#like many social things it is treated as a survival of the fittest a lot of the time

[the-acid-pear]

Seeing your own trans body and identity as your masterpiece is so important

[canichangemyblogname]

If you suddenly found yourself in the SW galaxy… how well do you think you’d fare? And what would you do?

Okay, so... fun questions and I'm gonna analyze the hell out of it. I'm assuming that this would come as a surprise, given the use of 'suddenly.' So, I didn't plan to show up in a galaxy far-far away.

This would mean I've likely brought nothing with me, no documents, no transportation, and no other clothing.

I am going to run into several issues:

I have no usable currency on my person.

I have no identity.

I have no roof over my head.

I have no other clothes.

I have few transferrable skills.

I will be illiterate--I cannot read Aurebesh.

The lack of identity, identity documentation, transferrable or usable currency, shelter and clothing is an issue that lots of homeless and refugee populations face in our own galaxy. I would be in a pretty sticky situation if I show-up on a planet/ among a society built upon the need for documentation and currency to meet basic needs, as our own is. It is very difficult to climb from that given I won't even have boots to pull myself up by.

There are also several things that--in this vulnerable situation--I'd be at greater risk of:

disease and health complications (especially as they'll have bacteria and viruses I've never been safely exposed to in order to develop immunity)

trafficking

So far this is not uplifting, but you came to me (and I think I'm "known" [loosely] for over-analyzing Star Wars in realistic ways).

My situation is going to be quite dependent on the planet I show up on. If I arrived on Tatooine or Coruscant, which are known for their wealth inequality and "survival-of-the-fittest" atmosphere, I'd probably be screwed. If I arrived on Alderaan (when it still existed), where people are known more for their altruism and social services, I'd probably fare better. I'd also probably have an okay chance on Chandrila or Naboo.

Or maybe I show up in the middle of no-where on a planet like Sorgan. There seems to be a good community there and very accommodating people. These issues of no shelter or clothing or food or identity would not be a problem for long on a random farm in the middle of no-where.

The next issue I will run into is my inability to read or write and communicate in a majority of the galaxy's languages. I do not know Huttese. I cannot read Aurebesh. I am going to have to find somewhere I can go to school to learn this--something which might be inaccessible due to cost or my lack of identity. It will be especially difficult as there is no mutual frame of reference I and my teachers can work from as I don't recognize their alphabet and they don't recognize mine.

The next issue I'll run into is the user interface for technology. How do I work it? This goes from standard kitchen equipment to communication devices to transportation crafts to holomaps. And I cannot simply just read a manual as I do not know Aurebesh and learning that may be beyond my ability to access it.

Someone is going to have to be my very patient teacher.

Depending on where I land, healthcare might vary in accessibility. Is there an eye doctor on Sorgan? How about a doctor that can help treat my PCOS? My chronic migraines? How much will it cost to see a dentist? What about my eye-sight? I need bifocals at just 25. I cannot see very well. What about my hearing? Hearing loss runs in my family and I have tinnitus and can barely hear out my left ear. Will I be able to access any aids? Will that be behind a paywall and thus inaccessible?

Now say I am able to overcome all of this and build a fairly successful life for myself. What transferrable skills do I have? I have a background in government and politics. I can certainly work in government in an entry administrative position (I don't know if my degrees will be transferrable, another issue many refugees and immigrants face upon moving to another country). Anything that pays better would require me to know someone who knows someone. That's often how positions of 'influence' work, and that seems especially so in a galaxy far-far away.

If I am able to girl boss my way up, well... Star Wars politics is dangerous. If a disease didn't already take me out, an assassin certainly will. I can't run (I don't run). I have no real self-defense techniques against trained bounty hunters or mercenaries. I am definitely defenseless against my planet getting blown up. I would also need training for how to handle a blaster as they work differently from any man-made weapon that we earthlings would be familiar with.

My end conclusion would be that I probably wouldn't fare well and any survival or a stable life would be very difficult to achieve. It's not fun, but it's realistic.

[anryuuepic]

Daryan Cultural Values: Part 2

Value Structure

1. Individualism vs. Collectivism

Daryans are a heavily individualistic society. For the most part, they believe in high levels of independence and prioritizing the individual over the collective society. There are a few exceptions to this, such as loyalty and duty to the royal family and other such associations, as well as family ties, but the overall Daryan society believes in sticking up for their own interests above considering those of others.

2. Power Distance

Daryans have a relatively low power distance in their society. While the very upper class has a significant power distance from the rest of society, within the middle and lower classes, most people are fairly equal. Social ranks rarely differentiate Daryans’ attitudes toward each other, and moving through classes and positions in life is fairly easy. Power isn’t demonized, but most people are considered equal.

3. Uncertainty Avoidance

Daryan society is very low in uncertainty avoidance. Change and different sources of information are welcome, and very few people are stuck in their ways. Strong traditions still have their place, but most of their culture is allowed to flow freely and change with the times. A shifting world doesn’t bother them much, as in the end, who they are and what they stand for always seem to stay mostly the same.

4. Orientation to Time

Daryans generally have a short-term orientation to time. They’re more likely to focus on the here and now instead of planning for lofty goals that take up years to achieve. Instant satisfaction matters more than waiting out good things that come with time. Daryans live in the moment more than anything, preferring to focus on what’s happening right now than worry about what could come in the future.

5. Gender Equality

Daryan society is almost completely equal in terms of gender. Males and females are barely considered different, and aside from the upper classes (which tend to mimic the other two societies), they’re treated almost entirely the same. No one has more or fewer rights than the other, and behavioral expectations between the two rarely differ. Gender (or biological sex) matters in reproduction and not much else.

6. Assertiveness

Daryans are fairly high in assertiveness. They’re aggressive, competitive, and value personal strength and individual success over sparing people’s feelings. While not actively encouraged, stepping on others to stay alive is considered a necessary part of life. It’s very much “survival of the fittest” for them, with relationships and reliable connections being seen as a luxury that few are afforded.

7. Being vs. Doing

Daryans fall somewhere in the middle of being and doing. While they do believe in being able to change and master their own lives, they also focus on the quality of their lives and don’t have a whole lot of urgency in “getting places” during them. Their attitude amounts to doing what they can, but not getting hung up on the little things. Accepting the challenges of life and overcoming them is important.

8. Humane Orientation

Daryans are in the middle, toward the lower end, on human orientation. They don’t often support each other, believe that people are meant to fend for themselves, are motivated by themselves alone, and tend to be very independent. However, they do value familial connections, have a strong sense of structure in those relationships, and aren’t overly concerned with people’s individual identities.

9. Indulgence vs. Restraint

Daryan society is more indulgent. They don’t see any need to restrain themselves from beneficial or enjoyable things. Purposefully abstaining from the good parts of life is often seen as stuffy or self-important, and living a fulfilling life is viewed in a far more positive light. They don’t have issues with indulging in pleasures, although their definition of what those pleasures are is very different than many expect.

[alovevigilante]

Lions are fierce. Their roars are so guttural and loud that you can actually feel them. They’re wild, but also stealthy if they wanna be. They are the reining kings and queens of the savanna’s; the very tip top of the food chain. But despite all that they aren’t self sufficient. Lions also require the land, and other animals for sustenance. They couldn’t be on the top, if there weren’t others, to support the mighty lions. We are all needed, to create the whole.

Lions are the best? Subjective. Lions are one of many animals that create the ecosystem that we are familiar with. Eliminate one species, and others are affected, and it eventually affects us all. It’s a vibratory affect in some cases, and in others, it affects the world directly. Love is not the issue, all the time in the wild. Survival of the fittest is a fear based existence. And it’s the usual vibration shared and agreed upon. It’s an unconscious, serpentine behavior. A knee jerk reaction to the outside world. When it comes to the laws of the wild, love doesn’t even come into play most of the time, or does it?

A lot of animals show love. Lions do show love, and a lot of it. They have strong emotions. They are pack animals, travel in tribes. They stay with their young, and their partners. They experience loss, and need others of their kind to be social with. They are not islands among themselves. They clearly show their love. It’s extremely apparent. They have their baser instincts, as all us animals do, but they also have their loving moments. Many animals experience love, and without love, we’d all perish.

Love is not just a human trait, but it’s in all living things. Perhaps it doesn’t show up in the same recognizable way like in humans, but it is there. And as thinking beings, we are capable of recognizing it, acknowledging it, and are able to define it. Being a “love vigilant” human (taking all of the aforementioned “thinking being” capabilities into account) means deliberately looking for the love in everyone and in everything you see and experience in your life. It’s realizing that your energy, your thoughts and your eventual actions lead to the affect, and do effect all things that share this earth. So being a loving person is most important thing you can do because we are capable of creating the reality we desire by thinking it into being with inspired loving thoughts and actions.

The lions, are still in survival mode, like a lot of us are, but despite their animal instincts, they still need love. We normally don’t have to choose fight or flight. Some people unfortunately still live in dire situations in this day and age, and some don’t. But all thinking, loving human beings can still choose to be in a state of love no matter what is happening on the outside. And it’s all of our responsibility to help all by first by thinking loving & supportive thoughts about ourselves, and then all the other extensions of us, which is everyone and everything in form in the world.

Love is something all humans can share with all things. And how we treat ourselves and one another and the world around us, is imperative to our survival as a human race. All depends on it.

[thefeckisthis]

i’m baack!

nope, you might have hoped that I stopped writing and Im sorry to disappoint you because i didnt. #sorrynotsorry

just havent written for a while, things happened, world shut down and all. now im back with bit of bitching again. and again im not sure how long this will be, and what exactly will i write but i feel like giving out about some stuff and some people, so stick around! first of all, in a way i wonder how antisocial my life is because this staying at home isnt much different than my everyday introvert (people hating) life. im surprised tho, i still work full time, finished dan browns origin that took me over a year to finish (might tell you how interesting it is compared to all his previous ones that I read in under a week). started new book, finished it in a week and a half, started a new one. so book reading is going well, i walk my dog often sometimes for over an hour, almost finished better call saul (great show if you watched breaking bad, explains a lot!), went back to my laptop gaming (sorry ps4 and sorry money i spent on it), btw im playing witcher 2 and sims 4 mostly. spent hours sometimes watching YT. worked out every second day, did online dancing classes, my time was fullfilled. work has been hectic because of some people, then this virus making it bit more hectic, then people making my life hectic, my anxiety was spiking, ya know, usual march in your life. dont ask me how did i manage to do all that

im not actually anxious because about getting virus, im happy to stay home, but things chained up, one after another and i used books and games to keep me occupied :D

things come and go, you just need to know how to control not yourself, but how you react to those things.when times get tough, you need to get tougher!

now lets get to the bitching part.

ha notice the new ‘’keep reading’’ part? stupid of me to not put it sooner.

Im a weird one. i know. ive been told that many times. with that im difficult one as well. just mixture of everything. what im mostly interested in is people and peoples minds, and no, i would never be a sociologist or psychologist as im at the same time really annoyed with people and lack of communication. and you know that most of people are assholes. at the same time im an introvert, and i have social anxiety but i also like to experience new things and go places and do things that involve other people. i dont say im smart or better than anyone, i did experience in multiple situations that many people are not on the same level as me and makes me wonder how did you survive till this point in your life?

take this pandemic for instance. all the panic buyers and people reading and believing everything they see on tv (watch V for Vendetta and it will make you question things). the simple rule is dont go out. and what people do? they go out. like since when do you hike every day? bullshit sit at home and watch tv. if youre smart youll do something useful. kids coughing at people around as  part of the challenge, like wtf? how are we still allowed to reproduce as a race? is brain dying out with every single generation? Maybe the world did deserve this virus, survival of the fittest, if you get what i mean.

anyway lets go back to people again. (like i talked about something else). im such a why person and i tend to see through peoples bullshit. i always say that honest communication is best way to avoid bad situations. 

and being honest requires some balls, and this year some people have been proving they dont have any. usually i dont believe in second chances, if i do give someone a second chance then there is a good reason. but like when i give someone three opportunities to be honest and the other person keeps on bullshitting and they know i know its not true, thats where i draw a line. its mostly for me to see how far can one person go and treat me in that way. if i do persue that long be sure that i know what youre saying is not true, i just want to know how far can you go. one thing is if people change their minds, ok, i dont mind, let me know. treating me as im stupid thats downright disrespectful and low blow. i keep seeing that thats more reflection of who they are and not who you are and you all should keep that in mind. 

as said, im an introvert, i wont text someone first mostly and my close friends know that and dont mind, they dont think i hate them, we’re still friends. my method is mirroring, how you treat me thats how i treat you. if youve ever wondered why i treat you the way i do, step back and think about your own actions.

in these days of modern technology  our everyday communication is through mobile phones and the easiest way is to pretend you didnt see something or something like i didnt have my phone with me. 

like cmon, it 2020. we both know its bullshit. just stop being an asshole and be honest, grow some balls and tell that person what is actually up. whether its your friend, family, someone youve been talking to - little honesty goes long way and can solve many problems. no one deserves to be treated that way and it only reflects bad on you.

i know its hard, it is way easier to just ignore and pretend it doesnt exsist and hope it goes away, but its not the way. i had situations like that, and being a person who always wants to know why i always want to give people the reason why, either if they ask me or if the situation requires it. i had situations when someone was trying so hard around me and i wasnt feeling the same way but i told them honestly what is up, yeah, some of them stopped talking to me which i completely understand and with some i still talk to this day, some of the even thanked me for being honest.

