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randomnameless · 5 years

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FE4 run - the unofficial 3rd Gen

Procrastination at its finest here - what would happen in this run of FE4 after several years?

warning, as always, this is not serious

Queen Larcei and King Seliph of Granvalle are actually pissed at the reconstruction and their own Kingdom - why should they start trading with Agustria first and help them more than help Isaach?

The “nobles” can’t tell them that they’re “barbarians” since Larcei is obviously Isaachian so they use the “it’s too far to send help there, we must secure the Yied Desert first if we want to cross and provide them with goods etc...” card.

But then Larcei tells them that Verdane is closer, and yet Granvalle isn’t helping her brother with his rebel-taming duties. Hell, if she could, she would go there to help him get rid of the bandits. But she can’t because she is Granvalle’s Queen.

Seliph understands that providing help to Verdane will bring less benefits to Granvalle than helping Agustria - who still has a functioning economy, and, besides, as the son of Sigurd, he feels indebted to the people of Agustria (he might have read a letter his cousin’s wife gave him).

So while he is a bit furious but powerless about helping in Isaach’s reconstruction, he continues with the general trend of his forefathers and doesn’t give a fig about Verdane.

Things are difficult in mainland Granvalle for Tine, because everyone and their cats hate Freege, and demand outrageous fees for Reparations about what the Freeges did during the War - when i say everyone and their cats it’s mainly the New Kingdom of Thracia and the Miletos guilds.

Tine and Nanna will never be friendly towards each other until their deaths.

She doesn’t care about Miletos though. Hopefully Seliph puts in place a new policy about “sharing the costs” so every Duchy has to participate. Ultimately, Seliph suspends the payment when he and his cousin have a heart-to-heart talk around the famous bottle of wine because Leif knows now that bleeding dry a country or a duchy isn’t the way to build a lasting peace between nations.

Tine also has problems in her personal life, because he husband is in Jungby and if they manage to get an Ulir Crusader, soon enough they will need a Tordo one but hey, there’s no one left with Tordo blood and there’s a duty not to let bloodlines extinguish (that’s the last thing Seliph heard from F!Lewyn).

Speaking of Jungby, as expected, Faval is the golden puppet Duke whereas Lester - who managed to convince his mom to come home - rules the house. They try to repair some of Faval’s early decisions like opening the castle to accomodate all orphans in the Duchy and giving a quarter of their treasury to the Conote orphanage he used to live in. Faval loves his wife, of course, but she has a duty to recreate a new Tordo line, just like he had to take his Holy Weapon and fight in the last Holy War. So he isn’t sad.

A bit pissed, but not sad.

Johalva was acclaimed as both as a hero and as a kinslayer by the randoms of Dozel. Lana was really pissed about this, but Johalva didn’t deny the various accusations but still add that he had to do those things to protect the civilians, the innocents etc and Julius was really mad, didn’t you see the big monster disappearing in the sky during the end of the war?

He finally managed to be acclaimed as a good Duke after head-butting with some of his fellow Dukes who called him a “disgrace” and managed to make Seliph reconsider his idea of taxing Dozel more than the other Duchies (Chalphy, Jungby and Edda) in the war reparations efforts.

He and Lana also made graves for Johan and Brian, but none were made for Danan.

Lana’s a bit worried about Neir blood disappearing, but given one or two generations cousins could marry and a Crusader could be born again.

Oifey trains Seliph’s son in the ways of chivalry like he did with Seliph when he was younger, he hopes that Seliph’s son will inherit the Chalphy duchy, because he doesn’t feel like he belongs here, in the halls and the throne that were supposed to be Lord Sigurd’s and Lord Byron’s.

Arthur’s dream never comes to fruition, and despite his best efforts, he cannot manage to make the world see Velthomer as anything else but a nest of vipers and other less than savoury people. Fee is the only reason why he didn’t pack his things and run away to Silesse after ten years of rule.

Cherry on top, despite being Azelle’s son, Arthur is also known for having been the one to have killed everyone in his maternal family, so the randoms think they get the short end of the stick - he even killed Lord Ishtore who participated in the child rescues with his sister!

Hopefully with a certain priest’s help, he still managed to rebuild the Duchy so they’re not in the Verdane tier of development anymore. After Arthur’s death, the randoms in Velthomer will say that he wasn’t so bad as a Duke.

Speaking of the savages, Ulster makes his base in Evans because it’s closer to Granvalle and to the royal forces he petitions to help against the barbarians.

When Julia finally joins her husband after being fed up with flower pot duties, she moves the new capital to Genoa. “Verdane” is too remote from everywhere, and in Genoa, they’re both close to Granvalle and to Miletos. Why Miletos? The closer they are to them, the harder it is for them to ignore Verdane, so they will have to listen and maybe obey when they petition for help or to stop putting stupid tariffs on their exports.

Why should they listen? Because Julia is Seliph’s sister and he cares a lot about her well-being.

Ultimately Ulster becomes King of Verdane, but Julia remains a Princess of Granvalle. Their son is the Prince of Persia Verdane and also a Prince of Granvalle. Hopefullu, the kid has major naga blood (even if ulster was overjoyed when the kid managed to “learn” Astra because those rumours about Julia and Seliph are still bothering him, just like they bother his sister) and even if he likes Verdane a lot, some people start to tell him that he has every right to sit in Belhalla and live with the civilised people.

He tells them to fig off.

In Agustria however, there are several rebellions brewing, even after Ares became King. Some former Princes/Kings call him an imposter, other call him too subservient towards Granvalle.

Strangely, though, Lene managed to usher a new era of show and other performing arts - to the point that the New Kingdom became reknown for its great arts. The children puppet shows about the Great King Ares vanquishing the Demon of Granvalle are always full. Through those shows, Agustrians manage to live in a collective fantasy of how they participated in ending the war and fought against Loptyr.

Shagall was the Shield that tried to protect Agustria from the Loptyrians during the first Gen and Eldingan was the Sword who defeated them, but through a deception the Loptyrians had Eldingan killed, so he passed the role of the Sword to his son Ares - everyone was happy, even the old Shagall partisans who, at first, didn’t want Ares or Eldie’s line to usurp the previous line of the Kings of Agustria and reminded Ares of Eldie and House Nodion’s vows.

Sadly enough, Lene wanted to make the lives of the performers and other orphans better with the economic profits earnt by those shoes, but it disappeared in the pockets of the people who were organising said shows.

Delmud was busy ruling the rest of the country, and exchanging letters with his sister and King Seliph, as the cordial man he has always been.

In Thracia’s New Kingdom we had Leif and Nanna happily creating a new dynasty - and Altenna’s forever alone.

Arion disappeared, and everyone thought that the line of Dain perished with him. However, one of Leif’s former cleric friends told him that there is a child living in (again) an orphanage in Tahra who is Lord Arion’s kid, but for his own sake, it’s better to live as an ignorant peasant than as a prince who lost his kingdom, wouldn’t he agree?

Due to Altenna’s dedication, and Hannibal’s popularity, the Thracians weren’t that crushed when the unification happened, and even if the northeners still have a better lifestyle then their southerners brothers, at the end of Leif’s reign, both people start to have to same lifestyles as in, there are brigands and piss poor people on both sides of the peninsula, but also, rich merchants and assholes in the South too.

Leif is aware that when he asked money to Seliph he acted a bit selfishly, but his Kingdom passes first. They still managed to remain great friends, and Leif’s son married Seliph’s daughter.

In Silesse, Ced manages to get a major blooded baby on someone but realises that he was never cut out to be a King, given how the country governed itself without him during all those years.

However, he didn’t bail out like his Father, and started to make several researches about dragons, and the mytical land of Archanea - prompted by Loptyr’s sight at the end of the war, and also, because of F!Lewyn.

He volunteered on the first expedition (passing through the northern seas of Silesse) but realised that his place was in Silesse, to study more and, maybe, start to develop trading routes to the new land. It’s only during the last years of his life that he managed to see a returning ship - after several years, sailors finally managed to land somewhere ; they brought him special endemic fruits found in that new land : Zofian Oranges.

The Isaachian people were happy when Shanan returned, because they heard disturbing rumours about their King misbehaving in Thracia and thought that if those rumours started, that meant that he was dead and some man tried to usurp his good name.

They were relieved when they saw him again.

Since the Isaachians had been freed early, they manage to reinstall some sort of government in Isaach (the capital) and everyone from the other kingdoms pledged their allegiance to Shanan - granted, they couldn’t find the former nobles of Sophara, so it was just some elders who participated in the ceremony.

Shanan was a bit disappointed that Granvalle didn’t send as much help as they expected, but thought that maybe Seliph was busy managing internal affairs.

Sadly for him, Patty gave birth to 3 children who all had the brand of Odo on their backs.

He decided that the eldest would remain in Isaac, one would go to Sophara and the last to Ganeishire.

But the one who was in Sophara wanted to inherit Isaach’s throne, given how he was a boy while the eldest was a woman, and trouble ensued.

More trouble ensued when Seliph’s son didn’t want to return to Chalphy and remain in Belhalla, and when Julia’s granddaughter has had enough of Verdane and managed to steal the Book of Naga, wanting to return to Belhalla.

France Agustria declared itself the Holy land and elected a pope, who took residence in Orgahill and who managed to hear the voices whispers of the gods. Soon enough, being the eldest brother of the Pope, Ares’ son, when he became King, declared the Thracians heretics, for they were developing and practicing dark magic.

Miletos tried to rob everyone using the various tensions as catalysts, but, in the end, they were unable to do a thing when Ares’ second daughter managed to survive a shipwreck when Leif’s only son didn’t. Thracia accused Miletos of having staged an accident to get rid of their heir - Leif’s daughter managed to find (or forge, depends on the POV) a letter detailing how Agustria paid the corrupt Miletosians to sabotage her brother’s lifeboat.

Hopefully Seliph died a few years before the start of the Third War, so he never knew how much the next generation managed to screw what he and friends fought for.

the end

#FE4 #FE4 run #FE5 #i had to make some nods i couldn't help myself #long story big story there is no loptyr anymore but Jugdral is still a shit place #i know i might have over used the orphanage card but #after a war like that there a lot of orphanages around? idk #i tried to avoid mentionning daughters because we're still in jugdral #The thracian-agustrian war starts before Julia's granddaughter's nonsense #but look #shit without Loptyr's intervention!#isnt it wonderful #miletos as a catalyst #yes #finally they have some importance!#jugdral nonsense #look zofian oranges!

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ayearofpike · 5 years

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Black Knight (Witch World, Vol. 2)

Simon Pulse, 2014 441 pages, 9 chapters + prologue and epilogue ISBN 978-1-4424-6734-7 LOC: PZ7.P626 Bl 2014 OCLC: 1065025018 Released December 2, 2104 (per B&N)

A month after her connection, Jessie Ralle starts dreaming about a young thief who mysteriously disappears in a flash of light. On the ninth night of the same lucid dream, she herself sees the flash, and wakes up next to the thief and four others in transport to a deserted jungle island. There are no ideas, no instructions, no obvious goals. There’s just a clue, a plaque mounted near their drop-off point that indicates that six groups just like theirs are here, but only one will make it out alive.

In other words: Remember that world-building we had in the first book, where it was implied that Jessie and her baby daughter were going to be integral components to the new and evolving leadership among the witch council? Remember the difficulty and heartbreak of Jimmy only being alive in one half of her life? Remember the potential new bonds of realizing her father was active in her upbringing, and could be again in both worlds? Well, fuck all that — let’s have a Hunger Games.

OK, technically this is more like Battle Royale, and Pike actually makes a reference to it as the young adults acclimate to their surroundings. But it is undeniable the influence that Suzanne Collins had on YA fiction, and certainly YA sci-fi/fantasy/analogues. In the wake of Katniss Everdeen, the market felt like it made a hard shift from doomed supernatural romances to dystopian future societies. It would be irresponsible of Pike to not try to cash in on that.

But this book ... is lacking in this regard. Collins’ success was not just that she made us care about Katniss, but that we cared about the bigger problem endemic to her (and all the other contestants’) situation. And Pike doesn’t give us enough to care about here. We don’t know what the stakes are, beyond survival. We don’t know who these people are, where they come from, or what they have to live for. We don’t even know where they are or why. I’m assuming there was another book or two planned for this series that would eventually get us to the meanings and revelations of this battle and why they were chosen to fight it and what ultimately was to come out of it. But this shit was so unsatisfying and we care so little about anyone or anything here that I can’t imagine we’ll ever see resolution.

(Like, does Pike even care? He claimed when the first one came out that it was going to be his “finest work,” and that the series could go “over ten books.” But it’s been almost five years and we haven’t seen another one of these. He didn’t mention his newer works at ALL in that recent Electric Lit interview. So who knows?)

The biggest problem is that the characters and setting we already know makes such a drastic shift to accommodate this story. And, like, I get it. The model of the industry, especially when this book came out, almost requires that you have established characters and an ongoing storyline before you ever publish anything. But it doesn’t feel connected to what’s come before. At all. It’s a new place we’ve never seen, everyone in the action except Jessie is a new character (and remember there are thirty-five of them), and there is almost zero resolution or explanation for what’s happening. There’s no reason this couldn’t have been literally anybody. Like, this could just as easily have been a Sita book, and maybe it would have actually made more sense, except that there’s no other vampires left. It probably shouldn’t have been a book about Jessie, who has a uniquely important position in witch world in light of the high-profile deaths she’s overseen and her responsibility to the Special. None of what happens in this story fits with anything that’s led up to it, and we are left a) wondering why the hell we’re reading this and b) ultimately unsatisfied.

I don’t even necessarily feel like there’s much to summarize, but I’m gonna do it anyway, because I’m dedicated.

We start with a chapter about the thief — Marc — whose MO is to hide in the trunk of a fancy car he’s valet-parked, wait for the owner to take him home, and then make off with the jewelry she (usually it’s a she) was wearing after she falls asleep. This heist is going to be his last job, because he doesn’t want to risk someone putting together a pattern that these high-profile thefts all came in the wake of the victims having been at his theater. So he steals the lady’s necklace and then her car to safely get out of Dodge, but when he stops to take a leak the light appears.

