darkmoka

[nerosdayinanime]

knock knock let me in let me be your secret sin ; left right straight ahead theres no way out youre dead

[lyricaldissonance]

Me: *does something to improve myself, is feeling optimistic*

My Brain: You're trash and it's cute you're trying to pretend to be likeable. These people are only being nice to you because they don't know how bad you suck yet. You're going to fuck this up the same way you ruin every good thing you've ever had, because you're a miserable failure who is only likeable when you're trying to act like you're a person capable of consistently maintaining competence and decency for any real length of time. And the reason why you can't is because you really aren't either of those things because otherwise it wouldn't take all of your effort just to be fucking normal and exist without constantly burdening everyone around you.

Mental illness is so cool, wow

But yeah, the reason why I avoid employment is because I'm lazy, not because I view it as a painful reminder of my inability to function in society unless I go so hard I break out in hives every day and lose the will to live even when my job isn't the hardest or most stressful and I still can barely pay my bills. Because apparently being a baseline functional person is so stressful that it takes everything I have, and that just further drives home the point that I'm weak and disgusting and useless and maybe people who find existing so hard shouldn't exist at all.

Hahahahahahahaha

I love my new job and everyone seems to genuinely like me but I'm so scared of fucking things up that it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I literally don't know how to not feel like an imposter. At least 70% of my stress could be relieved if I wasn't poor and in debt because of my own mania and impulsivity and unable to do anything about it or willing to ask for help because my mom gave me 3k and I still did this shit to myself AGAIN and I can't even tell you how or why, and I'm just so ashamed at this point that I can't ask for help and it's never going to get better. It's no one's fault but my own but I can't fix it and I've been treading water for years and I'm just tired. But I can't help myself because I can't ever repay someone else so I refuse to ask for outside assistance because I already live in a constant cycle of self-perpetuating guilt that feeling even more indebted to others isn't helpful.

Being "smart" fucking sucks unless you hit the nature/nurture lottery. Like wow, how cool it is I can write this little post exploring my diseased mental state, but it 0 percent helps me to feel better or enacts any kind of directly helpful changes, so self awareness can suck my dick. I'm just another someone with an emotionally toxic upbringing who grew into an emotionally stunted adult with a poor sense of self worth who may've won a junior high spelling bee once or written a story that other tasteless rubes liked. I'm not special and now I sure as hell never will be.

What is even the fucking point. Sometimes I wish I were suicidal or more of a moron who isn't regretting the egregiously offensive former half of this sentence. Intelligence is honestly a burden to me sometimes and it's so fucking sad because sometimes I really like myself and think I'm a good person but I'm not good at making money and I guess that's all that matters.

It's funny that my life went downhill after I tried to go to college. 5 years of savings evaporated before my eyes in a single semester of formal education that has yet to give me any material benefit in life, and all of the elders who blew sunshine up my "gifted" ass who told me higher education was my golden ticket shut the fuck up real fast, and also blamed everything on my lack of dedication.

I just feel robbed. And I'm "mature" enough to know that assigning blame won't solve anything. But I've had this destructive thought process/manner of coping with things for so long that, in the absence of any healthy reinforcement that no one owes me (and that I absolutely am too proud to ask for because, well, see aforementioned), I don't know how to proceed. I'm tired of compartmentalizing myself, but time and again, I've been shown that attempting to be seen is even more dangerous because you usually just make yourself vulnerable to people who then deliberately misunderstand you and try to make it your fault or act like you tricked them. As if pretending to be an untroubled, likeable person is a more malicious act than the messy atrocity that is your real personality that. . . Oh yeah, immediately just makes you "crazy" and even more unlikeable.

The one thing I learned from my childhood is that keeping the fragile peace was paramount, even if it was at the expense of denying the truth, because poking holes through someone else's carefully constructed reality was of more concern than the people who were hurt by their actions. Addict Stan 101, amirite? A family intervention was actually staged against me about how I should care less regarding my dad's drinking and the resulting emotional abuse because it was selfish to make it "all about me".

So now I view myself as the discarded piece of beach trash I was raised to. I guess everyone just assumes value is inherent, when you don't know to care about it until someone makes you aware based on their own biased set of metrics. I'm intelligence with no purpose, because my diseased brain and developmentally stunted ass couldn't hack the one advantage I was given to my own advantage. I'm literally a masturbatory fantasy.

All the people who raised me are flawed human beings with their own demons who really didn't mean it. But I can still be impotently mad. I didn't ask to be brought into this world.

Something was wrong with me. A really common, explainable thing, as it turns out. But of course, smart girls don't have problems. Mental illness is for parodical freaks tied up in straightjackets. There are starving kids in Africa. Do you really have it that bad?

So I learned to conflate my own personality and sense of self with my neurodivergence and now I'm 30 and I have such a tenuous sense of self-confidence that I literally just cosplay whatever version of me people like best from a capitalist perspective.

Haha jk. Sike, I'm a hyperemotional reactive and I will go off for everything, nothing, and all inbetween, even though I'm very chill and the things that set me off are on no one's radar. Just usually not in a way you can immortalize on TikTok. I used to apologize for having an emotional response, because I used to prize myself on being a robot, but as it turns out, I'm just a big stupid tsundere and no one cares how tough you look if the only person you're hurting is yourself.

I lost touch with the narrative.

Apparently I wrote this while wine drunk. Hm.

It's weird how suddenly I can turn to self loathing when I feel like things are getting better and I'm doing ok. I'm just starting to ignore things again and I don't want to let it spiral out of control again. I'm so feckless that I'm not sure how I manage to survive as an adult sometimes.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: 12 Mar 2020 (No health care for part-time TSA screeners, Akil Augustine on Radicalized, Wendell Potter rebuts Joe Biden, best Covid-19 explainer, Boeing's self-inflicted wounds, EU Right to Repair, virtual classrooms)

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Pluralistic: 12 Mar 2020

TSA boss doubles down on taking away health care from part-time screeners: They're touching your junk with diseased hands.

Akil Augustine on Radicalized: My book's Canada Reads champion lays out the case for Radicalized.

A former top Cigna exec rebuts Joe Biden's healthcare FUD: Wendell Potter is the prodigal corporate villain.

Ars Technica's Covid-19 explainer is the best resource on the pandemic: Beth Mole has outdone herself.

Boeing is even worse at financial engineering than they are at aircraft engineering: The $43B they incinerated through stock buybacks would sure come in handy about now.

Senate Republicans kill emergency sick leave during pandemic: Sick leave is cheaper than pandemics, but pandemics generate cost-plus contracts for the donor class.

The EU's new Right to Repair rules finally come for electronics: Snoods cocked at Apple and other US Big Tech monopolists.

How to run a virtual classroom: Masterclass from the 14-year-old Stanford Online High School.

This day in history: 2010, 2015, 2019

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

TSA boss doubles down on taking away health care from part-time screeners (permalink)

TSA agents handles the personal belongings and touch the bodies of millions of fliers. Part time agents don't get health-insurance. If they think they might have Covid-19, they might not be able to afford to seek care.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/11/politics/tsa-health-care-part-time/index.html

TSA chief David Pekoske told Congress that the Trump administration's decision to take away health-care from part time TSA employees was a good one: "I have no intention of restoring health care coverage for part-time workers. I think that was a good decision."

About 100 TSA agents have been sent home after it was believed they came into contact with Covid-19. The TSA will not try to track down passengers who also might have come into contact with sick people.

Akil Augustine on Radicalized (permalink)

My book Radicalized is a finalist for the Canada Reads national book prize. Each of the five finalists is defended by a Canadian celeb: my champion is the amazing and articulate Akil Augustine.

Akil just appeared on the @CBC's Canada Reads podcast to give us a preview of his defense, which he will field during several nights of nationally televised debates next week.

http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1708600899815/

He did an OUTSTANDING job! Here's the MP3:

https://cbc.mc.tritondigital.com/CBC_CNDAREADS_P/media/cndareads-3NLwEPaV-20200309.mp3

A former top Cigna exec rebuts Joe Biden's healthcare FUD (permalink)

In a recent and important essay, Maria Farrell wrote about the road-to-Damascus conversions that ex-techies are having in which they recant the damaging product design work they did and begin to campaign against their former employers.

https://conversationalist.org/2020/03/05/the-prodigal-techbro/

Farrell noted that these techies had missed an important step in their transformation from venal attention mercenaries to noble attention freedom-fighters: they had yet to hit bottom, to truly repent their earlier sins.

They skipped like stones over the waters of privilege, and never sank, unlike so many of their victims.

Contrast those journeys with that of Wendell Potter, the former Cigna exec turned whistleblower, who has devoted decades of his life to revealing dirty tricks and lies. Potter campaigns tirelessly – and shrewdly – for Medicare for All, and is always at pains to point out that the anti-M4A talking points his adversaries parrots were all developed by him, when he was on the wrong side of history.