COMMUNICATION is the key kids, dont be cowards.

[albus-sitnalta]

RP41111(M)

 In the summer, before I came to England, I began to think about what my animation would do. I started with six themes, exactly six animations. 

Of course, they are not the same level of preparation.           

 If I want to study them, I can actually study them, but the difficulty is different.

 These six themes are loneliness(lonely death), monopoly, justice theory, witch culture, friendship (mask) and pixel style.          

 In every story, I thought about what to do.           

 So, from this point of view, I’m very confident.  

 Loneliness(Lonely death):I quite agree with Zhang Ailing’s saying: a person will die three times in his life, the first time is brain death, which means body death, the second time is funeral, which means death in society, the third time is forgetting, no one in the world will think of you again, that is, complete death.             

 People who have read  Zhang Ailing’s novels all know that  Zhang Ailing’s novels are very sad and beautiful, and even the novels are full of her stubborn strength. Maybe it’s because Zhang Ailing’s life experience is rather tortuous, so she can fully understand the essence of things, so she can write some unforgettable words. Taking this passage as an example, it is undoubtedly the best interpretation of death.  But if, before his first death, he had experienced a second death and a third death, what would that person do?             

 I once made an animation called invisible death in my freshman year. This is the first time I really made an animation, but due to the length of time and technical problems, I didn’t make the result I wanted.      

 But it never means that I gave up the theme, the last time I didn’t do the animation, this is also a new opportunity.           

 So, invisible death is again on my mind.

 Profit:This is the inspiration I got from my discussions with my father.             

 A large company has already become a shell company, but it has not gone bankrupt, and the government does not allow it to go bankrupt. Every year, the government will give a lot of subsidies. The chairman of the company sent out an invitation for cooperation to the small developing companies around him by tough means. After that, he took the person in charge of the opposite company to the casino on the basis of business negotiation. He used improper means to make the person in charge of the other company owe gambling debts, and then he bought the other company at a very low price on the ground that the other party paid off the debts.             

 I’ve also heard of threatening investment, which is often used by angel investor sun Zhengyi. He once invested 100 million yuan in Yahoo in 1995, but the founder of Yahoo refused. Of course, sun Zhengyi won’t let go of the opportunity to get benefits. If the founder of Yahoo doesn’t accept the investment, he will give the 100 million dollar investment to his competitors.             

 When we talk about these things, we deeply feel that the gap between capitals can never be solved by one or two ideas or one or two investments.  

 Justice Theory: A lot of times, we find that a lot of things are obviously contrary to morality, but people say it is right. A lot of times, we see that bad people are not punished and good people are not rewarded.            

 “Survival of the fittest, natural selection” is justice, some say “victory is justice”, some say “most people think justice is justice"            

 What is justice?             

I didn’t make a breakthrough until I started writing the novel saints.             

It’s because of the deviation between our own justice and the justice in reality, and it’s a huge deviation.             

Later, when I finished writing the saints, I made a small, unprofessional summary of this discovery.              

I divide justice into six kinds according to my own understanding.             

Cosmic justice (Natural Justice): natural selection, survival of the fittest             Moral justice: justice based on moral and noble qualities, such as honesty, dedication, sacrifice             

Social justice: justice that conforms to the ideas of most people in society and changes with the development or change of society             

Legal justice: the justice stipulated by national laws is the final bottom line to protect people             

Rule justice (atmosphere justice): a kind of justice that does not conform to the rules, usually referring to the bad things, justice that appears in some disharmonious atmosphere            

 Game Justice: a kind of justice that destroys rules for the purpose of selfish desire or control.

Witch culture:If I am most interested in any culture at this stage, there is no doubt that I am interested in the witch culture in the Middle Ages             

When it comes to witches, it’s associated with herbs, witchcraft, and fire. When it comes to fire, it’s associated with religion. When it comes to the Templars, it’s associated with the Crusades. Together, everything is connected, and it becomes a medieval era with a unique style.             

The study of witches, or the study of the middle ages, started from my real writing of novels. It has been four years since now, but in fact, there are not many real researches.             

There are still a lot of things not to understand.            

 But if it’s just animation, I think I can extract a paragraph from my novel at any time.

Friendship (mask): I believe that I have experienced the cold violence in my campus. I am more sensitive and valued to the word friendship than ordinary people. I know how to protect myself, but I also don’t know how to refuse others’ invitation. I often do something I don’t want to do and participate in activities I don’t want to participate in.             

When there is an outbreak, I will quarrel with others, but I will be very careful even when I quarrel, but I find that some people do not treat you as a thing at all, and their attitude is who you think you are.             

Of course, this is my personal experience.            

 Another reason is that China’s friendship is really complex. If you don’t go to China, you can’t understand this feeling.

Pixel style：I’ve never been a person who likes to be the same, of course not my clothes.             

Since the University, my painting style has been changing. I’m willing to try all kinds of strange styles. I choose a different style to make every animation. The pixel style is also my favorite style.            

 Simple and light pixel style. Generalize without losing details             

Most beautiful things are ingenious combination of color and shape. Pixel style is a new attempt. 

[horner88breen-blog]

Can One Truly Leave the Sex Industry

Inside my 5-6 years in the escorting world, I just need seen one woman completely get out of the sex industry. Others, a small minority, may leave apparently industry but typically revert back to selling themselves after a few weeks/months/years. I will never forgot the words, Shell be back, said along with a Madame (brothel/escort business owner) at an establishment I worked at overseas. Consider the 63 after a popular young woman decided it was her last day in the industry, and she wanted to do pursue her new normal job and boyfriend. Shell be backhow discouraging, yet later I realized how real the statement actually was. Paulina Leaving the information mill NEVER without war. Paulina is the only former-escort I understand who has left the industry entirely. She has managed so far successfully, but it wasnt easy at in the beginning. I came to know her intimately only after she left the industry and when she almost fell back to it. However, when she was still in the industry and we were working together we hardly mingled. Having been the odd girl who stayed away from the casual sex, drugs, and party scene, so generally she, like many working girls, found little commonality with my lifestyle. Paulina was a stupendous South America girl who immigrated towards the West at a young age. I witnessed her loss-of-innocence in her escorting days, which happens when she involved herself with heavy partying and living with another escort (a match for disaster). She ended up getting involved through expensive drug (cocaine) habit, which looks the drug of choice for elite escorts/clients. Thankfully, her experimenting phase was short-lived, and ended in one year. One thing that Paulina and I have done have in common was our conflicting values of traditional and modern. She was raised on the inside West, yet she still held on to her traditional South American values (her cultural values conflicted with the individualistic, care-free values she was living as the prostitute). Selling sex is often not problematic, but rather the lifestyle frequently related to high-class prostitutes is damaging (excessive partying, excess shallowness). She'd quit the industry, and completely got away from drug treatments and partying. She called me from your nowhere one day, and wanted to. At first I couldnt discover why she would suddenly want to meet me, but later she told me that I was the only person she hoped to trust from this industry. In her view, I was someone who probably would not tempt her back up in her bad habits, yet I could relate to her because I was an escort overly. I was flattered, and determined to help her stay off from prostitution, even though I wasnt in order to leave myself. She had deep emotional scars from being a prostitute, and think it is hard confide in anyone. She had met a lovely man, but he previously had no idea about her past and she or he wanted to maintain it to remain that way. Whenever she got depressed or felt the urge to return to selling herself, she called me for comfort. I havent seen her in over one year, since she lives overseas where That i used to live. Currently, she's still out of the business, and a wedding soon to the love of her lifetime. She is my hopebecause if she could continue to be away from the industry, then a genuine effort . hope. Unfortunately, it is extremely easy to fall back into prostitution The pattern Ive observed has become common: women leave the industry to pursue love, and they return when that love failed. Another woman I am aware did quit the industry, however she recently admitted that she is returning to escorting. Why? Because she broke up with the person she wanted. Months ago I remember her saying If I wasnt with my boyfriend, then I would personally still be selling myself. This is classic of women trying to depart the industry, and perhaps the most depressing part of computer. Over the years, I met countless women whove returned to prostitution after a failed relationship. Well known girls say they wasted their youth in their failed relationships when they might have been essentially exploiting their youthfulness by selling themselves. During the night these women return to sex work, their hearts are dented. Yes, I have seen many broken hearted women returning to selling their bodies, yet sadly it looks like theyve also lost their souls. When falling in love with a potential partner, an escort to be able to ask herself: Is he worth this method? Is love, itself, enough to quit her autonomy and employment? The men she rejects are individuals cannot leave her with financial freedom, even though they may be willing to adore and treat her decent. Other escorts choose the latter, which is to avoid relationships altogether and focus on man or women. How often do escorts leave the industry when a man is NOT in photographs? I have yet to stumbled upon a prostitute who leaves the industry sector for her very own intuition. Stick to ask myself this question: Do I would like to leave because I want love? Perhaps, as most of us desire love and global recognition. Sadly, acceptance is only granted when people conform to whats frequent. And of course, being a sex worker is out-of-the-norm in modern societies, thus furthering us beyond your societies embrace. But again, it doesnt have staying this form. There are people who fight these oppressive norms that marginalize sex workers its not a very bad thing to differ. But being outside the norms of society requires lots of strength. There is absolutely no social space allocated for prostitutes. As a result, we face tremendous pressure to adhere to the normative ways of living life (such as marriage, owning a home, etc). Although Used to quit for a short period when I realized i was engaged, I never mentally prepared myself that I've been finished is not industry. I still haven't. Its a question that Ive been avoiding to answer: when will I quit? Does an individual even to help quit? Would I remaining? I used to want to quit, and I told myself that I would personally quit selling my body after I'm finished my graduate data. Regardless, I dont feel that Im ready to make now. Enjoy aspects of my job, but I just do not wish the implications (the stigma, the degradation of the industry, the legalities, etc). Fear of leaving sex-work is unique. Escorts in Manchester of emotions. Im aware that the stigma is damaging me, but when times are great I tend to ignore the damage Im executing. At times, sex work doesnt appear like a problem for some escorts, and for others, it is deeply damaging psychologically. But overall, one cannot deny the problem of hunting live in the world where ones identity is constantly hidden and condemned. Social Darwinism, the idea that started this complete survival of the fittest competition among society is a false notion, the idea may be very real in modern society. Im aware that competition is simply a socially constructed concept, yet sadly I feel deeply pressured to engage in this race in society. I fear that if I dont sell myself, I will lose out in this particular competition. This is exactly what needs to change, I have to let go of the pressures of mainstream the population. Why do I want to participate this shallow competition primarily? This is increase in a cold society (Western-Liberal societies) that puts increased progress, individualism, competition, status, and monetary wealth. This is what drove me to the Social Sciences as an area of study: society deeply impacts how people think and react. I assign other reasons why I entered into prostitution on social stress. Once youre in the sex industry, it is very hard to depart. A woman I know is wanting her much better to pursue the usual job but admits she gets the pressure to get back escorting. Its too easy (escorting), and also the money is quick. Her mind, like most escorts, becomes tainted whilst haunting fact: a few hours or an evening of escorting can pay all the bills that would take 1-2 weeks of hard act on a normal job. Did any of folks imagine growing accustomed to our lifestyles? Did we ever imagine that wed donrrrt slave to our own addiction for fast-money? Of course not. A wonderful friend of mine is a former receptionist in intercourse party industry. She told me how she was inclined to become an escort, however she changed her mind once she saw the reality: escorts may make lots of money, but at the high cost of our emotions. Provides you with ask myself time and time againWas it this?

[radredrecluse]

Survival of the Richest

The wealthy are plotting to leave us behind

Douglas Rushkoff

Last year, I got invited to a super-deluxe private resort to deliver a keynote speech to what I assumed would be a hundred or so investment bankers. It was by far the largest fee I had ever been offered for a talk — about half my annual professor’s salary — all to deliver some insight on the subject of “the future of technology.”

I’ve never liked talking about the future. The Q&A sessions always end up more like parlor games, where I’m asked to opine on the latest technology buzzwords as if they were ticker symbols for potential investments: blockchain, 3D printing, CRISPR. The audiences are rarely interested in learning about these technologies or their potential impacts beyond the binary choice of whether or not to invest in them. But money talks, so I took the gig.

After I arrived, I was ushered into what I thought was the green room. But instead of being wired with a microphone or taken to a stage, I just sat there at a plain round table as my audience was brought to me: five super-wealthy guys — yes, all men — from the upper echelon of the hedge fund world. After a bit of small talk, I realized they had no interest in the information I had prepared about the future of technology. They had come with questions of their own.

They started out innocuously enough. Ethereum or bitcoin? Is quantum computing a real thing? Slowly but surely, however, they edged into their real topics of concern.

Which region will be less impacted by the coming climate crisis: New Zealand or Alaska? Is Google really building Ray Kurzweil a home for his brain, and will his consciousness live through the transition, or will it die and be reborn as a whole new one? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?”

The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr. Robot hack that takes everything down.

This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from the angry mobs. But how would they pay the guards once money was worthless? What would stop the guards from choosing their own leader? The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers — if that technology could be developed in time.

That’s when it hit me: At least as far as these gentlemen were concerned, this was a talk about the future of technology. Taking their cue from Elon Musk colonizing Mars, Peter Thiel reversing the aging process, or Sam Altman and Ray Kurzweil uploading their minds into supercomputers, they were preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether and insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape.

