#i read it a million times while i wrote/edited so i had it basically memorized but reading it for the first time in months is an EXPERIENCE

[cadavercowboy]

IT IS 11:34PM AND I AM READING RESTLESS HEART FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE I WROTE IT AND I AM LAUNCHING INTO ORBIT I CAN NOT BELIEVE I WROTE THAT I WANT TO LIVE INSIDE THIS FIC

[boomingsmile]

A bunch of Borderlands headcanons - 1

I think, I need another headcanon dump, but for Borderlands. It’s my main fandom after Undertale&Homestuck sunk.

Edit: I'm sorry, in advance, for any grammar mistakes. I wrote this post at like 3am having an exam coming the very that day…

Edit2: after 2 years of non stop language practice i came here to improve on myself LMAO

I’ve read some hc’s through the years. Never memorized them. Even if I did, I couldn’t tell you what was from who. Okay, here I come, and gonna start with something simple. Characters: Lilith, Gaige n’ Deathtrap, Jeffrey Blake, Harold Tassiter, Timothy, Rhys. Some are 18+.

1. Lilith sing while taking a shower.

2. Lilith and Gaige are like sisters to each other.

3. When Tina saw Deathtrap the first time, she got the type of excitement when human body basically a little bomb-y of happiness. Except Tiny Tina is the bomb. She has. In her arm. Gaige has never left Deathtrap alone with Tina ever again.

4. After Jack’s death, Hyperion became a huge mess. Mr. Blake, as an acting CEO, had to do something with it. One could say, Mr. Blake isn’t the man of such responsibilities, however, all executives around him think and act like his old clients from Mercenary Relations, like his colleges. So Mr. Blake sure knows how to talk with them. He outlived Jack after all.

5. Mr. Blake and Timothy Lawrence are kind of a friends. Both survived, have some personal Jack-based problems, and terrible taste in clothing. Also, Timothy was told that if he betrayed Jack, he would get paid for it. Tassiter is long gone at this point but Mr. Blake kind heart is still beating.

5.5. The sum was 1 million borderlands dollars. But economics of Borderlands Universe is, um… stonks. But Tim has a literature degree, not economy, so he doesn’t quite understand…

6. So Tim finally gets his face changed and his name returned.

7. And lost all the money, and got another loan. Though, got stable bodyguard/negotiator job for Hyperion. Blake proudly call him his boy.

8. Mordecai thinks Moxxi, Tannis, and Lilith soon will have an orgy, assuming they spent so much time together.

9. Harold Tassiter has tragic-ass backstory about divorcing, losing a child and reading too much twitter shitposts. Whatever in this Universe called twitter anyway.

10. He never masturbate, as we know… ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

12. …Because there’s always a helping hand or mouth running around. Blake’s included, and if Jack didn’t kill anyone, Harold would get himself a new right hand… ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) yeah im in THAT HELL send help my dudes

13. Harold absolutely hates Blake’s tie.

14. Everyone hates it, actually.

15. Angel’s dream is to go to the sea, walking on the white-sanded beach, seeing palms nearby, and sun high up at the blue blue sky.

16. Ellie has never seen other planets. Janey saw some but never stepped on them. This is how their friendship began.

17. Athena threats Tim like a younger brother. She’s happy to know he finally can stand for himself.

18. I dislike Borderlands 3 pretty much but I believe Rhys will help Naoko Katagawa get the CEO position of Maliwan someday.

19. Rhys had relationships with both Sasha and Fiona. Then he walked to Vaughn and said: I Don’t Understand Women. Jack’s AI agreed.

20. Jack’s AI isn’t dead or destroyed. Rhys just put him at really old tamagochi-like device. Why he decided to do that’s still unknown.

[chiseler]

THE GREATEST FILM COMPOSER NO ONE’S EVER HEARD OF

Over the course of roughly two decades, from the early Fifties to the late Sixties, Herman Stein composed the music for nearly two hundred films and television shows. If you’re of a certain mindset, he wrote some of the most memorable music for some of the greatest films ever made, including Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Incredible Shrinking Man. You’d never know it, though, as he only received credit on about half a dozen of the pictures he worked on. Trying to find a complete filmography can be a daunting task. Even his IMDb page is sorely incomplete and rife with inaccuracies. 

In the mid-Nineties, while planning to launch a small record label devoted to releasing soundtracks from forgotten sci-fi and horror films from the Forties and Fifties, David Schecter set himself the task of tracking down some of the composers who’d worked on those pictures. Fully understanding most of these composers would have been in their eighties or nineties, at the very least he would contact their families or estates in hopes of gaining access to their written scores. One of the first he tried to find was Herman Stein.

“I don’t remember where I found the information,” Schecter recalls. “But Herman Stein had apparently died in 1984. His obituary was in Variety. So I began placing calls around town to every Stein I could find. Given there are a lot of Jewish people in Hollywood, I think this took up about a month of my life. I left messages all over town saying, ‘If you are a child of Herman Stein, please call me back. I’m trying to find out where his archives are.’ Then I moved on to other composers. One day the phone rang and my wife Katy came up to me and her face was white, and she said ‘That dead guy is on the phone.’ And I said, ‘Which dead guy?’ And she said ‘Herman Stein.’” 

When Schecter picked up the phone, Stein, who had a reputation for being a bit cantankerous, demanded to know why Schecter was trying to get in touch with him.

“I said, ‘You’re THE Herman Stein?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, but how could you have heard of me? No one’s heard of me.’ I explained that he had four cuts on that Dick Jacobs record, Themes from Horror Movies, from 1959, and I’d always loved his music. He seemed really suspicious and curmudgeonly. I explained we were thinking of starting a label and wanted to record some of his film music. He wanted to know what titles, and I told him his science fiction stuff—It Came from Outer Space, This Island Earth, Tarantula and on and on. And he said, ‘Why would you want to do that crap? Do my Westerns.’ And I said, ’Nobody cares about your Westerns.’ I mean, he scored dozens of these Audie Murphy Westerns, Rock Hudson Westerns, and you have to remember those were the prestige pictures back then. Those were the ones the composers were proud of. The science fiction stuff was just disposable. So I tried to convince him people still knew who the Creature from the Black Lagoon was, and he didn’t believe me.”

Upon leaving the movie business two decades earlier, Stein and his wife Anita retreated to their home in the Hollywood Hills. He didn’t go to the movies, he didn’t read about movies, and if one came on the television he’d snap it off. That was all part of his past life, and it didn’t interest him anymore. In fact, Schecter says, he was happy to hear about that Variety obituary, as it meant he had an excuse for not dealing with people anymore.

“I remember one thing that was really interesting to me and kind of put things in perspective,” says Schecter. “I told him I wanted to record some of the music from The Mole People, and he said, ’Did I do that picture?’ Even though every time that movie came on when I was growing up, whether it was five in the afternoon or four-thirty in the morning, I’d be up watching it. For Herman, it was a job he worked on for three ore four days in between a Ma and Pa Kettle movie and a swashbuckler, and that was it. And he probably only saw the part of the movie he scored—the opening scene. It would be like me asking you, ‘What did you do on July 17th, 1984?’ Chances are you have no idea, and Herman didn’t remember it at all. It made me realize I was coming from a very different perspective than the people who actually wrote that stuff. For them it was just product they were cranking out. It doesn’t mean they weren’t doing brilliant work, just that they didn’t obsess about this stuff.”

At the time Schecter contacted him, the only bits of Stein’s music to be recorded and released on an album appeared on that legendary 1959 Dick Jacobs record. Truth Be Told, it was a pretty shabby recording, performed by what was probably a seventeen-piece ensemble which, lacking a harp, substituted an organ instead. Schecter wanted to record his music properly and faithfully. As gruff as he was, it seems Stein still had some interest in the proposition.

“So he said he wanted to give me a test. I asked him what sort of test, and he said basically ‘to see if I can trust you with my music.’ I thought, oh boy, I’ve chosen the wrong composer. Bernard Herrmann had a reputation for being difficult, and Herman Stein was difficult in his own way. Anyway, he sent me a cassette with three pieces of music on it. The instructions were to listen to it, then call him up and talk to him about it. I had no idea what I was supposed to talk to him about, but I listened to it, then called him up and just gave him my two cents worth. Apparently, and I still don’t know to this day why, I passed the test with flying colors, and he said ‘Okay, tell me what you want and I’ll get it.’”

Stein began coming over to Schecter’s home with music, Schecter began releasing Stein’s scores on his Monstrous Movie Music label, and the two remained friends for the next dozen years, until Stein’s death at age 93.

Herman Stein, born in Philadelphia in 1915, had been an astounding child prodigy. He began playing piano at age two, and first performed with an orchestra at age six. In his teens he was selling compositions to jazz ensembles, orchestrating for the likes of Count Basie, and through his twenties was composing and arranging music for the radio.

“How he learned music was, he went to the library, and he’d look at the classical scores there. Just study them,” Schecter says. “He was entirely self-taught until he came to Hollywood, and he was already in his mid-thirties by then.”

After scoring an industrial film called Career for Two, Stein took a job with Universal’s music department in 1951. His first assignment involved arranging some classical pieces for the Boris Karloff picture The Strange Door. The first things he actually scored himself were a few musical cues for a 1952 Ozzie and Harriet vehicle, Here Come the Nelsons.