Take this thread, rebutting Joe Biden's FUD about M4A, delivered in the midst of a pandemic that has been worsened by the 77 million un- and underinsured people who can't get care or screening and disproportionately work in food-service and cleaning.

https://twitter.com/wendellpotter/status/1237438497218105344

As Potter points out, Biden's assertion that M4A costs $35T is just a lie. Once you factor in the savings of not paying for private healthcare, M4A SAVES at least $450B/year.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)33019-3/fulltext

Biden's plan to cap premiums on a public option at 8.5% of your income is more than double what M4A would cost you. The corporate plans Biden lionizes shackle good workers to bad employers, and put millions at risk of having their care arbitrarily withdrawn or limited. And, of course, private care doesn't cover much. Surprise bills, deductibles, co-pays, out-of-pockets… Our plan – a blue-chip employer's top-of-the-line Cigna plan – costs us $24K/year.

We're rationing our family's health care because in addition to the $20K/year we're paying out of pocket, Cigna refused to cover a pain procedure that my doc – the most-cited pain doc working in California, who runs a major university pain clinic – says I would benefit from. That procedure might let me get a good night's sleep for the first time in 15 years and allow me to live a more normal, pain-free life. But because Cigna won't cover it, it would cost $55K, which we do not have. So I'm foregoing it.

Ars Technica's Covid-19 explainer is the best resource on the pandemic (permalink)

I've been reading Beth Mole's outstanding science journalism for many years and I've always admired it, but even by the high standards of a Beth Mole explainer, this soup-to-nuts Covid-19 explainer is just spectacularly good work.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/dont-panic-the-comprehensive-ars-technica-guide-to-the-coronavirus/

Mole's calm and comprehensive coverage relies on the most reliable sources and turns the results of our best evidence-based studies into a coherent narrative, from the disease's origins to its spread to its symptoms to its resolution.

Just this symptom-by-symptom breakdown was enormously informative and filled in a huge gap that I had previously mentally signposted as "flu-like".

According to data from nearly 56,000 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 patients in China, the rundown of common symptoms went as follows:

88 percent had a fever

68 percent had a dry cough

38 percent had fatigue

33 percent coughed up phlegm

19 percent had shortness of breath

15 percent had joint or muscle pain

14 percent had a sore throat

14 percent headache

11 percent had chills

5 percent had nausea or vomiting

5 percent had nasal congestion

4 percent had diarrhea

Less than one percent coughed up blood or blood-stained mucus

Less than one percent had watery eyes

The sections on transmission, self-protection, and care during a social distancing lockdown or quarantine are likewise levelheaded, clear and informative.

This is a tab you should just keep open in your browser, IOW. Mole's updating frequently, too.

Boeing is even worse at financial engineering than they are at aircraft engineering (permalink)

Boeing is experiencing a potentially terminal slump. Between losses due to its 737 Max scandal (a self-inflicted injury), and the dropoff in travel during the pandemic, it has had to draw down its entire line of credit and institute a hiring freeze.

https://wolfstreet.com/2020/03/11/boeing-crashes-as-43-billion-in-past-share-buybacks-turn-into-existential-threat

Obviously, Boeing can't be blamed for the pandemic.

But you know what is absolutely the company's fault? Its financial engineering.

Since 2013, Boeing squandered $43 billion on stock buybacks, whose sole purpose was to goose its share-price.

As Wolf Richter writes, Boeing, this "master of financial engineering – instead of aircraft engineering – blew, wasted, and incinerated $43.4 billion on buying back its own shares."

The company just had to borrow $13.825B. Its shares are down 46% since March 2019.

The entire company – a jewel of American industry – might not survive, because it focused on short-term enrichment of shareholders, rather than safe aircraft or financial prudence.

Reality has a well-known anti-capitalist bias, part MMMLVII.

Senate Republicans kill emergency sick leave during pandemic (permalink)

Senate Republicans have killed emergency sick leave legislation, a move that will force millions of low-waged cleaning and food-service workers to choose between homelessness and potentially spreading Covid-19.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/coronavirus-paid-sick-leave-us-republicans-block-senate-bill-new-york-washington-a9395821.htm

The GOP says that paid sick leave will endanger the fragile bottom lines of employers and also that the feds have no money to pay for such a thing – despite finding it easy to blow $2.3 trillion on tax-cuts for the super-rich.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/28/tax-cuts-trump-gop-analysis-430781

They also found $20 BILLION in the senate's sofa cushions to give to the Pentagon, an agency whose auditor found more than a trillion dollars in off-the-books transactions in its financial records.

https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2019/12/19/pentagon-finally-gets-its-2020-budget-from-congress/

Refusing to help poor Americans stay fed and sheltered isn't just cruel, it's lethally reckless, and it demonstrates the moral hazard of oligarchic capitalism. Subsidizing sick-leave would merely afford survival to millions of Americans, after all.

Whereas the crisis that this will produce – a pandemic that is made worse and longer – will cost billions more, but that money will go to the donor-class, the Beltway Bandits whose cost-plus, no-bid contracts will transfer even more money from the poor to the wealthy.

It's disaster capitalism at its worst. The Senate GOP is dooming you and everyone you love to the risk of disease and death because preventing that risk would help millions of poor people, whereas creating the risk helps a handful of ultrarich people.

The EU's new Right to Repair rules finally come for electronics (permalink)

The EU Commission's latest "Circular Economy Action Plan" has enormous significance for Right to Repair and electronics.

https://ec.europa.eu/environment/circular-economy/pdf/new_circular_economy_action_plan.pdf

In addition to a host of eminently sensible, long overdue measures (bans on single use items and the destruction of unsold goods), there's a renewed emphasis on electronics, through the "Circular Electronics Initiative".

https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/11/european-lawmakers-propose-a-right-to-repair-for-mobiles-and-laptops/

The initiative mandates that components be reusable, repairable, and upgradable, and requires long-term software support to keep IoT devices useful for longer. These mandates – also long overdue – show that the EU is finally willing to ignore the priorities of Apple and other US Big Tech companies in favour of Europeans' rights to the long-term enjoyment of their property and the right not to drown in e-waste).

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/08/ghost-flights/#eurighttorepair

How to run a virtual classroom (permalink)

For 14 years, Stanford Online High School has been running fully virtual classrooms, with continuous, ongoing improvements in their tech and methods. They've just published a new guide to "the essential steps for preparing to teach online in a short period of time." They're also conducting a series of webinars on the subject.

https://ohs.stanford.edu/how

(I just realized that I've got a decade-old mail rule that autodeletes anything containing the word "webinar" that I probably need to turn off now that the term is being used by people other than hustling spammy grifters)

This day in history (permalink)

#10yrsago Leaked UK record industry memo sets out plans for breaking copyright https://craphound.com/BPDigitalEconomyBillweeklyminutes.pdf

#5yrsago Portland cops charge homeless woman with theft for charging her phone https://news.streetroots.org/2015/03/06/homeless-phone-charging-thief-wanted-security

#5yrsago How Harper's "anti-terror" bill ends privacy in Canada http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2015/03/why-the-anti-terrorism-bill-is-really-an-anti-privacy-bill-bill-c-51s-evisceration-of-government-privacy/

#5yrsago RIP, Terry Pratchett https://web.archive.org/web/20150312202353/http://www.pjsmprints.com/

#1yrago Security researcher reveals grotesque vulnerabilities in "Yelp-for-MAGA" app and its snowflake owner calls in the FBI

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Slashdot (https://slashdot.org), Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/).

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Museums and the Web: March 31-April 4 2020, Los Angeles. https://mw20.museweb.net/

Currently writing: I'm rewriting a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I'm also working on "Baby Twitter," a piece of design fiction also set in The Lost Cause's prehistory, for a British think-tank. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel afterwards.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: A Lever Without a Fulcrum Is Just a Stick https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_330/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_330_-_A_Lever_Without_a_Fulcrum_Is_Just_a_Stick.mp3

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

[an-aspiring-jester]

My take on Uncle Scrooge and his relationship with his family based on „Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck”

Okay, so this is going to be really long and unnecessary rant about things that were probably said thousand times before, but I just needed to organize my thoughts so might as well do it here :)

First of all, I agree that Don Rosa’s Scrooge is… not a good uncle. Far from it. He is mean to his nephews, exploits them mercilessly, is selfish, petty, stubborn and occasionally manipulative, but… he has a reason to be. His behavior is not justified, but it’s understandable. He just needs a little more time, patience and support from his family (which he gets now) to overcome this attitude and change.

Let’s start at the beginning: His Number 1 Dime. We all know that Fergus did this with his best intentions in mind, so Scroogie learns to rely on himself, values hard work etc., etc.… BUT: remember he is still just a 10 years old boy! And, I get that they were poor, he had to help support his parents and DIDN’T MIND DOING IT, loved it, in fact, but… when he became a little obsessed with making money, working non-stop, NOONE really stopped him to tell that maybe it’s not entirely healthy and it’s okay to take a break once in a while. They benefited from the situation… Additionally, he didn’t know about his father’s little “scheme” (maybe for the better) so his most prized possession remains a reminder of the time he was cheated for his labor as a kid. Not really helping with a positive view on the world. And don’t even mention the pressure of being the Last of the Clan McDuck and all the expectations to make a name for himself and save the ancestral castle… No wonder he became a workaholic at such a young age! XD Again: Fergus loved his son with all his heart and wanted what’s best for him, he just… didn’t think of all the side-effects.