This is the dream Jessie has for over a week. The rest of the story is told from her immediate perspective, in first-person present tense just like a good little dystopian. She’s wondering about the dream, but she’s more concerned about who she just saw in the mall: the Highlander and President Coroner, just sitting there eating ice cream like they didn’t both get fatal holes in their chests last month. And yes, this is in witch world, where they died. She tails them and discovers they’re staying with (of course) the Alchemist, who tells Jessie there’s a reason for this and she needs to be prepared for ... something big, he isn’t clear on it. The Council has more info, maybe: the bad witches need to replace their leadership, and Jessie is first in line because she facilitated the killing. But what about the fact that she just saw President Coroner? The Council has an answer to that as well: one of the witch genes allows its bearer to control time, and so probably the Alchemist has that and has brought her and the Highlander forward from the past for some reason.

So Jessie goes home and has the dream again, only this time when the light appears she feels as though she’s yanked from her bed. She wakes up in the real world (and yes, I have expressed my hate for these names, but I’m sticking with them for consistency’s sake) in some kind of a shipping container with five other dudes, all of them wearing identical green outfits and matching unbreakable bracelets. And yes, one of them is Marc. The others are a precocious genius who’s going to MIT at 16, a quiet and scared Korean girl, an Israeli military fighter, and a Sudanese farmer who exudes strength and just seems to accept the situation. All of them were snatched at about the same time, globally and not locally — morning for the Americans, evening for Africa and Israel, middle of the night in Korea. But as far as Jessie can tell, she’s the only witch. So what is this about?

They don’t get very far before the next chapter, where Jessie wakes up in witch world and realizes she’s in some deep shit. She spends all day trying to find Marc, but like ... if he’s not connected, how is this going to help? She ends up not doing anything about it, and awakens again in the real world on some kind of volcanic jungle island. They find the aforementioned plaque and immediately realize that they’re going to need to work together and find a place to defend. They also need food, and so Jessie has to start showing her hand when she catches a bunch of fish just by grabbing them out of the water. They find a cave to hide out in, but they also see some fast-moving people in gray outfits, presumably another set of contestants.

The Israeli wants to hunt them down — kill before we get killed, she says — and so everyone except the brain and the Korean go tracking. What they find is a grotesque death scene: five bodies in various states of dismemberment. It’s not the gray people there, though: it’s a giant Swede who has a deal for Jessie. He wants her to kill her humans as a show of faith, and he’ll do the same, and then they can team up against the other witches. Because of course he’s gotten all the information already, having made better use of his interim day in witch world than stalking some boy. Jessie refuses, and they fight, only the Swede has a healing factor that works almost immediately. Luckily some of Jessie’s time-controlling gene kicks in and she manages to run away, but her teammates aren’t so lucky. Another witch shows up and throws motherfucking LAVA at them, killing the Israeli and spearing the Sudanese to a tree.

So her next day in witch world needs to be more productive than the last one. Jessie calls up the Council, who is all pissed off that she didn’t come to them already. To survive, they say, she’s gonna have to go back to the Alchemist, because obviously this is what he wanted to prepare her for. So she shows up and talks to the Highlander, who starts working with her on fighting. Specifically, he forcibly activates her telekinesis power by throwing her off a cliff. So after this she’s gonna want to unwind with her family and enjoy their time together, right? Nope — she goes straight to Marc’s house and tells him the world’s least believable story, ending in the prospect that she might want to try to kill him so his witch powers activate in the other world. But haven’t we already said that killing someone in witch world means they’re totally dead? Technicalities. So she gets home and, oh shit, Jimmy’s mad that she went on a date with some random dude without talking to him at all about her troubles! What a silly boy!

When they wake up in the real world again, the Sudanese warrior is totally healed. Apparently the Korean girl has a super-powered healing factor even though she’s not a witch, tied somehow to the death of her twin sister, who presumably channels the power through her. They’ve also been offered a truce by a couple of other witches, not the ones who tried to kill them last night. So they partner up, but the Korean girl’s healing factor is instantly undone when she tries to fix one of the other dude’s teammates but they die randomly on the walk. (Probably actually secretly strangled by the lava-thrower, who Jessie learned yesterday can also make herself invisible.) They talk about the bracelets, which have some kind of weird stone inside, and one of the other witches says he’s found the source: a giant wall that blocks off half of the island they’re on, which you can only see if you climb to the top of the volcano.

As they’re walking, the gray team attacks ... sort of. These people are short and pale, almost albinos, but they move faster than any human can and Jessie knows they have some kind of group mind that allows them to work together. They surround the group and lure them into a battle with the giant Swede, and while they’re fighting him the invisible lava thrower murders all the humans except five: Marc (who does take a poisoned knife to the back), brain boy, Korean healer, and two dudes on a new witch’s team. Jessie manages to lop off her hand and collect her bracelet before she totally vanishes and gets away. Oh, and the other witch has captured the leader of the albinos, and is holding her hostage to attempt to lure in the rest of them. She doesn’t talk, but her telepathy is unsettling at best.

Jimmy shakes her awake in witch world and tells her to do whatever she has to in order to survive. If that means blowing another dude, whatever. So Jessie calls up the Council, which gives her a little more info on the two witches she’s teamed up with. Watch out for the second one, they say (not the one who’s tied up an albino), because he might have choked his last boyfriend to death and successfully covered it up. She goes back to the Alchemist’s house, where President Coroner pins her down about why their present selves can’t help Jessie train. So she has to limit just what she says about their deaths, and in turn they limit telling her that they traveled to Jessie’s funeral in the near future.

Fuck this training, then, right? Jessie figures the only thing to do is help Marc live, and to do that she’ll have to activate his witch genes. But to convince him to die she’s probably gonna have to give up the booty ... only she can’t do it, she’s too busy thinking of Jimmy for a change in this novel. He wants to go through with it anyway (the death, I mean) but she has second thoughts and isn’t ready to put him through it. So they fall asleep next to each other and wake up in a cave on the side of the volcano, where the other two witches are fighting. It seems the first dude had his teammates on watch, but they mysteriously choked to death in the night while the second dude was backing them up. Huh. But they have to keep moving, climbing to the place where the second dude said he saw the wall, for ... like, reasons.

They find another cave near the top of the volcano, and inside there are drawings showing a woman who looks suspiciously like the Council president touching a bracelet to a giant wall. They have to learn more, but the second witch isn’t eager to reapproach the wall. Brain Boy wants to go, so they agree that Chokey Witch can watch Healing Girl and Slowly Dying Marc while the rest of them investigate. Brain Boy touches the wall and freezes, and even though Jessie knocks him away immediately he senses that a lot more time passed, and he’s seen things that happened in witch world but not the real world. So Jessie wants to try, and when she touches it she’s suddenly playing red queen with the dead gambler from the first book, who reminds her that there’s more to the game than just the next card in her own hand. What? I don’t know.

She comes to on the ground with a lot of screaming going on. The Swede is back, so she and the first witch have to fight him. But he forgets Jessie’s plan and attacks weird, getting stabbed in the gut by one of the flying spears Jessie is controlling with her new telekinesis. Oh, and here’s Invisible Lava Thrower too, about to kill Brain Boy! He acknowledges that there’s nothing he can do and succumbs so Jessie has enough time to grab the Swede’s head and crank it around 360 degrees. Lava Girl vanishes, and Jessie picks up our other witch and carries him back to the cave, which is suddenly being guarded by all six albino dwarves. The other witch says that in this proximity, killing the leader will cause all of them to die because of the group mind, so Jessie sneaks up and lops off her head, and then goes inside the cave by herself.

Sure enough, there’s Lava Girl, holding Chokey at machete-point. Marc is mostly submerged in a freezing stream, and Healing Girl is just, like, there. Chokey fights free, but of course Lava Girl hits him with ... you know, because they’re INSIDE A FUCKING VOLCANO. Only Jessie has realized something: these bracelets with the rock inside that matches the wall control their physical connection to the island. Lava Girl looks sick, pale, and weak since she’s lost hers, and when Jessie casually chucks it into the lava she drops dead.

And now Healing Girl comes to. She wants to try to help revive Marc before it’s too late, and wants to study the poisoned knife. Only she then tries to stab Jessie with it. Turns out that when she was alone with the first witch, the one hiding outside with a spear through his guts, he used his strongest power: mental suggestion. He turned Healing Girl into a slave, designed to kill those who weren’t expecting it. Jessie uses all her mental powers to break the hold, upon which Healing Girl ... jumps right into the motherfucking lava herself.

I don’t know, I guess because we’re getting close to the end.

So Jessie disguises herself as Healing Girl and goes to confront the last witch standing besides herself. Who, surprise, does NOT have a spear through his guts. Apparently he can disguise himself too, in addition to the hypnosis. So he tells her to kill herself with the knife, but she stabs him in the lungs just before dropping her disguise, and then ... slits her wrists.

So Marc can live.

Because only one can survive, and of course it should be some dude we just met rather than the main character of the LAST TWO BOOKS. THE ENTIRE SERIES THUS FAR.

But as Jessie’s soul is floating away, she sees something. She sees herself, only older. Even though I thought once you were connected you stopped aging. And she tells herself that it’s not over, and they can go wherever they want to go ... or whenever, rather.

The epilogue takes place at Jessie’s memorial service (not actually a funeral, because there is no body, Jessie’s just been missing for a month but because Marc is now connected they think they know what happened) where Jimmy approaches Marc and they talk about what they know. In particular, Jimmy asks Marc to watch after his real-world son, who oh yeah there was an unfollowed thread where they got a DNA report that said he wasn’t actually Jimmy’s kid but it was also prepared by Jessie’s still-mostly-absentee father who has an agenda in ascending the ranks of the Council so its authenticity is questionable. But then they talk about Jessie and ... neither one thinks she’s actually dead.

And that.

Is the end of Black Knight.

I can sort of pick out the seeds that Pike is sowing in this story. I can start to sense the coming trails and paths the characters might walk in the supposedly potential ten-book series about witches. But like. You just essentially killed your MAIN CHARACTER. Your NARRATOR. And we don’t actually care about this jewel thief guy, who by all appearances is a BAD PERSON. But you went ahead and put him in the forefront.

Is it any wonder this series fizzled out? Part of why I (and maybe a lot of us) got tired of dystopian fiction is that so many authors felt the need to keep raining shit on their protagonists. And yeah, this is another Hunger Games thing, but there’s a reason there — the dictatorial leadership fighting to keep rebellion down. To be perfectly honest, even though I see that reason, I didn’t like it there either. At some point, I wanted Collins to HELP Katniss rather than repeatedly jamming a boot in her face. We want to trust our authors to care about the protagonist the way we’re supposed to care. So when writers keep making their characters climb uphill, for no reason other than to try to get readers to buy the next one and see how they get over the obstacles, it becomes stale. If they obviously don’t care, why should we?

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pyrebriight-a · 6 years

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rules: answer 20 questions then tag 20 (give or take) followers you wanna get to know better! tagged by: @hyaciiintho (YAS FAM, THANK YOU)

name: My given name? Katie. nickname: Pi, my mom calls me Mimi for some reason, people soooorta make fun of me on the trawl boat for holding onto boat hooks like a wizard staff, I'm fucking HOPING they start calling me "The Wizard." height: 5′3" nationality: Recovering Floridian favorite fruit: Apples, Nectarines, Cherries favorite season: Fall favorite smell: Musk smells, petrichor, salt breezes favorite color(s): Greens, blues, browns and tans favorite animals: Cats, dragons (shush), bats, owls, alligators tea, coffee, hot cocoa: Tea and hot cocoa, I don't drink coffee average hours of sleep: 7-8 dogs or cats: Cats! dream trip: New Zealand and Australia, or Hawaii. I want to hike big mountains and see endemic fauna! when my blog was created: The original Downfall Zel blog was made back in January of 2015. I've rebooted it a few times since then. Most recently a few weeks ago when I was a dumbass about which delete button I was clicking. random fact: I'm afraid of heights, so I used to go to rock climbing gyms and climb blindfolded. I was a stubborn, stupid child. favorite food: Curry of any variety, ice cream, french fries, dried apricots, sauerkraut, sharp cheeses. favorite t.v. show: Right now, I'm into Castlevania, The Good Place, and Stranger Things! favorite movie: Star Wars! This becomes apparent after knowing me for maybe five fucking minutes, because I often wear Rebel Starbirds in my earholes. favorite vine: I love the "Ah fuck, I can't believe you've done this" one. I die laughing no matter how many times I watch it. sexuality: Asexual gender: Female favorite book series: I read too much to keep track of this. Garth Nix's Abhorsen Chronicles stick out, and so does Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy... I don't fuckin know, man, I love sci-fi and fantasy books. favorite video game(s): Pokemon, Knights of the Old Republic, Zel-duh, Portal, and Supergiant's stuff is pretty damn good too. favorite subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology favorite fandoms: None of them. As a whole, I hate fandom. I stay for the maybe seven people I like, huddled spitefully in the corner, seething. favorite superhero: THOR guys or girls: In terms of romance? I'm not into guys, no. I know that much at least. celebrity crush: I have never had a celebrity crush. No, I know. It should have been a tip-off as to my current struggle with "Do I like girls or am I aromantic?" But I strongly recall a drama teacher asking me about who my celebrity crush was to explain the emotion she wanted out of me, and I remember just... staring at her blankly like "People do that?" last time i cried: I think it was Tuesday, at work, in the middle of trying to wrangle chlorophyll-a data? hair color: Brown eye color: Blue what I should be doing: I'm at a standstill right now, actually, this guy has to answer me back about the problems I've got with the chlorophyll-a data.

tagging 20 people: I think you tagged everyone here again, haha. Go ahead! Do it!

