#where is my reward for performing the most basic human functions

[theredquilt]

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Rude. [x]

[puckpocketed]

hi!! I was wondering where or how you do you research for players and teams, and just hockey in general? do you have any favorite blogs or other resources? thank you~

okay picking thru web rot for the sharks primer has prepared me for this one lmao here's the quick answer because i really need to eat some pie and go to bed. Hockey is my all-consuming interest at the moment and I haven't watched actual television or films; or read anything non-academic that isn't about hockey in.... 9 months? If it seems like I am taking in a LOT of information in a short amount of time it's because I am. I listen to hockey things at 2-5x speed depending on if its a video on youtube (locked to 2x), a podcast (3.5x is my ideal speed), or my screenreader (5x) and often take notes, save articles as pdfs to go back to, and transcribe things for fun (only recently am putting my transcriptions as addendums to gifs... very rewarding <3). When not studying for my actual degree, I am reading about hockey or listening to something hockey related or watching hockey or writing about hockey or learning how to play hockey. i am so serious. please don't assume that this is normal, optimal, or even something I would wish upon other people. I am in Love with her in thee most wretched and irrevocable way. She's my hobby in the sense that shes my sun and im building my wax wings and looking directly at her light and thanking her for blinding me. amen.

more seriously, if I'm going down a player rabbit hole I will try many of these things - though not necessarily all of them, and not in this order (and i'm sure i've forgotten one or two things I usually try... lordy):

I go to spotify/apple podcasts and throw in player names just to see what comes up and listen to basically everything.

if they are on an NHL team, there are likely MULTIPLE podcasts dedicated to that team. trawl through their podcast archives, especially post-game podcasts where discussion is happening about their performance. sometimes there are even interviews <3

i do the same with youtube if I can...!

throw their name into reddit, tumblr, twitter and scroll. endlessly. just trawl through everything that I can possibly get my hands on. The more obscure the player the easier this is, because there really aren't that many things to find out about them and not many people are talking about them at all. <- this is how I make contact with people who are the only person that knows about this one (1) guy and then we hold fins forever. <3

find out who the teams beat reporters are. if youre looking into prospects, even juniors teams have people covering them. the writing might not be the highest quality but you WILL eventually find fun details if you go digging.

check: elite prospects articles, the hockey writers articles, find out the player's home town and see if their local paper has anything on them (basically, check any and all databases that use a tagging system or have a functional search engine)

helpful things to tack onto the end of google/youtube/database searches: "media availability" "post-game" "interview" "feature" "profile" "scouting report" "draft" "debut" "review" "highlight" "tournament"

if they're a player from a non-english speaking country it's worth throwing their non-romanized name into google to see what you can get. google translate the website // chatgpt translation are two options - not ideal and not to be trusted 100% over actual translation done by a fluent human speaker.

Instagram stories are the bane of my existence because they're so ephemeral

tiktok is a parallel universe to me. I do not have the app. any browsing I do on it is solely via googling "[team name] tiktok official" and clicking around on my desktop PC. I've only ever done this for M.Chrona's gf (who is much more famous than him) but if you're really doing down the rabbit hole of player research, some of their WAGs will post about them. <- as always, be respectful/not weird.

facebook for older stuff... genuinely makes my skin crawl so I avoid it and its a last resort LMAO but yeah teams used to post on facebook and everything!!! <- again. dont be weird and stalk peoples families or friends asjklakjl

"[player/team name] gettyimages [day/month/year]" <- substitute getty images for: flickr, hockeyshots, dreamstime, alamy

Substack is good for general hockey stuff if you can stomach the dreaded idea of subscribing via email or getting the app <3 I like: Jack Han (hockey tactics newsletter), Sean Shapiro (shap shots), Adam Gretz (adam's sports stuff), Thibaud Chatel <- for the analytics nerds, Alex MacLean <- his Scouting The Scouts series is what got me into substack in the first place, Greg Revak (hockey IQ newsletter) <- this is the one that's got me on development stuff atm SUPER rec because there's gifs and charts and many many hyperlinks included for citations <3

i should do a book rec at some point but uhhhh its getting late and im hungry <3 thank you for asking + reading if you got this far, I hope it was a helpful peek into my process?

[givemearmstopraywith]

@vmpire

there's a very long and convoluted story around why i decided to do a master's degree in theology but in simplest terms it was a completely spur of the moment decision. not something i'd pondered or thought about for a long time, even though i'd always been interested in religion. i basically decided to do it, applied, and was accepted in the span of a few weeks, so needless to say it was very compulsive but ultimately worked out in my favour, moreso than my previous plan for education (which had been to study english lit, a field i wasn't particularly keen on but felt pushed into by profs).

the reasoning for me behind studying theology was mainly that it had both practical and theoretical applications, moreso than in other fields. i felt, and still feel, that a lot of subjects in the arts/humanities are almost too theoretical and do not give students a broad enough practical application. i wanted a degree that would allow me to have a pastoral element to the philosophy and theory i already knew i was good at- i.e., the ability to learn things like counselling and advocacy. this is ultimately dependent on the school and program you enter (i'm very lucky to live within commuting distance of one of the best theology consortiums in the world, which has a huge catalogue of courses and specialities available).

all of this is to say that i've been figuring out what i want to do essentially as i've been doing the degree, and it was on my radar for a while to get my mdiv and become a minister. but ministry requires a certain amount of compliance in what is ultimately a very human and fallible institution, and that's not something that i feel right about morally, particularly given my own feelings on issues as important as the sacraments and magisterial authority. my goal at the moment is become a profess of theology and teach. i'm still considering whether i want to do this at a degree level or a school level (i have the option to qualify to teach gcses, for instance, which is fairly lucrative). i'm leaning towards the degree level as that would enable me to continue conducting theological research in my chosen field, which is very underresearched and underrepresented. another option i've seriously considered is chaplaincy, which has different requirements from ministry and more practical focus, as well as the option to be a non-denominational chaplain.

theology is full of white, cishet men. something like 90% of those who hold phds in theology are white cishet men, with the remaining percent being split between men of colour + all women + everyone else. for another thing, because of this overrepresentation of one group, the same topics and issues are being constantly rehashed, which means there is enormous possibility for new research and thought to be had in what is one of the oldest academic fields in existence- but i will also say that it requires a certain amount of spite and the ability to self-start, because i only discovered my particular niche with a lot of pushing and circumvention of the traditional avenues. (i.e., there's no field of sexual theology that exists, even though we need a sexual theology now more than ever, but there's far too many people researching evangelism or ecumenism, which are both outdated topics if we want to have a functional church in the post-secular age.)

its an incredible field- i strongly believe it to be the most elegant, beautiful, and difficult in the humanities. but it also needs more like you in it! so ultimately i would say: what does your heart want? my degree has, frequently, not been fun at all, but its also the most rewarding thing i've ever done and it is the place where i am happiest and perform to my highest personal calibre. the fact that i felt compelled to theology at all was a sign it was where i was meant to be. sorry this is a bit rambly and vague, but i hope it helps!

[warsofasoiaf]

Its been awhile since you've done any character analysis on Fallout New Vegas, but would you be willing to go into one for some of the minor characters? I'm actually curios of your opinion on Silus the captured centurion and his motivations.

I’m more than happy to, although this won’t be about Silus so much as it will be about the quest Silus Treatment. It’s one of my favorite quests in the game, since it does a great deal just with dialogue and some creative use with the engine to create an engaging quest that showcases some of the failures of the NCR and the Legion. Given that the central theme is about picking a faction, warts and all, having a quest that puts the two main faction of New Vegas on full display is an absolutely good idea. The game is too old for spoilers, but it’s a long analysis so I’ll put a cut in.

Silus Treatment starts off simple enough, going to Camp McCarran, in the old McCarran International Airport, now the regional command post of Colonel Hsu. McCarran is not in a great spot when you first get there; there are periodic Fiend attacks, tensions in Freeside are causing havoc for NCR civilians, the overstretched NCR supply lines are making it difficult even for their central point of operations, and there’s a strong possibility that they’ve been infiltrated. It’s all Colonel Hsu can do to keep order and function in the base. Perfect protagonist fodder, in other words, for a nice quest hub.

It’s a tough needle to thread in any RPG to build a quest hub where there’s stuff for a character to do. If everyone is incapable of solving even the most basic of problems, it gives a great deal of quests for the player to do but it makes the quest-givers look incompetent, especially if the quest-givers are supposed to be capable figures in their own right. Conversely, if the NPC’s are competent, then the quests would be solved and that would close out on content for the player. There’s plenty of ways to settle this, and the devs do an adequate job here. The war effort means prioritization, and Hsu is dealing with being torn from both angles. He can’t just hunt down the Fiends, because he needs to organize patrols and deal with NCR settlers in the area. He can’t just pacify Freeside because it will engender hostility with House and so he’s delaying the order from his butcher superiors like Moore to go in with fire and sword. He doesn’t have a solution to the Kings but he’s trying to find one, which as far as writing goes is a good solution. Hsu is a decent man but overworked. He’s hoping that he can develop a solution in time before Cassandra Moore decides to pull rank and go on the warpath against all who oppose the NCR, which leaves a convenient spot for the player.

It’s this person that gives us our introduction to the Silus Treatment questline. Hsu has a valuable prize: Silus, a captured Legion centurion! Typically centurions always commit suicide rather than be captured to deny any useful intelligence to the enemy, so to capture a centurion alive should be quite a find. But it’s not going so well. Lt Carrie Boyd, in charge of base security, can’t get Silus to talk. Again, perfect quest writing to get the PC involved in the plot. Normally such a sensitive operation would never be given to an unknown civilian contractor, even for a bureaucratic mess like the NCR. Frontier desperation, hitting a wall via official channels, and the fact that the character is the protagonist in a sprawling open world help it pass ludonarrative muster.

