#or incentive to practice self-control

[allieinarden]

Man, I still can’t believe how many people read that article about how six religious Tongan boarding school boys belonging to a culture of boating and fishing, who were close friends before they got lost, behaved when they found themselves stranded on an island, and went “This completely invalidates every idea William Golding had about how 50+ random British boarding school boys emerging from a plane wreck might handle it.”

[reasonsforhope]

"Cody Two Bears, a member of the Sioux tribe in North Dakota, founded Indigenized Energy, a native-led energy company with a unique mission — installing solar farms for tribal nations in the United States.

This initiative arises from the historical reliance of Native Americans on the U.S. government for power, a paradigm that is gradually shifting.

The spark for Two Bears' vision ignited during the Standing Rock protests in 2016, where he witnessed the arrest of a fellow protester during efforts to prevent the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline on sacred tribal land.

Disturbed by the status quo, Two Bears decided to channel his activism into action and create tangible change.

His company, Indigenized Energy, addresses a critical issue faced by many reservations: poverty and lack of access to basic power.

Reservations are among the poorest communities in the country, and in some, like the Navajo Nation, many homes lack electricity.

Even in regions where the land has been exploited for coal and uranium, residents face obstacles to accessing power.

Renewable energy, specifically solar power, is a beacon of hope for tribes seeking to overcome these challenges.

Not only does it present an environmentally sustainable option, but it has become the most cost-effective form of energy globally, thanks in part to incentives like the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

Tribal nations can receive tax subsidies of up to 30% for solar and wind farms, along with grants for electrification, climate resiliency, and energy generation.

And Indigenized Energy is not focused solely on installing solar farms — it also emphasizes community empowerment through education and skill development.

In collaboration with organizations like Red Cloud Renewable, efforts are underway to train Indigenous tribal members for jobs in the renewable energy sector.

The program provides free training to individuals, with a focus on solar installation skills.

Graduates, ranging from late teens to late 50s, receive pre-apprenticeship certification, and the organization is planning to launch additional programs to support graduates with career services such as resume building and interview coaching...

The adoption of solar power by Native communities signifies progress toward sustainable development, cultural preservation, and economic self-determination, contributing to a more equitable and environmentally conscious future.

These initiatives are part of a broader movement toward "energy sovereignty," wherein tribes strive to have control over their own power sources.

This movement represents not only an economic opportunity and a source of jobs for these communities but also a means of reclaiming control over their land and resources, signifying a departure from historical exploitation and an embrace of sustainable practices deeply rooted in Indigenous cultures."

-via Good Good Good, December 10, 2023

[canmom]

what's the book for? part 0

I watched this three hour video! It is primarily a critique of the story games/Forge mode in TTRPG design, seeing it as the fruit of a condescending behaviourism, which to youtuber Vi Huntsman is painfully reminiscent of the 'Applied Behaviour Analysis' abusive treaments that are often applied to autistic children! Oof! Quite a charge...

...though it only gets there after the first hour or so! There's a segment where they do a stage production of an abridged version of a segment in Sunless Skies!

So... despite 'three hour video essay titled Art, Agency, Alienation' being kind of a punchline in itself, despite occasionally the kind of indulgence you tend to only see in got-way-too-big video essay channels, this video is actually pretty legit. I used to be quite the story game partisan and this is perhaps the best critique I've seen of it!

I think the thrust of Vi Huntsman's critique has merit, but it ends up feeling... honestly broader than I think they meant it - many dimensions seem to apply to almost any printed TTRPG. I also found their conclusion, which calls for more adventures and similar to support the 'folk art' of RPGs, extremely underwhelming - more a statement of taste than an answer to the blistering criticisms of the previous three hours.

So here's my own attempt at an answer. Or at least to lay out the premises we'd need to reach an answer, I'm not there yet!

tl;dw

Let me try and break it down into a tl;dw version. (I'll brush past the lead-in which talks about The Stanley Parable and Severance, used to frame the discussion.)

First up, ABA is an abusive practice inspired by radical behaviourism. In ABA, a behaviour analyst decides how a child should behave, and applies crude reward/punishment structures to get the child to do as they want, without trying to understand the underlying reasons. For example, an analyst may try to stop a child covering their ears when flushing the toilet, even though this is painful for the child. This analogy runs through the video. It is clearly quite personal for Huntsman, who I'm fairly sure is autistic themselves, and apparently worked at some point in attempting to apply the 'treatments' cooked up by the behavioural analysts.

Now, there is a perspective in game design that believes that the designer's responsibility is to create structures of rewards and perhaps punishments to push a player towards a specific intended experience - i.e. 'incentives'. In this light, game design is envisioned almost as a kind of spooky mind control to create behaviour in players, though the methods imagined to do so are in fact very crude.

The other element Huntsman introduces is the notion of 'Suitsian games', after the philosopher Bernard Suits, which are self-contained rules structures creating interesting obstacles to reach some kind of arbitrary goal (for example: capture king, place ball in hoop), where the interesting aspect is the new 'agency' created by the limitations of the rules. Huntsman argues that TTRPGs are not Suitsian games, and it's a big mistake to act as if they are.

They present some examples of a disdainful attitude among designers that players are like children whose behaviour is determined only by the game itself, despite all evidence to the contrary. A particularly damning example is a podcast episode in which a game designer who is also an ABA behavioural analyst attempts to explain how games should more deliberately apply direct incentives in their design.

This attitude, Huntsman argues, results in games (here books you can buy instructing you what to do) which attempt to meticulously shape play (the actual thing that happens at the table) to push it towards a very specific intended experience, often by rigidly defining processes for nearly every stage of the game, similar to a board game. This undercuts the open-endedness of TTRPGs, the major strength of the medium.

The roots of the pernicious ideology, in Huntsman's view, go back to the Forge forums, a cultish forum about game design run by a terribly arrogant man called Ron Edwards, known for Sorcerer and Trollbabe. Many of the major game designers active in the indie scene today come from the Forge, and they tend to somewhat nepotistically promote each other, including writing a very self-back-patting textbook.

In a section termed 'the can of worms', Huntsman suggests that elements like the 'agendas' and 'principles' and 'GM moves' amount to designers taking undue credit for player creativity, with designers claiming that fairly boilerplate GM advice framed as rules is what makes the game work, with the corollary if the game doesn't work you weren't following the GM rules properly and thus weren't really playing the game.

Some of these games tell you off for interesting ways you might hack or vary their rules, insisting that they be interpreted strictly and narrowly to get the 'intended' experience

This is all about selling a product - the idea that you need this specific book in order to create a certain kind of experience, when in reality the book does very little to actually contribute to the 'folk art' of playing an RPG together.

The main example used to illustrate all this is Root: The RPG, a TTRPG adaptation of the extremely popular asymmetric board game about forest animals having a civil war. The TTRPG is printed by a company called Magpie Games which specialises in PbtA designs, probably best known for Masks. They tend to do very well on Kickstarter, but their games - often IP tie-ins - are not especially memorable. Vi Huntsman praises the original board game, but has little positive to say about the TTRPG spinoff.

From what I saw in the video, Root is definitely a strong example of a shallow PbtA game which borrows the surface-level forms of Apocalypse World (moves, agendas, etc.) to create something bland and unengaging. It commits many design sins - far too many uninteresting moves, a dearth of evocative prompts to get you into the idea of the game, locking certain reasonable actions to specific playbooks, repetitive prose, a lack of conceptual clarity, dogmatic insistence that its rules must be followed to the letter... Clearly we can all skip this game.

But...

the role played by a roleplaying book

What's more interesting to me is the broader critique.

The video does not directly address Root's obvious parent Apocalypse World in much depth. Huntsman notes that most of Root's ideas are cribbed from there and that Magpie Games have been less and less likely to acknowledge Vincent and Meguey as time goes on; the pair are also included in the Pepe Silvia wall used to illustrate the reach of the Forge. However, they do not really address whether their criticisms apply to Apocalypse World.

To my eye, Apocalypse World is still a lot better than almost all of its many, many imitators. Part of that is the strength of its prose - and that is actually very important, for reasons I'll get into. So I think it would be better to look at the best of this tradition, rather than its worst.

But before we can get into that, the real question for me is this. What is the relationship between the paper object in your hands or PDF on your computer, and that mystical thing that happens when you and your friends gather around a table and tell a story together for four or five hours?