#ooc #and here we see the wild author in its natural habitat #although this creature may seem shy it can turn into a raging bitch at the slightest provocation #like for instance when THe CHLOROPHYLL-A DATA IS FUCKED UP

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picardonhealth · 3 years

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How will the pandemic end? Not with a moment of triumph we’ll all remember, but with a slow whimper we’ll soon forget

Don’t expect civilization to return to normal in 2021 with a V-Day-like emotional catharsis. Focus on the small signs of hope – and the things we can do to prevent anything like this from happening again

André Picard, The Globe and Mail

Tuesday, January 05, 2021

André Picard is a health columnist for The Globe and Mail. His new book Neglected No More: The Urgent Need to Improve the Lives of Canada’s Elders in the Wake of a Pandemic will be published in March.

This is the way the pandemic ends: Not with a bang, but a whimper.

Apologies to T.S. Eliot aside, the most likely scenario in the coming months is not world-ending catastrophe, but something more banal: More and more people getting vaccinated, followed by a gradual easing of public health restrictions, a rising tide of indifference and a petering out of one of the worst threats to global health the world has seen in a century.

“There won’t be a V-day where everyone runs into the streets and hugs,” said Ashleigh Tuite, an infectious disease epidemiologist and assistant professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health of the University of Toronto. “Just a gradual return to normal, but not normal-normal.”

Casual hugs, public celebrations and other indiscriminate mingling are still a long ways off. Masks, physical distancing, limits on gatherings and travel restrictions will be with us for the foreseeable future.

History tells us that pandemics don’t have Hollywood endings. The denouement tends to be slow and messy and COVID-19 will certainly be no exception.

The two big unknowns are the willingness of the public to get their shots, and the durability of immunity.

A lot will depend on how quickly we can get vaccines into people’s arms – and Canada doesn’t appear to be acting with much urgency on that count. Some provinces, such as Ontario, stopped or slowed the vaccine rollout during the holiday period, and some also held back stock to save it for second doses. Both policies have been reversed.

“The vaccine has given people a lot of hope,” Dr. Tuite said. “But whether we will reach herd immunity is still an open question. And if there’s a hiccup with the vaccines, all bets are off.”

Initially, it was estimated that 60 per cent to 70 per cent of the population would need to be vaccinated to make it difficult for the coronavirus to continue spreading – that elusive target called herd immunity. Now, because of more infectious variants, scientists are saying the target needs to be in the 80 per cent to 90 per cent range – which would be unprecedented with an adult vaccine.

Despite their loud, social-media-amplified voices, few people are actually anti-vaccination, and those who have doubts tend to become less hesitant as they see their peers roll up their sleeves. But there are many structural hurdles.

“The systems we have are designed to vaccinate kids. Getting beyond 50 to 60 per cent of adults will be really, really hard,” said Noni MacDonald, a professor of pediatrics at Dalhousie University in Halifax and vaccinologist who has worked for decades in global health.

The numerous challenges, she said, include vaccine hesitancy, hard-to-reach populations, weak public health infrastructure and the fact that, so far, the vaccines approved in Canada require ultracold storage (the Pfizer vaccine is stored at minus 70 C and the Moderna one at minus 20 C, and both must be used quickly after being thawed). Each of the existing vaccines also requires two shots to be fully effective. The third coronavirus vaccine to hit the market could resolve some of the daunting logistics problems as it can be stored in refrigerators already used for vaccines and may even require only one shot. Canada has ordered 20 million doses from AstraZeneca, but the vaccine has not yet received regulatory approval in Canada.

“We’ve only just begun to vaccinate and it will just get harder,” Dr. MacDonald said. “And, of course, the last mile will be the hardest mile.”

That’s just distribution. The immunology part of the puzzle is just as rife with potential complications.

Among those who are inoculated, the big question is: Will they be protected from infection for life – or at least for a few years? Similarly, are those who were infected by coronavirus at risk of reinfection? No one knows, and the only way to really answer those questions is with time and surveillance. It doesn’t feel like we have a lot of the former, and we’ve not done particularly well at the latter.

We’re all anxious to put 2020, the annus horribilis supremus, behind us. But the reality is that we’ve reached, at best, the halfway point of the pandemic. Not to mention that the collateral damage – everything from lingering mental-health wounds to staggering public debt – will be felt for years to come.

“In my experience with regional epidemics, one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is they always last longer than we think,” said Joanne Liu, a Canadian pediatric emergency physician and former international president of Médecins sans frontières.

“Infectious diseases are humbling at the best of times but what really matters in epidemics, or a pandemic, is the human factor, and no one can predict how people will behave in the coming months,” Dr. Liu said.

We can model different scenarios – how infections, hospitalizations and deaths will evolve over time. But we can’t model human behaviour. It’s the wild card in every prediction and plan.

What we do know is that a good chunk of the public seems to be getting sick and tired of restrictions – eager to return to work in the office, to go to the movies and to resume Tinder dating, while others want stricter rules, at least in the short term. Perhaps “more divided about the necessity of lockdowns” is a better way to put it.

Yet, when it comes to COVID-19, the lessons delivered time and time again have been: Impatience can be deadly. So, too, can hesitating to act.

To date, there have been more than 82 million infections in the world, and roughly 1.8 million deaths.

Canada is closing in on 600,000 cases and COVID-19 has claimed more than 15,000 lives here, making it the third leading cause of death in 2020.

By all appearances, the carnage is going to continue through the winter, whether vaccines are effective or not.

In fact, based on the trend lines of infections, hospitalizations and deaths, there is every reason to believe that the coming months will be the darkest yet – especially if we see a spike in new cases related to holiday gatherings, as occurred after Thanksgiving.

“I hate to say it, but this is far from over,” Dr. MacDonald said. “Many people have fallen ill and died, and many more are going to fall ill and die.”

But if the vaccination rollout goes smoothly, and the vaccine works relatively well, we should be able to breathe a bit by summer – maybe even dream of barbecues and baseball again.

Still, vaccinating 37 million people in Canada will take time, never mind seven billion around the globe.

As vaccination numbers rise, the way coronavirus spreads will also be altered. We can expect fewer large waves of illness, but more sporadic ripples concentrated in unvaccinated populations. Infectious disease experts predict the coronavirus is likely to become endemic, lurking about for years, maybe even sparking seasonal spikes of illness, much like the flu.

Global disparities will become more glaring. Countries with 13 per cent of the world’s population have already gobbled up more than half of all the vaccines available. (Canada alone has purchased 429 million doses of seven vaccines, enough to vaccinate our population six times over, and it isn’t clear how it will distribute the excess.)

“It’s like being invited to a feast but the LMIC [low- and middle-income countries] are at the kids’ table, waiting to get the leftovers,” Dr. Liu said.

She also warned that this “me first” attitude is counterproductive – that until coronavirus spread is tamped down everywhere, the threat remains for everyone.

As much as anything, the pandemic has laid bare disparities in society, even in wealthy countries.

In Canada, the most glaring failure has been in eldercare. More than 10,000 of the 15,000 deaths across the country have been in retirement homes and long-term care facilities, and the way others have been locked away is a testament to the ageism ingrained in social policies.

The pandemic has also hit women – especially working moms – particularly hard, setting back progress against gender inequality by years, if not decades. Correcting this requires, among other things, making accessible, affordable child care a public-policy priority.

COVID-19 has also forced us to recognize the importance of low-paid workers to a functioning society. If we don’t hike wages for essential workers (and not just temporarily), make benefits such as paid sick days mandatory, find ways to extend employment insurance benefits to the gig workers and the self-employed, and improve the work environment more generally, we will have workplace issues that extend well beyond the pandemic.

The Canada Emergency Relief Benefit (CERB), one of the most important initiatives taken by government during this public health crisis, brought some financial relief to 4.7 million workers, making it probably the world’s biggest pilot project on basic income. If it doesn’t spark a serious conversation about reforming social welfare, we will have missed an important opportunity.

The postpandemic period will also seriously test the resiliency of the health system. Surgeries are backed-up, patients with chronic illnesses are feeling ignored and front-line workers are burned out. No one knows what impact COVID-19 stress and trauma will have on the population’s mental health or how our medicare system, which has long neglected mental health, will cope.

“When there is a public health crisis, there is always a huge hangover, especially on health systems,” Dr. Liu said.

Going forward, the biggest political challenge will be addressing the many social and economic wounds that have been exposed.

There is much talk of silver linings, but those will only come to fruition if governments, businesses and individuals act on the lessons learned.

“Hopefully the vaccine will not be an excuse to not do all the things that need doing,” Dr. Tuite said.

Meanwhile, she said, the challenge of coronavirus will remain, maybe for many years. Eradication is unlikely, even with the best vaccines. Let’s not forget that only one human disease, smallpox, has been eradicated, and that happened more than 200 years after a vaccine. (Edward Jenner administered the first smallpox inoculation in 1796, and it was declared eradicated, thanks to vaccination, in 1980.)

The push to eradicate polio has not stalled for lack of vaccines, but because of complex geopolitics and socio-economic realities.

The best-case scenario is that SARS-CoV-2 becomes another seasonal coronavirus (there are seven known to infect humans) that causes only limited illness. A worst-case scenario is that it continues to mutate and returns every fall in different strains, similar to influenza, but more deadly. We’ve not been great in dealing with the coronavirus as an acute illness; would we do any better if it were a chronic problem?

At a certain point the world will also decide, through its actions, what level of death is “acceptable.” Tuberculosis still kills 1.5 million people a year, AIDS 700,000, malaria 400,000, and so on, and we barely bat an eye. When COVID-19 stops being a threat to wealthy countries, will it stop being a public health priority, as is the case with so many other infectious diseases?

As the immediate danger fades, we need to have a national plan beyond “reopen quickly.” It is not sufficient to have a schedule for vaccinating the population; we need to articulate a clear end game and how exactly we are going to “build back better,” as the political rhetoric goes.

When the epidemiological end of the pandemic occurs, likely not until 2022 at the earliest, we will only be starting to deal in earnest with the fallout.

A significant aspect of the recovery needs to include preparing for the next pandemic, which will no doubt pose new challenges. As the World Health Organization cautioned in its year-end briefing: This pandemic is “not necessarily the big one.”

Dr. MacDonald said we’ve learned a lot from COVID-19, but we have to be ready and willing to apply those lessons. “There will be other pandemic threats so we can’t afford to forget too quickly, as we have done in the past.”

The biggest challenge will be our short memories.

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omg-amaymon · 7 years

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So, a post here on Tumblr about Flight/Drama Rising and it’s SJW communities