There’s nothing wrong with madly optimistic appraisals of how technology might benefit human society. But the current drive for a post-human utopia is something else. It’s less a vision for the wholesale migration of humanity to a new a state of being than a quest to transcend all that is human: the body, interdependence, compassion, vulnerability, and complexity. As technology philosophers have been pointing out for years, now, the transhumanist vision too easily reduces all of reality to data, concluding that “humans are nothing but information-processing objects.”

It’s a reduction of human evolution to a video game that someone wins by finding the escape hatch and then letting a few of his BFFs come along for the ride. Will it be Musk, Bezos, Thiel…Zuckerberg? These billionaires are the presumptive winners of the digital economy — the same survival-of-the-fittest business landscape that’s fueling most of this speculation to begin with.

Of course, it wasn’t always this way. There was a brief moment, in the early 1990s, when the digital future felt open-ended and up for our invention. Technology was becoming a playground for the counterculture, who saw in it the opportunity to create a more inclusive, distributed, and pro-human future. But established business interests only saw new potentials for the same old extraction, and too many technologists were seduced by unicorn IPOs. Digital futures became understood more like stock futures or cotton futures — something to predict and make bets on. So nearly every speech, article, study, documentary, or white paper was seen as relevant only insofar as it pointed to a ticker symbol. The future became less a thing we create through our present-day choices or hopes for humankind than a predestined scenario we bet on with our venture capital but arrive at passively.

This freed everyone from the moral implications of their activities. Technology development became less a story of collective flourishing than personal survival. Worse, as I learned, to call attention to any of this was to unintentionally cast oneself as an enemy of the market or an anti-technology curmudgeon.

So instead of considering the practical ethics of impoverishing and exploiting the many in the name of the few, most academics, journalists, and science-fiction writers instead considered much more abstract and fanciful conundrums: Is it fair for a stock trader to use smart drugs? Should children get implants for foreign languages? Do we want autonomous vehicles to prioritize the lives of pedestrians over those of its passengers? Should the first Mars colonies be run as democracies? Does changing my DNA undermine my identity? Should robots have rights?

Asking these sorts of questions, while philosophically entertaining, is a poor substitute for wrestling with the real moral quandaries associated with unbridled technological development in the name of corporate capitalism. Digital platforms have turned an already exploitative and extractive marketplace (think Walmart) into an even more dehumanizing successor (think Amazon). Most of us became aware of these downsides in the form of automated jobs, the gig economy, and the demise of local retail.

But the more devastating impacts of pedal-to-the-metal digital capitalism fall on the environment and global poor. The manufacture of some of our computers and smartphones still uses networks of slave labor. These practices are so deeply entrenched that a company called Fairphone, founded from the ground up to make and market ethical phones, learned it was impossible. (The company’s founder now sadly refers to their products as “fairer” phones.)

Meanwhile, the mining of rare earth metals and disposal of our highly digital technologies destroys human habitats, replacing them with toxic waste dumps, which are then picked over by peasant children and their families, who sell usable materials back to the manufacturers.

This “out of sight, out of mind” externalization of poverty and poison doesn’t go away just because we’ve covered our eyes with VR goggles and immersed ourselves in an alternate reality. If anything, the longer we ignore the social, economic, and environmental repercussions, the more of a problem they become. This, in turn, motivates even more withdrawal, more isolationism and apocalyptic fantasy — and more desperately concocted technologies and business plans. The cycle feeds itself.

The more committed we are to this view of the world, the more we come to see human beings as the problem and technology as the solution. The very essence of what it means to be human is treated less as a feature than bug. No matter their embedded biases, technologies are declared neutral. Any bad behaviors they induce in us are just a reflection of our own corrupted core. It’s as if some innate human savagery is to blame for our troubles. Just as the inefficiency of a local taxi market can be “solved” with an app that bankrupts human drivers, the vexing inconsistencies of the human psyche can be corrected with a digital or genetic upgrade.

Ultimately, according to the technosolutionist orthodoxy, the human future climaxes by uploading our consciousness to a computer or, perhaps better, accepting that technology itself is our evolutionary successor. Like members of a gnostic cult, we long to enter the next transcendent phase of our development, shedding our bodies and leaving them behind, along with our sins and troubles.

Our movies and television shows play out these fantasies for us. Zombie shows depict a post-apocalypse where people are no better than the undead — and seem to know it. Worse, these shows invite viewers to imagine the future as a zero-sum battle between the remaining humans, where one group’s survival is dependent on another one’s demise. Even Westworld — based on a science-fiction novel where robots run amok — ended its second season with the ultimate reveal: Human beings are simpler and more predictable than the artificial intelligences we create. The robots learn that each of us can be reduced to just a few lines of code, and that we’re incapable of making any willful choices. Heck, even the robots in that show want to escape the confines of their bodies and spend their rest of their lives in a computer simulation.

The mental gymnastics required for such a profound role reversal between humans and machines all depend on the underlying assumption that humans suck. Let’s either change them or get away from them, forever.

Thus, we get tech billionaires launching electric cars into space — as if this symbolizes something more than one billionaire’s capacity for corporate promotion. And if a few people do reach escape velocity and somehow survive in a bubble on Mars — despite our inability to maintain such a bubble even here on Earth in either of two multibillion-dollar Biosphere trials — the result will be less a continuation of the human diaspora than a lifeboat for the elite.

When the hedge funders asked me the best way to maintain authority over their security forces after “the event,” I suggested that their best bet would be to treat those people really well, right now. They should be engaging with their security staffs as if they were members of their own family. And the more they can expand this ethos of inclusivity to the rest of their business practices, supply chain management, sustainability efforts, and wealth distribution, the less chance there will be of an “event” in the first place. All this technological wizardry could be applied toward less romantic but entirely more collective interests right now.

They were amused by my optimism, but they didn’t really buy it. They were not interested in how to avoid a calamity; they’re convinced we are too far gone. For all their wealth and power, they don’t believe they can affect the future. They are simply accepting the darkest of all scenarios and then bringing whatever money and technology they can employ to insulate themselves — especially if they can’t get a seat on the rocket to Mars.

Luckily, those of us without the funding to consider disowning our own humanity have much better options available to us. We don’t have to use technology in such antisocial, atomizing ways. We can become the individual consumers and profiles that our devices and platforms want us to be, or we can remember that the truly evolved human doesn’t go it alone.

Being human is not about individual survival or escape. It’s a team sport. Whatever future humans have, it will be together.

[patriotsnet]

Are Republicans Or Democrats Better For Small Business

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/are-republicans-or-democrats-better-for-small-business/

Are Republicans Or Democrats Better For Small Business

Small Business And Government Regulations

AOC Blasts Republicans Who Blame Democrats for Holding Up Small Business Aid

Democratic views on small business revolve around the theory that, while government cannot guarantee the success of a small business, it can implement the conditions that support hiring of new workers through providing tax relief and increasing the availability of Small Business Administration resources.

During the Obama administration, President Obama cut taxes for small businesses no less than eighteen times. Also at President Obamas direction, the Small Business Administration administered more than 70,000 loans for businesses, offering those businesses with the much needed capital to invest and grow.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that was signed into law by President Obama states that business that hire previously unemployed workers are eligible for tax cuts and can write off the purchase of new equipment. Most of the small businesses are eligible under the Affordable Care Act for tax credits to offset the insurance costs for their employees. Democrats are fighting to defend the progress made and ensure that the new president Donald Trump cannot disrespect the American small businesses.

Virginia Republicans Have Been Warning Democratic Control Was Bad For Business Cnbc Disagrees

By: Graham Moomaw and Ned Oliver– July 13, 2021 6:33 pm

The sun rises over the Virginia Capitol.

After Democrats took control of the General Assembly in 2020, a common refrain emerged among Republicans who opposed legislation that raised the minimum wage and added new anti-discrimination protections for employees.

The Democrat majority has done much to diminish Virginias reputation for being Americas best state for business, said Senate Minority Leader Tommy Norment, R-James City, as Democrats first legislative session in power in more than two decades came to a close, invoking a ranking bestowed annually by the cable news network CNBC.

Two years later, it looks like at least some of those Democratic priorities actually helped the states business reputation.

For the second time in a row, Virginia was named the best state for business , which this year began factoring things like anti-discrimination laws and voting rights protections into its rankings under the heading of inclusivity.

Our economy in the Commonwealth of Virginia is roaring, Gov. Ralph Northam said during a victory-lap news conference in Norfolk on Tuesday. Its why companies of all sizes are choosing to call our commonwealth home. Virginia is proving that when you treat people right, its good for everyone and its also good for business.

Youngkins campaign downplayed the CNBC ranking Tuesday, arguing the state is underperforming in key metrics like cost of living and cost of doing business.

Committee Republicans Send Letter To Biden Pelosi Slamming Democrats’ Tax Hike Proposals On Small Businesses

WASHINGTON, D.C. Today, all House Small Business Committee Republicans – led by Ranking Member Luetkemeyer – sent a letter to President Biden and Speaker Pelosi highlighting the negative impacts the Democrats’ tax hike proposals would have on small businesses. As Democrats prepare to take historic steps to recklessly push forward trillions of dollars in spending paid for by small businesses across the country, Committee Republicans are standing up for Main Street USA. Small businesses are focused on recovering from the economic effects of the…

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Small Business And Taxes

Trump has supported significant cut on the income tax on all companies to 15 percent. Business groups also want to see partners, sole proprietors and corporate shareholders whose business income is reported on their personal returns benefit from these changes.

While the party has gotten a great deal of pushback because these policies would benefit big business, what many fail to realize is how essential these policies are to the survival of small businesses.

Staying Afloat During Covid

Brianna Knight, a 31-year-old Fresno resident with clients across the state, was one of the fortunate ones. Her holistic skincare business has done well during the pandemic.

The state grants helped, but so did her overplanning six months ahead at some points. Before the pandemic, Knight also launched a clinical skincare line, enabling her to package at-home facial kits for her clients once COVID-19 hit.;

Despite staying afloat, Knight said she is undecided how she will vote on the recall. She said she needs to research the candidates more, and wants to see how the next phase of the pandemic goes.

I definitely think that we need new leadership, but I dont know if right now is the time, she said. And I only say that because right now California is in the purple and we do foresee a possible shutdown again. So transitioning leadership right now sometimes it gets worse.;

Knight said she wantsnew leadership because of the way the pandemic was handled, including shutting down businesses that state leaders deemed non-essential.

I do corrective skincare, so acne, so even in a pandemic, those clients are still dealing with an issue, she said. I think that what they considered wasnt as important was important to a lot of people, and we werent recognized.

I definitely think that we need new leadership, but I dont know if right now is the time.

Brianna Knight, business owner from fresno

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History Of The Republican Party

The Republican Party came into existence just prior to the Civil War due to their long-time stance in favor of abolition of slavery. They were a small third-party who nominated John C. Freemont for President in 1856. In 1860 they became an established political party when their nominee Abraham Lincoln was elected as President of the United States. Lincolns Presidency throughout the war, including his policies to end slavery for good helped solidify the Republican Party as a major force in American politics. The elephant was chosen as their symbol in 1874 based on a cartoon in Harpers Weekly that depicted the new party as an elephant.

Regulating The Economy Democratic Style

The Democratic Party is generally considered more willing to intervene in the economy, subscribing to the belief that government power is needed to regulate businesses that ignore social interests in the pursuit of earning a return for shareholders. This intervention can come in the form of regulation or taxation to support social programs. Opponents often describe the Democratic approach to governing as “tax and spend.”

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Left Wing And Right Wing Politics

Politics is said to be split in half and you either have left or right political views. Left-wing politics is typically associated with progressive ideas and equality. Democrats are viewed as left-wingers. Right-wing politics values tradition, equity, and survival of the fittest. Republicans are viewed as right-wingers.;

Left-Wing

Left-wing beliefs are liberal in that they believe society is best served with an expanded role of the government. Examples of an expanded role for the government include entitlement programs such as social security and Medicare, Medicaid, universal healthcare, food stamps, free public education, unemployment benefits, strong environmental laws, and other regulations on industries.

Right Wing

Right-wingers believe that the best outcome for society is achieved when individual rights and civil liberties are paramount and the role and especially the power of the government is minimized. Right-wing ideology would favor market-based solutions to the issues that these government programs aim to tackle. For example, encouraging a freer marketplace for healthcare, driven by consumer choice to drive down costs. Or privately held retirement accounts like 401 plans instead of government-guaranteed Social Security.

Study: Republicans Are 24 Percent More Likely Than Democrats To Be Business Owners

Lou Dobbs: NYC is a very difficult environment for any small business owner

According to the Small Business Administration, there are about 28 million small business owners in this country and approximately 22 million of them are self-employed or non-employer firms. The rest of these small firms are employing more than 120 million people. Thats a pretty big voting bloc of small business owners and their employees.

Thats probably good news for Republicans.

According to;a survey;recently released by data research firm Infogroup, most small business owners vote Republican.

The company merged voter registration data from critical swing states with its proprietary database to come up with a combined pool of 5;million businesses and consumers that were asked questions about their party affiliation and other topics.

Of those surveyed, 24 percent of business owners were more likely to be Republican than Democrat. Republicans are way more likely to be presidents, vice-presidents and finance executives than Democrats and the hot industries for Republicans appear to be real estate, financial services and wholesale trade.

