on MBE approach and questions. 

BARBRI Approach: Trust

Numerous BARBRI coaches talked about how if you do the work, you will pass. If you follow the program, you will pass. I wanted to believe them, particularly as I listened to the lectures on subjects that I never took in law school. However, despite being a rule-follower, throughout January, I resisted completely trusting the program. I watched the lectures and did the quizzes plus the practice questions but was worried that the PSP tasks would not be enough.

However, once I wrote the practice MBE at the end of January, the PSP became my boss for the duration. Along with SeRiouS on my phone to calm my nerves when I was away from my laptop where I accessed my PSP, I trusted that if I plodded my way through as much as possible, I would pass.

SeRiouS: New Twist on 80/20 Principle

When I told Gabe Teninbaum that I was studying for the bar, he kindly provided access to his new company, Spaced Repetition Systems or as it appears on my phone, SeRiouS (SRS).  Gabe has used adult learning theories, more precisely, spaced repetition theory, that replaces the idea of cramming with timed repetitive studying based on an algorithm.

I was able to review electronic flashcards that asked me how well I knew the answer after I tapped for the card to show the answer. Based on my responses, a custom set of cards was available for me every day and I could access this anywhere. The spacing of what knowledge is tested when is also based on science and if you wish to learn more, you can read about SRS here.

As I struggled thru the MBE, I could visualize those card answers, particular for lists just as well as I could remember my whiteboards.

Whiteboard It

As part of my extensive BARBRI package, I had access to a tutor. She was very helpful, particularly as I again struggled with hearsay. However, she provided the great idea to use whiteboards in the final weeks of study.

I would pick a topic from the eight main subjects and then try to make no more than two whiteboards from memory. For example, I listed all the crimes I could think of on the board marking whether they were specific or general, plus defenses. I used the acronyms from the course plus many colors (still remain that all specific were red).  A second board had all the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendment highlights. I would do this from memory first and then check my notes and try again. When I had enough verified info, I took pictures of the whiteboards and would look at them on my phone as part of my review. I did make note cards in January but found that those were not as helpful as the whiteboards.

Buzzwords

Finally, it was a challenge to write in IRAC or CIRAC form. After so much time in business, I really have a hard time not recommending quickly, and therefore, leaving out steps in the analysis and losing points. And also, as I mentioned last time, remembering all the elements was a challenge for me. I took a page from my mid-1980s professional accountancy exam and created a document with all the words and phrases used in the essay questions. I started with one for the eight main MBE subjects and created a second one for the essay only subjects. These two documents were created on my computer as I was using it for the exam and hoped that muscle memory would assist me to remember the phrases to always include, for example, in family law: “best interest of the child” or “equitably is not necessarily the same as equally.”

A big thank you to both BARBRI and SRS for their products. #onwards

Mary E. Juetten

Mary E. Juetten lives on the West Coast, holds a J.D., and is both an American and Canadian professional accountant. Mary is passionate about metrics that matter and access to justice. She founded Traklight and Evolve Law and consults as an Access Advocate for LegalShield. You can reach her by email at mejuetten@traklight.com or on Twitter: @maryjuetten.

BARBRI Take the Wheel, ‘SeRiouS’ly republished via Above the Law

[recentnews18-blog]

New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/coalitions-breathtakingly-stupid-response-to-ipcc-climate-report/

Coalition's breathtakingly stupid response to IPCC climate report

It wasn’t too hard to predict what the Coalition government’s responses to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report would be – you just needed to know where they would be making them.

Prime minister Scott Morrison chose two different media forums to espouse his views – that of far Right shock-jock Alan Jones on Radio 2GB, and Sky News, where the lunar right have been gearing up for this event for the past week.

As ABC’s Media Watch host Paul Barry noted of the Sky News “after dark” coverage on Monday: It’s either irresponsible or “bat-shit” crazy. You could categorise the Coalition government’s response along the same lines.

Morrison’s first response, as we reported on Monday, was to promise that Australia would be spending no money on climate change conferences and “all that nonsense.”

