#i put these together from a mishmash of parts its not official

[tossyouforedinburgh]

reunited finally

[traditional-with-a-twist]

xxxii. Beauty and Her Beast

@claudeng80 ha ha ‘a title has not helped Obi express himself better’ - truer words never spoken XD Ryuu just processes too slowly to keep up with things, and you’re so right, everyone is still shell-shocked and twisted around!

@bubblesthemonsterartist awwww, yeah, probably safe to say that Obi and Shirayuki are not doing great at seeing the bigger picture here XD I’m a little chagrined, putting them through these situations that push them so far outside their healthy canon!

@the-pompous-potato hahaha thank you for accepting my slightly contrived criteria for the wedding ceremony XD wish I were one of those authors who meticulously researches culture/history but ANS is such a mishmash! You are too sweet about the writing and feels and everything; makes me so happy to know that you’re enjoying it! <3

<<Previous || first arc || second arc || AO3

The first prince entertained very few visitors in the wake of the intensive administrative outpouring surrounding his public address.

There was too much to do, to rebalance the scales and irrigate the neglected areas of his responsibilities.

After revolving on its hinges in the days leading up to the grand announcement, Izana’s door presented now an unyielding front to almost all callers.

When Kiki Seiran presented herself, however, the guards admitted her at once.

...

She found the prince deep in thought, chin resting on a long-fingered hand. 

Only his eyelids flickered in acknowledgement of her entrance. He knew without asking what she had come to deliver to him.

She laid the report on his desk: her official account of their journey north. 

As she backed away, Kiki inclined her head in deference to his position and to the gravity of the task. He had entrusted her with a deep and dangerous secret, and she knew it wouldn’t be the last time.

He regarded her with that slight smile that was more forbidding than another man’s frown. “Your service will not be forgotten, Kiki Seiran.”

It is a compliment, but also a promise.

...

As she turns to go, her eye catches on a pair of figures, plainly visible in the courtyard below through the prince’s sweeping glass doors.

The woman’s hair flames, while the man’s swallows the light. They linger together before parting.

He slides in the direction of the pharmacy; she starts towards the castle.

...

Kiki’s eyes dart towards the prince, but he is watching her, still with that same slight smile.

Izana is enigmatic as a mirrored window. He let you paint your thoughts onto his facade, inviting any interpretation, any fear, no matter how wild. 

All the while, he revealed nothing of himself.

...

Kiki bows herself out.

She knows without knowing how that Shirayuki wants to speak with her, so she goes to make herself available - to intercept the intended second princess before anyone else in the castle does.

Calculating without conscious effort a range of factors from the relative privacy that they might expect, to the likelihood that Shirayuki will seek her there, Kiki positions herself in an alcove with a view of the forest.

...

As she gazes on the waving branches, Kiki thinks of nothing in particular, content to wait, and see.

It is as if her body remembers for her: riding horseback, side by side, perfectly in synch.

She had known the day she met Mitsuhide that he was the man with whom she wished to spend her life. 

Subsequent exposure had served only to confirm, as snarls arose and pulled smooth in a spiral of increasing intimacy.

...

His awkwardness, his uncertainty around her, had gradually transformed from cause for misgivings into evidence in his favor.

She had weighed and measured each of his qualities, each exchange that passed between them, and found him worthy.

She no longer wondered who would preside alongside her at Seiran manor, whose crest would join hers over the fireplace in the great hall, whose name she would carve into the seal of the wooden chest delivered on her birth.

Now she doesn’t even know where he is.

...

Still that wooden chest waited.

As she grew, she had added to its contents: laboriously contrived needlework, then finer things, and more recently the delicately crafted weapons that one might slip under an embroidered sleeve or wear along with layered skirts.

The chest had accompanied Kiki to the palace alongside trunks of finery which she had made use of perhaps twice since arriving: once at the ball where she met Mitsuhide and once to play charades with Zen in the garden.

Shirayuki is smaller than I am, Kiki thought, but some of the simpler shifts might suit her. She could wear one intended for garden parties, sewn at tea-length, without having to pin up the hem.

Such a dress would easily stretch to cover Shirayuki’s ankles and render her acceptable according to the unwritten yet ironclad rules of the game that Shirayuki had decided to play.

...

Kiki had feared for her less when Shirayuki had engaged to play with Zen as her partner.

He wasn’t - hadn’t been - all wise, or impervious to attack, but he was native to it. He was also by nature brave and generous, and that, combined with his own peculiar insights into the hearts of others, meant that he had known when to bow before the rules and when to break them.

Kki had believed they would find a way together, and she had been proud to walk beside them.

...

Now she felt no such assurance.

She wouldn’t say that Shirayuki and Obi were like the blind leading the blind - despite their carelessness and outright willfulness at times, she knew them better than that.

It was more that neither spoke the language of the court from birth - and on whom could they reply to interpret?

Instead of a loving prince, they now relied for patronage on Lord Haruka, a reluctant and embittered enemy, who would have gladly seen them both vanish off the face of the earth had his duty not impelled him otherwise.

...

Kiki shook her head.

She didn’t like it any more than she had before the announcement, news which she had greeted with the grim resignation of one accustomed to witnessing births, marriages, and deaths all managed like pieces on a chessboard, as it suited the political purposes of those in power.

Shirayuki and Obi might have convinced themselves that the game was over, but Kiki knew that it had just begun.

...

...

Shirayuki saw with relief that Kiki didn’t look busy - she was only standing by a window, as if lost in thought.

She approached the other woman shyly, still more relieved when Kiki greeted her with the customary quiet smile.

Friendship was a strange thing: Shirayuki would have trusted Kiki with her life, as she had while sailing on a ship with an evil captain into unknown waters -- but now she felt nervous.

She had never asked Kiki for a favor before.

...

Shirayuki joined Kiki at the window. The thought crossed her mind that her friend looked sad, even as Shirayuki was preoccupied with churning doubts over how to broach such a sensitive subject.

“I,” she faltered, blushing. “I’ve heard that--at least, here in Clarines--”

“I have a dress that will fit you,” Kiki answered, in unhesitating agreement with the question that had yet to be asked. “You won’t need much more than that.”

“Oh,” Shirayuki squeaked. “Really?”

...

“It will be a small ceremony, and you can keep your underclothes.” Kiki paused. “Unless you want silk stockings.”

“What? No, no!” Shirayuki waved her hands, her face flaming. “That’s not--I don’t need…” She stopped when she saw a twinkle in Kiki’s eye.

Shirayuki smiled back weakly. “Thank you. That’s very kind. Very, very kind!”

...

“This way.” Kiki was already in motion. “You can have it from my chambers now.”

“From…?” Shirayuki stumbled to keep up. 

An uneasy thought struck her. “Kiki...is it...your dress?”

“Tell me if it’s too long, and we’ll find a tailor.”

...

“But!” Dismayed, Shirayuki caught at her sleeve.

Kiki looked over her shoulder, her expression gentle. “Don’t worry, Shirayuki…

“...I won’t be needing it.”

[yaehit]

do *you* miss my engineer and want to relive the c h a o s that was the show?

how about coming on down to ao3 to read my story i’m in trouble (oh i’m in trouble)?

summary: in which king takes interest in the new bus rider and learns not to judge a book by its cover.

alternative summary: where king's just trying to figure out his feelings in a slightly different but mayhaps more intense and realistic world

---

chapter one: good guy

King has his head against the window as the bus pulls up to another stop, an AirPod pressed comfortably into one of his ears. To his left, his dearest (while admittedly at times most irritating) friend Bohn, gushes about some medical student that he saved from a lizard, and how he roped him into giving him a rose every day for a month. Honestly the whole thing feels so fictional, that he doesn’t bother listening. He nods politely at his words in an attempt to feign attention.

Bohn very much doesn’t buy it and slaps King’s arm. The gesture forces King to sit up and defend himself.

As he turns to look at his friend, something, well actually someone, catches his eye.

An unfamiliar, but oh wow, really attractive guy, walks onto the bus. He doesn’t look Thai, but it isn’t the only thing that catches what seems to be not just King’s attention. The aura he emanates simply attracts everyone. His dark hair is cleanly styled, and a dreamcatcher tattoo is inked below his left ear. Many of the passengers look towards the newcomer. However, a steely expression graces his strong features and repels anyone from approaching him.

Most importantly, to King at least, he’s wearing the same uniform as other juniors at his university. His eyes are the last to leave the newcomer; they follow him even after he’s passed by his row.

He has definitely never seen him before. He wouldn’t forget someone like that.

Another slap to his arm grounds him. He shoots what he hopes are very sharp and harmful daggers to his friend. They seem to be the equivalent of feathers because Bohn doesn’t waver.

“Did you see that guy?” King can’t help but mull, “He’s so pretty.”

Bohn squints at him. “Not as pretty as Duen.”

King rolls his eyes. He begs to disagree. Sure, he hasn’t really met this Duen guy but, a voice in his mind tells him that Bohn’s wrong.

So he says that. It earns him another slap unfortunately.

“Listen to me,” Bohn childishly whines

He begrudgingly does until they arrive at their school.

When the reach their customary table, Mek and Boss are already coddled up next to each other. The latter seems to be begging his “husband” to assist him with something. Tee is rushing to finish up his homework for his next class. King can’t help but crane his neck over to look at the worksheet.

“You used the wrong formula here,” he points out, “and there’s a computational error over there.”

Tee lets out a huff of frustration, but thanks him nonetheless. King starts to essentially dictate what to write on the page, not wanting his friend to lose any points in the class.

“Oooo, and who do we have here?”

King turns to look towards Boss, who is staring at Bohn. In front of his friend is an admittedly adorable guy, who he can only presume is Duen. The young man looks somewhat afraid. His dark, slightly curled hair is swept to one side. His features are soft and sweet, attractive in a very delicate way. A lab coat rests over his arm, blatantly decreeing his program. He timidly holds a red rose out to Bohn.

His friend takes it with a smile. He pats the younger’s head adoringly.

“This is Duen,” Bohn introduces to the rest of his friend group. Then he promptly wraps an arm around King. “This is King. The one frantically writing is Tee.” The said boy raises his free hand in a somewhat polite wave. While Bohn introduces the married couple, he turns to King and gestures for him to continue. Only after forcing the other to buy him lunch, does he resume explaining the answers to the questions. As Tee finalizes his answers, Boss announces that it’s time for class.

Bohn waves a small goodbye to Duen and the five seniors are off.

King matches his pace with Bohn. He can’t help but tell him that he’s definitely wrong. Sure, the medical student is cute, but the boy on the bus definitely registers higher on the attractiveness scale.

Throughout the day, he can’t help but keep one eye peeled open, hoping to maybe catch another glance of him.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t.

From that day on, Cool Boy (yes, King knows he’s very creative) steps onto the bus every day, and King can’t help but watch him. At some point, complaints have started coming from Bohn and not King. Part of him wants to ask the junior what faculty he’s in, if he can maybe get his number, and most ideally go out on a date. But also King is so sure that he doesn’t even speak Thai.

One day someone, a foreigner, runs onto the bus very confused, somewhat frantic. From what she says, King can only parse out the words “help” and “lost”. While he does know some English, he definitely isn’t the most fluent, which deters him from wanting to speak it.

As he observes no one stepping up to do anything, he is about to tell Bohn to step into the aisle so he can help her when someone walks briskly past him. Cool Boy. He says something in what sounds like perfect English, and the worry disappears from the woman’s face. After a few words, she gives him her phone, and he types out something.

And that makes him so much more attractive for reasons he cannot explain.

Bohn nudges him. “Why are you so red? You haven’t even talked to him.”

King presses the backs of his hands to his face. It’s warm to the touch.

“I don’t think I can,” King reasons. “I doubt he’d understand me even if I spoke to him.”

The look Bohn gives him tells him that he knows it’s an excuse.

“But look what he just did.”

“Maybe he’s just smart and knows two languages. He wouldn’t be going to school here if he didn’t understand Thai.”

King’s eyes narrow. His eyes follow Cool Boy as he passes by him.

“He could be in the international program for all I know and barely know Thai.”

“Could,” Bohn repeats, “But you don’t know for sure until you ask.”

While he doesn’t want to admit it, King knows that his friend is right. Instead of conceding, he requests that Bohn let him admire this man from afar. In peace.

Luckily for him, he’s able to see him a second time, but he seems to be focused on an odd task. Cool Boy has a plate of food, a mishmash of rice and meat set on the grass. A water bottle in one hand, he seems to be looking for something.

He’s probably trying to feed the campus cats.

King waters a nearby plant with the rest of his cup and approaches him.

“Here,” he says as he sticks the cup out towards him.

Cool Boy stares at him with a very neutral expression. King can’t help but admire him and his strong facial structure, long eyelashes, and perfect nose. He’s relieved once he takes the cup. While the younger fills it up, he pesters him, asking him for his name. Firsts he asks in Thai. When he gets no response, he defaults to English, regardless of how embarrassed he feels. He waits for an answer, only to hear silence. The younger’s only sign of acknowledgment is through his gaze, which has somehow become more intense. He has to will himself to not run away.

But that resolves hits the fan the moment the dog comes bumbling towards the plate.

King’s heart flutters a couple of days later when Cool Boy had walked onto the bus one particularly hot day. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows to reveal an intricate tattoo on his right forearm. While yes, he’s terrified of dogs, King can’t help but admire the ink on his skin. He very quickly latches onto Bohn’s arm, shaking it aggressively.

“Do you see that?” Bohn hums in acknowledgment. King finds himself repeating the statement slightly louder. The gesture was not appreciated.

He’s so inexplicably whipped. Cool Boy looks so put together and so handsome, and mysterious. And very much unapproachable. Maybe his attraction to him will stop when this illusion of perfection breaks.

King is wrong.

