#they take all its mistakes and unrealized potential and turn it into a chance for creativity. Lots of heart in this little corner of the we

[thewatercolours]

@cygnascrimbles, that's a great question, and there's no one right answer. I'll give you my two cents. :-)

tl;dr: I'd heartily suggest starting with Chapter One: A Knight to Remember from King's Quest (2015) because it's the game of my heart and is intended as a starting point. But many people would suggest King's Quest I ('84) because it was the very first, or King's Quest V ('90) or VI ('93) because they are often hailed as the best the older, original series has to offer.

So if the thing that's stoking your interest in King's Quest is my blog, what you're seeing is the King's Quest game released by The Odd Gentlemen starting in 2015.

It's a reboot of the 80's/90's original games, but it requires no previous knowledge to play and is a fresh story. You play as Graham, who starts off as young lad dreaming of adventure and glory, and ends up having to unexpectedly take the throne he had planned on serving. Over the course of five chapters, you navigate the story of his life from those eager teen days straight through to old age, telling bedtimes stories to his grandchildren. It's a charming, quirky game with plenty of heart, a really gorgeous fairytale world of all hand-painted textures (they literally printed out the shapes for all the textures they needed, painted them with paint brushes, and then scanned them in to render in the game world! At least, as I understand it?), with a great sense of humour and some delightful characters. Graham himself is such a loveable dork in this version of the story, too,

But I do have to give a caveat. This game, delightful as it is, is also seriously flawed. It was released episodically, and there were complications in the dev process as it went on, so the earlier entries are much stronger than the later ones. Some parts of it are kind of stupid, there are times when it drops the ball on storytelling principles and characterization, and some wonderfully over ambitious ideas were just that - overly ambitious - and never got paid off story-wise.

But I love it anyway.

So my suggestion? Chapter One: A Knight to Remember (2015) is a free download, so I'd heartily say, "Try it out and see if you like it!" Most people think it's the best one of the reboot - it's a gorgeous, lighthearted story somewhat in the spirit of The Princess Bride (homages galore, and Wallace Shawn who played Vizzini features as one of the main cast.) It's a tale about a tournament, and a dragon's eye, and new friendships. It's self-contained if you want to stop there, and it's just full of joy and puzzles and a couple of surprisingly moving moments. If you want more after that, maybe check out a little of a playthrough of Chapter Two, which is also great but has very different atmosphere, and judge if it's something you want to shell out a shiny gold coin for.

All that being said, there's a sizable portion of the population who would suggest going back to King's Quest I (1984), which is where it all started and which turned forty yesterday! It was a huge mover and shaker in video game history back in its day. It's about Graham's attempts to recover the kingdom's three stolen treasures.

Others would suggest starting with King's Quest V (Graham journeys to rescue his family from a wizard) or VI (Graham's son Alexander quests to rescue a princess in a tower. ) They were made in the nineties and many players consider them to be King's Quest at its best (VI especially is generally beloved.)

You might find you enjoy these games much more than the reboot, but since I'm not as knowledgeable about the older games, I doubt I am the person to do them justice. If they intrigue you, you might want to do your own research or chat with someone who really loves them!

Anyhow, I don't want to talk your ear off. Thanks for asking, and let me know if I can be helpful any which way.

*whispers* ... and go download Chapter One: A Knight to Remember. It's free. You might like it. It's here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/345390/Kings_Quest/

[meltedhorror]

Part 2/?

First part

...

He ran. He had turned around and ran. Each step hitting the floor hard, echoing hollowly throughout the building. The disfigured creatures words repeated over and over in his mind like a broken record, words that he couldn’t seem to shake.

“You better start looking for your buddy before it’s too late.”

Simon was in here. Something had happened, and that THING, that radio looking monster, had something to do with it, he was sure of it.

He stumbled, nearly tripping on broken off cement that had fallen from the ceiling at some point, and barely caught himself from falling face first onto the hard floor. He was heaving shakily as he finally slowed down. Emmet didn’t feel like he was far away enough, but he probably never would as long as he was in the same building as that ghastly figure of a man.

The longhaired man leaned heavily against the wall closest to him, desperately trying to catch his breath.

This couldn’t be happening.

Just a few hours before this they had both been wandering around the area and marveling at the halfly fallen down buildings, theorising about what this place might’ve been used for in its prime years...

But all that seemed so far away now, and almost unreal. None of this felt real. It couldn’t be, right? This was just a bad nightmare. It had to be.

He fumbled into his pockets before fishing up his phone. It was still dead. No matter how much he begged it to turn back on, the screen remained black.

“Damnit- Why didn’t either of us think of bringing a flashlight? Why didn’t I do that?” But the realisation of why hit him pretty quick. He had given Simon the keys, and the car was still locked.

He groaned at his own stupidity, letting himself slide down the wall until he was sitting on the floor and leaning back on it. He could always try and go back to the car, break one of the windows for the sake of getting a flashlight and a powerbank to charge his phone and then come back to try and find his friend again. But the darkness of the night advised against it. They had parked away from the area, just in case anyone showed up which would give them a better chance of getting out and away from there, but it proved to be a big mistake now during the dark hours. It was hard enough trying to find his way back to this building, it was probably near impossible to find their car in the forest without as much as a light to guide him.

He rubbed his eyes tiredly, still somewhat winded from running. He figured the time was around 11 now, which left him at least seven hours until sunrise. He was stranded there until he either found Simon or the sun came up, and he was hoping on the former. Judging by what that radio man said, he didn’t have much time to spare and a trip back to their car could potentially cost more than he was willing to risk.

He let his tired golden brown eyes open again, looking up above him with a sigh. His eyes had started to get used to the dark, and he could at least make out more silhouettes than before, but he was still left fumbling in the dark. He needed a lightsource, or else it’d be impossible to find his way around at all.

Emmet got up and dusted himself off a bit, before pulling off his hoodie and tying it around his waist. He knew he had a lighter, but that wouldn’t be nearly enough to let him see his surroundings. Looking around a bit, he found a broken off piece of wood, which he immediately managed to hurt himself on the moment he picked it up. Loose splinters stabbed his hand over and over as he grabbed it, but he didn’t have time to do anything about that. He winced but carried on with his plan.

Untying the hoodie again, he picked a part that he thought would affect him the least if he needed to wear it again before tearing off a chunk of fabric and tied it around the wooden piece.

That was gonna burn out too fast. Way too fast.

He looked around a bit, before spotting a puddle of presumably water. If he drenched the bottom of the fabric, it’d stop the fire from eating it too quickly…

After a bit of carefully dipping the stick into the water, he felt confident enough in his makeshift torch to light it. His hands were shaking and he could barely control his fingers, but after a few attempts he finally managed to light the thing.

Immediately the fire stuck to the object and gasped to life, basking his surroundings in a golden flickering light as the flames licked upwards, reaching for the ceiling before disappearing into nothing, letting the cycle of raw untamed heat repeat itself. Emmet couldn’t help but smile widely, staring at the flame as if it was his saviour.

There was hope. He would find Simon before sunrise and they’d go home, and all this would be but a bad dream left in the past.

He got up from his crouched down position and looked around at his options of where to go next. He wasn’t exactly sure where he came from, but what he was sure of was that he didn’t want to go back there and risk running into that… Thing for a second time.

That's when it struck him.

That creature wasn’t alone. It couldn’t be. It didn’t make sense for there to just be one of them, there had to be more like him. And what if Simon had already met another one? Obviously that radio man knew about him, Simon had probably already ran into him once, but...

Something wasn’t right. The radio man had obviously let them both go intentionally, but Simon never returned. He had to have run into something else. Something worse… What was it exactly he had been hinting at when he said ‘before it’s too late’?

He shivered, feeling the panic start to build even worse in his chest. The being had talked about some sort of competition or game, and that he was a contestant. But a contestant for what? What was the prize? But most importantly, what was the cost?

What exactly had they started when they walked in here?

Emmet started walking. He couldn’t just keep standing around and do nothing, he had to find Simon and he had to find him quickly, before anything could happen. He couldn’t afford to let his fears take control. His footsteps were rushed, but he wasn’t running. No, he needed to save his energy. For every room he’d pass by he’d take a look inside, letting the light of the fire guide him.

Every room seemed to be the same, a dusty and broken down mess, no furniture and no doors. He started to wonder if he was just walking in circles at this point. Was he lost? No, he couldn’t be… Right?

He stopped. From his left, a cold draught gently brushed past him, tugging at the flame that in response bent to the opposite direction, following the rush of air in a gentle manner. It felt like a warning, like a sign of something very bad about to happen.

He looked over to its source, which revealed to be a set of stairs leading both up to the upper floor and to what seemed to be an underground level. But the breeze seemed to be coming from the latter.

Hesitantly he walked a bit closer to the stairs. The makeshift torch revealed a sign placed on the wall, with an arrow pointing down the stairs.

‘Tunnels’

The stairs turned not too much further down from where he was standing, so he couldn’t see what was further down. Emmet could only assume the tunnels connected all the buildings surrounding the area. But maybe that’s where his friend had gone... He fell into complete silence, concentrating completely on what he could hear instead of what he could see.

The light crackling of the fire that he was holding, the low whistling of the wind that surrounded him, the shaking of leaves, and…

Sobbing. The faint sound of someone quietly sobbing.

And it was coming from the lower floor. From the tunnels. Emmet gasped, opening his eyes again and staring down the direction it was coming from.