He doesn’t dare pull Australia out of the Paris treaty, but he has no intention of doing anything while it’s there. Pretty much Australia’s standard response to international efforts for the last few decades.

“We are not held to any of the (IPCC recommendations), and nor are we bound by them,” Morrison insisted. In short, Morrison was backing miners over scientists, as the Sydney Morning Herald headlined.

In the fantasy world of the Coalition, according to deputy prime minister Michael McCormack, Australia can have its cake and it eat too: He says Australia can keep on burning coal for decades, and encourage others to do so, and still have a tourism industry on the Great Barrier Reef.

McCormack says Australia will not be dictated to by “some sort of report.”

Some sort of report?

The IPCC report is an opportunity to inspire some sort of rational and considered debate. It was timed, quite deliberately, to coincide with the deadline for the rules of the Paris climate treaty to be finalised, and to encourage the world to do more than their down-payment promises made in Paris, as they had agreed.

Any hope that considered debate would emerge would follow was quickly lost.

Treasurer and former energy minister Josh Frydenberg, ditching his pretence of being a moderate, declared: “If we take coal out of our energy system, the lights will go out on the east coast of Australia – it’s as simple as that.”

If you did it all at once, with no planning, then of course. But no one is suggesting that. If you manage the exit, then no, the lights don’t need to go out.

Current energy minister Angus Taylor, the anti-wind campaigner who says there is already too much wind and solar in the grid, did not take kindly to the IPCC’s recommended global renewable energy share of 75-80 per cent by 2050.

Taylor even tried to convince himself that Australia would meet its Paris target, despite the government’s own data which suggests it will miss it by about one billion tonnes on current trajectories.

He and Morrison congratulated Australia for meeting Kyoto, saying it was one of the only countries to meet its targets (the first stage of which allowed for a significant increase, rather than a fall, in Australia’s emissions. That’s not something to boast about).

And even when ministers were not talking to Murdoch media, the outcome was not much better.

In a complete train wreck of an interview, new environment minister Melissa Price – the former mining industry lawyer who is responsible for managing Australia’s emissions – admitted on ABC Radio’s AM program she had not read the whole IPCC report.

Still, she obviously felt she had read enough to suggest its 91 editors and authors had “drawn a long bow,” and insisted that Australia would meet its Paris targets.

please take 5 mins to listen to environment minister @Melissa4Durack‘s car-crash of an interview this morning.

apparently IPCC scientists are drawing a long bow, but the gov’t is going to take a look at the report & has a plan to “build” a billion trees.https://t.co/2ysF24QsuR

— simon holmes à court (@simonahac) October 9, 2018

Asked how, Price then cited the nearly depleted Emissions Reduction Fund, and two institutions that the Coalition has tried to scrap – the Clean Energy Finance Corp and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency – along with the government’s “investment in Snowy 2.0”. And something about “building” one billion trees.

Sure, the CEFC and ARENA are playing an important and welcome role in helping the energy sector reduce emissions to its pro-rata share of the pie. And Snowy 2.0, if it does go ahead, might do a very good job of using coal generation to push water up hill, if the renewables mix does not increase.

But none of Price’s examples explains, remotely, how the government intends to meet an economy-wide 26-28 per cent reduction in emissions, let alone a more ambitious target to play its share of a 2°C scenario, let alone a 1.5°Ç scenarios

Asked about the IPCC’s recommendation that coal be phased out by 2050, Price said: “I just don’t know how you can say by 2050 you are not going to have technology, good clean technology, when it comes to coal. That would be irresponsible of us to commit to that.”

Contrast all these comments from Australia’s cabinet ministers with those of Claire Perry, the UK minister for energy, who says her government will outline its next steps in the next few days:

“I welcome the strong scientific analysis behind today’s IPCC report and its conclusions are stark and sober. As policymakers we need to work together to accelerate the low-carbon transition to minimise the costs and misery of a rapidly warming world.”

Note her use of the words response, science, and the call to action. That was the purpose of the UN report.

But Morrison’s Coalition government didn’t even try, so deep is it in the thrall of its own denial of the science, hiding in the coat-tails of Donald Trump’s Twitter account, and beholden to the script laid out by the conservative forces and vested interests, and outlined in the conservative media.