Boyd is a real piece of work, she’s openly sadistic hiding beneath of veneer of civility. She considers the humane treatment of POW’s as an impediment, and so looks for ways around it. Notably, while she wants information from Silus to deliver to her superiors, she’ll settle for just having Silus beaten so bloody that he can’t speak anymore, calling it “entertainment.” This is a person who simply should not be in charge of interrogating a prisoner, she is neither humane nor effective at her job, but here she is by virtue simply of being the chief MP on base.

Not that Silus, the prisoner and the other side of this duo, is better. He openly revels in the barbaric practices of the Legion’s slavery system, even trying to ensure that the slaves can never achieve some level of comfort by tightening the collars and making it difficult for them to feel at ease while eating or drinking. Even if Silus is mostly saying those things simply to get a rise out of Lieutenant Boyd, he knows what the Legion is up to and enjoys it. Silus is arrogant to an extreme degree, he is filled with confidence that he can outlast any interrogation by the feeble NCR without giving up any intelligence, that he could easily escape NCR confinement and that he is so valuable to the Legion that following Caesar’s order would be a waste. Good fodder then, for the protagonist to bring him down to size.

Silus Treatment as a quest is relatively simple. Boyd signs off on the Courier beating the ever-living tar out of Silus and then steps out for a smoke, letting the player do whatever he or she wants to the prisoner. Silus, sneering, dismisses the Courier as just another piece of NCR trash, and it’s up to the player with how to succeed. Violence is always an option, you can beat Silus, and eventually gets something useful, that the base itself will be the target of Legion destruction. Silus admits that his fantasy of escape was always a fantasy, he was dead to Caesar just as surely as he as if he had committed suicide before capture. 

Yet if the Courier has points in Speech or Intelligence, he can completely upend Boyd’s methods and actually deliver a worthwhile interrogation. The first technique, with speech, uses an interrogation technique known as Pride-and-ego-down, where the interrogator routinely belittles and demeans the prisoner, usually their technical competence or soldierly qualities, in an attempt to get the prisoner to “redeem” themselves by explaining a piece of useful intelligence that would explain the deficiency as opposed to it just being a terrible personal quality. The Courier mocks Silus as a coward (bravery being a key soldierly virtue) and he defends himself by stating his bravery and that suicide is a poor death for a soldier of his intelligence and caliber, then saying how good a soldier he is for a “self-appointed megalomaniacal dictator.” Silus then spills that Caesar held his unit for three days because of “headaches,” in actuality, it’s Caesar’s brain tumor. The technique works to an exceptionally high degree, not only does Silus divulge that McCarran has been infiltrated as in the violence ending, but also that the Legion is suffering a crisis of command due to Caesar’s illness. The Courier gets a lot of useful intelligence out of Silus and doesn’t compromise the humane treatment of prisoners in the process. If it actually caused some self-reflection in Boyd, that’d be a complete win, but I suppose we can’t have everything.

My favorite option is the intelligence option, because the Courier goes full-on PSYOPS, posing as a Legion assassin sent to kill Silus for his failure to commit suicide on Caesar’s order. Silus denies it at first, but as the Courier continues to sell the performance, Silus begins to express real terror at the thought that the Courier is actually a frumentarius sent to kill Silus before he divulges anything to the NCR. The Courier fully sells the deal using Latin phrases as the language of Caesar’s elites. The Courier can quote Cicero, “legum servi sumus” - we are all slaves to the law, in what is perhaps a perfect example of Caesar’s philosophy of totalitarian obedience. The full quote "Legum servi sumus ut liberi esse possimus” - we are slaves to the law so that we might be free, means little in Caesar’s totalitarian state where all are subject to his whims and contingency plans for Caesar’s incapacity aren’t even considered. Of course, the Roman Republic was hardly a free state, but Caesar really takes the cake with his dictatorship. If Caesar’s dictum holds true: “Corruptio optimi pessima” - the corruption of the greatest is the worst outcome. how much worse is it when Caesar himself is corrupted? But totalitarians rarely raise the possibility that they themselves are corrupt, because the good of the dictator is the good of the state. After all, L'etat c'est moi is the dictum of any dictator, not just a Sun King.

Of course, fitting New Vegas, you can side with Silus, and facilitate his escape. There, you feign beating him to unconsciousness and slip him a silenced pistol, then Silus makes good his escape, killing the guard sent to bring him back to his cell and sneaking out. Of all the endings, this one isn’t as satisfying. Some of it, of course, is that you never interact or see Silus again, so there’s never any reward to the quest except for the knowledge that the base is infiltrated, which in the pro-Legion side of the quest I Put a Spell on You allows you to complete Curtis’s sabotage operation (and a far better Legion quest, in my opinion, with the NCR quest side being even better given the multiple outcomes), but also it’s not referenced again with Caesar. What would Caesar’s reaction be to the Courier springing Silus? He is quite fond of reciting a litany of the Courier’s accomplishments in Act 2 at Fortification Hill.

If I could improve Silus Treatment, I think I would have made it so the violent path wouldn’t have produced enough valuable intel, and the player needs to do some more detective work to actually get to I Put a Spell on You, or even being mislead by Curtis and becoming the unwitting patsy of the Legion. But overall, I think it was an incredible quest and a testament to the writing in the game.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[prorevenge]

Ridiculed, accused of lying and incompetence, I shoved burning facts down their throats and made a successful business in the process.

"The best revenge is massive success." -Frank Sinatra

TL;DR; Told I was lying and didn't know anything about game design. Made a spite video game that became a huge hit. Jackass is also forever immortalized within the game credits.

PREFACE

This is a very unusual story compared to the typical posts you've read here. There's a lot to unpack but I'll try to summarize everything as best I can.

I hope you'll find it as entertaining as I did. And, what's great about this story is that it happened very recently, it happened here, evidence is searchable, and it's still kinda on-going. It's a tale of trolls, video game addiction, self-righteous arrogance, harassment, winning an impossible bet, a viral hit in Russia, and massive success with even some little revenge sprinkles for added measure.

Quick background about me: I've worked with game developers for decades and I'm an avid researcher and supporter of unorthodox and ethical video games used for educational and clinical purposes.

HOW IT STARTED

Two months ago, there was a new reddit post about "using video game to ease depression" that caught my attention.

The reason it caught my attention was because it was a game & study that I had in-depth knowledge of (from over a year prior.) Unlike everyone else in the thread, I was the only one who had actually seen the game, played it, knew the developers, and even had the original technical game design documents.

The article discussed a variety of topics but never addressed exactly HOW the video game was able to ease depression. So, I provided a quickly summary of what the game actually did.

[SKIP THIS SECTION IF NEUROSCIENCE & GAME DESIGN DON'T INTEREST YOU]

A quick side note about this article, for those that like extra details: One of the cool properties of ketamine is that, not only can it provide rapid and temporary relief for depression, it also actively heals damaged brain circuits. Then there's dopamine. A chemical that we internally produce, that has similar but less potent effects. There is no cure for depression, but these are promising treatments for some. The article focused on what's called "flow". Using certain game design methods you can induce a "flow state" by causing a sustained dopamine release. When used ethically, it can be highly beneficial in stimulating/training the brain to perform certain activities, improve or learn memorization, adapt to challenges, learn new concepts, exercise motor skills, and meanwhile rebuild pathways/synapses. While all of this is happening, the user is receiving pleasurable rewards without realizing it. This process can create new pathways, repair old circuits, and increasing their neuroplasticity. Increased neuroplasticity means improved cognitive functioning, reducing impairment of the reward process, and improving the effectiveness of antidepressant medications. Video games can be a unique non-drug option to accomplish this while easing symptoms. Research has already shown that many popular games can already accomplish this (unintended effects by the game developers). By comparison, the game design they used in this theoretical study was highly limited in scope, so permanent benefits were negligible compared to the temporary respite brought about by basic dopamine release. Science is still barely scratching the surface of neurotransmitters and flow state. There are still many unknowns, but dopamine isn't just a pleasure chemical that the media would like you to be believe. It can do quite a number of things. Research has shown that "flow state" can modify synaptic plasticity, improve connectors between cells/synapses, ultimately helping cells in the brain communicate better as a network and improve neural system intrinsic properties.

My summary posting was fine for a while, until predictable trolls arrived led by an "armchair game developer". Dr. Armchair definitely did not appreciate my post. It was an affront and insult to his profession. Within a few minutes, it dropped 30 karma. I don't care about imaginary internet points but I don't like being accused of lying. Dr. Armchair and his pals started with the usual "do you even lift?" Then it was quickly asserted, from their armchairs, that I knew nothing about flow, psychology, dopamine or game design at all. From their high horses, they contributed nothing useful; only taunts, defamation, attacking my character and physical appearance, and accusing me of being a liar and incompetence.

Apparently it was a very sensitive topic. Who knew?

It quickly devolved into Dr. Armchair gleefully, and repeatedly claiming, that he won, he was right, and I was wrong. He demanded that I essentially write a 300 page peer-reviewed study to prove him wrong, and when it couldn't be provided within 5 minutes, there were more gleeful cheers of "HAHA! I WAS RIGHT! I WAS RIGHT! I'M NOT LISTENING TO YOU LALALALALA.."

Obviously, it was going to be impossible to reason with Dr. Armchair and his buddies. But actions speak louder than words.

So, I claimed that I would provide undeniable proof in the form of a video game "a few months from now" that he could actually play for himself. Once again, claiming that I was lying and it was impossible. And more of the usual "It's been 5 minutes, where is it? Oh, you can't do it can you. HA! I was right! I BEAT YOU! I BEAT YOU!"

It was weird.

Eventually the mods had enough. Dr. Armchair and his cronies harassment, ad hominem attacks, accusations and inflammatory attacks resulted in multiple posts being removed. But my promise still stood and I fully intended on keeping it.