He frantically looked around, making sure nothing was secretly stalking him, waving the fire around him as he looked. He was alone. He turned back to the stairs, which now reminded him more of hungry jaws waiting to swallow him and trap him deep underground... He had to go down there. He had to find Simon.

Without wasting another moment by just standing around, he rushed down the stairs, careful of where he set his feet. The building was old, and there was no telling when it would let the flooring fall beneath him and send him tumbling down.

Well down in the bottom floor, he wasn’t too surprised to find himself in a much narrower hallway, piping running just above his head and other corridors shooting off from this one. If he thought the area he was in before was maze like it was nothing in comparison to this.

He could hear the faint sobbing a bit more clearly now, it was definitely coming from here. But whoever that was crying must’ve heard him ascend, and immediately silenced.

“Simon?”

No response.

He slowly started walking, checking each corridor he passed. He thought he heard something move down one of the corridors shooting off from the one he was walking down, and it sounded like… Cracking. Something breaking over and over again, and a faint dragging sound…

‘No, you’re just imagining things… It’s an old building...’

The corridors shooting off from the main one seemed to become fewer and fewer the further he walked, instead being replaced by various rooms, but even then they were placed scaresly and far apart. It didn’t take him long to get to the very end of the corridor. But something was different about these rooms.

They had doors.

Each door was halfly closed, but something stuck out about one of them. Unlike the other doors, it seemed to have been moved recently judging by the dust on the floor. Cautiously he approached that one, and with his one free hand pushed it open. The door creaked and groaned on its hinges as in a protest, scraping the floor with whatever rubble was stuck to the bottom of it.

The light flowed into the room like a giant wave of gold, casting long shadows from the various things on the floor. But one of the shadows wasn’t a shadow at all... 

It was a person.

The light seemed to temporarily blind the man sitting curled up on the floor in the farthest away corner, causing him to raise his arms in a defensive position and curl up even closer to himself. Emmet could do nothing but stare, for sitting there on the floor and slowly turning his gaze up to meet his was Simon.

He looked completely shocked, hair in a mess and hoodie severely dirtied up. His hands were severely and painfully scraped and bloodied, he must’ve fell somewhere before he got there. The remnants of tears glistered against the light as he stared up at him...

“What... happened?” Emmet carefully takes a step forward, gaining an even more panicked look from Simon, who had just started shaking his head frantically. Something was very wrong.

“N- No… No, no you shouldn’t be here- Emmet you need to run, get out!” he hisses out through stifled sobs

“What do you-”

“We don’t have time!! You have to put out the light and run! He’ll find you!!”

Emmet stared wide eyed back at him, completely frozen in shock.

“He?”

But before Simon could answer that, Emmet could tell something was off. His focus had shifted from looking directly at him to somewhere behind him, eyes completely empty of emotion and his expression seeming to dull into nothing. There was a low, disgusting cracking sound right behind him, before he felt a cold breath hit the back of his neck.

Whatever Simon had been trying to warn him about had found them…

[josiemaxinegallows]

LIFE BEGINS AT CUM Sermon #1 of the SUNDAY SATANISM series by Josie M. Gallows

Life begins at cum. Cum doesn’t have a heartbeat but it can travel. Cum is alive. When a cumshot is killed we call it “spermicide.” When an egg dies that’s called “ovicide.”

The abortion debate is a moral stopwatch. When is life alive? Choose your philosophy. The intrepid sperm is alive. The egg, also. Both have potential to become Bible believing patriots. Inshallah. Certain extremists take these factoids deadly serious. The anti-masturbators of the past are the great-grandpappies of today’s anti-abortion sharia.

Zygotes and blastocysts are living. But they’re unthinking. Devoid of personality. No stake in the world of human affairs. No history, with thousands of man hours invested. Unlike the mother, the fetus is alive but has no life that can be halted, delayed, or destroyed. Nobody relies on the unwanted fetus. The fetal heartbeat can’t be heartbroken. It knows nothing about itself. The fetus is the most innocent thing in all the world, because it’s a non-person.

Pregnancy effects the woman more than abortion effects the unborn. Abortion isn’t a care free decision but the scales have been miscalibrated. Intentionally.

It’s political theater. The Christians who rule value the cumshot more than the woman. They legitimize their rule by appealing to ignorant sentimentality. Observe the very same men, and their dutiful wives, dispassionate towards every other example of innocent life. It’s assured these men are unsympathetic to strange fetuses. They bother because of theater, simple and plain. Their own misogynistic superstition plays a role, and takes its toll, but whatever the motivation, the damage is the same.

Dysfunctional Christian strongholds such as Georgia and Alabama are threatening the state’s violence against women who might need an abortion. I’m sure, the Mega Churches blame loose moral values for the “murder of babies.” They indict everything but Christianity for the sorry state of family values. But they don’t get off the hook. Christianity is the loose moral value.

The state of family life is botched by religions like Christianity. The church is why the proletariat struggles to find its footing. Place your hopes and your values in the unreal and a barren harvest is a sure thing. The Satanic Age can’t be faulted. The church can be blamed for Girls Gone Stupid. I blame the peer pressure of good Christian morality for every teenage girl who stunts her future by the wretchedly sentimental act of becoming a teen mom, in this day and age; if she has any choice. Chances are, she doesn’t have a choice. I don’t blame sexual promiscuity.

Without the church, abortion and dysfunction wouldn’t occur at the rate they do. If the Satanic Age, an age of meaningful liberty, were allowed to flourish and take its final shape – and sooner rather than later, it will – only the most necessary of abortions would take place. Anton LaVey himself commented on this in Satan Speaks!, where he suggested compulsory sterilization. Read for yourself, The Third Side: The Uncomfortable Alternative, pages 30-31. With everything we’ve learned since then, perhaps it’s time to elaborate.

The Christian types have resisted, corrupted, or destroyed efforts to create a more responsible public, better fit for parenting and less likely to abort. The Christian resists education as a natural predator, because it challenges the primacy of The Holy Bible as the sole source of public wisdom. But it’s sexual education he truly rails against. Private neurosis becomes a civilization wide crisis.

As much as possible, the public’s kept in the dark about their own bodies, practically bereft of deeper knowledge about birth control and relationships. Resistance is met with an unhinged freak-out, each and every time. Ignorance, not family, is the public institution.

Forthcoming generations will be deprived of choice through sheer ignorance. The mutation is already taking hold. What good is a public, today, where only the therapist and the educator are compelled to learn about child psychology and child education? This is a profound loss to the species because Mega Church Christians are hysterical, in need of a 72-hour psych hold, that gays might be included, that women wouldn’t be beasts of burden by default. The unreality of porn is the greatest source of sex ed for boys. Good going, Jesus.

There is a gaping hole where adult values have been effectively sledge hammered out of the wall between order and chaos. The most basic of instruction is morally troubled. The young won’t learn the folkways and traditions that made life effective in the old world. The third world can do more with less. The western kiddo is deprived, because the girl might be oppressed and the boy might be sissified by wearing an apron. They aren’t taught to cook, clean, build, organize, mend, hunt, or study for anything but a standardized test. They don’t learn to grow, preserve, take inventory, or balance an account. They certainly won’t learn to be effective parents, parents on purpose, able to delegate roles, and capable of discipline without abuse. Their own parents won’t be around to teach these things in full because, thanks to Protestant austerity, both parents are entrenched in the workforce. Seeing as the churches on every street corner don’t pay their taxes, to subsidize the results of their own fuck-up failures, it wouldn’t be affordable to institute these solutions anyway. Let me make it Satanically clear, the zygote has little to look forward to.

Let’s no longer pretend Christian hyperbole isn’t to blame, please and thank you. It’s time to skewer the bastards. They’ve had US Surgeon Generals fired in disgrace for trying to turn the tide. It’s not hypothetical. Our botched republics are at least one part theocracy, right now. Each of us have a vested interest in dismantling Christendom.

The Christian man can’t get a clue. After millennia of accrued evidence that hormones are stronger than scripture, he persists in his delusional pipe-dream that abstinence will save the soul of the nation. Of the 2 billion odd Christians, the majority of them are Catholic. The Catholic is well known to teach the poor, destitute, or insane, to forego contraceptives. The missionaries of Christ are plague rats who journey to regions frequented by famine, drought, and genocide. In their wake, they leave behind the building blocks of ignorance. Be fruitful and multiply, and should the babes die of dehydration, God bless. If abortion is murder, are missionaries enacting crimes against humanity? If we’re talking results, let’s talk negligent manslaughter. Can we try the Pope in Nuremberg? Every Mega Church pastor, too? And why not? Lately, they love the idea of threatening us with the state’s violence. Tit for fucking tat.

I suspect the degeneracy and misery they sow is coincidentally of great benefit to Christendom. If a child is born with his hands outstretched for alms then he’s a vassal to whoever controls the collection plate. The destitute and dysfunctional are most in need of the mad hope of spiritual religion. The more dysfunction at play the better, with less help to go around the desperation can only deepen, creating ever more loyal subservience. This is why the junkie, the convict, and the lunatic, are often the most devout believers. Look to the worst human settlements and you’ll find the most religion. It sure looks that way. It’s coincidental, but all the same.

Christian men don’t lead. They force. They penalize. Ironically, it’s not we Satanists who love a human sacrifice. It’s the Christian type, the Muslim type, who make burnt offerings of suffering women and children. The stench is pleasing to the nostrils of Allah. Here’s a secret: killing a woman isn’t necessary to sacrifice her to God. Remember that.

We do need a program of family planning. A real institution. A revolution of prevention would provide all the family values we’d ever need. What do we get instead? Pale face sharia.