The next week, Cool Boy runs onto the bus frantically. Accompanying his loud steps is the fluttering of a piece of paper in his hand. Today, he isn’t put together, or that mysterious looking; his typical stony expression is replaced with panic and worry. Red colors his cheeks and King can hear how heavily he’s panting, even with the pen squeezed tightly between his teeth. His hair is unstyled, bangs hanging lightly over his forehead. His uniform’s tie rests loosely around his neck, and his shirt is buttoned wrong. He looks almost normal; the mistakes humanize him. King’s stomach flutters, but for different, more endearing reasons.

Oh. Is that another tattoo on his chest he sees?

“Oh wow. He’s really cute and hot at the same time. I don’t get it. How,” he turns to Bohn, “How is that even humanly possible?”

Bohn groans, somewhat frustrated next to him.

“Can you not for once?” King waves him off.

“Says you, hypocrite.”

When they reach the table, Duen is already there, a flower clasped in his hands, and next to him is an unfamiliar person. Bohn plucks away the rose and presses a kiss to his boyfriend’s(? Bohn hasn’t officially asked him out but they act like boyfriends, and everyone is pushing him to finalize it, but he ignores them, as per usual) cheek.

“This is Phu,” Duen says, “He’s also in the engineering program.”

Phu slightly bows as a greeting and reaches out to shake everyone’s hands. Tee goes out of his way to firmly clasp the junior’s hand with both of his.

“Duen told me that King was really good at tutoring people,” Phu states, “And I was wondering if he could help me? I’m doing really badly in my physics class, and I seriously don’t know what else to do.”

King’s eyebrows furrow in confusion. He didn’t realize that Duen had been so observant. After the whole homework fiasco, he had begun helping Tee actually learn the information rather than using him as an answer key. The other engineering senior seemed grateful nonetheless, constantly praising him for his efforts. King always replied with it wasn’t him, but that Tee was making it all happen. He truly believed in what he said.

“Sure,” he replies.

“What about Ram?” Phu asks Duen, “I thought he was supposed to meet us here.”

The boy’s expression falls a little bit. “He didn’t finish his prelab last night and said he was gonna wake up earlier today to finish it. I guess he thought he could but then he slept through his alarm and didn’t bother setting up more. He’s probably trying to finish it right now.”

Phu laughs. “It’s what he gets for prioritizing his dogs over classwork.”

Duen shrugs but seems to agree.

Five pairs of eyes, including King’s, stare at the juniors expectantly.

“Ram is another engineering student, and my best friend,” Duen explains, “He also needs tutoring.”

King feels his sleeve being pulled next to him.

“I can tutor Phu,” Tee whispers, “and you can help Ram.”

Confusedly, King asks why.

“Just let me do this once please. And you get less work out of it.”

Tee does bring a good point. But King still doesn’t understand the motivation.

Someone pulls him backward. He looks up to be greeted by Mek’s upside-down face.

“Just let lover boy have his opportunity,” he simply states. Tee slaps their friend’s shoulder, telling him to stop, but there’s obviously no truth to his denial.

With a sly smile he nods.

“I think it would be better if we separated the tutoring. Phu can go with Tee,” King pulls Tee into a friendly headlock, “While he might not understand fluid dynamics, I can guarantee he knows everything up to,” he pauses and reads the title of Phu’s class according to the syllabus he gave him, “General Physics II.”

His friend escapes his grasp and snatches the paper out of his hand. He looks expectantly at the junior, nodding confidently. He hands his phone to him.

King doesn’t know if it’s his eyes tricking him, but as he takes Tee’s phone, Phu’s cheeks seem to turn a little bit red.

“And I’ll help Ram,” he concludes.

Duen grins brightly, an expression that bleeds onto Bohn’s face.

“I’ll tell him.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier for me to contact him?”

Duen sheepishly scratches the back of his head. “He doesn’t like having his phone number given out to people he doesn’t know? I’ll bring him around sometime.”

“Sounds good,” King agrees.

Today, King is alone on the bus. Bohn had caught a cold after jumping into a river in an attempt to save Duen’s sister. Things like this don’t happen in real life. Don’t get him wrong, he doesn’t doubt his friend’s account, especially seeing how whipped Bohn is for the medical student, but it feels unbelievable. He would have his AirPods in, but he hadn’t charged them or the case recently. They died after half a song.

He sits back in his regular seat. At his stop, Cool Boy steps onto the bus. His visuals never seem to fail him. How can someone be that attractive?

Someone waves a hand in front of his face. King, thrown out of his haze looks up.

It’s Cool Boy.

He gestures at the seat as if asking if it’s free. King nods.

When he sits down, nothing else happens.

Right now, he’s overwhelmed by how close he is, and the details of his perfection. Part of him wants to reach out and lightly trace over the tattoo with his finger, but he knows its weird and not socially acceptable to do so.

The ride to school is quiet and unnerving. He wishes that Bohn was sitting next to him, even if he wouldn’t shut up about his love life, and more recently how unexpectedly dysfunctional it’s become.

When they arrive at the stop, King feels like he lets go of a breath he didn’t even know he was holding in.

“You aren’t too bad yourself, you know.”

It’s quiet but in perfect Thai.

Before he can say anything else, Cool Boy has already departed.

Oh. He’s a fool. A very big fool.

He doesn’t bother recounting anything to his friends. They would actually clown him out of existence, and it’s the last thing he needs after a morning like this.

On his way to his regular spot, his phone rings in his pocket. It's Bohn.

“Feeling better?”

“He seems to be,” Duen replies.

“At least he’s not alone,” King says to mask his surprise.

The younger man chuckles.

“It’s the least I could do since it was my fault.”

“Bohn was probably being more childish than your sister. Was he pestering you to pay attention to him?”

Duen sighs. King can feel that he’s right.

“Don’t worry too much about it. He gets too jealous too easily.” King found himself getting pretty frustrated with his friend’s attitude. While sometimes Bohn had his points, Duen not always as pure as he seemed, the push and pull never seemed to end. It discredited the both of them, making King very confused.

After a bit of silence, Duen thanks him for his words. A part of King wants to criticize Duen a little bit, but then he remembers to consequences of upsetting the younger and immediately shuts himself up.

Apparently, the recent incident had made Duen so upset that his friends felt it necessary to intervene. While King thought it was a bit dramatic, they declared that after Bohn had completely recovered from his sickness, he would be subject to a series of trials to prove his love to Duen. It seemed childish until he heard that Ram had declared a boxing match with him. Ram, who was apparently a nationally ranked boxer.

He still hadn’t met Duen’s best friend, and he hopes never to.

Maybe he can slide out of this tutoring gig.

“I told Ram to meet you by your table really soon.”

“Yeah, about that, I’m not sure if I can do it anymore. You know with midterms coming up, I have a lot of final projects and studying to do.”

He hears slight murmurs. “Bohn says you wrapped all of your projects up yesterday. And that you don’t need to study.”

His free hand cards through his hair nervously. Of course Bohn would be honest.

“I don’t think he knows what he’s talking about,” King laughs a little, “The cold might be getting to his head.”

“What am I talking about?” Bohn exclaims, “What are you talking about? You were literally celebrating about being done with everything in our group chat last night. Plus, I don’t think you’ll be too unhappy with the arrangement.”

“Okay now you’re just being vague!” King replies equally as loud, “What are you even talking about? This man is threatening to pummel you into the ground, of course, I’m a little bit-”

King’s voice trails off as his eyes meet with the same ones as less than an hour ago.

And there’s nobody else.

He hangs up on his friend and ignores the vibrations in his hand.

“Are you Ram?”

Cool Boy, well more properly Ram, nods.

if you liked that blurb i have written much more (eight chapters to be precise)! come visit i promise i am v nice.

[cpp93227]

18th Floor, Henley Building,5 Queen's Road Central, Hong Kong Tel: +852 2810 0863 Email: info@iplsa.net/

Dated: 23 March 2021

BY POST & BY EMAIL

The Honourable Ms. Michelle Bachelet Jeria

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Palais des Nations CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland

Email: InfoDesk@ohchr.org

Dear High Commissioner,

Responses of the International ProBono Legal Services Association concerning Allegations against China in the “2021 World Human Rights Report” issued by Human Rights Watch

INTRODUCTION

The International ProBono Legal Services Association (IPLSA)

1. The IPLSA was founded in June 2018, as a non-profit organization registered in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Hong Kong) of the People's Republic of China (PRC). 2. The core objectives of the IPLSA are: –

 i. To provide for or assist in the relief of the poor or necessitous persons for the benefit of the Hong Kong community;

ii. For the advancement of legal education, to provide for or assist in the advancement of education, learning or legal concepts;

iii. For the advancement of legal education, to promote international legal exchanges;

iv. For the advancement of legal education and relief of poverty, to promote and motivate youngsters, including young lawyers, to have a greater vision of the global legal framework, and to provide for or assist in the relief of poverty; and

v. For the advancement of legal education, and to patronize all works and matters in respect of legal education for the young lawyers and students.

 Human Rights Watch (HRW)

3. Human Rights Watch is an international, non-governmental organisation that focuses on human rights worldwide, with its headquarters in New York, USA.

4. On 13 January 2021, HRW released a report entitled: “2021 World Human Rights Report” (the Report). The Report covers more than 100 countries, and HRW asserts that its aim is to examine human rights conditions around the world. However, as with their other reports of recent years, the Report has largely targeted China, claiming a human rights deterioration.

5. In its China section, the Report insinuates at the outset that China’s anti-epidemic actions were mere attempts to conceal the outbreak. This is in spite of the fact that China promptly alerted the World Health Organization, and other countries, to the outbreak. The Report even describes the

imposition of lockdowns on Wuhan and several other regions as “acts of authoritarianism”. However, China’s vigorous epidemic prevention and control efforts have been hailed by experts as far-sighted and crucial, with other countries subsequently emulating its example. This slur, however, was simply a foretaste of what follows.

6. The IPLSA finds it extraordinary that what is basically an anti-China rant has been presented to the world as objective reporting. The Report contains extravagant allegations of human rights violations in China, which are defamatory, tendentious and unsubstantiated. It even concludes that “there has been a growing deterioration in China’s human rights situation”, which is far removed from reality, and could have been lifted out of the songbook of any of its geopolitical rivals.

7. As the IPSLA is, in particular, deeply aggrieved at the Report’s misleading picture of the situation in Hong Kong, which will have given observers a wholly false impression, it is left with no choice but to try to put the record straight. As a first step, a media briefing is being scheduled for 23 March 2021 in Room 502 of the Legislative Council Complex, Hong Kong, China.

Xinjiang

8. In recent years, issues related to Xinjiang have been politicized by the HRW, and others. The impression that this is being done in order to discredit China is unavoidable. The report is, frankly, a mishmash of half-baked theories and twisted analyses culled from hostile reports in the Western media. Rumours are treated as facts, slurs are presented as truths, and mountains are made out of molehills. Although catchphrases like “large-scale surveillance”, “forced labour”, “genocide”, and the like are waved around, what is wholly lacking is any attempt at objective reporting.

9. The IPLSA will itself be conducting a fact-finding mission of its own in Xinjiang (and Tibet) in the third quarter of 2021 and will thereafter make its conclusions known to a wider audience, including the HRW, which appears to have relied wholly upon unauthenticated reports and hearsay.

 Hong Kong SAR

10.In relation to Hong Kong, the IPLSA is able to confirm from its experiences on the ground that the Report is primarily fiction. In 2019, an insurrection was launched, which injured many people, including police officers, who were routinely attacked with Molotov cocktails and other weapons, caused huge damage to public and private property, caused many people to lose their jobs as businesses closed, turned universities into bomb factories, blocked highways, preventing people from getting to work and children from attending school, and targeted people from other parts of China or with different opinions, including one man whom the protesters killed with a brick and another they set on fire after he argued with them.

11.Although the Hong Kong Police Force, with bravery and professionalism, saved the city from destruction, without, amazingly, any of the fatalities which have arisen recently in police anti-riot operations in, for example, Chile, France, and the United States, this has been consistently disregarded by the HRW, which is wedded to an anti-China agenda. Although the protest movement and its armed wing sought to destroy Hong Kong and provoke an armed confrontation with Beijing, knowing that this would spell the end of one country, two systems, they did not succeed, and the city has largely returned to normal. Instead of congratulating the city upon its survival and the central government for its restraint, HRW has continued to whitewash the protest movement and its political backers, even though they almost destroyed one country, two systems.

12.It is mind-boggling that, in its Hong Kong reportage, the Report completely disregards the Independent Police Complaints Council, which, in May 2020, issued a 999-page report on the recently concluded protests. It largely exonerated the police force of misconduct in relation to the protest-related violence which began on 9 June 2019, and placed responsibility for the horrors which wracked the city squarely at the feet of its perpetrators, the protest movement and its armed wing. That HRW has disregarded the IPCC report, is, the IPLSA considers, proof positive of its determination to suppress the truth and mislead the world.

13.The Report, moreover, misdescribes the National Security Law for Hong Kong, which was promulgated on 30 June 2020, as “the most aggressive assault on Hong Kong people’s freedom since the transfer of sovereignty in 1997”. In fact, this new law has restored peace and stability to the city, ended the widespread violence and the bombings, been welcomed by businesses and the law-abiding public, and enabled our educational institutions to function again. It has, in short, saved one country, two systems from those who wished to destroy it, knowing full well that, if it failed, this would harm China as a whole, which is precisely what they, and their foreign backers wanted.

14. Once again, however, the Report, in its eagerness to demonize the National Security Law, conceals the important truth that the new law is actually human rights heavy. It even stipulates that, in its application, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights applies (Art.4). It also states that the presumption of innocence must be respected, together with other fair trial guarantees (Art.5), although the Report reveals none of this to its readers. It is, in fact, from start to finish, an exercise in deception.