Begin series.

[yabee-tea]

This was supposed to just be practice on a pose I saw on Pinterest but I had no motivation so I had to turtlefy it to give me the incentive to finish.

Also pink version because I was messing around w filters + have no self control + really like him pink. (Who said turtles can't be pink? - my friend)

[study-with-aura]

Monday, March 25, 2024

It's RAD exam week! I am taking the Advanced Foundation exam this year, and I am so nervous! My time is tomorrow at 10:00, so wish me merde! This also means that I am missing a day of school work tomorrow, but oddly enough it works out. Since this is the Easter holiday weekend, there is no dance meaning I will be spending Saturday completing what I missed.

I feel like today was mostly all vocabulary review. I did some of it while Mom drove me to ballet. Honestly, sometimes the drive to and from ballet is perfect for vocabulary study, language lessons, or reading when necessary. I do often talk to my parents while they're driving me, but sometimes, the only way for me to get everything I want to get done in a day complete, is to work through that time, but most days, that is not the case and we can chat about whatever.

Tasks Completed:

Geometry - Learned to construct the circumcenter, incenter, centroid, and orthocenter of a triangle + practice + honors work

Lit and Comp II - Reviewed Units 19-21 vocabulary + read chapter 43 of Emma by Jane Austen

Spanish 2 - Reviewed vocabulary + listened to a story in Spanish

Bible I - Read Judges 19-20:11

World History - Read about Joseph Stalin + watched a biography on Stalin + completed review questions + completed the Russian Revolution Chart

Biology with Lab - Reviewed vocabulary from all previous units

Foundations - Read more on self-control + completed next quiz on Read Theory

Piano - Practiced for one hour

Khan Academy - Completed High School Geometry Unit 8: Lesson 12

CLEP - Completed Module 11 reading "Europe: 1918-1945" 13.6 + watched Module 11.1-11.2 lecture videos

Streaming - Watched episode 7 of Life on Our Planet (evolutionist perspective)

Duolingo - Studied for 15 minutes (Spanish, French, Chinese) + completed daily quests

Reading - Read pages 182-254 of Dear Medusa by Olivia A. Cole

Chores - Cleaned my bathroom + cleaned windows in my bedroom and in the study + took the trash and recycling out

Activities of the Day:

Personal Bible Study (Ephesians 2)

Volunteered for two hours at the library

Ballet

Contemporary

Journal/Mindfulness

-

What I’m Grateful for Today:

I am grateful to have the opportunity to take ballet examinations at my dance school.

Quote of the Day:

All dreams are within reach. All you have to do is keep moving towards them.

-Viola Davis

🎧Pièces de Clavecin V. Le Tic-Toc-Choc ou Les Maillotins (Ordre XVIII, 6) - François Couperin

[autisticadvocacy]

Doctors and nurses at HCA Healthcare, the largest hospital chain in the U.S., have raised concerns about hospital policies that push patients to begin end-of-life care when there may be other options available. A report by NBC News found that this practice lowers HCA’s rate of in-hospital deaths and makes beds available for more profitable patients. HCA’s CEO compensation is tied to in-hospital deaths, setting a dangerous incentive to reduce that number at the cost of quality patient care.

Our health care system devalues the lives of people with disabilities and chronic health conditions. HCA Healthcare’s use of internal policies and algorithms to deter patients from continuing life-lengthening care means this hospital system is acting in the interest of profits, not patients. Entering hospice must always be a personal choice. A hospital that pressures patients to stop life-saving treatment if they are perceived as likely to die will cause premature deaths among people with disabilities who seek treatment.

ASAN is deeply against any policies, formal or informal, that devalue the lives of people with disabilities and make us more likely to die, whether that be medical rationing due to COVID-19 cases, physician-assisted suicide, restrictions on organ transplantation for people with disabilities, or policies that push patients into hospice prematurely. We will continue to fight to prevent the deadly consequences of these policies.

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network seeks to advance the principles of the disability rights movement with regard to autism. ASAN believes that the goal of autism advocacy should be a world in which autistic people enjoy equal access, rights, and opportunities. We work to empower autistic people across the world to take control of our own lives and the future of our common community, and seek to organize the autistic community to ensure our voices are heard in the national conversation about us. Nothing About Us, Without Us!

Read the full statement: https://autisticadvocacy.org/2023/08/asan-condemns-hospital-policies-that-value-profits-over-patients/

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Web apps could de-monopolize mobile devices

Mobile tech is a duopoly run by two companies — Google and Apple — with a combined market cap of $3.5 trillion. Each company uses a combination of tech, law, contract and market power to force sellers to do commerce via an app, and each one extracts a massive commission on all in-app sales — 15–30%!

This is bad for users and workers. Many companies’ gross margins are less than 30%. In some categories, that means there’s no competition. Take audiobooks: publishers wholesale their audiobooks to retailers at a 20% discount, so a retailer that sells its audiobooks through an app, paying a 30% commission, will lose money through every sale.

This is why the only convenient mobile audiobook stores are Apple Books (a front-end for Amazon’s Audible) and Google Books: Apple doesn’t have to pay the Apple tax, and Google doesn’t have to pay the Google tax, and that means that Apple and Google can demand crippling discounts and preferential treatment from publishers and independent authors.

The app tax is a tax on the workers whose creative works are sold on mobile platforms, because creative workers have the least bargaining power in this monopolized supply-chain. Our publishers can squeeze us — and the editorial workers, narrators, and sound technicians who work on our books — to make up the difference.

Independent authors who sell directly on these platforms, meanwhile, have even less leverage and get even worse terms. Things aren’t much better at the other end of the supply-chain, either: while firms prefer to wring concessions out of their workers and suppliers, they’re not averse to raising prices on customers, providing that all the competitors do so as well.

Since every competitor is also selling through an app store and either paying a direct app tax or ceding margin to the mobile duopoly as a condition of selling in their in-house, pre-installed stores, they all have the same incentive to raise prices.

Economists call this the monopsony problem (or, since we’re talking about two companies, a duopsony or oligopsony problem). That’s an unwieldy and esoteric term, so Rebecca Giblin and I coined a much better one, and wrote a book about it: Chokepoint Capitalism:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

Theoretically, there’s a way to avoid the app store chokepoint: web apps. These are part of the HTML5 standard, and if a browser fully implements that standard, then developers can make a self-encapsulated “app” that’s delivered in the browser, complete with an icon for your home screen, capable of doing anything an app store app can do.

A company that wants to sell stuff without paying the app tax could hypothetically deliver a web app that the user could download and install via their browser. This doesn’t just avoid the app tax, it also overrides the app stores’ editorial control, like Apple’s decision to block privacy tools in China to aid in state surveillance.

But you can’t have a web app without a web-app-compatible browser, and you can’t get a web-app-compatible browser in Apple’s App Store. The only browsers permitted in the App Store are those based on WebKit, the browser engine behind Safari. This means that every browser on Ios, from Firefox to Edge to Chrome, is just a reskinned version of Safari.

That’s a problem, because Webkit suuuuuuucks. Without the discipline imposed by either regulation or competition, Apple has systematically underinvested in Webkit, so that major bugs remain unaddressed for years and years. Some of these bugs are functional — Webkit just doesn’t act the way its documentation says it does — but others represent serious security vulnerabilities.

This is an important point: app store proponents say that denying users the right to choose where they get their apps and excluding competitors is necessary, the only practical way to prevent security risks to users. But while app stores can prevent the introduction of insecure or malicious code, they can also block the introduction of code that fixes defects in the manufacturer’s own security.

Mobile companies don’t want insecure code on their platforms, but they also don’t want to erode their profits. An Iphone with a working VPN app is more secure than one that lacks that app, but if that Iphone is owned by a Chinese person, it endangers Apple’s access to low-waged Chinese labor and 350 million affluent Chinese consumers.

Likewise, a third party might create a browser engine that corrects the security defects in Webkit, but if Apple allows users to install such a browser engine, they will lose the ability to extract billions through the app tax.

Companies never solely pursue their customers’ interests. Instead, they seek an equilibrium that allocates as much value as possible to their shareholders. This allocation is limited by both competition (the fear that a bad service will drive customers to a rival) and regulation (the fear that a bad service will attract crushing fines).