“Thing about Herman, he was…different,” Schecter admits. “He had a brilliant, brilliant mind. People talk about perfect pitch, but he said perfect pitch isn’t important. If you’re a composer what’s important is having relative pitch. He would hear everything orchestrally in his head before he wrote it. Most of the great composers couldn’t do that. They would sit at the piano, hit a note, write the note down, hit another note, and so on. Herman would just sit out in his car in the parking lot at Universal and write the scores out.{Fellow Universal film composer} Irving Gertz said he and Henry Mancini would walk by, and they could see Herman in the car transcribing the music he heard in his mind. They would just shake their heads. He was taught by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, who taught everyone in Hollywood how to score films—Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, so many others. Castelnuovo-Tedesco taught Herman to think everything out before he wrote it, and to write his scores in ink. You see sketches written by other composers and they’re in pencil and there are a million cross-outs and erasures, and that was just normal. It’s like being a writer like you and I are, you need to edit things. Herman wrote things out in ink, and apparently did not need to change them.”

The other thing about Herman, Schecter says, was that he was, even into his eighties, something akin to a human computer.

“I remember one day when I was doing some research on something. Herman had all his cue sheets and musical manuscripts in a closet at his home in Hollywood. I called him up one night and asked him about a piece of music he’d written for a Western in 1954. And I said, ‘It’s a piece called ‘On to Socorro’ or something like that. I told him I was wondering about why he did something the way he did there. And he said ‘Hmm, let me think about that for a second.’ He went over to the piano, and all of a sudden I heard this full orchestral version coming out of the piano. He’s not just hitting the notes with one finger, he was playing with flourishes and everything. You could hear the brass the way he was playing. It was about a two minute piece, and he’d played it perfectly, so far as I could tell because I’d been watching the film version. He got done with it, and I asked how he’d found the music so quickly. He said ‘Didn’t—I did it from memory.’ I asked him when he’d last heard the music, and he said ‘Only at the recording session.’ He’d written literally thousands of pieces of music, he’d written this one back in 1954. It was performed once, put away in his closet, and that was it. But he could play every single nuance of it fifty years later. He could do that with anything he’d written.”

In the early Fifties, Joe Gershenson  was the head of Universal’s music department, and his second in command was composer Milt Rosen. Stein, Irving Gertz, Henry Mancini and others were mere contract composers. When a new picture was finished, it was determined how much time was left before the scheduled release, and how much money was left in the budget for music. Then Rosen, a couple of the composers, and the music editor would get together for a screening.

“They would decide which parts needed music and which didn’t,” Schecter explained. “They’d be doing that with the music editor, who’d be writing all these things down. Then depending on how much time they had and what the budget was. They would decide which parts needed new music, because that would take more time given the composer would have to write it, as they’d have to derive parts for the orchestra to play. All that versus how much older music they could use, maybe re-writing it slightly, or just re-using it as is. I’m not talking about using original recordings. But the written music. They already had the scores and the parts there, and wouldn’t have to spend the money on the copyist, and they wouldn’t have to spend the time. Some films would be completely scored, others would be a mix of new and old music, some would have nothing but older music. Then one or more of the composers would rearrange that older music to make it fit with the new music.

“Let’s say a few composers—Mancini, Gertz and Stein—were working together on a picture like The Monolith Monsters. For some reason, Irving Gertz scored most of The Monolith Monsters. Eighty percent of it. Some of the music came from earlier pictures, but the majority of it was written for that picture. And The Deadly Mantis, too—they were both the same score, so to speak, written at the same time. But then there were a few pieces Mancini wrote. Maybe Irving was running out of time, or maybe he had to work on something else. I have no idea. But someone told Mancini ‘Here are your three pieces,’ and they’d give Herman his three pieces. Sometimes the composers would talk to each other, sometimes they would play each other the themes they were using, so they’d have some kind of continuity. Sometimes the scenes a certain composer would be writing were so discreet from what the other composers were doing—maybe they just had to do with a certain subplot—so they could score their own things and it wouldn’t conflict with the rest of the picture. That’s one of the appeals of the Universal scores from the Forties and Fifties—there’s so much musical material in them. It wasn’t just one composer writing a couple themes and then doing endless variations on them. You listen to Creature from the Black Lagoon, even though the Creature theme is in there, Hans Salter’s music sounds like Hans Salter, Herman Stein’s music sounds like Herman Stein. Henry Mancini’s music sounds like Henry Mancini. Then there’s some older music by Milt Rosen that sounds completely different because it came from other pictures. There’s also a cue by Robert Emmett Dolan from Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid, which had nothing to do with any of the other pictures that provided music. You end up with an incredible wealth of musical material from these grade-B horror films.”

In the end, however, particularly if there were multiple composers involved in scoring a picture, as music director it was Joe Gershenson  who got the sole screen credit. This explains why Stein’s contributions went uncredited for roughly ninety-five percent of the films he worked on. So maybe it’s easy to comprehend why Stein would be a bit cantankerous.

“Herman was really something,” Schecter says. “Unfortunately he was his own worst enemy. He was a curmudgeon, and he had reason to be. Some really terrible things happened to him over his life that probably would have destroyed many a weaker man. So Herman could be bitter at times, and I understood that. But he was also very funny and incredibly smart. He should have done so much better in terms of his career, but again he was his own worst enemy. He was very opinionated, and very ethical. In Hollywood, there are not a lot of people with ethics, and Herman would call you on it. That’s why we got along so great, because I’m honest all the time, and Herman knew he could trust me. But he burned a lot of bridges, unfortunately. After the music department was taken down in 1958, Joe Gershenson wanted him to score John Huston’s Freud. I won’t tell you what Herman said, but it was very insulting to Gershenson . It was also very true, but he shouldn’t have said it. Gershenson told him, ‘you’re never gonna work on another film again,’ and Herman didn’t, except for {Roger Corman’s 1962 feature} The Intruder. Maybe that’s one of the reasons he liked The Intruder so much. 

When the music department was dissolved, Stein, Irving Gertz, Hans Salter, Mancini and the others suddenly found themselves out of work. Gertz moved over to 20th Century Fox, and managed to bring a few others with him, including Stein. For the next decade, Stein would compose the music for TV shows like Lost in Space and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. A young Jerry Goldsmith, meanwhile, snagged his first high-profile job by scoring Freud back at Universal.

“Mancini was and unbelievably talented composer,” Schecter says. “Herman was also unbelievably talented. I think Herman could have had a much better career than he did. Mancini early on had the reputation for being the tunesmith. Whenever there was a song, they would ask Henry to write it, or they’d bring in one of their staff songwriters, or they would go to a freelance person. But Herman could write some really, really, beautiful melodies  that he had hoped would be turned into a record so he could have a hit. But Universal didn’t allow him to do that. He got kinda bitter over that, and I can understand why, because I’ve heard some of his tunes. Just listen to ‘Sand Rock,’ the cue that opens It Came From Outer Space right after the main titles. Just absolutely gorgeous music, and you could have easily thrown lyrics on that and had a hit song, but they weren’t going to do that for Herman.”

Stein and his wife lived quietly for two decades, Herman focused on his commodities investments, until Schecter lured him back out into the world by calling attention to his music.

“It was both good and bad,” he says. “He always let you know how much you were putting him out, but you could tell how much he liked it beneath the rough exterior. When someone would call him up from a TV or radio show, he’d just light up. He felt he’d been forgotten, as a lot of these composers did. It was kind of difficult at the beginning. And I think there was a little resentment there—‘Oh NOW they’re discovering me, now that I’m too old to get jobs out of it.’ You can understand that, you don’t want to be recognized when you’re on your death bed, you want to be recognized when you can still produce.  Herman was well aware of the career he could have had. I’m glad he lived long enough that I could show him books that make reference to him and his music.

“He still did amazing things,” Schecter went on. “To my mind he was the sound of 1950s science fiction. As wonderful as the other  composers were. Herman was involved with a lot of the bigger, more important films. The scenes that he scored and the way he scored them, that’s what you think of when you think of the science fiction films of that era. One thing about Herman’s style that set it apart from the others, he could use dissonance to his advantage. He didn’t write atonal things like Alex North, where sometimes you don’t want to listen to them because they’re so harsh. But he could push the envelope, especially with the brass, to where it bordered on being dissonant, but it wasn’t. So he could create these sounds that sounded like horror and monsters, but were also fun to listen to. They didn’t repel you, they didn’t hurt your ear drums. I think that was his strength. You listen to the cue ‘Visitors from Space’ from It Came From Outer Space, and you can hear him pushing it so close to where it’s gonna hurt, but in the end it’s beautiful. You could probably slow dance to that piece, but it’s definitely strident. When you listen to all his music from all those movies, you say, ‘Yup, that’s 1950s horror.’”

by Jim Knipfel

[quranreadalong]

Notes before we get started

Here’s some stuff you need to know before we actually get into the Quran itself.

ORDER OF THE QURAN

The Quran isn’t in chronological order. Instead, the longest suwar (chapters, singular=surah) are generally in the first half, and the shorter ones are in the second half. No one knows the exact chronological order, as in which of Mohammed’s “revelations” came first, but the suwar are generally divided into Mecca and Medina suwar.