The study also found that Republicans tend to have stronger financial indicators than Democrats, such as higher household income, home value, net worth and likelihood to invest. They are also much more likely than Democrats to have a home office, purchase small business insurance, fly more frequently and invest more often in real estate.

For someone in marketing, sure. But what if youre a presidential candidate?

Read Also: Who Controls The House Of Representatives Republicans Or Democrats

Politics And Small Business

“The immediate shift in forward-looking sentiment that small business owners reported following the election reveals how deeply politics has become embedded in the public’s assessment of the economy, and in particular how divided the country is,” said Laura Wronski, research science manager at SurveyMonkey. “We’ve seen evidence of that every quarter, with Republican small business owners consistently reporting a higher degree of confidence than Democrats, but the election of Joe Biden is the first opportunity we’ve had to see whether that would flip if presidential power changed parties and it did dramatically.”

Among Republican respondents, the small business confidence index score fell from 57 in the third quarter to 42; among Democrats, confidence jumped from 46 to 58. The lowest previous confidence reading from Republican business owners was in Q2 2020, at 54.

We’ve seen evidence of that every quarter, with Republican small business owners consistently reporting a higher degree of confidence than Democrats, but the election of Joe Biden is the first opportunity we’ve had to see whether that would flip if presidential power changed parties and it did dramatically.Laura Wronski, SurveyMonkey research science manager

Histories Of The Parties

The Democratic party started in 1828 as anti-federalist sentiments began to form. The Republican party formed a few decades later, in 1854, with the formation of the party to stopping slavery, which they viewed to be unconstitutional.

The difference between a democrat and a republican has changed many, many times throughout history. Democrats used to be considered more conservative, while the republican party fought for more progressive ideas. These ideals have switched over time.

Recommended Reading: Where Are Republicans On The Political Spectrum

How Republicans And Democrats Compare As Small Business Owners

COSTA MESA, Calif.A new analysis shows that Republicans make up the largest percentage of U.S. small business owners, and that they have the highest average business loan balances and lowest delinquency rates.

With the presidential election less than a year away, Experian looked at the financial and demographic characteristics of small business owners by political affiliation. The report found that approximately 35% of all small business owners identify as Republican, while 29.4% identify as Democrat and 15.8% identify as Independent.

Small businesses are a major area of interest for a number of political campaigns and justifiably so, given their positive impact on employment rates and importance to local economies, said Pete Bolin, director of consulting and analytics for Experian business information services. Gaining insight into the characteristics of specific segments of the small business owner population enables government officials, lenders and business professionals to better understand them and take appropriate action to help these small firms grow.

Section:

Crisis On Top Of Crisis

Thousands of small business owners across California are still trying to survive a pandemic now in its fourth surge. Even with the reopening, some restaurants and other service establishments are having trouble hiring workers or are having to pay more and offer perks.;

Then, there are businesses that also have to deal with wildfires and drought.

Data from San Francisco-based software company Womply showed that the deadly 2018 Camp Fire resulted in 13% of local businesses near the fire shutting down permanently, while in 2019, 6.6% of businesses closed after the Kincade Fire in Sonoma County.;

In 2020, California experienced its most destructive fire season in history, with 4.2 million acres burned. In 2021 so far, it isnt much better. The still-burning Dixie Fire is already the second largest in state history, having blackened more than 600,000 acres in Butte, Plumas, Lassen and Tehama counties.;;;;;

Meanwhile, California is in the grip of its worst drought since 2015. This week, Newsom raised the prospect of mandatory water conservation statewide.

John Kabateck, California director of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, said;opinions on the recall vary among its members, but many are too busy dealing with bigger concerns. Among them: finding qualified employees, meeting payroll and readying for a huge spike in their unemployment insurance taxes.

So hes willing to give Newsom the benefit of the doubt.

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Obamacares Impact On Small Business

Opponents of the Affordable Care Act argue that the ACA has forced small business owners to pay a lot of money they dont have, that the rising cost of medical insurance and the associated fees has forced companies to lay off workers or to halt expansion plans, and that the tax incentives offered to small businesses isnt guaranteed and its too complicated.

Proponents of the ACA argue that the tax incentives are a great help, and assist them in the added costs of the health insurance premiums. They state that the majority of the expense falls with big businesses, not small businesses. They also argue that many small businesses will fall into the category of under 50 employees, and therefore will not be impacted by the act anyways, aside from the supposed lowering of healthcare costs that it offers.

What Is At Stake For Small Businesses In The 2020 Election

This combination of pictures created on October 22, 2020 shows US President Donald Trump … and Democratic Presidential candidate and former US Vice President Joe Biden during the final presidential debate at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, on October 22, 2020.

Tomorrow, voting concludes in one of the most contentious elections of our lives, but its just another chapter in the wild story that has been 2020. Weve had a pandemic, heightened racial tensions and a faltering economy.;A client told me last week that he feels like the world around him is on fire. And with Covid-19 infections coming back with a vengeance, stimulus talks at a standstill and an unpredictable election, things are set to only get more tumultuous.

You may be election-exhausted by now. You may be one of the 92 million Americans who have already voted.;But no matter who wins on Tuesday , its important ;to understand whats at stake for small business owners tomorrow and in weeks and months to come.

More Stimulus

But now, as CARES impact fades, we are still far from full recovery. The recent rise in coronavirus cases, new lockdown orders looming, 12.6 million workers on unemployment and eight million American pushed into poverty all jeopardize continued recovery in the fourth quarter. ;;

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Clinton Vs Trump: Who’s Better For Your Small Business

AP 1-/10/2016

At 7 a.m. local time on Nov. 8, 2016, polls will open for the 58th quadrennial U.S. presidential election to determine the 45th president. Regardless of your political party or if youre voting for Clinton or Trump, its one of the most important elections in the countrys history.

Thefirst of four presidential debates took place on Sept. 26, and both candidates expressed that this election is about getting the economy working for average Americans again and that means small business owners. According to the Small Business Administration , small businesses provide 55 percent of all jobs and 66 percent of all net jobs since the 1970s. The problem is that recent data from the National Federation of Independent Business found that political uncertainty is at an all-time high because neither candidate is speaking in detail to issues that small business owners care about.

This post will take a look at what Clinton and Trump have said about small businesses, whether their proposed plans help or hurt and what they could do differently. The best way to remedy political uncertainty is to know what the candidates stand for and what proposed policies and beliefs mean in the long run.

Hillary Clinton Wants to Be theSmall Business President

Sounds Great, But is it Too Good to be True?

Where Does Trump Stand With Small Businesses?

His Real Stance Is Still Up For Debate

Have a Voice and Vote

Democrats Raise Red Flags On Gop Small Business Plan As Biden Weighs In

Republicans join Democrats to advance $1tn infrastructure bill

When it comes to some of the broad strokes in the small business plan, Republicans and Democrats appear to be close to agreement.

07/28/2020 04:56 PM EDT

Link Copied

Democrats are gearing up to push for changes to a small business aid plan pitched by Republicans as part of the latest economic relief package, as former Vice President Joe Biden called for major new investments in firms owned by people of color.

While the small business rescue plan released by Senate Republicans Monday included bipartisan priorities including a second round of forgivable government loans Democrats are targeting what they say are key omissions.

Among them, according to sources familiar with the matter, is the absence of new funding for the Small Business Administration’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, which offers direct aid to employers. Democrats also say there is insufficient support for Community Development Financial Institutions and Minority Depository Institutions, which focus lending on populations lacking access to traditional banks.

Democrats may also try to bar executive branch officials and members of Congress from obtaining government-backed business loans. The bill proposed by Republicans only requires the officials to disclose their status when applying.

CORONAVIRUS: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

President Donald Trump and Melania Trump have tested positive for Covid-19.

The latest news in employment, labor and immigration politics and policy.

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[austenmimetics-blog]

Austen, Mimetics, and Fanfiction (introduction to the blog)

Lately, I have been struck by the recurring thought that Jane Austen is treated unlike any other author. The many views of Janeites seem largely paradoxical at times. Jane Austen has been appropriated to communicate both alt right (https://www.chronicle.com/article/Alt-Right-Jane-Austen/239435) and liberal feminist (https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-jane-austen-can-teach-us-about-sexual-harassment-1514822957) ideals. She is heralded as mother of “chick lit” (Harmon, 201) and game theorist (https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/23/books/michael-chwe-author-sees-jane-austen-as-game-theorist.html).  

The purpose of this blog is to examine Jane Austen’s own work, as well as her continued fandom, in relation to meme theory and fanfiction. If I can gain a better understanding of why and how ideas survive, than perhaps I can gain a better understanding of the cloud of truths which surround Austen. In this introductory post I will give a brief definition of meme theory and fanfiction, relate them to each other, and finally relate them back to Jane Austen, specifically her novels Northanger Abbey and Pride and Prejudice. Northanger Abbey because of its meta engagement with meme/fanfiction, and its general engagement with all things Austen (social class, marriage plot, sarcasm). Pride and Prejudice because it is arguably peak Austen fandom (who doesn’t swoon over Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy?).

I’ll start with meme theory. Meme theory was first introduced by Richard Dawkins in his popular science book The Selfish Gene and it has continued to gain traction since. Dawkins presented meme theory to discuss culture in terms of genetics/Darwinism, and in doing so, he framed the possibility of a fit idea. Think back to whatever you’ve learned about Darwin in the past. Survival of the fittest. Dawkins explained meme “as a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation” (Dawkins, 192). He even named memes to rhyme with genes. Dawkins explained that the part of an idea which make up a meme, is the thing about it which many individuals hold in common, as opposed to all of the disparate parts. When we think about the act of reading, we might think about reading different books in different languages, but generally, we all imagine the act of internally spelling out letters and words on a page which string together to create some larger meaning. 

It must be noted, that considering culture in terms of Darwinism is a bit terrifying (Darwinism was used to justify racism, and colonialism generally, for a long time), and that shouldn’t be ignored (Dawkins does seem to ignore that fact, however). Thinking about the ways in which ideas are alive/act similarly to living organisms, however, doesn’t feel inherently harmful. So let us remember the ways in which dominant cultures can aid in the survival or death of particular memes as we go forward.    

This brings me to fanfiction. Fanfiction are “stories produced by fans based on plot lines and characters from either a single source text or else a “canon” of works” (Thomas, 1). Fanfiction allow narrative worlds to be expanded upon (outside of the original text). When fanfiction meet internet platforms this expansion becomes basically limitless.

Fanfiction, in my opinion, are interesting to think about in relation to meme theory. They represent an expansion of ideas which are so obviously shaped by those who consume those same ideas. Fanfictions expand on the original meme, or multiple memes, which a book represents. In doing so fanfiction aids in the survival of the original meme(s). The more forms these memes are willing to take, the more people who interact with them, the more likely they are to be passed on. Simultaneously, fanfiction allow fans to play a role in potentially mutating the original meme. It makes sense that a meme (like genes!) would mutate over time to become better suited for their current environment. With fanfiction, these meme mutations can happen almost instantaneously. In What is Fanfiction and Why are People Saying Such Nice Things about it, Bronwen Thomas points out that “fan communities proudly boast about the influence they have on people’s engagements with the storyworlds about which they write”(10). Fanfiction, especially that which is written online, is not always created by the dominant culture, or even by the dominant fandom. Many platforms allow for different voices to contribute more equally. The interesting thing about Austen fandoms and fanfics, however, is that they “tend to be quite conservative and fiercely protective of the Austen legacy” (Thomas, 6).

So what is the central meme we can draw from or around Jane Austen? What is it that fans set out so fiercely to protect, even within their own fanfic? Let’s take a closer look at a couple of Austen’s novels to gain a better understanding of the stakes. Every Austen novel contains a marriage plot. Every Austen novel simultaneously contains a lot of wit and irony. It is not always certain how these two things interact, but their combination leave a lot of room for interpretation. 

Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey functions through sarcasm and the marriage plot (as most of her novels do). Northanger Abbey, a kind of gothic fanfiction in its own right, ends with the marriage of Catherine and Mr. Tilney. Much of the novel’s tension resides in the uncertainty of romantic feelings between the two. A tension which moves the plot equally, however, is the central irony. Northanger Abbey begins, “no one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine”(Austen, 5). This beginning shows irony through a meta-awareness of format which continues throughout. Not long after this intro, the narrator openly defends novels, “I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding”(Austen, 22). In this, the narrator defends Catharine’s enjoyment of novels, while once again showing self-awareness of form. 

Peak engagement with gothic fiction as a genre comes through at the points in which Catherine interacts with the Tilney’s own abbey. Catherine asks Henry Tilney if the abbey is “a fine old place, just like what one reads about” (Austen, 107), and Henry responds by explaining it as gothic, with “sliding panels and tapestry” (Austen, 107), “gloomy passages” (Austen, 108), and beds with “a funeral appearance” (Austen, 108). Although the abbey does not end up fitting these gothic descriptions, Catherine leans into every gothic mood which strikes her, eventually convincing herself that the General Tilney has murdered his late wife. By engaging with stereotypically gothic images and tone, Austen expands the world of gothic fiction in her own right. Northanger Abbey can thus be taken as a fanfiction, while the meme of gothic fiction is passed on.