Then we have his Uncle Angus. A guy who exploited his nephew, tricked him, put him in danger multiple times, valued his potential treasure more than their LIFES, and not only didn’t really acknowledged Scrooge saving  the day, but downright stole the glory for himself and portrayed him as a useless dummy in his novels. And STILL counted on him to clean up after his mistakes. (The Vigilante of Pizen Bluff) Sounds familiar? Why would Scrooge treat his nephews differently if HE turned out okay? (I even dare to say he treats them slightly better than Pothole did) What’s more – when Scrooge was on the receiving side of this dynamic – HE NEVER EVEN COMPLAINED! Just treated it as something normal, admirable even! He really DOESN’T see why Donald or the boys would have a problem with that.

Scrooge spent most of his life alone. During that time he learned the hard way that people are going to judge him based on what he owns, people he considered friends are bound to turn his enemies once he gets richer than them, some of them won’t hesitate to kill him for profit *cough*Glomgold*cough*. The first time his family managed to contact him was when they needed cash for castle taxes. He drops everything and rushes to the rescue – yet the only reason his ancestors decide he’s worthy enough to continue living is that he’s going to become “the cheapest tightwad on Earth” (to Scrooge’s shock). You can see how optimistic and open-hearted Scrooge gets progressively colder and harsher (the way he acts after rescuing Glomgold versus Jaburi Kapirigi? Entirely different.). And at that point he STILL worries about his family and their well-being, even though his situation is probably much worse than theirs. He never got a letter from home. He’s been captured and ridiculed mercilessly - on account of his mother’s DEATH for crying out loud! Maybe that’s why he’s so unwilling to show any kind of care or affection? Because if you do - someone might as well use that sentiment to hurt you. The love of his life only wanted to rob and cheat him (his perspective) - no wonder he’s got trust issues. The only way to survive in this cruel world is to be just as ruthless as it is.

And when he comes back home? (Again - Scrooge doesn’t abandon his family once he gets rich. He still wants to go back home, to be with them and run his business from Scotland. When he realizes he doesn’t belong there anymore – he asks them ALL to move out with him. And when Fergus disagrees, he WANTS to reconsider this, it’s Fergus who cuts him off and order him to take his sisters away, without giving a chance to argue.) He got rotten tomatoes thrown at him JUST BECAUSE he’s rich now (at least that’s how Rosa portrayed that scene). And his father is disappointed when he (albeit harshly) defends himself! How unfair is that?

His sisters focus on how grand he LOOKS (our brother – billionaire), one of the first things they ask him about is what he BROUGHT them, when they realize he carries cash around (for him – his most important keepsakes!) they just call him loon, without considering his point of view. They’re tired of his stinginess and complain when he makes them do the hard work - but it’s not like he’s slacking off at the time! It’s more of a “Welcome to my world” sort of thing. And again – I ADORE Hortense and Matilda, they clearly love their brother and are just excited to see him back – but fail to understand how he changed. And do very little to help him adapt. Teasing him about his paranoia does not. If anything, it just makes him feel like they don’t treat him seriously and don’t appreciate his accomplishments. Maybe that’s why he tries so hard to impress them. He starts taking shortcuts, challenges his principals. Yeah, he’s frustrated with world and how it treats him. He wants to take an easy road for once. He ignores his sisters begging, refuses to listen to reason. That’s his fatal mistake and his lowest point. But what he says while watching the destruction of Foola Zoola’s village? “Nobody humiliates a McDuck in front of his kin!”. He cares about what they think of him, but his priorities are messed up. When he comes back to the tent he starts with: “That’s more wealth for you two to INHERIT someday, so you can stop pretending to be outraged.” He honestly BELIVES that. If almost everyone he crossed paths with was only interested in his money – why should his FAMILY be any different?! (Later he thought that Donald agreed to meet him at Christmas dinner only to “see how rich he’ll be when Scrooge’s gone”. And I THINK that part of the reason that in Rosa’s comics (unlike Barks’) we only ever see them hanging out in the Bin or on an adventure is that Scrooge may STILL think that they only agree to spend time with him when he pays them. What other reason they would have to put up with him? That’s just depressing, when you think about it.) That’s the twisted way he sees the world nowadays. And even then he managed to realize that burning the village WAS a mistake and attempts to fix it! Sure, he delays their reconciliation more and more – still convincing himself that “my sisters will forgive my delay when they see this.” It’s sad how delusional he got.

And on to the big fight – at that point, Scrooge is a changed man. And Hortense’s yelling doesn’t do any good. (Again – they have every right to BE outraged, it’s just… not the best way to actually SOLVE anything.) They say he won’t ever see them again – and honestly, WHAT KIND OF A THREAT IS THAT TO HIM?!! He ALREADY spend 50 years of his life WITHOUT THEM! Without anyone! For HIM – it doesn’t make any difference! From his perspective – his family really IS “nothing but trouble.” Ungrateful freeloaders, holding him back. (Side note: in Letter from Home it was A LITTLE unfair for Matilda to accuse him of not “being around” with them at the castle – when at the time he was earning money so they could KEEP the castle. A bit of hypocrisy, in my opinion. And Scrooge didn’t even defend himself, thinking he deserves it.)

Scrooge spent his entire adulthood with no one to rely on, besides himself. Almost every time he trusted someone he ended up backstabbed one way or another. He doesn’t NEED anyone, he survived on his own this long, he can continue to do so. Yet when his sisters abandoned him for good – “no joy remained.” He CARED about them, even if he wouldn’t admit it. He still wanted to have them around. He got so depressed, he retired and was ready to spend the rest of his days in a lonely mansion, basically waiting for death. Until he finally decides to reach out for his only nephew…

Basically what I’m trying to say here is: Scrooge McDuck loves his family wholeheartedly. He ALWAYS did. They always had been his priority. He just has NO IDEA what SHOWING love is supposed to look like! And you can’t really blame him. Let’s just hope that Donald and the rest of the gang can teach him that eventually.

[sure-as-eggs]

can you tell more about ed’s (and oswald’s) ways of thinking? god i can listen to you going on about them forever

…Well since I don’t seem to be capable of shutting up about them, I’m thrilled you feel that way?? (I’m sorry this took so long… Honestly I kept putting it off because I was waiting to see how Defrosted!Ed would handle things on his own before I committed to a reading on him!)

Anyway:

Ed is a chess player.Oswald is an artist.

There are a finite number of variables Ed is interested in at any given moment, and he operates within a closed system of actions and responses. He also always has a predetermined Winning Condition: after all, there’s only one definition of ‘checkmate.’

The problem for Ed is that he’s not always a particularly good chess player, because he has blinders a mile wide that prevent him from seeing if he’s made a bad move or if he’s underestimated an opponent. And that happens quite a lot?? Because Ed has very poor social skills and a fascinating ego problem.

Rather than a narcissist (which is 100% Oswald’s issue), I’d almost call Ed a solipsist?? Solipsism is the philosophical idea that you can’t be sure if anything exists except your own mind, and between his hallucinations and his compulsions and his empathy issues and his social difficulties, Ed has very very few anchors in reality. He has to find a way to view the world in concrete terms if he’s going to interact with it, he has to know that he can process and catalogue and make sense of things. Riddles are a perfect expression of that: by framing things in questions he knows the answers to, he swaps places with the rest of the world temporarily, because HE’S the one who’s anchored and it’s EVERYBODY ELSE who’s on uncertain ground.

That’s why it breaks my heart when he gets those riddles wrong. It’s all tied up in his Riddler persona, this assurance that he’s real and knows who he is and what he’s meant to be doing, and it unwinds him. Oswald telling him his riddles don’t make sense is Oswald telling Ed that his grasp on reality is wrong, that his identity isn’t real and that he’s completely lost sight of the chessboard patterns and reasoning he held on to so tightly in the first three seasons. Of COURSE he accepts being frozen again.

“Fogginess of the mind,” “decreased capacity to think ten steps ahead,” and “inability to solve riddles” are all basically the same complaint. He can’t make sense of the chessboard anymore. He knows it’s all there, he knows there are patterns to follow and questions with answers, he just can’t see it.

And he doesn’t make any attempt to adapt or look at things differently, either?? (Not yet, anyway.) He manages to develop a complete plan, and when it falls through, he temporarily gives up, and then comes up with another one. (Make money -> Fix brain) 

Honestly, the quality of his plans has declined significantly from when he went up against Jim or orchestrated Oswald’s downfall, but I don’t think his mental cycle of futility and single-mindedness has changed at all from before being frozen??

Ed doesn’t adjust well to unexpected circumstances or reactions. He’s at his best and happiest when he’s protected, removed, when there’s a buffer between him and whatever he’s trying to do. He doesn’t tend to do well in the thick of things, because he can’t account for complicating variables or micromanage from the front lines, and because he has no time or space to develop alternate strategies when he feels like everything he’s planned is falling apart around him.