15.Whereas the Report, moreover, mentions that a “pro-democracy” legislator had to be removed from the acting chairmanship of the Legislative Council’s House Committee, it fails to disclose that this was simply because, for seven months, he abused his position by not only preventing a new chair from being elected, but also blocking the passage of any legislation, thereby frustrating the work of government. In many places, this is tantamount to misconduct in public office, yet the Report seeks to place a favourable gloss upon this systemic abuse of parliamentary procedures. Although it highlights the arrest of various prominent people for their alleged involvement in offences against public order, the Report does not mention that they are all entitled to a fair trial according to law and will only be convicted if prosecutors have proved their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

16.Indeed, although the Report mentions that the media tycoon Jimmy Lai is being prosecuted for participation in an allegedly unauthorized march, it ignores his acquittal last year, after a fair trial, of a charge of criminal intimidation, which speaks volumes for HRW’s real agenda. While the Report plays up the disqualification of particular members of the Legislative Council, it fails to explain that this was because they had violated their oaths of office, with some of them even having urged foreign powers to harm Hong Kong and its officials, something that would be viewed as intolerable throughout the world.

17.As the IPLSA is based in Hong Kong, it is able to provide first-hand accounts of recent events. This is reflected in its report in support of these responses and entitled: The Fallacies about Human Rights Watch’s Report and Facts about Human Rights in China.

RESPONESES

18.In light of these matters, the IPLSA concludes that the Report is unprofessional, biased, and politically tainted. In relation to Hong Kong, key incidents are either ignored, or else distorted and misrepresented. Particular events are taken out of context, and no attempt is made to explain the basis of governmental initiatives. Although basic facts could easily have been ascertained, this has not been done, and this raises real concerns over the motivations of its authors. The Report has been compiled in a way designed to place the PRC in the worst possible light, and to portray a false picture of events in Hong Kong, and this must be called out and condemned unreservedly.

19.Whenever situations like this arise, it not only embarrasses its victims, but also brings human rights reporting in general into disrepute. When such reporting is devalued, it leaves the public uncertain as to what can and cannot be believed, and this affects adversely even genuine areas of concern. The IPLSA, therefore, invites the United Nations to have no truck with the Report, to urge HRW to aspire to objective reporting in future, and to use its good offices to ensure that NGO’s operating in the area of human rights do not debase their operations by mis-reporting of this type. DS

20.If the IPLSA can be of any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@iplsa.net.

Yours sincerely,

INTERNATIONAL PROBONO LEGAL SERVICES ASSOCIATION LIMITED

[angelofberlin2000]

Photo: Emily Denniston/Vulture and photos courtesy of the studios 

Keanu Reeves has been a movie star for more than 30 years, but it seems like only recently that journalists and critics have come to acknowledge the significance of his onscreen achievements. He’s had hits throughout his career, ranging from teen comedies (Bill & Ted’s) to action franchises (The Matrix, John Wick), yet a large part of the press has always treated these successes as bizarre anomalies. And that’s because we as a society have never  been able to understand fully what Reeves does that makes his films so special.

In part, this disconnect is the lingering cultural memory of Reeves as Theodore Logan. No matter if he’s in Speed or Bram Stoker’s Dracula or Something’s Gotta Give, he still possesses the fresh-faced openness that was forever personified by Ted’s favorite expression: “Whoa!” That wide-eyed exclamation has been Reeves’s official trademark ever since, and its eternal adolescent naïveté has kept him from being properly judged on the merits of his work.

Some of that critical reassessment has been provided, quite eloquently, by Vulture’s own Angelica Jade Bastién, who has argued for Reeves’s greatness as an action star and his importance to The Matrix (and 21st-century blockbusters in general). Two of her observations are worth quoting in full, and they both have to do with how he has reshaped big-screen machismo. In 2017, she wrote, “What makes Reeves different from other action stars is this vulnerable, open relationship with the camera — it adds a through-line of loneliness that shapes all his greatest action-movie characters, from naïve hotshots like Johnny Utah to exuberant ‘chosen ones’ like Neo to weathered professionals like John Wick.” In the same piece, Bastién noted: “By and large, Hollywood action heroes revere a troubling brand of American masculinity that leaves no room for displays of authentic emotion. Throughout Reeves’s career, he has shied away from this. His characters are often led into new worlds by women of far greater skill and experience … There is a sincerity he brings to his characters that make them human, even when their prowess makes them seem nearly supernatural.”

In other words, the femininity of his beauty — not to mention his slightly odd cadence when delivering dialogue, as if he’s an alien still learning how Earthlings speak — has made him seem bizarre to audiences who have come to expect their leading men to act and carry themselves in a particular way. Critics have had a difficult time taking him seriously because it was never quite clear if what he was doing — or what was seemingly “missing” from his acting approach — was intentional or a failing.

This is not to say that Reeves hasn’t made mistakes. While putting together this ranking of his every film role, we noticed that there was an alarmingly copious number of duds — either because he chose bad material or the filmmakers didn’t quite know what to do with him. But as we prepare for the release of the third John Wick installment, it’s clear that his many memorable performances weren’t all just flukes. From Dangerous Liaisons to Man of Tai Chi — or River’s Edge to Knock Knock — he’s been on a journey to grow as an actor while not losing that elemental intimacy he has with the viewer. Below, we revisit those performances, from worst to best.

   45. Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

The nadir of the ’90s cyberpunk genre, and a movie so bad, with Reeves so stranded, that it’s actually a bit of a surprise the Wachowskis were able to forget about it and still cast him as Neo. Dumber than a box of rocks, it’s a movie about technology and the internet — based on a William Gibson story! — that seems to have been made by people who had never turned on a computer before. Seriously, watch this shit:

44. The Watcher (2000) This movie exists in many ways because of its stunt casting: James Spader as a dogged detective and Keanu as the serial killer obsessed with him. Wait, shouldn’t those roles be switched? Get it? There would come a time in his career when Keanu could have maybe handled this character, but here, still with his floppy Ted Logan hair, he just looks ridiculous. The hackneyed screenplay does him no favors, either. Disturbingly, Reeves claims that he was forced to do this movie because his assistant forged his signature on a contract. He received the fifth of his seven Razzie nominations for this film. (He has yet to win and hasn’t been nominated in 17 years. In fact, it’s another sign of how lame the Razzies are that he got a “Redeemer” award in 2015, as if he needed to “redeem” anything to those people.)

43. Sweet November (2001) It’s a testament to how cloying and clunky Sweet November is that its two leads (Reeves and Charlize Theron) are, today, the pinnacle of action-movie cool — thanks to the same filmmaker, Atomic Blonde and John Wick’s David Leitch — yet so inert and waxen here. This is a career low point for both actors, preying on their weak spots. Watching it now, you can see there’s an undeniable discomfort on their faces: If being a movie star means doing junk like this, what’s the point? They’d eventually figure it all out.

42. Chain Reaction (1996) As far as premises for thrillers go, this isn’t the worst idea: A team of scientists are wiped out — with their murder pinned on poor Keanu — because they’ve figured out how to transform water into fuel. (Hey, Science, it has been 23 years. Why haven’t you solved this yet?) Sadly, this turns into a by-the-numbers chase flick with Reeves as Richard Kimble, trying to prove his innocence while on the run. He hadn’t quite figured out how to give a project like this much oomph yet, so it just mostly lies around, making you wish you were watching The Fugitive instead.

41. 47 Ronin (2013) In 2013, Reeves made his directorial debut with a Hong Kong–style action film. We’ll get into that one later, because it’s a ton better than this jumbled mess, a mishmash of fantasy and swordplay that mostly just gives viewers a headache. Also: This has to be the worst wig of Keanu’s career, yes?

40. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993)

Gus Van Sant’s famously terrible adaptation of Tom Robbins’s novel never gets the tone even close to right, and all sorts of amazing actors are stranded and flailing around. Reeves gets some of the worst of it: Why cast one of the most famously chill actors on the planet and have him keep hyperventilating?

39. Replicas (2019) In the wake of John Wick’s success, Keanu has had the opportunity to sleepwalk through some lesser sci-fi actioners, and this one is particularly sleepy. The idea of a neuroscientist (Reeves) who tries to clone his family after they die in an accident could have been a Pet Sematary update, but the movie insists on an Evil Corporation plot that we’ve seen a million times before. John Wick has allowed Reeves to cash more random checks than he might have ten years ago. Here’s one of them.

38. Feeling Minnesota (1996) As far as we know, the only movie taken directly from a Soundgarden lyric — unless we’re missing a superhero named “Spoonman” — is this pseudo-romantic comedy that attempts to be cut from the Tarantino cloth but ends up making you think everyone onscreen desperately needs a haircut and a shave. Reeves can tap into that slacker vibe if asked to, but he requires much better material than this.

37. Little Buddha (1994)

To state the obvious, it would not fly today for Keanu Reeves to play Prince Siddhartha, a monk who would become the Buddha. But questions of cultural appropriation aside, you can understand what drew The Last Emperor director Bernardo Bertolucci to cast this supremely placid man as an iconic noble figure. Unfortunately, Little Buddha never rises above a well-meaning, simplistic depiction of the roots of a worldwide religion, and the effects have aged even more poorly. Nonetheless, Reeves is quite accomplished at being very still.

36. Much Ado About Nothing (1993) Quick anecdote: We saw this Kenneth Branagh adaptation of the Bard during its original theatrical run, and when Reeves’s villainous Don John came onscreen and declared, “I am not of many words,” the audience clapped sarcastically. That memory stuck because it encapsulates viewers’ inability in the early ’90s to see him as anything other than a dim SoCal kid. Unfortunately, his performance in Much Ado About Nothing doesn’t do much to prove his haters wrong. As an actor, he simply didn’t have the gravitas yet to pull off this fiendish role, and so this version is more radiant and alive when he’s not onscreen. It is probably just as well his character doesn’t have many words.

35. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) GIFs are a cheap way to critique a performance. After all, acting is a complicated, arduous discipline that shouldn’t be reduced to easy laughs drawn from a few seconds of film played on a loop. Then again …

This really does sum up Reeves’s unsubstantial performance as Jonathan Harker, whose new client is definitely up to no good. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a wonder of old-school special effects and operatic passion — and it is also a movie in which Reeves seems wholly ill at ease, never quite latching onto the story’s macabre period vibe. We suspect if he could revisit this role now, he’d be far more commanding and engaged. But in 1992, he was still too much Ted and not enough anything else. And Reeves knew it: A couple years later, when asked to name his most difficult role to that point, he said, “My failure in Dracula. Totally. Completely. The accent wasn’t that bad, though.” Well …

34. The Neon Demon (2016)

One of the perks of being a superstar is that you can sometimes just phone in an amusing cameo in some bizarro art-house offering. How else to explain Reeves’s appearance in this stylish, empty, increasingly surreal psychological thriller from Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn? He plays Hank, a scumbag motel manager whose main job is to add some local color to this portrait of the cutthroat L.A. fashion scene. If you’ve been waiting to hear Keanu deliver skeezy lines like “Why, did she send you out for tampons, too?!” and “Real Lolita shit … real Lolita shit,” The Neon Demon is the film for you. He’s barely in it, and we wouldn’t blame him if he doesn’t even remember it.

33. The Lake House (2006) Reeves reunites with his Speed co-star for a movie that features a lot fewer out-of-control buses. In The Lake House, Sandra Bullock plays a doctor who owns a lake house with the strangest magical power: She can send and receive letters from the house’s owner from two years prior, a dashing architect (Reeves). This American remake of the South Korean drama Il Mare is romantic goo that’s relatively easy to resist, and its ruminations on fate, love, destiny, and luck are all pretty standard for the genre. As for those hoping to enjoy the actors’ rekindled chemistry, spoiler alert: They’re not onscreen that much together.

32. Henry’s Crime (2011) You have to be careful not to cast Reeves as too passive a character; he’s so naturally calm that if he just sits and reacts to everything, and never steps up, your movie never really gets going. That’s the case in this heist movie about an innocent man (Reeves) who goes to jail for a crime he didn’t commit and then plans a scam with an inmate he meets there (James Caan). The movie wants to be a little quirkier than it is, and Reeves never quite snaps to. The film just idles on the runway.

31. The Bad Batch (2017) Following her acclaimed A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour plops us in the middle of a desert hellscape in which a young woman (Suki Waterhouse) must battle to stay alive. The Bad Batch is less accomplished than A Girl, in large part because style outpaces substance — it’s a movie in which clever flourishes and indulgent choices rule all. Look no further than Reeves’s performance as the Dream, a cult leader who oversees the only semblance of civilization in this post-apocalyptic world. It’s less a character than an attitude, and Reeves struggles to make the shtick fly. He’s too goofy a villain for us to really feel the full measure of his monstrousness.

30. Hardball (2001)

Reeves isn’t the first guy you’d think of to head up a Bad News Bears–style inspirational sports movie, and he doesn’t pull it off, playing a gambler who becomes the coach of an inner-city baseball team and learns to love, or something. It’s as straightforward and predictable an underdog sports movie as you’ll find, and it serves as a reminder that Reeves’s specific set of skills can’t be applied to just any old generic leading-man role. The best part about the film? A 14-year-old Michael B. Jordan.

29. Street Kings (2008) Filmmaker David Ayer has made smart, tough L.A. thrillers like Training Day (which he wrote) and End of Watch (which he wrote and directed). Unfortunately, this effort with Reeves never stops being a mélange of cop-drama clichés, casting the actor as Ludlow, an LAPD detective who’s starting to lose his moral compass. This requires Reeves to be a hard-ass, which never feels particularly convincing. Street Kings is bland, forgettable pulp — Reeves doesn’t enliven it, getting buried along with the rest of a fine ensemble that includes Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, and a pre-Captain America Chris Evans.

28. Constantine (2005) In post-Matrix mode, Reeves tries to launch another franchise in a DC Comics adaptation about a man who can see spirits on Earth and is doomed to atone for a suicide attempt by straddling the divide twixt Heaven and Hell. That’s not the worst idea, and at times Constantine looks terrific, but the movie doesn’t have enough wit or charm to play with Reeves’s persona the way the Wachowskis did.