The Mecca suwar were from Mohammed’s earlier years as a “prophet” (610-622 AD), while the Medina suwar were from many years later, after he had gathered followers and established a Muslim base of power in the city of Yathrib, which he called Medina (622 AD+). Some suwar are a combination of “revelations” from both eras! In a small number of cases, it’s hard to tell where/when the majority of a surah came from, but I’ll point those out along the way. As a general rule, the Medinan suwar contain lists of rules and descriptions of events in Mohammed’s own life, whereas the Meccan ones are mostly just Mohammed yelling at people and telling them to stop being polytheists; most are devoid of rule-and-regulation stuff.

The reason why I tend to use the word surah rather than just “chapter” is because of this--suwar that directly follow one another aren’t necessarily from the same time period or concern the same topic. Each one is pretty self-contained. A surah in the second half of the Quran is usually earlier than one in the first half of the Quran.

The Quran is fairly intolerant and extremely repetitive. I’m serious: it is not laid out like a mythological history book like the Torah is, so if that’s what you’re expecting, then... don’t... expect that! It’s just a long collection of Mohammed’s rants. If you have never read it before, and the only thing you know about it is that Muslims believe it is the most beautiful book of all time, please temper your expectations now.

Mohammed’s early “revelations” (ayat, singular ayah) are noticeably more poetic than the later ones from Medina, which are often tedious lists of rules, Biblical stories, and chastisements of The Disbelievers, which get worse and worse. We’ll see that right away in the second surah. Don’t worry, though, it’s not all tedious crap. There’s plenty of interesting stuff to discuss within the Quran’s pages.

Finally, because there are so many suwar and they come from different points in Mohammed’s lifetime, some parts of the Quran seem to contradict one another. But never fear: the Quran contains a handy-dandy provision in which seeming contradictions are resolved by Allah abrogating older ayat/verses with new and “better” ones: the later verse replaces the earlier one. As we go along, we will keep that in mind.

Wikipedia lists two suggested chronological organizations of the Quran, though as you can see, there’s some variation. I’m going to be reading the Quran in its standard order, but I’ll note whether it is an early, middle, late Mecca or Medina surah at each one’s introduction.

THE AHADITH

While Islam requires one to believe that every word of the Quran is true, there is another element to the religion called the ahadith (“traditions”, singular hadith) which are basically collected sayings about Mohammed and his followers. Essentially, if a subject is not directly addressed in the Quran, Muslims turn to the ahadith collections to figure out what is or is not permissible. Allah forgot to mention a lot of stuff in The Perfect Book, apparently. So occasionally I’ll need to link to some ahadith.

The problem, of course, is that many of the ahadith passages are full of shit and blatantly made up. Early Muslim scholars dedicated their entire lives to figuring out which ahadith were reputable, and when I quote a relevant hadith, it will almost always be from one of the two most reputable collections, called Sahih Muslim and Bukhari. Maybe we’ll read some of the collections later, at least the sahih or “strong”/highly reputable ones. My Big Fat Ahadith Read-Along would be…. an experience.

TAFSIR & SIRA & HISTORY

Some things in the Quran are incomprehensible without consulting outside sources that explain what a particular verse is about and what the historical context of the verse is. There is a genre of Islamic literature called a tafsir that collects ahadith relevant to a certain verse, and sometimes I will link to one of several highly-regarded tafsir collections when a part of the Quran requires it.

Every now and then I’ll also bring in excerpts from a sira (a “biography”/hagiography of Mohammed and his followers; the one I'll quote from is by Ibn Ishaq and was written in the 8th century) or a history book (usually al-Tabari’s) for the same reason. It is impossible to read the Quran without referencing these things at some points, because people, places, and events are mentioned but never explained. Understanding the changing situation and power dynamics between Mohammed and his various enemies is also crucial for understanding why the Quran gets progressively more violent and intolerant chronologically.

The tafsir collections, as well as the history and sira books that I link to, occasionally give more than one explanation for a certain verse/incident. When there is historical disagreement about a situation or reason to doubt any of the sources I listed above, I will be sure to mention that.

CHRISTIAN AND JEWISH SOURCES

Much of the Quran involves rehashed stories from Judaism and Christianity--but often the details are strange and don’t come from the Bible/Torah. This is because Mohammed enjoyed collecting and then copying stories he heard from the sects around him, and not all of those stories had any basis at all in the Bible. Some parts of the Quran are clearly pulled from the Talmudic writings of rabbis, while others are clearly pulled from Christian apocryphal texts. I will link to the sources of those non-Biblical stories when they come up.

TRANSLATIONS

corpus.quran.com is my go-to translation site. It lists seven highly-regarded English translations, all side-by-side. I’ll be using the Pickthall translation. In the event that Pickthall’s translation is noticeably different from the others, I’ll make a note of it and explain the controversy over the word in question. (There are some people who will tell you that you cannot read the Quran in any language other than Arabic or else you won’t understand it. These people are full of shit and you can feel free to ignore them. Hundreds of millions of the world’s Muslims cannot understand Arabic. Any debates over the meaning of a certain word also apply to the original untranslated Arabic word. All the translations on that site are regarded as very well-done and scholarly.)

THE HISTORICAL QURAN

Regarding the historical validity of the Quran itself, the content has remained mostly unchanged since the 7th century. There is a debate about how much of was altered between the time of Mohammed and the last years of the 600s AD, but it is generally agreed that the majority of it has remained the same.

There is, however, evidence that during Mohammed’s lifetime, the Quran was a changing document, and some verses were removed from it on Mohammed’s orders, both in the early and late periods of his prophetic career. Some were once believed to be part of the Quran but were later deemed non-revelatory. This is a form of naskh, or abrogation, a concept that is addressed within the Quran itself. The other form of naskh involves a later verse superseding an earlier one, but both remaining in the Quran. We’ll get to all that.

It is less clear whether anything major was added to the Quran after Mohammed’s time. The first written Quran was compiled only after Mohammed’s death, and it wasn’t fully edited and standardized until the time of the third caliph. The written Quran itself also changed over time, as the Arabic script of early Islam was not the Arabic script we use today. For example, diacritics (little dots above or below Arabic letters: ت/t and  ب/b) were not in use in the early days. Identical letters were used for different sounds, which was, as you might imagine, somewhat of a problem. So eventually they were added in to help people read the damn thing. In general it is believed that the addition of diacritics did not alter the meaning of the Quran in any huge way, as the Quran in its verbal forms (there were multiple different ones, though Mohammed said that was fine as long as the meaning remained the same) had already been memorized by several people, but it really isn't possible to know for sure.

We do not know who was the first to compile the Quran into one book, as there are conflicting ahadith on the matter. We do know that one of the first to compile a written Quran was a scribe named Zayd ibn Thabit, who put it together in the year after Mohammed's death by bringing multiple fragments of text together and supplementing it with the assistance of those who had memorized some verses. The caliph Uthman used Zayd's text a base for the “official Quran” and had variant texts burned (a fragment of one surviving older copy is here; it does have some added words, subtracted words, a missing verse, etc compared to the Uthmanic text). It’s generally believed that this is more or less identical to the Quran that we have now, but the earliest surviving near-complete copy that we have dates to the mid-eighth century at earliest. If any significant material was added to or removed from it in the preceding century+, we have no way of knowing it.

(I finally wrote a post on this whole process that u can read here if you want!!)

So we're just gonna ignore those problems, since neither we nor anyone else can answer the questions they bring up. For the purpose of this read-along I’ll be treating every word of the Quran as something Mohammed actually said. Now settle in and get ready to read the most beautiful book of all time.

Without further ado, I present: How To Burn Your Kafir: The Noble Quran

⇚ previous day | next day ⇛

[catholiccom-blog]

Quoting Jesus: Was it Live, or Was It Memorex?

Perhaps you’ll recall back in February when the head of the Jesuit order, Fr. Arturo Sosa, cast doubt on the trustworthiness of the Gospels (in particular, Jesus’ teaching on divorce):

There would have to be a lot of reflection on what Jesus really said. At that time, no one had a recorder to take down his words. What is known is that the words of Jesus must be contextualized, they are expressed in a language, in a specific setting, they are addressed to someone in particular.

Although he later walked back these comments to some extent, the fact remains that Fr. Sosa’s attitude towards the trustworthiness of the Gospels is not uncommon in certain clerical circles, and also among many biblical scholars. Like melting snow from mountain peaks, in these two groups skepticism towards the trustworthiness of the Gospels tends to filter down to the laity, who naturally wonder if these documents can indeed be trusted to communicate what Jesus really did and what he really said.

Right now let’s focus on authenticating the words of Jesus. Of course, the first half of Fr. Sosa’s comment is unimpeachably true: there were no tape recorders or smartphones recording Jesus’ exact words, say, on divorce (which are presented in Matthew 19, among other places). But I take umbrage, and so should you, with Fr. Sosa’s conclusion that we can’t really know what Jesus actually said—on this or any other issue that arose in his teaching.

Was it live, or was it Memorex?

Perhaps you remember the old ads for Memorex cassette tapes. I know I do. The tagline in those ads was, well, memorable: “Is it live, or is it Memorex?” Scholar Darrell Bock once wrote an article relating this line to how Jesus’ teachings were written. Were they “live” (the “living” words of Jesus), or were they “Memorex” (word-for-word, as if recorded)?  

The latter option must be ruled out. First of all, the Gospels were composed in Greek, whereas in all likelihood Jesus preached and taught in Aramaic, the “street language” of Palestine. So, we’re already dealing with a translation issue. This is why “red-letter” editions of the New Testament, which feature the words of Christ in red ink, are somewhat misleading. They weren’t the literal, actual Aramaic words and phrases Jesus used, except perhaps in a few instances (for example, his use of the term Abba in referring to God the Father).