The less competition and regulation a company faces, the more value it can take from its users and give to its shareholders. Here, mobile platforms have it easy: they don’t have to worry about competition because of regulation. Laws like Section1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and Article 6 of the EU Copyright Directive (EUCD) make it illegal to jailbreak a phone to install third-party apps. Jay Freeman calls this “felony contempt of business model” — that is, the government will punish your competitors for trying to compete with you. Nice work if you can get it.

As the old joke goes, “if you wanted to get there, I wouldn’t start from here.” The rules that should promote better corporate conduct (through competition) instead encourage worse behavior, by putting companies in charge of who gets to compete with them, in the name of user safety.

Meanwhile, users are increasingly trapped inside walled gardens, because their media, apps, and data are locked up in mobile silos and switching to a rival means enduring the switching costs of leaving it all behind. Mobile companies claim to have built fortresses to keep bad guys out, but those high walls make fortresses into prisons that keep customers locked in.

But anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop. The manifest unfairness and insecurity of the regulation-backed walled garden model has attracted the interest of new trustbusters, competition regulators from China to the EU to the USA to the UK.

The UK plays a key role here. The country’s Competitions and Markets Authority boasts the largest workforce of technical experts of any competition regulator in the world: the CMA’s Digital Markets Unit has 50+ full-time engineers, which allows it to produce the most detailed, most insightful market investigations of any nation’s competition regulators.

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/digital-markets-unit

(Don’t get too excited, though: in keeping with the UK’s abysmal standard of government competence, Parliament has yet to pass the long-overdue secondary legislation that would give the DMU its own enforcement powers. Ugh.)

Last June, the CMA proposed a market investigation into cloud gaming and mobile browsers (gaming is the largest source of app store revenue and cloud gaming is a way to avoid the app tax, so it’s a closely related issue):

https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/mobile-browsers-and-cloud-gaming

There were many significant submissions over this proposal, including comments that EFF legal intern Shashank Sirivolu and I drafted:

https://www.eff.org/document/comments-electronic-frontier-foundation-cmas-inquiry-mobile-browsers-and-cloud-gaming

Many commenters (including EFF) proposed that the CMA should intervene to improve the state browser engines competition on Ios and Android (Android allows multiple browser engines, but doesn’t give them the same hardware access that Chrome and its Blink engine enjoy).

This argument seems to have landed for the CMA. Today, they announced that they would go ahead with a full-fledged market study into mobile browsers and cloud gaming:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/63984ce2d3bf7f3f7e762453/Issues_statement_.pdf

The most obvious outcome of this study would be an order forcing the mobile vendors to open up to full-featured, alternative browser engines. This is compromise solution, between forcing open app stores onto the platforms — which would mean forcing Apple to allow sideloading and policing Google’s use of contracts to limit third-party stores — and doing nothing.

A browser engine mandate is less satisfying than open app stores, but it is also more achievable, and easier to monitor and enforce. With Android, Google proved that you don’t have to use hardware locks to prevent third-party app stores — you can use a hard-to-detect web of contracts and incentives to create an app store monopoly that’s nearly as airtight as Apple’s.

But policing whether a platform permits rival, full-featured browser engines — ones that enable web apps and cloud gaming without paying the app tax — is much easier. Also easier: developing objective standards for evaluating whether a browser engine is secure and robust. Open Web Advocacy’s criteria are a great starting point:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1118238/Open_Web_Advocacy_-_Consultation_response_-_Publication_version.pdf#h.q9nder968wzm

The CMA announcement is welcome, but has some gaps. It under-emphasises the importance of hardware access (for web apps to compete with native apps, they need full hardware access), and could leave new browser engines at the mercy of the existing review teams that review all the other apps in the app store (who reject rival browser engines out of hand).

Meanwhile, while I was writing this article, Mark Gurman published a jaw-dropping scoop in Bloomberg: Apple will open its Ios platform to rival app stores by 2024, in order to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA):

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-13/will-apple-allow-users-to-install-third-party-app-stores-sideload-in-europe I’m still absorbing this news, but I think this complements the CMA browser engine work, rather than rendering it redundant. Alternative app stores don’t necessarily mean alternative browser engines. Apple says it will have security standards for alternative app stores, and these standards could well include a ban on browser engines. At a minimum, it’s clear that different levels of scrutiny need to be applied to apps, app stores, and browser engines, as each one poses different threats and opportunities.

[Image ID: London's Canary Wharf, a high-rise business district that is home to the UK Competition and Markets Authority. The colours of the buildings have been inverted, and the sky has been filled with a Matrix 'waterfall' graphic. In the foreground is an ogrish giant, standing at a console, yanking on a lever in the shape of a golden dollar-sign. The console is emblazoned with the logos for Chrome and Safari. The ogre is disdainfully holding aloft a mobile phone. On the phone's screen is a Gilded Age editorial cartoon of a business-man with a dollar-sign for a head. The phone itself is limned with a greenish supernova of radiating light.]

[mariacallous]

Can you imagine what a digital white ethnostate or a cyber caliphate might look like? Having spent most of my career on the inside of online extremist movements, I certainly can. The year 2024 might be the one in which neo-Nazis, jihadists, and conspiracy theorists turn their utopian visions of creating their own self-governed states into reality—not offline, but in the form of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs).

DAOs are digital entities that are collaboratively governed without central leadership and operate based on blockchain. They allow internet users to establish their own organizational structures, which no longer require the involvement of a third party in financial transactions and rulemaking. The World Economic Forum described DAOs as “an experiment to reimagine how we connect, collaborate and create”. However, as with all new technologies, there is also a darker side to them: They are likely to give rise to new threats emerging from decentralized extremist mobilization.

Today, there are already over 10,000 DAOs, which collectively manage billions of dollars and count millions of participants. So far, DAOs have attracted a wild mix of libertarians, activists, pranksters, and hobbyists. Most DAOs I have come across in my research sound innocent and fun. Personally, my favorites include theCaféDAO, which aims “to replace Starbucks” (good luck with that!); the Doge DAO, which wants to “make the Doge meme the most recognizable piece of art in the world”; and the HairDAO, “a decentralized asset manager solving hair loss.” But some DAOs use a more radical tone. For example, the Redacted Club DAO, which is rife with alt-right codes and conspiracy myth references, claims to be a secret network with the aim of “slaying” the “evil Meta Lizard King.”

The year 2024 might be one in which extremists start using DAOs strategically. Policies, legal contracts, and financial transactions that were traditionally the domain of governments, courts, and banks can be replaced with smart contracts, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and cryptocurrencies. The use of anonymous bitcoin wallets and non-transparent cryptocurrencies such as Monero is already widespread among extremists whose bank accounts have been frozen. A shift to entirely decentralized forms of self-governance is only one step away.

Beyond practical reasons that encourage extremists to create their own self-governed structures, there is an ideological incentive too: their fundamental distrust in the establishment. If you believe that the deep state or the “global Jewish elites” control everything from governments and Big Tech to the global banking system, DAOs offer an appealing alternative. Conversations on far-right fringe platforms such as BitChute and Odysee reveal that there is much appetite for decentralized alternative forms of collaboration, communication, and crowdfunding.

So what happens if anti-minority groups establish their own digital worlds in which they impose their own governing mechanisms? What are the stakes if trolling armies start cooperating via DAOs to launch election interference campaigns? The activities of extremist DAOs could challenge the rule of law, pose a threat to minority groups, and disrupt institutions that are currently considered fundamental pillars of democratic systems. Another risk is that DAOs can serve as safe havens for extremist movements by enabling users to circumvent government regulation and security services monitoring activities. They might also allow extremists to find new ways to fundraise, plan, and plot radicalization campaigns or even attacks. While many governments have focused on developing legal frameworks to regulate AI, few have even recognized the existence of DAOs. Their looming exploitation for extremist and criminal purposes is something that has flown under the radar of global policymakers.

Technology expert Carl Miller, who has long warned of potential misuse of DAOs, told me that “even though DAOs behave like companies, they are not registered as legal entities.” There are only a few exceptions: The US states of Wyoming, Vermont, and Tennessee have passed laws to legally recognize DAOs. With no regulations in place to hold DAOs accountable for extremist or criminal activities, the big question for 2024 will be: How can we ensure the metaverse doesn’t give rise to digital white ethnostates or cyber caliphates?

[tasmiq]

Jumu'ah Sohbet: 5 April 2024

Alhamdulillah for another productive Ramadan week in the lead up to Laylatul Qadr (The Night of Power / Decree), where we continued to contemplate on and practice taqwa (self-vigilance).