And just to remind us what this script is, the Australian’s “environment” editor Graham Llloyd – in a piece entitled “UN’s Panel inhabits a universe without  parallel”– suggested it was all part of a plot by the UN to deliver a more equitable sharing of global resources.

Hint: They want to cut your meat pie in half and give it to someone else. That must explain why former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull was eating his meat pie with a knife and fork, so he could cut it evenly. No wonder they ditched him.

The paper’s economics correspondent, Judith Sloan, said the IPCC report wasn’t science but “astrological prophecies.” In an opinion piece titled “If disaster is nigh, we’ll be spared this amateur hour claptrap”, Sloan dismissed the science out of hand and claimed that scientists know nothing about cost-benefit analysis.

But it is Sloan who wilfully ignores it. You certainly wouldn’t want to go on a camping trip with any of this mob – they’d eat everything on the first day, and be on the phone to Gina the next to get helicoptered out.

As ABC’s Paul Barry noted, you might be better off ignoring such tripe, were it not for the fact that this is what is guiding the federal government.

As Opposition spokesman Mark Butler put it today:

“In spite of the clearest possible advice from the world’s most qualified scientists this government has again decided to block their ears and ignore the science, even if it means placing our children and our grandchildren in the face of serious danger.

“Malcolm Turnbull was right when he said, after losing the Liberal leadership yet again, that the Coalition is simply constitutionally incapable of taking action on climate change.”

We are now, quite openly, in the Age of Stupid; or is it the Age of Denial? Whichever it is, let’s just hope that it is over soon.

(Note: The IPCC issued a press release on June 4 announcing they had sent all governments a final draft of the 1.5°C report, so it is highly disingenuous of Price to claim she has had no time to read the report.

GENEVA, June 4 – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is inviting governments to comment on the Final Draft of the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5oC (SR15) ahead of the approval plenary for the SPM at the IPCC’s 48th session in early October.

The IPCC distributed the Final Draft of the report …. to governments on Monday with a request to comment on SPM by 29 July 2018

Source: https://reneweconomy.com.au/coalitions-breathtakingly-stupid-response-to-ipcc-climate-report-46898/

[republicstandard]

New Frontiers of Social Justice

“The enemy of subversive thought is not suppression, but publication: truth has no need to fear the light of day; fallacies wither under it. The unpopular views of today are the commonplaces of tomorrow, and in any case the wise man wants to hear both sides of every question.”-Sir Stanley Unwin

Not long ago, while visiting a friend, I was in a city where one of the major hospitals runs these ads placed on the side of public transportation saying something to the effect of, “We care for all patients” against a rainbow flag backdrop. This is textbook virtue-signaling. Does the Hippocratic Oath not state that you must care for all patients to the best of your ability anyway? What does the implied “inclusiveness” of gender have to do with it? I suppose there’s some wiggle room; after all, you’re also not meant to perform abortions, but like the Constitution, the Hippocratic Oath is a “living document” I guess. The torturing of language has become so commonplace at this point that people are becoming immune to it, but we need to be very careful not to cede any linguistic territory to the Left. This is one of their key strategies, and if it sounds like I’m talking about a war, well…just look at the kind of language they use: “ally,” “combat,” “agent,” “coalition,” “collusion,” etc.

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MSNBC host Joy Reid thinks rural Americans are a “core threat” to democracy. I’m not sure how much of that is posturing, but according to University of Wyoming professors Keonghee Tao Han and Jacqueline Leonard in the article “Why Diversity Matters in Rural America,” published by the Urban Review, “women faculty of color” in particular need to bring the joys of diversity to the last vestiges of America not touched by it through the Trojan Horse of the academy, where not only more faculty (especially women) of color must be employed, but a whole “support team” of people of color must be hired and trained in order to combat “racism” and “bigotry.” The authors summarize their work as follows:

Using critical race theory as an analytical framework to examine White privilege and institutional racism, two teacher educators, in a rural predominantly White university tell counterstories about teaching for social justice in literacy and mathematics education courses… We, women faculty of color, challenge Whiteness and institutional racism with the hopes of: (1) promoting social justice teaching in order to globally prepare (pre-and-in-service) teachers and educational leaders to motivate and empower ALL students to learn; (2) dismantling racism to promote better wellbeing for women faculty of color; and (3) moving educational communities at large closer toward equitable education, which is a fundamental civil right.