THE BOLD CLAIM

The plan was simple:

Create a proof of concept that demonstrates just the critical neuroscience principles that induce flow. To prove it beyond a doubt, I intended to also prove that MOST COMMON INGREDIENTS of a game are completely UNNECESSARY to accomplish this.

So, I made the very confident claim that the game would still be fun, addictive, and demonstrate flow state, even after ripping everything out:

No extras or frills. Built within a short period of time.

No music. No sound effects. No animations. No story.

No expensive art. In fact, hardly any at all: I would use ONE SINGLE ART ASSET for the gameplay (plus some lines.)

No feature creep. No sign-in system. No gacha mechanics.

No level design. No achievements. No RPG gamifications.

I could get at least a couple hundred people to play it.

I should have also mentioned that it would be built with ZERO BUDGET and NO MARKETING.

If this sounds like a strange way to make a game, it is. For a typical game developer, this would raise many eyebrows, and they'd consider it highly risky or improbable to achieve any success with both arms figurately tied behind your back while blindfolded.

HOW IT ENDED

While I was preparing to stress test the game online, it was discovered by .ru bots that were scouring the web for new games. Even before the game was ready, they published the game link on several Russian gaming sites.

The game exploded.

It has graphical similarities to Tetris, so it was a nice coincidence that the game essentially launched and did so well in Russia at first. After that, other game sites started discovering the game on their own too, even before I had a chance to submit the game myself. Most importantly, the proof of concept and everything I claimed worked (high ratings and retention). It proved so effective that the game is currently being played by hundreds of thousands of users worldwide. And it's a clear demonstration about the importance of combining psychology and game design.

I suppose you could say that there are many layers of revenge happening here, maybe even karmic justice or backfiring on their part, it's really hard to classify. The best kind of revenge is always massive success, and shoving it in their faces, however. But, on top of that, I also fully kept to my promises while proving these ignorant individuals so wrong they look like fools.

I also added some extra salt to the wound. I figured that success of the game was partly due to Dr. Armchair's ignorance. It was only fair that I included his name within the Game Credits. So, I officially gave this very wonderful human being a very "special thanks" for their support in making this success possible.

(source) story by (/u/postfu)

[lakemojave]

Supergiant Games: Same Bones, Different Skeletons

I just finished a retrospective of all 4 games by Supergiant on my twitch channel, and I have a few thoughts I wanna connect and questions I wanna explore. My love for these games is real strong and i could write a whole essay just gushing about them, but I wanna give some thought to what makes them so compelling: not just to me, but to damn near everyone I’ve talked to on their discord who feels the same. I myself rank Bastion among my favorite games ever, and Hades is climbing that list at a clip. And even though I could take or leave Transistor or Pyre, they keep pulling me back.

But I could talk a whole lot about each game’s appeal and waste a lot of time. I’ve gushed enough to my friends about how Bastion and Pyre’s rugged, apocalyptic atmospheres draw me in with their incredible vibrance to contrast. I could talk about how Ashley Barrett’s vocal tracks carry Transistor on their shoulders, or what makes Hades so much goddamn fun that the game doesn’t really need to be much else. But I realize that if the Supergiant library is so universally appealing to me, there must be some sort of connective tissue between them--some sort of fundamental similarity that makes them work. After thinking about it for more than five minutes, it turns out there are many; some are pretty obvious, and some less so. This brings me to the conclusion that the Supergiant library, with its four wildly distinct and different games, still follow a noticeable formula--one that is flexible enough to allow such completely different games.

Game Design

The Supergiant library are all essentially top down action rpgs, Transistor having the most elements of the genre. This is still a pretty weak connection, given how different they all play from each other. The only two that have much overlap in the most basic sense are Bastion and Hades, with the same general fast paced, real time combat. On closer examination, the two games have enough differences in the variety of mechanics at play, (Bastion with its multiple weapon slots and a shield, Hades with its sheer number of commands) that even they are hard to compare.

There are, however, several mechanics that the library loves to use. The first that comes to mind are the difficulty conditions: idols in Bastion, limiters in Transistor, titan stars in Pyre, and the pact of punishment--and arguably Chaos boons as well--in Hades. Their function is simple: increase your challenge for a little extra reward. Bastion and Pyre go the extra mile by fixing in world building elements to this mechanic; Bastion’s idols inform about the game’s pantheon, while Pyre informs about its, well, evil pantheon. The use of these conditions is indicative of Supergiant’s game design philosophy as a whole--you, the player, can make the game as hard or easy as it takes for you to have fun. The inclusion of infinite lives in Bastion or god mode or hell mode in Hades further builds on this point. This library is designed for all sorts of audiences, whether they want to be challenged by their games or simply immersed in the story.

Another repeating mechanic in these games are the use of challenge rooms, which started in Bastion as the training grounds and, to a lesser extent, Who Knows Where. In Transistor they are the sandbox test rooms, and in Pyre they are the beyonder crystal’s scribe trials. They appear in Hades a little more ambiguously; the infernal troves or Erebus rooms are not quite the same, but they serve a similar function. This function is a momentary break from the gameplay loop for a little extra reward, much like the previously discussed conditions. Transistor and Hades’ challenge rooms offer relatively negligible rewards; the sandbox rooms simply offer xp and unlock tracks for the jukebox, while the Erebus tiles offer double the reward for any normal tile. Bastion and Pyre go the extra mile by giving specific, long term rewards for their challenges. In Bastion’s training grounds, the Kid earns weapon specific abilities that are among the game’s most powerful; in Pyre’s scribe trials, exiles can earn character specific talismans that feed their specialization. For the most part, these rooms give the player a low stakes opportunity to practice, hone their preferred playstyle, and reward the effort, all while being completely optional.

Akin to these breaks in the game loop are designated resting areas/hub worlds. The Bastion, the Sandbox, the Blackwagon, and the House of Hades each offer a moment to interact with characters and lore, goof around with the environment, buy permanent upgrades, or just take a break. Transistor utilizes this function the least of the library, since it never once requires the player to enter the space. Pyre utilizes it the most since it has the most breaks in both frequency and number. In a way, this decision is both a game design and storytelling choice. Between all four games, perhaps excluding Transistor, this is where the majority of story beats take place. It is where the player can read up on some fresh lore or meet the ever growing cast of characters, and eventually grow to cherish them (as I often do playing this library). Without little breaks like these, the climactic or world/story shaking events that take place out in the actual playable space have no impact or narrative weight. The fact that all these sort of interactions are completely voluntary also rewards the player in the storytelling sense; by choosing to engage with the figures of the story rather than having that choice decided for them, the player feels as though they themselves have agency in the story unfolding.

Style

Perhaps the most distinct part of the Supergiant library, (and perhaps what I personally love most about it) is its aesthetics. There are few games that look, feel, and sound the way these games do. Yet, the four of them hardly resemble each other. Bastion is a rugged, frontier-esque sci fi apocalypse, Transistor is a sleek, cyberpunk apocalypse, Pyre is a high fantasy purgatory space, and Hades is simply stylized Greek mythology. It is a shock to remember, then, that these four games are all designed by the same artistic team.

I confess I don’t know much about art, so I don’t have anything too profound to say about Jen Zee’s art style, besides that I like it a lot. It is also worth noting that despite her spearheading art and character design for the whole library, each game still looks visually distinct, and not just in their overall aesthetics. Take the character design of the library, for instance. Bastion’s human figures tend to be short, stocky, with exaggerated facial features. Their colors are highly saturated, with a soft, almost blurry quality that gives a level of warmth to the fatalistic atmosphere. Transistor’s characters, barring Red, tend to be based around palettes centered around a single color, such as the Camerata red and the spectrum of the function character profiles. Pyre is the first of the library to use talking portraits, which contrast robed figures with stark color palettes and simple designs with unrobed figures with much noisier details. Hades is easily the most distinct of all four, using simple colors and thick outlines on all its characters. The most consistent feature of all their designs, as usual, is how wildly different they are. For Hades, Zee makes sure that characters only look alike in any way if they have some relation to each other, such as the Furies, Achilles and Patroclus, or Zagreus and his parents. On the whole, the versatility and variety in the character design is impeccable.

What I most enjoy about these games is Darren Korb’s soundtracks, which continue to vary wildly. From the closet-recorded Bastion soundtrack to the whole two and a half Hades score, Korb’s scoring keeps improving and changing in the 10 years Supergiant has operated. His music, which adds and changes motifs as each game progresses, contributes to the atmosphere just as much as the visuals do. Whenever he teams up with Ashley Barret to add vocal tracks to certain parts of the game, they always manage to place them at critical narrative or emotional beats, turning them into the games’ most memorable moments. The team goes one step further every game by incorporating a musician or source of music into each game, giving the music just as much character as the one performing it. It also sneaks its way into the aforementioned hub worlds by providing the player a means to play their favorite tracks whenever they want (except in Hades, where they have to pay in game for that privilege). In essence, Korb makes sure to give each game a distinct feel through its music, but familiar enough to connect the library in the player’s mind.

Just as Supergiant gets so much mileage from Korb and Zee alike, they also manage time and time again to make use of Logan Cunningham’s top notch voice over work. Originally the sole voice actor at Supergiant Games, Cunningham continued on from famously narrating Bastion as Rucks to remaining a ubiquitous voice throughout the library. His role as the Transistor in the game proper drives the emotional core of that game, and his role as the Voice/Archjustice proves to be a solidly effective, yet distant antagonist. In Hades, his roles are somewhat overshadowed by Korb’s performance as Zagreus, (which I’m still blown away he still had time to do) but his performance as Lord Hades is still excellent. Supergiant also uses Cunningham in Hades to sort of satirize how often he narrates for them by casting him as the narrating Old Man, then allowing Zagreus to break the fourth wall and acknowledge him. It is as if the team at Supergiant knows how much they use the same stylistic team, then mocking that same choice.