For example: Kristen wasn’t supposed to get mad at him over Dougherty. He doesn’t know what to DO with that, he didn’t plan for it and so he panics, he tries to get things back on track with such violent desperation that he kills her. He has absolutely no problem-solving skills in situations like that.

Compare it to literally the next time he wakes up, when he’s alone and can start to rationalize the situation and the stakes. Compare it to him trying to sabotage the investigation into Kristen’s death, where he absolutely expects Jim to be out to get him, but there’s no immediate danger; he has all the time in the world to come up with and commit to a course of action, and to handle it all cleanly and precisely.

Ed has plans, and then potentially back-up plans, and quite often they’re brilliant. But if they fall through and he’s not in a position to retreat and reassess… He’s screwed. (“I was arresting Jim!!”)

(He has the /capacity/ to improvise, and sometimes he’s even successful, but generally only when whoever he’s trying to manipulate doesn’t have a good reason to doubt or make things difficult for him. He lies to Lee several times, and to Kristen, but in all those situations they go out of their way to give him the benefit of the doubt. It’s the same thing when he tricks Oswald; Oswald doesn’t believe what’s happening even when Ed pulls his gun.)

Ed gives his stance on manipulation in Arkham, which is that people are just puzzles, and there’s a solution to them: give them what they want. Contrast that with Oswald’s perspective: “when you know what a man LOVES, you know what can kill him.”

Ed is thinking in terms of cause and effect, black and white, fixed identities and desires because that’s how he operates, that’s the only way he can anchor himself and create a strategy that gets him closer to some objective ideal of control over his own reality.

Oswald isn’t.

Oswald is entirely contextual. He’s not looking for truth or answers, he’s not interested in objectivity or what’s really going on, all he cares about are feelings and experiences. Even his big-picture view is in terms of his own relationship to Gotham: it’s not just a prize or a proving ground, it’s his home.

I love his relationship to Ed’s riddles, because the ones he solves are the ones that are wrapped up in an immediate experience. He’s brilliant, but he’s not interested in being smart for its own sake. He gets nothing out of solving puzzles which aren’t relevant to him.

“What I want, the poor have, the rich need, and if you eat it, you die.”…Who gives a shit? Literally, who gives a flying fuck? If you want to say something, say it. If you want to lie, then lie. He doesn’t understand what Ed gets out of knowing the answer to his own question, he doesn’t understand why you’d separate the fact that you know something from the thing that you actually know unless you’re going to USE that somehow.

“I can’t be bought, but I can be stolen with a glance. I’m worthless to one, but priceless to two.”He is so not interested in this while he’s pissed at Ed and trying to run a goddamn campaign, but, fascinatingly, he remembers it word for word. Because the scene where Ed tells him this riddle is Ed pulling out all the stops, every rational explanation and concrete example he can think of to communicate something to Oswald, and I think Oswald can tell. He shuts Ed down because love is such a huge insecurity for him, acknowledgement is such a weak point, and he doesn’t want to accept that he has any interest in what Ed’s trying to tell him.But he does.And when it turns out Ed’s right, Oswald proves that he totally subconsciously solved that riddle because he could FEEL it, not as a question with an answer but as a hope and a fear he was trying to pretend Ed hadn’t brought to light.

…That was a digression.

Anyway: Oswald is at his best when things are an absolute shitshow. In tense, high-stakes situations where everybody’s already burned through Plans A through F and nobody has a precedent for what to do next, or when he’s stuck with no resources and an impossible task, Oswald shines.

My favorite example of this is the Season One finale, where he’d planned to go quietly murder Falcone and instead ends up arrested and chained in a warehouse by his two OTHER worst enemies (one of whom he thought was dead) who are suddenly working together. There is no way in hell he even considered that this was how his day would go. In Ed’s chess metaphors, this would be like if halfway through the game somebody gave your opponent all their captured pieces back and then let them take several consecutive turns. This is a Problem in a proper noun sense of the word, and Oswald has absolutely nothing to work with.

…Except he does. Because he can feel the tension, he can feel Fish’s controlled fury and Maroni’s self-satisfaction, he has history and connections with both of them, and he channels it all through about three sentences. He reads the situation like a painting and changes the entire mood and meaning of the piece with three well-placed strokes.

He can do this most effectively when he only has to worry about himself, because whatever he creates is (by default) going to suit his own vision. The most extreme version of it manifests as one of my favorite Oswald Things: what a tremendously bad idea it is to let him go off screen.

If you let him out of your sight, you’ve given him free reign to choose his own relationship to whatever’s happening. You’ve given him total creative control, and by god he’s gonna use it.Some examples off the top of my head:-When everybody scatters in the Season One finale and he unhooks himself and disappears, he comes back minutes later with an assault rifle and takes over the city-When Jim and Harvey leave him downstairs at Loeb’s farm, he stages the escape of the captives he’s supposed to be guarding and later murders them at his club-Ed shoots him and puts him in the river and he survives and turns up as Ed’s roommate in the super secret Court of Owls dungeon(I like to think everybody is fully aware of this phenomenon by the time the hostage exchange rolls around, and it’s part of what’s going through Ed’s head while chasing him out of the warehouse: “If I let him get out that door, I am fucked.”And hey, what do you know.Oswald gets out the door about four seconds before Ed.And four seconds is all he needs.)

Oswald has his weaknesses too, obviously. He’s actually, generally speaking, pretty terrible at being in charge of things. (Remember what a piss poor job he did with Fish’s club before Butch showed up?? He made it too much about himself, took it too personally, disregarded too many things he wasn’t personally interested in, and it nearly flopped.) Being in a position of authority really doesn’t capitalize on his skills, because it restricts the perspectives he can take, it dictates his relationship to the city and its workings in a way that can undermine the things he wants and feels.

In that sense, the team up of Oswald as mayor and Ed as chief of staff really could not have been better for either of them: you got the sense that Oswald ranted and fumed about things and worked through to what he wanted, and Ed translated it all into itemized lists to be discretely handled after tea.Oswald was in a position to see and interpret everything, but he didn’t have to worry about micromanagement. Ed had a constant stream of ego-inflating tasks to optimize and complete, but he could do it all from a position of total security.

(…I have to bring up one last thing, which is part of why I picked chess player and artist as my metaphors for Ed and Oswald: 3x15. Oswald leaves behind an oil painting of the two of them together, layers and shades and impressions, and Ed leaves a huge question mark over it because he can’t PROCESS them that way. He goes to the chess tournament, one stage in a meticulously choreographed master plan, and hallucinates Oswald telling him he’s being absurd because Ed is coping by moving pieces around for their own sake, assembling a puzzle without any regard for whether it actually makes a picture in the end. It’s such a good contrast and such a good episode, I’m still not over it.)

[seo1code-blog]

How to get your marketing in front of people at exactly the right time

How to get your marketing in front of people at exactly the right time

When is the best time to market your services to someone?

That’s what today’s post is all about. I’m going to show you how to get your marketing message in front of people at exactly the right time. It’s based on my newest client.

I was prompted to write about this, after Jennifer joined my Marketing Mentor Program. Jennifer’s experience shows the importance of timing. She explained how she’d reached a tipping point. She wasn’t prepared to waste another year, working hard and making too little progress. So, she decided to get in touch with me on Friday and hire me.

There’s a lesson here for you and the way you market your business. And it becomes obvious, as you look behind Jennifer’s actions.

What does this have to do with timing?

Jennifer’s desire to own a better, more profitable business is what motivated her to take action. However, in order for her to consider me as the obvious choice, I needed to be where her attention was, at the point where she was motivated to take action.

You need to do the same. You need to be where your prospective client’s attention is, when they need what you have to offer.

Most small business owners only market their services intermittently. There’s usually weeks and often months between their marketing efforts. And because of the importance of being there precisely when their prospective clients need them, this stacks the odds against them.

If you’re getting low response rates from your marketing, you’ll already know exactly what I mean. Because no matter how great your services are, if you catch people at the wrong time, they won’t hire you.

Thankfully, this doesn’t need to happen to you ever again!

Here’s a proven, extremely effective alternative.

It works like this

Instead of seeing marketing as something you do occasionally, start treating it as an ongoing part of your business. This is how you ensure your name is front of mind, when a prospective client needs you. This is critically important, if you want people to hire you.

For example, Jennifer had been a reader of mine for months, before she hired me. She already knew who I was and she knew my work. So, she trusted me. Then, one of my posts landed in her inbox at the point when she was looking for help.

I became, in her words, “the obvious choice”.

Be there when they need you

Quit marketing like it’s a decade ago. Instead, turn up often, with something useful… not just a series of ads, offers and pitches. Consider newsletters, vlogging, blogging via email, podcasting etc, to share your expertise with your prospective clients. Demonstrate your knowledge. Share your passion. Build a connection with your marketplace.

If you do, you’ll be where their attention is, when they need your services.

IMPORTANT: None of those marketing suggestions cost you a dime, unlike; print ads, mailing lists, mail shots, networking groups, Facebook ads, Google pay-per-click, adwords etc.