This article is a perfect snapshot of where the minds of academia and the “intellectual elites” of this country are. It’s all there: the feminist critique, the inherent racism of (white, rural) homogeneity, the Marxist twist in the form of “equitable education,” the appeals to open borders and globalism, and finally, the self-contained world of academia that continues to perpetuate “knowledge” based on subjective experience and a perversion of formerly respected disciplines. This self-justifying twaddle exists in a “safe space” un-encroached upon by logic, reason, or reality. It’s so easy to write this dross; I could pump this stuff out at a staggering clip. It’s comically easy. Virtually none of it requires any research, and what little there is is either taken out of context, willfully misrepresented, or refers to the similarly-constructed and equally intellectually bankrupt “work” of race and gender “theorists.” Good ideas are good ideas, I don’t care where they come from. There aren’t any here, but there is plenty of Frankfurt School post-modernism and its attendant corollaries such as post-colonialism and gender theory to make up for the lack of original thought. The few definite claims made in this article, after the requisite hemming and hawing about “problematizing” this-and-that, are patently absurd and most are downright harmful.

No terms in the article are precisely defined, the basic framework operates from, as Peter Boghossian has helpfully illustrated, “manufactured epistemology,” and the conflation of a university in rural America with rural America is very disingenuous as they are not even remotely the same thing. And there are questions, so many unanswered questions: What does “challenging whiteness” entail outside of simply existing as a minority in Wyoming and a slew of “raising awareness”-style vagaries? What are some concrete examples of institutional racism? Why do the students need to be “globally prepared”? Why is Han, an “Asian-American,” considered to be a “woman of color” when Northeast Asians otherwise fail to register on the oppression hierarchy? Additionally, I fail to see the pertinence of privilege and racism to literacy and mathematics education, or what the connection is between racism and womanhood, or what, indeed, is meant by “equitable education.”

After reading it in its entirety, and having had to translate it from “academia-ese,” I can confirm that the proposal is, effectively, to use the academy to ferry more diversity into the few remaining pockets of America that are “suffering” from homogeneity, areas that would not otherwise be “enriched” without the academy (or the Section 8 voucher program that has destroyed places like Ferguson, Missouri, by displacing whites with a more “urban” demographic). The two professors do not explain to us why diversity is a good thing—in fact, people in homogeneous areas look far more kindly on the concept of diversity than do people that actually experience diversity on a regular basis. Diversity atomizes communities and erodes trust, health, and well-being in affected areas. Like so much else that suffices for “research” in the “soft sciences” and humanities in the modern academy, this article is almost entirely self-referential and provides the reader with nothing of substance, nothing that could credibly be deemed an argument in the proper sense of the word, and little beyond the hectoring self-righteousness of two people who believe their race imbues them with some kind of inherent superiority over the stump-toothed rednecks they look down their noses at.

As one example of what I’m talking about, many of critical race theory’s earliest touch-stones include the subjective observations of authors (not researchers, not scientists) such as Zora Neal Hurston, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison, post-modernists like Frantz Fanon and Edward Said (the founding father of post-colonialism), and the mixed-race W.E.B. DuBois who is, to use the One Drop Rule the Left strictly adheres to, “African-American.” The “lens” used by Han and Leonard also includes an interrogation of “whiteness,” commonly placed under the critical race theory scholastic sub-heading, Critical Whiteness Studies. As Barbara Applebaum informs us:

“Critical Whiteness Studies is a growing body of scholarship whose aim is to reveal the invisible structures that produce and reproduce white supremacy and privilege.”

Invisible structures. Got that?