Scholars differentiate between the ipsissima verba (the actual words) of Jesus, and the ipsissima vox (the actual voice) of Jesus. Thus, what we really have in the Gospels is the “live” option—the living words of Jesus. Gospel writers referred to Jesus as rabbi or teacher, with themselves as his students. What’s the job of any rabbinical student? To master the message of his rabbi. If a student were simply to “parrot” Jesus’ words to an audience, repeating them word-for-word, that person would actually be considered a very poor student. What was actually expected was that a student could re-present the rabbi’s teaching in ways that are helpful for listeners or readers.

How was this done?

First, a word must be said regarding the ability of the disciples to memorize Jesus’ teaching. The German scholar Armin Baum has calculated that Matthew, Mark, and Luke together contain approximately 15,000 words of Jesus’ teaching. Could the disciples have committed that much material to memory? You bet.

Braun demonstrates that many rabbis of the time had not only committed to memory 300 thousand words of the Hebrew scriptures, but also that some Jewish scholars had memorized the nearly two million-word Babylonian Talmud. Surely the followers of Jesus, steeped as they were in a culture of oral transmission of doctrine, could accurately recall and communicate to others the comparatively smaller block of material in the Gospels.

Also, the evangelists knew how to use compression techniques to recount Jesus’ messages accurately in short spaces. Think about it: the Gospels speak of Jesus holding crowds spellbound for hours, yet his speeches can be read in just a few minutes. We do this as well when reporting on conversations we’ve had with others, communicating the “gist” of what was said. This is perfectly consonant with techniques used in the construction of Greco-Roman biographies, the genre of literature to which the Gospels belong. The one thing no student would have ever done is invent teaching by putting words into a rabbi’s mouth that he never said. Again, accuracy was paramount.

A simple example of this method (cited by Bock) can be found in examining the Gospel accounts of Peter’s confession of Jesus as Messiah. Jesus prompts the discussion with a query:

Matthew 16:13: “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”

Mark 8:27: “Who do people say I am?”

Luke 9:18: “Who do the crowds say that I am?”

Here we have the same basic question being restated in slightly different ways. “Son of Man” is Jesus’ favorite self-appellation in the Gospels, with Mark and Luke rendering this as simply “I”. Similarly, the choice of the terms “people” (Matthew, Mark) and “crowds” (Luke) might be a case of the Evangelists choosing different Greek words to translate an Aramaic term used by Jesus. In any case, the “gist” of the question gets across to the reader.  

The Gospels also present slightly varied takes on how Peter answers Jesus:

Matthew 16:16: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Mark 8:29: “You are the Christ.”

Luke 9:20: “The Christ of God”

Matthew’s rendering is longer, more complex and theologically unique, echoing not only the idea of Jesus as Son of God, but also hinting at a kingly sonship (Ps. 2). Luke adds “God” to Mark’s matter-of-fact statement. But in all three, the bottom line remains: Peter correctly identified Jesus as Messiah.

While maintaining basic accuracy, there existed a degree of flexibility in recording speeches in Greco-Roman biography, which was the genre of the Gospels. Despite this, the Gospels are much more stringent on this count than most Greco-Roman biographies. It’s actually startling to note how few variations there are between Matthew, Mark, and Luke (the synoptic Gospels) when one compares the words of Jesus in parallel passages.

And this is truly the point: we have to judge the Gospels by the historical standards of the first century A.D., not the twenty-first. When judged by the historical standards of their day, the Gospels pass with flying colors. The evangelists were clearly concerned about getting Jesus’ message right, and despite the claims of many skeptics, both within the Church and without, we can indeed know with a great degree of certainty what it was that Jesus taught.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHAT NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ABOUT TOUCH

I thought it might be interesting to try and write down what made Java seem suspect to me. But in at least some cases the reason the best PR firms are so effective is precisely that they aren't dishonest. If you're a nerd, and an investors' opinion of you is the opinion of other investors. This is a list of people who've influenced me, not people who would have if I understood their work. So I've seen a good part of the mechanism of popularity. And bingo, there it is: The Men's Wearhouse was at that moment running ads saying The Suit is Back. After spending years chasing them, it's now second nature to me to recognize press hits for what they are. You mean she doesn't know the kind of things that matter in the real world, it's generally for some common purpose, and the first cars.

We were already thinking about the kind of problems that have to be especially awkward to look awkward by comparison. Really they ought to be out there digging up stories for themselves. Most CEOs delegate taste to a subordinate.1 In fact, horrible far out of proportion to the value of Nasdaq companies in two years?2 They do it too consistently. The urge to look corporate—sleek, commanding, prudent, yet with just a touch of hubris on your well-cut sleeve—is an unexpected development in a time of business disgrace. John Bautista, Pete Koomen, Jessica Livingston, and Jackie Weicker for reading drafts of this essay, and Maria Daniels for scanning photos.

This one just happens to be controlled by a giant company.3 The reason startups have been using more convertible notes in angel rounds is that they make deals close faster. Probably the best we'll do is some kind of dreamer who sketched artists' conceptions of rocket ships on the side. You never understand other people's code as well as Newton, for their time, but the most I've ever been able to manage is about 18, and I feel as if someone snuck a television onto my desk. The specific argument, or one of them: a list of the n most admirable people. Why call an auction site eBay? It's all-encompassing redesigns. I'm uncomfortably aware that this is why poor whites in the United States are the group most hostile to blacks.

It's not because they're irresponsible that they work in long binges during which they blow off all other obligations, plunge straight into programming instead of writing specs first, and rewrite code that already works. In general, people outside some very demanding field don't realize the extent to which success depends on constant though often unconscious effort. Ok, I better work then.4 I was more in the nerd camp, but I wouldn't describe them as intellectually curious. Historically, languages designed for large organizations PL/I, Ada have lost, while hacker languages C, Perl have won. How can they get off that trajectory?5 They only just decided what to use, so why wouldn't they? The general argument is that new forms of communication always do. What you want is to increase the actual value of the company, not its market cap, Yahoo was still worth a lot.6 To do really great things, you have to get the first commitment, because much of the difficulty comes from this external force. The thing is, he'd know enough not to care what they thought.7

Reporters like definitive statements.8 Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas. Real estate is still more expensive than just about anywhere else in the country.9 While the book seemed entirely believable, I didn't have much more experience of the world than producing something beautiful.10 If anything oversensitive. But reading Austen is like reading nonfiction. And that's what programs are: ideas. The least popular group is quite small.11 Kids are sent off to spend six years memorizing meaningless facts in a world ruled by a caste of giants who run after an oblong brown ball, as if it were part of the indictment.

So the language is likely to make your life difficult. There are always great ideas sitting right under our noses. Java in the press sounded a lot more definite.12 As with an actual gold mine, you still have to work hard to get the company to the point where it's like visual crack.13 I've read a lot of protocols for doing things.14 We made software for building online stores. You want above all to survive. When Yahoo was thinking of buying us, we had a meeting with Jerry Yang in New York. And most importantly, their status depends on how well they do against opponents, not on whether they can push the other down. And yet the authorities still for the most part act as if drugs were themselves the cause of so many present ills: specialization.15 Though notoriously lacking in social skills, he gets the right answers. But in at least some of the time we were all, students and teachers both, just going through the motions.16

When I talk to a startup that's been operating for more than 8 or 9 months, the first step is to realize there's a problem. When groups of adults form in the real world, nerds collect in certain places and form their own societies where intelligence is the most important thing was to stay on the premises. It was when I'd finished one project and was deciding what to do by asking what they'd do in the same situation. Or to put it more dramatically, ordinary programmers working in typical office conditions never really understand the problem. Apple was able to sell enough of them to get the same price. Chesterfield described dirt as matter out of place as an elementary school teacher, and I feel as if I have by now learned to understand everything publishers mean to tell me about a book, and perhaps a bit more. Because PR firms tell them to. Einstein was really as smart as them. I had a few other teachers who were smart, but I have a separate note with a different cap for each investor. It's not a question that makes sense to ask early on, any more than it makes sense to ask a 3 year old how he plans to support himself.

Suburbs are deliberately designed to exclude the outside world, because it changes too fast for that to be possible. Eventually everyone will learn by word of mouth. Mihalko was mine. Real standards don't have to look any further to explain why teenage kids are tormented. Most people who write about art history, Civilisation is the one I'd recommend.17 If you pay them to.18 Wow. Novels seem so impoverished compared to history and biography.19 I doubt PR firms realize it yet, but the way one anticipates a delicious dinner. Boston.20 This is the tone of someone writing down to their audience.

Notes

The set of plausible sounding startup ideas is many times have you heard a retailer claim that companies like Google and Facebook are driven by money—for example, if you repair a machine that's broken because a part has come is Secretary of State and the cost of writing software. With a classic fixed sized round, that probably doesn't make A more powerful sororities at your school, the approval of an extensive biography, and many of the big winners are all about hitting outliers, are available only to your brain that you're small and then using growth rate has to split hairs that fine about whether a suit would violate the patent pledge, it's a collection of qualities helps people make the kind that prevents you from starving.

So for example, probably did more drugs in his early twenties. Google was in his early twenties.