So, a few things you need to know. First: I hate Tumblr. I originally only made this to connect to a few friends on Tumblr, but that fell short like hell. You can clearly see I don’t use Tumblr much or plan to use it much outside of responding to DramaRising posts in their posts and the occasional post such as this. I don’t even know how to sort out a proper background or how to just directly respond to a post on DramaRising without reblogging it. If you disagree with me about something, well hit me up on FlightRising or make a post about me on DR. If anyone reading this somehow stumbles on this, I should point out something. This is going to be both a private and public letter. I’m not going to put any tags outside of DramaRising into this because I don’t expect people to read it, but it’s worth a read anyways. Flight Rising, for those who don’t know, is basically a game about breeding and decorating dragons with a bit of Pokemon style battling thrown in there. That’s the main gist of the whole thing. You can trade and sell Dragons and breed your own. That’s it. It’s simple, and easy to understand. But there’s an underlying problem with it, or rather with the Tumblr community of FlightRising... or rather from people who browse ‘DramaRising’, a Tumblr page dedicated to the Drama on-goings on FlightRising. And recently it’s taken over as more of a political blog than anything else, talking mostly about LGBTQ+IA Pride (Which I don’t have a problem with) and how everything is “Transphobic” and “Homophobic.” This, however, I do have a problem with. This isn’t just a problem, to be fair, to the denizens of DramaRising or FlightRising or even to Tumblr, but it’s becoming Endemic to DramaRising and FlightRising. How did we get here though? It’s always happened, admittingly from what I seen from the previous DramaRising and it appears quite often in FlightRising forums also, but it’s kept mostly out of FlightRising which is why it appears on DramaRising. Here I’m going to talk about three things: The first two are recent events and the last one is the more longer and more common event that keeps popping up all the time. Recently, a person made an artshop on FlightRising. This is one way many people make ‘Gems’, ‘Treasure’ and actual Money on FlightRising. Artshops are common as muck, but it’s not the scope of this post to talk about the oversatuation of the Artist Corner there. However, this one individual made what you would think would be a complete crime against nature. They posted they would draw many things, but one of the subjects they won’t draw is ‘LGBT.’ That’s a broad enough subject in of itself admittingly. Though from what I understand, they don’t mind drawing Gay or Lesbians. So what could they have possibly mean? Well, one of the examples they gave on what they would draw was ‘Light Romance.’ The example of what they wouldn’t draw was ‘LGBT.’ I would assume, therefore, that they would not draw any Light Romantic stuff which involved LGBT stuff in, which would be Lesbians and Gay people perhaps partaking in romantic actions, such as kissing. The person who made this, by the way, is apparently a 15 year old girl. However this didn’t matter to many people on the DramaRising page, where there were dozens of anonymous entries dedicating to how disgusting of a person she was, demanding for her name so people can boycott and block her. To decry her as Homophobic as well as Transphobic. All because she won’t draw LGBT stuff. I don’t know about you guys, but most people don’t know what the hell they’re talking about when they’re 15 years old. I was considered smart for my age, but I still barely had a real grasp on things and that was before the Internet really took a hold. The reblogs and replies though were just as bad, if not as toxic as some of these posts though. I saw one post on DR that was about someone defending this girl, maybe a little confused. The posts and responses were very different, but had one guy basically tell the anonymous user to ‘Fuck their Face.’ Brilliant. I’ve noticed that many of the most aggressive people are from those who believe this girl to be Homophobic. Now I want to say: “Not all LGBT users.” Many of them also seemed quite supportive of the girl. Maybe disagreeing with the idea, but certainly condemning the more oppressive people. I like these LGBT users, probably because they show Maturity. Maybe, also though, because pretty much almost all my friends are in the LGBT or a minority community and have learnt to accept that I, as a Straight White Cisgendered Male (But Disabled) man, can understand other peoples ideals and can also disagree with other people and hold a rational conversation with them. Now the current big drama is about this ‘Heterosexual Pride’ Hatchery. Hatcheries, for those who don’t know, are threads that basically sell their dragons and continuously update them to sell more of their dragons. They always sell certain dragons and can breed them. And I’m going to say this: Making a “Heterosexual Pride” Hatchery, is stupid. Not that I don’t agree that Straight people are actually getting attacked, but it looks to be more of a ploy to get attention than anything. The person who made it, from what I’ve seen in the past, does stupid stuff all the time. People are taking this stupid bait for what it is and, again, demand name drops so they can block and/or harass this user. And like the previous event, it keeps getting brought up all the time, with people both attacking and defending the user. Here, I think both need to look at it and think “Well, this is stupid. For both sides.” Finally the last thing I should talk about. Here’s some context, again, for people who don’t know much about FlightRising. There are multiple breeds of dragons. There are also multiple ‘Genes’ you can get also. Within this, you can change the Breed of the Dragon to one of the many other breeds and you can change the genetics of the dragon so it looks nicer and cooler. One thing, however the site does not offer, is a ‘Sex Change Scroll.’ You cannot change the Gender of the Dragon, you cannot change their Eye Colour and if you want to change their colours, you have to do it randomly. Otherwise all rules apply, you can change any breed/gene of a dragon to another breed/gene of a dragon. Also, the gender of the dragon changes the pose of the dragon. So a Male Coatl Dragon looks different to a Female Coatl Dragon due to their ‘Poses.’ Some Dragons have some differences in their sexes also, such as one breed’s Male having a much longer nose than the female or depending on the gender, one might have more horns than the other. So why doesn’t the site offer a ‘Sex Change Scroll’? Many reasons probably why they don’t offer one but the main point of the game is the Dragons themselves and that you can breed the dragons together. Part of the challenge of getting your perfect dragon is to breed them or buy them. You must realize, also, that in this regard there’s also different breeding cool downs and that certain Genes/Breeds have a more dominant trait than others. A Coatl Dragon, for example, is less likely to give birth to a Coatl Dragon unless it breeds with another Coatl or a Wildclaw. They are ‘Rare Breeds.’ (Coatls also so happen to be the most popular.) The Rarer the Breed, the longer it also takes for their breeding to go off Cooldown. If you want to breed a Coatl again, you’re going to have to wait another 35 days. Yes, it sucks that if you breed two Coatls together and you’re after a Male but only get Females, it sucks. Even more so when you’re trying for certain colours/genes. But the goal of the game is to breed dragons to make your dream dragon or make someone elses dream dragon to which you can sell. To some people though: This reasoning would be considered Homophobic or even Transphobic. Hell, a lot of people who say if you don’t want a Sex Change Scroll, you’re outright Transphobic. No, this isn’t the case. I simply want there to be some restrictions. Dragon Breed changes are a good idea, because otherwise we would never be able to get hold of Coatl/Wildclaws. And It’s not like breeding two Plentiful Breeds have a chance for a Common breed or a Rare Breed. It’s always locked to the two parents you breed with what Breed/Gene they have. You start out with two parents, one you can customize but you only get to choose a plentiful breed. The other is randomly generated and, again, is also always a plentiful breed. The eggs you can scavange are Plentiful unless they’re from the Cauldron (Bogsneak) or an Event (Nocturne) so it is literally impossible to get a Common, Uncommon, Imperial or a Rare Breed outside of these scrolls. Likewise, it would be impossible to get the Genes you want outside of those scrolls because you always only have the Basic Gene. The Gender of a Dragon is not impossible to get, however, due to fact you always have a 50/50 chance of getting the Gender you want. I got the first Triple Cherry Wildclaw on the site and I was disappointed it wasn’t female. But you know what, I don’t want to change it’s sex because he grew on me. Which leads me to the Final idea these lunatics want. It’s not a bad idea, admitting, and I have a hard time refuting it, but I will and not because I’m ‘Transphobic’ (Though people will call me a Homophobe/Transphobe because of this post.) The final idea is instead of a ‘Sex Change Scroll’, that they instead put a ‘Pose Change Scroll’ instead. This changes the Dragon so that they have the opposite Genders Pose. A lot of people hate the Male Wildclaw or the Female Faepose, for example and would love to change it to the Female Wildclaw/Male Fae. So... what’s wrong with this? There’s actually quite a lot wrong with it. First, remember I said there were differences in the Genders of some dragons. Male Guardians have Beards, Male Ridgebacks have longer noses, Male Pearlcatchers have another Horn and probably a few more I forgotten. (Contray to belief: There’s no Gender Difference in Coatls.) So these artists will have to make adjustments already and add more artwork into the site already just to accommodate these pose change scrolls. This will put more strain on the servers because now every breed would have to call upon, in some cases, FOUR different artworks for different dragons. If you’re like me, who’s been on the site almost ever since it got out of Beta, you know how unstable it can be already. The second problem I have with it is... I think it may actually be insulting to Trans people. Hear me out here. Even if no new artwork is drawn up, would someone who is transitioning to a woman want to show up as always having a beard? You would think someone who identifies as a woman would not want to have/limit the amount of stuff that would identify them as a Male. Likewise, a Female wouldn’t suddenly have a beard just because they identify as a Man would they? So maybe it’s just me, but having a dragon with those traits on the wrong artwork would seem insulting to me. However, I’m not Transsexual or planning on ever becoming Trans, so maybe this one is just a weird one on me. The Third and final problem, a smaller one admittingly, is it can be used deceitfully as a way of selling dragons on the Auction House. This is probably the least concerning, since we also have a scroll that gives Dragons “Eternally Youthful”, which means they always have the Young Dragon look (Which is very unisex, though originally weren’t meant to be.) So I doubt that’s an issue. Personally, I’m against the Sex/Pose Change Scrolls. I know that LGBT (Particularly the T part it seems) wants to have a way to identify themselves in the game and to have representation in the game. However the game was clearly not made for that in mind. Instead of listing everyone who slightly disagrees as Homophobic/Transphobic, perhaps take a moment to look and understand their reasonings. If there’s not much of a reasoning, don’t assume either that they’re just a scumbag who believes that all Homosexuals need to be burnt on a cross. Just... hear them out. I will only list this as DramaRising Tag. I don’t think it’s a problem for FlightRising, but those who appear on DramaRising instead. If you do want to discuss about this, you can always hit me up on FlightRising (It’s probably obvious from my name who I am on there.) If you feel you need to complain about me on DR, that’s fine too. I’ll respond.

#DramaRising #rant #personal rant

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pubtheatres1 · 5 years

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Image: Sophie Treadwell GARRY by Sophie Treadwell White Bear Theatre, Kennington, 4th – 22nd June 2019 Interview with director GRAHAM WATTS Graham Watts is directing and producing the world premiere of Sophie Treadwell’s play GARRY. Sophie Treadwell wrote more plays than Shakespeare. Her play Machinal is looked upon as one of the great plays of the 20th century. “Everybody’s done it, from Broadway to the Almeida”, says Watts, “her other plays are there, they’re just ignored.” Like a man on a mission, Watts is determined to raise the profile of brilliant female writers’ who have been overlooked. Last year he premiered THE UNNATURAL TRAGEDY at The White Bear, 350 years after it was written by Margaret Cavendish. It received five-star reviews and an OFFIE nomination for Best Direction. Yet when he tried to get THE UNNATURAL TRAGEDY published, nobody would do it. It’s a clever restoration comedy, with 14 characters. Watts points out that it’s ideal for “universities, amateur groups could do it, students could study it, so many things you could do with it, but they just won’t publish”. It’s a problem which appears to be endemic. Timberlake Wertenbaker wrote 41 plus, operas, radio plays and screenplay. “You’ll see OUR COUNTRY’S GOOD And if you’re lucky you might see THREE BIRDS, ALIGHTING ON A FIELD”, says Watts. “If you’re telling me that’s not gender discrimination, it’s a bit suspicious, particularly when you’re comparing with productions for male writers.” “We need to enrich the repertoire. If we don’t produce plays written by women then we reduce it by 51% It’s not about a condescending concern for the “Little Ladies.” These are fantastic plays that have been neglected for years. Nobody does them. If I do them it will encourage other people to put them on, otherwise no one knows they exist. They’ll just keep doing the same productions like TOP GIRLS. If someone told you Carol Churchill only wrote TOP GIRLS you’re going to believe it.” Naturally, taking a play which has never been produced before does have challenges of its own. GARRY is a hard-hitting modern play. “It’s very 21st century, it’s the Weisberg situation except with a twist.” Set in 50s New York. Garry, an unemployed man is lured from a bar to a hotel room with the promise of a job. Watts explains: “It’s that prominent rich guy situation. When Garry comes back to the hotel room in the Waldorf, he’s sexually assaulted by the guy with repercussions for him and his new wife Wilma in particular – a reporter turns up looking for a scoop and events build to a shattering conclusion. She’s a small town girl from Oklahoma, believing in the American dream but life’s a bit more complex than that. The big thing she learns is that people are all a little bit different.” “It’s not showing graphic subject matter” says Watts, “it’s not gross, we’re talking 1954 in certain parts of America where homosexuality isn’t accepted, now there’s an attempted rape, and the changing role of women - It’s anti the American dream. The character’s feel chocked, they can’t breathe, they can’t express themselves”. The play is actually about Wilma, she’s on stage from the very first gong, and never leaves the stage for two hours. All four character’s in the play are aged 18 – 22, so Watts’ cast is very young. Two of them have worked with him before. “It has to be a stepping stone for people to move on. They won’t do something like this for the rest of their careers. An American giant of a playwright in a pub in south London … you can never take that away from them.” Phebe Alys is playing the role of Wilma. Phebe was last seen at the White Bear in The Unnatural Tragedy as Amor. She is currently filming Harlots for Sky TV. Also, in The Unnatural Tragedy was Alice Welby. In this production she takes on the part of Peggy, a tough New York prostitute and Garry’s sister. She was also Juliet in Graham Watts’ Romeo & Juliet. “Why not give them a break?” says Watts. “Particularly for Phebe - Wilma is a hell of a challenge, she’s carrying the play. These actors leave drama school with high expectations and then nothing … if people have done a good job before, I stay loyal to them”. Watts doesn’t believe in imposing a style on the play, the script is a gift. “It just comes because it’s the right thing to say, if you listen to the other actor, the response is already in your head” Watts’ explains. “Rather than grammatical sentences she splits it up into thoughts and of course New Yorkers are quick thinkers, quick speakers.” The fact that the play has never had an audience does raise a few difficulties and is disconcerting for Watts’. “I’m never sure whether it’s going to be safe. For example, will an audience understand it? Will they be offended, confused? We might know the play well but there’s no Ouija board in rehearsals for Sophie Treadwell to help us through.” At the same time Watts concedes that “the script always gets the story and language across, so she’s there holding my hand in rehearsals.” Although the Treadwell estate allows no changes to be made to the script, it is possible to slightly rearrange, and cut material, so there are some choices to make. However, Watts is always keen to honour the authors intensions. “I hate productions when you see the director on stage. Ivo Van Hove is like that his work is full of gimmicks, for me its gimmickry. With UNNATURAL TRAGEDY I used a recognised modern Shakespeare approach, keeping it fluid, not out of keeping with the RSC. GARRY is a psychological play, it’s 50s method acting, that’s what I’m driving for, that intensity that Marlon Brando had.” Watts describes himself as one of the ‘one in ten directors’ who are from a working class background’. “To be honest with you, I was ignored, that’s why I went to work abroad. I worked a lot in America. They see me for who I am and what I’ve achieved and here they don’t do that. The White Bear is different, they are so supportive, one hundred percent behind the project.” Artistic Director of White Bear, Michael Kingsbury welcomed the play. “He cares about the plays that are put on and all the new writing he’s putting on” says Watts. Watts also praises the pub, and its atmosphere. “It’s nice to sit here. Really friendly. You don’t have to try and get served, and it’s not a tenner for a drink and a fiver for a programme”. Sophie Treadwell “GARRY deserves to be seen. I want audiences to have a new respect for Sophie Treadwell, she’s not a one act wonder. She’s another female author who wrote great plays being ignored. We can’t let it go on, we’ve got to change the system”. Graham Watts in rehearsal He also praises Sophie Treadwell’s humanitarianism. “She wasn’t religious but she left the Rights to her plays with the Roman Catholic Church (Diocese of Tucson, Arizona) with specific instructions. Her estate was to be used to care for migrant children from Mexico and Latin America who come across the Border, where they are split up from their parents”. After negotiating with the church and Sophie Treadwell’s estate, Royalty payments are based on a percentage of gross box office. “Any rights and any future rights of this particular production will go to helping their kids” says Watts. Whilst Treadwell was sixty-eight when she wrote the play, Watts believes “she knows what she’s doing, at a certain age people suddenly think writers don’t know what you’re doing, the opposite is true. She’s an experienced author, let her speak.” As a director Watts has certain methods which are anecdotal but its not really about making jokes, its sharing and only if relevant to the play. “It sounds like it’s just faffing about and wasting time, it’s not, it relaxes the atmosphere. You’re not saying ‘I want it now’. Trevor Nunn is like that, I’ve worked with Trevor and that’s what he does. He’ll take about football and they’d do the best hour of rehearsal you’ve ever seen. He’s so on the money.” Watts best advice to actors is to forget about the money and think about the play. “If you want to do that play don’t let your agent stop you from doing it. So often actors go away from their passion play to work on … ‘Father Brown’. Too often with young actor’s agents will actively stop them from doing theatre, Hold on, what have you being doing for the last year? Nothing! You could have been here working.” Watts concedes that the route into directing has changed. “When I started from university, I became ASM, watched other directors work, watched lunch-time shows, then did some fringe. That was the pathway, people are denied that now.” His advice would be to “run box office, lighting, costume, don’t get a degree from Cambridge, do basic stage craft. Get your hands dirty.” It’s all about believing in the work you are doing. “GARRY deserves to be seen” says Watts. He’s looking forward to sharing it with an audience. “I want them to have a new respect for Sophie Treadwell, she’s not a one act wonder. She’s another female author who wrote great plays being ignored. We can’t let it go on, we’ve got to change the system”. THIS SHOW HAS ENDED GARRY White Bear Theatre, Kennington 4th – 22nd June 2019 1954. New York. An unemployed man is lured from a bar to the hotel room of a “prominent citizen” with the promise of a job. A sexual assault is attempted which has devastating consequences for newlyweds Wilma and Garry. When a reporter turns up looking for a scoop, events build to a shattering conclusion.