Applebaum also says, “For generations, scholars of color, among them Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin (my note: not scholars), and Franz Fanon, have maintained that whiteness lies at the center of the problem of racism” (how exactly is never illuminated with specifics). I wonder if, as “scholars of color,” writing, by the way, during a radically different period in terms of race relations—ie, Jim Crow and the last vestiges of colonialism—they might have drawn conclusions based on their “lived experiences” that may not still be relevant today? I’ve noticed basically every “scholar” of race in contemporary society, when not “de-constructing” “implicit bias” or “invisible structures of ‘racism,’” always dwells incessantly on historical events, events oftentimes beyond any living person’s existence, before ultimately trying to conflate past injustices such as slavery with perceived contemporary injustices by using weasel phrases like “the legacy of which is still with us today,” “the likes of which still exists, albeit in a different form,” or some other imprecise cop-out. Again, no contemporary or non-subjective evidence is ever provided, save fictionalized narratives such as the Michael Brown “incident,” and no argument, other than impossibly broad phrases like “systemic racism” or “invisible structures” (I just love that one), is formulated. Without any kind of specificity, it is impossible to take this kind of “scholarship” seriously.

The basis for “systemic oppression” has now become so broad that, according to Lorraine Code, “Knowing is a political activity.” In Margaret Mead’s terms, “Ignorance excludes groups and individuals from the future by trapping them in co-generational struggles that are prolonged by inherited Western colonialism and enduring political paradigms of what the future should be rather than what can evolve if all voices contribute.” Foucault seemed to believe that there were no absolutes, and that it wasn’t merely a question of knowledge versus ignorance, but of “multiple knowledges.” More on Foucault in a bit. For Kristie Dotson:

Epistemic oppression refers to persistent epistemic exclusion that hinders one’s contribution to knowledge production. The tendency to shy away from using the term “epistemic oppression” may follow from an assumption that epistemic forms of oppression are generally reducible to social and political forms of oppression. While I agree that many exclusions that compromise one’s ability to contribute to the production of knowledge can be reducible to social and political forms of oppression, there still exists distinctly irreducible forms of epistemic oppression.

We are now literally in the realm of the intangible. First “invisible structures,” and now “epistemic oppression.” Epistemic advantage, the inverse of the force of exclusionary knowledge production, is defined by Uma Narayan as “[the oppressed] having knowledge of the practices of both their own contexts and those of their oppressors.” Knowledge production, having received its Marxist bath, becomes another frontier from which to combat “exclusionary practices.” Vanderbilt professor Jose Medina expands:

Foucaultian genealogy offers a critical approach to practices of remembering and forgetting which is crucial for resisting oppression and dominant ideologies. For this argument I focus on the concepts of counter-history and counter-memory that Foucault developed in the 1970’s. In the first section I analyze how the Foucaultian approach puts practices of remembering and forgetting in the context of power relations, focusing not only on what is remembered and forgotten, but how, by whom, and with what effects. I highlight the critical possibilities for resistance that this approach opens up, and I illustrate them with Ladelle McWhorter’s genealogy of racism in Anglo-America.

What he’s referring to is what McWhorter has to say about the most tolerant and open cultural inheritance in human history:

By foregrounding historical material that hegemonic histories and official policies have de-emphasized or dismissed, they [the genealogical researchers] have created an erudite account of scientific racism and eugenics, and in so doing they have critiqued received views and called into question some aspects of the epistemologies that support them.

Though the Left is convinced the study of genetic differences will lead to eugenic policies, which inevitably lead to genocide, they somehow support Planned Parenthood, founded by eugenicist Margaret Sanger. There’s an abortion clinic in practically every inner-city neighborhood. The Left throws their entire weight behind Planned Parenthood and demands federal funding for an organization that specializes in terminating, at a disproportionate clip, the identity voting blocs so coveted by the Democratic Party. Since half of all black babies end up aborted, tell me again how black lives matter, Leftists. Where the Left does not support eugenic policies, they implement ones that are decidedly dysgenic, as the welfare state incentivizes certain partner selection that ultimately has deleterious effects on the gene pool, and the onerous taxes foisted on the middle class renders procreation a luxury. What epistemology are they talking about, the one propped up by the entire academic establishment for disciplines like theirs that are wholly illegitimate? Medina informs us:

“In the 1975-76 lectures, ‘Society Must Be Defended,’ Foucault draws a contrast between ‘the genealogy of knowledges’ and any kind of linear intellectual history such as the history of the sciences: whereas the latter is located at ‘the cognition-truth axis,’ ‘the genealogy of knowledges is located on a different axis, namely the discourse-power axis or, if you like, the discursive practice—clash of power axis.’”