The frauen of the church want the children of rape born into this world. The morally unsatisfied Christian man wants a mother’s trauma relived at every milestone of development. Allahu Ackbar. Children of incest would skinny dip in our gene pool, protecting and defending the purity of southern heritage. Christians want their own nightmarish conjuring of “family values, with no compromise and no revision. The Handmaid’s Tale feels less like speculative fiction and more like a plausible threat under the right working conditions. Christian family values reduce women into beasts of burden. Breeding stock. If it means killing our mothers, sisters, and daughters, then praise be. They would rescind the right to terminate a high risk pregnancy. In Jesus name, hands to the sky. A family should lose its matriarch for the sake of one doomed pregnancy.

The mother’s heartbeat is a chicken heart, to the Christian – she exists for her eggs. Her own heartbeat is a petty concern. Her body is meant to warm the nest and receive the cock. Nothing more. Thy Kingdom Cum.

By the sign of the cross, the bodies of women are livestock to be tortured, not respected. Should her fetus be nonviable, this Peckerwood Caliphate would have her carry the miscarriage to term, wrecking her mental and physical health in the process. If an accident should happen, should contraceptives fail, should a bright and talented woman be impregnated against her will, the saints would have her follow through. Carry the mistake to the very bitter end. Nevermind the repercussions to herself, to her family, or to her society. God is good. “Live with your mistakes,” she’s told. “Take responsibility.” Yet abortion is often the most responsible choice possible.

Under His Eye, a profoundly deformed fetus would be denied a merciful death in the comfort of the womb. The family home would become a hospice care for the irreparably broken. Christians fancy using adjectives like “unnatural” and “abomination.” Their tongues can’t taste the irony. There couldn’t be a more apt description of permissive, degenerate behavior, than rooting for the legally required birth of genetic tragedies. And yet, they’d deny women, at every opportunity, to choose health over deformity, to choose success over pointless drudgery. Foundering horses get more mercy at the hands of the farmer.

Since these Christians can’t send us to hell themselves, they seem bent on making the Earth as miserable as possible. And with what they’re pushing, they’re getting the job done as best they can.

What might be the Satanic alternative? The third side? “Of course, whenever an issue becomes more important than a solution, don’t expect to stumble over a third side.” Dok LaVey was right. And I don’t suspect any real solution, proposed by any Satanist, stands a chance of becoming the mainstream institution. Flying the banner of Satan over an issue would probably be detrimental, anyway. Though what could we do, individually, to fight back?

We need to knock the crucifix off the flag pole. We need education, to start with. Miseducation is the church’s lifeblood. With so much agitation about the pay of teachers, there’s not much talk about the usefulness of what they’re allowed to teach. The program must be fixed, from K to 12, from Associates to Bachelors. If the public infrastructure is rendered obsolete by moral trouble, then rational, secular, wealthy individuals with a stake in the future, might consider building an alternative – freely available. Perhaps. A revival of classic education and training, strengthened by the lessons we’ve learned in the last century, could be useful. Sex ed, and what comes after birth, would have its place.

Up next, accountability. I know it sounds feminist – and I know that puts it in the bargain bin of ideology for a great many of this “congregation” – but men aren’t taking nearly responsibility they could. The burdens of sexuality and care of the young still fall, mainly, to women. Should we stay 2,000 years backwards, also?

If not, it’s time to talk about the vasectomy. The vasectomy is the most effective, lowest risk, cost effective, least detrimental form of birth control on the market. It has no effect on hormones. It poses no risk of blood clot or mood instability. The vas differens, the small tube that makes ejaculate fertile, provides around 2% of the total volume in a cumshot. If a spectator were genuflecting for her facial, she could never tell the difference. It’s reliable and reversible. Some 80% of American men are circumcised so there should be no squeamishness involved here. Unlike circumcision, the vasectomy doesn’t decrease sexual pleasure. It’s not outwardly visible.

If it’s such a man’s world, where’s the man’s choice in conception?

How many parasitic industries would collapse in a generation were the vasectomy as common as the circumcision? If the vasectomy were incentivized, normalized, and subsidized as the responsible choice it is, Christianity would spring another leak in its gas tank. And we could start to say “Good riddance.” Where Satan is no longer an effective spook to lure in the masses, abortion picks up the slack. Take away abortion and we deprive the church of its holocaust propaganda.

The courts would lose their cut of the child support racket. Ghettos would flourish. With more to go around, and less waste, what would become of the welfare state? And in turn, the nanny state?

Schools would no longer be overcrowded brainwash laundromats, where thanks to inherited hardship we still separate our whites from our colors. Missionaries could dig wells while doctors without borders could perform vasectomies. The global population could start to shrink, reduced to only the most wanted, most loved, best cared for generations of children.

Tract housing wouldn’t scar the earth and wildlife could return, ecosystems restored. With so much concern for global warming and the clear cutting of rain forests, isn’t any sensible environmental policy one that reduces the human population and human consumption together? With so many human rights violations, wouldn’t a smaller, better educated, better prepared generation, be less susceptible to tyranny? By virtue of there being fewer people, each person would matter all the more. That sounds like pro-life to me.

Is my speculation so far fetched? Could the proliferation of schooling and the all-but-compulsory vasectomy get so much accomplished? Look to their absence. Look to a Christian Nation, as forced as it is. Look everywhere ignorance and theocracy hold hands.

The outrage will have its way. A woman’s choice vs. a woman’s jail time. And for all the sorrow caused by unplanned, unmitigated, uneducated parenthood, solutions will go ignored. Remember this, the uncomfortable third side is so uncomfortable because nobody gets to feel like a messiah, and somebody has to do an honest day’s work.

HAIL SATAN! Josie Maxine Gallows Kali Yuga

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are not THE Satanic view on abortion. But they are MY Satanic views on abortion. Cross-posted from my official website. Want more? Become a member of The Kali Yuga by subscribing to my content on PATREON. www.patreon.com/josiemaxinegallows

[go-redgirl]

Biden Plans First Major Federal Tax Hike Since 1993

Joe Biden is planning the first major federal tax hike since 1993 to help pay for the long-term economic program designed as a follow-up to his pandemic-relief bill, according to people familiar with the matter.

Unlike the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus act, the next initiative, which is expected to be even bigger, won’t rely just on government debt as a funding source.

While it’s been increasingly clear that tax hikes will be a component — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said at least part of the next bill will have to be paid for, and pointed to higher rates — key advisers are now making preparations for a package of measures that could include an increase in both the corporate tax rate and the individual rate for high earners.

With each tax break and credit having its own lobbying constituency to back it, tinkering with rates is fraught with political risk. That helps explain why the tax hikes in Bill Clinton’s signature 1993 overhaul stand out from the modest modifications done since.

For the Biden administration, the planned changes are an opportunity not just to fund key initiatives like infrastructure, climate and expanded help for poorer Americans, but also to address what Democrats argue are inequities in the tax system itself. The plan will test both Biden’s capacity to woo Republicans and Democrats’ ability to remain unified.

“His whole outlook has always been that Americans believe tax policy needs to be fair, and he has viewed all of his policy options through that lens,” said Sarah Bianchi, head of U.S. public policy at Evercore ISI and a former economic aide to Biden. “That is why the focus is on addressing the unequal treatment between work and wealth.”

While the White House has rejected an outright wealth tax, as proposed by progressive Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, the administration’s current thinking does target the wealthy.

The White House is expected to propose a suite of tax increases, mostly mirroring Biden’s 2020 campaign proposals, according to four people familiar with the discussions.

The tax increases included in any broader infrastructure and jobs package are likely to include repealing portions of President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax law that benefit corporations and wealthy individuals, as well as making other changes to make the tax code more progressive, said the people familiar with the plan.

The following are among proposals currently planned or under consideration, according to the people, who asked not to be named as the discussions are private:

Raising the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%

Paring back tax preferences for so-called pass-through businesses, such as limited-liability companies or partnerships

Raising the income tax rate on individuals earning more than $400,000

Expanding the estate tax’s reach

A higher capital-gains tax rate for individuals earning at least $1 million annually. (Biden on the campaign trail proposed applying income-tax rates, which would be higher)

An independent analysis of the Biden campaign tax plan done by the Tax Policy Center estimated it would raise $2.1 trillion over a decade, though the administration’s plan is likely to be smaller. Bianchi earlier this month wrote that congressional Democrats might agree to $500 billion.

The overall program has yet to be unveiled, with analysts penciling in $2 trillion to $4 trillion. No date has yet been set for an announcement, though the White House said the plan would follow the signing of the COVID-19 relief bill.

An outstanding question for Democrats is which parts of the package need to be funded, amid debate over whether infrastructure ultimately pays for itself — especially given current borrowing costs, which remain historically low. Efforts to make the expanded child tax credit in the pandemic-aid bill permanent — something with a price tag estimated at more than $1 trillion over a decade — could be harder to sell if pitched as entirely debt-financed.

Democrats would need at least 10 Republicans to back the bill to move it under regular Senate rules. But GOP members are signaling they are prepared to fight.

“We’ll have a big robust discussion about the appropriateness of a big tax increase,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said last month, predicting Democrats would pursue a reconciliation bill that forgoes the GOP and would aim for a corporate tax even higher than 28%.

Kevin Brady, the top Republican on the House Ways & Means Committee, said, “There seems to a be a real drive to tax investment of capital gains at marginal income rates,” and called that a “terrible economic mistake.”