To other studios: learn from Supergiant

I’m running out of things to say and my ball of yarn that connects all these newspapers and polaroids on my wall is running thin. I would talk more about Supergiant really knows how to end a game and frequently does so in similar ways, or that their library is a masterclass in character-driven stories, but this little essay is long enough.

Instead, I wanna talk about how Supergiant does something right which so many AAA developers and publishers don’t seem to understand. To contrast with the Supergiant library, consider Assassin’s Creed, another franchise I have spent an embarrassing amount of time playing. This franchise releases a game almost every year, and in my experience, when a company does this, you tend to get the same pig with a different paint. From the original Assassin’s Creed to their most recent release, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, the differences seem to be night and day. Combat and free running are far more complex than they once were, rpg elements to story and gameplay have been introduced, composers, writers, voice actors, and cast members have changed with each release, and the sheer size of the game has become staggering. Yet, in the 13 years and 11 main releases in the game’s history, (plus spinoffs) any change has not only felt incremental over time, but fundamentally insignificant to the skeleton of the game. Assassin’s Creed 1 and 2 play and feel differently, but the differences are subtle. The bones are different, but every year they assemble to form a vaguely Assassin’s Creed shaped thing. People who play games tend to hate this and frequently berate companies for this practice; Bethesda and GameFreak receive the same criticism that their games are so formulaic that their new releases might as well be carbon copies of the ones before it.

Yet, Supergiant Games, with its four games over ten years, has used essentially the same team and building blocks to make games that can hardly be considered interchangeable. Whether its the passion of this humble little indie studio or the sheer talent of this team, Supergiant takes the same pile of bones and assembles them in a different shape each time with care and attention. They are proof that a formula doesn’t need to be tweaked or altered or given a different coat of paint in order to be accepted; instead the formula needs versatility, the means to produce a fresh result each time. It also works best when we adore the result every time.

[weightlossblogd]

3 Effortless Actions to Quick and Long lasting Excess weight Loss

When it comes to dropping excess weight there are no magic drugs or magic formula diet programs that can assist you attain your bodyweight reduction objectives. But you can achieve your goals with these 3 steps to assist shed excess weight. Like most items in existence getting rid of excess weight (a great deal of weight) boils down to aware hard work, self-discipline, perseverance and perseverance. Losing 10, twenty, fifty or a hundred lbs or much more all comes back again to what you do on a everyday basis.Weight loss  If you do what you're supposed to do (consume right + exercise) working day in a working day out you will at some point shed all the bodyweight you want. Nevertheless, if you throw caution to the wind and will not do what you happen to be meant to do then you may possibly never see your bodyweight reduction dreams arrive true. This my friend is the saddest situation there is. If you are bored of becoming unwanted fat, if your drained of getting chubby, if your ready to begin your new existence these days then keep on since I am about to give you the straightforward nevertheless extremely efficient fat loss program you've got been waiting around for. Are you all set? I am heading to tell you in no uncertain conditions what you have to do to get rid of all the weight you want in 3 straightforward to do measures. Even so, in order for this to operate you have to maintain your emphasis and self-control daily to keep performing the measures till you attain your preferred benefits. Even if you falter and veer off your fat reduction observe, it truly is Okay. If you are in a position to rapidly get back on monitor you will extra time, reap the positive aspects of remarkable weight loss and improved wellness. And now, with out more adieu here are your 3 simple measures to fat reduction... one. Eat Significantly less two. Eat Greater 3. Exercise There they are. What do you think? A little anti-climatic, huh? Probably you had been expecting far more... Nicely, allow me explain to you if you are capable to grasp and apply this powerfully safe and efficient bodyweight decline plan is you will by no means once more have to invest one more unneeded dime on fat decline merchandise that never work. You see, your body is a good tuned weight reduction administration equipment. If you adhere to the right prepare and give your entire body only what it demands to survive it will do all the challenging function for you. Given ample time and following the three steps over you can get rid of tens and even hundreds of kilos with no starving by yourself or resorting to bogus weight reduction drugs or harmful human body sculpting surgical procedures. Now, this is not to say that the highway to important bodyweight decline will be simple or that you will not have to endure a bit to get to your preferred final results. There will be days when you feel like throwing in the towel and offering up. On individuals days you may possibly just cave into your undeniable cravings and go crazy at your neighborhood all you can consume artery clogging buffet. But hey,that is Alright. You happen to be human. Occasionally you have to go a small nuts to get back on keep track of. Nevertheless, if you are actually dedicated to reaching even your most seemingly unattainable fat decline objectives you can and will do it by pursuing the strategy above. Now, for your reward let's go a little further into each action of the plan. one. Take in Considerably less There is really no question about it. If you want to get rid of weight you have to start off taking in less. You have to create a calorie deficiency in buy for you physique to start shedding lbs .. If you do not get started to limit how much food you just take in no quantity of exercise will aid you achieve your goals. Consuming significantly less of your preferred greasy, excess fat loaded food items will be the quickest way to extraordinary weight loss. It actually isn't going to make a difference how much excess weight you have to drop. Until you just take manage of equally your conscious and unconscious eating practices you will be tough pressed to get rid of even one particular pound. No, you have to commence chopping back on the volume of foods you are utilised to consuming. I have listened to of tales where people would go to Mc Donald's and pack absent two Tremendous Sized Massive Mac Meals. Clearly, this is way too significantly. In this scenario even slicing down to 1 Super Measurement meal would be an advancement. But, as we will see in our up coming stage, a greater program would be to do absent with the Super Dimension meal all-with each other and begin consuming greater. two. Eat Far better As the declaring goes, "We are what we try to eat." If we consume crap, guess what? Nonetheless, if we learn to take in effectively then not only will our waistline thank us for it but we are going to also feel much better about ourselves to boot. One of the fastest alterations you can make to your diet regime when striving to drop excess weight is to ditch all the junk foods you might be utilized to ingesting (chips, sodas, pizzas, donuts, cookies, etc) and start eating far more greens. Now, I know what you may possibly be pondering. You may nevertheless be traumatized by your mom not permitting you get up from the evening meal desk till you finished all your broccoli but allow me notify you, your mother was correct. If you can fill fifty percent your plate at every single meal with substantial fiber and nutrient packed vegetables you are effectively on your way to important and extended long lasting bodyweight reduction. This is probably one particular of the most basic items you can do to truly kickstart your weight reduction journey. Whilst it may possibly not be effortless to commence consuming greens at each and every food the quicker you start the far better off you are going to be and the more quickly the weight will start to melt off your body. 3. Exercise In get to kick your excess weight loss experience into higher equipment you have to get your body moving. I don't treatment if you contact it working out, working out, aerobics or whatever the level is you have to do some thing to get your heart price up and your sweat glands operating time beyond regulation. Exercise is the key to sustainable, prolonged long lasting and true bodyweight reduction. For each pound you get rid of by ingesting correct and performing exercises that is a single a lot more pound that will in no way occur back to haunt you. Why? Since you now know the "secret" to risk-free and successful weight reduction. If you at any time really feel by yourself creeping back again up on the dreaded scale o' unwanted fat all you have to do is set these 3 methods into motion and observe as you stabilize and contradict any unwelcome fat obtain. By performing exercises on a standard basis you are offering your physique the energy increase it needs to ramp up your metabolic rate fee to commence effectively and properly getting rid of bodyweight on a every day basis. I will not about you but that appears rather darn very good to me. The a lot more you press your self bodily the quicker you will see modify in your entire body happen. You may possibly not have to function out with a personal trainer daily but you do require to do something. Be it likely for a wander, working, swimming, biking, climbing, or any other bodily exercise you like to do start off carrying out it now. Do not devote one more night time on the couch observing the most recent re-runs. Get your physique moving and begin dropping fat right now. Conclusion Losing bodyweight (even a good deal of bodyweight) is not rocket science. So rest assured that anyone can do it, even you. Nonetheless, it will need all the patience, willpower, determination and perseverance you can muster. Start off sluggish. Just take it 1 working day at a time. You may not reach your perfect fat in a single 7 days, one month or even 1 yr but stick with it and reach it you will. By subsequent the 3 methods earlier mentioned you way too can become a accomplishment story like so several other just before you. So go forth and start off losing all that undesirable weight that several years of undisciplined residing have left driving. Consider manage of your daily life beginning right now. Quickly you are going to be glad you did. When that day will come there will be no hunting back again. Business Name: Nutrition 4 All Email: Nutrition4all.rd@gmail.com Phone Number: 661-495-8883

[shesey]