I touched on this a while ago in my articles on Rome, but it warrants further discussion here. Foucault is situating this entirely new paradigm of “knowledge” completely outside of cognition and truth. It is fundamentally anti-intellectual and based on pure subjectivity. The “experiential quality” of “the oppressed” becomes the basis for “legitimate” scholarship. As the Combahee River Collective puts it:

“We have spent a great deal of energy delving into the cultural and experiential nature of our oppression out of necessity because none of these matters have ever been looked at before. No one has ever mentioned the multilayered text of black women’s lives.”

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What does that mean? We can see the impact that Foucault and his ilk’s “counter-histories” have had on the educational experience of every American under the age of forty; the primary events in American history were portrayed as Columbus’s legacy of subjugation and destruction of the native peoples of the “New World,” the Civil War (which was, we are taught only about slavery), large-scale immigration via Ellis Island, and the Civil Rights Movement. The little we learn about the Founding Fathers is that they were slave-holders and their legacy is a racist, oppressive country.

For their crimes, as determined by today’s Cult-Marxists, this legacy must be completely dismantled, and this dismantling must include the United States of America itself.

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[open--love]

Jealousy and Compersion with Multiple Partners

By Elisabeth A. Sheff Ph.D., CASA, CSE The Polyamorists Next Door

From The Lives of the Rich and Famous to Real Housewives of Atlanta, mainstream culture in the US is saturated with jealousy. Popular images of romance cast jealousy as an emblem of true love, because someone must really care if they are jealous, right? The flip side of jealousy, compersion or the warm glow of happiness that comes when one’s lover is happy with one of their other lovers, is so little know that the polyamorists had to make up a word for it.

The majority of polyamorists (and a significant number of serial monogamists) experience jealousy at some point in their relationships. Polys have four primary responses to jealousy, frequently moving among them and combining them so that they can go from freaking out to introspection, through compersion, and back to freaking out again in the same evening.

Freak Out and Want to Control Others

Often, especially when initially exploring polyamory, people who experience jealousy get extremely upset and feel threatened. This feeling of threat can spur the jealous person to want to control others, which often results in a slew of rules that limit how/when/where/who their partners can see, and what/when/how/where they can do/say/think with other people. The idea behind the rules is usually that, if they can arrange things just right and the rules are followed to the T, then no one will feel jealous because the feelings of jealousy will either go away, or situations will be controlled to the point that they no longer provoke jealousy. Usually that doesn’t work, though, and people still experience jealousy, so the rules have to be rewritten to include the new situation that provoked jealousy and new rules about how to interact with others so jealousy will not appear. This strategy often results in an ever-growing list of rules that governs ever-shrinking and circumscribed relationships. Sometimes polys who feel the desire to control others recognize it as a booby trap and talk about it instead of actually trying to do it.

Discussion, Introspection, and Negotiation

Another way people deal with jealousy is to discuss it with their lovers and lover’s lovers or paramours (sometimes called other significant others or OSOs). Speaking openly of jealousy can help to defuse the charge around the situation, and partners can respond by offering reassurances of lasting love and demonstrating appreciation. Practiced polyamorists talk about focusing on the emotions that are underlying the jealousy, often insecurity or fear of loss. By facing those fears directly, polys are able to address the issues head on instead of allowing them to run the show from behind the scenes.

Negotiating the situational and practical elements of the relationship can go a long way towards alleviating jealousy: If one partner is constantly staying home with the kids eating macaroni and cheese when the other is out on dates eating steak and dancing until 3am, it is bound to create jealousy and resentment. By making sure that everyone is getting personal time equitably (regardless of if they are dating or not), and equally distributing fun, money, and work, polys can forestall many of the situations that could provoke jealousy before they even become problems, or address them once they have been identified as problematic.