While about 18% of the George W. Bush administration’s tax cuts were allowed to expire in a 2013 deal, and other legislation has seen some increases in levies, 1993 marks the last comprehensive set of increases, experts say. That bill passed on a two-vote margin in the House and required the vice president to break a tie in the Senate.

“I don’t think it is an understatement to say the current partisan environment is more severe than 1993” said Ken Kies, managing director of the Federal Policy Group, a former chief of staff of the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. “So you can draw your own conclusions” about prospects for a deal this year, he said.

Still, there could be some tax initiatives Republicans could get behind. One is a shift from a gasoline tax to a vehicle-miles-traveled fee to help fund highway projects.

Another is more money for Internal Revenue Service enforcement — a way to boost revenue without raising rates. Estimates have found that for every additional $1 spent on IRS audits, the agency brings in an additional $3 to $5.

Democrats are also looking to revise tax laws that they say don’t do enough to stop U.S. companies from shifting jobs and profits offshore as another way to raise revenue, one aide said. Republicans could potentially support incentives, though it’s unclear whether they’d back penalties.

White House officials including deputy director of the National Economic Council, David Kamin — who wrote a 2019 paper on “Taxing the Rich” — are in the process of fleshing out the Biden tax plans.

As for timing, if passed, tax measures would likely take effect in 2022 — though some lawmakers and Biden supporters outside the administration have argued for holding off while unemployment remains high due to the pandemic.

Lawmakers have their own ideas for tax reforms. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden wants to consolidate energy tax breaks and require investors to pay taxes regularly on their investments including stocks and bonds that have unrealized gains.

“A nurse pays taxes with every single paycheck. A billionaire in an affluent suburb on the other hand can defer paying taxes month after month to the point where their paying taxes is pretty much optional,” Wyden told Bloomberg in an interview. “I don’t think that’s right.”

Warren has pitched a wealth tax, while House Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters has said she would like to consider a financial-transaction tax.

Democratic strategists see the next package as effectively the last chance to reshape the U.S. economy on a grand scale before lawmakers turn to the 2022 mid-term campaign.

“Normally, the party in power gets one or two shots to do major legislative packages,” said Chuck Marr, senior director of Federal Tax Policy at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “This is the next shot.”

[junker-town]

Kobe Bryant and learning to live without fear of death

Kobe Bryant showed us that the only way to live is to strive for immortality.

When Kobe Braynt died, as with any iconic person’s death, people said the tragedy should be a reminder of life’s fragility. That it should be a memento mori, a sign we could be gone at any second. A warning to push us to cherish the important things in life — our family, friends, passions, and beauty of the world — and not to waste energy on inconsequential things. The constant knowledge of how sudden life can end is a tool to energize us into living a better and more clear life.

This reminder is effective because it comes in flashes, often when public icons die. It’s only in those flashes we can truly wrangle with death. We periodically look up at the sword of Damocles to remind us that it’s there, but we can’t live while staring and thinking of it falling. It’s not that we forget our mortality, but that keeping it present in our minds is an impossible task while living.

In the movie Troy, Brad Pitt’s Achilles says, “The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”

The idea that the doomed state of life makes the beauty of it more profound is a beautiful statement, but if the gods envy us for our mortality, I think we also envy them for their immortality. If not for ourselves, then at least for the ones we love.

In The Iliad, it wasn’t Achilles who knew the burden of his own mortality, but his mother Thetis, a goddess of the sea. She was immortal and he wasn’t. She knew from a prophecy that when he chose to go to war, his life would be brief. She spends her time trying to please and soothe her son, making each moment as sweet as possible before his doom, but also trying, as she did when she first dipped him in the river Styx, to save him.

When he begged her to plead with Zeus on his behalf to cause misery to the Trojans after Agamemnon dishonored him, she accepted his request after saying:

“My child, why did I rear you, cursed in my child-bearing? Would that it had been your lot to remain by your ships without tears and without grief, since your span of life is brief and endures no long time; but now you are doomed to a speedy death and are laden with sorrow above all men; therefore to an evil fate I bore you in our halls.”

Thetis is anguished by Achilles’ mortality more than Achilles could ever be. Their moments together are sweet because she loves him, but she is also bitter from the knowledge that there won’t be many more.

Of course Achilles had to know he would eventually die. He was human and a warrior, he had killed people. He had seen and caused death. But he is most human in that he is only aware of death in the abstract.

Unless it has a set time and place, death is impossible to grasp. It is both near and far. It could come at anytime, and we know that, but the potential suddenness and finality of it is against life, which is full of second chances and change. Random, sudden death is so antithetical to the way humans see their lives, with death as the closing of the book, that the thought “I could die in the next minute” is repulsive.

The potential of sudden death can be considered only for a brief moment, before being pushed away. Otherwise, the terror of the thought would be paralyzing. Achilles could go out and fight, pout and rejoice, love and live, cherish and waste moments, because he saw himself alive in that immediate moment and the next. He eventually does die, but when Odysseus praises him in the underworld, Achilles doesn’t opine on the beauty of his doomed time in the world. He rebukes his friend:

“Glorious Odysseus: don’t try to reconcile me to my dying. I’d rather serve as another man’s labourer, as a poor peasant without land, and be alive on Earth, than be lord of all the lifeless dead.”

We wake up everyday and make plans for the future, and not just for what is immediate and urgent — plans that are often inconsequential, as if our lives are not doomed. We continuously project ourselves into the future, as Achilles must have. Helene Cixious writes in Stigmata that we feign immortality, and we have to:

“Outside, I know, but fundamentally I don’t believe, everything we think we don’t think, that’s because we’re alive, we inhabit the country of the living; that which is beyond, outside—we don’t have the heart to believe. We can’t believe in death in advance, it remains inadmissible. Our immortality is: not-believing-in-death.”

This disbelief makes itself apparent when someone who we care about does suddenly die. We think there must be a mistake, that it’s a hoax. It’s all a bad dream, and when we wake up, things will return to what they should be. A person we love couldn’t possibly be gone, it must be another. We keep hoping that by denying the event, we can make it unreal. It takes a long time for reality to settle in.

When I first read the news of Bryant’s death, I looked at the headlines reading “Kobe Bryant has died in a helicopter crash” and thought that it was an absurd statement. The more I read it, the more nonsensical it seemed. It was a thing that was possible, but didn’t feel tangible.

When we accept the truth, we go on to celebrate everything our loved one did in their short time. And there is an intensity to their time that get colored in postmortem because of how short it was, but I think that’s how we have to reconcile with death, as Odysseus tried to do. Beauty is not a quality that potential disaster adds to life; it’s what we’re left with when the physical presence of the person who we miss is gone. If Bryant had lived to be 100 and continued to try to do well, his life would have been even more beautiful. If he had been immortal, even more so. At least for us. The way it would have been for Thetis with her son.

Bryant’s stature added another layer of disbelief to his death. Bryant is someone who is seen as an icon to millions. Though we can never be immortal, we do create gods all the time. We turn people like Bryant into superheroes, into beings who are transcendent of humanity. Great athletes like him are rarely ever just athletes, they become symbols, ideas, myths. They’re as immortal as we could possibly be. For these people, a sudden death seems beneath them. Bryant, who was larger than life, dying from a negligible accident. It is incomprehensible. If he, of all people, is vulnerable to that possibility, then the rest of us are even more so.

Yet Bryant’s death doesn’t really bring the concept of sudden death any closer. It is still only possibly, but not entirely, real. Bryant died in a helicopter crash. Not many of us will ever find ourselves in that situation. We may walk outside, get in cars, cross the street during traffic, and toy with our mortality in more familiar ways than getting into a helicopter, but while we know the potential of sudden death, it’s hardly ever in the forefront of our minds.

Willful ignorance of fatal danger is the only way we can go through each day and imagine ourselves in the next one. And when we do lose people we care about suddenly, the celebration of their lives is followed immediately by the greater grief of their extinguished presence. Celebration is only a small comfort. What we are often left with is a deep helplessness and sadness.

What then? What can save us from this omnipresent and terrifying possibility of death? I’m not sure there is an answer, but I like the idea of feigning immortality. Not living with the constant knowledge that any moment could be our last, but that death, until it comes, doesn’t matter at all — it has nothing to do with life.

I think of how Bryant trained and played, how he wasn’t afraid of the big moments or failure. And how that attitude came from a defiance of finality rather than an acceptance of it.

My colleague, Tom Ziller, wrote that Bryant played as if there was no tomorrow, but I think he has it backwards. Bryant behaved as if there were infinite tomorrows. While he played basketball, he did so obsessively, but then he moved on to other pursuits, and imagined himself doing even more in the future. When asked why he wasn’t afraid of taking the last shot, he said: “There’s an infinite groove. Whether you make the shot or miss it is inconsequential.”

It’s not the potential of an end that creates beauty or urgency, it’s the possibility of a future. Life is all about tomorrows, about growth, continuance, and change, about dreams. Death is repulsive because it is not life. It can never get closer than its abstract form, and it shouldn’t. It is true we are powerless before it, but until the event of death, it is also powerless before us.

[georgesmithunit5unit13]

Unreal Museum Evaluation

18.01.19

In this evaluation, I will be addressing the inspiration behind my project as well as how the principles and fundamentals of modernist architecture are reflected in my work. 

How did my virtual museum reflect the principles of modernist architecture of the 20th century?