27. The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) Reeves’s alienlike beauty and off-kilter line readings made him an obvious choice to play Klaatu, an extraterrestrial who assumes human form when he arrives on our planet. This remake of the 1950s sci-fi classic doesn’t have a particularly urgent reason to exist — its pro-environment message is timely but awkwardly fashioned atop an action-blockbuster template — and the actor alone can’t make this Day particularly memorable. Still, there are signs of the confident post-Matrix star he had become, which would be rewarded in a few years with John Wick.

26. Knock Knock (2015) Reeves flirts with Michael Douglas territory in this Eli Roth erotic thriller that’s not especially good but is interesting as an acting exercise. He plays Evan, a contented family man with the house to himself while his wife and kids are out of town. Conveniently, two beautiful young strangers (Ana de Armas, Lorenza Izzo) come by late one stormy night, inviting themselves in and quickly seducing him. Is this his wildest sexual fantasy come to life? Or something far more ominous? It’s fun to watch Reeves be a basic married suburban dude who slowly realizes that he’s entered Hell, but Knock Knock’s knowing trashiness only takes this cautionary tale so far.

25. The Devil’s Advocate (1997)

Very few people bought tickets in 1997 for The Devil’s Advocate to see Keanu Reeves: Hotshot Attorney. Obviously, this horror thriller’s chief appeal was witnessing Al Pacino go over the top as Satan himself, who just so happens to be a New York lawyer. Nonetheless, it’s Reeves’s Kevin Lomax who’s actually the film’s main character; recently moved to Manhattan with his wife (Reeves’s future Sweet November co-star, Charlize Theron), he’s the new hire at a prestigious law firm who only later learns what nefarious motives have brought him there. Reeves is forced to play the wunderkind who gets in over his head, and it’s not entirely convincing — and that goes double for his southern accent.

24. The Prince of Pennsylvania (1988) “You are like some stray dog I never should have fed.” That’s how Rupert’s older hippie pal, Carla (Amy Madigan), affectionately refers to him, and because this teen dropout is played by Keanu Reeves, you understand what she means. In this forgotten early chapter in Reeves’s career, Rupert and Carla decide to ditch their going-nowhere Rust Belt existence by taking his dad (Fred Ward) hostage and collecting a handsome ransom. The Prince of Pennsylvania is a thoroughly contrived and mediocre comedy, featuring Reeves with an incredibly unfortunate haircut. (Squint and he looks like the front man for the Red Hot Chili Peppers.) Still, you can see signs of the soulfulness and vulnerability he’d later harness in better projects. He’s very much a big puppy looking for a home.

23. The Last Time I Committed Suicide (1997) Every hip young ’90s actor had to get his Jack Kerouac on at some point, so it would seem churlish to deny Reeves his opportunity. He plays the best pal/drinking buddy of Thomas Jane’s Neal Cassady, and he looks like he’s enjoying doing the Kerouac pose. Other actors have done so more indulgently. And even though he’s heavier than he’s ever been in a movie, he looks great.

22. A Walk in the Clouds (1995) Keanu isn’t quite as bad in this as it seemed at the time. He’s miscast as a tortured war veteran who finds love by posing as the husband of a pregnant woman, but he doesn’t overdo it either: If someone’s not right for a part, you’d rather them not push it, and Keanu doesn’t. Plus, come on, this movie looks fantastic: Who doesn’t want to hang around these vineyards? Not necessarily worth a rewatch, but not the disaster many consider it.

21. The Replacements (2000) The other movie where Keanu Reeves plays a former quarterback, The Replacements is an adequate Sunday-afternoon-on-cable sports comedy. He plays Shane, the stereotypical next-big-thing whose career capsized after a disastrous bowl game — but fear not, because he’s going to get a second chance at gridiron glory once the pros go on strike and the greedy owners decide to hire scabs to replace them. Reeves has never been particularly great at playing regular guys — his talent is that he seems different, more special, than you or me — but he ably portrays a good man who’s had to live with disappointment. The Replacements pushes all the predictable buttons, but Reeves makes it a little more enjoyable than it would be otherwise.

20. Tune in Tomorrow (1990) A very minor but sporadically charming bauble about a radio soap-opera scriptwriter (Peter Falk) who begins chronicling an affair between a woman (Barbara Hershey) and her not-related-by-blood nephew on his show — and ultimately begins manipulating it. Tune in Tomorrow is light and silly and harmless, and Reeves shows up on time to set and looks extremely eager to impress. He blends into the background quietly, which is probably enough.

19. I Love You to Death (1990)

This Lawrence Kasdan comedy — the first film after an incredible four-picture run of Body Heat, The Big Chill, Silverado, and The Accidental Tourist — is mostly forgotten today, and for good reason: It’s a farce that mostly features actors screaming at each other and calling it “comedy.” But Reeves hits the right notes as a stoned hit man, and it’s amusing just to watch him share the screen with partner William Hurt. This could have been the world’s strangest comedy team!

18. Youngblood (1986)

This Rob Lowe hockey comedy is … well, a Rob Lowe hockey comedy, but we had to include it because a 21-year-old Reeves plays a dim-bulb, good-hearted hockey player with a French Canadian accent that’s so incredible that you really just have to see it. Imagine if this were the only role Keanu Reeves ever had? It’s sort of amazing. “AH-NEE-MAL!”

17. Destination Wedding (2018) An oddly curdled comedy about two wedding guests (Reeves and Winona Ryder) who have terrible attitudes about everything but end up bonding over their universal disdain for the planet and everyone on it. That sounds like a chore to watch, and at times it is, but the pairing of Reeves and Ryder has enough nostalgic Gen-X spark to it that you go along with them anyway. With almost any other actors you might run screaming away, but somehow, in spite of everything, you find them both likable.

16. Thumbsucker (2005)

The first film from 20th Century Women and Beginners’ Mike Mills, this mild but clever coming-of-age comedy adaptation of a Walter Kirn novel has Mills’s trademark good cheer and emotional honesty. Reeves plays the eponymous thumbsucker’s dentist — it’s funny to see Keanu play someone named “Dr. Perry Lyman” — who has the exact right attitude about both orthodontics and life. It’s a lived-in, funny performance, and a sign that Keanu, with the right director, could be a more than capable supporting character actor.

15. Something’s Gotta Give (2003) This Nancy Meyers romantic comedy was well timed in Reeves’s career. A month after the final Matrix film hit theaters, Something’s Gotta Give arrived, offering us a very different Keanu — not the intense, sci-fi action hero but rather a charming, low-key love interest who’s just the supporting player. He plays Julian Mercer, a doctor administering to shameless womanizer Harry Sanborn (Jack Nicholson), who’s dating a much younger woman (Amanda Peet), who just so happens to be the daughter of a celebrated playwright, Erica (Diane Keaton). We know who will eventually end up with whom in Something’s Gotta Give, but Reeves proves to be a great romantic foil, wooing Erica with a grown-up sexiness the actor didn’t possess in his younger years. We’re still not sure Meyers got the ending right: Erica should have stuck with him instead of Harry.

14. Man of Tai Chi (2013) This is the only movie that Reeves has directed, and what does it tell us about him? Well, it tells us he has watched a ton of Hong Kong action movies and always wanted to make one himself. And it’s pretty good! It’s technically proficient, it has a straightforward narrative, it has some excellent long-take action sequences (as we see in John Wick, Keanu isn’t a quick-cut guy; he likes to show his work), and it has a perfectly decent Keanu performance. We wouldn’t call him a visionary director by any stretch of the imagination. But we’d watch another one of these, definitely.

13. Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

Le Chevalier Raphael Danceny is merely a pawn in a cruel game being played by Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont, and so it makes some sense that the young man who played him, Keanu Reeves, is himself a little outclassed by the actors around him. This Oscar-winning drama is led by Glenn Close and John Malkovich, who have the wit and bite to give this 18th-century tale of thwarted love and bruised pride some real zest. By comparison, Danceny is practically a boy, unschooled in the art of manipulation, and Reeves provides the character with the appropriate youthful naïveté. He’s not a standout in Dangerous Liaisons, but he acquits himself well — especially near the end, when his blade fells Valmont, leaving him as one of the unlikely survivors in the film’s ruthless battle.

12. The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (2009) In this incredible showcase for Robin Wright, who plays a woman navigating a constrictive, difficult life with more grace and intelligence than anyone realizes, Reeves shows up late in a role that he’s played before: the younger guy who’s the perfect fit for an older woman figuring herself out. He hits the right notes and never overstays his welcome. As a romantic lead, less is more for Reeves.

11. Parenthood (1989) If you were an uptight suburban dad, like Steve Martin is in Ron Howard’s ensemble comedy, your nightmare would be that your beloved daughter gets involved with a doofus like Tod. Nicely played by Keanu Reeves, the character is the embodiment of every slacker screwup who’s going to just stumble through life, knocking over everything and everyone in his path. But as it turns out, he’s a lot kinder and mature than at first glance. Released six months after Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Parenthood showed mainstream audiences a more grown-up Reeves, and he’s enormously appealing — never more so than when advising a young kid that it’s okay to masturbate: “I told him that’s what little dudes do.”

10. Permanent Record (1988) A very lovely and sad movie that’s nearly forgotten today, Permanent Record, directed by novelist Marisa Silver, features Reeves as the best friend of a teenager who commits suicide and, along with the rest of their friends, has to pick up the pieces. For all of Reeves’s trademark reserve, there is very little restraint here: His character is devastated, and Reeves, impressively, hits every note of that grief convincingly. You see this guy and you understand why everyone wanted to make him a star. This is a very different Reeves from now, but it’s not necessarily a worse one.

9. Point Break (1991)

Just as Reeves’s reputation has grown over time, so too has the reputation of this loopy, philosophical crime thriller. Do people love Point Break ironically now, enjoying its over-the-top depiction of men seeking a spiritual connection with the world around them? Or do they genuinely appreciate the seriousness that director Kathryn Bigelow brought to her study of lonely souls looking for that next big rush — whether through surfing or robbing banks? The power of Reeves’s performance is that it works both ways. If you want to snicker at his melodramatic turn, fine — but if you want to marvel at the rapport his Johnny Utah forms with Patrick Swayze (Bodhi), who only feels alive when he’s living life to the extreme, then Point Break has room for you on the bandwagon.

8. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) and Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991) Before there was Beavis and Butt-Head, before there was Wayne and Garth, there were these guys: two Valley bozos who loved to shred and goof off. As Theodore Logan, Keanu Reeves found the perfect vessel for his serene silliness, playing well off Alex Winter’s equally clueless Bill. But note that Bill and Ted aren’t jerks — watch Excellent Adventure now and you’ll be struck by how incredibly sunny its humor is. Later in his career, Reeves would show off a darker, more brooding side, but here in Excellent Adventure (and its less-great sequel Bogus Journey) he makes blissful stupidity endearing.

7. The Gift (2000) This Sam Raimi film, with a Billy Bob Thornton script inspired by his mother, fizzled at the box office, despite a top-shelf cast: It’s probably not even the first film called The Gift you think of when we bring it up. But, gotta say, Reeves is outstanding in it, playing an abusive husband and all-around sonuvabitch who, nevertheless, might be unfairly accused of murder, a fact only a psychic (Cate Blanchett) understands. Reeves is full-on trailer trash here, but he brings something new and unexpected to it: a sort of bewildered malevolence, as if he’s moved by forces outside of his control. More of this, please.

6. My Own Private Idaho (1991)

Gus Van Sant’s landmark drama is chiefly remembered for River Phoenix’s nakedly anguished performance as Mike, a spiritually adrift gay hustler. (Phoenix’s death two years after My Own Private Idaho’s release only makes the portrayal more heartbreaking.) But his performance doesn’t work without a doubles partner, which is where Reeves comes in. Playing Scott, a fellow hustler and Mike’s best friend, Reeves adeptly encapsulates the mind-set of a young man content to just float through life. Unlike Mike, he knows he has a fat inheritance in his future — and also unlike Mike, he’s not gay, unable to share his buddy’s romantic feelings. Phoenix deservedly earned most of the accolades, but Reeves is terrific as an unobtainable object of affection — inviting, enticing, but also unknowable.

5. Speed (1994)

Years later, we still contend that Speed is a stupid idea for a movie that, despite all logic (or maybe because of the utter insanity of its premise), ended up being a total hoot. What’s clear is that the film simply couldn’t have worked if Reeves hadn’t approached the story with straight-faced sincerity: His L.A. cop Jack Traven is a ramrod-serious lawman who is going to do whatever it takes to save those bus passengers. Part of the pleasure of Speed is how it constantly juxtaposes the life-or-death stakes with the high-concept inanity — Stay above 50 mph or the bus will explode! — and that internal tension is expressed wonderfully by Reeves, who invests so intently in the ludicrousness that the movie is equally thrilling and knowingly goofy. And it goes without saying that he has dynamite chemistry with Sandra Bullock. Strictly speaking, you probably shouldn’t flirt this much when you’re sitting on top of a bomb — but it’s awfully appealing when they get their happy ending.

4. River’s Edge (1987) This film’s casting director said she cast Reeves as one of the dead-end kids who learn about a murder and do nothing “because of the way he held his body … his shoes were untied, and what he was wearing looked like a young person growing into being a man.” This was very much who the early Reeves was, and River’s Edge might be his darkest film. His vacancy here is not Zen cool … it’s just vacant, intellectually, ethically, morally, emotionally. Only in that void could Reeves be this terrifying. This is definitely a performance, but it never feels like acting. His magnetism was almost mystical.