Anticipate and Overcompensate for NRE

New Relationship Energy, or NRE, is the effervescent feeling that accompanies new love. The rush of new love makes everything associated with that person glow with the brilliance of infatuation and the fun of spontaneity. In contrast, long-standing relationships can seem boring or simply get overshadowed by the brilliance of the NRE. Practiced polys take several steps to overcompensate for NRE, such as making sure to spend time and attention on longer-term relationships as well, being aware of and acknowledging the narcotic effects of NRE, and avoiding making any big life decisions when in the grips of NRE.

Compersion

Compersion is the flip side of jealousy, or the glee of seeing one’s lover falling in love with someone else. Polys who experience compersion liken it to being happy that their partner got a part in a local theater production or was chosen employee of the month – it does not affect the person directly, but they are still happy to see their partner happy and having good things happen, regardless of the nature of those good things. If something brings joy to your partner, then it makes you happy. Practiced polys act in compersive ways like vacating the large bedroom for their partner to host a visiting lover, taking care of kids so their partners can go on dates, and treating their paramours kindly.

It is important to note that compersion must be authentic to truly work. Feigning compersion with forced cheerfulness in the face of pain will only go so far. Talking about discomfort early and often tends to be a far better strategy than “fake it till you make it,” which more often leads to explosion and disaster.

Lack of Jealousy?

A few of the polys in my study reported that not only did they did not feel jealousy, they didn’t really even understand it on a visceral level. They generally related their lack of a jealousy response to either never having learned to be jealous as a child, or to being polyamorous by sexual orientation: Either their upbringing did not emphasize jealousy, or they were not “wired” for jealousy or monogamy. In some cases people’s assertions that they did not experience jealousy seemed a bit too blithe and smacked of superiority to those jealous monogamists and cheaters. In other cases, however, I witnessed people responding with compersion to situations that could have easily provoked jealousy instead. At one poly campout I attended, a man with several lovers spent the first night in the tent with his wife and then spent every other night with a different woman in a different tent. In a situation that could reasonably provoke jealousy, the woman did not appear jealous at all.

On the last night of the campout I finally asked her how she felt about her husband’s absence from their tent. She responded that she was an introvert and liked the space to herself, she got enough attention from him (and others) at different times to meet her needs, and she did not “need to keep him in my back pocket all the time to know he loves me.” Importantly, she emphasized the fact that her needs were getting met on the broader level. Because she felt loved, considered, and safe, she could relax and be comfortable with his camp-ground roving. While jealousy was not an issue for the camping woman and some others, in most polyamorous relationships it comes up at least occasionally and people simply learn to deal with it.

[junker-town]

The unwritten rules of Manny Machado kindly pointing out that he could murder Chris Sale

The Red Sox are throwing at Manny Machado again, so he reminded us all of the violence inherent in the system.

Alright, alright, settle down. It looks like we have some unwritten rules to dig into, and time’s wasting, so we have to act fast. Apparently Chris Sale of the Boston Red Sox threw at ... [squints at notes] ... huh, this reads that it was Manny Machado. That can’t be right.

My intern screwed up again.

Dammit.

You know what, though? Looks like this news report also says Machado. Getting a confirmation here and here, too. This seems legit. Which means the Red Sox have thrown at Machado six times in the last week. They’re trying to set a record.

To get thrown at this much, Machado must have used a Red Sox jersey as a prop in an obscene piece of performance art. Then he must have spent an hour talking about how awful the Dropkick Murphys are while peeing on a Dunkin Donuts bag. Because you can’t be telling me this is still about Machado accidentally sliding a little late. That would be unfathomably dumb.

Okay, maybe it’s Chris Sale just having an uncharacteristic bout of wildness. Total misunderstanding! Let’s just see where the pitch was, according to Texas Leaguers:

Oh. It doesn’t show up on this plot. Maybe that’s a mistake, and MLB Gameday has it.

Well, shoot. That is pretty danged inside. Of the 3,068 pitches Sale has thrown since May 1, 2016, about five of them were even close to that inside.