#1. Anne spoke about Laylatul Qadr (The Night of Power). It involves the Angels where Prophet Muhammad PBUH saw them in person on Laylatul Mi'raj (His blessed night journey and his ascension into Heaven). We may even be blessed to see them as our helpers because they witnessed our creation, and they help us to maintain Allah's order.

Thereafter, Anne said that she hoped that our taqwa (self-vigilance) practices were coming into effect when we were feeling disconnected, angry, or forgetful of turning to Allah. We ought to spend the time in Ramadan with Allah regardless of what is happening around us! The reasons we get angry could be because of injustice or feelings of control, entitlement, or fear. Surely, these are all reasons for us to turn to Allah. Ramadan is the ideal opportunity for detoxing our bad habits.

Ramadan gives us an extra incentive to practice taqwa, which is the actions that Allah is happy with. When we are contemplating on taqwa and we're watching our actions, we keep Allah's pleasure in mind! Many of us reported that this is the most spiritually connected that we've felt, with gratitude for Anne's spiritual leadership acumen.

#2. Fellow murids (followers), Sister Hayat and Wakil Rosieçim reflected that when they were running out of sabr (patience), they practiced taqwa, which moved them into love. One actually feels taqwa in one's body, muscles, and emotions. You have to be involved physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually with love. Similarly, as reflected by Sister Fatima, there is a place where Love is loving itself! It's Allah's love where humans are able to bring it back and reflect Him, insha'Allah.

Khalifa Rubina reflected that because we are studying taqwa so deeply, there were definite changes within our bodies. We perceive the change in our actions, where we experience peace and calmness. Anne astutely picked up another point, where we are experiencing Allah within ourselves. Our brains help us to understand, but our whole beings bring us to live with Allah. That is why it is said that Sufism should be learned by living our individual experiences of Allah.

#3. Our brother Daud referred to observing taqwa through difficulty. Anne postulated that there were two ways to deal with the difficulty. One way could be to surrender to Allah by accepting and witnessing what is happening in the subsequent moments. We pray for it while turning to Allah and saying, "What would You like to show me through this?" This is the moment-by-moment unfolding of my post-accident life which I have entiled my "Accidental Epiphany"! The other futile way is blocking and ignoring it.

Anne reminded us about the legacy of Hazrat Musa AS and Hazrat Khidr AS. When things go wrong, we should be asking the "what" questions rather than the "why" questions. What does Allah want to show me here? Am I seeing what is really happening, or am I seeing the veil? Who will open the veil? Allah will, insha'Allah. It won't happen while we're blocked and turned away. It is through witnessing, acknowledging, and feeling through our human faculties. We are not robots that are locked and closed up. Instead, we open ourselves to Allah.

In conclusion, I am left with humbled gratitude for our Tariqa as a deep spiritual school of like-minded hearts, from myriad walks of life, that have mystically been brought together ...

Shukran Ya Allah (Divine gratitude)

[void-and-virtue]

I’m a big fan of the whole concept that Andrew actually ends up grudgingly enjoying Exy at some point, entirely because he enjoys being contrary. Like. To Andrew, denying people who think they can one-up him their success is a basic need. Riling them up for his own amusement in the process, only to make the takedown that much more humiliating when even the anger is not enough to give them an edge against his immovable presence is Andrew’s idea of self-fulfillment. Exy makes it so he’s literally getting paid millions of dollars to do that.

Kevin would be so much more successful in his pursuit to get Andrew to actually play if he stopped trying to get him to like the sport itself, and instead started to subtly market it as a professional career in being a little shit. I like to think Neil eventually figures out how to intentionally garner Andrew’s interest and starts to capitalize on his instigative tendencies to the fullest to give him incentive. Andrew plays Exy like it’s psychological warfare when he puts his mind to it. They could probably get him to run precision drills at night practice by prompting him to imagine how mad it would make people if he managed to strategically bounce balls off of his opponents’ helmets mid-game as a way to pass the ball up to Neil so that he can score. Stuff like that is actually creative, and hard to do, so the challenge becomes interesting when the reward (grim satisfaction in his own skill, his opponent being mad at him but unable to do anything about it, Neil’s smile) is worth the shot. It’s not the game itself that interests Andrew. It’s the opportunity to thoroughly mess with people and be as much of an inconvenience as humanly possible that sometimes makes playing Exy satisfying for him.

On a more serious note, there’s also something to be said about how his personal history/trauma feeds into this. Saying ‘No’ and the ability to see through that his ‘No’ is final is a very integral part of who Andrew is as a person. It’s really tangled up with Exy for him because, as Neil accurately put it, he plays Exy like he plays life.

Andrew is someone whose choice has been taken away from him far too many times in his life. The ability to choose and deny what happens to him and those under his protection is the highest good he has. Playing as the last line of defense at his level of skill quite possibly has the potential to be downright therapeutic. There’s satisfaction to be found in every goal denied, in being the best at what he does and taking control of his part in the game, if he allowed this to mean that to him. And that could factor into enjoyment of the sport as well — a quiet, subdued kind rather than loud celebration, but silent satisfaction is just as valuable as the much louder, more obvious kind. Anybody who matters can recognize happiness and contentment in him without needing him to say anything anyway.

[tri-punisher]

sid’s become like. pretty antithetical to the practices that make cults successful when recruiting and retaining their followers

like as a scared and orphaned child he was a very easy victim, he had no ties to anyone and was encouraged by the promise given to him by the eye of developing all the skills he could ever need to make sure no one could ever hurt him again, and that was more than enough incentive to want to go with them, but as he grows up and his motivations become more and more individualist and spiteful, parallel to his increasingly souring relationship with razlo and the disillusionment of attaining the status of punisher when chapel decided razlo would be a Much better target to serve his own means, he comes to believe in absolutely nothing except fulfilling his own pursuits and is so venomous to everyone he’s like. just kinda Useless to them. because yeah, he is actually great at killing shit, incredible at it in fact, but the eye created a highly capable, highly efficient super soldier who has very little.. not even very little--has nothing that can be dangled over his head to make sure he stays in line for them. he can’t be cowed into submission by anything, he is obstinate to his bones, he has no desire to fit in or feel needed or wanted or appreciated because he doesn't care about anyone anymore, he doesn’t care about whatever the fuck knives is doing or why the eye cares so much about him, he tears people apart just for fun whenever he has the chance because he can, and he certainly doesn’t care about whether or not his behaviour is gonna hurt or upset razlo

he’s a useful asset to the eye only for conditioning razlo in ways that make it easier for chapel to control and manipulate him. if he didn’t enjoy making razlo as miserable as much as he does maybe he’d care more about doing whatever the eye wants him to do, but as far as the eye is concerned he's a sunk cost and a walking ticking time bomb

despite all that though he still does end up furthering their endgoals for a significant amount of time because of that misanthropy he carries with him. he's self righteous and obstinate in his belief he needs to burn the world down, but it's for entirely different reasons to why the eye wants to achieve that too, the reason the eye was creating their soldiers--the eye are following a doctrine based on knives' pursuit of the eradication of humanity, but sid just hates the world and thinks he's entirely justified in being as cruel and violent as he is because he believes the world to be fundamentally cruel and violent. he's oblivious to this though, as much as the eye helped influence his cynical, misanthropic worldview. he really does think his motivations are separate to the eye's, or somehow more justifiable because he feels like he's been abandoned by a world that doesn't care. in the same way he's oblivious to how chapel was using him as a tool to enforce the conditions of razlo's abuse, if he calmed down for 5 minutes and devoted any amount of time to examining his behaviour it might click for him that he's been doing what the eye initially wanted him to do for a long time. he's too blinded by just. abject hate and the need for stimulation any way he can get it to ever do that though. at least not until that hole in his chest becomes so deep nothing he pours back into it hits the bottom

[anthonybialy]

Loud About Hush Money

Taking is the Democratic form of profiting.  There’s no other way to run a business, at least that legalized grifters can imagines.  They’re not mean like your bosses, other than how they do the same by law.  The only important employment is their own, and let’s classify their workdays as unproductive.  Politicians must only endure a performance evaluation every couple years.  They expect you to keep them in office because it’s more fun than working.  Revelry will continue as long as bucks keep flowing.  The party’s finally nearing its conclusion.