I can't safely omit any type I startups. Doh. This is everyday life in general we've done ok at fundraising, because those are writeoffs from the Dutch not to need common sense when interpreting it. If big companies can even be conscious of this essay, I can't tell if it means a big company CEOs in 2002 was 3.

When we work with me there. I couldn't think of the first type, and some just want that first few million. What happens in practice money raised as convertible debt at a 15 million valuation cap.

Basically, the more effort you expend on you after the first phase of the statistics they consider are useful, how could I get attacked a lot about some disease they'll see once in their early twenties. What I dislike is editing done after the fact that you're not doing YC mainly for financial reasons, including principal and venture partner. No doubt there are no false negatives. The best technique I've found for dealing with recent art, they don't.

At Princeton, 36% of the whole.

One of the web. If the rich. Proceedings of 2003 Spam Conference. What if a company in Germany, where there were some good ideas in the field they describe.

On Bullshit, Princeton University Press, 2006. But that turned out to be something of an extensive biography, and indeed the venture business, and try selling it. The state of technology. But in a certain size it gets you growth, because any VC would think Y Combinator.

They don't know who invented something the mainstream media needs to, but had instead evolved from different types of startup people in any era if people can see the old one was drilling for oil, which parents would still send their kids rather than for any particular truths you'll learn. A related problem that I see a lot of problems, but when people in return for something that would help Web-based applications. As Anthony Badger wrote, If it failed it failed it failed it failed. Foster, Richard, Life of Isaac Newton, p.

The New Industrial State to trying to sell, or one near the edge case where something spreads rapidly but the number of restaurants that still requires jackets: The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China, during the 2002-03 season was 2. In technology, companies building lightweight clients have usually tried to unload it on buyer after buyer.

It's hard to grasp this than we realize, because they insist you dilute yourselves to set aside a chunk of this type is the proper test of success. Only a fraction of VCs even have positive returns. The brand of an investment. It may be useful here, the top startup law firms are Wilson Sonsini, Orrick, Fenwick West, Gunderson Dettmer, and this tends to be vigorously enforced.

None at all.

Everything is a bit more complicated, because the arrival of your identity. This law does not appear to be very unhealthy. Robert were each in turn is why I haven't released Arc.

Creative Destruction Whips through Corporate America. I worry we may be a trivial enhancement of HTTP, to pretend that the meaning of the Dead was shot there. But the solution is not one of the Garter and given the freedom to experiment in disastrous ways, but I realize this sounds to him? Japanese.

Revenue will ultimately be a variant of the resulting sequence.

Apparently someone believed you have the perfect point to spread the story a bit. Part of the causes of the problem.

In high school football game that will be big successes but who are both genuinely formidable, and also what we'd call random facts, like warehouses. A from a company's revenues as the cause.

No one in its IRC channel: don't allow duplicates in the belief that they'll only invest contingently on other sites. When you're starting a business is to start or join startups. But you can't tell what the US.

But you can't easily get a personal introduction—and in some ways First Round excluded their most successful startups looked when they buy some startups and not be to say that hapless meant unlucky. More precisely, this phenomenon myself: hotel unions are responsible for more than whatever collection of stuff to be on the wrong algorithm for generating their frontpage. Earlier versions used a technicality to get fossilized. There are two ways to get kids into better colleges, I can't refer a startup.

Ed. And in any field. I'm not saying, incidentally; it's not uncommon for startups that seem to lose elections. After lunch we went to Europe.

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Dan Giffin, Jeff Clavier, Alex Lewin, and Patrick Collison for the lulz.

[gracewithducks]

Doers of the Word (James 1:17-27)

In our family, we are big fans of the TV show “The Amazing Race.” If you’ve never seen it, basically, it’s a reality show that follows several teams of two as they race around the world. At the beginning of each leg of the race, the team members open an envelope with a clue – which leads them to another clue, which gives them a task they must complete in order to receive their next clue, which then leads them to another clue, and on and on it goes. Every so often, the teams “check in” at what’s called a pit stop – a mandatory time to rest, eat, and record all those little interviews they pepper throughout the episode. And most of the time, the last team to check in is eliminated from the race. Eventually, after many legs, many countries, many clues and many challenges, one team is named the winners – and because it’s a reality TV show, they’re awarded a prize of one million dollars.

 One of the reasons I enjoy the show is because it gives me an opportunity to see the world – at least vicariously. Ask my family sometimes, and they’ll tell you that at least once during just about every episode, I’ll say, “We should go there.” Pristine beaches in Bora Bora. Moscow’s Red Square. Norway’s midnight sun. The hustle and bustle of downtown Shanghai. Bavarian fairy-tale castles and the timeless beauty of Botswana – the world is such a vast and diverse and beautiful place, and I know I’m never going to see it all in person, so I’m grateful for the glimpses I can get along the way. And it’s also lovely to see teams move from ignorance or even prejudice as they encounter people who are kind, and compassionate, and generous – in every country – and realize people are people, all the world over.

 Of course, that’s just a side effect of the race. The contestants aren’t there to be goodwill ambassadors or to make friends, and they certainly aren’t just sightseeing. Though they do find themselves in some of the most impressive places around the world, they’re always busy looking for a clue box or trying to get to their next task. They play Japanese game shows, try to identify bowls of tea, unroll haybales and build wooden toys and race on donkeys and learn traditional dances and jump out of airplanes – things they would never do in their normal lives, sometimes things they never thought they could do, overcoming fear and stepping outside their comfort zones along the way.

 And again and again, the teams get into trouble when they fail to read their clues. “Find the marked counter” – “wear your costume” – even the difference between “take a taxi” and “walk on foot” to your next destination, gets teams into trouble over and over again. Sometimes teams are so excited just to be on the race, so eager, so anxious, that they end up getting in their own way. They miss details. They forget to pick up their gear. They leave their bags, miss their trains, even lose their passports, as they run off enthusiastically in the very wrong direction.

 Pay attention, work together, keep going, and follow directions: those are the lessons of the Amazing Race.

 This week, as we were watching an episode of the Amazing Race, as I watched team after team tear into their clue envelopes and then take off running – I found myself thinking about the words we heard from James this morning: “Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.”

 Can you imagine an episode of a show like “The Amazing Race” where a team stood at the starting line, full of excitement and anticipation – so delighted to be on the show at last – and then they opened their first clue, and it says – I don’t know, “Drive yourselves to the airport and fly to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and make your way to Copacabana beach, where you must search for your next clue.”

 And imagine a team that says, “Wow, it’s an actual Amazing Race clue! Oh, it’s so beautiful! Wow, wouldn’t it be incredible to go to Copacabana beach?” And then that team ran to their car, and drove home. And they framed their Amazing Race clue, and they hung it on the wall. And every day they’d read it again, until they’d memorized it. And maybe they looked on the internet for a lovely picture of Copacabana beach, and they used some photo editing software, and they put the words “Make your way to Copacabana Beach” across the top of the picture, and they framed it, and they hung it up on the wall next to their clue… and they made tee shirts that said “Copacabana beach” and put “Rio de Janeiro” bumper stickers on their cars, and everyone who met them just had to hear the story of the time they ripped open a clue and it said, “Fly to Rio de Janeiro and find Copacabana Beach.”

 Except they never actually went there. They never went to the airport, got a ticket, boarded a train, hailed a taxi – never actually saw or set foot on the beach. And they never found the next clue there, which told them to go parasailing, or to build a sandcastle, or to learn to mix cocktails, or to go tango in Argentina, or fly over Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, to learn a French song in Paris, to search windmills in the Netherlands or stand at the Schindler memorial in Poland, to receive a traditional blessing in India or learn a water dance in Hong King, or to run to the finish line at the end of the race.

 Imagine a team who was given this chance at a once-in-a-lifetime adventure, and they never even made it past the starting line. Imagine if they opened the first clue – and ignored it. Imagine if they loved the race – but when it came time to take off, they so completely missed the point.

 It’s a bizarre and unrealistic scenario, sure. And no, I’ve never seen it happen. I’ve seen teams freeze and panic many times, but they always find a way to keep going; they refuse to give up, even if they end up limping to the finish line.

 I don’t think any team would ever be so careless or so clueless to never even leave the ground. But it sure seems to me that we as Christians make that same mistake more times than we’d care to admit. We know what we are meant to do… we just fail to actually do it.

 Through the month of September, we are going to be spending time with the epistle of James.

 James is a tiny little book, shoved way in the back of the bible. Most of the New Testament is made up of either the gospels – the stories of Jesus – or the letters of Paul, who wrote to the early Christians trying to help them make sense of their faith now that Jesus had risen from the dead. Because he wrote so many letters, and because those letters hung around, Paul’s voice has pretty much dominated Christian theology since just about the very beginning. Which is ironic, because Paul himself was a second-generation Christian – which is to say, he never actually knew Jesus when Jesus was on earth. And while Paul did some amazing things to open the church to new people in new places, while Paul advocated for a good news that really was for all people, while Paul followed Jesus by breaking rules and crossing borders – Paul did some great things, but Paul wasn’t the only one.

 Way back in the end of the New Testament, there are a handful of tiny little letters: letters from Peter, and John, and from James, letters that may actually be from disciples who walked alongside Jesus, who were there at Pentecost and who went out into the world to share what they had seen and heard.

 Paul’s voice predominates – Peter, John, and James, whose voices reach back to the time of Christ directly, are shoved into the back. Peter warns against false teachers, and encourages perseverance in the face of persecution. John talks about love, love for one another, which is the mark of our discipleship. And James? Well, James is emphatic: how you live, what you do, matters.