Although similarly framed through irony, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is a more classic  example of Austen as marriage plot meme. In Pride and Prejudice there are multiple proposal scenes, and the proposals themselves make up the major plot developments within the novel. The novel begins with the line, “it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife” (Austen, 3). This line might be ridiculous, and obviously untrue, but it nevertheless alerts readers to the tensions to come. Elizabeth Bennet is proposed to three times, once by her cousin Mr. Collins, and twice by Mr. Darcy. Each proposal represents a peak in her character development. The first by Mr. Collin’s allows for her to the assert the separation of her own needs from her parents desires for her, the second proposal (first of Mr. Darcey’s) provides space for Elizabeth to begin questioning her own view and judgements of the world, while the third proposal finally ends with an engagement to Darcy. Without the proposals, Pride and Prejudice would be plotless. The irony of the first line does not negate this fact. 

The role of irony and marriage plot together ultimately serve to complicate the larger meme of Jane Austen. In a way, irony allows for people to take the marriage plot as seriously as they want to. You can imagine Austen as lover of the institution, lover of marriage, or as institutional cynic; both are supported within the original texts. This makes the meme of Austen, although difficult to pin down, perhaps especially mimetically fit. Austen can continue to mean a lot of different things to different people, and the two major conflicting memes which exist within her novels, allow for these external conflicting views to align with her as a larger cultural symbol. Perhaps the extreme adaptability of Austen as a meme is why Austenites feel such a need to defend her. Memes are adaptable when they serve people or cultures as a whole. Austen’s ironic marriage plots give the people stories which help situate themselves to the paradox’s which surround them everyday. 

Works Cited

Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey. New York: Norton & Company, 2004.

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. New York: Norton & Company, 2001.

Cohen, Paula. What Jane Austen Can Teach Us About Sexual Harassment. The Wall Street Journal, 1 Jan. 2018, https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-jane-austen-can-teach-us-about-sexual-harassment-1514822957.

Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press, 1976.

Harmon, Claire. Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World. New York: Picador, 2009.

Mirmohamadi, Kylie. The Digital Afterlives of Jane Austen: Janeites at the Keyboard. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Wright, Nicole. Alt Right Jane Austen. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 12 Mar. 2017, https://www.chronicle.com/article/Alt-Right-Jane-Austen/239435.

Schuessler, Jennifer. Game Theory: Jane Austen Had it First. The New York Times, 22 Apr. 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/23/books/michael-chwe-author-sees-jane-austen-as-game-theorist.html.

Thomas, Bromwen. “What is Fanfiction and Why Are People Saying Such Nice Things About it.” Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies, vol. 3, 2011, pp. 1-24.

[pygmyscheese]

What am I to you?

There are times, when you can’t do anything to help your loved ones in their struggles, but you stay with them for good and for worse.

Namjoon x reader

genre: light angst & some fluff I guess?

word count: 3 786

based on: Verbal Jint “Pretty enough”

A/N: I’ll be honest, it’s not good at all, but the idea for this fic was going around in my mind for so long, and then I came across the song and I just had to pour it all out. No matter how bad it is, I’m still proud of this small baby of mine as it’s the first work I fully wrote in English, which is not my native language. I’d like you to take that into consideration while reading, especially if you find some grammatically incorrect fragments, although I tried my best not to do any and if, correct any mistakes in the text. Enjoy!

“Namjoon” You called him quietly. He should be awake by now, trying not to be late to work, but he stayed up all night to finish project before deadline for one of his classes. Working while studying is a cruel thing indeed, but almost everyone has to go through it to learn the harsh way of life and try their best to survive in society. World is brutal and Namjoon knew it, it was all about survival of the fittest, but he opposed that. That is why you loved him. “Namjoon” You repeated, this time louder. He really had to wake up by now, but there was no reaction. You studied his face. Dark bags under his eyes that with every passing day became more and more visible, messy hair that should be cut long time ago, dry skin from obvious dehydration. He was slowly becoming a shadow of who he once was. And it was all because of her.

“Namjoon!” A loud bang at the door and her shout woke him up immediately. Looking around the room his hazy eyes stopped at your figure.

“What time is it?” He mumbled more to himself than to you, running hand through his blond hair, black roots showing underneath, shaking his head from left to right to shoo the sleep away. Grabbing the phone he forced open his still glued from sleep eyes. Seconds later you heard him gasp and watched how he jumped out of bed just to run around the room in search for any clothes he could wear and look decent. ���Why didn’t you wake me up? You know I’m still on a trial, I cannot let myself be late.” Namjoon gave you a quick look, hurt and exhaustion mixed in it.

You knew perfectly what he meant. After working many odd jobs he caught position as a junior editor in a magazine he wished to work for several years already. Even though still on trial, during which people tried to use him for their own tasks as much as possible, with the fact that work wasn’t exactly as he imagined, it was pretty obvious he was happy there. Definitely happier than during last two years you’ve spent with him, full of struggles, self-sacrifice and many sleepless nights. 

“I tried Namjoon, I did” You just said, accepting the blame. You always did.

“I might be late today, will you be fine?” You heard him asking, while going out of the room. There was another bang at the front door, as she was getting impatient. Not the first, not the last time, you thought.

“Sure, I have food and something to drink, I’ll survive.” Namjoon double checked what you said just to be sure himself. It’s not that he didn’t trust or believe you, he just cared too much and you accepted it gladly. Then with rushed swing of his arm he opened the front door, where the one you detested the most stood in full grace.

“Finally. Do you know how long I had to wait? You better take me to work before I’m late.” He didn’t say anything at her words and with slight nod of his head his arm wrapped around her waist to guide to parking lot. You stole last glance at his stoic face when he closed the door. Yes, he knew better not to say anything while she was in a bad mood as things could go very wrong in a matter of second with someone like her.

Sighing you retreated back to the depths of the flat you shared with Namjoon. It was small and cosy, just like the two of you liked. As everyday you ate breakfast in silence and went to bed. It was a sad and boring routine that started after he met her. You were happy for him finally going out and meeting girls, he needed it, he deserved it after his heart broke right before college. But why, just why, it had to be her? She was pretty, you admit. Beautiful, flawless even, with long silky hair, perfect proportions and good manners. Only if her personality wasn’t rotten to the core. She always put herself on pedestal just because she already got her degree and stable, well-paid job. Always pretending, just to keep her high social status. Seeing her acting high and mighty around Namjoon, ordering him around caused pain in your chest. You tried so many times to help him realize that she’s not the one for him, that her presence in his life was like a poison to him. But he was in love. Oh, he was. Seeing the boy, who never let anyone be their pushover, the same boy that went through life with his own opinions and beliefs, so often different from the common ones accepted by society, the same boy, who was always eager for intellectual disputes with just enough criticism entwined in them not to hurt the other party, the boy who stood even against people close to him in order to pursue his dream, his passion, seeing that very boy being so cruelly played by her was crucifying to you. He wasn’t the type to be dominated, no. But Namjoon had a good heart. He was the most compassionate and the warmest person you’ve ever met and that was also his biggest weakness. He couldn’t indifferently pass by seeing people’s fragility and troubles, he tried to oppose injustice surrounding people in everyday life. When he put his mind to something, it was hard to change it. Same was for love. He’ve been hurt before, broken to be exact and it was about to happen again but because of thoroughly different reason. Trying your best to help him realize relationship he was currently in was toxic for him and his dreams was pointless as he had tunnel vision.

You could go on about all small and big things you didn’t like about her for whole day. You liked people, you felt good around them and could always find some chemistry with everyone you approached. But she smelled like danger and you wished Namjoon knew it as well. Train of your thoughts was suddenly interrupted by the sound of key turning in a lock. Scooting to hallway to check what was going on, the man in question stood in front of you.

“Didn’t you say you’ll be late?” You asked trying to read his mood. Namjoon sighed loudly. Was it from exhaustion, which he most definitely felt or something else happened? “I missed you.” You hugged him tightly as if he would fall apart any second and gave a peck in a cheek. You decided not to ask any more questions, he would tell you eventually when the time was right.

“I missed you too, sweetie.” Both of you were so used to each other and grown so close, that sometimes you forgot to grant yourselves with such simple affections like those. That is why you cherished every one of them. Just like his hand that he placed on your head and gently patted your hair. “Do you want to go to our place?”

Your place. The place, you’ve first met. Secluded part of a park, resembling wild forest, small meadow hidden from curious eyes. You always went there when something was up, when he had to clear his mind. About to give him positive answer, your voice got stuck in your throat as sound of his ringtone resounded in hallway. He gave the screen quick glance before putting the phone to ear. 

“Yes? I’m home already. Where? …Fine, give me 20 minutes.” Judging from his tone and sighs that came out of his mouth between the words it was her again. Namjoon gave you an apologetic look to which you could just nod, encouraging him to go and see her. 

Little did you know that it was the beginning of then end. Several hours after his short visit home, he came back, accompanied by her and two big suitcases.

“Don’t tell me…” You were dumbfounded, eyes wide open when she made herself home seconds after entering your place. Yours and Namjoon’s.

The boy nodded. “She’s gonna live with us from now on. Treat her right, hm?” His fond smile directed at you didn’t help you in digesting this new information.

Days dragged on painfully slow since her appearance and Namjoon gradually started to disappear from your vicinity, being tangled tighter into her web of lies and fake smiles. Sometimes it was as if you became invisible. Acknowledgement of your existence varied from person. Namjoon provided you with food and checked on you from time to time but his sighs at you when you tried to spend some time together clearly showed he was starting to be fed up with you pestering him. She on the other hand was straight up ignoring you, occasionally, when Namjoon wasn’t around, using you to vent out her own problems on you in quite an abusive way. It wasn’t just once or twice when you ended up almost tearing up, feeling that places she hit started to bruise. But you couldn’t say anything, seeing Namjoon so cheerful and productive since she moved in. Even if you did, he was deaf for everything except for her words. It wasn’t only you who saw how unhealthy this relationship was. His friends came over from time to time, hopefully when she wasn’t around and tried to shine some light on his clouded mind, with no results unfortunately.

And then it happened.

You saw her change. New clothes, different make-up, perfume other than the one Namjoon bought for her birthday. Those small, almost trivial changes didn’t go unnoticed by you only. Her gruff behaviour was showing on a daily basis now, giving both of you a hard time. Even when he was nothing but sweet as sugar to her, she would snap at him without any reason. And he still loved her despite being hurt by this kind of treatment.

“Namjoon, I think we need to talk.” One day, when you were alone you once again took up the subject that was  cause of all problems. “Can’t you see you’re becoming a wreck because of her? It’s not healthy. She’s not healthy.”

“Sweetie” He sighed loudly, taking off his glasses and moving away from laptop to face you. “Do you really have such a problem with her being here? Nothing changed, you know? I’ll always be there for you.”

“Are you serious?” You didn’t even try to stop the snicker that left your lips. “Since she’s here you gave up on everything other than your job and college. And what do you get in return? You’re treated like shit.” You weren’t really the type to be harsh with words or to show anger, but you were losing your composure because of the situation you were all in.

“I really didn’t want to say that but…don’t you think you became too clingy recently? It’s tiring.”

Silence fell on both of you, staring in each other’s eyes. You hoped he would see in them everything you wanted to tell him but couldn’t. He didn’t. Instead, without a word he left the room and soon after, the flat. He left you alone once again.

Little did you know that one Monday afternoon would be the time when your world would slowly collapse into pieces. You were napping comfortably on the bed when door opened suddenly and you heard two voices. One of them was hers, so sweet, as honey dripping from her lips when she whispered sweet nothings into someone’s ear. You started to move away from bed, sure that soon they’d barge here with Namjoon to indulge in each others fantasies, but the man you saw in the door was definitely not the man, he was supposed to be.

“What’s going on?” you asked, voice barely audible.

“Oh. I forgot you’re here” She scoffed when her lips finally left man’s neck, already covered in few marks.

“What are you doing?” You repeated, your voice higher, harsher, as you approached the pair. You had your suspicions for some time now, but you didn’t want to believe your eyes. How could she cheat on Namjoon and even be shameless enough to bring that man to their flat? “Get out. Now.”

“Fuck, can’t you shut up?” The stranger furrowed his brows in annoyance. “Are you asking for a beating, is that it?” His open hand flew toward your face, leaving your cheek stinging in pain.

“Get the fuck out” Managing to spit those words between gritted teeth you threw yourself on the man and bit his arm. Yelping in pain he pushed you away with brutal force. You flew to the wall, back hitting it with a loud thud.

“I had enough, you fucking bitch” This time punch came from her. You felt air leaving your lungs when her foot met your side. Her partner used that chance to grab you by the hair and threw into study. Trying to fight back, your nails dragged on his forearms, leaving red lines on his skin. 

Everything was happening so fast, leaving you in shock, your mind blank, that you hadn’t realised you were screaming all this time until they wrapped a cloth around your mouth. 

“You have to treat bitches like this, roughly, so they know their place” Man spitted those harsh words while granting you with another kick in the ribs. 

Choking back the tears you saw how doors closed behind them, leaving you alone in the darkness of the room. You always hated Namjoon’s study for it’s storage like size and lack of windows that made you feel trapped, now even more so, your body aching, your cries muffled. You were left there to hear all the things they did, her being so audible that you felt nauseous. You didn’t know how much time have passed when the door opened and cloth was removed from your mouth. Not daring to leave the room you stayed where they left you, letting your eyes to close in search for sleep, hoping that maybe it all was a bad dream.