My virtual museum does indeed reflect some of the design principles and characteristics detailed by certain art movements like The Bauhaus and Russian Constrictivism. I believe that I partly followed perhaps one of the most prominent design principles of The Bauhaus, form follows function. Essentially, my design adheres to functionality, as well as aestheticism. My reason for saying this is because when I was creating the entrance for the building, I played as the dummy many times in order to get the perfect height. I would not say that utility comes first in my museum however, though excessive ornamentation was definitely avoided. I would say that it follows minimalist style excessively—my design favours linear and geometrical forms, and floral and curvilinear shapes are avoided. 

My museum generally doesn’t conform to any of the main Dadaism design characteristics or principles, this is because they focused mainly on more abstraction, which isn’t really shown in my museum. I will say that it conforms more to Russian Constructivism design principles more than Dadaism, as Russian Constructivism architecture consisted of themes that were often geometric, minimal, experimental (definitely) and rarely emotional. Colours used in my design were simple, flat and symbolic, and would only draw from a certain palette, consisting of grey (bottom half), blue (top half), and brown (floor) in my case.

How did my museum reflect the shapes and 3D form explored in modernist architecture?

I would say that my design reflects the shapes and 3D from modernist architecture decently, there’s definitely an abundance of big blocky cubes and linear shapes in general. I did this partly because I was inexperienced in Unreal Engine, therefore I didn’t really end up branching out and using cylinders etc, and partly to adhere to modernist architecture in general, as I knew that they tend to use a lot of cubes. I wanted to talk about a specific piece of architecture that I was inspired by since before I sketched my initial plans for the building. It’s a piece known as ‘Villa Savoye’ designed by Le Corbusier, and is one of the only houses in France to be declared a national monument during Le Corbusier’s lifetime. Looking at it, I think it could have possibly been designed with influence of Constructivism art and architecture in mind. The design fascinates me and I wanted to kind of make something of a similar caliber. It’s almost contradicting since the Bauhaus generally avoided curvilinear shapes, but overall, that kind of shape was used a lot in 20th century modernist architecture. 

What materials did I use? How did this reflect the materials used in modernist architecture exteriors and interiors?

In terms of materials used in my design, I tried to follow the general consensus (or at least what I’ve seen) that light colours and shades (often just white) were abundantly used in modernist architecture. So, I too decided to use a light grey and a light blue in the end, as well as dark brown wood for the floors. 20th century modernist architecture, as well as just modernist architecture in general  use these light colours on the exterior for sure, but not always in the interior, though I did design my insides so that they were lightly coloured, with the exceptions of the floors being dark, since a lot of interiors are light, but do definitely include darker colours in the form of chairs, tables, etc. The floor in my case.

Aside from colours, one texture that I was particularly fond of in my design was the water texture. I noticed that a lot of these modernist buildings are in somewhat remote or empty places, like surrounded by nature, which I think is really interesting—I like the juxtaposition of the man-made buildings next to its natural counterpart, and I think that they compliment each other nicely. There’s a certain pair of towers that really fascinate me—that I think perfectly encompasses what I’m saying here and it is called ‘Bosco Verticale’ by Stefano Boeri. One thing that is often present in these buildings though, is water, somewhere or other. I wanted to incorporate water somehow to my design the moment I discovered you could even use it as a texture. Ultimately, I decided on it being used as the outside of the floor that the building would be stood upon. It kind of looks like a moat. I did use grass initially, which would also have been fine, but I just decided that I wanted water in the end. Another more prominent material displayed in my design is glass. The glass definitely bolsters the design as something that reflects 20th century modernist architecture as if you are to search for this anywhere, chances are you would see massive (but not always) panes of glass somewhere on the design. This was my intention when drawing up my plans originally, that and I simply like glass too. 

How well did I translate my research and idea generation into 3D interactive ideas?  

I think that overall, all of the idea generation and research that I conducted across the few weeks has translated well into my final design. When I was sketching out my plans, I wasn’t quite sure how I would bring them to life in Unreal because of my lack of experience and that there were some quite complex aspects in my plans, such as the glass balcony and the indents in the walls. The research on 20th century modernist architecture proved useful for me, as I discovered the Le Corbusier’s ‘Villa Savoye’ that I mentioned earlier, which is what I drew inspiration from with my design. I think that I followed my plans with good accuracy, but developed it from there, since I felt that it was lacking something. The idea to add a cube on top may not have been the best idea in retrospect, but at least it shows that I developed it further after finishing the design based on the plans. Speaking of, even my plans were developed greatly, as my original, original ones look thankfully nothing like how it ended up. Barely any of the four designs I came up with a couple of months ago look like they took no inspiration whatsoever from modernist architecture, with one even looking like some weird rocket-space needle hybrid or something. 

How could I have improved on these points?

I would love to be able to improve my final design, as there just looks like there’s something off about it, but I just can’t put my finger on it. Though I think that it could be just the shape of the entire building—I think making it top-heavy and having a larger cube on top of the original cube was a mistake, and I should have stuck to my sketch more closely. It would look better if it were simply a cube with a glass balcony around it and a little bit extending off of that. Even just making the bottom half larger than the top half would most likely look better than how it turned out. Also, I think that looking at it more, the glass balcony may be what doesn’t sit right with me—it might be too wide, and should have stuck to the building more tightly.

I could possibly try and draw some of the Dadaism principles into my design, though it would not be my priority, since doing that in any way would alter the simple geometrical properties of the design and introduce abstraction which isn’t exactly what I need. Kind of contradicting what I just said, perhaps there is room for more delicate and detailed aspects to the design, much like with what I did with the steps leading into the building—while in retrospect, they don’t really look that good, I think that they could be improved by giving the door area some kind of protruding part that sticks out above the entrance, or make some posts/pillars and place them in various areas. 

Another thing that could be possibly improved would be the information contained in the indent on the side of the building. With the presentation and how I laid out the information, I chose to go with a simple approach, with the black boxes at the top with the name of the art movement, the large text boxes, and the image. I could have put a little more effort or thought into other potential ways I could have laid the information out, instead of taking the corporate route and sticking with simplicity and repetition. 

[avilalily94]

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[temporaklepticgalanty]

Just For Fun - Least Stable Session*

The classes I'm using for this one are Knight, Page, Thief, Rogue, Maid, Heir, Bard, Prince, Seer, Mage, Witch, and Sylph. The aspects I'm using are Time, Space, Life, Doom, Heart, Mind, Breath, Blood, Light, Void, Rage, and Hope. The least possible stable session is 12 Bard Circus, Baby, but for the creativity let's say no double dipping. Buckle up, Homestuck.

Prince of Space is a very active class that destroys creativity, locations, distance, patience, and material form. Things are getting maximum alienist right out of the gate. The PoS has petulant rages that destroy all sensible anchors of setting, putting all the other players in an arbitrary surreal nightmare. No one is even likely to know about frog duties at all. Needless to say, this is almost certainly the deadest possible session — but all's fair when you play in the encroached Furthest Ring, now just the Horrifying Alien Void All Around Us.

Page of Time is an active class that has very little time, temporality, spontaneity, or endings, and through great effort, grows into power. Pages are people who really need to be pushed by externalities to actualize, which is going to be impossible in this session, for many wonderful reasons. When all they need is some time, a nascent Page is going to be too busy being overwhelmed. And sometimes being limitless is a hindrance ... like when physical laws have no more meaning.

Knight of Breath is a passive class that is utilized by direction, change, liberty and wind, usually for the benefit of others. And what does it mean for individuality to use you for itself? Well, you end up a bad puppet and a bad teammate both. A KoB is someone whose lack of attention and binding makes their frantic efforts too scattered to be effective. Without a strong influence to get them to give up on some things so that they can at least save some others, they just end up with their reach forever exceeding their grasp. And if you buy into this particular nonsensical fancanon, this embodiment of unmitigated ADHD is going to be juggling much too much to do proper frog recon.

Bard of Blood is a very passive class that uses connections, obligations, blood, and interconnectivity to destroy those things, and to destroy them in others. The BoB is a spiteful gossip, a bully, and a violent manipulator. Like the queen bee in a teen movie about cruel high schoolers, they are so stuck in their own heads that the only way to slow their toxicity enough that they can begin to see it would be a brave and shocking intervention — or getting hit by a bus. The unquestioned center of their social circle (because everyone is too genuinely afraid to question it) this sadistic predator will leave the session with plenty of tangled puppet strings and no actual leadership.

Thief of Light is a notably active class that takes knowledge, focus, insight, and luck all for themself. With apologies to any arachnid-themed candy corn extradimensional aliens out there, this has got to be the most selfish and bombastic blowhard in Paradox Space. If the ThoL doesn't learn to stop making everything all about me, me, me, they're going to spend a brutal and nasty life all alone, alone, alone. Teamwork is an impossible dream, potentially even as a matured, actualized person, except in the case of, say, a severely emotionally stunted Page of some sort to imprint codependently on. While they are still in the "making mistakes" part of "learning from their mistakes," they'll be hoarding any good fortune just when this hellscape session would be needing it to patch their flimsy foundations.

Witch of Void is an active class that changes secrets, obfuscation, unreality, and everything unknowable, sometimes in surprising and powerful ways. Who can say what they're even capable of? And after the Prince of Space leaves everything Voidy as hell, everything is going to rest on their narrow, hard to discern shoulders. A WoV hardly even knows anything about themself, as prone as they is to self-contradiction, so how are they supposed to know how to dig in deep and flip the right blackout switches for the identifiable to emerge? And how much juice could they even have in the tank, anyway? The way the events go is all going to turn on them.