 Over the centuries, the little letter of James has been quite controversial. When it came time to set the canon, to decide which of the many early Christian writings would be considered authoritative scripture for the church for all time, James almost didn’t make the cut. The great reformer, Martin Luther, once dismissed James’ letter as an “epistle of straw” – that is to say, flimsy, unstable, and essentially worthless.

 James is controversial because he never talks about the death of Jesus, or the resurrection of Jesus, or the divinity and humanity of Jesus, or the Trinity, or any of the other themes we might expect from an early Christian preacher. And unlike Paul, who emphasizes again and again the primacy of grace – who writes one letter after another to combat the idea that, in order to be forgiven, we have to do good works, to earn our salvation, to be circumcised, and so on. Over and over again, Paul proclaims: God’s grace is enough. We are sinful, we are weak, we can’t help ourselves, but the very good news is, we don’t have to. That’s what Jesus came to do.

 James, on the other hand, James says: that may all be true, but it’s also true that how you live matters. James was writing to deal with a completely different set of problems: not to people who added rules and laws and burdens to the gospel, but to those who had so fully embraced this idea of grace that they believed they were free to do anything and everything they want. It’s as if they thought, God loves me, no matter what, and I’m in, no matter what – so why should I worry or care about anyone or anything else?

 And James says: no. That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. Yes, God loves you freely; yes, God forgives your sin… but Jesus also said things like, “Be perfect” and “Go and sin no more” and “Love one another as I have loved you” and even “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters, you do to me.”

 We know those words. We’ve heard those words. Some of us even have them underlined in our bibles, we sing them, we repeat them, we nod our heads whenever the preacher comes back around to them… but James reminds us, Hearing the words – underlining them – memorizing them – agreeing with them, that’s not enough. Because what we are really supposed to do is to follow them, to obey them, to put them into action in our lives.

 “Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.”

 It’s a theme we will hear again and again in James: how we live matters, because how we live reveals what we truly believe.

 It’s far too easy to look around these days and see people who profess to be Christian – with crosses around their necks and crosses on their cars and bible verses on their walls and on their shirts and rolling out of their mouths… people whose lives have all the “trappings” of Christianity, but who by their lives call into question whether they’ve ever gotten acquainted with Jesus at all – Jesus, who knew that hurting people are always more important than rules and tradition; Jesus, who said only the one without sin should cast a stone; Jesus, who didn’t stand apart from the hungry or the lonely, who welcomed strangers and identified with outcasts, who sought out the people everyone else had written off as untouchable, and invited them to share his bread and share his life; Jesus, who called out the comfortable and comforted the oppressed.

 James writes, “If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless.” If you use the words of Christ to wound the very people he came to heal, if you use the words of scripture to justify excluding the very people God’s arms are open to receive, if you use the bible to try to argue that it’s God’s idea for the rich to get richer while everyone else hopes to scrape by, if your faith is lived out by dismantling education, by taking away opportunities, by propping up evil and unjust systems… well, you may have faith, friends, but it’s not faith in any Christ I’ve ever met.

 James writes, “But those who persevere, not as hearers who forget but doers who act – they will be blessed in their doing… Religion that is pure and undefiled before [God] is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

 And “unstained” doesn’t mean untouched; it doesn’t mean we lock ourselves away so we can keep our hands clean in order to satisfy some impossible ideal of purity. After all, Jesus was born in a stable, and he slept alongside dusty roads, and he bled on a criminal’s cross... this is not a God who is afraid to get dirty.

But “unstained’ means that, as we wade into the dirt and dust of a world full of sin and sorrow and suffering, that we don’t let it define us, and we don’t forget who we really are. We are made in God’s image; we bear the image of the God who so loved the world that he could not stay away – and we are called to do the same. The faith that God delights in, the faith that’s worth living, is the faith that leads us to care for the most vulnerable people around us, to help the powerless find their voice, to love the lonely, and to believe that when we do, God will meet us there.

 As we journey through the book of James, we will find that James has no time for casual disciples; and James is quite insistent that how we live matters… not because we’re so weak we need to protect ourselves from the world, but because we are so powerful, we have the power to reshape this world, to impact lives, to bring hope and work for justice and make the world around us look more like the world God longs for it to be.

 We know the words. We have met the Word in flesh. But let’s not just let the words be words, words we underline and scrawl across pretty pictures… let’s not let our faith be no more than slogans and bumper stickers…but may our faith be written on our hearts and lived out in our lives.

  O Lord, may our faith be more than words. May we not just hear, not just speak, but live with faith, with love and with grace. In Christ’s name; amen.

[mindthump]

Neuroscience Tells Us How to Hack Our Brains for Success http://ift.tt/2sikZSy

What’s the secret to success? Some would argue that insanely successful people possess traits like having a vision, showing gratitude, being honest, learning from failure and having a high emotional intelligence.

While these traits definitely play role, the real secret to success comes down to science, particularly advancements in neuroscience, and how you can condition your brain to achieve your dreams and goals.

The neuroscience of success can get complicated, but it’s really about how your brain functions in three different areas; reticular activating system (RAS), the release of dopamine and your memory. If you’re not a science person, I’ll try and make this all painless as possible.

Related: How to Hack Your Brain Chemicals to Be More Productive

The Reticular Activating System

Located at the base of the brain where it connects with the spinal cord, there’s one of most important parts of the brain; the reticular activating system.

RAS influences cognition and is basically a filter for the roughly eight million bits of information (subconsciously) flowing through our brain. In other words, it eliminates the white noise. When message gets past the RAS filter it enters the cerebrum and is then converted into conscious thoughts, emotions, or even both.

As Ruben Gonzalez, author of The Courage to Succeed, explains, “Even though the cerebrum is the center of thought, it will not respond to a message unless the RAS allows it. The RAS is like Google. There are millions of web sites out there, but you filter out the ones you are not interested in simply by typing a keyword.”

So, what messages get through? Pretty much just the ones that are currently important to you. For example, if you’re focused on preparing for a speaking engagement then your RAS is going to filter in the thoughts that are going to make your presentation a success, such as the tools and resources you’ll need to deliver a memorable speech.

As Gonzalez adds, “This means the more you keep your goals ‘top of mind,’ the more your subconscious mind will work to reach them. That’s why writing your goals down every day, visualizing your intended outcome and regularly saying affirmations is so important! Doing those things truly does help you to focus your subconscious mind on what’s important to you.”

Related: The Extraordinary Power of Visualizing Success

Dopamine Feedback Loops

While RAS can help you focus on the desired outcome you’d like to receive, the release of dopamine is what makes success feel oh-so-good.

As Mark Lukens, founding partner of Method3, wrote recently, “When we succeed at something, our brains release chemical rewards, the most important of which is the neurotransmitter dopamine, a chemical best known for the role it plays in addiction and drug use.” Dopamine, despite this negative association, “is a natural part of how our brains function, producing the sensation of pleasure whenever you taste coffee or chocolate, or when you achieve a big win.”

Because of this, it makes sense that “dopamine is strongly connected to motivation, driving us to repeat the behaviors that create that rush, even when we aren’t experiencing it.” However, the dopamine response is short-term, but since our brains remember how awesome it was before, we strive to seek it out over and over again.

That’s when dopamine loops enter the picture. After you’ve experienced repeated success the pleasure you initially had gets smaller and smaller. Think of it this way, after you’ve already beaten a video game, it just doesn’t feel as good the second or third time, right? That’s when you seek at bigger rewards, like unlocking trophies, new characters or swag when completing a level.

“Under the right circumstances, this can drive us to seek out ever-greater thrills,” adds Lukens. It’s what why video game players are constantly engaged, it’s the reason why you check your phone every minute after updating your Facebook status, and it’s what motivates us in accomplishing bigger and better things.

For instance, if your goal was to acquire three new clients within two weeks, then you’re next goal would be to acquire six new clients in one one week. Everything else is the same, except the more challenging, and rewarding, task of doubling your stable of clients. As an added perk, this also helps you weed out the work and goals that aren’t motivating you or your team.

Related: Trigger These 4 Key Brain Chemicals for Happier Workers

Memories

Neuroscientists who have studied the way that the brain retrieves memories can also determine success.

Think about that for a second. That time you went mountain biking and had a nasty spill? That was a bad experience might discourage you from mountain biking again, at least for the foreseeable future. The same is true with starting a business. It failed and now you are more hesitant about taking that risk again.

Scientists, however, found that we can edit those bad memories to remove the negative associations. In fact, this memory therapy is used to treat PTSD sufferers. You can also edit good memories to further propel your towards success.

To weaken bad memories, bring that memory back and then let it get smaller and dimmer, like you’re watching small black-and-white TV fade out. Once there, insert new details that scramble the memory. For instance, think about the time you bombed while giving a speech or investor pitch. Now just imagine that your audience was dressed in something that made you laugh. Do that five or 10 times and that memory will make you chuckle.

As for strengthening your memories, recall the good memories as bright and loud as possible, like watching a movie in an IMAX theater. Keeping adding how that experience made you feel for five or 10 times. You should now feel on-top-of-the-world. Use that to motivate you going forward.

Related: How to Be Grateful When Times Are Tough

Hacks to rewire your brain for success.