3. John Wick (2014), John Wick: Chapter Two (2017), and John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum (2019)

If they hadn’t killed his dog, none of this would have happened. Firmly part of the “middle-aged movie stars playing mournful badasses” subgenre that’s sprung up since Taken, the John Wick saga provides Reeves with an opportunity to be stripped-down but not serene. He’s a lethal assassin who swore to his dead wife that he’d put down his arms — but, lucky for us, he reneges on that promise after he’s pushed too far. Whereas in his previous hits there was something detached about Reeves, here’s he locked in in such a way that it’s both delightful and a little unnerving. The 2014 original was gleefully over-the-top already, and the sequels have only amped up the spectacle, but his genuine fury and weariness felt new, exciting, a revelation. Turns out Keanu Reeves is frighteningly convincing as a guy who can kill many, many people.

2. A Scanner Darkly (2006)

In hindsight, it seems odd that Keanu Reeves and Richard Linklater have only worked together once — their laid-back vibes would seemingly make them well suited for one another. But it makes sense that the one film they’ve made together is this Philip K. Dick adaptation, which utilizes interpolated rotoscoping to tell the story of a drug cop (Reeves) who’s hiding his own addiction while living in a nightmarish police state. That wavy, floating style of animation nicely complements A Scanner Darkly’s sense of jittery paranoia, but it also deftly mimics Reeves’s performance, which seems to be drifting along on its own wavelength. If in the Matrix films, he manages to defeat the dark forces, in this film they’re too powerful, leading to a pretty mournful finale.

1. The Matrix (1999), The Matrix Reloaded (2003), and The Matrix Revolutions (2003)

“They had written something that I had never seen, but in a way, something that I’d always hoped for — as an actor, as a fan of science fiction.” That’s how Reeves described the sensation of reading the screenplay for The Matrix, which had been dreamed up by two up-and-coming filmmakers, Lana and Lilly Wachowski. Five years after Speed, he found his next great project, which would become the defining role of his career. Neo is the missing link between Ted’s Zen-like stillness and John Wick’s lethal efficiency, giving us a hero’s journey for the 21st century that took from Luke Skywalker and anime with equal aplomb. Never before had the actor been such a formidable onscreen presence — deadly serious but still loose and limber. Even when the sequels succumbed to philosophical ramblings and overblown CGI, Reeves commanded the frame. We always knew that he seemed like a cool, left-of-center guy. The Matrix films gave him an opportunity to flex those muscles in a true blockbuster.

[quantumrpg]

NAME: Jake Ryleigh AGE: 33 SPECIES: Werewolf OCCUPATION: Tattoo Artist YEAR OF DEPARTURE: late 2011 RESIDENT FOR… six years FACECLAIM: Bob Morley

t i m e  i s  a n  i l l u s i o n,  b u t  n o t  o u r  s t o r i e s…

TW: Drug Abuse, Alcoholism, Death, Domestic Abuse, Assault, Racism

When people hear Ely, Minnesota not much comes to mind. Born and raised in small town, USA, population less than 4,000, Jake grew up surrounded by what he fondly refers to as the lower working class. For every family resting comfortably in the working class, there were those that barely managed to scrape by. Small towns aren’t exactly booming with opportunity. Especially, for two high school graduates.

Jake was born to two teenage parents. His mother belonged to a religious, white, middle class family. His father was an immigrant working alongside his brother for a contractor in town with nothing to his name save for work ethic. Needless to say, his grandparents were not pleased with the elopement so Jake has few memories of them from before the age of seven. They were there for no birthdays and holidays; they weren’t even at the hospital when his little sister was born. It wasn’t until his father passed away, victim of a heart attack caused by an undiagnosed health condition, that they surfaced. Jake was seven at the time and from there things quickly swan dived.

His mother struggled to find work without job experience and the small family drowned under the funeral expenses. Although she had to bite her pride, Jake’s mother agreed to live with his grandparents. This arrangement was supposed to last until she got the family on their feet, but his mother took the first out she could find. It came in the form of a toxic relationship, which scars went beyond her to Jake. His sister was too young to remember everything, and that was the only good part of that time period.

By the time Jake was nine years old, his mother managed to get enough footing that they moved into a modest neighborhood. He wound up making his first real friend after the move with a boy that lived close by. His name was Lee Randazzo and the two became an inseparable pair. So much so that they decided to start a band at the age of fourteen. Things were fine enough. He was no stranger to childhood bullying. Kids didn’t understand why his clothes didn’t fit right and why he never had much until they were older, but by then it hadn’t mattered because his mother remarried. Two incomes instead of one made things easier, and Jake already learned that the best way to get by was to laugh first. Even if it was at himself, and having Lee around made it better.

At the age of fourteen, Lee and Jake decided to start a band on a whim. Lee, as discovered by their choir teacher, could actually sing. Jake liked the bass that Lee’s dad kept in the basement. They met Ken, their first drummer, after school. He was a jazz band kid, but he wanted more, and they needed a drummer. Keith came a few months later; then, Jeremy a year later. Lee found them and that was how they built the band. Over the next three years, each of them got a little better at being a band. They started playing locally after school despite their parent’s complaints, and they practiced in Lee’s basement whenever they had the time.

By the time senior year rolled around, Lee, Jake, Jeremy, and Keith were ready to commit to the band 100 percent. Ken was not. Ken wanted college, so he left, and they came to a fork in a road. Luckily for them, Aaron found them and unlike Ken he wanted the band just as much as they did. With Aaron on board, they were able to find the right and venues and Oliver Fink, agent for Hollywood Records, found them.

At nineteen, Jake and the rest of the band moved from Detroit to sunny LA. They all fit it with ease. They were on top of the world, and it stayed that way for five years. Five years and four records was a lot. If they weren’t in the studio they were on stage. Jake loved it. He loved traveling and meeting new people, one of his first serious relationships happened during this time with a girl named Kat. He was living a life he never expected, chasing after a dream and living comfortably alongside his friends.

Lee started to crumble and his drinking and self medicating hit its peak during their second tour. Jake and Aaron begged for Lee to go to rehab. They insisted that putting the band on hold would be worth it if he could get clean. The band wouldn’t keep afloat if they kept cancelling shows and missing rehearsals. Lee insisted he was fine, and for a few months thing seemed that way.

In 2009, their fourth album was in production when Lee went out for the night. Jake planned on going with him to a mutual friends house, but when he got stuck in traffic Lee told him to meet him there. He was only a hour and a half late when he got to their friends house and saw the ambulances surrounding it. Dead on scene, is what the paramedics said. Accidental overdose was the official report on the autopsy. According to their friend, Lee was already at their house when Jake called. There was nothing he could have done, but Jake wasn’t so sure.

In the months after Lee’s death, Jake and the rest of the band tried to get back on their feet. They looked for a new main vocalist, but nothing ever worked. By the time their fourth album released, they knew it would be the last. The band went their separate ways within a month of the album’s release, and Jake? Jake was beginning to crumble under the same demons that took his best friend, and he could see the dead end from a mile away. He made the decision to move from LA to New York on a whim. It was a last ditch attempt to save himself before he was completely lost.

Within his first few months of living in New York, Jake ran into Kat again and the two started dating after a few months of hooking up. Things were going well. As someone that was always more artistically inclined and a fan of tattoos, Jake decided to leave the music scene in lieu of becoming a tattoo artist. His first year as an apprentice was a challenge, but rewarding. He and Kat were supportive of one another’s goals and happy, but things started to go south during the fall of 2011. They started to fight more, and Jake struggled to find the reason why. It wasn’t until he came home one night and saw Kat using in their bathroom that he put two and two together.

If things were different, if there was no Lee, and if Jake hadn’t found himself in a similar place, he would have stayed in the apartment that night and talked things out. Unfortunately, things weren’t like that for Jake and he walked out. He intended to to go to his best friend’s house and return in the morning. Jake was halfway to Silas’s house when his friend convinced him to turn around and go home. Jake made a call to Kat that night to apologize and to say he was coming home. That never happened, though. Instead, he slipped into the liminal space.

What he found was another family in his apartment and no sign of anyone he knew. He had nothing except for what was on his person. While he could look at his friends and family online, it was a one way mirror and no one could see or hear him. Jake began to crumble on his own. This time, there was nowhere and no one to run to in order to save himself. He quickly crumbled to his demons and was fully prepared to let them eat away what was left of himself.

Despite his best intentions, Jake wound up meeting people during his first year in the liminal space. One of them was a girl named Ophelia. Ophelia was fun at first. A nice distraction from the loneliness and anger he felt at not being able to return home. Ophelia was not content with being nothing more than a fling, and she disliked watching Jake spiral so she took matters into her own hands. She bit him. She gave him no choice but to live.

Alone and afraid, Jake spent the first few weeks after being bitten avoiding her at every corner. He met a dormant werewolf and her boyfriend during this time and the two managed to keep him together long enough for the first full moon after Ophelia’s attack. It wasn’t until days before the first shift that Jake realized that he didn’t have much of a choice: he was going to have to live a sober life. It was either that or waste all of his money trying to fight against a body that needed more of everything to feel high.

It’s been six years since he slipped and at times Jake feels the same as he did during the first week. He feels alone and aimless in a place that is real, but not by the standards he used to understand. On other days, he feels almost human. He has a job, and a place to sleep. He’s more in control of himself and his werewolfism with every year, and he has even found himself coping with music and work. There a few people he would consider friends, too. It’s not the same, but it’s fine. Yet, that’s the problem. It’s fine. Every now and then, he revisits his friends and family online. It’s a bittersweet comfort to see that they have moved on, and on some days he’s better at moving on, too.

t e l l  m e, a r e  w e  a  p r o d u c t  o f  w h o  w e  u s e d  t o  b e?

Jake’s a complicated mishmash of a person. On one hand he appears to be a very laidback person in the sense that people can rarely make him mad. Annoyed? Sure. But Jake’s the type to be annoying right back and he does it with the biggest grin. Most people find this infuriating. Jake doesn’t really care. He’s the type of person that goes over like a fart in church for some people. He’s too loud, too talkative, and for some people, too unfocused, for them to take seriously. Despite this being a core of Jake’s personality, it has always functioned as a barrier of sorts. As a kid, it was all armor against anyone trying to pick on him. As an adult, it’s a ruse that makes people feel close to him without actually being close to him. It’s hard to notice that a person is actually distant when they always seem at ease and happy with company. Underneath the ruse, Jake swirls with turbulent emotions and regrets. He’s been hollowed out with loneliness and self hatred. He has always put blame on himself for the things that have happened in his life, and slipping into the liminal space was no different. In order to keep himself afloat underneath the weight of his self loathing he tends to run away. Whether it be by changing his own setting or through humor, Jake’s usual response to his own negative emotions is to distance himself. He’ll go from being lighthearted to numb and blank when he’s alone in his room if he’s reminded of the past. In spite of this, Jake is stubborn and intensely loyal when it comes to other people. It is both a blessing and a curse as he tends to make lasting friends with those he becomes close to, but fails to let go easily, even if it is at his own expense.

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Montana Sticks to Its Patchwork Covid Vaccine Rollout as Eligibility Expands

MISSOULA, Mont. — Montana’s covid-19 vaccine distribution is among the most efficient in the nation, but closer examination reveals a patchwork of systems among counties and tribal governments that will be put to the test as the state opens vaccine eligibility to all people 16 and older starting this month.

This story also ran on Montana Free Press. It can be republished for free.

KHN, Montana Free Press and the University of Montana School of Journalism surveyed all 56 counties and eight tribal governments to find out how vaccine distribution has worked over the past four months and what residents might expect when the floodgates open.

Montana’s rate of covid vaccines given is in the top tier in the nation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 186,500 people — roughly 17% of the state’s population — had been fully vaccinated by the end of March. But that progress papers over a disjointed rollout that’s been left to individual public health departments that are already overstretched. An increasing number of employees have resigned after working long hours while being harassed and blamed for enforcing covid restrictions such as mask mandates. At least 10 counties have lost their top health official in the past year, though many more public health workers have left jobs.

The pressure remains as larger shipments of vaccines arrive and highly contagious variants of the coronavirus spread in Montana. More pharmacies are coming online to administer doses, which is expected to help in the race to vaccinate Montanans. But the task of ensuring everyone who wants a shot gets that chance will likely continue to fall on local health officials.

For those seeking vaccines, the process can be bewildering. In Missoula County, Dennis Klemp qualified early on for the shot as an 81-year-old with kidney disease. Klemp, who doesn’t have a computer, put the county’s health department on his phone’s speed dial and called daily, but he was unable to secure a spot in vaccination clinics that filled within minutes.

“I was pretty despondent,” Klemp said. “There was mass confusion, and I’ve got a lot of friends who were just as confused as I was.”

After spending more than a month trying to book an appointment, Klemp called his local television station for help in February. NBC Montana reporter Maritsa Georgiou said she managed to book an appointment for him over the phone, and she estimated she similarly helped at least 30 others register for vaccines.

There are multiple ways to get a vaccine in Montana. Tribal governments are getting doses to Native Americans and some are also vaccinating non-Natives either through the state or the federal Indian Health Service program. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is a source for veterans, their spouses and caregivers. Federally contracted pharmacies are giving vaccines to the general public after distributing shots in assisted living centers.

For counties and tribes that participate in the state program, a mishmash of strategies has resulted in the absence of a detailed state plan to sign up people for doses. Montana’s patchwork approach is no accident. State leaders deliberately left it up to local governments with few rollout guidelines because they said local leaders know best how to reach their residents.

Some states have set up one-stop vaccine registration systems to bring order to the scramble of the largest vaccine effort in history. But Jim Murphy, head of Montana’s Communicable Disease Control and Prevention Bureau, said that a pandemic wasn’t the time to force a new system on local governments, and that Montana’s approach is working.

“Most of our major providers already have those systems built, so we weren’t going to say, ‘Well, here’s another big road you can take,’” Murphy said. “Just didn’t seem like it would be worth that effort.”

Nicholas Stewart, a senior research scientist at the international health data nonprofit Surgo Ventures, said Montana’s high national ranking, despite its lack of a unified system, has been a surprise.