In other words, so long as you do the right things correctly, there’s no financial barrier to continuously marketing your business. There’s no barrier to being where your prospective client’s attention is, at the point where they’re actively seeking the services YOU provide.

Think about that for a moment.

Is it easy? Yes. Once you know what to do and how to do it correctly, it’s extremely

Cheap trick?

Without knowing it, many small business owners are engaged in a dangerous race to the bottom. In today’s post, I explain what’s meant by marketing professionals when we say race to the bottom, and why it’s almost always a terrible strategy for small businesses.

What is the race to the bottom?

In small business marketing, we tend to use the term to refer to making sales or winning new clients, based on being the cheapest option. This is most common among commodity businesses. The ‘winner’ of the race to the bottom is the business that’s the cheapest at that time.

Some large companies use their financial muscle to work successfully with small profit margins. They have strategies in place, which lets them to compete on very low prices.

However, small business owners tend to just lower their fees (or prices), as a way to make more sales or attract more clients. They then find competitors do the same (see below) and the race to the bottom (the lowest price) begins.

This small business scenario, along with a better alternative, is what today’s post is all about.

What does the winner get as their prize?

They get, wait for it… the privilege of building a client list of fee sensitive people, who will leave them the moment a cheaper provider comes along.

It’s a high risk, low return strategy. It requires you to constantly look for ways to lower your overhead, cut corners and speed things up. All this, in an effort to attract the least loyal profile of clients in the world: Those who switch from provider to provider, looking for the lowest fees or prices.

Why is such a high risk, low return strategy so popular with small business owners?

Simple. They see it as an easy way to attract more clients or make more sales. However, a look at the medium and longer-term picture shows how this can go horribly wrong.

Here’s what I’ve seen small businesses do over and over again:

They lower their fees (or prices) by 10% and see that they get a slightly better sales conversion rate.

So, they lower their fees by another 10% and see it improves sales even more.

Some of their competitors decide to do the same.

Now, the race to the bottom is on!

That first business now needs to lower their fees by another (whatever)%, because their competitors are charging the same kind of fees as them. Their fees are now rock bottom or very close to rock bottom.

After a while, they are working with clients or making sales, with very little profit.

If a better funded competitor then decides to undercut them, they have to try and survive on fewer and fewer clients, who are hardly profitable.

Alternatively, if their overheads increase and they have to start increasing their fees, all those fee sensitive clients they raced to win, start looking for the new, cheapest provider.

In the absence of an effective marketing strategy, it’s just too easy to lower your fees in order to get some fast money into your business. But it isn’t sustainable. And it will only create additional problems, further down the line. So, if this is something you are considering, please think about the medium term and longer-term consequences.

Marketing Tip: Getting noticed

Your clients or customers have something in common. Something that you need to be aware of, if you want to market your business successfully.

It’s simply this. They notice things. For example, they notice:

When you treat them like stars in order to get their custom, then treat them like numbers once you have it.

When you promise their project will be delivered on schedule, but you’re late.

When you’re more focused on what’s in it for you, than what’s best for them.

Thankfully, they also notice:

When you treat them like stars in order to get their custom, then treat them like superstars once you have their custom.

When you promise their project will be delivered on schedule, then deliver their project (and your promise) on schedule.

When you’re more focused on what’s best for them, than what’s in it for you.

Not every client complains when they’re receiving a poor service. However, they’re highly likely to take their custom to a competitor.

Not every client says “thanks” when you’re delivering an outstanding service. However, they’re highly likely to remain your client and to recommend you to everyone.

People notice what you do. So do something worth noticing. And do it every day.

Who are you selling to? The answer will shock you!

Are you selling to yourself?

That may seem like an odd question, yet it’s one of the most important questions in marketing.

Why?

Because business owners tend to market their products as if they were selling to themselves, when they should be marketing to their prospective clients or customers.

Now, if you are a lawyer and your prospective clients are lawyers, that works fine. However, if you sell to people whose needs and wants are different to your own, you need a different approach.

Here are a couple of examples, though it applies to every industry:

Read the marketing of most accountants and you will find lots of statistics and graphs. This is what accountants love, but not their prospective clients. The prospective client wants to know why they should hire this accountant and not an equally qualified competitor. They want the story behind the numbers. They want to know how the accountant will help them build a better business.

Read the marketing of most web designers and it’s filled with jargon and buzzwords. They talk about things like; HTML5, Java, CSS, standards compliance and responsive design. These are things designers know are important and love to talk about. However, those terms mean nothing to their prospective clients. Their prospective clients want a professional looking site. They want a site that is an asset to their business. They want to know how a new website will help them make more sales and attract more enquiries. They want to know they can trust the designer to do a great job.

Anyone using that approach is leaving money on the table every day. Don’t let it happen to you.

Match your message to their wants and their needs

Now what?

Take a look at your marketing messages from your prospective client’s vantage point. Determine if you’re marketing based on what they want (not need) to hear. Also, check to see if you are using their language or yours. Sometimes we get so used to industry terms and buzzwords, that we forget they are meaningless and confusing to everyone else.

In short, the better you communicate how valuable your services are, the easier you will find it to attract great clients or customers.

How to create marketing that spreads and sells

I have a very effective marketing idea to share with you today. You’re going to love this!

I’m going to show you how to create marketing, which people will value and that’s powerful enough to inspire them to hire you or buy from you. It’s based on the work I do with my clients and includes a brief case study, which you can learn from.

So, let’s get started.

Receiving or paying attention?

It starts with understanding that there’s a huge difference between someone receiving your message and someone paying attention to it.

For example, TV viewers are sent targeted marketing messages (commercials) during TV shows. What do most of us do? We fast forward through them or if watching the show in real-time, we go and make a coffee. Just because they send their messages, doesn’t mean we are paying attention.

For your marketing to work, you need to get a great message in front of the right people. In order to get this correct, here’s the key question we need to ask ourselves:

If I stopped my email marketing campaign or I stopped publishing my blog posts, newsletter etc, would people really MISS them?

As a quick look at the marketing you receive every day confirms, for most people the honest answer to that question is NO! We get bombarded with dull, uninspiring sales messages all day and see them as an intrusion, rather than something of value.

Of course, for that tiny minority of small businesses who DO produce marketing, which people genuinely value and would miss if it were to stop, the sky is the limit.

I’m going to share the process required to make this work for your business later in this post.

First, we need to understand why there’s so much dull and ineffective marketing out there.

Dull is cheap. Dull is fast. Dull is simple!

It’s cheap, fast and simple to create dull marketing and get it in front of a lot of people. As a result, there’s no barrier to entry today.

Things were very different a decade ago. Back then, if a small business owner wanted to send a mail shot to 50,000 people, she’d have to spend some serious money.

She’d have to cover the cost of the mailing list.

Then she would need to pay for all that paper and the printing.

Next she would need to pay a company to get the letters folded and inserted into the 50,000 envelopes.

Then there’s the huge postage costs for those 50,000 pieces of mail.

All in all, it would cost many thousands. She would need to think long and hard aboutthe value of what she put into those envelopes. Get it wrong and she would pay a hefty price!

Today, everything has changed

That same business owner in 2017 can hit 50,000 people using cheap email software and her laptop. It costs just a little of her time. If it fails, maybe tomorrow’s one will work. It’s never been cheaper or easier to push dull, uninspired, poorly thought out, uncreative marketing out the door.

So, that’s exactly what a lot of people are doing. This is why there’s so much junk in your email inbox and on your social networking accounts.

Here’s what you need to do to get it right!

There is an alternative approach I want to share with you, so people welcome your marketing, share it and hire you or buy from you. It requires that you take the exact opposite approach, to 99% of the marketing you see out there.

It’s about shifting the focus of your marketing, so that it’s primarily of benefit to the people who receive it and secondarily of benefit to you.

It’s about producing content (audio, video, blog posts, newsletters, mail shots, flyers, social networking updates etc), which provide independent value to those who receive it. This means they get genuinely valuable or useful information from it, independent of them needing to spend a penny with you.

An example of how this works, based on one of my clients

Imagine you are a dog owner and after a trip to the vet, you subscribe to their dog owner’s newsletter. It gives you tips and ideas, to help you keep your dog healthy, fit and happy. At the bottom of each email are their contact details, so you can call them when you need a vet. You find this free information so useful, that you send it to 10 of your dog-owning friends.

They subscribe and then do the same. Then these new subscribers share it too, and on and on it goes. The amazingly valuable, highly-targeted readership grows and grows.

Soon, that vet (a client of mine) was talking to thousands of local dog owners and positioned themselves in their marketplace, as THE place to take your dog for all its veterinary needs.

Their newsletter was eagerly anticipated by it’s readers… yes, people wanted to hear from them and valued what they had to share.

Compare that vet’s approach to the typical marketing messages we see.

That vet doesn’t need to run expensive radio ads.

They have no need to waste time on Facebook. They own the communication channel with their prospective clients… not Facebook!

They have no need to buy mailing lists.