“Sweetie, wake up.” Hours later, Namjoon’s voice drew you back to reality from sweet covers of nothingness. “What are you doing here?” The feeling of his fingers on your skin made you shudder and move away. His eyes studied you cautiously, not expecting such behaviour. “What happened? You’re acting weird.” Oh, how you wish, you could just say everything that happened. You felt sick to the stomach, smell of the stranger still lingering in the flat, as if the walls absorbed all of it for the reminder of what happened. And continued to happen, all behind Namjoon’s back. Study, that you once hated, became your shelter, where you hid from everyone, both her and Namjoon. He was alarmed by the way you acted, tried to find solution for it but was still blind that it was all because of her.

Until that one day, in late April when spring was in it’s fullest.

“Say…what am I to you?” Namjoon asked her during dinner. His body was tense, face expressionless, eyes dark but empty.

“What question is that even? You’re my boyfriend Joonie.” Sweet lies, he knew too well by now left her cherry lips yet again, just to fade away in silence that followed them.

Biting his lower lip, eyes moved to her face, as if trying to look for the last ray of hope. He hesitated for few seconds before quietly muttering question that was on his mind for weeks now. “Am I, really?”

“Are you trying to imply something now? We know each other not from yesterday, it’s been almost a year, so just spill it.”

“How long have it been with him then?” Hearing man’s question her hand that was reaching for wine glass stopped mid-air. “Don’t try to deny it. I saw you two. Not just once.” Namjoon laughed in disbelief. “I’m not stupid. I saw you change. You grew distant and more fake than you’ve ever been.”

Her mouth hanged open for mere seconds before she snapped. “Excuse me? Who do you think you are to call me fake?” her lips quirked upwards in a mocking smile, words leaving them like poison. “You know my little secret now, so what? Are you hurt Joonie? Will it make you feel better if I said sorry? It won’t happen, because I’m not. You’re sweet but boring, nothing more than a pet.” Sickly sweet voice she used made you boil in anger. You were about to react and give her a lesson she deserved when Namjoon spoke as if giving a command, voice so stern as you’ve never heard before.  “Leave. I’m done with you.”

Ostentatiously standing up from the table she grabbed her bag and was about to leave when she turned on her feet. As expected, she had to have the last word in everything. “Just don’t call later begging for me to come back.”

Silence enveloped the two of you left in the room. Without a word, you approached Namjoon and tugged on his sleeve, trying to bring his attention to you. When it failed, you lay your head on his lap, looking up at his face, hidden behind fringe of now all black hair. 

“You did well, my love.” Your voice a mere whisper, when reached his ears caused him to break. It was second time you saw his tears, second time to see his heart break in span of just few years and you knew, he didn’t deserve any of it. He deserved the world. That’s why you were beside him all this time.

It hasn’t been that long since you left your tiny flat in the centre for the new one, right next to the park you first met at. Enjoying weather, mix of springs freshness and summer’s heat, the two of you laid under trees shadow on soft grass covering the meadow. It was just the two of you, both content with each other’s company. Stealing glances at Namjoon, you studied his face. He dyed his hair again, now to beautiful deep purple graciously accentuating his tan skin, cheeks became more plump, eyes regained that sparkle, you loved so much. He was coming back to life, blossoming like a late flower after harsh winter.

“Namjoon” Just calling his name excited you, as you hoped, he would understand you fully this time. Not satisfied with a lazy hum as an answer, you poked his side to grab his attention. “Look” You got up and stood by one of the trees waiting for him to follow your tracks. Your hand pointed to a hole in the tree trunk, once in the open, now hidden behind the green bushes.

“What do you see there?” Furrowing his brows in confusion he tried to see what you did, but failed. Trying to move away the natural barrier of leaves, his hand brushed over small, now barely visible carvings in wood. “How did you…?” Bewildered, eyes moved between you and names on the tree.

He carved them there himself, long time ago, when he was still a teen, his own name right next to the name of the love of his life. No one but the two of them knew about this fact, so how could you? As sudden recollection of past events flooded his mind, his eyes widened in shock and blank amazement. Nodding to his silent question, you knew he wanted to ask, you smiled widely.

“Y/N, what am I to you?” Namjoon asked, when he sat beside the tree that had your names on it. You declared it yours long time ago, way before becoming a couple, which happened under the same tree anyway. It was your secret place, sort of your own piece of heaven, your sanctuary. He watched as you absently walked in circles, your bare feet disappearing in high grass with every step, face showing you were deep in thought.

“Everything” You finally admitted, looking him straight in the eyes with determination. He couldn’t help himself and chuckled at how it sounded. “You think it’s lame? I don’t care. You’re everything to me. Everything I need, everything I want, everything that makes me feel alive.”

“Now that sounds like a bit too much. I almost got goosebumps.” Namjoon’s hands reached for you when you approached him and pulled you into his frame for a tight embrace.

“I didn’t lie though. I’d say the same thing even in my next life and I’m pretty much sure I said it in previous one as well.”

“And what would you like to be in your next life? Assuming that you couldn’t be born as human again?”

“What?” You scoffed, not agreeing with such condition, but still giving it enough thought to be sure of your answer. “A dog.”

“Really? Why?” Without even looking at his face you could tell he was smiling, revealing his deep dimples to the world. He probably expected your answer, both of you being huge dog lovers.

“Then I could always be next to you, for better, for worse, I could love and cherish you as I do now.” With every word spoken you felt his embrace tightening, him feeling overwhelmed with content feeling.

“I like that.” Placing a kiss on your forehead, Namjoon made a silent vow to recognise you in your next life and love you as deeply as you deserve it.

Remembering his vows, his grief after hearing of your accident, despair followed by emptiness after you passed away, he looked at you again, taking in your features, your eyes and that playful sparkle that shined in them, just like before.

“Y/N?” His voice barely audible, as if scared that it was all a dream, he reached his hand to you to cup your cheek. Feeling his touch you naturally leaned in, humming ever so slightly in confirmation. “I can’t believe it.” Swallowing back the tears, threatening to fall from his eyes, he took you in tight embrace, just like before. And even though you weren’t the same anymore, you couldn’t tell him everything you wished to share with him, you were happy enough to feel the love you once shared, enveloping both of you again. As you promised years ago, you came back by his side to protect him, for good, for worse, so he could get all the love he deserved. As he stroked your snow-white fur, you felt tears falling down his cheeks. It was third time, you saw Namjoon cry, but this time he wasn’t broken, quite the opposite, he have never felt as happy as in that moment.

A/N: Surprise! I hope you enjoyed it! Love you! ♡

[bienready2122]

'Tis the Time for Mindful Eating: Danielle's 5 Key Tips to Surviving the Holiday Food Deluge

Gracious definitely, here they come back once more, the special seasons! It's clever on the grounds that it is a period we as a whole anticipate but there is as yet this fear... the fear of long stretches of indulging and the unavoidable weight gain. For some it's very unsurprising. Actually, the normal American increases 7-10 pounds during the long periods of November and December. However, who can oppose every one of those scrumptious occasion treats?

Many, then again, never increase an additional pound over the special seasons. I am typically one of those. "That is on the grounds that you are a dietitian and never appreciate food in any case" you state. "No chance!" is the thing that I state. I appreciate heaps of nourishments. Loads of nourishments with some restraint. "Ugh, the control word. So abused." Yeah, I concur. In any case, to a huge expand it's actual. You can appreciate a wide assortment of nourishments on the off chance that you keep it with some restraint. Over-enjoy? No. Enjoy a bit? Indeed.

Presently, you may be now thinking, admirably that is unpleasant. What's the special seasons on the off chance that you can't eat until your stomach is going to tear in two and you have to take an all-inclusive break on your granddad's apathetic kid? I hear you UberEats Clone. We as a whole have conventions that we generally expect and nearly ache for during this season. For such huge numbers of, over eating is one of them. As referenced, we fear this period of indulging, however we additionally anticipate it and do it in any case. It resembles an unbreakable endless loop. How would we escape treats land hellfire!

One of the initial steps is to perceive the issue! The issue is that when we gorge, we continually supersede our regular appetite/completion prompts which in the end prompts brokenness, to the point we can't tell when we are ravenous and full any longer. We begin to eat for delight or agony rather than physical need. This makes us eat oftentimes and in parcels a lot bigger than we need.

What to do? This is the place some essential careful eating tips can come in very supportive. It may not change your life promptly, yet trust me, over many months you will gradually be more in line with yourself and better ready to feed your body with what it needs, not with what your longings disclose to you it needs.

Danielle's 5 hints for enduring the occasion food downpour:

1. Perceive your shortcoming regions and where they are experienced.

Acknowledgment is consistently the initial step, right? You need to survey where your difficult territories lie. Is it sugar? All carbs? Salt? Huge segments by and large? The entirety of the abovementioned? Does the issue happen in the working environment? At home? At family social affairs? Late around evening time alone? The entirety of the abovementioned. Thoroughly consider the nourishments you can't quit eating and where you discover them for the duration of the day. Record it.

2. Make a day by day and week by week plan.

Keep in mind, the greater part of the progressive weight gain originates from slight yet total indulging all through the special seasons, not simply on Thanksgiving and Christmas day. Make an arrangement for yourself so you have a harsh thought of what you need to eat from everyday and stick to it. Having an arrangement frees the psyche to consider other increasingly significant things and even liberates it from thinking about longings, particularly when you know, as per your "plan," that they are impossible.

*If you need assistance making an arrangement for these special seasons, come see me for thoughts!

Obliging that, keep an eating regimen diary as you go. Recording what you eat, in any event for a brief timeframe, expands your care around what you are eating and stays away from arbitrary eating. At the point when you are compelled to contemplate what you eat, you will in general settle on better decisions. So put pen to paper (or finger to telephone) and save track for two or three weeks during the special seasons.

3. Try not to stay away from all your preferred nourishments. That is most likely the most exceedingly terrible thing you can do, particularly as you begin something new. I would say the more taboo a food is, the more you need it. What I state is that all nourishments are permitted, yet partitions are controlled. That is the key. Ensure you enter it into the arrangement and adhere to a characterized divide. *Don't overlook, as a rule the initial 1-3 nibbles of any food are the most fulfilling. The word is appreciate, appreciate, appreciate. Appreciate the damnation out of each nibble. At the point when that uber happiness closes, put down the fork. Spare the rest for one more day. I know it's hard, however attempt it!

4. Keep up your physical movement! I can't disclose to you what number of individuals let go of their activity schedules during this time since they are "excessively occupied." Oh no. That isn't worthy. We as a whole have additional things we add to our day by day schedules as a result of occasion stuff, yet relaxing on practice isn't one we can cut. Diminishing activity can build your hazard for wretchedness (particularly on the off chance that you are inclined to it), decline your self discipline around food parcels, and obviously just add additional calories to your day in light of the fact that your aren't copying those awful young men off. Truth be told, my recommendation is to INCREASE your activity during the special seasons! Make November and December your fittest months. You won't be lamenting that come January when every other person is pulling their sorry arse back to the exercise center!

5. Continuously load up on foods grown from the ground.

Fundamentally if all else fails, pick products of the soil. These delights are chocked loaded with nutrients, minerals, fiber and cancer prevention agents... all the things you have to neutralize any undesirable options experienced over the occasion months. You are going to feel significantly better, and put on less weight, in the event that you fill your plate with produce at every single supper.

Reward tip: Relieve pressure anyway you can! Stress consistently aggravates eating (also ruins our vacation soul). Before the special seasons hit, thoroughly consider right now what encourages you dissolve away pressure and make an arrangement to DO those things consistently. Peruse a book? Get along with a companion? Contemplate or profound relaxing? Yoga? A snappy escape? In the event that the special seasons worry you, balance it this year and get pressure alleviating exercises on the calendar!

[fractalcult]

Market Myths: Good, Bad, and Bazaar

The stories that hold up western* capitalism

First, a procedural note…

The truth value of a myth doesn’t matter, where efficacy is concerned. However, some myths have become so strongly internalized that they become difficult to identify as myths; they are mistaken for “common sense”. For most of us, the ideas underlying western* capitalism are like this. It’s difficult to separate ourselves from these myths and gain the appropriate distance, so I’m going to engage in a little bit of ‘debunking’ — specifically, I’m going to take some time pointing out parts of the capitalist model that don’t match with reality or history, during the course of analyzing its structure and function. This doesn’t take away from the immense power and importance of capitalist mythology, nor does it indicate that I consider all of the ideas associated with capitalism to be strictly false.

On tautology

Academics tend to treat tautologies as a lesser form. Tautologies are shallow, by their nature. It’s quite reasonable for a system optimizing for novel and interesting ideas to reject tautologies. Nevertheless, some really important ideas can be rephrased as tautologies — as Charles Fort points out, natural selection is better summarized as “survival of the survivors” than “survival of the fittest” — and one can make the argument that any really true argument is in some sense circular. There’s no shame in a circular argument that depends only on true premises. In fact, this is one way to look at all of mathematics — which is true because of its internal consistency, and only accidentally coincides with physical reality.

When someone dismisses a seemingly profound statement as “just a tautology” they omit important information. An obvious tautology contains no information. However, a non-obvious tautology is just about the most profound thing imaginable — it takes a complex, incomplete, vague collection of loosely related ideas and replaces it with a much smaller and simpler set of rules, which (if the tautology is reasonably close to correct) is both at least as accurate as the original set of ideas and easier to reason about. A non-obvious true tautology refactors huge sections of our mental models. Obviousness is a function of existing knowledge, so what is an obvious tautology to some people will be non-obvious to others. It should come as no surprise that people seek out ideas that present themselves as non-obvious tautologies.