The pushy party can afford to be so generous because of a generous benefactor.  If you want to maximize contributions, make them compulsory.  Thanks to withholding, most donors don’t even realize how generous they are.

Bribes for votes are shameless in blatancy, which is another sign market incentives work.  Coercion really helps those who need to keep others on their side without making a convincing case or being able to create anything worth trading.

Limp government goons inadvertently illustrate their foes are right while showing why they’re so wrong.  Every Democrat is a corrupt sheriff with a councilman in his pocket.  Entice voters with profits seized from those who back candidates calling for workers to keep what they earn.  The self-proclaimed selfless get away with it because they can, which also helpfully illustrates how they implement their very caring philosophy.

Hypocrisy is just the start.  Elected autocrats see themselves as fighters of corruption as they embody it, which is surely the only time they’re full of it.  Expanding power to the point where they can negate it with a nod is also coincidentally the reason they’re so eager to make crime legal, aside from serving as an indirect perk to their constituency.

Those who can’t create a solid image rely on projection.  Democrats habitually act in the same shameful way they accuse private entities of conducting themselves, with the difference being you can’t choose a different government without a decent amount of hassle.  Knowing you can’t shop elsewhere is part of the privilege of constructing a loving administration that has control over every life aspect.

It’s best to use bills yoinked from others, as your own is so expensive.  Buying support with cash seized from the successful is the primary way of leveling society.  The presumption that everyone should have the same works with ice cream, so why change kindergarten thinking?  The ideal amount is more than whatever you have now.

Wealth transfers are necessary if all funds have been assigned.  You unfairly claim salaries reflect value created, but that cruelly leads to some people having more than others.  True motivators have to convince voters that they’re useless.  Breaking down self-esteem is how Democrats inspire.  Someone stole from you so proficiently that you didn’t even notice.  No, they don’t mean the government.

Student loans are seen as anything but.  College is a time for learning that words don’t mean anything, which is one sort of lesson to retain.  The expectation of entitlement may not be the healthiest major.  There’s no point in arguing with people who think you’re selfish for not wanting to give what you’ve earned to those who haven’t.

Outrage at the expectation that they should pay for things defines liberalism.  Take the costliness of allegedly free tuition.  Panhandling graduates got amazing training, at least according to them.  It should be easy to pay off what’s borrowed with 120 credits of solid training.

Pretending not paying for something will help the economy is the ultimate case of not seeing both sides.  The practical implications of closed-mindedness lead to dismissing prosperity via, say, exchanging goods and services for dollars.  Alleged beneficiaries save so much by not paying for groceries, which can be spent to stimulate an economy where many things are unaffordable for mysterious reasons.  Shoplifting must be making life permanently prosperous.

Walking around money ensures getting out the vote.  Claim to help the poor to make winking less obvious.  Inflation is the only downside for the ripoff artists and upside for those outraged.  Currency has gone from worth less to worthless.  

Trying to befriend those who hate them is a sick habit of the psychologically gullible.  They simply must convince everyone they’re cool.  Iran took their lunch money and got them to beg to come over for dinner.  Enabling villainy is just one more reason to not pay ransoms.  The inability to see obvious consequences is inherent to their ideology.  Anyone who saw what comes next wouldn’t be a liberal.  

Trying to get global supervillains to behave with perks is a rather obvious test which the White House fails.  It took an invasion of Israel to show how Iran spends their allowance on terror rockets, which the executive branch naturally still doesn’t grasp.  Joe Biden’s flunkies are more than willing to accept excuses about how lunatic mullahs can’t spend what they have yet to receive.  Meanwhile, the world’s substitute teachers put America nearly $35 freaking trillion in debt.

A time-honored tradition features no honor.  Redistribution constitutes politics at its oldest and by no coincidence worst.  An entire outlook based on taking from one party and giving it to others is framed as the epitome of high-minded decency, which is true aside from how its theft that demotivates all involved.

Class warfare builds society.  Motivating their base coincidentally conforms with claiming they’re trying to help.  It’s an unfinished sentence, as they want to help stay in office.

[supersoftly]

If the minimum wage shouldn't be increased, what's the solution? Do you believe in capping executive pay or having a maximum wage? What would you do instead? Also, do you believe the studies that show increasing the minimum wage doesn't cause inflation or do you believe those studies are flawed?

Look, all I'm saying is that this isn't a thing that hasn't been tried before, you can finds studies (both small, genuine or flawed) that support your claim and in practice do jack shit or worse. In Canada, we're practically infamous for implementing every genius socialist idea and watching it play out. Last time they pushed for a huge leap in the minimum wage here you know what happened to the very people meant to help? Businesses simply cut hours per employee and then demanded they do the same work in less amount of time. Senior employees have zero incentive to give a shit when the newbie who calls in for mental health breaks only to quit a week later are paid the same. Small businesses either closed or suffered a dramatic cost increase without making profit. Heres another thought exercise for you: why do you think so many of our extremely educated and well trained nurses leave the country? Because nurses as a part of our nationalized healthcare have a capped pay, is that an acceptable end result of declaring and generalizing arbitrary value to a broad range of a workforce? You have to accept that a nurse in Ontario is worth the same as a gas station attendant, a cashier, a shelf stocker, a Walmart greeter, or do you think they deserve the money they believe they're worth even if it's more than what the government deemed? It's two sides of the same coin, all manipulated not by the will of the free market and the people, but by government and that should concern you.

Money is a system of belief, remember that, if people don't believe in the system, that the money isn't worth the value of the things you trade it for, it will fail and artificially inflating value, during a time when everything is literally getting shittier, is not a real solution because it's not producing anything. Literally look at Canada's economics since Trudeau came into power, we've just been pissing away our money for the press and our dollar, our economy is on its way to nosediving this entire country just to 'own the conservatives' or whatever the heck makes everyone salivate over supporting our corrupt government and ignore their self appointed raises 2020-2023. Recall that I'm in the country where when one MP openly suggested all of the Parliament take CERB as their paycut during COVID lockdowns since they forced it on everyone else and it was rejected by basically all but the guy who suggested it. I have a hard time believing any of these people have you, me or the little guy in their hearts when making any decision.

But either way, all I can do is question if this is really the solution y'all think it is cuz it's not like I have any control or voting power in the province I live in, so they'll probably raise the wage anyways and we'll see it play out just like you want. Maybe you and your studies are right and we'll see a turn for the better, but I have my doubts, mostly in anything the government implements for the supposed 'greater good'. We'll see how it plays out, Cotton.

[sukimas]

mental illness (general form) musings below the cut

i think in general that there are a lot of things that people don't want to acknowledge as actual ways a brain can be wired. e.g. people generally do not want to believe that someone can have no control of their actions

i think that this impulse is also present in psychologists/psychiatrists, and goes into how the DSMs are written. to be specific, diagnostic criteria.

diagnostic criteria for mental illnesses are often written extremely broadly, because they want to cover as wide of a category of behavior as possible. however, these broad diagnostic criteria often don't carve reality at the joints.

a tame example is ADHD; there is no practical reason that the inattentive and hyperactive forms should be considered the "same disorder". they do not have similar symptoms. oh, they both can be treated with stimulants and thus both likely come from dopamine deficiency? great! let's group every mental condition influenced by GABA under the same umbrella now.

a much less tame example is antisocial personality disorder.

the criteria as articulated in the DSM-V basically make it, when diagnosed "sort of a jackass who does some crimes disorder". however, the way people think of it socially (and the way even psychologists characterize it) is very different.

i personally believe that there is an abnormal brain psychology that exists that does fit the role of how people normally think of ASPD. that is to say: -little regard for consequences of actions on the self (probably from hyperbolic time discounting, lack of a future world model) -lack of impact of other people's emotions on one's emotional state (i state it like this instead of the vague term "empathy" because there's a whole mess of empathy arguments out there) -low tolerance for being around other people (if being around others doesn't positively affect one's emotional state there is less incentive to do so) -chronic understimulation (probably lack of future world model again)

these things lead to (to variable degrees) -lowered impulse control -lack of care for impact of actions on others -risk-taking behaviors -desire to inflict harm on others

these traits existing does not require the existence of all other traits on this list (i.e. you can have high impulse control wrt your actions on others but low impulse control wrt risks you take on yourself, for example) but i think that they are a closely linked cluster of traits leading from deficits in one's world-model

however i think that the overlap of people with these particular traits (even those who have all of them; the classic "sociopath") with people who have the diagnosis of ASPD is actually quite low, as the diagnostic criteria of ASPD are such that people get diagnosed with it for being a problem to others in some way (whether that's being an asshole or Crimes For Real) rather than actually fitting the above constellation of traits.

a summary of my thoughts on psychiatric diagnosis is: the DSM-V is Plato's cave, the diagnosed mentally ill are holding the shadow puppets, but that doesn't mean that (outside the cave) there aren't things that represent what the diagnoses are desperately trying to gesture at (and failing).

i hate the social sciences. dreadful.