Rogue of Heart is a notably passive class that takes identity, emotional fortitude, affection, and feelings, to give away to other people. Equal parts dependent and hidden behind façades, the RoH has trouble coping with their own personality, emotions, and desires. While an actualized Rogue of Heart could be helpful as counsel, they start out with a real lack of confidence or reflection regarding their aspect, and never quite gets to the feeling that what they grasp is best kept in their hands. The best they can be at the start is a non-factor. But who is always at their best? And can this chaos really use any more burdens?

Heir of Mind is a subtly passive class that is created and protected by choice, thoughts, logic, and justice. No one will ever be as single-minded about taking things into their own hands like this protofascist buffoon. It's ironically hard to say if they've ever made a decision for themself, because the narrow edge of Occam's Razor has been carving away at them before they're even sapient. Like a Batman Spock, they're more interesting as a foible than they are tolerable as an immature kid, and the absolute stuntedness of their reactive thinking is not going to be able to cope with this chaotic Medium. Not that they'll have the capacity to reflect like this, as pushed on by their dogmas to act, act, act right about now, now, now!

Mage of Life is an active class that experientially discovers and becomes knowledgeable about vitality, vivacity, progress, and biology. Honestly not a bad classpect in general, but considering Mages seem to learn about their aspect by ramming their face into the brick wall of its hard lessons, I'm not going to argue that trying to dive headfirst through Life is easy, swift, or necessarily productive. This (potentially charming) loser will be so occupied with the fits and starts of putting one foot in front of the other, that by the time they're really starting to limp along, everything and everyone will be nothing for nobody. The MoL is going to have to hope for a multimedia self-fulfilling DMRA paradox, because their talent for bloody-nosed endurance is just plain not enough.

Maid of Doom is a subtly active class that creates and protects rules, restrictions, decay, and the inescapable, like death itself. They have so much inherent doom, in fact, that one could even say they exemplify it. If the MoD even survives entry without getting double dead, which I would be shocked to hear, they'd be such a petty pedantic hardass, even petty pedantic hardasses think they should relax. This quality doesn't help with the Prince, Page, and Witch making everything as incomprehensible as possible, and they'd inevitably (isn't everything they do seemingly inevitable?) spin their wheels the whole time trying to impose their desperately needed order.

Seer of Hope is a passive class that intuitively discovers and becomes knowledgeable about hope, desire, benevolence, self-motivation, faith and fantasy, which sounds really nice until you remember Seers are giving out what they learn to this pack of losers. A Seer going solo is a Seer burning themselves out, and a SoH especially is an obsessive dreamer without peer. In a healthier session, the Seer would be a powerful asset; in this session, the Seer is at their best a bitter contrast and at worst a chainsaw in the hands of a naked drunk.

Sylph of Rage is a passive class that is readily changed by and restores skepticism, rebellion, excess, immediacy, and fury. They're going to have a turbulent rage-aholic phase, and it's going to be infectious. Given everything else blowing up around them, does it matter what they're capable of afterwards? And that's all there really is to say about the matter.

It's important, I think, to point out that there is the slimmest possible chance that, through some quirk of emergent factors, some unheard of miracle, that this group could in fact achieve their Ultimate Reward. If a miraculous string of ridiculous miracles goes off, everyone might even survive! But they won't. Because it won't. But like rubbernecks watching an accident, the horror would at least draw attention and generate interest, and schadenfreude is as old as people and still as alluring. And wouldn't it be satisfying to prove me (and themselves) wrong? Being unstable, after all, doesn't mean being unlikeable nor irredeemable.

[gowhine]

Personal Renovation...

When you want what you need, then you'll appreciate what you have. When having the need to fulfill your wants is greater then appreciating your haves, it becomes a marathon away from the truth. Only when our haves have become our needs then we return to prioritizing our presence, appreciating our past and enjoying the next moment in the future. Needing to fulfill our wants prioritized not the present, but the future while ignoring the past. The past becomes an ignorance that haunts every decision that could be made and hinders every action to progress. Creating a vicious cycle of doubt and regret until we break down to our basic instants of survival- regaining our diminished haves, living through the past to solve present problems reduces our capacity to gain further knowledge. Recycling tools for a repeated situation creates the same problem. Fixing the car with the flat that threw you into the accident will only put you into another, completely different accident where the loss is greater and more than you can handle. The deficit from the previous accident is not even made whole, now it's even deeper and more arduous and deliberate to deliver it to its end.

Be present.

Drop the old tools of failed behaviors and redouble the effort to abscond from recidivist behaviour. It feels good, but it feels bad to clean after a crash from the high of the permanent state of instant gratification - especially if it occupies the greater part of your life. Motionless with dread poured upon your shoulders yielding not only from the shame, the reflections of downed expectations and potholed disappointments. The hangover of youth shall be a long shadow over your future endeavors.

Render it obsolete.

Render the thoughts of fear and apprehension obsolete by dismissing elements that detour your trajectory. Calm the heart of the anxiety of the unknown and pursue the capacity of embracing the demons that lurk and dance in the rhythm of regret and doubt. Prepare and execute, prepare to execute and follow through on your plan. Take suggestions and listen and follow the best idea and  not the most convenient. You are your world, the world is not you.

Exploit yourself, let yourself exploit you.

Everything that you have learned in the climb to this point is yours to exploit. Every skill, talent, ability and gift is yours to exploit for yourself. Give what is not needed, unload it. Keep what is necessary and guard what essential. Develop relationships with respect to that and be guarded against the attributes of judgement, for there are only one pair of shoes per life. Knowledge of yourself from every angle, vantage point, internal, external of all the force, feebleness, fears, and foundations that exist around you infinitesimally in perpetuity must be accounted for.

Make déjà vu's .

It is apparent that we have seen moments in our lives before and most of us enjoy it. Most us are content with the record repeating itself. Some of the repetition is necessary for us to realize that nothing has changed. We must create a point of exit. A moment that gives us the opportunity to pull the needle from the record and change the tune and possibly change the device that plays this record. This will prepare you to deal with the necessity of change, often. This will lower your consumption of bullshit and obstacles that come along the way, all the while changing the intelligence reducing monotony of repeating the same errors, mistakes, and accidents. You have no choice but to learn and improve. Live with a nomad’s load of problems and not a billionaires wealth of heartaches.

Regain your soul.

Picture the world without your presence, daily. Imagine the crisis with out you and the party without your voice. Observe the work of nature and heed the force that guides your heart. Seek the source of the electrical current of your heart and listen the to synapses in your brain. Feel your skin inhale and exhale. Feel your eyes write your memory and your ears record the song. Listen to all the all organs act out their diverse roles without the hierarchy of the world. And imagine Earth as the body that you reside in. Every mountain, river, ocean, sea, forest, desert, tundra, glacier, storm, sky, and wave are the vessels, muscles, organs that act in their diverse roles to create this habitable place in this universe. Understanding that there is a great power above this existence and there is a purpose to this realization. Every loss is a gain and every gain is a loss but all in an unfathomable equilibrium that appears to be an abyss. That abyss is the source of our dreams and fears. A repository for our wounds, unresolved emotions, and yearnings for greatness.

One year of a positive attitude.

Listening to negative vibe breeds negative results. Thinking negative vibes creates words. Those negative words seed negative actions. Negative actions receives negative reactions. Repetitive negative actions creates negative behavior. Negative behavior creates a negative character. A negative character begets a negative destiny.

Now turn that negative into a positive for seven days, then seven weeks, then seven months. Meditate for three months and repeat.

Write down that negative thought on a disposable piece paper. Shred it. Obliterate it. List the positive thought as a goal or task to accomplish. Then let go, move on.

Manage your emotions.

Your feelings are your responsibility and play a major role in your life. Commandeer your actions when your emotions run rampant through your mind. It is your heart flooding your brain with stimulants. Your heart is only capable of sending signals the brain can understand and the capacity is non-reciprocal. Your heart knew your mother before you seen her. Your brain took years to comprehend that idea. The process will not improve in life, the learning curve is steep and unrelenting. The only tool that works is breathing to slow the flow, pace the emotional baggage. Slow the heartbeat. Look at the postage; where did it come from, who sent it? Send it back, redistribute it, exercise or exorcise it, in your breathes. Let that be the reaction. Then act to understand that emotional postage, baggage, and/or overdue shipment. Your reaction (rather good or bad) to the situation is an addition to the situation. A "non-reactive" physical response gives more answers than swimming in the middle of a torrent of emotional stimuli. Drowning in the emotional body of tears has a high incidence of failed results. Heavy correlations to apathy and antipathy for our fellow human beings derive from our bruises and broken bodies against rocks and the shoreline of finite reality. We allow ourselves a to be hurt by not listening to what our heart says and analyzing why these emotions are back, again. Recognizing the pattern is like saying Rumpelstilskin or Beetlejuice three times. The imp is exposed. Now it's time to manage it. Not control it, but use it to produce your dreams. Let that be the steam of your locomotive for a new trajectory.

Understand, know, and own your place.

We posses nothing but memories in our minds and the emotions in our hearts. We belong to the world the world does not belong to you. You are the world the world is not you. You are here for the utility of the universe, to carry out your purpose. You are  useful in this universe and necessary. Your existence was not a decision but a chance purpose in along line of perpetual cycles of life. We are the result of chemical reactions and coagulated matter with some semblance of self awareness in this multiverse and multidimensional existence. This universe that in which we reside might just a the blood cell in our body. That truth is greater that our capacity to understand. Comfort yourself with the philosophy that all knowledge is unknowable and our perception of our reality is too small for our eyes and body to ever fully experience. The world and the universe is way too large for our small minds. Our small minds must rest receptive for survival. A glimpse at the omnipresent omni-verse that we live in requires our minds to remain open. Closing it ends us. Stick around as long as you can, the show never ends. Boredom is the indication for a new frequency.