They don’t need to waste valuable hours at networking events.

They certainly don’t need to pester people on social networks or ask strangers for recommendations on Linkedin.

They don’t need to invest in anything, other than the creativity required to produce a genuinely valuable newsletter, with useful content.

That example shows how a business can grow a massively valuable marketing asset, by sharing real value — rather than pushing unwanted messages. If you invest in creating this kind of value driven marketing, it will improve your business beyond recognition.

The lesson? Stop pushing predictable marketing at people. Focus on attracting clients instead! This means giving valuable information, something your marketplace will embrace and share.

Yes, you need to get the process just right, but as my client demonstrated, if you do it correctly, the rewards are huge. Soon, you too could have a valuable, growing community of people, who position you in their mind as the obvious choice, when they need the type of service your business provides.

Discover the safest, least risky way to grow your business

Kelly emailed me with a great question. I know her challenge is something many small business owners encounter, so I thought you might find it useful.

Here’s an excerpt from Kelly’s email, shared with her permission, along with my answer.

“I started my business in 2009 and though it grew for the first 4 years things have been flat ever since. […] My main problem Jim is that I know I need to grow my business but that means changing things and it feels too risky. I carry on doing what I do because the risk factor stops me doing what I need to do. Why am I self sabotaging?”

Understanding risk

Like many, (perhaps most), small business owners, Kelly fears making some of the improvements needed for success. It’s easy to see why: Improvements require change and change feels risky. So, she repeats what feels comfortable, she works hard and hopes things will improve.

The challenge with that approach, as Kelly has discovered, is that it doesn’t work. It’s limited. Extremely limited.

Here are just some common examples of what happens, when we try to avoid risk:

We fail to get noticed. To get noticed we need to stand out, which feels risky. Riskier than simply working hard and staying in the background.

We fail to be remembered. To be remembered, we need to do something extraordinary. The ordinary is within our comfort zone. The extraordinary is, by default, outside our comfort zone. And leaving our comfort zone feels risky.

We fail to attract word of mouth referrals. People only remark on a business when it does something remarkable. It feels risky to deviate from the norm.

We fail to attract the best clients and the highest fees. Offering a premium service and charging a premium fee, feels risky. Risky enough for just a tiny percentage of business owners in your industry to even try.

We fail to deliver exceptional work for our clients. To do exceptional work, we need to risk delivering something different.

We fail to work on the best projects. The best projects go to those who operate at the top end of their marketplace. These are the providers who are daring enough to tackle the trickiest challenges. The mavericks. Maverick work feels way, way riskier than doing average work.

When I work with a client on this challenge, I start by explaining how change is essential, if they want to grow a great business. Because no change equals no improvement. I then work out what’s blocking them and show them how to overcome it.

If you know there are things you should improve, which you’re not doing because the change feels risky, press pause!

Find out why you associate risk to the safest thing you can possibly do. Then develop a strategy for growth. That’s how you start the process of taking your business to another level. And another level…

[codefortnite4725-blog]

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[sevendeadlyseans]

10 (or 11) Movies Released Last Year That I Really Liked, 2016 Edition

Before I get to my “official” Top 10, one title has been excluded for consideration due to conflict of interest, but would otherwise top my list.  

Darling

Mickey Keating’s 3rd feature (produced by the fabulous Jenn Wexler, a.k.a. my girlfriend) is, of course, my favorite film of the year. I’ve seen it three times in theaters—twice in 2015 on the festival circuit, and again last April on opening night—and still keep finding new, subtle things about it to love.

The story: a young woman is paid to housesit a glorious old building while its eccentric owner is away. Is the house haunted? Is she unhinged? Maybe both? Star Lauren Ashley Carter—rightly recognized as “the Audrey Hepburn of indie horror” by The Austin Chronicle, is in almost every frame of the film and is never short of mesmerizing, whether answering the telephone, putting on make-up or getting her hands dirty by...well, let’s not give away the fun. 

The black and white cinematography is gorgeous, the score crawls under your skin and the editing is legit terrifying. Watch with the lights out.

And now back to our official, less personally biased top 10, in order...

Moonlight

Without question, the most accomplished, most moving film of 2016. 

James Joyce once noted, “In the particular is the universal.” Moonlight is atop my list in no small part because it’s so breathtaking in its particular intimacies. 

Moonlight is like Boyhood on a budget: it drops us into three important periods in the life of a boy who becomes a teen who becomes a man—at first bullied and confused, increasingly neglected by his crack-addicted mother and influenced by a kind-hearted, drug-dealing surrogate father. We see him harden, over time, under the pressure of a world with no use for softness, and then, perhaps, reconnecting with a lost bit of himself, at long last.  

Writing that synopsis, it strikes me how easily such a story could have tipped into cliché and melodrama. Perhaps because writer/director Barry Jenkins and playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney are both from the Liberty City projects themselves. their knowledge—coupled with a great cast, an impeccable soundtrack, a deft use of color and Jenkins’ masterful control of tone—l gives Moonlight specificity, and that makes it universal.

Jackie

Tone is a theme for the first three films on my 2016 list—four if you count Darling, and you most definitely should. Pablo Larrain’s Jackie puts us inside the experience of First Lady Jackie Kennedy in the aftermath of JFK’s assassination, in a way I never thought I could experience:

Your husband was just murdered; his blood is on your dress. Your life is cracked, and even if you put the pieces back together, nothing will ever be the same. Oh, and he’s the president—was the president—so your country is broken, too. History has its eye on you, so while the crushing weight of grief bears down, try to look good for the cameras. It’s only his legacy at stake.

It seems ludicrous to say that Oscar-nominated Natalie Portman is underrated, but somehow she is—and I adored her in Black Swan. In Jackie, she’s working at another level. Open and wounded when no one but us can see, calculating and brittle and angry before an eager reporter. I am excited to see Portman does next.

Special mention to Mica Levi’s score, her second feature after 2013′s Under the Skin. Can’t wait to hear what she does next, too. 

The Witch

Someone had the terrible idea to market The Witch as “the year’s scariest movie.” It’s not, nor is it trying to be. It is, however, among the most unsettling films of this year or any other. (Again: tone.)  

The story: it’s 17th century New England. William, his wife Katherine, and their five children have been kicked out of the settlement being too religious (it seems, or perhaps just too self-righteous) and must find a way to survive on their own on the fringes of the deep, dark wood. 

Before you have time to wonder if the titular witch might be metaphoric, she shows up and does something unspeakable to William and Katherine’s newborn son. Things go downhill from there, exacerbated by both outside, malevolent forces and unacknowledged tensions within the family unit.

The Witch looks gorgeous, as well it should. First-time director Robert Eggers made his bones as a production and costume designer, and reportedly built an actual, mostly working 17th century farm for the film. Even the dialogue itself was built out of scraps of things people wrote and said back then. You can feel the authenticity, which makes the family’s isolation feel that much more acute and dangerous. 

O.J.: Made in America

Bob Dylan never asked “How many minutes does a film have to be, before we can call it TV?” but the answer, my friend, is probably not much more than the 467 minute runtime of Ezra Edelman’s O.J.: Made in America. (For comparison, that’s almost 3 hours longer than a full season of HBO’s Veep.)

It doesn’t help that it was produced by ESPN, or that it aired on that cable network less than a month after it’s Oscar-qualifying theatrical run. And yet...it was my favorite documentary in a year of many great docs (more on that later), so if wants to call itself a movie, I’ll roll with it.

2014 marked the 20th anniversary of the murders. The revived attention around the so-called “trial of the century” led to two great works of art, Edelman’s doc and FX’s American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson. (One can only wonder how our present political moment will be filtered through the culture of 2018).

Rather than produce O.J. overload, the two projects complement one another—the dramatic series taking us inside the lives and hearts of key figures on both legal teams, while the doc simultaneously expands the scope and deepens the focus—showing us more about who O.J. was before, during and after, and what America was and still is, especially but not only in Los Angeles, but also in Ferguson, on Staten Island, everywhere. If it takes Edelman 8 hours to set up all details to knock us down with his larger point, well, that’s 8 hours well spent. 

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrB3rOcrJxg&list

The Lobster

Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth was one of my favorite movies of 2010. He’s back on the list with a film that’s just as strange but far more accessible. 

I love absurdism, deadpan humor, magical realism and dystopian fantasy, but I can’t recall a film that manages the trick of juggling all three at once as The Lobster does—with an honest-to-goodness love story right there in the middle.

I’ll skip the premise—if you don’t know it, watch the trailer. 

The cast is great, and Colin Farrell is a revelation, topping my previous Farrell favorite, the criminally under seen In Bruges. Lanthimos packs the film with small details that make the surreal world of The Lobster believable. The first shot packs an entire story of love, betrayal and murder (which is never revisited) into a single, long take. And its final, wrenching moments will stay with me forever. 

Film critic Britt Hayes got to the heart of the filmmaker’s uncanny alchemy when she noted “Lanthimos doesn’t heighten reality to an absurd degree; he heightens the absurdity of our existing reality.” Or put another way, he doesn’t add absurdity, he just turns the heat up on reality and our own absurdity bubbles to the surface.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTNZmOJxuAc

Hail, Caesar!