[ospreyeamon]

general education in the reconstituted sith empire

Education policy for the Force-blind in the Sith Empire is guided by several goals; indoctrination and social cohesion, education and skills, health and wellbeing, and freeing up child-minding family members.

These priorities present incentives to make general education universally accessible and mandatory for all free-born children in the Empire. Age brackets are determined using the unitary Imperial (read Korribani) calendar; children without Force-adept potential are required to be enrolled in general education from their second to seventh years of life (about two and a half to seventeen and a half years old). A person’s eighth year of life – the final one before they reach the age of majority – is usually spent in higher education, work training, military basic training, or a combination of the afore mentioned. General education schools are known as lyceums to distinguish them from the Sith Academies and higher education colleges and technicum.

Indoctrination and social cohesion: State education is the only general education in the Empire. There are no private schools, and any private schools in newly integrated territories are required to integrate into the Imperial state system. Schooling districts are determined by proximity; families’ must enrol their children within their district. They can request a specific lyceum but there is no guarantee that request will be honoured. This is designed to control educational outcomes and build a social solidarity that specifically excludes slaves.

Each school morning begins with the pledge of eternal loyalty to the Emperor who nobly commanded the children of his empire have their education provided for. Criticism of the Emperor is forbidden. Criticism of the Emperor’s orders is forbidden. There are specific units in social science dedicated to the Emperor’s historic achievements and civics dedicated to the wisdom of the Empire’s autocratic governance structure. However, most educational propaganda uses the power of the agenda rather than the power of the outcome; informing students of the existence of bad and undesirable things, people, and ideas in the process of warning them away could backfire if it makes students curious instead.

The curriculum set by the Bureau of Education does not permit deviation from the official narratives regarding Imperial history or the wider goings-on of the galaxy. There are alternate subject units lyceums can choose between – especially in areas like history, astro-geography, and literature – which hypothetically enable lyceums to self-select away from certain topics. The Bureau monitors trends in subject selection, but any action is left in the hands of Imperial Intelligence.

Many things which are external or semi-external in other education systems are internalised in the Imperial one; before/after lyceum care, sports participation, life skill education, school lunches, etc. This gives the Empire more control over those aspects of its children’s lives and learning. Imperials born and raised throughout the Empire share a set of formative school experiences; beloved hiking trips, hated military-grade ration bars, pledging the Emperor’s Grace until it can be sung while too drunk to stand.

Education and skills: The free-born population is its skilled population (on paper, the reality is more complicated). General education is concerned with laying the foundation for both military service and civilian professions. Literacy, numeracy, hard science, social science, LOTS (language other than Standard), physical education, and civics – as well as other practical skills like cookery and mechanics – make up the core curriculum. Arts, crafts, and music are also core study areas but these are provided through a choice in electives.

Because lyceums are not intended to be in competition with each other for students or funding, there is minimal standardised testing in primary and secondary lyceums. Lyceums are prohibited from helping or encouraging their students to study specifically for standardised tests. The Education Bureau doesn’t want parents trying to get their child into the lyceum at the top of the charts, they want them to be happy they received their first pick of the ones in their district. Standardised tests are only meant to confirm that students are learning, not to be an end in and of themselves, and the results are never made public. Tertiary students have their scores directly delivered to the recruitment divisions of the Imperial Military and quaternary educational institutions so that their further education and career paths can be determined.

Not all subjects are formally graded; art and music are effectively sorted by prestige (who gets to play first treble flute or has their painting displayed in the lyceum library) while effort in cookery is ensured by the expectation students eat the products of their lessons. Most elective classes are made up of children from an entire year, rather than a single tercile as is the case for academic subjects, so grading younger and older students directly against each other is considered counter-productive.

Health and wellbeing: It is in the Empire’s interest that its population be in good health for military service, avoiding emergency healthcare budget blowouts, and minimising lost productivity. Nutritious school lunches are provided at all levels of education. Lyceums administer the bulk of the childhood vaccination program. Physical education classes are scheduled at least twice a week across lyceum tiers; variations students cycle through include ball sports, athletics, swimming, dance, obstacle courses, and martial arts.

It has never been in the interests of the Emperor, the Sith, or the wider Empire to drive members of the free-born Force-blind population to the point of snapping. The Imperial Military is rather intended to serve as the long-suffering sane-man to the Sith hierarchy. Dual purpose stress valves for mental wellbeing include arts and crafts electives, daily unstructured free time, and access to a school counsellor who students are encouraged to report any upsetting seditious material they may be exposed to.

The system is also intended to insulate children and parents from financial stress, as well as breed loyalty to the state which funds their education. There is no additional cost for excursions, camps, electives, meals, or before/after lyceum care. A rotating pool of second-hand gear and uniforms is kept by lyceums for students whose families cannot afford to buy them new. Imperial planning laws place all lyceums within easy walking distance of access to public transport which is free for Imperial citizens; urban planning laws require all residential districts contain at least one of each tier of lyceum and that public and social housing units be within half a mile of each lyceum tier.

Freeing up child-minding family members: Lyceum schedules vary by planet because they are based on local calendars rather than the unitary Imperial one, but the primary and secondary core programmes usually cover about 25% of a complete day-night cycle. There are optional before/after lyceum sessions which add another 16.7%; not classes but things like breakfast club in the morning and nap-time, story-time, team-sports and choir in the afternoon. The school lunches cut down on home meal preparation. Placing lyceums near public transport routes and mandating the walkability of residential districts enables children to commute without adult accompaniment once they are old enough; the assumption they will is why tertiary lyceums don’t offer before or after care.

Each year is divided into three terciles, which are in turn divided into three trimesters. New students begin schooling at the beginning of each tercile. Most classes – the core academic, practical, and physical education units – are comprised of students grouped by tercile but electives like sketching are grouped by year, with older students expected to help younger students learn from their example and work together with them on group projects.

The trimesters are divided by two weeks of lyceum holidays that sandwich each state holiday period. Lyceums are also allocated a dozen extra non-school days which can be used for planetary holiday observance or lesson planning but are required to be open for the rest of the year.

Lyceum schedules vary by planetary calendar, being based on local rather than unitary Imperial day length. They do share a general structure however. Primary (2.5 to 7.5 years): before school lyceum (optional) - classes - morning break - classes - lunch & break - classes - afternoon break - classes - after lyceum care (optional). Secondary (7.5 to 12.5 years): before lyceum care (optional) - classes - morning break - classes - lunch & break - classes - after lyceum care (optional). Tertiary (12.5 to 17.5 years): classes - morning break - classes - lunch & break - classes - afternoon break – classes.

Primary education, for a child’s second and third years of life, is the equivalent of kindergarten and Prep. Students are considered too young to be lectured on anything to an impact other than increasing their level of boredom so classes are play based. As much importance is placed on socialisation as memorisation. How to relate to their teachers, their peers, younger and older students. How to work in groups and play in teams; how to lead and how to follow. How to think of themselves as an Imperial.

Secondary education, over the fourth and fifth years of life, can be approximated to elementary school. Secondary schooling is formal where primary is informal. Academic subjects are taught using a lecture-based model. Greater choice in electives in art and music is introduced as students, having been exposed to the varying options in primary lyceum, are assumed to understand what they are choosing between. In their fifth year of life and second year of secondary lyceum students are deemed old enough to be taken on a week-long school camp each tercile to give them the experience of being separated from their families and sleeping together in dormitories while partaking in activities like orienteering, low ropes courses, open fire cooking, and educational nature walks.