Montana’s success may be partly due to officials’ familiarity with the inherent challenges that come with delivering health care in the fourth-largest state by land, yet eighth-smallest state by population. Public health workers have long worked to reach isolated people and spot hurdles to accessing care, such as a lack of internet access.

Ideally, states would test different scenarios before expanding vaccine eligibility, but needs have rapidly shifted. “What we have constantly been seeing is decisions are being made on the fly,” Stewart said.

In Carter County, in the southeastern corner of the state, early vaccine efforts faltered because nobody was on hand to administer the shots. The area’s health officer resigned in mid-December and the county had been without a public health nurse since summer. In January, residents eligible for a shot had to drive to neighboring Fallon County, where Carter County had sent its allotment of vaccines to prevent wasting doses.

Trish Loughlin, Carter County’s interim public health nurse, has led the vaccine effort part time since late January. Despite the initial lag, Loughlin said, the county is catching up and everyone who wants a dose should be able to get one by early April.

“The collaboration of a neighboring county is what helped; it’s the only way we did that,” Loughlin said.

Fallon County’s health director also resigned in December. Mindi Murnion, Fallon County’s public health specialist, said residents angry about pandemic-related rules drove out the health director before the county got its first supply of covid vaccines.

“There was a little bit of panic,” Murnion said. “But after we got through that first clinic, now we whip it out like clockwork.”

She said she’s relieved the state let Fallon create its own vaccine plan, which includes calling people already in its system to book appointments and working with other counties to move doses based on need.

“It might not be the way everybody else does stuff, but it’s the way we do stuff,” Murnion said.

In larger counties, a major hurdle is making sure all residents can navigate systems in which they’re competing with thousands for appointments.

Despite Klemp’s difficulty making an appointment by phone, Missoula County set aside 20% of available vaccine appointments for seniors without internet access, according to Adriane Beck, Missoula County’s emergency management director. The county also held an outreach campaign using nonprofit agencies, utility bill inserts and ads run by newspapers and radio and television stations to prod people to make appointments by phone.

But, to the dismay of some, the county doesn’t offer a vaccine waitlist for people struggling to book an appointment.

“From a logistical and just a management perspective, we were not going to be successful and we were not going to meet people’s expectations,” Beck said.

She said making vaccines available to all people over 16 may complicate access for more vulnerable groups until supplies increase. An effort is underway, she said, to reach “stragglers” and homebound residents.

The Flathead Nation’s Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes have outpaced many Montana counties when it comes to vaccine distribution, despite what Health Director Chelsea Kleinmeyer described as a low initial allocation by the state to the tribes. Weeks before the state’s April 1 expansion of eligibility to the general population, tribal health officials were offering shots to all adult tribal members along with descendants and other Native Americans.

Kleinmeyer said tribal health officials relied heavily on community health representatives to identify and contact vulnerable elders. Health officials eventually worked their way to anyone living in an American Indian household along with tribal and nontribal teachers and employees. The Salish and Kootenai Tribes had planned to vaccinate approximately 12,000 people.

“We feel like maybe we hit this saturation point with tribal people on the reservation,” Kleinmeyer said, adding the tribe is now preparing to help nearby counties.

Silver Bow County is using its civic center ticketing system, usually used for concerts and sporting events, as one way to schedule vaccine appointments.

“We thought, if you could get a ticket to go to a basketball game, why couldn’t we do that here? And it worked,” said Karen Sullivan, health officer for Butte-Silver Bow County.

Sullivan said the overall joy that people exhibit at vaccine clinics has been a bright spot during a difficult period. The past year has been one of threats and verbal attacks against her and her staffers for implementing covid restrictions. Sullivan, 62, said she’s considering early retirement after seeing the vaccine rollout through.

“I’m not gonna leave in the middle of this,” Sullivan said. “When we get to the point where we have a great percentage of our people vaccinated, I’ll give retirement some serious thought. I need the rest.”

Eric Dietrich and Chris Aadland of Montana Free Press and Andrea Halland, Antonio Ibarra Olivares, Aidan Morton and Addie Slanger of the University of Montana School of Journalism contributed to this report.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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[songbirdspells]

Local Cultus, One of Many Introspections

There is no singular Greek religion.

Instead, what we think of as the “Greek religion” is a mishmash of multiple city state’s local cultus that share overarching themes and deities. Mingled with the panhellenic ideals of manhood we come up with a generalized idea of a religion that we can all claim to share, even if individual practices vary widely and wildly. The idea of one person worshiping all the aspects of a deity as listed in a place like theoi.com is antithetical to how the ancient society of Hellenes (ancient Greece) would have considered. Instead, each city-state developed rituals, aspects, epithets, and cults that suited themselves and their needs. I will be answering the questions: what is local cultus? How did the Greeks utilize local cultus in their own practice? How can we take that knowledge and use it when building our own practices?

What is local cultus?

Local cultus is the idea and ideal that an area develops practices and beliefs that make sense for that area. Local cultus can be found in multiple areas but there is an origin point. The mystery cults--especially Eleusinian Mysteries--are a great example of this phenomenon. The Eleusinian Mysteries were celebrated by many ancient Greeks all across of the ancient colonies but the epicenter and where the cult developed is in Eleusis. This is why part of the rituals often involved traveling to Eleusis itself. While there were satellite temples (so to speak) who could perform the ritual it was considered best, if possible, to travel to the original site.

Delphi is another example of local cultus that spread beyond its own city-state borders to influence the rest of Greece. “Apollo could be consulted in so many places that the Greeks called him the wandering god. Interestingly, Apollo’s temples as a rule used men as oracles. Only in Delphi did women speak on his behalf” (The Oracle, pg 19, Broad) In a more typical Apollo oracle temple the priests would use less dramatic methods of receiving the divine guidance from Apollo and they functioned in more typical priestly manners, as explained by Broad, “In ancient Greece, priests tended to be symbolic intermediaries between the human and the divine. By contrast, the Oracle merged with the most illustrious of the gods in a holy marriage. She became Apollo’s mouthpiece and her words were the incarnation of his authority”(The Oracle, Broad, pg 11).

Also, they would not limit the types of questions received from the worshipers. Just like Dodona is the only Zeus oracle temple to use the rustle of doves’ wings and the sighing of the trees to hear the god--Delphi is the only oracle temple we know of to use the local landscape. Delphi could not be replicated in another location. In addition, Delphi is the one of the only known locations in which Dionysus and Apollo co inhabited the same temple. During Apollo’s fallow times and at night time, the temple was a celebration of Dionysus, not Apollo.

Instead, in one of antiquity’s most psychologically arresting twists, Apollo’s rowdy younger brother, Dionysus, took control of Delphi, and his devotees joined him in orgiastic rites. Exactly when such worship began is unclear. But certainly by the time of Clea, Plutarch’s friend, Dionysus had held sway at Delphi for at least a half dozen centuries” (The Oracle, Broad, pg 40).

Local cultus is why the historical books and papers will often broach a topic--like priestly duties--but then list many examples of how various locations differed from each other.

But in a cult of many manifestations, which varied according to the sanctuary and the god, the role of the sacrificer was not the only duty of the priest. At Eleusis one of his essential functions was to reveal the sacred objects to the initiated in the course of the ceremony of the epopteia, or the initiation of the second degree. At Ephesus the high priest, later to be known by the persian name of Megabyxus, went at the head of the annual procession in honour of Artemis, and for this he was apparelled in purple and gold, with all his priestly and royal decorations. It was his task to represent the goddess at games and festivals outside the shrine. At Claros the priest might on occasion assume the duties of the prophet.

-Daily Life in the Time of Homer by Emile Mireaux, pg 82-83

I know the quote is rather long but in that one paragraph the author has mentioned three different practices, despite the fact the basic underlying duties remain the same for priests across ancient Greece. Panhellenic (all of Greece) practices do occur--the basics of libations and offerings, the idea of regular social ritual and festivals. But the interpretations of it and why it was done tends to vary from place to place.

So what is local cultus? It is rituals that are localized to your area and your own practice. In Delphi, they grew close to Apollo (and Dionysus) by breathing in mind-altering fumes. In Dodona they listened to the wind and the birds sacred to Zeus. In Athens they honored the great statue of Athena by draping her in the finest work the city could offer. In Eleusis, they found through ritual a way to their own enlightenment and salvation.

How did the Greeks utilize local cultus in their own practice?

“The religion of the Homeric Greek, of all of ancient Greece for that matter, was essentially official. Each city had its gods. It selected them as a rule from the Pantheon of the great deities common to the Hellenic world; but it frequently also had secondary gods of its own. It was bound to these divine deities by a sort of pact which created reciprocal obligations. These deities were in truth members of the city. They had their dwellings there, they had land--a temenos, which was a veritable concession, granted by the state--and they maintained servants. By reason of the services they rendered the community, they had a right to a collective tax, or grant, in the form of sacrifices and ceremonies.

-Daily Life in the Time of Homer by Emile Mireaux, pg 227

Nevertheless, the hard core of Greek religion is to be found in its observances: these took their shape among men whose focus was first the hearth and then the city-state, men moreover whose life and livelihood were tied to crops and herds and the annual cycle of nature. Urbanization brought changes, but we must not make too much of them, for in Greece proper there never was a cosmopolitan city like Alexandria and even the Athenians did not wholly lose touch with the good brown earth.

-Greek Folk Religion by Martin P. Nilsson

Long quotes but all state the same idea which can be found over and over again in historical literature about Greek religious practices; that individual practices were used in the ceremonies both public and private and that they differed from region to region both through necessity and tradition. Just as not everyone celebrates the international duck calling contest every year, not every city state or even town would celebrate the same festivals or use the same observances for shared festivals.

Some examples would include Athens, and the Greater Panathenaea. While all city states who celebrated Athena would come together for typical ritual and festivities, only Athens would spend the better part of the year before the festival with its best weavers carefully putting together a saffron robe to adorn the great statue of Athena. It was their own local way of honoring Athena that was not shared in other city states. While other city states might clothe their statues (a trait shared with other religions of the time), only Athens invested the time and money into providing for the weavers to make the truly gargantuan outfit and would include the drapery in their parade towards the temple.

How and why did local cultus form instead of a country-wide and/or culture-wide religion?

The short, sweet answer is the unique geography of Greece lent itself to small, focused communities. Each city state was often separated by either mountains, sea, or otherwise inhospitable terrain. Travel was common, absolutely, but it was difficult outside of designated paths. Few city states could boast rich soil for good agriculture (part of why olives flourished and flourish in Greece is its poor soil quality is perfect for olives) which further divided the city-states between those who could roughly sustain their own populations and those that required trade to stave off starvation.

Examples of how strongly the local geography can affect the worship practice and religious thoughts of the people we can turn to actually five of the great temples and known worship centers: Delphi for Apollo, Olympia and Dodona for Zeus, Athens for Athena and Sparta for Ares.

Delphi exists high in the mountains in an easy to defend and difficult to find region of Greece. This geographical isolation allowed the temple there to flourish mostly untouched for many of its years. Before it overtook Dodona as the center of prophecy for Greece it was still a place of prophecy with its unique geography allowing it a relatively unknown form of rapture--the steam vent that was uncovered during tectonic shifts that produced an altered mental status. Through this unique geological feature Apollo’s fame as an oracular god spread and Delphi became known as the place to go for grander and less personal prophecies. Because of its eventual fame and staggering wealth, Delphi became a hotspot for statesmen, philosophers and ambitious countrymen alike to mingle--which led to such things as the Delphic Maxims, which were carved on the side of the temple itself and said to come from either Apollo himself or the Seven Sages. However because Delphi was elevated to such a high status in the lore of the time it did not function at all like other Apollo temples.

Olympia--the city-state is mostly known now for the Olympics. But in its heyday it was a hive for oracles, trade and, yes, sports. The flat land surrounding the temple lent itself to truly massive playing fields including a track that could allow up to 40 chariot teams to race at once. Sports of all kinds were widely practiced and celebrated across Greece--to perfect one’s body was seen as a virtue--but the mixing of sports with an oracle temple was unique to Olympia, especially on the scale seen at the temple. Only in one of the few flat plains of Greece could such a temple exist and it lent itself to large, over the top celebrations versus more private and intimate festivals.

Dodona: a study in juxtaposition. When one thinks of Zeus what image is conjured is often big, brash, loud. Dodona reveals in near silence. The true heart of Zeus’ oracle tradition--in Dodona they listened to Zeus’ answers in the soft cooing of the doves or the rustle of the sacred oak leaves. After some time someone introduced singing brass bowls and gongs to Dodona and if the leaves and the doves would not speak the priests would consult the bowls instead.

After a long, arduous trek through the mountains to the quiet valley, visitors would wait their turn to ask Zeus whatever they wished. Some came to thank him. Some came to ask favors. Many came to complain to Zeus about unfair treatment or beg for the proper weather for their crops. While Dodona did have a few peaks of lavish decorations and festivals--it continually returned to its humble roots. Dodona is different from the other temples of Zeus due to both its location and the fact it was originally the sacred place of a different sky-god--of the people who were there before the Greeks. Just like the double-headed axe was added to Zeus’ sacred objects from another sky-god, Dodona became Zeus’ sanctuary only after the Greeks successfully colonized the area. To this day, Dodona remains a quiet place, given to reflection and contemplation.

Athens is the city-state that we know the most about so I will be fairly brief. However, Athens won for both the land it had to use (a decent amount of arable land, a well-sized port, slightly less mountain than most of Greece) and the centralized location to most of Greece. Because of where it was situated it naturally developed a strong line with surrounding city-states as well as a steady back-and-forth with nearby countries like Egypt. And because of this constant flow in and out of the city what Athens truly excelled in was trade, diplomacy and culture. It relied on imports to support itself but that wasn’t a problem for the city that controlled most of the foreign trade market inside Greece.