There’s this other movie that’s sort of a throwback to old Hollywood, with some singing and dancing in it. That movie’s fine, but don’t hold your breath, it didn’t make my list. For my money, the real love letter to Hollywood—and why the movie industry matters—came from the Coen Brothers. 

Now, it wouldn’t be a Coens movie if that tender heart weren’t covered under many layers of arch cynicism, stylized reference bordering on “acting” “in” “quotation” “marks” and the occasional silliness. But you don’t have to peel much of it away to see the real love they have for not just the magic of movies but also the joy in so many abandoned film genres that once ruled the box office—be they Gene Kelly musicals, Gene Autry oaters or C.B. DeMille bible epics, to name but a few recreated here. 

For me, Hail, Caesar! sits perfectly between the sour cynicism of the Hollywood in Woody Allen’s misanthropic Cafe Society and the false romanticism of the ambition-for-ambition’s sake “dreamers" of La La Land who prize the warmth of the spotlight over any real human affection. 

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NYpz_j3e38

13th

Ava DuVernay’s 13th is a civics lesson for a country in dire need of one. With a controlled but searing ferocity, the documentary lays out the case that the 13th amendment allowed the continuation of a system of oppression and control not all that from slavery: the criminal justice system. If you haven’t read your Constitution lately, here’s a refresher on the 13th, the amendment that ostensibly ended slavery:

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

This one, terrible clause not just perpetuated slavery under another name but incentivized an expansion of the definition of criminality, in order to profit from the subjugation of mostly brown and black bodies, which has led to an explosion in America’s incarcerated population. In effect, through laws designed to maintain segregation, blackness itself has been criminalized.

With Jim Crow, redlining, lynching (terrorism by another name) and the like, the 13th has led to a more unequal society—and, indirectly, to leaders who lie and stoke racial, as well as religions and ethnic, divisions in order to maintain the ever-growing class divide from which they profit. 

This poor summation doesn’t do justice to the full weight of the case DuVernay and her experts make, or how well they make it. 13th should be required viewing by everyone, but most of all by those who hold the power to make and enforce the law.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V66F3WU2CKk

The Love Witch

Let’s start with the obvious: Anna Biller’s The Love Witch is a gorgeous film. Turn the sound off, re-order the scenes at random and you still can’t take your eyes off what looks like a lost Technicolor American Giallo from 1972. Biller not only wrote, edited and directed the film but also handled production design, art direction, set decoration and costuming, almost single-handedly crafting one of the best looking films of 2016. 

Beneath that dazzling frosting is a rich, feminist layer cake. Elaine is a witch specializing in sex magic, who believes her path to happiness lies in finding the right man, seducing him and pleasing him in every way. On paper, she’s a patriarchy’s dream come true. But when these lustful men inevitably fall short—as they all must, as patriarchy itself is built on a lie—she gets rid of them, permanently. Poor, unfulfilled Elaine. 

The Love Witch is Biller’s own magic trick, casting its spell over us with its color, its throwback ‘70s sexploitation vibe and its razor-sharp message we don’t notice until the blade has slid, quietly, between our ribs and stabbed us in the heart. Metaphorically.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXjDEDYlu7c

I, Daniel Blake

Daniel Blake has spent a lifetime working with his hands, supporting a modest but pleasant life for himself and his late wife. After a heart attack, his doctors tell him he’s not fit to return to work—yet with a simple questionnaire (and absent any input from his doctors), the government’s welfare bureau deems him too fit to qualify for disability. 

He can apply for unemployment benefits, but only if he’s actively seeking work—work which, according to his doctors, he can’t accept. Caught in a catch-22, he must appeal to an unreachable “decision-maker” for relief—provided he can find a way, without income or assistance, to get by while he waits. Then Daniel meets a single mother in stuck in a similar situation and does his best to help her struggling family, even as his own situation grows worse.

Ken Loach’s drama won the Palm D’Or at Cannes but has received not much notice since then, at least outside the UK, perhaps because of the specific criticism of the British welfare bureaucracy at the heart of the story. But you don’t need much imagination to see how things can be as bad or worse for the many Daniel Blakes of this country.

Loach has been making socially conscious films about the struggles of the working and lower classes for longer than I’ve been alive. As with Jenkins and Moonlight, it’s clear Loach knows this world, these people and their struggles, and knows how to tell their particular stories in a simple yet powerful, moving and universal way.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4KbJLpu7yo

The Handmaiden

Apologies if you’re getting whiplash. I went from a highly stylized Love Witch to a pared-down I, Daniel Blake. Now I’m going to swing back the other way with Park Chan-Wook’s sensual, sensuous The Handmaiden. 

As has been the case in years prior, the 10th (really, 11th) and final spot on my list could have gone to a number of worthy films, and almost did—I began writing up another film here before realizing there’s no way I could round out 2016 without giving The Handmaiden its due.  (Sorry, Elle!)

The story of The Handmaiden is...too complex to go into here, frankly. There’s a con man and his female accomplice. There’s a rich heiress and her controlling uncle. Some of them are Japanese occupiers; others native Koreans. Oh, ands there’s a library of dirty, dirty books. 

Cons are conned, crosses are doubled, no one is quite who they pretend to be and everyone is up to something. In the end, something real is found and, through it, freedom is won.

The Handmaiden is a thriller as elegant as it is perverse. Every change in perspective brings new meaning to all that’s come before. Every twist revealed is a delight. Park Chan-Wook is at the top of his game.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4Z5jfjxdvQ

Honorable Mentions & More 

Wait, don’t get up. There’s more! 

First, let’s start with honorable mentions that you already know are great: 

Paul Verhoeven’s psychological thriller Elle, which features Isabelle Huppert in one of my favorite performances of the year, or maybe ever.

Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, which goes on my list of essential smart science fiction, along with Gattaca, Ex Machina, Primer and Under the Skin, to name a few.

Sing Street, one of the most joyful films of the year. A misfit ‘80s Irish teen starts a band so he can cast the girl he likes in their highly creative music videos. From John Carney, the filmmaker behind the equally charming Once.

Nicolas Winding Refn’s mad look at fashion, envy and unchecked ambition (kind of the anti-La La Land?), The Neon Demon.  

Next, films that might have been off your radar but are well worth seeking out:

Benjamin Dickinson’s Creative Control, a very-near-future sci-fi film about augmented reality, and the augmented lives we all want to pretend we’re living (at least on Instagram). A must-see for all my friends in media, marketing or technology. 

Elizabeth Wood’s directorial debut, White Girl, in which a New York City undergrad moves to Queens, dates her local corner drug dealer and learns first hand the limits of her privilege in both their lives.

Taika Waititi’s The Hunt for the Wilderpeople, a reluctant buddy comedy/coming-of-age film that’s way more fun than it has any right to be.

Todd Solondz’s Weiner-Dog, a dark, dark comedy stringing together four tales of unhappy people, all of whom at one point own the same sad canine. Or, for you hard-core cineastes: Au Hasard Dachshund.

American Honey, Andrea Arnold’s sprawling tale of wayward youth living for the moment across a vast swath of America, high and low.

The animated documentaries Tower, which looks back on America’s first campus mass shooting in a surprisingly moving way, and Nuts!, which is the rare doc with an unreliable narrator, which fits the unreliable (Trump-like) conman at the center of its story. 

Julian Rosefeldt’s Manifesto, which I was fortunate enough to experience as a multi-screen installation at the Park Avenue Armory but has been adapted (rather successfully, it seems) as a traditional film. Either way, Cate Blanchett takes on a dozen different guises in a sequence of stunning short films, the text of each comprised of bits of famous manifestos, from Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto to Jim Jarmusch’s Golden Rules of Filmmaking. 

And last, because the horror genre in near and dear to my heart, here’s #4-#10 on my year’s best horror list. (The top 3 being Darling, The Witch and The Love Witch.)

The Invitation

Green Room

Demon

Under the Shadow

Train to Busan

10 Cloverfield Lane

Southbound

Honorable mention: the “Happy Father’s Day” segment of Holidays

Past years: 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008

[dfroza]

Today’s reading from the ancient books of Proverbs and Psalms

for Wednesday, december 2 of 2020 with Proverbs 2 and Psalm 2, accompanied by Psalm 72 for the 72nd day of Autumn, and Psalm 37 for day 337 of the year (now with the consummate book of 150 Psalms in its 3rd revolution this year)

[Proverbs 2]

My son, if you accept what I am telling you

and store my counsel and directives deep within you,

If you listen for Lady Wisdom, attune your ears to her,

and engage your mind to understand what she is telling you,

If you cry out to her for insight

and beg for understanding,

If you sift through the clamor of everything around you

to seek her like some precious prize,

to search for her like buried treasure;

Then you will grasp what it means to truly respect the Eternal,

and you will have discovered the knowledge of the one True God.