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ktley1986 · 7 years

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My husband isn’t nerdy, at all. Which is okay because I happen to be nerdy enough for both of us-I love comics, video games, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Battlestar Galactica, etc. I love all of it, mainly because I happen to know a lot about history and world events and the main theme of history is that people are super shitty to each other, all the time, usually without very good reason. And once you know that, sometimes the only way to stay sane is to find solace in imaginary worlds-maybe that’s not always the healthiest thing, but at least if someone is cruel in one of those worlds they usually get a satisfying comeuppance, which sadly, rarely happens in the real world. Now that we’re all suitably depressed, Mike and I were watching The Phantom Menace the other day and he made the grave error in judgement to remark that he “didn’t remember this movie being that bad. People like it when it came out!” I mean, is that technically true? Yes. I definitely enjoyed these movies when they came out as a teenager (I was also afflicted with a debilitating crush on Hayden Christensen, which has since died a death of natural causes) and I will stand by that, because I didn’t know any better. Now with the benefit of experience and foresight I realize the serious damage done to the Star Wars universe and the overwhelmingly potential of what could have been. Because it’s fresh in my mind after having given an impromptu mini-lecture to my husband earlier, I will explain my problems with Episodes 1-3 of the Star Wars film franchise. The whole Space Jesus thing You know what I’m talking about-the fact that Anakin Skywalker doesn’t have a dad, but is basically just the product of the Force and his long suffering, cipher of a mother figure. That doesn’t even kind of make sense and it’s so lazy and shitty as to be actually insulting. Let’s also remember that he’ll eventually become Darth Vader, the ultimate bad guy (and if you’re currently feeling the soft and fuzzies for him, remember he did kill a whole temple full of children.) He’s such a special snowflake, he’s totally selfless, he’s the most amazing pod racer or whatever, he’s basically Valentina from Season 9 of Drag Race, and she turned out crazy too. He just needs to compare himself to Selena to make the transformation complete.

Obi Wan to Anakin, honestly.

My problem with that is this could have been a much more interesting story, in the hands of someone who gave a shit about storytelling or the emotional arc of a character. What if he was just a regular person, who had a dad and a mother who wasn’t window dressing for made up emotional issues later, but maybe he was kind of a reckless dick, then they could have made a more interesting story about how some people aren’t fit to have power, even if they are technically proficient. It could have been an interesting twist on the idea that all Jedi are totally perfect peace keeping good guys, but what if he was able to convince them he was, but in reality, he was actually a dick? At least that would make more sense later when he in fact does turn out to be a dick. The whole Jango/Boba Fett story arc Famously George Lucas had this whole series written out back in the 70’s but the studio was only interested in making episodes 4-6, since the storyline was more cohesive. I believe that’s true, and I even believe that a lot of the nonsense he put into the first 3 episodes was present in those early drafts, but I can’t be expected to believe that the basis for the clones was Jango Fett, and that his clone son would grow up to be Boba Fett, kick ass bounty hunter extraordinaire. I get that Boba Fett was a wildly popular character, despite having zero lines as far as I can recall, and getting knocked into the pit of Sarlacc to be digested slowly over a thousand years, he’s my brother’s favorite character, so by default one of mine too, but honestly? This is endemic of a wider problem in the first three movies in my opinion which is shoe-horning in fan favorite characters rather than making new and interesting ones which serve the story. Why the everloving fuck is young Anakin making his dirt farmer slave mom a protocol droid? Does she have a lot of use for translations of over 6 million forms of communication? Lucas just wanted to take what worked from the original movies and force it into the new ones, although to be fair his stab at original characters did give us Jar Jar Binks, so maybe it’s a good call after all. Darth Vader’s reasoning for becoming Darth Vader This is where it really hits home for me how much cooler this story could have been-the transformation into one of the most iconic villains of all time was just so lame in these movies. For one thing, the romance between Padme and Anakin is painful and embarrassing, and this is coming from someone with a fairly comprehensive crush on Anakin. So much cringe though, seriously. But making it about him thinking that his wife might potentially die, is just stupid, especially because he ends up choking the fuck out of her. Again, this is where the story could have been served by establishing him as a bit of a dick from the beginning, instead of a heroic space Jesus type character. I mean, I am very much in love with my husband, probably irrationally so, but it would take a lot more than the premonition that he might, maybe, potentially die to make me murder an entire Jedi Temple full of younglings. And I don’t even like kids. And then he just hates Obi Wan for not letting him live his best life or whatever, I mean they could have gone the route of him thinking there was a relationship between him and Padme, although I find the whole turning into an evil warlord over a lady to be one of the tired-est tropes on the planet. It could have been so much better! Midi-chlorians Just no. So much politics and talk about trade negotiations. Oy! I get that George Lucas doesn’t really get how to write strong female characters, and I guess it’s kind of flattering that he thinks women’s strength is in the political arena, but man I do not give a fuck about trade embargos in the real world, so I definitely don’t give a fuck about trade negotiations in space. I watched these movies for the first time as a young person and I could not have told you one thing about why the Nemoidians were doing, or what exactly was going on in the space Senate. The beauty of the original trilogy is that things were simple, motivations were clear and no one had to put anything to a vote.

I don’t think the whole thing is awful-Darth Maul is pretty sick, General Grievous is cool, Christopher Lee is always a welcome addition to any movie, now that I’m older I can definitely appreciate young Ewan McGregor

I need to resolve my feelings about bearded Ewan McGregor

Now I’ve stalled out. Huh. I know there are probably parts of it that are redeemable, but I can’t remember any, and I can’t be bothered to actually watch it again. My point being is that it could have been so much better, if they were interested in telling a great story instead of making millions of dollars in merch. Does anyone else remember all the merch associated with this, you couldn’t even buy a bag of chips without Jar Jar Binks dumb face looking at you. While this isn’t something I would normally say, but I’m glad that Disney has the reins now, and they’ve already made some great Star Wars movies, sans mention of midi-chlorians which personally leaves me excited again to visit a galaxy far, far away.

My Epic Retcon of Darth Vader’s Backstory

Okay, so he’s just a normal kid, who has a mother AND a father, both of which are fleshed out characters, and he gets selected for Jedi training in a normal, non-mystical space Jesus way. He turns out to be super great, a special snowflake, blah blah but then (plot twist!) he falls in love with another Jedi, and they have a clandestine affair until she gets pregnant with their baby. Now, we all know Jedi aren’t supposed to have attachments blah blah, but they never explore what happens if you did, so it could be an interesting way to explore that idea. So, the female Jedi (which really shouldn’t we get some female Jedis by now? Seriously?) refuses to tell the council who the father is, and she gets banished, without Anakin being aware of it until it’s already over. She dies in childbirth, totally not the Jedi’s fault, but Anakin doesn’t know that, and that’s why her children are taken away and given to other families. Anakin either finds out that Obi Wan took his children and that’s why they have their big battle where Obi chops his legs off and roasts the rest of him once he realizes that Anakin is the father and he’s so pissed at this point that he is going to try to kill him. See, I literally just pulled that out of nowhere and managed to shoe horn a lady Jedi (which this series badly needs, come on!) and no mention of midi-chlorians! Is it a perfect story, no, but does it contain no mention of trade negotiations and Jar Jar binks, yes!

#star wars #rdpr9 #jar jar binks #obi wan kenobi #retcon #the phantom menace #revenge of the sith #attack of the clones #personal essay #writing

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edrya221 · 4 years

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November 25, 2019 ·

Los Angeles Crime Victim, Ed Ryan, wants Justice and End to Los Angeles Court Corruption. 11/24/19 Attorney Mike Feuer’s Use of Corrupt Neighborhood Prosecutors that Protect LAPD Vigilantes By prosecuting Homeless Victims with False LSAPDS Police Reports Must Stop. by L.A City The Corruption is that not one LAPD Police report of any Arrested Homeless Person in Los Angeles says anything about the truth that LAPD Vigilante Harassment of homeless is on-going. Now the truth is out thanks to the “LAPD Crime-buster Vigilante” Scandal. Homeless are provoked by vigilante harassment and arrested when the fight back in self-defense. Why are all arrest reports of homeless out of the LAPD Topanga Station bereft of any mention of vigilante harassment when now we know vigilante harassment of Topanga Area homeless was endemic. The Los Angeles News Media, including the LA Times, is Bias against the Homeless and does not report this issue. Los Angeles court corruption victimized me to repeatedly from 2015 through 2018. Some of my arrests were in the San Fernando Valley and in the general in vicinity covered by the vigilantes belonging to; “Homeless Transient Encampments of Our West Valley” and “Crime-busters of West LAPD Hills/and Woodland Hills”. A full investigation by the uncooperating California Attorney General Becerra would prove Los Angeles court corruption. He now fails the people of Los Angeles allowing LAPD Crime-buster Vigilantes to Corrupt courts and Violate civil rights by doing violent crimes onto San Fernando Valley Homeless The best way to prove that Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Moore is feeding the public lies and dis-information as a way to cover up the real crimes of corruption being done by this LAPD vigilante thing, is to take a close look at the criminal cases against any San Fernando Homeless defendant from the following category; Any and all San Fernando homeless, either arrested by any LAPD community police officer from LAPD Topanga Community Police Station, or any homeless defendant prosecuted by Attorney Karine Philips, the Deputy City Attorney and Neighborhood prosecutor for the Topanga area. Note that Neighborhood prosecutor Philips was found to be a member of “Homeless Transient Encampments of Our West Valley” and/or “Crime-busters of West LAPD Hills/and Woodland Hills”. Thus, the time frame of criminal cases examined should be the time period that the first vigilante Facebook group above existed. Police reports from Homeless arrest cases in the Topanga area since 2016 will show no reporting of any homeless harassment by vigilantes. At the same time, we know the LA City prosecutor covering Topanga, along with many of the SLO community police officers making the arrests were all members of the vigilante Facebook groups. Because of this corruption the police reports will not report the intense vigilante harassment onto the homeless, we now know to be true. The LAPD police that were used to convict and incarcerate will be false and misleading, being reports of random homeless defendants doing supposedly random crimes like threats, assault and vandalism. Using false and misleading police reports to convict and incarcerate is felony obstruction of justice. All those involved in making that happen are guilty of conspiring to obstruct justice. LAPD Chief Moore and other officials who downplay the LAPD’s culpability in this matter by labeling this Crime buster LAPD vigilante scandal as no more than LAPD officers using insulting language describing the homeless, are covering-up the corrupt reality. The truth is that this is much more than a few LAPD officers showing poor judgement by joining a secret LAPD vigilante Facebook group and engaging in politically incorrect banter about the homeless, No, it is the of wholesale corruption of the Los Angeles court system through ongoing and repeated acts of obstruction of justice. Ask Judge Kevin Brazile, the presiding justice of the Los Angeles Superior Court. Xavier Becerra covering up the Crime buster vigilante crimes of the LAPD Brass (Deputy Chief Kris Pitchers, a known member of the West valley vigilante Crime-buster group) reason why there has been no full investigation of this matter by the California Attorney General. No doubt the reason that LA Mayor, Eric Garcetti the LA and the LA City Attorney have all stayed silent to protect LAPD Chief Moore and Deputy Chief Pitcher chose to lie and cover up full scale court corruption by spreading dis-information. In the captured Facebook postings, Crime buster vigilante Eileen Barnette posted on the Facebook site criminal threats instructing other LAPD Vigilantes to “make it as uncomfortable as humanely possible. She suggests using flood lights, and firecrackers.” She likes horn honking. She thinks standing in the vicinity of a targeted homeless victim and taking pictures is a good tactic. She says there are “other things she wants to do but she does not want to get kicked off the Face book page. This is plain proof that these LAPD that LAPD vigilantes in San Fernando Valley are doing real crimes of violence and assault on the homeless. They do terror instilling stalking and assault and theft acts. To do this they have to do to get up close to targeted homeless and lay down poison or t snap picture. These are the same criminals who constantly stalked and harassed me when I was in the San Fernando Valley. When I fought back in self- defense, I was arrested by LAPD SLO members of this group or by other officers sent in by them to protect their identity. Full investigation of this vigilante corruption that has corrupted the LA courts with fraudulent police reports is needed. I was forced against my will to say nothing about the LAPD Gang Stalk vigilantes who attacked me on 12/29/16 in North Hollywood at 2 am. My Los Angeles County public Defender, Casey Kozel and Van Nuys Municipal Court Judge Mulcahy made it clear that any talk by me of the LAPD Gang Stalk vigilante attacked would be met by Mulcahy ordering me to under- go a six-month competency exam at Patten State Hospital. Corrupt Attorney Casey Kozel Filed paperwork with the court

January 2 ·

The LAPD crime Buster vigilante scandal shows the extraordinary racism the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has towards the black population in Los Angeles. This is about Hate Crimes being used by the LAPD to deny Los Angeles blacks of their Civil Rights. Attorney General Becerra does nothing because he is involved in a corrupt cover-up of LAPD Civil Rights Violation. Abusive hate crimes done by LAPD vigilantes need the sun light of public exposure. Members of the LAPD Command belonged to this racist vigilante group, and so did a Neighborhood Prosecutor for the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office. Mike Feuer,The Los Angeles City Attorney, and LA Mayor Garcetti are two failed leaders in Los Angeles who are afraid to cross the LAPD. Garcetti and Feuer and have not said one word about the Crime Buster vigilante Scandal. When 43% of the Los Angeles homeless population is black and the LAPD supports the use of Crime Buster Vigilantes as they target, attack , and harass, and corrupt the courts Los Angeles, coverage by the AP and UPI is needed. So why is the AP office in Los Angeles not covering this issue. LA Blacks who are Homeless, are being wrongfully incarcerated when they fight back against LAPD Vigilante attacks. Not one police report of the LAPD mentions vigilante harassment in the San Fernando Valley, yet it is fact that it happens. This is direct proof that false LAPD Police Reports are routinely used to incarcerate targets of the crime-buster vigilantes. The question for Jonathan Lemire and even Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski is why is the AP office in Los Angeles, and the California News Media allowing Attorney General Becerra to get away with the corruption of not investigating the LAPD crime Buster vigilante. Let’s hope the institutional racism by the mainstream press stops and the important Hate Crime And Civil Rights Issue Of The LAPD Crimebuster Vigilante scandal gets covered.