Be industrious.

"If you can't find work, make work."- Kanye West.

No excuses. Government, war, famine, or apocalyptic footing- there is something to do. You suck at something, educate yourself why. Exceed at something, exploit it for your needs. Tired of giving unheeded advice, blog it and request tips. Don't have a degree in the field of study you desire, read up, study like you didn't, read like you won't, and fail at failing. Give up on giving up. Overcompensate for your vices and be made fun for being a nerd. Get teased, mocked, and even shunned for doing right. Do it, because it's not going to be done for you.

What we need is never what we want-at first.

Discipline can be learned and relearned. Disciplinary behavior is not exclusive to punishment. Discipline is necessary to following through on your plans. It only becomes punishment when you allow your mouth to water incessantly over a desired want instead focusing on the task at hand. Turn your vices into rewards for first executing a task, then completing a task, then executing a project, then completing a project, then appreciating an accomplishment, then replace that vice with a new invested habit that will propel you beyond your potential and fully realizing your unrealized propensity for growth. Grow, be grown to grow. The strength of the esteem will overshadow the ego of those vices that drug you down. (undedited version)

[sherristockman]

Vitamin C — A Game Changer in Treatment of Deadly Sepsis Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola Each year, an estimated 1 million Americans get sepsis1,2 and up to half of them die as a result.3,4,5 Sepsis is a progressive disease process initiated by an aggressive, dysfunctional immune response to an infection in the bloodstream, which is why it's sometimes referred to as blood poisoning. While illnesses such as bronchitis, pneumonia, strep throat, kidney infection or even localized infections can turn septic, sepsis is most commonly acquired in hospital settings.6,7 Starting out with symptoms of infection, the condition can progress to septic shock, which may be lethal. Unless treated, sepsis can result in extremely low blood pressure that is unresponsive to fluid replacement, weakening of the heart and multiple-organ failure. Unfortunately, treatment can be a considerable challenge, and is becoming even more so as drug-resistant infections become more prevalent. According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, sepsis is the most expensive condition being treated in U.S. hospitals, costing more than $24 billion in 2014.8 Critical Care Doctor Discovers Inexpensive Cure for Sepsis Earlier this year, news emerged about a critical care physician who claimed to have discovered a simple and inexpensive way to treat sepsis using intravenous (IV) vitamin C, thiamine (vitamin B-1) in combination with the steroid hydrocortisone9,10 — a discovery that may save tens of thousands of lives and billions of dollars each year. Dr. Paul Marik, chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital in East Virginia, published a small retrospective before-after clinical study11,12,13 showing that giving septic patients this simple IV cocktail for two days reduced mortality nearly fivefold, from 40 percent to 8.5 percent. Of the 50 patients treated, only four died, but none of them actually died from sepsis; they died from their underlying disease. In all, Marik has treated more than 150 septic patients with this protocol so far, and only one has died from sepsis. More than 50 medical centers around the U.S. have also started implementing the protocol, with similarly spectacular results. This should be cause for celebration but, as usual, there are detractors and skeptics saying Marik's study is little more than fodder for hyperbole.14 Many doctors are also weary of using such a novel treatment.15 As noted by Smithsonian: "For many doctors, Marik's protocol represents a dilemma. There seem to be no ill effects. Yet, there are also no randomized clinical trials. Should they embrace an untested treatment?"16 It's an ironic question, if you consider many conventional medical treatments are still experimental at best. Flawed trials often promise more than can be delivered, and it can sometimes take years or even decades before the mistake is rectified. In this case, the chances of doing more harm than good are extremely low, so what is there to lose? Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, where Marik works, has already made the protocol its standard of care for sepsis. The hospital president is considering making it standard of care in its other 12 hospitals as well. "Marik and others enthusiastic about the treatment agree with skeptics who say blind, randomized clinical trials need to be done to validate the treatment's efficacy. However, they also say that the dramatic results so far mean doctors should embrace the treatment in the meantime — an unorthodox proposition, to say the least," Smithsonian writes.17 "During an interview in his office, Marik called up Dr. Joseph Varon, a pulmonologist and researcher at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. 'It does sound too good to be true,' Varon said over the phone. 'But my mortality rates have changed dramatically. It is unreal. Everything we have tried in the past didn't work. This works.'" How Does the Treatment Work? Vitamin C is well-known for its ability to prevent and treat infectious diseases. Previous research has shown it effectively lowers proinflammatory cytokines and C-reactive protein.18,19,20 Influenza,21 encephalitis and measles22 have all been successfully treated with high-dose vitamin C. To investigate the mechanism of action for sepsis, Marik reached out to John Catravas, Ph.D., a pharmacology researcher at Old Dominion University. At Marik's request, Catravas performed an independent lab study, which confirmed the effectiveness of the treatment. Catravas cultured endothelial cells from lung tissue and then exposed them to endotoxins found in patients with sepsis. Interestingly, vitamin C acts like the steroid hydrocortisone, yet when either vitamin C or the steroid were administered in isolation, nothing happened. When administered together, however, the infection was successfully eradicated and the cells were restored to normal. The addition of thiamine is also important. Not only is thiamine required for metabolism of some of the metabolites of vitamin C, research has also shown many patients with sepsis are vitamin deficient, and when thiamine is given, it reduces the risk of renal failure and mortality. Studies have also shown thiamine can be helpful for a long list of diseases and disorders, including mitochondrial disorders,23 heart failure,24 delirium,25 thyroid fatigue and Hashimoto's (a thyroid autoimmune disorder).26 These and other health effects may help explain why thiamine works so well in conjunction with vitamin C and hydrocortisone for sepsis. In short, the key Marik intuitively stumbled upon was the right combination of ingredients. Nationwide Trial Underway Dr. Craig Coopersmith, a leading sepsis researcher at Emory University School of Medicine, is now planning a multicenter trial to put Marik's vitamin C protocol to the test across the nation. "If this is validated, this would be the single biggest breakthrough in sepsis care in my lifetime," he told Smithsonian.27 Results from his field trial cannot come soon enough, as current best practices are ineffective at best. For example, recent research shows the standard calling for rapid and substantial infusion of IV fluids have no effect on survival rates,28 and previous guidelines calling for the use of a specific drug turned out to do more harm than good.29 In short, there are few good alternatives available, making Marik's treatment protocol all the more crucial. Sepsis kills more than breast cancer, colon cancer and AIDS combined, and here's a treatment that is not only profoundly effective, but also has no side effects, is inexpensive, readily available and simple to administer. Patients and doctors really have nothing to lose by trying it, but to make it standard of care across the U.S., more evidence is needed. Potential Contraindication While vitamin C and thiamine administration is incredibly safe, it may be contraindicated if you happen to be glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficient, which is a genetic disorder.30 G6PD is an enzyme your red blood cells need to maintain membrane integrity. High-dose IV vitamin C is a strong prooxidant, and giving a prooxidant to a G6PD-deficient individual can cause their red blood cells to rupture, which could have disastrous consequences. Fortunately, G6PC deficiency is relatively uncommon, and can be tested for. People of Mediterranean and African descent are at greater risk of being G6PC deficient. Worldwide, G6PD deficiency is thought to affect 400 million individuals, and in the U.S. an estimated 1 in 10 African-American males have it.31 Vitamin C and Antibiotics — A Winning Combo Against Cancer Stem Cells Studies have also shown vitamin C can be used as an adjunct to cancer therapy. Vitamin C is selectively cytotoxic to cancer cells by generating hydrogen peroxide when administered intravenously in high doses, and recent research suggests vitamin C in combination with antibiotics helps kill cancer stem cells — cancer cells responsible for metastasis of lethal tumors. Here, researchers at the University of Salford in the U.K. used the antibiotic Doxycycline, followed by IV vitamin C and, again, it's all about the combination. It's well-known that that cancer cells can survive chemotherapy and develop resistance to the drug. The study in question was designed to determine how this occurs. They suspected the answer cold be found in metabolically flexible cancer cells — in other words, cells capable of switching from one fuel source to another. Science Daily reports:32 "The researchers say their method offers a new explanation for how to prevent cancer cells from becoming treatment-resistant and how combinations therapies can be developed to overcome drug resistance. Professor Michael Lisanti, who designed the study, explained … 'Thus, when the drug treatment reduces the availability of a particular nutrient, the flexible cancer cells can feed themselves with an alternative energy source.' This new combination approach prevents cancer cells from changing their diet (metabolically inflexible), and effectively starves them, by preventing them from using any other available types of biofuels. The team … added Doxycycline in ever increasing doses over a three-month period, to induce metabolic inflexibility. The result was to leave the cancer cells … severely attenuated and depleted, so that they would be much more susceptible to starvation, by a second metabolic "punch." First, the researchers inhibited the tumor cell mitochondria, by restricting the cancer cells only to glucose as a fuel source; then, they took away their glucose, effectively starving the cancer cells to death. 'In this scenario, vitamin C behaves as an inhibitor of glycolysis, which fuels energy production in mitochondria, the 'powerhouse' of the cell,' explained co-author Dr. Federica Sotgia." Vitamin C Is an Excellent Emergency Kit Staple Vitamin C by itself outperformed 2-Deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG, a glycolytic inhibitor33) by as much as 10 times when it came to preventing cancer cell growth. When combined with an antibiotic, the treatment is nearly 100 times more effective. Best of all, while antibiotics do have health risks (since they decimate your gut microbiome), antibiotics and vitamin C are far safer than most cancer drugs, dramatically reducing a patient's risk of adverse treatment effects. The team also identified eight additional products that can be used in lieu of vitamin C, including berberine — a natural plant compound shown to work as well as metformin for diabetes. As noted by Lisanti, "This is further evidence that vitamin C and other nontoxic compounds may have a role to play in the fight against cancer." Indeed, while I do not recommend taking high doses of vitamin C on a daily basis, I'm absolutely convinced it is a key staple that belongs in everyone's home emergency kit. In cases of acute illness, I recommend taking 2 to 3 grams of vitamin C per HOUR until you feel better. Note that most people will get loose stools with conventional oral vitamin C, which is why the vitamin C should be liposomal. This prevents the loose stools and provides blood levels similar to IV vitamin C without the expense or inconvenience. In my experience, this high dose liposomal C every hour will typically reverse acute illnesses within 24 hours or so. Just make sure it is liposomal vitamin C. I always travel with a bottle of this and regularly give it away to clinicians I see who have come down with an acute infection. For general health, it's fairly easy to get sufficient amounts of vitamin C from food, so supplements are usually not necessary. I grow acerola cherries, which are particularly high in vitamin C. Each cherry provides about 80 mg of vitamin C. I will sometimes eat up to 100 cherries a day, giving me about 8 grams of vitamin C — far above the recommended daily intake of 90 mg/day. Still, if I were to become ill, I would not hesitate to take high doses of vitamin C, including the use of IV vitamin C if the situation were sufficiently dire — although I would start with hourly high dose liposomal C as I think it would work just as well, and only progress to IV if the high dose liposomal C was not working. In the case of sepsis, I think using IV vitamin C with thiamine and hydrocortisone makes a world of sense, especially since the risks are virtually nonexistent. Common Sense Strategies to Reduce Your Risk of Sepsis With sepsis affecting more than a million Americans each year, it's important to be aware of its signs, symptoms and risks. Part of what makes it so deadly is that people typically do not suspect it, and the longer you wait to treat it, the deadlier it gets.34 Even health care workers can miss the signs and delay treatment. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), you're at higher risk for sepsis if you have: Chronic disease. A vast majority — 7 out of 10 — of people who develop sepsis have some kind of chronic health condition. Those with diabetes, lung, kidney or liver disease tend to be particularly susceptible to infection, which raises the risk. Weakened immune system, AIDS or cancer. Recently spent time in a hospital, nursing home or other health care facility, as exposure to infection-causing bacteria is common in these places. While health care workers have a responsibility to prevent infections that could potentially turn septic and to educate patients about warning signs of sepsis, you can lower your own risk by: • Promptly treating urinary tract infections (UTIs). UTIs are the second most common type of infection in the body, sending more than 8 million people to their health care providers every year in the U.S. alone,35 and one-quarter of sepsis cases are related to urinary tract infections. Conventional treatment typically involves antibiotics, but research shows 90 percent of UTIs can be successfully treated with D-Mannose, a naturally occurring sugar that's closely related to glucose. To learn more, see "D-Mannose for UTI Prevention Validated in a Clinical Trial." • Properly clean skin wounds. About 1 in 10 sepsis cases are due to skin infections, so always take the time to properly clean and care for wounds and scrapes. Wash the wound with mild soap and water to clean out dirt and debris, then cover with a sterile bandage. Diabetics should follow good foot care to avoid dangerous foot infections. • Avoid infections in hospitals. When visiting a health care facility, be sure to wash your own hands, and remind doctors and nurses to wash theirs (and/or change gloves) before touching you or any equipment being used on you. If you have to undergo a colonoscopy or other testing using a flexible medical scope, remember to call and ask how they clean their scopes and what kind of cleaning solution they use. If the answer is glutaraldehyde (brand name Cidex), find another hospital or clinic — one that uses peracetic acid. This preliminary legwork will significantly decrease your risk of contracting an infection from a contaminated scope.