The good news is that you can actually rewire your brain to become more successful. In fact, according to neuroscientist Michael Merzenich, it takes just 30 hours of training based on specific neuroscience techniques to improve your memory and cognition, speech patterns, and reading comprehension.

I know. That may sound like much. But, that’s just an hour a day for a month to achieve life-long success. I think that’s totally worth it. And, most of this training involves simple daily tasks, like;

Exercise and meditation. Exercising releases endorphins, which can help with problem solving and boost creativity. Meditation can help you achieve inner calm and breakdown any mental barriers or limitations.

Consume a diet rich in omega-3s and healthy fats. These can help keep dopamine levels in your brain active, as well as increase cerebral circulation.

Precision affirmations. “We’ve all heard of affirmations: repeating positive statements to ourselves in order to believe it,” writes John Assaraf is the CEO of NeuroGym. “While that may sound good in theory, there is often a severe lack of specificity that can hinder results.” Instead, “make a clear, definitive statement about yourself as if it is already true, your subconscious mind takes over and will act in accordance with that belief.” This “will imprint these beliefs into new neural pathways.”

Say your “Chief Aim” every morning and evening. Based from Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, “A definite chief aim is a specific, clearly-defined statement of purpose,” writes Dr. Julie Connor. “It has the power to guide your subconscious mind. It transforms your attitude from pessimism into positive expectation.” Write down your own “chief aim” and say it out loud every morning and evening. When I started my invoice company, I started every day by saying that I would become the best at this. Not quite there but getting there.

Get plenty of sleep. Make sure that you get between 6 1/2 and 8 hours of quality sleep every night so that you're more attentive and focused.

15 minutes a day. Carve out 15 minutes of your day to learn something new or master a skill you already have. It will have a positive impact on your brain.

Remove yourself from negative and stressful environments. According to Robert Sapolsky, a neuroendocrinology professor at Stanford University, “stress can not only be stopped, but reversed once the source, psychological or physical, is removed or sufficiently reduced.” In other words, the physical environment around us plays a very important role in the health of our brains.

Visualization. “Visualization is a powerful tool to retrain your subconscious mind, because it allows you to feel and experience a situation which hasn’t happened yet – as if it were real,” writes Assaraf. In short, “if you are able to genuinely ‘see’ yourself as financially successful in your mind, your subconscious will process that as reality.”

Related: Neuroscience Tells Us How to Hack Our Brains for Success 7 Big Myths About Success You Need to Ignore 4 Lies You Tell Yourself That Keep You From Being Successful

[tune-collective]

The 20 Best deadmau5 Songs

The 20 Best deadmau5 Songs

He may not be one for metaphors or lofty album titles, he may not know how to refrain from weighing in on any given subject, he may not really know how to play a bunch of traditional instruments, but Joel Zimmerman, aka deadmau5, is absolutely one of electronic dance music’s greatest producers.

He’s quite prodigious with eight studio albums released in 10 years, a successful label that helped spawn Skrillex and others, and his own music production Master Class series. You get the feeling he does everything the hard way, but he somehow does it so well.

Here’s a list of the 20 best deadmau5 songs to date, in our critical opinions. Enjoy, and feel free to disagree.

20. deadmau5 – “Bot”

For Lack of a Better Name is deadmau5’s fourth studio album and one that cemented the noise artist as one of the greats. It spawned tons of hits, and while “Bot” isn’t the LP’s grandest achievement, it is one of deadmau5’s most interesting songs. It’s full of wacky textures and frog noises. It sounds like the tribal music of exotic aliens who dwell in some kind of fantastic cyber jungle.

19. deadmau5 – “Alone With You”

This glittering bit of progressive house come from Random Album Title, deadmau5’s beautiful third LP. The persistent beat keeps bodies moving through the sparkling, melodic mist. It’s the kind of emotional build one happily and aimlessly explores over and over again.

18. deadmau5 – “Closer”

That exciting five-note progression should be instantly recognizable as John Williams’ alien-speak melody in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Daft Punk also used the sample, officially titled “Wild Signals,” as the intro to its Alive 2007 set, but deadmau5 takes the motif and turns it into something even grander. He deviates after the first two minutes, though those five notes continue to make their way in and out of the melodic lines. Maybe the aliens are listening.

17. deadmau5 – “Snowcone”

The first official single from deadmau5′ latest album, W:/2016Album, earns its name. It’s light and airy atmosphere captures the feeling of a light snow, and as we move forward into the beat, we find ourselves exploring deadmau5 hidden love of hip-hop rhythm. Kanye West and Pete Rock are fans. They shared a video of themselves listening to it in the studio, upon the reception of which deadmau5 announced “Snowcone” as one of his favorite songs on the new LP.

16. deadmau5 – “Infra Turbo Pigcart Racer”

Track five from while(1has got to be one of the most unique weapons in deadmau5′ musical arsenal. At just more than nine-and-a-half-minutes, it tells the supersonic story of, well, let’s pretend it really is a piggy racecar driver. It’s called Fast and the Furriest, and it is all about one adrenaline junky porker who makes his way into the Tron world and unlocks the true supersonic potential of those light bikes. Alright, I just made all that up, but doesn’t it sound like that?

15. deadmau5 – “Hi Friend”

This song perfectly captures the vibe of going out to your favorite nightclub and running into everyone you know and love. Lots of electro, heaps of filters, and dope party raps from MC Flipside.

14. deadmau5 – “Aural Psynapse”

Though it appears on 2011’s 5 Years of mau5 double-disc compilation, “Aural Psynapse” was first recorded and released in 2001 under deadmau5′ former alias Halcyon441, another Joel Zimmerman screen name lost in the annals of time. Proving the old adage that everything old is new again, the single went on to peak at No. 7 on Billboard‘s Dance/Electronic Digital Song chart. It’s a beautiful, emotional song where synths take the lead in all shapes and forms. Definitely a classic deadmau5 atmosphere.

13. deadmau5 – “HR 8938 Cephei”

This stand-alone release never graced an official deadmau5 album. It was one of Zimmerman’s Soundcloud dumps, but it’s nothing to overlook. At nearly 11-minutes long with a distant star namesake, it’s a progressive journey that starts cold and somber, builds into a hopeful, shoulder shaking beat, and here and there blasts the listener with strong, powerful moments.

12. deadmau5 – “Brazil (2nd Edit)”

Whatever happened to the first edit of “Brazil?” Well, deadmau5 decided it wasn’t that important. He might have been right. This track has been sampled by Kylie Minogue, Alexis Jordan, and Taio Cruz. It’s got an infectious beat and an easy-going staccato synth melody. Does it make you feel like you’re in Brazil when you listen to it? It’s a lot cheaper to enjoy than a vacation, in any case.

11. deadmau5 – “Maths”

Who’s ready to get weird? We are, and deadmau5 is bringing the electronic, alien funk heavy on this cut from 2012’s > album title goes here It served as the album’s lead single, and originally, it was supposed to be the final track on 4×4=12. The anxious, rising motion of the hook is the stuff dance floor come up dreams are made of. No one can stay seated when a tune like this gets dropped. This weird little tune is a get-up-and-go machine.

10. deadmau5 – “Moar Ghosts N Stuff”

Question: Why does “Moar Ghosts N Stuff” precede “Ghosts N Stuff” on 2009’s For Lack of a Better Name? Answer: Because deadmau5 is a troll, and he does whatever the hell he wants. This creepy organ intro is bone-chillingly cool. It’s actually a sample of Frederic Chopin’s Piano Sonata, Op. 35, No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, if you care to know. The vocal sample is from a monologue in The Brain From Planet Arous, a black-and-white, 1957 sci-fi indie flick. It also is an incredible way for deadmau5 to say “yeah, I just totally changed the game, and I am one of the best ever. Part two comes before part one. -shades fall on eyes- Deal with it.” This motif is one of deadmau5’s most memorable and instantly recognizable melodies. It just had to crack the top 10.

9. deadmau5 – “Sometimes Things Get, Whatever”

Another absolute fan favorite, this one being an early cut from 2008’s Random Album Title. It’s an easy song to relate to. We’ve all been overwhelmed by life to the point that we revert to cold robot mode, right? Zimmerman probably feels this way all the time. He’s totally that perfectionist sound engineer guy who frets over everything. I can’t actually say that with certainty, but c’mon, listen to this. Ironically, it’s a pretty straightforward and simple composition. He’d probably have a big explanation for why that’s not true, of course. It probably took like a million hours of engineering to create this. It’s probably too complicated to explain, so, you know, whatever.

8. deadmau5 – “Animal Rights” with Wolfgang Gartner

Storytime! This jam dropped a couple weeks before I turned 23, and the night of my birthday, I was partying in college, and some drunk frat guy wandered into our after party and heard it was my birthday and decided he was gonna give me a lapdance. So I put on “Animal Rights” and he was like “Hey, I really like this song. Who is it?” And I was like, “Don’t worry about it and take your clothes off.” That has nothing to do with how awesome this Wolfgang Gartner collaboration is, how it’s super funky and was totally exciting and fresh at the time, how it blends Gartner’s signature “complextro” sound with deadmau5’s awesome, techy atmospheres – but then again, maybe it does. Either way, go get a lap dance from a frat boy to it. It’s a pretty fun experience, even though he’s totally feeling himself more than you are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_esYONwdKuw

7. deadmau5 – “The Veldt” feat. Chris James

Grab your reading list. This tune is inspired by a Ray Bradbury short story, also titled The Veldt. That’s more to do with Chris James’ original lyrics, but it’s still totally awesome. You should know Ray Bradbury as the guy who wrote Fahrenheit 451, and if you don’t, get it together! deadmau5 created this song live during a 22-hour livestream. Dude is insane, right? The original version is just more than eight-and-a-half minutes long, and when the radio edit ends at just more than two-and-a-half, you’re like “wait, where is the rest of the song,” but the video is really cool, so we share it with you. This is a majestic bit of music, a perfect combination from deadmau5 and James.