Due to its location and place within the League, Athens needed a god or goddess that reflected its values of careful thought, witty speeches and bravery. So while Poseidon would have exemplified Athens’ bravery and trade as well bolstered its reputation of a strong, sheltered port, only Athena would do as a patron goddess. Especially since Athens was known for its braggadocio when it came to relations with other city-states and often found the need to defend itself--either through counsels or war. And Athens is a fantastic example of how even one city could have multiple local cults about one goddess with distinct epithets, customs and fulfill different worship needs. In the Pantheon complex alone you can find temples to three different cults of Athena.

Sparta is one of the few city-states that venerated Ares above all others. While all soldiers would participate in rituals honoring Ares, only in Sparta were numerous temples found devoted to the god of war. The Spartans were noted for sacrificing dogs on his altar and participating in various festivals throughout the year that were not noted anywhere else. While the other deities were worshipped in Sparta--there is one particularly barbaric yearly ritual of young boys being whipped on a festival day for Artemis--Ares ruled supreme in a way he did not in other city-states.

The reason for his unusual popularity goes beyond the obvious answer of the fact that Spartans molded their entire society around war. And that reason is found in the Spartan history. No other city state forewent trade and cultural development to the extreme that Sparta did and yet Sparta worked when other city-states would be forced during war time to return to their normal pursuits to sustain the damage and strain that fighting troops can bring to resources and the surrounding landscape.

And why is that? Well, the Spartans had a dirty not-secret. The Spartan region was colonized by the Greeks well after another group of people had settled there for thousands of years. The colonizing Greeks in that region chose not to live side by side with their original settlers (as some other city-states, such as Olbia, did) but chose to subjugate the native peoples. We know them now as “helots”. Helots existed in an odd in-between state between true slave and a free people. They were not bought and sold as slaves were but they were forced to work their family’s plots as sharecroppers and were given meager to no rations by the Spartans who took over their family land.

In addition, they were conscripted into the Spartan army and forced to fight for Sparta. They dressed either like poor people or were forced to wear ridiculous clothing, depending on who you asked, as an outward mark of their social standing. And while not “slaves” they could win their freedom on the battlefield (usually from protecting Spartans). As anyone in logistics knows--at most only about 10% of a fighting force actually fights at any given time. The rest is resources and support. The Spartans maintained their extreme war-like culture, attitude and behavior only by using the helots as their “logistics” while they then spent their time preparing for battle.

Rhodes was the bringing together of two distinct city states, “In 408/7 BCE the old Rhodian city states of Ialysus, Camirus and Lindus united to form one polis and create a joint capital called Rhodes at the northern tip of the island” (Schipporeit). In doing so the people of the region were forced to bring together their cultures and customs as well in order to create a new way of doing things. And so in doing so, despite the fact that Helios was by far the “patron god” of Rhodes--with a distinct local cult, statues, temples, shrines, festivals--all devoted to Helios--there also existed a thriving and evolving local pantheon. While several deities enjoyed local cults within Rhodes, Athena in particular was a particularly strong presence since she had a famous temple at Lindos before the unification.

Rhodes is an interesting case of local myth being shaped by the events of a particular area since there is some proof of why Helios, a relatively minor god outside of Rhodes was chosen as the patron. “Diodorus Siculus (XV 56), quoted above, narrates how the god dried the earth after a flood and fathered a new generation of inhabitants. A slightly different version of the myth is told by Pindar in his seventh Olympian, where he praises the athlete Diagoras of Rhodes after his boxing victory at the Olympic Games in 464 BCE. After the gods divided the world among themselves, they realized that they had forgotten to include Helios in the process. Although Zeus offered to start all over, Helios refused: he had spotted an island still covered by the sea, made it rise and claimed it as his share. Then he coupled with the nymph Rhodos, and from this union were born seven men, the Heliadai.” (Paul) The story of the flood landed can be seen in almost (possibly all?) ancient civilizations speaking to a global event, but Rhodes in particular used it as part of the creation myth of both their island and their people. From there it was a natural choice to choose the god that made their island possible, rather than a ‘more powerful’ deity that already had shown favor to other places.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, I would like to highlight what brings all these examples I examined together. FIrst, the idea that one must embrace the entire deity--with all their aspects--is a very modern idea. I believe it is one brought over by the Christian mythos since it is an idea I myself succumbed too. But as those in the city states outside the cult centers did not worship Demeter as a judge or Aphrodite as an abstract being of lust or Posideon as an oracle god; if we are being true to historical accuracy we do not necessarily need to embrace all aspects of a god. After all, as R.P. Lister mentions in the introduction to The Travels of Herodotus, “The Greeks originated two revolutionary concepts that affected human history and have affected it ever since. [...] THe other was the idea of philosophical and scientific enquiries made in a free spirit, with the sole desire to ascertain the truth.” (pg 27) By using this philosophy we can turn to ourselves, our deities and also our observations of our nearby areas to discern if the deities are present in our lives or our local living spaces in a way that is not historically attested. The deities were living, growing creatures at their height but there is no reason they cannot live and grow the same now. Perhaps in an urban city Demeter is the goddess of the local mediation courts or the goddess of the cottage industries. Artemis could be the goddess of the local CPS.

While we always should strive to be respectful to the gods, it is clear that the ancient Greeks desired their pantheon to be in every aspect of their daily lives and invited the deities into areas they were not typically rulers of. And most of these cults and worship centers stayed for quite some time, implying that the deities welcomed the worship even if it wasn’t technically their normal patronage; and/or that the worshipers received some measure of satisfaction and fulfillment from worshiping a deity outside their normal spheres.. And by using the ancient local cultus as a guide I believe we can invite the gods into our local areas--even if that means that we “ignore” another one of their aspects or worship them for something that perhaps isn’t on their Theoi.com list of patron areas. Our local cultus practices should reflect our unique areas and their struggles and triumphs and, as in ancient Greece, that means our local worship practices may be similar to others but should not be carbon copies of each other.

Sources:

Books: Daily Life in the Time of Homer by Emile Mireaux The Oracle, by William J Broad Hellenisms: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity from Antiquity to Modernity, Katerina Zacharia (ed.) Greek Identity in the Hellenistic Period, Stanley Burstein Greek Folk Religion by Martin P. Nilsson Historical Atlas of Ancient Greece by Angus Constam The Travels of Herodotus by R.P. Lister The Traveler’s Guide to Ancient Greece: A Guide to Sacred Places by Richard G. Geldard

Articles: Mystery Cults in the Greek and Roman World by Kiki Karoglou The New Order of Time and Cult in Synoecized Poleis by Sven Schipporeit Local Pantheons in Motion: Synoecism and Patron Deities in Hellenistic Rhodes by Stephanie Paul Personal protection and tailor-made deities: the use of individual epithets by Jenny Wallensten Religious Innovation in the Ancient Mediterranean by Greg Woolf

Articles reference but not directly quoted: Dedications to Double Deities: Syncretism or simply syntax? by Jenny Wallensten Objects and Ancient Religions by Jay Johnston Visiting the Oracle Shrine at Dodona by Visiting Greece (the website)

Podcasts: Myth and History of Greece and Rome by Paul Vincent, particularly episode “Chapter Thirty: Men of the Polis” The History of Ancient Greece by Ryan Stitt, particularly episode 10 “Panhellenism”

[chorddebtor0-blog]

How a mayor’s crazy idea put a Chicago suburb into the bowl game spotlight

ELK GROVE VILLAGE, Ill. — If you’ve ever traveled through Chicago’s O’Hare airport, there’s a good chance you’ve flown over Elk Grove Village’s industrial park.

There is zero chance you’ve given it a second thought.

Elk Grove Village Mayor Craig Johnson wants to change that. When Friday’s “Makers Wanted” Bahamas Bowl kicks off, his northwest Chicago suburb of 33,000 people will officially join the eclectic list of bowl game sponsors that includes snack food, automobile tires and fast-food restaurants.

“Makers Wanted” is the village’s marketing slogan and Johnson hopes the people watching will have their interest piqued and be inspired to search the meaning of the phrase online. Once they do, they’ll be hit with a host of results touting the benefits to relocating or expanding your business to Elk Grove Village (the municipality’s name will be printed on both 25-yard-lines).

“We want to reach some guy in California, who’s thinking about opening a second manufacturing plant in the Midwest,” Johnson said while sitting in his office earlier this month. “His realtor walks in and says, ‘I’ve got Milwaukee, I’ve got Elk Grove Village and I’ve got Sheboygan.’ We want to have that guy in California to know what we’re about when that time comes for him to make a decision.”

Johnson isn’t offended if you think he’s crazy that sponsoring a bowl game will fill his industrial park or the new 85-acre technology park the village is constructing. His wife shot him down 30 seconds after he came up with the idea last winter, saying he was “[bleeping] nuts.”

So did the people he works with.

“They didn’t use the [f-word] but they also basically said I was nuts,” Johnson said with a laugh.

But the story of how Johnson saw how he could turn $300,000 of his marketing budget into an attention coup for Elk Grove Village is an interesting one involving President Donald Trump, the Chicago Cubs and a warm Christmas in Wisconsin.

What’s more interesting is that it may have already worked.

“We hit a grand slam,” Johnson said.

Craig Johnson gambled that a $300,000 bowl sponsorship would help Elk Grove Village attract business. (Courtesy of Pat Dahl/Banner Collective)

More

Trump and the Cubs lead the way

The largest industrial park in the nation is a mishmash of unremarkable buildings spread over six square miles and 62 million square feet of industrial space. It’s home to 100,000 employees from surrounding communities and a variety of businesses that thrive on the area’s easy access to air, land and rail.

All of that makes Elk Grove Village the second-largest manufacturing base in Illinois — Chicago is the first — and the list of products that are put together here is a varied one. Pinball machines are manufactured in Elk Grove Village. So is the floor for the Final Four, as well as more mundane things like frozen food and countertops.

Over 3,600 businesses call Elk Grove Village home, but they do come and go. Which means that Johnson — a fast-talking and energetic man who has been mayor since 1997 — is always thinking of ways of keeping those buildings full.

Back in 2015, the industrial park was still recovering from the recession and its vacancy rate was just over seven percent. Johnson and his board knew it needed to get proactive, so they started exploring the possibility of regional TV ads.

With the rise of Netflix and DVRs, Johnson was only interested in programming that people still watch live: news and sports. So a plan was quickly hatched: Elk Grove Village would take out regional ads on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC to reach business owners in southern Wisconsin, eastern Iowa and northwestern Indiana.

It would also negotiate a season-long deal with the Chicago Cubs to become a sponsor. Sure, the team had averaged 93 losses a season the previous five years, but the price ($175K) was right.

Story continues

The timing was perfect. Not only did the Cubs blossom into a perennial contender that would set record ratings on its way to the 2016 World Series crown, but a guy named Donald Trump would make each news station must-see television each night.

Elk Grove Village’s name was out there. And over the next three years, the park’s vacancy rate plummeted. It recently checked in at a record-low 2.6 percent in the second quarter of 2018.

“You’re f—in’ nuts”

Johnson isn’t sure how big of a role marketing played in the industrial park filling up. The strength of the economy obviously played the most important part, as did a bevy of infrastructure improvements made to the highways and interchanges that surround Elk Grove Village.

He was certain, however, that the village would have to remain vigilant in keeping that rate low in future years, which meant maintaining a vital marketing presence.

The only problem was that rates for the nightly Trump and Cubs shows had skyrocketed. Continuing on the same path didn’t present the same value for Elk Grove Village as it once did.

So Johnson started doing some thinking outside of the box.

“I get bored and I think of different things,” Johnson said. “I drive [my staff] nuts with some of the things I come up with.”

Johnson knew he wanted to make a big splash. He looked into running an Elk Grove Village ad during the Super Bowl or Oscars, but both were cost prohibitive, running millions of dollars the village didn’t have for just 30 seconds of airtime.

Then, one day last December, he and his wife were at their second home in Wisconsin. The weather was unseasonably warm. Johnson couldn’t snowmobile or ice fish, so he sat on the couch watching bowl game after bowl game.

During one of the games — he can’t remember which — an idea popped into his head.

“Look at the television,” he said to his wife, who was sitting nearby.

“Yeah, another bowl game,” she said. “What about it?”

“Look at the logo on the 50-yard-line,” Johnson said. “Can you picture ‘Makers Wanted Bowl’ on the 50-yard-line?”

“You’re [bleeping] nuts,” she said.

“That’s all I wanted to hear, thank you,” Johnson said.

Return on investment

Though he faced initial skepticism from his wife and co-workers, Johnson found that his enthusiasm was shared by a few marketing experts whose opinion he values.

From there, they started looking into sponsorship options. ESPN Events manages 15 different bowl games and Elk Grove Village zeroed in on three of them: the Hawaii, New Mexico or Bahamas Bowl.

Johnson didn’t like Hawaii’s late-night slot and New Mexico wasn’t a warm-weather locale like Johnson was picturing in his head, so the Bahamas Bowl — a game previously sponsored by Popeyes Chicken — ended up being the choice.

For $300,000, about half of the village’s annual marketing budget, Elk Grove Village would make sponsorship history as the Bahamas Bowl title sponsor. The village board approved the deal with a unanimous vote at a special board meeting at the end of July and a public announcement was made.

Johnson was staggered by the response.

“Our goal all along was that we wanted 95 percent of the benefit by kickoff,” Johnson said. “In the first 24 hours, we got five thousand times the return.”

The Associated Press wrote an article that landed Elk Grove Village in three of India’s largest newspapers. One of Johnson’s friends was traveling through Berlin and saw his hometown mentioned on “SportsCenter.” All of Chicago’s television stations came out to interview him for the nightly news.

They all asked: Is this really worth it?

“You’re out here, aren’t you?” Johnson asked right back.

In the middle of the initial rush of attention, Johnson took a call from Elk Grove Village’s most famous resident. John McDonough is the president of the Chicago Blackhawks and is known as one of the best marketers in town for his decades of work with the Blackhawks and Cubs.