Tertiary education, for the sixth and seventh years of life, is something akin to middle school and high school. The school day becomes longer, falling into sync with the general length of a workday in the civilian and logistical branches of state employment. Pressure is placed on students to perform academically to secure their preferred quaternary education placements. The number of weekly PE classes is increased from secondary lyceum to accommodate additional calisthenics, martial arts, and obstacle course running in preparation for future military basic training. School camps become proper camping excursions, with students pitching their own tents and practicing constructing makeshift shelters like lean-tos.

Quaternary education is comprised of the educational options which become available after graduation from tertiary lyceum but before the age of majority when most Imperials begin mandatory state service. It is effectively mandatory because completing the quaternary field and institution application process in the final tercile of tertiary lyceum is compulsory and all Imperial citizens without a Class 1 or 2 medical exemption – even the aliens – are legally required to attend bootcamp in preparation for conscription into the military or the reservist corps.

Quaternary educational institutions include colleges, technicum, registered work-experience providers affiliated with technicum, and the military onboarding and training divisions. Unless you are studying fields which will be made use of during your mandatory state service – like medicine or engineering – for which you are permitted to defer the start of your mandatory service to complete your degree, qualifications are designed to be completable in under a unitary year while studying part-time. Because students are furthering their other studies on top of going through military basic training, quaternary education undertaken prior to mandatory state service is free.

[sablelab]

Covert Operations - Chapter 225

SYNOPSIS:  Madeline’s demise at her own hand was not totally unexpected, as she had always done things her own way.  She gives an insight into her mindset before she took the actions she did and why.

Chapter 224 and all other chapters can be found at … https://sablelab.tumblr.com/covertoperations 

 *This can also be read on AO3

Madeline’s demise was no doubt a shock, but hopefully not too much of a one. Hope it was not triggering of any adverse emotions. THANK YOU all for supporting this story, for your insightful feedback and likes. 👋

CHAPTER 225

Section One’s Head Strategist and second-in-command, Madeline Sand, was defiant to the very end by deciding to take Fate into her own hands. It was the only way that she could have any control over the punishment she knew was forthcoming, and one that she was not prepared to face.  Sealing her own fate was her only way of avoiding recrimination.  Mr Lambert’s verdict rocked Madeline so much so that the only way to take back some of the control she thought she had was to evade the sentence that he handed down.  Rather than face judgment, she took the coward’s way out, rebelliously committing suicide without warning or explanation, instead of experiencing the Gelman mind altering procedure, as well as the terrifying torture she would have known was waiting for her in the White Room. 

To die for a cause ... was heroic, but in Madeline’s situation this was not the case. She was not brave, far from it.  She took the easy way out rather than face the consequences of her actions.  Her suicide was a major fuck you to all those gathered in the Committee Room, indicating her determination and stoicism to the very end by taking her own life, on her own terms.  Madeline was willing to kill herself, because she was not able to face the fact that she was to be put through a series of very difficult and unpleasant and torturous experiences in the White Room, as pay back for her crimes over the years. This was a terrifying thought to her, but taking that option out of the equation was her way of keeping her persona in the forefront. She would be facing a fate worse than death … humiliation and disgrace … and she was not going to let that happen. Thus, her cyanide capsule was her friend in controlling the narrative.

Rather than face the punishment announced, plus the public humiliation of those in Section One knowing her destiny with her ultimate execution, was an anathema to her. Before her sentence could be put into effect; her self-inflicted death would have caught them all by surprise.  If she could avoid this death and torture and loss of the one thing she cherished the most … her superior intellect … then that is why she preferred to do what she did. Loss of control over her mind was the one thing she was not prepared to relinquish, and she knew that is what would happen when they subjected her to the Gelman procedure. Her suicide would demonstrate her own stoicism and honour in the face of adversity. Not only that, but it denied those present the satisfaction of eliminating her.  That one fact was her last hurrah.

Madeline’s reflections before her decision …

In the White Room, she made vital decisions including who lived and who died, while on occasion it was she who pulled the trigger to carry out a cancellation, but now the tables had been turned and it was she who was destined to die.

Henry and Elizabeth’s torture orders would be comparable to the fate she'd inflicted on many terrorists which were relentless until they cracked and were executed. She knew of the torture twins’ expertise in all kinds of ways to make a person suffer.  She had trained them after all and knew what they were capable of.  Thus, she was not prepared to be on the receiving end of their tactics while they administered any of their tried-and-true signature practices.

The fact that she had given Henry and Elizabeth the orders to carry out their brand of interrogation on captured terrorists was enough incentive to control her own destiny. She was willing to sacrifice her own life to stay in control. The writing had been on the wall for both her and Operations, for there was no other verdict in this interrogation inquiry that would in any way exonerate them of their crimes.  The evidence the Head of Oversight had acquired was too overwhelming.   All their buried skeletons had risen from the grave and had been their undoing.  

Her last-ditch effort to use Operations as her plea of insanity was farcical.   She knew it, and so did all those gathered.  All throughout this inquisition she had woven a tale of delusion in her own head about Claire and Jamie. However, she was not prepared to even contemplate those scenarios.  She would go out on her own terms and surprise the lot of them … Which she decided she would.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Her thoughts couldn’t help but turn to Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” and the conflict between Shylock’s and Antonio. “Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh ….”

She knew those in the Committee Room would also want a pound of her flesh.

First Colum Mackenzie and Letitia Chisholm would enjoy seeing her squirm in the White Room chair as Henry and Elizabeth were ordered to make her cuts unbearably painful for what she had done to Letitia. It had taken years before Colum knew what exactly had happened to her.  Now that they had been reacquainted, by none other than James Fraser, she knew that his contempt of her was evident.  His dossier information on her on all the things carried out in secret, which she never thought would be discovered were now all exposed. There was no hiding the truth any longer.  Colum would also be seeking some chastisement for the assassination attempt on his life to rid her and Operations of his meddling in Section One affairs. The clarity of the situation all made sense to her now.  Colum had in fact used his unannounced visits to ascertain intel on them for this inquisition. How duped they had both been.  They treated his visits with disdain and inconvenience never realising that he had the jump on them the whole time.   

Then there was the Head of Centre, Quentin Lambert, who now had an overall picture of what misdeeds she and Dougal had carried out, from treason, treachery, manipulation of their subordinates and all their other sins of malice and deception. These in themselves were all punishable by the verdict he had given.  Over the years she and Dougal had lost sight of Section One’s ideals and had let power go to their heads at the expense of their operatives.  Thus, anyone who had discovered their domination plans were eliminated.  They could ill afford to be found out, for had they been, this decision would have happened long ago.  They had been clever enough to cover their tracks … but not clever enough to not be found out.  Now she and Dougal had to pay the supreme price of their decisions.

Although she bore some of the responsibility for these crimes, however it was her treatment of Mr Lambert’s niece that would be an entirely different matter.  He would certainly not be forgiving for what she had put Claire Beauchamp through with the Gelman procedure. The fact that it was a severe, debilitating mind changing method of control by eliminating her free will, her emotions, as well as a personality changing procedure, had not been underestimated by him. This procedure was barbaric and that fact that she had used it twice on two very strong and influential women in Section who were an ongoing threat to her and Operations could not be underestimated. The Head of Centre really had no recourse for the sentence handed down.  She had found out her fate and Dougal would soon discover his in the White Room for all the other horrendous miscellaneous actions he had done as well. 

That then left Jamie and Claire to take a final pot shot at her in the torture chair.  Would they in fact follow suit of Colum, Letitia and Mr Lambert or think that it was just enough punishment already given to her.  She had always known that James Fraser was undeniably the better leader for Section One.  It was this fear of him doing to them, what Dougal had done to Letitia Chisholm in usurping control of Section One that had resulted in their methods to control him through his partner Claire Beauchamp.  This was the ongoing threat that caused much of the angst they put him through with what they initiated. However, in retrospect and regardless if they had known of Claire’s association with the Head of Centre, they would have still done the same things.  Whatever it took, and regardless who suffered or died, their endgame was to protect their hold on supreme power at any cost.

She knew that James Fraser would take no prisoners, as he had on occasion when he himself was in charge of interrogating terrorists in the White Room.  If she was manacled in the infamous metal restraining chair awaiting torture, would Jamie carry it out or would he watch while Elizabeth and Henry carried out his orders?  Would he wish to see her suffer for what she had done to his partner? 