Wintering by Katherine May

“Wintering is a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider. Perhaps it results from an illness; perhaps from a life event such as a bereavement or the birth of a child; perhaps it comes from a humiliation or failure. Perhaps you’re in a period of transition, and have temporarily fallen between two worlds. Some winterings creep upon us more slowly, accompanying the protracted death of a relationship, the gradual ratcheting up of caring responsibilities as our parents age, the drip-drip-drip of lost confidence. Some are appallingly sudden, like discovering one day that your skills are considered obsolete, the company you worked for has gone bankrupt, or your partner is in love with someone new. However it arrives, wintering is usually involuntary, lonely, and deeply painful. Yet it is also inevitable. We like to imagine that it’s possible for life to be one eternal summer, and that we have uniquely failed to achieve that for ourselves.” “Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximizing scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible. Once we stop wishing it were summer, winter can be a glorious season when the world takes on a sparse beauty, and even the pavements sparkle. It’s a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment, for putting your house in order.” “That’s what humans do: we make and remake our stories, abandoning the ones that no longer fit and trying on new ones for size.” “In the changing room later, I experience a different kind of warmth: the nakedness of a dozen women, all unashamed. These aren’t the posing bodies you find on the beach, dieted beyond al joy to be bikini-ready, and tanned as an act of disguise. These are northern bodies, slack-bottomed and dimpling, with unruly pubic hair and the scars of hysterectomies, chattering companionably in a language I don’t understand. They are a glimpse of life yet to come: a message of survival, passed on through the generations. It’s a message I rarely find in my buttoned-up home country, and I think about the times I’ve suffered silent furies at the treacheries of my own body, imagining them to be unique.” “Ghost stories may be a part of the terror of Halloween, but our love of ghost stories betrays a far more fragile desire: that we do not fade so easily from this life.” “Winter has decorated ordinary life. Some days, everything sparkles.” “You realize that no one is what they look like, on the surface. Everybody has their dose of suffering; it’s just more hidden in some than in others.” “I think about this a lot, she says, the needle breaks the fabric in order to repair it. You can’t have one without the other.” “In the absence of sunlight, it would be too costly to maintain the machinery of growth.” “I’m fairly certain that my decision not to have a second child rests squarely on my worship of sleep.” “I have nothing to show for my forty-odd years on this earth, except for a pile of dusty books.” “4am. The ego flares like a struck match: bright, blue, fleeting. I am thankful to be alone when this happens, to let it burn out in private. We should sometimes be grateful for the solitudes of night, of a winter. They save us from displaying our worse selves to the waking world.” “Certainty is a dead space in which there’s no more room to grow. Wavering is painful. I’m glad to be travelling between the two.” “Sometimes writing is a race against your own mind, as your hand labours to keep up with the flood tide of your thoughts, and I feel that most acutely at night, when there are no competing demands on my attention. That slightly sleepy, dazed state erods the barriers of my waking brain.” “I can confess all my sins to a piece of paper, with no one to censor it.” “Our personal winters are so often accompanies by insomnia, but perhaps we are still drawn towards that unique space of intimacy and contemplation, darkness, and silence, without really knowing what we’re seeking. Perhaps, after all, we are being urged towards our own comfort.” “Lucy is a symbol of absolute faith and utter purity, but the sins for which she suffers are not her own. Instead, she shoulders the weight of the male gaze, and is destroyed by it.” “Some winters creep up on us so slowly that they have infiltrated every part of our lives before we truly feel them.” “We felt broken into pieces, but at the same time, never so loved.” “We changed our focus away from pushing through with normal life, and towards making a new one. When everything is broken, everything is also up for grabs. That’s the gift of winter: it’s irresistible. Change will happen in its wake, whether we like it or not. We can come out of it wearing a different coat.” “I could have stood there and cried on the spot, just knowing that I wasn’t alone.” “I felt accepted in a way that I hand’t for months.” “This isn’t just an unkind attitude, it does us harm, because it stops us from learning that disaster happens, and how to adapt when it does. It stops us from reaching out to people who are suffering. And, when our own disaster comes, it forces us into a humiliated retreat, as we try to hunt down mistakes that we never made in the first place.” “I simply had no defence against the changes that were happening in my life.” “Life never does quite offer us those simply happy endings. I often that that it’s all part of my own craving: the moral clarity of cause and effect, reward and punishment for my actions. A map for living that renders everything explicable.” “All her desires were for elemental things: love, a little comfort, the society of interesting people. Everyday life is so often isolated, dreary, and lonely. A little craving is understandable. A little craving might actually be the rallying cry for survival.” “I love the inconvenience [of snow] the same way that I can sneakingly love a bad cold: the irresistible disruption to mundane life, forcing you to stop for a while and step outside of your normal habits.” “In autumn, the male drones are sacrificed because they’re no longer of any use, and would otherwise just be hungry mounts to feed.”  “Our lives take different shapes: we do not work in a linear progression through fixed roles like the honeybee. We are not consistently useful to the world at large. We talk about the complexity of the hive, but human societies are infinitely more complex, full of choices and mistakes, periods of glory and seasons of utter despair. Some of us make highly visible, elaborate contributions to the whole; some of us are just part of the ticking mechanics of the world, the incremental wealth of small gestures. All of it matters. All of it weaves the wider fabric that binds us.” “We may sometimes drift through years in which we feel like a negative presence in the world, but we come back again, not only restored, but bringing more than we brought before: more wisdom, more compassion, a greater capacity to reach deep into our roots and know that we will find water.” “Usefulness, in itself, is a useless concept when it comes to humans. I don’t think we were ever meant to think about others in terms of their use to us.” “We flourish on caring, on doling out love.” “Winter is a time for the quiet arts of making: for knitting and sewing, baking and simmering, repairing and restoring our homes.” “We sing because it fills our lungs with nourishing air, and lets our heart soar with the notes we let out. We sing because it allows us to speak of love and loss, delight and desire, all encoded in lyrics that let us pretend that those feelings are not quite ours.” “As I walk, I remind myself ot the words of Alan Watts: ‘To hold your breath is to lose your breath.’ In The Wisdom of Insecurity, Watts makes a case that always convinces me, but which I always seem to forget: that life is, by nature, uncontrollable. That we should stop trying to finalize our comfort and security somehow, and instead find a radical acceptance of the endless, unpredictable change that is the very essence of this life. Our suffering, he says, comes from the fight we put up against this fundamental truth: ‘Running away from fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is in pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought. There is no escape.” “The future, to which we devote so much of our brainpower, is an unstable element, entirely unknowable.” “When we endlessly ruminate in these distant times, we miss extraordinary things in the present moment. They are, in actual fact, all we have: the here and now; the direct perception of our senses.” “I’m beginning to think that unhappiness is one of the simple things in life: a pure, basic emotion to be respected, if not savoured. I would never dream of suggesting that we should wallow in misery, or shrink from doing everything we can to alleviate it; but I do think it’s instructive. After all, unhappiness has a function: it tells us that something is going wrong. If we don’t allow ourselves the fundamental honesty of our own sadness, then we miss an important cue to adapt. We seem to be living in an age when we’re bombarded with entreaties to be happy, but we’re suffering from an avalanche of depression; we’re urged to stop sweating the small stuff, and yet we’re chronically anxious. I often wonder if these are just normal feelings that become monstrous when they’re denied. A great deal of life will always suck. There will be moments when we’re riding high, and moments when we can’t bear to get out of bed. Both are normal. Both, in fact, require a little perspective.” “We need friends who wince along with our pain, who tolerate our gloom, and who allow us to be weak for a while when we’re finding our feet again. We need people who acknowledge that we can’t always hang on in there; that sometimes, everything breaks.” “I recognized winter. I saw it coming (a mile off, since you ask), and I looked it in the eye,. I greeted it, and let it in. I had some tricks up my sleeve, you see. I’ve learned them the hard way. When I started feeling the drag of winter, I began to treat myself like a favoured child: with kindness and love. I assumed my needs were reasonable, and that my feelings were signals of something important.” “We tend to imagine that our lives are linear, but they are in fact cyclical. I would not, or course, seek to deny that we grow gradually older, but while doing so, we pass through phases of good health and ill, of optimism and deep doubt, of freedom and constraint.”

[mr-entj]

Brain-Based Descriptions of the 8 Jungian “Types”

A piece my former professor published on MBTI, cognitive functions, and his study I participated in 10 years ago.

____________________

By Dario Nardi

This is based on the blue “Brain Basics” foldout by Radiance House. (Www.RadianceHouse.com)

In his seminal work, Psychological Types, Dr. C.G. Jung described 2 attitudes (Extraverting and Introverting) and 4 “mental functions”: Sensing, Intuiting, Thinking, and Feeling. Together, they give what he called 8 “Types”. Today, we can use more appropriate terms like functional patterns or cognitive processes. Notice the terms are verbs. His is a process model, not a trait model. Since then, people have offered many variant definitions and created assessments, most of which are peculiar to the creator, speculative, and not research based. In my own work since 2006, I have correlated the Jungian processes to biases and patterns in neocortical (brain) activity using EEG technology. Subjects complete a 1-hour protocol of 20 diverse tasks (meditating, math, memory, etc) while monitored by EEG. And of course, we do our best to confirm their best-fit personality profile using common definitions. Here is an overview of the neocortex and definitions of the 8 cognitive processes.

BRAIN BASICS

Your brain consists of many small modules linked in networks. Each module is a neural circuit that helps you do a task. Some tasks are concrete, such as recognizing faces, hearing voice tone, and moving a hand. Other tasks are abstract, such as evaluating ethics, adjusting to others’ feedback, and mentally rehearsing a future action. There are easily five-dozen modules just in the neocortex, which is the brain’s outermost, thick layer and seat of consciousness. The big figure below is a bird’s eye view of the neocortex. It highlights key modules. We each prefer some modules over others. We differ by the tasks we enjoy and how well we do them. You might take a moment to explore the big figure to identify aspects of yourself.

We enjoy different competencies. For each of us, modules activate with a different degree of stimulus, competence, motivation, and energy level. If we look at the average brain activity of two people over an hour, you may see that their favorite modules are similar, near opposites, or somewhere in between! When different, those people’s personality profile, behaviors, and self-experience differ greatly too. In fact, we can dig deeper to look at underlying brain networks (using computer-aided analysis of EEG data), and confirm the biases are longterm rather than a result of just a 1-hour protocol.

In addition to favorite brain regions and networks, there are whole-brain patterns. For example, the brain can get into a state of “flow” where all modules are in synch. Or it might show  a chaotic brainstorm. There are more patterns, and we human beings are pretty diverse. Situations may prompt everyone’s brain differently. Take a moment to reflect, when do you get into your “zone”? What is it like when you are at your most creative and productive?