Let’s give Sale the benefit of the doubt and give him two more that were so wild they couldn’t be plotted. That means there’s about a quarter-of-one-percent chance that this was an accident. Then you remember that Sale is the jersey-slashing bandit, which is basically a gateway drug to making suits made from human skin. I’m willing to believe that he’s not all there. His mind is 30 percent off, if you will. He was probably throwing at Machado because he wanted to.

Or because it gave him a strategic advantage! If you’ll look at the Gameday plot again, note that the at-bat ended with a called strike on a 98-mph fastball on the inside corner. That is cold blooded and old school, and I almost approve.

But I’m burying the lede. Machado is the one making the news because of his post-game quotes:

I’ve seen people call this a threat. This is not a threat. This is a succinct argument against the baseball tradition of throwing baseballs at hitters. And it’s absolutely correct.

If you want a threat, Machado could have made it a threat. “I’m a gonna come out there with a bat,” would be a great way to start. “If he’s got a ball as his weapon, guess what? I have a bat” would be another. There are so many ways to turn the blunt object into a specific threat. “Maybe I’ll just have the weapon that’s available to me, then.”

That’s not what happened. It was an exercise in absurdity to highlight just how inequitable baseball’s unwritten rules are. We’ve had a batter attack another player with a bat, and we’re still talking about it 52 years later. The suspension (10 games) for Juan Marichal was hilariously weak in retrospect, but there was a widespread belief that the incident kept him out of the Hall of Fame for two years. Don’t hit players with bats. Seems like one of the more obvious of unwritten rules.

For a more recent example, Delmon Young was suspended 50 games for throwing his bat at an umpire:

And in a completely applicable example, Machado was once suspended five games for using his bat as something between a weapon and a demonstration of his displeasure.

That was a shameful incident. However, if you give me the choice of standing 90 feet away from Manny Machado throwing a baseball bat at me or standing 60 feet away from Chris Sale throwing a fastball at me, I’ll take the bat every single time, and you would too.

All Machado is saying is that pitchers have an unfair advantage when it comes to expressing their displeasure, and he’s not wrong.

Like, what if baseball thought it was normal for the batter to charge the mound with the bat, but only if he promised to hold the barrel and whip the knob end towards the pitcher’s toes? Just a real good thwack, right on the ol’ piggies. If a toe gets broken, that’s a shame, but most of the time, there will be sore toes and nothing more. It would send a message.

At the very least, imagine a batter chasing a pitcher and trying to do this, straight Benny Hill-style. I’m not even sure what I’m arguing anymore, other than that I really want this to happen. We deserve this addition to the unwritten-punishment arsenal.

Except, while that’s roughly as ridiculous as throwing a baseball at someone, except doing that can’t actually concuss the pitcher or end his career/life. So the pitchers still have the upper hand. The only logical way to make it equitable is to allow batters to wield their potentially fatal tool as a weapon, too, and we know that’s not going to happen.

Why?

Because you can hurt someone with a bat!

But you can hurt someone with a baseball, too.

You just don’t understand the sport. That’s how it’s always been.

It’s nonsense. As Marc Normandin wrote earlier, the real answer is an increase in suspensions for the pitchers who use the baseballs as weapons. With the average velocity of fastballs increasing year after year, baseball is hurtling toward a tragedy. You can kill someone with a baseball. You can kill someone with a baseball bat. Players use one as a weapon regularly because it’s tacitly allowed. They don’t use the other one as a weapon because baseball would freak the hell out.

Baseball should freak the hell out in both instances. It would take a lot of work, a lot of muddling through gray swamps, to determine which pitchers were throwing baseballs at batters on purpose, and it would be a mess to identify the true offenders. But the alternative is to let this stupid infection fester indefinitely.

When people start whining about nanny states and “pussification,” we’ll know that baseball is on the right track. Cross your fingers, everybody.

The alternative is that we could just wait for someone to get killed, whether it’s because of a bat or a baseball. That’s one of the possible solutions, I guess. It sure would take the least amount of work. Manny Machado is right, though. The de facto system of checks and balances is unfair and hypocritical, and I don’t know how much longer baseball can keep the status quo.