“Craig, you’re a genius,” McDonough said, according to Johnson. “You got all of this for just $300,000? We have to win the Stanley Cup to get this kind of attention.”

’This is not a junket’

Three weeks before the game, Johnson sits in his office doing yet another interview about the Bahamas Bowl. Framed printouts of internet articles about the game hang on the walls.

The reception from Elk Grove Village residents has been a good one, he said. The news channels and Cubs sponsorships got them used to the idea of advertising the village as a business destination, plus property taxes are staying flat.

Additionally, Johnson has made a point of stating in every interview that any village official wanting to attend the Bahamas Bowl will foot their own travel, hotel and food bills.

That includes him.

“This is not a junket,” Johnson said.

Elk Grove Village has an option to extend its Bahamas Bowl sponsorship to the 2019 game for the same price and must do so by March 1.

Since the novelty of a suburb sponsoring a bowl game will have worn off, it’s unlikely the village will draw the same sort of attention from the media. But Johnson is open to renewing if he sees results from an advertising campaign done by Banner Collective and a six-week internet advertising campaign that is targeting business owners who are also sports fans. If those owners click through to see what Makers Wanted and Elk Grove Village are all about, it will be considered a success.

Even if it doesn’t, that’s OK, too.

“Everything we get from here is gravy,” Johnson said. “[The sponsorship] did everything we wanted it to — it got our name out there, it got our community out there. If you go and Google ‘Makers Wanted,’ Elk Grove Village is going to come up.”

More from Yahoo Sports: • President Trump has to sell his Tebow helmet • The 10 biggest NFL Pro Bowl snubs • 5-star spurns Alabama, flips back to Michigan • Haynes: Kings star says he’s ‘fastest’ in the NBA

Source: https://sports.yahoo.com/mayors-crazy-idea-put-chicago-suburb-bowl-game-spotlight-170031301.html?src=rss

[theshreedhar]

The End of My Tryst with the Megalomaniac Called Facebook

I was 13. My parents asked me not to do it. No one was sure why, though.

So we settled mid way. I created my Facebook account, but with a fake name. The name couldn’t get weirder than what it was - Rahul Anwar. Somehow I saw humour in two first names together, one predominantly Hindu and the other, Muslim. I added all my friends, or Rahul Anwar did, and he was immediately inside their closest circles.

But I failed to see what was wrong. I was on Facebook with the cool peeps, seeing their photos and status updates and there was nothing wrong. I was still living my usual life and that was enough for me to believe that Facebook was the harmless creature that I saw it to be. Rahul Anwar turned into Shreedhar Manek.

Between then and now, a lot of things have changed. 10 years have passed, and in these years I may have deactivated Facebook many times, without ever properly understanding why. But now we know. We know the beast that Facebook is and the monster that it can be.

Reason 1 Facebook can and often does make you feel bad.

There are studies that say that Facebook makes people feel bad, and other studies that suggest otherwise. Facebook themselves try to answer the question, they even admit that too much FB can be bad!

So how exactly can Facebook make one feel bad? Sure, a lot of studies can answer this in detail, but here is my take on it. 

Those likes are like tests. Who likes taking tests? But we do it, voluntarily, every time we upload something online. For every thumbs up, there is a certain part of our brain that feels rewarded, which makes us want to do it more and want it more. And tests often make us feel bad, don’t they? With a lesser than expected thumbs up count, we feel bad too. Those among us who we consider “petty” even sometimes cheat on these tests by asking their close friends to “like” their latest picture. It might sound a petty thing to do and it probably is, but how many of us haven’t cheated on a test?

Reason 2 Constant, almost immediate validation is addictive. It makes us less patient.

As a kid, or rather, back in the day, reading a book was easy. Just pick it up and don’t leave it until you’re done with it. But those days are long gone. I am easily distracted. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the book that I’m reading, but I’ve gone from waiting for the best to always enjoying it. And that make the waiting less fun.

Maybe I’m taking a leap when I blame (even partially) the likes I expect on Facebook with my reducing patience to read books (which I still enjoy). I can almost see people making the same argument when the first movie was made. Reading books requires time and patience, but the constant dopamine uptake that Facebook, or indeed, social media has made us used to, has changed the internal reward mechanisms such that, leaving aside books, doing anything that requires time and patience becomes more of a task. Say, establishing meaningful relationships. They take time, effort and patience, things that we have long foregone. I love how Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive, puts it: The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth.

Reason 3 Facebook does not show you the facts, it shows you what will keep you on their platform longer.

Back in the day, when Facebook only had the potential of being dangerous, as opposed to actually being dangerous, there was a beloved button on people’s newsfeed - the ‘most recent’ button. The purpose of this button was, as is obvious, to show the most recent posts. It would enable the user browsing through the posts of all their followed friends and pages chronologically. Everything would show up and everything would be seen by the user based on when it was posted.

Over the years, FB made its best attempt to hide this most recent button. It made it difficult to reach, and most people now don’t even know that it exists. A google search tells me that users can now only temporarily switch to the most recent newsfeed.

This was important to FB in order to control what we see. What you see now, is entirely in the control of Facebook. Are you a liberal? Here, some liberal propaganda for you. Conservative? 10 reasons why the mandir must be made in Ayodhya. Something even more insidious, say, two news outlets post articles of the same event, but frame them differently giving a slightly different picture. Facebook will show you the one it thinks conforms to your existing bias (or not, if it sees a reason to do so). Consuming news via Facebook has especially turned into one big circle jerk of information where people feed their existing biases and in turn make them stronger.

Reason 4 Facebook is fucking evil.

Big statement, isn’t it? I think so too. I am unsure who I mean by “Facebook”. Zuckerberg? Probably. The engineers? Probably not. But as a corporation on the whole, FB takes the cake in how evil you can be without actually killing anyone.

Remember Reason 1 about FB making you feel bad? FB thought they could do it, and they took the liberty to try it out. They experimented by controlling the feeds of a large number of people, limiting or increasing what they say, and realized, with absolute certainty this time, that they could control people’s emotions. Happy days, right?

This is also only a little before they introduced “reactions” to posts, as opposed to just “likes”. They might claim that they want its users to “express themselves better” et al, but by now we know that they just want to know how we feel about certain things, so that they can use that to control how we feel, don’t we?

Another example of Facebook’s evil is their attempt to push for what they called Free Basics in India. The now dead Free Basics was supposed to be Facebook’s way of reaching out to the poor of India and give them free internet. Free Basic’s policy was a mishmash of misleading statements and half truths and the whole PR team tried their best to spin them into something that sounded good. Their “we do not have advertising on Free Basics”, for example, which did not translate to “we will never have advertisements on Free Basics”, or their lack of mention of what they could or couldn’t do with data. I am not sure what FB’s official stance on net neutrality is (or was) in the US, but here in India, it made its best attempt to ensure we lose it. What grind my gears the most, however, is Zuckerberg’s post on his own personal FB account, where he, in the most sanctimonious way possible tried to explain how his money making scheme was good for the poor people of India. 

Reason 5 Facebook cares little about our data, is helping spread fake news and influencing elections.

Reason 5 is probably the tipping point for me. The reason for Facebook being in the news right now.

We knew that Facebook used our data to better market things to us and improve revenue from advertisers. We didn’t care about it. But now, even though FB denies it and will keep denying it, it gave access to data of millions to a researcher and even a profit making company, Cambridge Analytica, that went on to help political outfits win elections. While CA may not have gained access to the data of millions ethically, Facebook itself has a political unit that does just the same work as CA.

What Now?

There are no two ways about it. WhatsApp’s co-founder Brian Acton said it and Elon Musk did it. Zuckerberg has apologized for the many lapses (but what about evil by intent?) and it’s time.

Does this imply that I mean that Facebook has no utility and can just be deleted right of the bat? No! Facebook can be very useful at times, it can be a force of real good, and it has many everyday benefits. But it will have to be a new FB. A new social media platform that has a different foundation. For the time being we will have to move back to RSS feeds and subscriptions by email (I just added an ugly subscription form to my blog).

It has to go.

Bonus Scary Stuff A friend just introduced me to Data Selfie, a browser extension that tracks what FB can track about you and shows it to you in a readable format. Watch the video here.

[omcik-blog]

New Post has been published on OmCik

New Post has been published on http://omcik.com/how-many-funds-do-you-really-need-to-diversify/

How many funds do you really need to diversify?

I have seven mutual funds in my retirement savings account that invest in a broad range of stocks (large, mid-, small-caps, domestic and international) and bonds, plus real estate and gold. I’m now looking to add an eighth fund or ETF to my portfolio. Any recommendations? –Joseph

I’m sure there are people out there who would be more than willing to point to all sorts of funds and ETFs you could add to your portfolio: smart beta funds, thematic ETFs, low volatility funds. There’s even an ETF designed to capitalize on the ETF industry itself.

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But I’m of the less-is-more school. So my recommendation to you is to slow down, take a deep breath and ask yourself this simple question: Do you really need to add more funds to your portfolio?

When you’re building a portfolio for retirement — or any other purpose, for that matter — your goal shouldn’t be to load up with as many different types of investments as you can (although you can certainly get that impression given the constant flow of new and often gimmicky funds and ETFs that financial services funds churn out).

Rather, your aim should be build a well-diversified group of funds that can help you harness the long-term wealth-building power of the financial markets in a way that’s consistent with your financial needs and tolerance for risk. The idea is to assemble a portfolio that can generate the returns required to achieve your financial goals, but won’t be so volatile that you’ll be tempted to jettison funds in a panic when the market goes through one of its inevitable severe setbacks.

Related: How much investing risk should you take in retirement?

Fortunately, you don’t need a whole lot of funds to do that. For example, with just two funds — a total U.S. stock market index fund and a total U.S. bond market index fund — you would have exposure to all sectors of the stock and bond markets, or large-, mid- and small-cap shares in the case of stocks and both government and corporate investment-grade issues in the case of bonds.

I think you could stop there and have a broadly diversified portfolio that should get you to and through retirement. But if you want to go the extra mile, you could also put, say, 15% to 30%, of your stock holdings into an international stock fund and a similar portion of your bond stake into an international bond fund for additional diversification and to ensure your portfolio’s performance isn’t completely dependent on the fortunes of the U.S. financial markets.

You appear to have pursued a version of this strategy, although with more funds presumably because you’ve chosen to invest in separate funds specializing in large, midsize and small stocks respectively rather than buy one fund that includes all such shares. I prefer the total stock market fund approach I described above rather than separate funds for large-, mid- and small-cap stocks because it keeps things simpler and requires less monitoring and managing of one’s portfolio. But if you’re up to the extra effort, your approach can work too.

You’ve also gone two steps further by adding a real estate and gold fund. Frankly, I don’t think these additions are absolutely necessary. But as long as they’re a minor part of your holdings, I don’t see a problem including them.

The main point, though, is that it seems you have more than adequate diversification to generate the gains you’ll need for a secure retirement. If you start throwing yet more funds into your current mix, I’d say you run the risk of turning your portfolio into an unwieldy mishmash of overlapping holdings that don’t work together as a coherent whole. In short, you stand a good chance of “di-worse-ifying” rather than diversifying.

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But while you should think long and hard before adding an eighth (or ninth or tenth) fund to your portfolio, there are a few other things I think you can and should that might improve your portfolio’s performance.

First, I’d recommend you check to ensure you have a mix of stocks and bonds that balances growth vs. safety. Generally, you want to lean more toward stocks when you’re younger and have lots of time to rebound from market setbacks. You can then shift more toward bonds as you age and become more concerned about preserving your retirement nest egg.

There’s no official stocks-bonds mix that’s right for every person of a given age. Some people are more comfortable with investing risk than others. But if you go to Vanguard’s risk tolerance-asset allocation questionnaire, you’ll come away with a suggested stocks-bonds mix that makes sense given how much risk you feel you can handle and how long your money will be invested.

Your next step is to make sure that your stock and bond holdings generally reflect the makeup of the stock and bond market overall. For example, large-company stocks account for roughly 70% of total stock market value, while midcaps and small-caps represent about 20% and 10% respectively. Your holdings don’t have to mirror these percentages exactly. But if you want a truly diversified portfolio with a risk profile largely in line with that of the market overall, then you don’t want your portfolio’s proportions to be too far off either.

To see how your stock and bond holdings compare to the stock and bond market overall, plug your funds’ names or ticker symbols into the quote box at the top of any Morningstar page and then click on the Portfolio tab. For stock funds you’ll get, among other things, a breakdown of your funds’ holdings by size. In the case of bond funds you’ll get a breakdown by credit quality and type of issue (Treasury, other government, corporate).

You can then insert the ticker symbols for index funds that track broad domestic and international stock and bond markets benchmarks — for example, Vanguard’s total U.S. stock market index, total international stock market index, total bond market index and total international bond market index funds — and get similar breakdowns. By comparing the stats of your fund to those of funds that track the broad market, you can see whether your portfolio’s composition is roughly in sync with the stock and bond market overall.

Related: 4 questions to ask before pulling the trigger on retirement

Finally, I’d suggest you review what you’re currently paying in annual fund fees. Paying even an extra half a percentage point or so in yearly investment expenses can reduce the value of your nest egg by $100,000 or more over the course of a career, so you want to take care not to overpay.

You can see how your funds’ fees compare to the average for its category by putting its name or ticker symbol into Morningstar’s Quote box and then selecting the Expense tab. If your funds’ fees are above average, you can screen for funds with lower costs at Morningstar’s Fund Screener. Or you can simply stick to low-cost index funds and ETFs, some of which charge as little as 0.10% a year in annual expenses.

Bottom line: If you really want to increase the chances that your investments will help you achieve a secure retirement, I suggest you go through the process I’ve described above and don’t assume that more is better when it comes to funds.

CNNMoney (New York) First published June 28, 2017: 10:56 AM ET