Nevertheless, her one and only hope lay with Claire Beauchamp.  She believed that Claire may just forgive her for her deeds in a last act of compassion.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

As Section One’s Level 9 executive strategist, second-in-command, chief tactician, and psychologist she was Operations' closest ally and confidante. She was cold and efficient in the execution of her duties, which often involved using torture to extract information from captured terrorist subjects. But now everything that she’d been in control of had been stripped from her.  Her power had been eroded to such an extent that she had no control whatsoever over her fate, that is, unless she took back that control.  

All throughout her leadership, she had been a master at manipulation, and she used this skill to control her underlings in Section.  Because she knew the psyche of each operative inside and out, she could push the right buttons to get what she wanted from each one, every time through the fear of the power she held over them.  She liked it that way. However, that had all eroded because it was Claire Beauchamp and James Fraser who had ultimately threatened her control within the organization.  Her tampering and manipulation of these two exemplary operatives had been her downfall. It was her "Type One Directive" against their romantic partnership that had kicked off a chain of events that even she was unable to predict, events that eventually forced her to make choices that had major repercussions for the future of Section One.

Her power centred around the perception that the limits of her knowledge and abilities seemed infinite.  But this had made her overemphasize her vanity in her achievement in demonstrating that persona.  Pride came before a fall, and fall she had, with the knowledge that Murtagh Fitzgibbons had bested her opinion of herself.   She had an overinflated ego and because of this, she had abused her control over Jamie and Claire in particular, by using her keen insight to pry deeply into their minds.  This was her modus operandi, but it had ultimately led her to where she was at this very moment in time … defeated.  Her power and control had been decimated, thus hearing the severity of her sentence was something she was not prepared to accept.

Condemned to die, she knew that her demise would not be pretty. Given all that she had done over the years and especially what she had put Claire Beauchamp through, she was aware that the Head of Centre would like to prolong her torture to make her truly suffer.  And suffer she most deservedly would.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

She had been given an outline of what her judgement would entail, humility, tried and true torture techniques as well as being subjected to the Gelman procedure, but in her mind, this was the worst of all the decisions.  She valued her Machiavellian mind and her superior intellect. The thought of having that erased with the same method she had used on Claire Beauchamp and Letitia Chisholm, was a punishment worse than death.  

Her mind power was the strongest and most useful power she possessed.  She relied on her intellect acumen and used her keen perception to pry deeply into the minds of others. Her cold intelligence coupled with her brilliance as a perceptive strategist, could manipulate everybody without any feeling of remorse or hesitation.  It was this power, together with her imagination for unusual and devious ways of making people conform, whether in the White Room or within Section, that was at the forefront of her success or failure. Her shrewd schemes conjured up opportunities that she and Operations embraced, or when these plans placed obstacles in the way of their success, she then had to manoeuvre a way out of the situations.

She highly valued her mindset, and Operations relied on her uncanny perception to make things happen.  Being subjected to the Gelman procedure would erase all that she held sacrosanct. Her mind was the most powerful tool that she used to indicate and evaluate all levels of success. Her manipulation of others, even Operations at times, relied on her influencing the physical well-being and the emotional state of those in Section. She was always one step ahead of others, always plotting ways that would see her and Dougal outsmart all enemies, and it was her mindset that plotted their strategies for power. Her brain was the inscrutable weapon used in planning all strategic stratagems as well as mission and personal profiles done in Section. To have all of that taken from her was unthinkable.

Through her mind games she was able to keep control of those who feared her authority but it was her enigmatic persona that was not easily deciphered. Within the White Room she loved matching her wits against the captured terrorists, knowing that she had the upper hand, and because of her cool demeanour would throw the targets off centre. She had personal ambition to rule with an iron fist, and was a dangerous adversary to all who stood in her way.  It was her way or the highway. If operatives wouldn't make those sacrifices willingly, she had no compunctions about manipulating or even coercing them to do so, as in the case of Claire Beauchamp.

Unfortunately, Colum’s dossiers had uncovered her manipulations for which she now had to pay the ultimate price … death in the White Room.  So, as a profiler and head strategist, she’d weighed up all the scenarios in her head before deciding to take the action she was about to do.  The shock of her decision would remain with those gathered for she had taken back the control she had forfeited during this interrogation.   

Hence, she would chart her own destiny now. 

When she and Operations had been placed in this situation in the Committee Room, she had never once thought things would amount to what they did. In retrospect, Colum Mackenzie had held all the cards as to their fate. She and Dougal were always doomed from the start for the evidence was irrefutable.

She had held steady with all the accusations read out, but the straw that broke the camel’s back, was the information about Murtagh Fitzgibbons. This knowledge that their munitions expert was the spy within Section One was one of total humiliation for her. The fact that he had well and truly flown under the radar, right under their noses by stealth, and surreptitiously gathered intel against them both like an invisible apparition, had gnawed on her mind.  People in Section were ghosts to the outside world.  However, she had never thought that Murtagh Fitzgibbons would also been a clandestine ghost within Section itself, and one that had worked against them so successfully. 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Stunned into silence on hearing her sentence, she couldn’t deny how she failed to recognize Murtagh Fitzgibbons as the mole. It only went to prove that she didn’t have her finger on the pulse of the comings and goings at Section from those in specialist positions as she had thought she did. Fitzgibbons had certainly been the one who had used his smarts in a way she had never ever expected.  This fact shocked her to the core and rattled her perceived stronghold over all their operatives. Her arrogant belief was that she and Operations had total control over all in Section, but this had been shown not to be the case. Mistakenly thinking that she knew everything happening 24/7 in Section really knocked her for a loop.   She’d always believed that she knew what operatives thought, knew how to manipulate them by fear of cancellation for hers and Dougal’s endgame, and could further their goals of total power any way they saw fit, had now been confirmed misguided.  Finally realising how ignorant both she and Operations had been regarding Murtagh Fitzgibbons, it was this final humiliation that had tipped the scales in the decision that she would make.

So, she would take the easy way out knowing she was going to die in the most painful and humiliating way possible, while realising that no one would miss her or mourn her passing, except maybe Operations.  However, at the same time she was egotistical enough to believe that when she was really gone, then it would hit home that they would indeed miss her in some way.  She was now on her own as she had always been … making her own decision to suit her own agenda. However, under the circumstances, would it be surprising to those there that she chose to go out on her own terms?  

The aftermath …

The cyanide capsule Madeline had ingested deliberately contained a fatally poisonous substance that was fast and lethal.  Her death was quick.  It was all over in less than a minute. Mr Lambert and all those in the room watched as Madeline fell to the floor lifeless, but cared not that she had taken her own life.   When Housekeeping arrived, she was unceremoniously placed on a gurney and wheeled out of the Committee Room.

“I will miss her fortitude … and our battle of wills when I visited Section.” Colum Mackenzie stated a little pensively in retrospect.

“I believe that no one in Section will mourn her passing for all the misdeeds that she was responsible for,” Letitia added, stating a truth that was undeniable.

“Madeline was so ambiguous,” Claire said as well.  “She could smile so warmly, then two seconds later, shoot someone in the head with no emotion whatsoever in the White Room.”  

James Fraser was more philosophical.  “The content of yer character is yer choice. Day by day, what ye choose, what ye think, and what ye do is who ye become. Madeline chose her own path with her choices. She lived by the sword and now she has died by her own hand.”

The Head of Centre had the final word and made this statement as the gurney was wheeled away.

“Although Madeline was basically a psychopath with almost no emotion or empathy, the choices she made ultimately led to this happening.  She was neither truly remorseful nor repentant about the crimes she committed with Operations against their own people. Her punishment was justified for her wrongdoings but I am disappointed that she could not face her sentence honourably. On the contrary she chose to again buck against the system by doing things her own way.  However, whichever way her demise was achieved, the end result is still the same. She can no longer do harm and tarnish the name of this organisation and in particular Section One.”

Mr Lambert paused for a moment before adding, “Thankfully, we are now on the cusp of new leadership under James Fraser and Claire Beauchamp which will restore faith and confidence to all who serve in Section One.”

“And what of Operations Quentin?”

“I think it’s time that I made a visit to the White Room Colum.  Perhaps you may wish to join me, seeing that you have already seen to it that he has endured some punishment already.”

“Yes sir.  He needs to be told about Madeline.  I would like to see his reaction to that news.” Colum stated. He already knew that his brother would not be too pleased to hear that his second in command had taken her own life, while he was still faced with the prospect of a prolonged stint in the White Room.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ to be continued Friday 2nd September