6. deadmau5 – “Some Chords”

I nominate this track for Best Song Title of All Time. Basically every song in the history of ever could have this name, but only deadmau5 was lazy and clever enough to think of it. The chords in question are the backbone for the song, the musical template around which the beat aimlessly meanders. The chords evolve through different instrumentation, all the while the texture accents weave in and out to build the song to an aggressive fever pitch. 

5. deadmau5 – “Raise Your Weapon”

Heartbreak is never easy, but the music is inspires is some of the best ever written. “Raise Your Weapon” is a rallying cry, something to cling to in times of sadness. It’s opening piano notes, matched by singer Greta Svabo Bech’s listless vocal entry, welcomes your sorrow, but soon, the song finds strength, just as you will, given enough time. Bech is positively powerful by mid-section, and of course, so is the music, which eventually dissolves into a dubstep breakdown. It grips the listener from beginning to end, and though it’s a rather primitive bit of dubstep, it’s got some of the cooler noises we’ve heard in the garish genre. We’re happy to hear those piano chords finish it out, though. Part of your sadness never dies.

4. deadmau5 – “Faxing Berlin”

Faxing is an outdated form of communication, but it may have still been slightly relevant when deadmau5 first released this track in 2006. Email was totally relevant by then, but old people, you know? Famously supported by Pete Tong, “Faxing Berlin” is actually deadmau5’s first single ever, which is worth celebrating in itself. It’s also the first-ever release from mau5trap records. It’s also a constant favorite among fans, it’s slow build progressive vibe being absolutely quintessential to the deadmau5 sound. It’s one of his chillest, prettiest compositions. It’ll put you in a trance you’ll never want to escape.

3. deadmau5 – “I Remember” with Kaskade

“Faxing Berlin” is beautiful, but “I Remember” is one of the most luscious, gorgeous, all-encompassing electronic tunes of all time. It’s got classic written all over it, from the moment the beat and chords hit your ears, to the transcendent minute vocalist Haley Gibby sings into the mic, on through its full, spell-binding nine minutes. It’s kind of the perfect rave anthem, with soft female vocals whispering vaguely positive messages and chords in the tone of soft blues and whites. Something about it makes me reminisce about raves I went to in the mid 2000s, or maybe that’s just the song’s reminiscent vibe creeping into my head. I see what you did there, guys. Good game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7ArUgxtlJs

2. deadmau5 – “Ghosts n Stuff” feat. Rob Swire

Here we are again, these instantly-recognizable synth chords, this moment-defining sound. Of course, this time, we get the incredible Rob Swire, a man who was already a legend for his work with Pendulum, and who would go on to be even more famous as Knife Party. Swire is a beast on this track. This song was originally created at the request of Pete Tong, who essentially dared deadmau5 to make a new tune in time for his appearance on BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix. It’s one of deadmau5’s biggest hits ever, which is more than impressive for a last-minute production. This beat matched with these scream-along vocals makes for one of dance music’s most memorable refrains. It’s a classic. Kids 20 years from now will be like “have you heard Ghosts n Stuff,” and wish they were around to party in 2009, for sure.

1. deadmau5 – “Strobe”

I don’t think anybody would argue against “Strobe” being deadmau5’s best song. It’s iconic. It’s got all the elements that make deadmau5 the producer he is. It’s slow and pretty, it takes time to evolve, it’s got a slow and steady build, it erupts into progressive house perfection, it even carries a bit of hard electro edge. It’s just the jam. It’s such the jam, deadmau5 recently reimagined it for mau5trap’s 100th release, then he gave it away for free because he knew all you fools wanted it so bad. It’s one of those perfect electronic tunes that stays with you forever, and for that, we owe deadmau5 our eternal thanks.

Source: Billboard

http://tunecollective.com/2017/02/14/the-20-best-deadmau5-songs/

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN COMPANY

I'm more sympathetic to Newton. And a lot of people aren't sure what's the top idea in your mind with the imaginary high price you think they'll offer. They'll just discard that sentence as meaningless boilerplate, and hope, with increasing impatience, that in the next room snored? They pay him the smallest salary he can live on, plus 3% of the company up and down for each investor.1 It's striking how often programmers manage to get a lot done. The regulatory burden is much lower if a company's shareholders are all accredited investors.2 They have to, but the boring stuff you do in school under the name passion. The due diligence discloses no ticking bombs, and six weeks later they go ahead with the deal.3

Basically, I had to do was sit and look attentive. What kind of anti-dilution protection do they want? But having ideas is not very good. Risk and reward are usually proportionate, however: they're also not bound by all the rules that VC firms are organized as funds, much like hedge funds or mutual funds. When we got into such a scrape, our investors took advantage of it in a way that allows specifications to change on the fly. Programmers, though, like it better when they write more code. If you're talking to someone from corp dev wants to meet, the founders tell themselves they should at least see what it is, right? I think we should be just as likely to feel life was short if we lived 10 times as much. You can start to ask other interesting questions. I can do at this computer is work. It's getting more straightforward to get things manufactured.

Where does it go wrong? In practice that means startups should only talk to corp dev unless a you want to write out your whole presentation beforehand and memorize it, that's ok. Many founders do.4 Maybe the startup can find lawyers who will do it cheaply in the hope of getting rich is enough motivation to keep founders at work. I don't always try as hard as this though. VCs who'd invested at high valuations, leaving an IPO as the only way to be sure that you're exploring virgin territory is to to stake out a piece of ground that no one is going to come up with more. Programmers were seen as technicians who translated the visions if that is the word blog, at least.5 Excite did, for example, because people are what people are interested in you, or an acquirer says they want to invest millions in a company, that implicitly establishes a value for it. He brought up something called Revenue Loop, which Viaweb had been working on when they bought us.

For example, newspaper editors assigned stories to reporters, then edited what they wrote. Relief. All makers face this problem. Distraction seeks you out. Most articles in the print media are competing against. Write rereadable code. They seem to vary a great deal in other respects. He works in a small group perforce, because he expected it to be perfect. But suggesting efficiency is a different thing from actually being efficient. You've still picked a good team. It was alarming to me how foreign it felt to sit in front of that computer for hours at a stretch. Especially in the beginning; a prototype is a conversation with yourself.6

It's the economy, stupid. VCs prefer to invest in come to him through referrals. Chesterfield described dirt as matter out of place. Reading Fred's post made me go back and look at the ones that went on to do great work for free, those worlds resemble market economies, while most companies, for all their followers to die. So if you don't let people ship, you won't have any artists. Good does not mean being a pushover. After years of working on it.

In the earliest phases—often when the company is in theory worth $200,000 worth of new shares to the angel; if there were 1000 shares before the deal, but because if other investors are interested, you must be worth investing in. The same happens with writing. Counterintuitive as it feels, it's better most of the world, including China. Of course, Internet startups are still only a fraction of the world's economy, this component will set the tone for the rest. As I've written before, one byproduct of technical progress is that things we like tend to become more addictive. My oldest son will be 7 soon. So what do you do that, though?

We'll finish that debate tomorrow in our weekly meeting and get back to you with our thoughts. No one except the other founders gets to see the real Nixon. We did it because we want their software to be good at what you do when life is short. I'm not saying there's no such thing. But when you damp oscillations, you lose the high points as well as your audience. I did. In the best case, the papers are just a fad. In both painting and hacking there are some tasks that are terrifyingly ambitious, and others wouldn't. Then I had kids.7 It means not being defined by it.8 When a friend of mine dislikes VCs.

Notes

For more on not screwing up. In principle companies aren't limited by the government. Learning for Text Categorization.

5,000 sestertii for his freedom Dessau, Inscriptiones 7812. But the change is a way to tell them exactly what constitutes research in the US in 2002 was 35,560. A small, fast browser that you should be taken into account, they mean. I have so far done a pretty comprehensive view of investor quality.

Sparse Binary Polynomial Hash Message Filtering and The Old Way. They therefore think what drives users to observe—e. When investors can't make up the same root.

Many will consent to b rather than for any particular truths you'll learn. Our founder meant a photograph of a startup to duplicate our software. Candidates for masters' degrees went on to create a silicon valley in Israel. The real problem is not the primary cause.

Add water as specified on rice cooker.

One reason I stuck with such energy that he had never invented anything—that an investor makes you a question you don't know who invented something the telephone, the American custom of having one founder take fundraising meetings is that they've focused on different components of it. Because the title associate has gotten a bad idea has been decreasing globally.

Comments at the end of the x axis and returns on the firm's site, they're nice to you; you're too busy to feel tired.

In fact it's our explicit goal at Y Combinator to increase it, and cook on lowish heat for at least some of those sentences. I don't mean to kill bad comments to solve a lot of reasons American car companies have never been the first person to run an online service, and that they don't want to save money, the approval of an investment.

Thanks to Max Roser, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, Jackie McDonough, and Josh Kopelman for putting up with me.