The drive toward seeking non-obvious tautologies can lead to mistakes. Looking for simple and efficient models of the world is a mechanism for enabling lazy thinking. When lazy thinking is correct it’s strictly superior to difficult thinking, but lazy thinking often comes with lazy meta-cognition. If we jump on ideas that look like non-obvious tautologies too greedily, we fail to see hidden assumptions.

Market efficiency is a very attractive model. Under certain circumstances, we can expect things to actually work that way. If a large number of competing producers really do start off completely even in capability, we really can expect the Most Unexceptional product to price ratio to win out. To accept it completely means ignoring hidden assumptions that serious thinkers should at least consider.

One hidden assumption in market efficiency is that competitors start off even in capability. This is almost never the case outside of a classroom demonstration. Companies enter established markets and compete with established competitors, and companies established in one market will enter another. Both of these mechanisms make use of existing resource inequality in order to reduce precisely the kinds of risks that lead to efficient markets, and while perhaps in the long run poor products might lose out, with the extreme spread of resource availability the “long run” can easily last until long after we are all dead. Given no other information, if age is not normally or logarithmically distributed, we can reasonably expect something to last about twice as long as it already has. With corporations, the tails of this distribution are further apart — we can expect a startup to be on its last legs, and we can expect a 50 year old company to last 75 more years, because resource accumulation corrects for risks. A company that has a great deal of early success can coast on that success for a much longer period of poor customer satisfaction.

Another hidden assumption is that communication is free within the set of consumers and between consumers and producers but not within the set of producers.

Free communication within the set of producers is called collusion, and the SEC will hit you with an antitrust suit if you are found to engage in it. People do it all the time, and it is usually worth the risk, since it reduces market efficiency down to almost zero.

Free communication between producers and consumers is also pretty rare: even failing producers typically have too many consumers to manage individually and must work with lossy and biased aggregate information; successful producers have enough resources to be capable of ignoring consumer demand for quite a while, and often encourage ‘customer loyalty’ via branding. (In other words, cultivating a livestock of people who will buy their products regardless of quality — ideally enough to provide sufficient resources that appealing to the rest of the customers is unnecessary). Customer loyalty can have its benefits compounded if wealthy customers are targeted: “luxury brands” are lucrative because something can be sold well above market price regardless of its actual quality or desirability, and sometimes the poor price/desirability ratio is actually the point (as a form of lekking / conspicuous consumption).

Free communication between consumers is becoming more and more rare, since flooding consumer information channels with fake reviews and native advertising is cheap and easy. There used to be stronger social and economic incentives to clearly differentiate advertising from word of mouth, but advertising’s effectiveness has dropped significantly as customers develop defenses against it and economic instability has encouraged lots of people to lower their standards. Eventually, consumer information channels will become just as untrusted as clearly paid advertising is now considered to be, and communication between consumers will be run along the same lines as cold war espionage.

Motivated reasoning

Considering that the hidden assumptions in market efficiency are dependent upon situations even uninformed consumers know from experience are very rare, why would people accept it so easily? The inefficiency of markets has no plausible deniability, but motivated reasoning lowers the bar for plausibility significantly.

During the bulk of the 20th century we could probably argue that anti-communist propaganda played a large role. I don’t think that’s true anymore. Nevertheless, in many circles faith in the invisible hand actually is increasing.

There’s another kind of circular reasoning — one that operates on the currency of guilt and hope. If one accepts market efficiency, it tells the poor that they can rise up through hard work, and it tells the rich that they earned their wealth. This is remarkably similar to the prosperity gospel, which claims that god rewards the righteous with wealth and therefore the poor must have secret sins. It also resembles the mandate of heaven, which claims that all political situations are divinely ordained and therefore disagreeing with the current ruler is sinful.

The similarity between the guilt/hope axis of the market efficiency myth and the prosperity gospel explains the strange marriage between Randian Objectivists and Evangelical Christians found in the religious right. We can reasonably expect many members of this group to be heavily motivated by the desire to believe that the world is fair. It’s not appropriate to characterize this movement as lacking in empathy — empathy is a necessary prerequisite for a guilt so extreme that it makes an elaborate and far-fetched framework for victim-blaming look desirable.

For the poor of this movement, at least on the prosperity gospel side, it might not be so terrible. Motivating a group of people to do the right thing has a good chance of actually improving life generally, even if their promised reward never materialized; second order effects from accidental windfalls are more dangerous, though. (For instance, if you disown your gay son and then win the lottery, you’re liable to get the wrong idea about what “doing the right thing” means).

That said, while the above factors encourage people to trust more strongly in an idea of market efficiency they already accept, bootstrapping the idea of market efficiency is much more difficult.

Natural law, myth vs legend

Market efficiency draws power from an older myth: the idea that money is a natural and universal means of exchange. This is historically and anthropologically dubious. David Graeber, in his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years, makes an argument for the idea that systematic accounting of debts predates the use of actual currency and furthermore only became necessary when cities became large enough to necessitate something resembling modern bureaucracy. Regardless of how accurate that timeline is, we know that gift economies, potlatch, and feasting are more common in tribal nomadic societies than any kind of currency exchange, and that feasting in particular remained extremely important in Europe through the Renaissance.

The legend that backs up the myth of money-as-natural-law takes place in a town. A shoemaker trades shoes for potatoes, but doesn’t want potatoes, so he organizes a neutral currency so that potatoes and apples can be traded for shoes. Graeber points out that this level of specialization couldn’t be ‘natural’ — the town is an appropriate place to set it, since specializing in a particular crop or craft would have been suicidal in the bands of 20–50 people that most humans lived in prior to around 2000 BC.

Our first examples of writing, of course, coincide with the first permanent settlements to have a large enough population to justify heavy specialization. Our first examples of writing are, in fact, spreadsheets recording debt and credit. This, along with the evidence that the unit of currency (the mina of silver) was too substantial for most people to afford even one of (and probably was mostly moved between rooms in the temple complex), is part of Graeber’s argument that independent individuals carrying money for the purpose of direct transactions (i.e., our conception of money) probably only became common later, when imperial armies were expected to feed themselves in foreign lands.

So, on the one hand, it seems to have taken a very long time for the ‘natural’ ‘common sense’ concept of money to take hold among humans. On the other hand, people exposed to the idea of money tend to adapt to it quickly and we have even been able to teach apes to exchange tokens between themselves in exchange for goods and services — in other words, it’s a simple and intuitive system that even animals we mostly don’t consider conscious can grasp.

If something is considered natural law, it’s very easy for people to believe that it is also providence. If something is straightforward and useful in every day life, it’s very easy for people to consider it natural law.

Moral economies

Thoughtful economists tend to recognize the caveats I present here. Some behavioral economists have done great work on illuminating what kinds of things aren’t — or shouldn’t be — subject to the market. This, in turn, illuminates the market myth itself.

It’s possible to think of social relations as economic in nature. Indeed, this is a pretty common model. Transactional psychology presents social interactions as the exchange of a currency of strokes, for instance. Nevertheless, Khaneman presents an experiment that shows social relations aren’t, and shouldn’t, be fungible.

The experiment went like this: a busy day care center has a problem with parents picking up their children late, and instates a fee. Parents in turn respond by picking up their kids late more often, and paying the fee. After the fee is eliminated, the percentage of on-time pickups does not return to the pre-fee state.

Khaneman interprets the results in this way: initially, parents thought of picking their kids up late as incurring a social debt (they were guilty about inconveniencing the day care), the fee reframed it as a service (they can pay some money in exchange for their kids being watched a little longer, guilt-free). But when the fee was eliminated, they felt as though they were getting the service for free.

This result looks a whole lot like the way fines for immoral business practices end up working.

If we consider that, typically, we can make up to people we feel we have wronged, we consider social currency to be somewhat fungible. Nevertheless, exchanging money for social currency is still mostly taboo — paying for sex is widely considered taboo, and even those of us who feel no taboo about sex work would find the idea of someone paying someone else to be their friend a little disturbing. If my Most Unexceptional friend helps me move furniture and I give him a twenty dollar bill, he might be insulted. If I left money on the dresser after having sex with my girlfriend, she might be insulted. (Or consider it a joke.)

We could consider the ease with which money is quantified to be the problem. We rarely can put a number on our guilt or joy. On the other hand, we can generally determine if we feel like we’ve “done enough” to make up for something — our measures of social currency have ordinality, if not cardinality.

Instead, the disconnect is that money is, by design, impersonal. I cannot pay back my guilt over Peter by giving him Paul’s gratitude toward me. This is where transactional psychology’s monetary metaphor for strokes falls apart: a relationship is built up via the exchange of strokes, and that relationship has value based on trust. Meanwhile, any currency has, as a key feature, the ability to operate without trust or even with distrust. Money makes living under paranoia possible, and sometimes even pleasant. But exchange of strokes has its own inherent value, and the trust it builds likewise: it cannot be replaced with money because money’s value is based only on what it can buy.

Speculation

The belief in market efficiency, and the emotional and moral dimensions of that belief, have some unfortunate consequences in speculation. Paradoxically, these consequences are opposed by the myth of money as natural law.

With speculation, one can create money without substance. Promises, bets, and hedges can be nested indefinitely to create value held in superposition. A stake in a speculative market is both credit and debt until it is sold. This is natural, since social constructs are eldrich, operating on fairy logic. This is both a pot of gold and a pile of leaves until I leave the land of the sidhe. Of course, there’s every incentive to oversell, so more often than not it’s a pile of leaves: when too many superpositions collapse, so does the market.

Naive materialism, when it intersects with the idea of money as natural law, finds the eldrich nature of money in speculation disturbing. Isn’t money gold? Or coins? How can something be in my hand and then disappear? So, we get arguments for the gold standard along moral lines: “it’s immoral for something that’s real to behave like fairy dust, so we should limit its growth to match mining efficiency”.

The eldrich behavior of money has some paradoxical results. Being aware that money is a social construct tends to decrease its value (clap your hands if you believe!). The question “if someone burns a million quid on TV, does the value of the pound go up or down” is very had to answer. (If you think you know the answer, substitute a million for a trillion, or for twenty.) On the other hand, being aware of its eldrich nature also tends to slightly decouple one from potentially-destructive drives.

Belief in market efficiency leads successful speculators to believe themselves skilled. While skill at speculation might be possible, statisticians who have studied the problem have generally come to the conclusion that the success distribution is adequately explained by market speculation being entirely random. Unwarranted confidence can lead to larger bets, which (if results are random) means half the time the money disappears into thin air. This does not require malfeasance, misrepresentation, or willful ignorance (as with the 2008 housing crisis). Believing that speculation involves skill is sufficient to cause the market to have larger and larger bubbles and crashes.

*“Western” is neither precise nor correct here. These myths seem to be present in western Europe, North America, Japan, and South Korea. Both China and the former Soviet states have different mythology I’m not qualified to analyse. In the absence of a better term than “western capitalism”, I will use it.

(originally published here: https://modernmythology.net/market-myths-good-bad-and-bazaar-7fa0cbc8f646)

[beforethoughts]

I finally ordered this guitar, and on the website you are able to select “custom” features, so it’s sort of/kinda custom. I don’t want to sound like Muse for be a Matt Bellamy fanboy and it’s not just so I can play their music or pretend to be like them. I honestly love music, it’s just that with my budget it was the perfect guitar for me. Basically, while the guitar was a little expensive (at least to some people) it was better I felt then purchasing two sub par guitars for the same price and then spending a fortune instead and making the main focus the “amp (like a lot of guitarists say, I do not agree with me, I don’t tihnk it’s the amp) I think the guitars are very important to your sound, and even just yourself. (how it feels in your hands) the guitars are like a perfect mix of a fender and gibson, which is mostly what I wanted. It’s classy and has a nice fender-y- tone, but it’s a little on the heavy end like  Gibson and can play heavy music well, but just not to extreme levels (that’s what the bassist is for right?) I don’ want to be too heavy. Plus, it has kind of a modern tone, it’s not too twangy, american sounding. I don’t want to sound like 70s hard rock. So really, it’s just a perfect guitar. You can play hard rock, but also jazz, blues, all on one guitar. It’s very versatile. Well sort of, maybe I could have bought two really nice guitars with the amount I spent. I could have literally bought two fenders, but I really wanted a sonic duo tone, and it just has the perfect tone for me. It was pretty expensive, I normally don’t like to spend lots of money on things like this, but oh well. : (

I think the music thing will finally start working out for me. At least if I have ever had anything going for me it’s this. In some of the places I’ve lived in North America, I have faced so much discrimination. I think they either want everyone that is not perfect, and fits into their agenda now a days to either live with their parents for years, or live on the god damn streets. It’s so much harder to get work “too many people are being left out in the cold” not only that, but if you have any problems, or even if you are just unique, whatever it is, there’s no tolerance for diversity anymore. They expect everyone to be on those damn drugs, (psychiatric) most human behaviors are a result of “mental illness” now, no tolerance for deviation from the norm. I was treated like shit in all of these places because I am not sedated, I am not on any drugs, I have lots of energy and I am healthy, I am an individual and I am not “super successful” I m not a perfect diligent student, I am not a mindless cog and i do not want to be a debt slave. And whose behind half of this? China. Like, I’m sorry China but shit you guys have serious social problems with your country, and not only that but you are like the fore runners of fascism an totalitarianism to the world and act as ambassadors as such.