The Eternal is ready to share His wisdom with us,

for His words bring true knowledge and insight;

He has stored up the essentials of sound wisdom for those who do right;

He acts as a shield for those who value integrity.

God protects the paths of those who pursue justice,

watching over the lives of those who keep faith with Him.

With this wisdom you will be able to choose the right road,

seek justice, and decide what is good and fair

Because wisdom will penetrate deep within

and knowledge will become a good friend to your soul.

Sound judgment will stand guard over you,

and understanding will watch over you as the Lord promised.

Wisdom will keep you from following the way of evildoers,

of those who twist words to pervert the truth,

Of those who reject the right road

for a darker, more sinister way of life,

Of those who enjoy evil and pursue perverse pleasures,

Of those who journey down a crooked path,

constantly figuring out new ways to trick and deceive others.

Wisdom will pluck you from the trap of a seductive woman,

from the enticing propositions of the adulteress

Who chose to leave the husband of her youth,

to forget her sacred promises to her God;

For her house is on the road that leads to death,

and her path goes down to the shadowy pit.

Those who go to her will never return;

they will never again find their way back to true life.

As for you, you should walk like those who are good

and keep to the paths of those who love justice,

For those who live right will remain in the land

and those with integrity will endure here.

But not the wicked; they will be forced out and banned from this promised land,

and those who deal in deceit will be plucked up like weeds.

The Book of Proverbs, Chapter 2 (The Voice)

[Psalm 2]

You are wondering: What has provoked the nations to embrace anger and chaos?

Why are the people making plans to pursue their own vacant and empty greatness?

Leaders of nations stand united; rulers put their heads together,

plotting against the Eternal One and His Anointed King, trying to figure out

How they can throw off the gentle reign of God’s love,

step out from under the restrictions of His claims to advance their own schemes.

At first, the Power of heaven laughs at their silliness.

The Eternal mocks their ignorant selfishness.

But His laughter turns to rage, and He rebukes them.

As God displays His righteous anger, they begin to know the meaning of fear. He says,

“I am the One who appointed My king who reigns from Zion, My mount of holiness.

He is the one in charge.”

I am telling all of you the truth. I have heard the Eternal’s decree.

He said clearly to me, “You are My son.

Today I have become your Father.

The nations shall be yours for the asking,

and the entire earth will belong to you.

They are yours to crush with an iron scepter,

yours to shatter like fragile, clay pots.”

So leaders, kings, and judges,

be wise, and be warned.

There is only one God, the Eternal;

worship Him with respect and awe;

take delight in Him and tremble.

Bow down before God’s son.

If you don’t, you will face His anger and retribution,

And you won’t stand a chance.

For it doesn’t take long to kindle royal wrath,

But blessings await all who trust in Him.

They will find God a gentle refuge.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 2 (The Voice)

[Psalm 72]

A song of Solomon.

True God, bestow Your honest judgments upon the king

and anoint the king’s son with Your righteousness.

May he be honest and fair in his judgments over Your people

and offer justice to the burdened and suffering.

Under his reign, may this land of mountains and hills know peace

and experience justice for all the people.

May the king offer justice to the burdened and suffering,

rescue the poor and needy,

and demolish the oppressor!

[May the people fear You] for as long as the sun shines,

as long as the moon rises in the night sky, throughout the generations.

May the king be like the refreshing rains, which fall upon fields of freshly mown grass—

like showers that cool and nourish the earth.

May good and honest people flourish for as long as he reigns,

and may peace fill the land until the moon no longer rises.

May the king rule from one sea to the next,

and may his rule extend from the Euphrates River to the far reaches of the earth.

Let the desert wanderers bow down before him

and his enemies lay prostrate and taste the dirt.

Let the kings of Tarshish and the island kings

shower him with gifts

And the kings of Sheba and Seba bring him presents as well.

Let every king on earth bow down before him

and every nation be in his service.

For he will rescue the needy when they ask for help!

He will save the burdened and come to the aid of those who have no other help.

He offers compassion to the weak and the poor;

he will help and protect the lives of the needy!

He will liberate them from the fierce sting of persecution and violence;

in his eyes, their blood is precious.

May he live a long, long time

and the gold of Sheba be given to him.

May the people constantly lift up prayers for him,

and may they call upon God to bless him always.

Let grain grow plentifully in this land of promise,

let it sway in the breeze on the hilltops,

let it grow strong as do the cedars of Lebanon,

And may those who live in the city bloom and flourish

just as the grass of the fields and meadows.

May his name live on forever

and his reputation grow for as long as the sun gives light.

May people from all nations find in him a blessing;

may all peoples declare him blessed.

May the Eternal God, the God of Israel, be blessed,

for He alone works miracles and wonders!

May His glorious name be blessed forever

and the whole earth be filled with His eternal glory!

Amen. Amen.

The prayers of King David, Jesse’s son, are ended.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 72 (The Voice)

[Psalm 37]

A Song of Wisdom

Poetic praise, by King David

Don’t follow after the wicked ones or be jealous of their wealth.

Don’t think for a moment they’re better off than you.

They and their short-lived success

will soon shrivel up and quickly fade away

like grass clippings in the hot sun.

Keep trusting in the Lord and do what is right in his eyes.

Fix your heart on the promises of God and you will be secure,

feasting on his faithfulness.

Make God the utmost delight and pleasure of your life,

and he will provide for you what you desire the most.

Give God the right to direct your life,

and as you trust him along the way

you’ll find he pulled it off perfectly!

He will appear as your righteousness,

as sure as the dawning of a new day.

He will manifest as your justice,

as sure and strong as the noonday sun.

Quiet your heart in his presence and pray;

keep hope alive as you long for God to come through for you.

And don’t think for a moment that the wicked in their prosperity

are better off than you.

Stay away from anger and revenge.

Keep envy far from you, for it only leads you into lies.

For one day the wicked will be destroyed,

but those who trust in the Lord

will live safe and sound with blessings overflowing.

Just a little while longer and the ungodly will vanish;

you will look for them in vain.

But the humble of heart will inherit every promise

and enjoy abundant peace.

Let the wicked keep plotting against the godly

with all their sneers and arrogant jeers.

God doesn’t lose any sleep over them

and he knows their day is coming!

Evil ones take aim on the poor and helpless;

they are ready to slaughter those who do right.

But the Lord will

turn all their weapons of wickedness back on themselves,

piercing their pride-filled hearts until they are the helpless.

It is much better to have little

combined with much of God

than to have the fabulous wealth of the wicked and nothing else.

For the Lord takes care of all his forgiven ones

while the strength of the evil will surely slip away.

Day by day the Lord watches the good deeds of the godly

and he prepares for them his forever-reward.

Even in a time of disaster he will watch over them,

and they will always have more than enough

no matter what happens.

All the enemies of God will perish.

For the wicked have only a momentary value, a fading glory.

Then one day they vanish! Here today, gone tomorrow.

They break their promises, borrowing money

but never paying it back.

The good man returns what he owes with some extra besides.

The Lord’s blessed ones receive it all in the end,

but the cursed ones will be cut off

with nothing to show for themselves.

The steps of the God-pursuing ones

follow firmly in the footsteps of the Lord,

and God delights in every step they take to follow him.

If they stumble badly they will still survive,

for the Lord lifts them up with his hands.

I was once young, but now I’m old.

Not once have I found a lover of God forsaken by him,

nor have any of their children gone hungry.

Instead, I’ve found the godly ones

to be the generous ones who give freely to others.

Their children are blessed and become a blessing.

If you truly want to dwell forever in God’s presence,

forsake evil and do what is right in his eyes.

The Lord loves it when he sees us walking in his justice.

He will never desert his devoted lovers;

they will be kept forever in his faithful care.

But the descendants of the wicked will be banished.

The faithful lovers of God will inherit the earth

and enjoy every promise of God’s care,

dwelling in peace forever.

God-lovers make the best counselors.

Their words possess wisdom and are right and trustworthy.

The ways of God are in their hearts

and they won’t swerve from the paths of steadfast righteousness.

Evil ones spy on the godly ones, stalking them

to find something they could use to accuse them.

They’re out for the kill!

But God will foil all their plots.

The godly will not stand condemned when brought to trial.

So don’t be impatient for the Lord to act;

keep moving forward steadily in his ways,

and he will exalt you at the right time.

And when he does, you will possess every promise,

including your full inheritance.

You’ll watch with your own eyes

and see the wicked lose everything.

I’ve already seen this happen.

Once I saw a wicked and violent man

overpower all who were around him,

a domineering tyrant with his pride and oppressive ways.

Then he died and was forgotten.

Now no one cares that he is gone forever.

But you can tell who are the blameless and spiritually mature.

What a different story with them!

The godly ones will have a peaceful, prosperous future with a happy ending.

Every evil sinner will be destroyed, obliterated.

They’ll be utter failures with no future!

But the Lord will be the Savior of all who love him.

Even in their time of trouble God will live in them as strength.

Because of their faith in him, their daily portion will be

a Father’s help and deliverance from evil.

This is true for all who turn to hide themselves in him!

The Book of Psalms, Poem 37 (The Passion Translation)