To meet our needs, the brain’s elements work in concert. As an analogy, if a module is a musical instrument, then the brain is a symphony orchestra that affords complex performances. Research suggests eight ways the brain (specifically, the neocortex) works in concert. These eight are highly effective and sustainable, though we necessarily come to rely on some more than others. You will find descriptions of these 8 below.

FOUR EXECUTIVE STYLES

Before we get into details about all 8 cognitive processes, let’s break things down more simply into 4 executive styles. 

Two Processing Circuits: To start, there are 2 circuits in the brain to process incoming stimuli. One circuit is faster. It sends sensory data directly to the front of the brain, our executive centers, to quickly act on the data. This is a more extroverted style. A second circuit is slower. It sends sensory data to the back of the brain, to link with memory and information processing centers, to compare, contemplate, and collate the data before moving it on to the executives. This is a more introverted style. There are other ways extroverts and introverts different, such as high versus low gain: Given a certain environment, an extrovert may easily find it too quiet and want to “dial up” the stimuli, whereas an introvert may easily find it too noisy and want to “dial down” the stimuli. Suffice to say, everyone uses both fast and slow circuits, and Jung himself described each person has having 2 functions in awareness, one for extroverting and a second for introverting, to make a well-rounded adult.

Two Executive Centers: We have 2 main executive centers: a “goal-focused” left pre-frontal cortex and an “open-ended” right pre-frontal cortex. Different activities light up these regions. For example, when you make a decision, craft an explanation, or focus to shut out distractions, the left goal-focused executive gets active. Or, when you engage in brainstorming, monitor a process, or reflect on yourself, the right open-ended executive gets active. Very nicely, these two executives correlate well to Jung’s functions. Jung described Thinking and Feeling as “rational” or “judging” functions, which definitionally fit well with our left goal-focused executive. And Jung described Sensing and Intuiting (aka “iNtuiting”) as “a-rational” or “perceiving” functions that definitionally fit well with our right open-ended executive. In his framework, Jung viewed balanced adults as having both kinds of functions, just as all people use both their left and right pre-frontal cortex, and their left and right hands, but invariably with some bias for one over the other.

Now we can bring together Extraverting-Introverting and Left-Right pre-frontal bias to get 4 executive styles:

Expedite Decision-making: Proactively meet goals. Often look sure and confident. Organize and fix to get positive results soon. (More goal-focused, more extraverting.)

Refine Decision-making: Clarify what’s universal, true or worthwhile. Often look quietly receptive. Trust their own judgments. (More goal-focused, more introverting.)

Energize the Process: Seek out stimuli. Often look random, emergent, and enthusiastic. Attend to the here and now. (More open-ended, more extraverting.)

Monitor the Process: Reflect on data and perceptions. Often look focused and preoccupied. Attend to reference points. (More open-ended, more introverting.)

You might take a moment to consider which style is more like you, and more like a spouse, colleague, or boss. Remember these are about habitual biases, not boxes, so feel free RANK the styles 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th rather than pick one.

EIGHT COGNITIVE PROCESSES

We can get more detailed. People’s brains tend to differ in two more ways: people versus thing preference, and abstract versus concrete preference. These are not absolute, simply biases.

For example, there is a module that aids us in identifying stuff in our environment. Some people invest more in identifying lots of people’s faces and emotional expressions, whereas other people invest more in identifying makes and models of cars, computers, or other objects. Of course, everyone does both. But like handedness, where we use both hands, there is bias and have a preferred hand that plays a lead role in many activities like writing.

For as a second example, there is a module that is home to lots of “mirror neurons”. This module tends to get active when we do something concrete like observe and mimic a person’s actions, perhaps to learn a skill. It also can get active when we do get abstract and imagine if we were another creature in a galaxy far far away. Everyone can do both, but we have biases that are likely do due a combination of genetic tendency and habits from culture and physical environment.

There are many other examples. We don’t need to go into them here. Suffice to say, there is evidence to support the kinds of variations and biases that Jung observed among people. 

Without further ado, let’s look at the 8 processes. As you explore, keep in mind you likely have preferred one or two from an early age, and may now be reasonably proficient with as many as 5 or 6 as an adult, at least enough to keep up in society, in relationships, and on the job. I have numbered the processes for convenient reference. They do not actually come in any particular order! Each comes with a name like “Active Adapting” and a broad cognitive process such as “Immersing in the present context”. Finally, each comes with a code such as “Se” (meaning extroverted Sensing) that links to Jung’s framework in Psychological Types.

1. Active Adapting (“Se”): Immerse in the present context.

Act quickly and smoothly to handle whatever comes up in the moment. Excited by motion, action, and nature. Adept at physical multitasking with a video game-like mind primed for action. Often in touch with body sensations. Trust your senses and gut instincts. Bored when sitting with a mental/rote task. Good memory for relevant details. Tend to be relaxed, varying things a little and scanning the environment, until an urgent situation or exciting option pops up. Then you quickly get “in the zone” and use your whole mind to handle whatever is happening. Tend to test limits and take risks for big rewards. May be impatient to finish.

2. Cautious Protecting (“Si”): Stabilize with a predictable standard.

Review and practice to specialize and meet group needs. Constant practice “burns in” how-to knowledge and helps build your storehouse. Specialization helps you reliably fill roles and tasks. Improve when following a role-model or example. Easily track where you are in a task. Often review the past and can relive events as if you are there again. Carefully compare a situation to the customary ways you’ve come to rely. In touch with body sensations. Strong memory for kinship and details. Rely on repetition. Check what’s familiar, comforting, and useful. Tend to stabilize a situation and invest for future security. May over-rely on authority for guidance.

3. Timely Building (“Te”): Measure and construct for progress.

Make decisions objectively based on measures and the evidence before you. Focus on word content, figures, clock units, and visual data. Find that “facts speak for themselves”. Tend to check whether things are functioning properly. Can usually provide convincing, decisive explanations. Value time, and highly efficient at managing resources. Tend to utilize mental resources only when extra thinking is truly demanded. Otherwise, use what’s at hand for a “good enough” result that works. Easily compartmentalize problems. Like to apply procedures to control events and achieve goals. May display high confidence even when wrong.

4. Skillful Sleuthing (“Ti”): Gain leverage using a framework.

Study a situation from different angles and fit it to a theory, framework, or principle. This often involves reasoning multiple ways to objectively and accurately analyze problems. Rely on complex/subtle logical reasoning. Adept at deductive thinking, defining and categorizing, weighing odds and risks, and/or naming and navigating. Notice points to apply leverage and subtle influence. Value consistency of thought. Can shut out the senses and “go deep” to think, and separate body from mind to become objective when arguing or analyzing. Tend to backtrack to clarify thoughts and withhold deciding in favor of thorough examination. May quickly stop listening.

5. Friendly Hosting (“Fe”): Nurture trust in giving relationships.

Evaluate and communicate values to build trust and enhance relationships. Like to promote social / interpersonal cohesion. Attend keenly to how others judge you. Quickly adjust your behavior for social harmony. Often rely on a favorite way to reason, with an emphasis on words. Prefer to stay positive, supportive, and optimistic. Empathically respond to others’ needs and feelings, and may take on others’ needs as your own. Need respect and trust. Easily embarrassed. Like using adjectives to convey values. Enjoy hosting. May hold back the true degree of your emotional response about morals/ethics, regarding talk as more effective. May try too hard to please.

6. Quiet Crusading (“Fi”): Stay true to who you really are.

Listen with your whole self to locate and support what’s important. Often evaluate importance along a spectrum from love/like to dislike/hate. Patient and good at listening for identity, values, and what resonates, though may tune out when “done” listening. Value loyalty and belief in oneself and others. Attentive and curious for what is not said. Focus on word choice, voice tone, and facial expressions to detect intent. Check with your conscience before acting. Choose behavior congruent with what’s important, your personal identity, and beliefs. Hard to embarrass. Can respond strongly to specific, high-value words or false data. May not utilize feedback.

7. Excited Brainstorming ("Ne"): Explore the emerging patterns.

Perceive and play with ideas and relationships. Wonder about patterns of interaction across various situations. Keep up a high-energy mode that helps you notice and engage potential possibilities. Think analogically: Stimuli are springboards to generate inferences, analogies, metaphors, jokes, and more new ideas. Easily guess details. Adept at “what if?” scenarios, mirroring others, and even role-playing. Can shift a situation’s dynamics and trust what emerges. Mental activity tends to feel chaotic, with many highs and lows at once, like an ever-changing “Christmas tree” of flashing lights. Often entertain multiple meanings at once. May find it hard to stay on-task.

8. Keen Foreseeing (Ni): Transform with a meta-perspective.

Withdraw from the world and tap your whole mind to receive an insight. Can enter a brief trance to respond to a challenge, foresee the future, or answer a philosophical issue. Avoid specializing and rely instead on timely “ah-ha” moments or a holistic “zen state” to tackle novel tasks, which may look like creative expertise. Manage your own mental processes and stay aware of where you are in an open-ended task. May use an action or symbol to focus. Sensitive to the unknown. Ruminate on ways to improve. Look for synergy. Might try out a realization to transform yourself or how you think. May over-rely on the unconscious.

Further Exploration

You can read more in the following references: “Neuroscience of Personality: Brain-Savvy Insights for All Types of People”, “Our Brains in Color”, and “8 Keys to Self-Leadership”. Or if you prefer a free online 1-hour video, you can find it here:

https://vimeo.com/user40810588/review/143815719/c69a1060ef

Here is an assessment built around the Jungian functions, validated on 3000 people:

http://www.keys2cognition.com/explore.htm

You can find a complete list of references to my neuroscience of personality work here:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/dario-nardi/neuroscience-of-personality-resources/10155730683011216/

[mentalisttraceur-long]

@intpdreamer replied to this post:

To not even go as far as ask for a definition of *root* insecurity, how would you define insecurity? Is it anything that causes fear? Anything that causes self-doubt? (In which case - does the degree of self doubt have to be inappropriate to be deemed an “insecurity”?)