Santa Monica, CA | Dec 18

Congressman Barragan, and The Los Angeles Congressional Delegation and Los Angeles Federal Prosecutor need to stop the corrupt cover-up by California Attorney General Becerra’s. The corruption by Becerra is his failure to Investigate LAPD Crimebuster Vigilante Scandal after receiving a valid complaint almost 2 years ago, the 8/1/18 joint complaint of LAPD Crimebuster vigilante was filed by a coalition of homeless advocacy organizations consisting of Los Angeles Community Action Network (LACAN), National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, and Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP). Mike Feuer, the Los Angeles City Attorney is involved with and protects LAPD crimebuster vigilantes. He allowed Attorney Karine Philips, Neighborhood Prosecutor for the LAPD Topanga Community Police Station to be an active member of the LAPD Crime-buster Vigilante Facebook group. As the Topanga Neighborhood Prosecutor, she jailed homeless by routinely using falsified police reports that never make mention of vigilante harassment that regularly occurred. Becerra is letting the LAPD totally off the hook for their use of vigilantes to harass homeless and the Federal Justice system needs to look at this. Congressman Judy Chu and Congressman Julia Brown need to help stop a problem that is growing big time. LAPD Chief Moore is trying to hire 5000 new LAPD volunteers, and it is these people that have high vigilante likelihood. The Federal Prosecutor for Los Angeles, United States Attorney Nicola Hanand, needs to investigate LAPD Crimebuster Vigilante Scandal. Why? Because the corruption is great and Civil Rights are being violated. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti shows us that the Los Angeles City Hall corrupt for other reasons besides the corrupt “pay for play”. Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti is an outright “political coward”. As the LAPD uses vigilante hate crime to stem the LA homeless problem, Mayor Garcetti remains silent after seeing the many incriminating Crimebuster vigilante Facebook postings that were published on the net.

Stop LAPD Crimebuster Vigilante Gang stalking and corruption of Van Nuys Superior Court dept 122 , Judge Harmon oversees conviction of Kevin Perelman for littering Topanga Neighborhood Prosecutor Conspires with fellow crimebuster Vigilante group members use other vigilante group member Terrance Scroggins to lie and sety Perelman up. Why . So judge Harmond stop Perelman from talking about being gang stalk by crimebuster vigilantes. Why did neighborhood prosecutor Not Disclose she,SLO Dinse and Scrogginns all belonged to Crimebuster vigilante Facebook group and that Facebook postings used by vigilante Susan Epstien Fishman to post location of Perelman's car just after SLO Dinse {Posted to vigilante Crimebusters that Perelman was walking out of court room. Proof that both LAPD SLO Sean Dinse and Topanga Neighborhood Prosecutor Karine Philips are engaged with Fishman and others to terrorize the mentally ill Perelman through organized Community or Gang Stalking. THe Postings included in complaint to Attorney General show many members of fern Peskin-Whites Crimebuster Vigilante Facebook group took up close photos of area homeless because they were gang stalking those homeless. Edward Ryan, Victim of San Fernando Valley LAPD Vigilantes, Why is LA City Council Member Bob Blumenfield not demanding a full investigation by California Attorney General Becerra. Why do all LA City Councilors and Mayor Garcetti refuse to even mention the LAPD Crimebuster vigilante scandal. Stop being political cowards, these animals are being used by LAPD Command, Deputy Chief Kris Pitcher do terror and violent crime onto san Fernando Homeless.

1. I’d like to comment on corruption by the California Attorney General’s failure to investigate a formal 75 page complaint on the LAPD Crime-buster Vigilante Facebook scandal matter. This is a serious matter as the Los Angeles criminal justice system skews when it comes to fair justice for all as LA homeless are attacked by LAPD supported vigilantes, then arrested and jailed if the try to fight back in self- defense. Now there is proof of “jury trial rigging “by LA Prosecutor and LAPD Slo for Topanga. Both are members of the secret vigilante Facebook group, and 2 other Vigilante group members as witnesses for a bogus littering trial where Van Nuys Judge Harmond seems to play along by issuing an extreme sentence. LAPD command now spreads disinformation saying LAPD members only posted insults to homeless when the truth is LAPD supplied tracking and other info to vigilante members. The info was used to do violent crimes and community terror stalking onto targeted homeless victims. A homeless advocate and activist for LA political reform was harassed then convicted and incarcerated for months when he was attacked on 12/29/16 in Van Nuys by the same LAPD crew. False police reports were used and judge Mulcahy Van Nuys court prevented the mentioning of vigilante abuse at trial. This happened to Ed Ryan [email protected] who had to flee LA after release because of more vigilante harassment by LAPD connected crews. Ryan’s jaw was smashed by a vigilante attacker wielding a hammer and LAPD refuse to take his complaint and investigate. Ryan now lives in Mass as LA Court court issued a probation violation warrant to further silence him. LA superior Court Presiding Judge, Kevin Brazile has so far ignored Ryan’s comprehensive complaint. Ryan challenges reporters to read the 8/1/18 complaint to Atty Gen Becerra that has plenty of screen shots of captured vigilante and LAPD postings to surely warrant the Cal AG to investigate, but he remains silent on the issue. Also remaining totally silent on this atre LA Mayor Garcetti I’d like to discuss Corruption in Los Angeles as the LAPD Crime-buster vigilante Scandal is being ignored and all LA city Councilors. LA City Atty Furey also is silent even though his long time Deputy Karin Philips is involved and is being reported to Cal BBO flor ethical violations of not disclosing vigilante group membership by entire prosecution team in People v Kevin Perelman , the

edryan2219 January, 2020, 02:43

Emporium Productions is preparing to begin shooting the LA Political Documentary of an ex-lawyer recovered addict Ed Ryan as he begins his runs for Mayor of LA,. Ryan was incarcerated 6 times in three years for fighting crime buster vigilantes who harassed and did violence to him. Ryan hopes the Documentary be to fully expose the LAPD Crime buster Vigilante. Ryan wants Attorney General Becerra to answer one question, ” why no full investigation of the LAPD Crime buster Vigilante scandal”. The Answer, to cover-up the corruption political allies like of LA City Attorney Feuer, a man who also wants to be Mayor of LA. But, can Feuer be honest. corruption is in the air, as his Deputy, assistant City Attorney Topanga Neighborhood Prosecutor Karine Philips keeps who job after she is reported to be a vigilante group member. The Reason Becerra will not order an investigation is because so much more real corruption would be exposed. For instance, why did Philips failed to follow Legal ethics and disclose to Van Nuys Judge Harmon that SLO Dines, herself ,and the two prosecution witnesses. On Page 28 of the Complaint to Becerra’s office is a SLO Dines Facebook Posting and when that happens vigilante justice happens, Besides using all vigilantes for prosecution witnesses , A Becerra investigation would probably find that Philips may have used corrupt methods to get the case in front of a judge who is very kind to the crime buster vigilante team of SLO Dines and Attorney Phillips. Becerra might change his mind and investigate faster if the LA Times didn’t use disinformation to confuse the issue. For example why would the LA Times not just report the truth about Becerra in October, 2019. by Then Becerra had the Crime buster Complaint for 18 months and did no investigation. So why does LA Times Reporter the issue saying his office won’t confirm or deny the investigation. Point is there was no investigation, but the “confirm/deny” standard is a great way to hide Becerra’s refusal to investigate a complaint that makes the LAPD and LA City Attorney Feuer look corrupt. Also a Becerra Investigation would have to investigate the 12 other LAPD Crime buster Facebook Groups in LA, City Attorney Feuer has Neighborhood Prosecutors all over LA.. Feuer needs to come clean, to stop corrupting the LA court system. Speaking of corruption, Judge Harmon is a LA Superior court judge and cases are assigned per a rotation system that shows a glitch if a corrupt prosecutor cuts the rotation to make that happen. Emporium Productions wants exciting conflict in the documentary, so Emporium is doing some up front work to investigate get Filming permission. For example, when Ryan surrenders on his probation warrant, he may be jailed. Then what, who knows, tune in and find out. As of now a Vimeo, Networking Platform will host bi-weekly, but if the Ryan campaign for Mayor of LA gets interesting, Net–Flix could exercise an option. LA Mayor Garcetti was the focus of Ed Ryan’s sarcasm in April of 2015 when Ryan, also an Artist, was interviewed by a Hollywood Arts reporter as he created ang displayed Street art on The Fence of the Barnsdall Art Park in East Hollywood, that faces Hollywood Blvd It is Ironic that Becerra’s not investigating the complaint may protect City Attorney Feuer from being officially labeled corrupt. That being so, Feuer can run for Mayor and still have a chance of being elected. However. Feuer chances to win drop if Ryan is in the Race and constantly spelling out exact details of potential Feuer Corruption ect. But things could work out nicely if Becerra were to now flip and do the right thing and investigate. The findings of the investigation would provide Ryan with certified proof needed for him to finally him to gain a decent settlement from LA via Feuer’s office. Ryan may be hard-pressed not to take a decent LA settlement package for the dames of 14 months wrongful incarceration ect.

van Nuys Superior Court jury trial in front of L1/10/20 LA City Attorney Web Page issue submission. To: Attorney Mike Feuer, Los Angeles City Attorney. From: Ed Ryan, Candidate for Mayor LA 2022: I’m Ed Ryan, and I’m Running for Mayor of LA in 2022. “The Committee to Elect Ed Ryan Mayor of LA” is being organized and our approach is 100 percent “Anti-corruption Transparency” thus, no donations at all. However is a documentary an “In Kind” donation. I am allowing Emporium Productions to film a Documentary by following my “Outsider” bid for the 2022 LA Mayor seat. Segments of the documentary will be posted on a Vimieo channel every 2 weeks. It will be close to real time. It should be worth watching as I plan to get down and dirty. First order of business is stopping by your office again, like I did in January 2018, only to get arrested for trespassing. I did 27 days in County for that, and now I know I was right, your office was involved with the LAPD Vigilantes. LA City Hall Corruption is intense with the FBI investigating Mayor Garcetti and the other ‘Pay for Play” players in LA City Hall. In 2016 your office did “Pay for Play” undercover investigation of Hollywood Acting workshops, but how come you let the LA Voters down by never investigated the ‘Pay for Play” LA City Hall Real-Estate Development Deals. Certainly you saw the corruption. It was right there in LA City Hall , and those Luxury Housing Development deals came to your office for review. In fact, your office had early warning of such corruption but did nothing ever. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it was you who dropped the Dime bringing the in FBI. By the way, please make sure those Feds are doing their job correctly. It’s weird in LA how investigations get set aside. Right now in Sacramento Atty. Gen Becerra has spent 2 years not investigating the 8/1/18 WRAP complaint that exposed just a small part of the LAPD Crime buster Vigilante Anti-Homeless Hate Crime Scandal. Did you know 43 percent of LA homeless are black, thus Crime buster Vigilante are. Doing ‘Racist’ Crime. To what extent we do not know because California Attorney General is evidently OK with Racist Hate crimes being done onto a mostly Black LA homeless population. Now that I’m running for Mayor of LA, I’m hoping My standing as a progressive democrat can convinced Bernie Sanders and Cory Booker and Liz warren to take a close look at the scandal when the come to LA foe the Presidential Primary in March. I’m going to do it while being filmed for the documentary. I’m going demand it be investigated. If not Becerra, then maybe by the US Justice Department when Trump is finally gone. Really, I should think you as LA City Attorney should either do an investigation, or call Becerra and ask him what is the problem. Why no LAPD Crimebuster vigilante Investigation. I suppose your office might have a conflict since I’ve read published reports that your Deputy Karine Philips, the Topanga Neighborhood Prosecutor is a Crimebuster Group member. According to reports she did a good job for LAPD SLO Dinse,the LAPD Cop that runs the Topanga Crimebuster Vigilante group. Other LAPD members include, 2 LAPD Deputy Chiefs and 13 other LAPD Officers , including a LAPD Watch Commander and the present day Captain of the Topanga LAPD station. Yes, Prosecutor Philips really worked it prosecuting mentally ill Perelman for littering. I read the transcript in that case and Philips never disclosed to the Court that She, SlO Dinse and two civilian witnesses all were members of the LAPD Crimebuster Vigilante group. She Prosecuted Perelman in front of Judge Harmmon Dept 113, Van Nuys Court. Could you talk with her confirm the exact rout the Perelman littering case took to get before being assigned to Hammon, the Ex DA. No Hanky Panky I trust. Ah LA, so much corruption, so little time. I can be reached at: (413 863-5592) or [email protected] My Twitter Handle: LAmayorRYAN2022