[junker-town]

The Julio Jones trade turns the Titans into a Super Bowl contender

An already good team becomes fearsome.

The Tennessee Titans emerged out of nowhere Sunday to complete a trade for Julio Jones, sending a 2022 second and fourth round pick to Atlanta for one of the league’s most talented receivers. A genius deal in its simplicity, Jones goes to a playoff team ready to take the next step and make a serious push for the Super Bowl, while Atlanta gets future assets and sends Jones to a team they won’t play this upcoming season.

Trading Jones was still the wrong move for Atlanta, but the team found themselves between a rock and a hard place, especially after Jones went viral when Shannon Sharpe cold-called him on Undisputed and had Jones, on live TV, confirm that he wanted out so he could play for a contender. It accelerated the timeline for a deal, and could have potentially hurt what the Falcons could have received in a trade — but what’s done is done.

Julio to the Titans could be the game-changing move of the off-season.

An 11-5 team in 2020, the Titans have every bit the potential to make a Super Bowl. Benefitting from playing in one of football’s weakest divisions gives them a head start, but recent moves by the front office have been nothing short of brilliant.

This all centers on Ryan Tannehill, who freed himself from Adam Gase’s osmotic stench in Miami and turned a backup role into becoming one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL. Pairing Tannehill’s accuracy with the league’s best running back in Derrick Henry resulted in immediate success, and having a Pro Bowl receiver in AJ Brown was the icing on the cake.

However, as we’ve now seen for two successive seasons, lacking a second top-tier receiving threat has been the Titans undoing. In 2019 the Chiefs were able to contain Henry in the AFC Championship game, holding him to 69 rushing yard and bracketing Brown to the point where a then-second option Corey Davis had to be the star — an impossible task against Kansas City’s juggernaut offense.

Then, in the 2020 playoffs we saw a similar refrain, this time in the Wild Card round. The Ravens knew their path to victory was stopping Henry and bracketing Brown. Once again, it worked. The Titans lost 20-13, ending their season in similar fashion for the second straight year.

This really put Tennessee at a turning point, heightened by No. 2 receiver Corey Davis leaving in free agency for the Jets. Believed to be in on a first round receiver in the NFL Draft, the Titans went in a different direction, solidifying their secondary — and taking depth receivers later in the draft.

As constructed, this team was not going to win a championship. Julio Jones changes all that. You now have the accurate Tannehill, with two 1,000 yard, Pro Bowl receivers — and the best running back in football to boot. The dual deep threats of Brown and Jones will force teams to give defensive backs help in coverage, but how do you manage that, and still expect to have safeties work in the box to stop Henry running all over you?

You can’t, at least on paper, and defenses will need to try and come up with creative options to contain all those weapons. Any time you ask defenses to get “creative,” you take them out of the comfort zone, and ability to control the pace of the game — meaning, the Titans will step on the field with an advantage, before the first snap ever occurs.

Make no mistake, the road to the Super Bowl in the AFC is still absolutely brutal with the likes of Baltimore, Kansas City, and Buffalo lurking, but this is still the best chance the Titans have had during the Mike Vrabel era.

Despite all this excitement, there are some concerns

To look at the roster upgrades, dust your hands off and say “job done” really ignores a couple of large elephants in the room. The first, and biggest, is the absence of offensive genius Arthur Smith.

Smith took over as offensive coordinator in 2019, and made the bigger impact on the team than any coach in the NFL. The 2018 Titans finished 27th in the NFL in points scored, and 25th in total yards. Woeful numbers, propped up by the strength of the Titans defense.

In two short seasons Smith improved those numbers to an average of 7th in the NFL in scoring and yards. The biggest improvement in the league, and unquestionably the reason the Falcons decided to hire Smith as their head coach earlier this year.

The hallmark of Smith’s offense was his genius red zone play calling. An unreal ability to call up the perfect play when it counted, and seemingly have success. We always, rightfully, talk about the brilliance of the Chiefs’ offense — but when it comes to the red zone nobody compared to the Titans over the last two years. Ranking 1st in 2019, and 2nd in 2020, then only team in the same zip code as Tennessee was Green Bay.

It remains to be seen how the Titans will operate without Smith. There’s high hopes for incoming coordinator Todd Downing, who serves as tight ends coach. However, there’s reason to be a little nervous too. The last time Downing served as coordinator was in 2017 with the Oakland Raiders, a team that was in the bottom-half of the league in both scoring, and total yards.

In Downing’s defense, the Raiders were grappling with a lot of issues that season, including Derek Carr struggling with injury for much of the year, but there’s still a significant leap of faith required in hoping Downing can be as good as Smith.

There’s also some worry on the offensive line. The Titans are adept at run blocking, but have struggled in pass protection. Now, with more of a focus being put on the passing game with Jones arriving, there’s going to be a need for some guys to step up on the line and make more of an impact. That requires a leap of faith as well.

That said, trading for Jones was still a stoke of genius

Yes, there are concerns for the Titans moving forward. However, they pale in comparison to landing a player of Jones’ talent. Without him this was a team poised for a major step back, regressing further from the AFC elite and becoming one of many good, not great teams in the NFL.

Now they’re one of the most exciting offenses in the NFL on paper, with a potential the supporting structures could hold them back. That’s a risk worth taking. Assuming Downing can manage the offense well, and the line can hold up, we really could be looking at a team ready to make the Super Bowl. I don’t know if it’s possible to say that prior to Julio Jones’ arrival.