This is just insane, crazy, this whole situation and their whole plant. They are only megalomanicas hell bent on world domination and control, and not only does it sound too far fetch to be real (it does) it sounds like it belongs in science fiction, but they really are trying to do it! and that’s another reason why it’s not safe. Anyway, that’s why I am so happy I found one of the last remaining safe/free zones in my country, with lots of punks, and weirdo’s whatever. Fuck all of this shit. I don’t have good parents I can rely on, sorry I don’t want to live out in some stupid fucking idea of “extended adolescent” and act/be treated like a fucking teenager for year more (or as they say to people being fucked over) and not only be hardly given any job opportunities, but who cares right? this is what goes for “socialism” now. They don’t want me to play this kind of music or be a musician but fuck them they cannot stop me.

It’s ironic too, try to get through the sheeple and they’ll just repeat the rhetoric and dogma that’s been drilled into their heads, willing pawns and accomplishes, little do they realize it’s probably bad for them as well. They think that by accepting or going along with it they'll be compensated and re-warded, again, by some misplaced sense of honor or loyalty that doesn’t even exist to these people. It’s just totally ridiculous this whole situation and these people. Everyone still think it’s the dogma of capitalism (and that it’s not even dogma from that” Survival of the fittest and you just accept whatever your superiors tell you. I mean seriously, is it that hard for people to think for themselves?

[tgunn64]

Favorite Villains - Makoto Shishio (Rurouni Kenshin)

Rurouni Kenshin is a classic anime--it’s tone shifting from relaxed and serene to intense and dark at the drop of a hat, it’s easily one of Shonen Jump’s best. It has a huge strength in leaving feelings of anticipation--the first opening shows transparent images of every villain before and after the current point of the show over Kenshin--the last among them this mysterious looking fellow covered in bandages like a mummy. What was he? A masked rival to Kenshin? Some kind of magical, living mummy? We would have to wait until season 2 to meet his true identity; Makoto Shishio. Character design is so much for than anything superficial; it’s one of the most important foundations for setting expectations for a character, and that alone is massively important for how someone is characterized. Shishio, from the moment I got the glimpse at him, peaked my interest with his look--it may be one of the strongest designs ever for how thought provoking it can be. It raises so many questions, he looked sickly but also terrifying--he looked human but also nothing short of otherwordly. Just about everyone who watched Kenshin recalls the same story of waiting to see what the deal with this bandage clad monster man was.

When Shishio finally does leave his mark, he is FAST to leave an impression. His planning results in the death of one of the highest ranking officials of the Meiji government--resulting in the entirey of the then-peaceful nation of Japan to be shook up. This might be of poor taste, but y’know those videos of civilians reacting to the 9/11 attacks in New York? It felt like that, the same fear and anxiety when your nation is spat upon and attacked, by someone you barely even know, and Kenshin is instantly motivated to save the day. All of this is achieved while Shishio is still only spoken of in whispers. Before he officially walks on screen in person, he achieved much, much more than any other villain on the show. When we finally meet Shishio, the rumors Kenshin has heard of him come full circle with his own side of the story. Shishio was Kenshin’s successor as the government Manslayer, killing scores of people until the Meiji government decided he knew too much. To that end, they ambushed him, coating him in oil and lighting him on fire. Miraculously, Shishio survived the encounter, using the experience to fuel his new mentality; the strong live, and the weak die. If he’s strong enough to survive an experience that like, then surely he is fittest to rule Japan. To boot, this makes him a perfect archenemy for Kenshin, who defends the weak, and is constantly fighting his past mistakes as the Manslayer himself, which have practically come to life as Shishio, the grey ghost of his sins.

Shishio is immensely intelligent and even a bit philosophical. He’s an extreme combination of anarchist and social darwinist, and yet, he never once comes off as insane. He’s seen a LOT and his words have great weight. He so earnestly believes every word he says, it’s no wonder so many people follow him. He’s also much younger than many villains; i know this is an odd point to mention, but at the tender age of just 27 years old, he isn’t as jaded or nihilistic as a lot of villains are despite his past; he isn’t above enjoying the simple things and the perks of being a conqueror, such as appropriating a torn down village’s hot springs or enjoying some sake with his main squeeze, Yumei. Speaking of which, I often say that one of the strongest aspects of a villain is their relationships with their entourage, and that is truer no where than with Shishio. He has a massive faction called the ‘Ten Swords’, and for such a huge collective, he has at least an inkling with all of them. Yuemi is only really there to be his arm candy, but they truly love one another. He passionately kisses her before battle and makes sure she’s protected. That said, when this ‘dog eat dog’ world forces him to, Shishio plunges his sword through Yumei to get in a cheap shot on Kenshin. But Yumei understands why this needed to be done, dying in Shishio’s arms with no regrets. It’s a twisted love but one where there’s no misunderstanding.

Hoji, Shishio’s top advisor, is another interesting aspect--Shishio’s charisma and teachings have made Hoji a fanatic of his, so much so that he believes he cannot lose. And Soujiro, Shishio’s champion, has a heartbreaking arc where he’s torn between the ideals that saved him taught by Shishio, and Kenshin’s more kind hearted way. Shishio teaches his followers that this world is hell itself, so there’s no point in protecting those who cannot protect themselves. It’s survival of the fittest, and the weak will feed the strong in this life of carnage. Steve Blum is the voice of Shishio, and he does a stellar job selling him at his most casual and furious. I cannot imagine him with any other voice, no matter what adaptions and such may go by. Speaking of which, Shishio was also playable in J-Stars Victory Vs, a fighting game crossing over various characters of Jump manga. While Shishio is no doubt the most famous villain from Rurouni Kenshin, he hadn’t been in the public eye for some time, and seeing him in a video game almost two decades after his story in the manga ended is super uplifting. His role in the game’s story isn’t big, but he gets a fun alliance with One Piece’s Akainu, both trying to make their flaming ideals a reality among the many characters.

And needless to say, Shishio is a brilliant planner and deadly fighter. His strikes on Japan are never anything less than devastating, even if he is foiled at the end of the day, and he has a dozen tricks up his sleeves. His sword is coated in the fats and oils of all he has killed, meaning he can ignite those oils and wield fire--which not only raises the stakes far beyond anyone Kenshin has faced before, but speaks to the mentality that he grows stronger with every weaker foe he ‘devours’. Unfortunately, all that Shishio is built upon culminates in his demise. Because of the burns he endured, all of his sweat pores are inactive, meaning he cannot regulate his own body heat, and fighting for more than a half hour causes him to catch fire and die. This is ultimately what does him in, and the real kicker is that his followers are all so ingrained that their master is unstoppable, they don’t bother to help him. Shishio was too charismatic for his own good, and in the end, the man who believed that the strongest survive was killed but what he couldn’t control. Kenshin, Sano, Saito, and Aoshi all attempted to kill Shishio, but in the end, they didn’t defeat him, they survived him. As if that send off wasn’t enough--we get treated to one last scene after Shishio’s death. He, along with Yumei, awaken in Hell, where they proclaim to set out to conquer it as they did Japan. Shishio is my favorite in the slew of wonderful anime villains, and in my opinion, he’s what they should all strive to be.

[shawnjacksonsbs]

Still ever-so inclusively for coexisting, but with a heavy hope for so much more.   4-26-20

"They think order and chaos are somehow opposites and try to control what won't be. But there is grace in their failings. I think you missed that." - Vision to Ultron Just so ya know, I had taken notes for this entry, like a lot of notes, but as I re-read over everything to edit, I found that the pieces were more of a . . . theatrical side tangent. They were arbitrarily flawed and got away from the point too far to come back from. Now everyone likes a feel-good story, and there's plenty of kindness and compassion left in humanity. But if I'm being honest, I believe there's still plenty of room for growth from the human collective as a whole. The only feel-good story I can ever be fully honest about is my own. Most of which has been recorded as I write this every week, going back over 6 years now. This won't be a specific feel-good story by the way, not really. The further along in life I get, specifically this side of life, the more I feel a disconnect from the systematic and political failures of the society I live in. The one that allows more of the less fortunate people to struggle in excess, as wealth hoarders stand by with enough to make serious social strides forward but don't. Not all of them are like this, but enough are. Eat the rich, seems more and more viable every day. lol I will never change pace with the fact that I do not think billionaires should be a thing either. Like, they just shouldn't be allowed to exist as billionaires. Pretty unrealistic to think that that will ever change, at least in my lifetime, but one can hope. And with that part being said, the least one of them could do is become the god damned Batman or fucking Iron Man!! Is that really too much to ask? I mean for I'd do it with less and a pair of tights. Wait. . . that didn't come out right. You know what I mean though. lol no lol True equality is never going to be a thing, even with a socialist or communist ideology in place that isn't flawed. It just hurts my heart on so many levels that more people don't want the same for everyone. Living in any society, drives home ideals to the largest parts of that society that their ways are the only right ways without ever thinking twice about any other parts, other regions, or other countries, and damn sure not in the whole world. People raised Christian tend to believe it's the one true religion, but in other parts of the world decent, honest, hardworking people believe that Hinduism is, or that Islam is, etc.. and they do so with every fiber of their being, some even taking offense to someone lacking that same belief. The same can be said for political affiliations, capitalism vs socialism and conservative vs liberal etc. So are your opinions and views 100% of your own free will if they match only and almost exactly with those around you? It's curious, right? The world and life are far better reached with more information that comes from more of an open mind than not. I learn a little bit more every day. Most of which is a variation of growth in areas that I would have said once I had peaked in. Arrogant I know, and ignorant even more so, but when I learn a thing, I try to aspire in that new direction to the best of my ability. Most are learnings I fight against at first, and none of them are considered backslides at the end, not by any stretch of the imagination. So I read something the other day, along these lines, ~An apocalyptic style pandemic happened and instead of perpetuating self-survival of the fittest, etc, etc, it actually required kindness, patience, and responsibility towards others.~ That shouldn't be a thing to fight against or to be disappointed in. Be super good practice for a lot of us for even after this thing is finally over. You know those of us trying to live as examples, living the change we want to see in the world.                                                                                                                    I still have faith in person(s), but continually feel repulsed by the actions of people(s). Collectives seem to be much worse than individuals and its hard for me to understand why. With that mob mentally you think it would be easier for people to do things they actually know deep in their hearts to be good and righteous, instead of following others in hate or other more negative directions. A brief conversation with a coworker made me 100% realize that it doesn't matter which side of an issue you stand on, such as racism, because without a single doubt both sides know it's wrong to be that way toward people. The true racists and their opposition know that its wrong to treat others differently, or worse based on their race/skin color. It's not much left to ignorance, regardless of whether or not it stemmed from it. It's why so many racists can't be so publically outspoken about their racsim, especially when they aren't with a group of the same. Everyone knows it's an evil. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. Period. You'll probably have a really hard time trying to ever convince me otherwise, especially in this day and age. Update, for those interested, on my two oldest boys that I've been trying to help; I'll start by saying this, as some of you already know, I have been bumping heads with the both of them for 2 to 3 months now fairly regularly. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, but my oldest, oldest and myself just couldn't even come close to getting on the same page. He has since moved out. I haven't heard from him in a few days. I don't know if he's ok really, or if he's even trying to be. I hope against hope that he gets it together sooner rather than later, but accepting that the time frame and severity isn’t up to me, is still a hard-won life lesson that I'm working on. My second oldest and I will be going separate ways very soon as well. The imminent end will be within the coming month I imagine. With boundaries continually broken (by both) no options remain here. I am trying to help him get into some places with people that will help, where I couldn't. Because of the strain on my relationships with each of them, I know that the way I wanted to help them isn't going to work, maybe ever. So it's over. I'm not so naive to think that my way is the only way out there for either of them though, or anyone for that matter. There's plenty of other options still left and available if they're willing to put forth some effort on their own behalf(s). I guess I'd ask for you guys to keep them in your positive thoughts as we move forward. I imagine the initial struggle will be the most difficult for them. If you have relationships, of any kind, with them and you care, maybe reach out with some love and encouragement. More of the rest of their journeys and lives are on them once again. I believe, with 100% of my heart, that we can all learn to grow a little more into love, we can all do a little better, and we can all be a little better tomorrow than we were today. If you think you've reached some pinnacle I assure you that together we can go so much further. Trust me. I've fallen for that old mindset before. If you really search your heart, and your conscience it'll lead you in the right direction. It is our goodnesses that cam and will bring it all back into balance and the more we learn from it the stronger that balance becomes. I will end with reiterating a little of the beginning, in that even though we, as a whole, have a long way yet to go, at least in my opinion, we do still have lots, like shit tons of good, trying, caring people in this world, and even more of those celebratory, feel-good stories to take solace in, and comfort from. It's the very reason to keep moving forward. . . because WE ARE NOT ALONE. They’ll keep coming in too, and those new people who prove we aren't alone in this. The push for kindness and the mission to civilize is a torch to be passed down forever and ever. People like us that try and continually do right by others, and that always try to make as good decisions as we possibly can, are meant to walk as examples, to attract more and more persons to a better feeling side of life. It's not over. It’s never over. So continue to share the love and the laughter with the world around you, and please, please, please be kind to one another.                                           Giving from the heart is easy. Taking from the heart, not so much. That takes a little more practice for most of us. And, of course, Gratitude, which really speaks for itself. Find yours. Until next week; "Empathy without boundaries is self-destruction" - Silvy Khoucasian