‎Edward Ryan‎ to C40 Cities

November 25, 2019 ·

2. /33/22 Press Release- Ed Ryan Candidate For Mayor Los Angeles, 2022 calls out the Los Angeles Times newspaper for coddling LAPD vigilantes by not reporting LAPD Vigilante Court Corruption and deception regarding the San Fernando West Valley Bacon Bike Patrol secretly being LAPD Vigilantes doing organized gang-stalking of Topanga Area Homeless. Los Angeles Time Coddles LAPD vigilante use by not reporting the West Valley Bacon Bike Patrol (see YouTube Videos) This is more anti-homeless vigilante deception from Topanga Community LAPD Community Police Station. It is and it is to the LAPD Crimebuster vigilante scandal. Bacon works with LAPD stalking Topanga Area Homeless and then feigns no relationship with LAPD on their YouTube Videos. California Attorney General Becerra needs to investigate WRAP LAPD Crime buster vigilante complaint. But LA Times is pro-LAPD Vigilante deception, and pro anti-homeless LAPD Vigilante Hate Crime and Court Corruption, is a non-issue for the elite Los Angeles Times. LA Times a racist paper allowing LAPD Vigilante to do racist anti-homeless hate crime. When I’m elected Mayor of LA in 2022, LAPD Corruption will not be tolerated and LAPD Reform towards modern policing tenets. The West Hills Topanga Community Police Station Is where LAPD Crimebuster Vigilante Scandal originated. Bacon Patrol YouTube videos make it obvious that Bacon Patrol is doing Vigilante Gang Stalking of the Topanga area homeless. The corruption on this issue is intense considering that Topanga Neighborhood Prosecutor, Karine Philip’s membership in the LAPD Crimebuster Vigilante Facebook group. Philip’s 2018 rigging of the Kevin Perelman’s littering trial is totally corrupt. To convicted as she SLO Dinse and the two witnesses all belonged to the same LAPD Vigilante Crime Buster Facebook group Philips never disclosed this material conflict in the trial transcripts. Also. The trial was suspiciously placed in front of ex-DA Judge Harmon, Van Nuys Court. They can say what they want but both LA City Attorney Feuer and LAPD Deputy Chief Pitcher are well aware thar Bacon patrol is a LAPD Vigilante group that is in place to do racist hate crime onto the homeless. This is not just curious bikers in Wester Hills, but is a volunteer LAPD gang stalk vigilante crew. Ryan is a former prosecutor from MA and says he can see the LAPD deception on the videos. Bacon Bike Patrol is used to harass and stalk West Hills/Canoga homeless. It is unknown how many homeless victims are stalked by Bacon, and then arrested when they fight back against their vigilante stalkers. No LAPD police report anywhere contains information about a homeless being harassed by vigilantes. This proves LAPD corruption on the issue. LAPD Chief Moore certainly knows all about this Bacon Bike Patrol scam since as one video shows the Bacon vigilante saying he works with Topanga SLO Duke Dao. The SLO Dao who works closely withstands LAPD Crimebuster Gang Stalker Fern Pekin-White. Contact [email protected],

Hi, I’m Ed Ryan, and I’m running for Mayor of LA, 2022. LA needs Charter reform to give the power of “representative democracy” to the people of LA to end corruption and make LA great for all the people of LA. What gives LA Billionaire oligarch Rick Caruso the right to use corruption and walk over the good people of LA. Caruso paid LA Mayor Garcetti thousands and maybe millions of dollars in “dark money” “Behest Donations” while engaging in LA City Hall “Pay for Play” corruption. This corruption stinks and FBI cannot ignore it. I demand the LA FBI do their job so that “we the people” learn the true extend of corruption that rots the present LA government that is un-democratic, antiquated, small, elite and racist. LA charter reform to increase LA City Council to 40 seats by district is empowering the voters of LA with ‘Representative Democracy” Charter reform will end corruption, increase voter participation, stimulate economic development, and deliver better services to all LA. The proof, NYC and Chicago did a decade ago and are loving it. The voters from those cities enjoyed benefits of liberty provided by “representative democracy”, while LA is denied democratic reform and forced to endure LA “Corruptacacy” . EdRyan MayorLA2022, [email protected]

Santa Monica, CA | Dec 18

perior Court Harmond that was rigge

November 5, 2019 PRESS RELEASE; CAL. AG Becerra Fails LAPD Crime-buster Vigilante, LA Fed Prosecutor Help Contact: Julia Austin, 5th Street Emporium (413)863-5592, [email protected],m LA “Crime-buster Vigilante” Cover-Up by California Attorney General Becerra and LA Garcetti. Why? LAPD Blackmail denied by LAPD Chief Moore and LA City Attorney Fuery. LAPD Brass and LA Prosecutor, Vigilante, do Anti- Homeless Joint Venture for RICO “Criminal Enterprise” prosecution. LA Fed. Prosecutor Contacted to Investigate. LAPD Chief Moore request 5,000 LAPD Volunteer, fear of more vigilantes. LAPD Inspector General asked to investigate. Real LA Superior Court Corruption by use of False LAPD “Police reports” that neglect harassment of homeless by LAPD Vigilantes. Jury Trial Rigged as Topanga Prosecutor (Attorney Karine Philips) Reported to Cal. Bar Overseers. LA Judge, Brazile, ignores LA Court Corruption Complaint. By LAPD Crime-buster Vigilante Victim, Edward Ryan 11/4/19. (413)863-5592 C:\Users\Ed\Documents\CAL. ATTORNEY GENERAL COMPLAINT LAPD CRIMEBUSTER VIGILANTE.pdf.eC:\Users\Ed\Documents\LATIMES INTERVIEW.emmlcalagfails shuelw.ch.files.1drv.com/y4mhg0KFHBWmJl8P-oiNQQf-9MYFw_Kbas6XA0ENsKidXyo4Bw4TFOXD5mmtP-NX4U8XtZZpzdoDFVpkR-66JZtV3D1XgQe77rIDjv6OwbLbxeRxcTIiRU6P6ZAv4SUEfvokSHs2G3kO3w0fUMJcC0PmyHskUL-h5V3D0DtfQzghZyo3ayO4s5jqPHEwLcr9XaohZAF62yF_mdkf5zzNvSVety2NExO4bJCYTfbv6EvAc/ammended youtube.com/watch?v=amhCbZwitLM&t=3110s

LAPD CORRUTION OF THE LOS ANGELES COURT SYSTEM BY USING FRAUDULENT POLICE REPORTS. THE LAPD USE OF CITIZEN VIGILANTES SIMILAR TO CRIMINAL HARASSMENT SEEN DONE BY FACEBOOK CRIMEBUSTER VIGILANTE TO FRAME POLITICAL REFORM ACTIVIST FO TO DO CRIME ONTO THE HOMELESS, VICTIM EDWARD RYAN SPEAKS OUT.

Recently Los Angeles homeless advocates have filed a complaint with the California Attorney Generals office concerning the discovery of unchecked police corruption in Los Angeles where it has been discovered that police officers including members of the Los Angeles police brass are using the police/citizen anti-crime program known as “Crime Busters” to plan vigilante crime onto certain homeless victims. A recent crime buster face book page with thousands of Los Angeles residents as members was discovered to be the method of communication lead crime buster police officers used to plan crimes to be done onto problem homeless. A quick google search will bring those interested to information that includes screen shots of Facebook threads where members of the L.A.P.D. discourse on the best ways to stalk and harass and do other harm onto targeted homeless. I’m Ed Ryan and have been a three year victim of vigilante/LAPD harm. Several times I was forced to act in ways to protect myself from vigilante abuse during the period of 2015 thru 2018 and the LAPD would swoop in and arrest me. I have been incarcerated five separate times for multiple months because of these vigilantes harassing me and the LAPD supporting them. I have been assaulted and hospitalized for my jaw being smashed with a hammer by a crew of vigilantes on foot who were later protected the LAPD who refused to investigate my being brutally attack with a hammer. I have been tortured four times by vigilantes and the police supporting them. I was targeted in May of 2016 when I filmed and uploaded 30 videos of these vigilantes in action. I have much to say now that I am safe having left LA. I urge my public face book be looked at where I have re-posted the original videos and also post new videos where I tell the specifics of what happened to me Before I found the information on the crime buster vigilantes I thought the people attacking me were called Gang Stalkers as that is the subject that came up on my google search of the phrase “Being followed in Los Angeles. The gang stalker thing makes you sound crazy when explaining my attackers. I now know the LAPD and vigilantes from crime busters hid behind that label. I now am very concerned as I see that all of the Los Angeles face book pages are shut down thus protecting those who did harm to me from being identified. I will join the Attorney General complaint to seek help from that office in getting Face Book to retrieve threads from all shut down crime buster face book pages. So the Los Angeles police and the Mayor have stayed silent when asked about the crime buster vigilante complaint now with the Attorney General. That is not right and I now go forward to all mainstream press outlets in LA. seeking they investigate this corrupt thing. Let me say this in closing. I am trained as an attorney and chose to live with the homeless population in 2015 so I could learn what is needed to be a decent advocate for the homeless. In mid April of 2015 I did a Utube video interview that was very critical of the apathy by the Los Angeles Mayor and City Council towards the plight and suffering of the homeless. It was very soon after that interview by Susan Stoval that I became a target of these LAPD supported vigilantes. About a year after that I uploaded the 30 videos on Vemio’s secure space. My point is that while I was trying to do the right thing and expose this vigilante corruption I was totally squelched by the press, the courts and the vigilantes themselves as they used top grade hacking to destroy my ten year old email system and to keep my efforts from making this public from the internet. To further the harm, the LA Courts and the LA city attorney did their best to shut me down forcing me to take pleas and to be label as having mental problems because I tried to explain about the vigilante thing by using the Gang Stalk terminology. The bottom line, I am their crime victim, I have been hurt,I deserve justice like any American and the LA homeless don’t deserve to be victimize by vigilantes protected by the police. I NEED A CAL ATTORNEY ON CONTINGENCY CALL IF INTERESTED 413 863 5592

R FALSE CRIMES ON WHICH THEY ASkip to content📷7Get Coins📷edryan221-10 karma2.4kUser account menuPosts0Posted byu/edryan2213 months ago

LA VIGILANTE CORRUPTION

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Ed Ryan is an LA political Activist and a writer. Ryan is a former Massachusetts criminal defense attorney. Ryan spent two years as an Assistant District Attorney with the Hampden County District Attorney’s Office. He graduated Cum Laude with a BS in Political Science and he earned his A Juris Doctorate at California Western School of Law. He was elected to the Hampden County Charter Commission and became Chaired the Commission for its duration. Ed likes to read, write, lift weights and eat. He is 59, Ed Ryan lives with his partner, Julia Austin, in Turners Falls, MA. Eed had three children from a prior marriage, and they are all doing well. Ed moved to Los Angeles, CA in April of 2013. Ryan started to live as “homeless” starting in April 2013. Ed was targeted by LAPD Gang Stalkers by starting in April 2015. Ryan was Arrested multiple times in LA for actions related to defending against the Gang-stalkers. Ryan spent most of 2018 and the early part of 2019 in LA’s Men Central Jail. Ed decided to temporarily Leave LA upon being released from jail in 2018. He now researches and writes about the LAPD Crime-buster Vigilantes as he does his best to publicly expose as much of the gang-stalking thing as possible. Ryan came from a family of nine children. Both Ryan’s parents have died. Ryan says he will return to LA “When the time is right.” Ryan can be contacted at: (413)863-5592 [email protected].

See Ed Ryan video describing life in LA see Gang stalk info and description

https://d.docs.live.net/4196796a4ebdf433/CAL.%20ATTORNEY%20GENERAL%20COMPLAINT%20LAPD%20CRIMEBUSTER%20VIGILANTE.pdf

https://d.docs.live.net/4196796a4ebdf433/ammended%20letter%20to%20prresiding%20judge.docx

ReplyShareSaveEditlevel 1edryan2211 point·2 months ago

Deval Patrick Inspired Obama and Obama Inspired the Nation, Now Time for Deval Patrick to Inspire the World. One world Government, Clean Democracy, No Weapons, and No Poverty. How the Elite One Percent Class Prevents Global socio-economic evolution to a free and Democratic system

Trump is a Billionaire Oligarch and is part of the “one percent” elite that form the ruling class in most every country on earth. Deval Patrick is new to the race for the democratic nomination for President. As things shake-out he is America’s and maybe the world’s best bet to someday get lout from under the corrupt control of the one percent or oligarch class. They use corruption and unreformed, capitalism to rule. This tiny elite is the class that prevents the people of the globe from ever coming together as one world government, and providing the most efficient way for all to live fulfilling lives as all resources and production flow to the people and not to the military industrial class that works with the one percent elite to hold power.

But Trump could be defeated by Deval Patrick the former Democratic Massachusetts Governor. Patrick is the real deal. He’s from Chicago’s south-side and was practicing law in 2006 when State Senate Candidate Obama looked him up. Patrick schooled Obama and they both understand the truth about Billionaire Oligarchs like Bloomberg. It is fundamentally wrong to stand silently by as Bloomberg the Oligarch uses the Democratic party as a platform to buy Political power. Bloomberg and other rich Oligarchs use money not rightfully theirs, to buy power. These greedy power-hungry thieves deny Americans of “Government by the People for the People” Deval Patrick is “Obama Strong” hand- picked by President Obama.

Corruption now smears Joe Biden. Biden and son are in the wrong. Corruption involving millions paid by a Corrupt Ukraine Oligarch. Evidence of similar “pay for play” by the Biden Father son team in Romania and China is not good. Biden is in the swamp. Deval Patrick has no hint of corruption ever. Deval Patrick is real. He is moral and has been married for 35 year. America will understand that love and duty combine to be his is ‘North Star”. In fact, he is late in entering the race because of how loyal and moral he is. He’s late because his wife was diagnosed with cancer and he had to be with her during cancer treatment They are “Soul- mates”

73 percent of the US Senate is owned by Multi-Millionaires. All the Supreme Court and the Executive Branch Cabinet officers are multi-millionaires. “One Percenters” rob us of democracy forcing us to live their greedy thumb. Americans have the right to make laws to protect democracy. Prohibiting the ultra-rich from taking seats of power is an option. We need to amend the constitution and decree only 10 percent of Congress to be available to be occupied by millionaire. 10 percent and no more. That gives the 1 percenters 9 percent more representation in Congress than they deserve, so they have no reason to complain. Deval Patrick says his Bain Capital work was about socially responsible investments. Deval Patrick was inspired, and he is a smart creative leader. He is about a future of corporate social inclusion of the community. We need to limit wealth accumulation and radically expand the money supply and redistribute wealth. It’s time to payback the Blacks for 300 years of slavery. The wealth held by the super-rich is the wealth generated by many generations of slaves and under-paid overworked laborers. Oligarchs like Bloomberg are highly unlikely to help with the structural changes of “reformed capitalism” to allow for equal opportunity and clean democracy.