I actually have been intending to write a definition post for "insecurity", because after understanding my own insecurities (and to a lesser extent others' insecurities) more and more, I recently realized no definition or explanation I have ever been exposed to actually explained it right, in a way that properly focused on the cognition mechanisms of it, the usefulness of it, or the empirically-learned by the brain logical-ness of it.

Insecurity is what happens when a mind has learned to predict that it will be hurt in some manner, even if only by the chronic absence of positive experience.

Insecurity is what happens when within the futures the mind is predicting, the good-enough outcomes have too little total probability mass/density.

Lucky you everyone, you just triggered a very important rant!

No, this needs big words, that's how important this is:

Important Rant

Step 1 - Prediction Functions

Remember that the human brain is in large part a prediction machine - that is one of its main functions and purposes, and it is subconsciously predicting all the time.

At any given moment, our brain is running a bunch of "prediction functions" with all of our current raw experiences and mental state as inputs (sensory data, internally maintained world model, memories, emotions, and so on), and those prediction functions spit out what experiences will come next, which update the world model and are themselves experiences and thus get fed into more prediction functions, over and over recursively, until the brain runs out of relevant and habituated prediction functions.

These prediction functions are instantaneous by human standards: when new information comes in, they happen faster than we even consciously notice that new information.

Technical detail below; feel free to scroll to step 2.

Prediction functions habituate thusly:

Neurons are regularly growing new connections, this works even if the growth is purely random but there might be any number of evolved heuristic optimizations to make it grow faster.

Neurons are regularly discarding connections whose firings are not reinforced or maybe even "deinforced", and reinforcing those that are reinforced.

How are they reinforced or deinforced? With brain chemicals various parts if the brain squirt around of course, but in response to what? Well:

The brain is always pattern matching different cognition together. A couple obvious sources to compare the result of any given ripple of fired neurons connections would be our raw sensory organ data and our slow conscious thinking. Two more will be described shortly. There may be others.

The pattern-matching wetware for each of these comparisons is always comparing its inputs and squirting out chemicals signaling good or bad pattern-matches, which get circulated around. This concept is enough to work, but you can devise optimizations, and evolution may have already implemented a bunch of them.

The prediction functions are pattern-matched with each other. This helps new prediction functions get developed and reinforced faster, even if they cannot share the same wiring with the older ones, because of too much logical difference or because they don't fully cover the same cases.

Stronger reinforcements due to trauma or other intense experiences are possible, causing neurons to retain and keep reinforcing connections which would normally get pruned out. This is probably done by certain brain parts being responsible for releasing the right type or amount or combination of brain chemicals or otherwise signaling in response to specific severe-enough signals, and then either neurons directly responding to that by treating that as a vastly stronger reinforcement for those connections that matched up with that event the right way, or probably a more advanced system where traumatic memories are stored redundantly or differently in brain parts which themselves are pattern-matching wetware for reinforcing prediction functions.

Note that this means that at any moment there may be any number of "ephemeral" or "nascent" prediction functions "implemented" by the brain, many of which are nonsensical or wrong, and they will be kept or culled as they empirically prove themselves accordingly, but also that prediction functions can get kept even if they were only correct in our earlier specific circumstances, and that older prediction functions might be contributing to the reinforcement or deinforcement of new prediction functions.

So the brain optimistically generates new connections, lets them fire as they will, and the ones that pattern match raw sensory data or conscious slow cognition or maybe each other or other sources get rewarded and retained.

Step 2 - Prediction Pyramids

The result is one or more final predictions logically resting on what I initially called "prediction pyramids".

One pyramid for each final prediction, where the ground at the base is all the inputs, and the root point is a prediction.

Each layer of the pyramid represents all the prediction functions which had the opportunity to execute at the same time - if a prediction depends on the result of a previous prediction, then the pyramid is "higher".

The pyramids can overlap, of course - some prediction functions might cause more than one new prediction function to activate, and so on.

When the predictions are mutually exclusive, that's just our mind seeing multiple possibilities, with how likely each one feels being determined by how strongly and thoroughly those prediction pyramids have been reinforced for similar situations before.

Before we even finish consciously processing what's just come in through our senses right this moment, the brain has already run through many prediction pyramids, at least to some significant height.

Technical detail below; feel free to scroll to step 3.

If we want to get more formal, we can think of them as "prediction trees", using tree in the mathematical or graph theory sense: each node is one habituated prediction function, the output of each node is a prediction, so the root is the final prediction.

Or if you want you can include the raw experiences in the tree and then those are the leaf nodes and the prediction functions are the non-leaf nodes.

If you want to complicate the picture further by representing

how the raw experiences may get fed into some or all of the prediction functions and not just the initial ones, and how prediction functions can in turn update the world model and thus new raw experiences, or

the overlap of multiple prediction trees using the same prediction functions,

then it turns into a directed acyclic graph (DAG).

We can keep going, because in practice it's kinda like a partially cyclic graph which just has some nodes that do not participate in cycles. A directed partially-acyclic graph, or DPAG, if you will.

Keep going with this long enough and eventually you're just representing an actual modern neural net implementation, or something like one.

For practical introspection, just the idea of prediction trees or pyramids is most of the value, and usually good enough.

Also!

There is also a complication I have been skipping: maybe some prediction functions share neurons. So besides data dependencies there is also a possible bottleneck in that case, and reinforcement of prediction functions actually doubles as increasing or decreasing the priority - maybe a neuron has some way of being conditioned to respond more readily to one signal versus another.

Or maybe this is simply prevented at a higher level - even if we imagine just very simple neurons that can only decide to fire on all output synapses or not on any, in responce to a strong enough input on one or more of its inout synapses, with only one neurotransmitter available, even then overlapping prediction functions would simply either misfire too often and get disenforced, or else prove accurate enough and maybe only cause occasional subtle errors.

And remember the idea about prediction functions being pattern-matched against each other?

Notice how these ideas combine: if you have two overlapping prediction functions, and that is the bottleneck in critical situations, and you need to shave off those tiny fractions of a second, then simply keep practicing at that edge or your performance envelope, and gradually a new copy or almost-copy of that original prediction function will grow and get reinforced which doesn't overlap with one that has to fire at the same time.

Basically, the height of your prediction pyramid/tree/DAG/DPAG is more formally determined not just by data dependencies but also refractory periods and any activation at the same time on overlapped neurons.

Step 3 - Prediction Substitution

Of course the brain also heuristically "cheats" to optimize this to be faster and take less energy, which is why this is able to stay fast no matter how tall the prediction pyramid gets.

If a second prediction is reinforced enough for immediately following an earlier one (that is to say if prediction one fires on some input, and prediction two then fires right after because of the result of prediction one), then the brain will simply eventually grow a prediction function that produces the second prediction directly for the initial input.

If two different prediction functions or pyramids are too consistent with their results, without in some situations producing enough different but still valuable/reinforced results, one will eventually be removed.

In other words, the brain will always try to flatten and simplify the prediction pyramids, eliminate all that nuanced reasoning in between. (If we want to resist this, we have to make a point to think and maybe even regularly put ourselves into situations in ways that keep discerning the difference.)

This is why introspection past a certain point, and extracting the logic from inside our intuitions, is part reverse-engineering and part historical inference - because the brain will readily optimize out the original reasoning/justification/"prediction pyramid" behind a given reaction!

The brain will substitute simpler or shorter prediction pyramids for complex or tall ones every chance it gets.

Step 4 - Emotional Reaction

Some parts of the brain are constantly streaming in this prediction data (or some reduced form of it as a heuristic optimization).

They react by activating some physiological process or releases some chemicals (neurotransmitters, hormones, whatever) into the brain accordingly, which we in turn consciously perceive as the often "immediate" emotional reaction.

Remember, all of the above happens basically pre-consciously, basically instantaneously by human conscious thinking speeds.

But why a reaction to a prediction? We can have raw reactions to raw experiences like pain and pleasure, that's obvious. But a prediction is this abstract idea thing, isn't it?

No, because what is the mind predicting? What is it a prediction of? What is the "language" or "format" of a raw prediction in a mind? Raw experiences.

Up at the start of the rant I said that the prediction functions produce "what experiences will come next", and this is a key detail.

At the level of these prediction functions, every single prediction the brain makes represents a raw experience, some of which include pain or pleasure or are otherwise experientially positive or negative, and our brain is ultimately reacting to that.

Step 5 - The Analysis

This, this is what I keep talking about when I mention "raw experience prediction analysis". The reverse-engineering of the pyramids of prediction functions in our mind, many of which have been substituted out for simpler heuristics over the years, to finally figure out why we do what we do, react how we react, feel how we feel, think how we think, and want what we want.

The realization that everything, everything about what motivates our minds, and maybe even all possible minds, can be understood as reactions to one or more interlinked chains of predictions of raw experience - that, that is the "raw experience prediction epiphany".

We apply that enough, while being ready to look at ourselves as unflatteringly as needed to do so, and eventually, the view we get of our mind is profoundly explanatory, comprehensive, predictive, and empowering as a result.

There are some things about how minds work that this doesn't cover, but everything it doesn't cover is far easier to satisfactorily explain with much simpler ideas. And the more time passes the more I find things I initially thought I understood well enough without this, only to find that this enriches it.

So anyway, "insecurity"...

... should make more sense now.

Our mind is constantly predicting raw experiences, based on what it has empirically learned from past experiences.

Our mind reacts negatively whenever it predicts it's experiences will be sufficiently preference-pleasure negative.