Christian Fundamentalist are a non-super-rich class voting as Republican block and supporting the corrupt political oligarchs like Trump who are the very people that harm the economic interest. As a class, fundamentalist is not rich. Oppose to the good of their own economic class is not rational. They are “well paid scabs. Their hate for progressive pushes them to serve the ultra-rich and oligarch class. They are employed in positions that protect and care for the rich. They are “stupefied” by Bible-based lies. They are cowards who fear the reality of final death. They are a “service” class. They are well paid to serve, care for and protect the rich, and their way of life. Their minds rot with religiosity They are superstitious and are easily manipulated by the rich. They are “failed citizens” of our democracy. They are not the informed, rational citizens required for our democracy’s “Social Compact”. Young minds are routinely ‘trashed” as fundamentalist parents engage in “mind debilitating” child abuse. These parents deny their children rational, secular teachings and replace with the false teachings of fundamentalist indoctrination. Minds are presently stunted, the abused, thorough. Secular Americans want a leader like Deval Patrick who understands the fundamentals of ‘Reformed Capitalism

Deval, Patrick campaign against and defeat of Trump is the best movement in the right direction that can be made. Using a reformed market system, we have the ability, the technology and resources to live globally as one people, as a free people. All poverty can be ended globally. No war, no hate. The placing of this issue on America’s “political table” is a necessary first step to attain eventual successful completion. Governor Deval Patrick makes a great candidate for President. He is smart uncorrupted and about making a good future happen. It is true, he does have the “Audacious Vision” that President Obama anointed him with.

Oligarchs across the globe now prevent the people of the world from starting down that road of real global prosperity in perpetuity. This tiny elite oligarch class use militaristic nationalism to hold power. The spend huge amounts for weapons. They are selfish to the core and deny the possibility of one free and democratic world government. They could care less that every year a million people die in utter poverty. The global population is beginning to understand that world free of oligarch manipulative control would see a move towards one government rule. Oligarchs do all sorts of tricks to keep the world divided into many separate countries. They will even do intentional mass-murder and start wars killing thousands because militarism makes people patriotic. Patriotic people are blinded and not rational. Patriotic people think that fighting and dying for what the rich want is doing what is best. Overly patriotic or nationalistic people irrationally prevent the movement towards one world government. This means the oligarch class in every country will survive but at a huge cost of not have the most efficient system to deal with world problems.

Bloomberg and Gates control lover 120 billion dollars between them. “Reformed capitalism” will ends such unhealthy concentrations of wealth. Redistribution of income means supplying cash to everyone all the timed. Money’s purpose is not to make the few grossly rich so they can control by manipulating and destroying our democracy. Money needs to become what it is. Money is merely a tool to create the rational distribution of goods and services. Why do we need it.? Because people act irrational, Reformed capitalism is about ending that irrational behavior. Reformed capitalism works in tandem with getting the world’s population out from under the greedy manipulation of the oligarch class. A free and uncorrupted federation of decentralized regional

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retr0nics · 5 years

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I actually talked to a former Amazon employee the other day at Target. She works for Target now, however she actually loved her job when she was back in the warehouse. She said it was peaceful and I can see that, that’s how I felt about my job at FedEx. When it actually got bad for her? When she worked as a courier delivering packages, she said the level of vitriol and harassment from customers was leagues beyond what she’s ever gotten working for Target.

I’m not saying all Amazon facilities are great, not at all, they (like other big factories) take advantage of the poor and destroy them. However, I am saying that at least the facility closest to us is pretty good to its employees. So, when someone says they like their job at Amazon it may not be them shilling it could be that they’re lucky enough to work at a good facility and that they’re the right kind of person for the job.

Also a nice thing to do if you have the extra cash for bottled water: Leave out bottled water in a bucket of ice (or not, either or) with a sign to let the courier know that they can take one. Not just for Amazon employees either; UPS, FedEx, and other big box delivery companies are all really awful to their employees. I know from experience that FedEx was great but not, I liked my job but I fucking hated it.

I quit due to getting food poisoning and not being allowed to leave the slide (because I was part time and thus worked less than 4 hour shifts thus had no real break). They kept the heaters on in international sort during summer nights to keep people from getting ‘too comfortable’ meaning that we were lifting heavy packages in 100+ degree (F) heat.

I mean I bet they wished they’d have let me go to the bathroom since I got sick all over the slide and packages. And myself. It sucked really and I basically got bullied into quitting since I was ‘in my first 60 days’.

What I’m saying is: Amazon sucks but it’s not a new problem, it’s an endemic problem that needs to be solved at all factories in America. We can’t stop trying for people’s rights after Amazon finally gets their what for because at this point places like FedEx that own and employ entire cities (Yes, that’s been a thing since before Amazon was even a twinkle) have ruined entire economies. I was told when I lived in Memphis that I would never get a job better than FedEx, it paid a whole $11.00 an hour! The problem was though it took 90 days to get to any benefits and they worked you hard, harder than your body could even really take, in hopes that you’d give up. This isn’t a new problem. It’s a very old problem and it’s good that Amazon employees have brought it to light but we really, really, really need to remember that Amazon isn’t the only big bad here. Capitalism isn’t suddenly ok or nice because it isn’t Amazon.

#sj #long post #ramble #amazon #fedex #factory #capitalism

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douchebagbrainwaves · 7 years

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WORK ETHIC AND SCHLEPS

And there are a lot of startups don't want to make it something that they themselves use. Techniques for competing with delegation translate well into business, because delegation is endemic there.1 So if such a company has two possible strategies, a conservative one that's slightly more likely to work in the end, or a company hiring people right out of college. How many startups fail. Yes, the price to earnings ratio is kind of high, but I count them as false positives because I hadn't been deleting them as spams before. Many if not most of the rest of the world. If I had to condense the power of vested interests, the undiscerning audience, and perhaps most dangerous, the tendency of such work to become a big, independent company is the same reason Google and Facebook have remained independent: money guys undervalue the most innovative startups. At first they're always dismissed as being unsuitable for real work. It's hard to think of VCs as piratical: bold but unscrupulous.2 They can work on small things, and if they get a higher valuation.3

He said it wasn't anything specific Google did, but simply that they trained their filter on very little data: 160 spam and 466 nonspam mails.4 Ask for advice.5 Subject free!6 These get through because I'm a writer, and writers always get disproportionate attention. As well as being more comfortable working on established lines, insiders generally have a vested interest in perpetuating them. Subject FREE Subject Free Subject free FREE! This is particularly true with companies, who have not only skill and pride anchoring them to the status quo, but money as well. I have a more complicated definition of a token: Case is preserved. Not publicly.7 In fact, one of the things she's best at is judging people. I even fix bits that are phonetically awkward; I don't know. Much was changed, but there just aren't enough of them, and hippies to boot.

More likely the reason is that the kind of alarms you'd set off if you spent a whole day, but that you should never shrink from it if it's on the path to something great. Investors don't like to say no. For example, after Wozniak designed the Apple II he offered it first to his employer, HP. You may feel you don't need that, but history suggests it's dangerous to work in fields with corrupt tests. In addition to their intrinsic value, they're like undervalued stocks in the sense that the startups they like most are those that seem like work, the danger of responsibilities is not just that you can stop judging them and yourself by superficial measures, but that so many judge themselves by it.8 Apparently the most likely animals to be left alive after a nuclear war are cockroaches, because they're more confident. What made YC successful was being able to pick winners.9 It was small and powerful and cheap, but not writing, my dissertation. That's schlep blindness.

7636 free 0.10 But the startup world for so long that it seems normal to me, so I was curious to hear what had surprised her most about it. But if the worst thing they can hit you with is your own feeling that you're thereby lacking something. Which illustrates why this change is happening: for new ideas. And that will get us a lot more state. They may be enough to kill all the opt-in lists. In this case, the device is the world's economy, which fortunately happens to be open and good. Facebook. This is extremely risky, and takes months even if you succeed. One of the things the internet has shown us is how mean people can be.

That isn't literally true, but there was still that Apple coolness in the air like the smell of dinner cooking. Some founders are quite dejected when they get turned down by investors. That's where the big returns are. But since then the west coast has just pulled further ahead. Now the reconquista has overrun this territory, and, not surprisingly, found it sparsely cultivated. The most effective approach seems to be growing. The bad news is, the only investors who can do it right are the ones you end up looking at when you get rejected by investors, don't think we suck, but instead ask do we suck? What does it mean, exactly?11 If you can't find an exact match for a token, treat it as if it were like getting into college. They feel they've achieved more if they get a higher valuation they can say mine is bigger than yours.12 The games played by intellectuals are leaking into the real world, and they're worried about some nit like not having proper business cards. Suppose a Y Combinator company starts talking to VCs after demo day, and is successful in raising money from them.

In retrospect that seems ridiculous, and we can all see the long tail of meanness that had previously been hidden. The potential of a new medium is usually underestimated, precisely because no one has yet explored its possibilities. YC, why don't more people realize it? Links and images you should certainly look at, because they couldn't afford to take so much time away from working on their software. If you take VC money, you have to follow the truth wherever it leads. The founders early on were mostly young. I thought I'd already been cured of caring about that. Corporate M & A is a strange business in that respect.13 How do you see ideas that involve painful schleps. I just mentioned.

The dangerous thing about investors is that hackers don't know how much they'll need to. That filter recognized about 23,000 tokens.14 To understand what McCarthy meant by this, we're going to retrace his steps, with his mathematical notation translated into running Common Lisp code. Another reason attention worries her is that she hates bragging. 9782 free! If you ultimately want to do something that will cost a lot, start by doing a cheaper subset of it, and we want to keep in close touch as you develop it further.15 This technique can be generalized to any sort of work: if you want to beat those eminent enough to delegate, one way to do it is to take advantage of direct contact with the medium. Startups win or lose based on the quality of their funding deals.16

That VC round was a series B round; the premoney valuation was $75 million. Fortunately, there are all those people the eminent have working for them; they have to ask for advice. One of the many things we do at Y Combinator is teach hackers about the inevitability of schleps. Another project I heard about after the Slashdot article was Bill Yerazunis' CRM114. You might think that if they found a good deal of fighting in being the public face of an organization.17 And Jessica is the main reason VCs like splitting deals is the fear of looking bad. This makes everyone naturally pull in the same direction, subject to differences of opinion about tactics. And I think I can prove I'm right. The professor who made his reputation by discovering some new idea is not likely to be the ones you would least mind missing. Another way to find good problems to solve in one head.

Notes

Hackers Painters, what you learn about programming in Lisp. Proceedings of 2003 Spam Conference. 1% in 1950 something one could aspire to the problem and approached it with such a large organization that often creates a rationalization for doing it with the guy who came to work like blacklists, for example, if you did that in the 1920s.

Calaprice, Alice ed. If the rich.

If you were going to give up your anti-dilution provisions also protect you against tricks like a compiler, you can't dictate the problem is not much to maintain their percentage. If you're dealing with the Supreme Court's 1982 decision in Edgar v. Among other things, like the arrival of desktop publishing, given people the shareholders instead of the living. It doesn't take a small proportion of the more powerful sororities at your school, and judge them based on their own company.

Photo by Alex Lewin. Because we want to create giant companies not seem formidable early on. They can lead to distractions even more closely to the table.

Every pilot knows about this trick works so well. This is not such a low valuation to see it in B. The disadvantage of expanding a round on the person.

If idea clashes got bad enough, but I'm not saying all founders who are all that matters financially for investors.

I was writing this, on the x company, and why it's such a low valuation, or working in middle management at a famous university who is highly regarded by his peers, couldn't afford a monitor. The best thing they can grow the acquisition offers that every fast-growing startup gets on the one Europeans inherited from Rome. The US News list tells us is what you build for them, but I managed to find a broad range of topics, comparable in scope to our scholarship though without the spur of poverty I just wasn't willing to put it here. Whereas the value of their core values is Don't be evil, they tended to be on demand, because the rich have better opportunities for education.

There are simply the embodiment of some brilliant initial idea. Which OS?

Cit. A preliminary result, comparisons of programming languages either take the term copyright colony was first used by Myles Peterson.

Nor do we push founders to overhire is not writing the agreement, but I couldn't convince Fred Wilson for reading drafts of this type: lies told to play the game according to certain somewhat depressing rules many of the startup. No one wants to program a Turing machine.

This phenomenon is apparently even worse in the 1984 ad isn't Microsoft, incidentally, because the kind that evolves naturally, and many of which he can be surprisingly indecisive about acquisitions, and post-money valuations of funding. At any given person might have 20 affinities by this, but sword thrusts.

All he's committed to believing anything in particular took bribery to the inane questions of the political pressure to protect their hosts. Not in New York. So if it's not the primary cause.

But you can often do better, because the outside edges of curves erode faster. I spent some time trying to upgrade an existing university, or it would feel pretty bogus to press founders to overhire is not always as deliberate as its sounds. The question to ask for more than most people emerge from the rest generate mediocre returns, it's easy for small children, or in one where life was tougher, the editors think the company.

While we're at it he'll work very hard to make Viaweb. I realize revenue and not least, the best approach is to give them sufficient activation energy to start a startup, and then scale it up because they need them to get going, e. So far the closest anyone has come unscrewed, you don't need that much of it. A lot of press coverage until we hired a PR firm.

You can relent a little too narrow than to call all our lies lies. They live in a situation where they all sit waiting for the same thing, because you need to, and 20 in Paris. Most people let them mix pretty promiscuously. I should add that none of them material.

The Mac number is a bad idea the way they have less time for word of mouth to get users to switch.

They're common to all cultures with long traditions of living in cities.

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