An insecurity is whenever our mind has learned to predict that its experiences will be below that threshold. So insecurity can be anywhere from intensely immediate to lightly gnawing about the indefinite future; anywhere from extremely specific to inscrutably general. The essential part is the below that threshold, a certain negative reaction, a compulsion to prevent that outcome, starts to kick it. It's a gradient, usually to some degree proportional to how severely below the threshold it is, but also importantly, how much our brain believes the outcome could be better if only we knew could do something about it.

But the actual follow-up beyond that point, including what emotional reactions are felt, is itself dependent on the prediction functions and other habituated cognition. Some examples different people might experience include:

Desperate or needy or manipulative behavior to try to get a wanted/needed thing.

Rage and hostility and violence because it helped them prevent hurting or to get their way before.

Eager sexual arousal because that helped stop hurt or got them safety and approval before.

Some other behavior which modifies the situation to temporarily soothe or mask a want or need with other experiences.

Going non-verbal or freezing up because their brain literally cannot think of any action which would be predictive of improving the situation.

Physiological activation of the body as in fight-or-flight just-in-case, without any compelled action.

Generalized anxiety, a weaker form of the previous point.

Except an insecure mind is prevented, by the same life strokes that cause and sustain the insecurity, from developing particularly reliable ways of avoiding those negative outcomes - if they had those, they wouldn't be insecure.

So often these reactions are not actually constructive to the goal, because the person simply doesn't know how to do that, or were constructive but only under particular circumstances (often less healthy ones, like abusive relationships, etc).

But just as often, the reactions are very constructive, sometimes even perfectly executed, skilled preventions or mitigations of the predicted negative outcomes, and otherwise totally justifiable independent of the insecurity.

The essence of insecurity, and it's literally in the name but I spent years missing it, is the lack of feeling secure, assured, confident, certain (about our raw experience being good enough in the future).

In saying that an insecurity is whenever our mind predicts that its experiences will be below some threshold, and feels negatively compelled to change that, I deliberately left unspecified whether or not it is objectively sound for the brain to make that prediction, or whether or not the fundamental compulsion to avoid the outcome is adaptive, or whether or not that threshold is in some way at the right level.

Those are all important questions, and touch on the essential point that insecurity isn't just this defect that some people have, but rather an essential ingredient of cognition for most people to some degree. But they are otherwise irrelevant to describing the essence of what an insecurity is.

[ethenell]

Best Films of 2018, Part II

5. The Favourite (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)

“I dreamt I stabbed you in the eye ...”

Dogtooth was as bold as debut features come ... It’s fiendishly clever conceit and distinctively muted delivery heralded an auspicious new voice in international cinema.

But even Dogtooth’s most ardent supporters would have been hard-pressed to imagine that, a decade down the line, Yorgos Lanthimos would find himself at the helm of a film with no less than ten Academy Award nominations to its name. In that sense, The Favourite is a perfect demonstration of both how far Lanthimos has come since his inimitable debut, and how fiercely true he has stayed to his idiosyncratic vision.

Lanthimos’s great leap has been to take his vision out of the arthouses and into the cinematic mainstream without losing one iota of his edge. The Favourite, anchored by a trio of extraordinary performances by Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, and Emma Stone, is easily Lanthimos’ most palatable offering yet. With all due respect to Dogtooth and Alps, it may also be his flat-out best.

Lacking the high-concept foundation of his previous work, Lanthimos’ latest more than makes up for it by playing up the absurdities of its setting. In the cutthroat world of social climbers and hangers-on in the lavish royal court of Victorian England, Lanthimos' wickedly comedic voice has found it’s perfect canvas, and his trio of actresses sell every bizarre beat to perfection.

Lanthimos’ films has always explored the ways that the societal convention clashes with our most basic, instinctual behavior, and The Favourite is no exception. Victorian England is simply a (fish-eye) lens through which he strikes at humanity’s propensity for self-interested cruelty, manipulation, and deception. Unsurprisingly, Lanthimos’ diagnosis on the topic remains characteristically bleak. But if The Favourite teaches us anything about Lanthimos as a storyteller, it’s that he’s uniquely capable of delivering bad news with a smile and a wink.

 4. Eighth Grade (dir. Bo Burnham)

“Gucci!”

Bo Burnham, who first gained fame through YouTube videos of self-proclaimed "pubescent musical comedy", would strike most offhand as an unlikely source for the most pure-heartedly empathetic film of the year. But Eighth Grade, Burnham's debut feature, is exactly that. 

Centering around the painfully shy Kayla as she goes through her final week of middle school, Burnham and star Elsie Fisher bring to the screen a keen sense for what it means to be a child in the age of social media, not to mention the most genuinely rewarding actor-director connection of any film in 2018. 

Burnham has said repeatedly that the casting process for the role of Kayla was extensive, and that he nearly considered shelving the project before auditioning Fisher for the role. Seeing her on screen, it's easy to see both why Burnham was so particular in casting this part, and why he struck gold discovering Fisher. 

As written by Burnham and played by Fisher, Kayla is a ball of anxieties whose struggles in IRL social scenarios are presented in direct contrast to the version of herself presented on her YouTube channel, through which she shares motivational videos with messages about, among other things, courage and being yourself. It's this juxtaposition that forms the thesis of Burnham's beautiful film, but not quite in the way you might expect. 

This may not come as too much of a surprise, given his background, but Burnham categorically rejects lazy criticisms of the social media generation, or of social media itself. In fact, Eighth Grade feels more in tune with the detailed realities of a life dominated by interaction and engagement through social media than any other film in recent memory. 

But, in spite of the broad cultural transformation that has followed in social media's wake, Eighth Grade's greatest achievement is to remind it's viewers that the vulnerabilities and angst of childhood remain largely unchanged. 

3. Roma (dir. Alfonso Cuaron)

“We are alone. No matter what they tell you, we women are always alone.“

Alfonso Cuaron is one of the world’s most treasured filmmakers – this much is not really up for debate. His unerringly brilliant filmography showcases a directorial range unmatched in modern cinema. So, the transition from the space epic Gravity to an intimate family drama set in an upscale suburb of 1970s Mexico City should have surprised no one familiar with the director’s previous work. His new film’s reported autobiographical elements should also have come as no surprise, as he had previously dabbled in stories loosely based on his own life with his celebrated debut, Y Tu Mama Tambien.

But even this thorough setting of the stage could not have been adequate to prepare audiences for what Cuaron had in store. Among a filmography already replete with masterpieces, Roma may well be the most important (and personal) film Cuaron has ever made.

Unlike Y Tu Mama Tambien, Roma draws inspiration not from Curaon’s own adolescent exploits, but from the experiences of Libo, the domestic worker who helped to raise him, along with his own mother, as they deal with a series of upheavals within their upper-middle class home.

Where Roma and Y Tu Mama find common ground is in their uncanny ability to ground their intimate stories within the broader sociopolitical landscape in which they are set. Perhaps the most notable achievement of Cuaron’s work than his unparalleled ability take us to a time and place, set us inside an experience that’s unlike our own, and drive home with uncanny precision how that experience fits within our world at large.

The miracle of Roma is the grandeur and power it imbues in the banal details of domestic life. Even with Cuaron having largely abandoned the formal flashiness of Children of Men and Gravity, his images elevate a traditionally marginalized figure to almost mythical significance. Today’s world being what it is, Roma serves as a powerful and timely reminder – every life, even those most easily overlooked, spill over with love and tragedy and moments of genuine wonder.

 2. Burning (dir. Lee-Chang Dong)

“There is no right and wrong ... Just the morals of nature.”

There’s a mystery at the heart of Burning that never resolves itself -- at least, not in the way you might want it to. And though it casts an unmistakable pall over the film from the moment that it comes into focus, there’s a sneaking suspicion that writer-director Lee Chang Dong’s real focus is lingering just behind this shroud.

Indeed, peeling away this outermost layer of intrigue reveals a thorny, tangled treatise on the divisions of modern society. Burning functions exceptionally well as a pure, slow-burn mystery, but it’s deliberately composed subtext provides contextual space for it to blossom into something far more complex and significant. No doubt in my mind, this film is a masterpiece.

On paper, Burning’s first act seems well-worn – Jongsu (Yoo Ah-In) reconnects by chance with Haemi (Jeon Jong-seo), a friend from his home village, whom he initially does not recognize. He agrees to feed her cat while she travels in Africa. When she returns with a mysteriously wealthy sophisticate named Ben (a slyly terrific Steven Yeun) Jongsu immediately feels threatened. But as his petty jealousies pile up, deeper suspicions begin to take root, and small, seemingly innocuous details begin to point towards sinister possibilities. 

Rather than focus on the things that connect us, Burning probes the divides between us that – as modern discourse reaches ever closer to a fever pitch – threaten to become unbridgeable.

In this state of disconnection, what can we be convinced to believe about one another? What (or who) is disposable?  Burning asks provocative questions about our cultural shortcomings and paints a chilling picture of the alienation that can fester as a result. It’s a patient, masterful film that pays off with an absolute wallop of a conclusion.

As we see our cinemas filled with more and more tired remakes and obvious retreads, Burning represents something truly indispensable and increasingly rare – an assured, original masterpiece from a vanguard of international cinema.

1. First Reformed (dir. Paul Schrader)

“Can God forgive us? For what we’ve done to this world?”

Decades after penning the script for Scorsese’s searing take on the explosive blend of toxic masculinity and moral righteousness, Paul Schrader is back with his own twisted take on Taxi Driver  this time sprinkled with elements of Winter Light, Bergman’s austere study of faith in crisis.

Like Bergman’s enduring chamber play, First Reformed focuses on a pastor, Ernst Tollet (an earth-shakingly great terrific Ethan Hawke), who offers to counsel the troubled husband of one of his parishioners (Amanda Seyfried), only to find himself slipping into a spiritual crisis of his own. 

In the wake of their conversation - which plays out as a debate over the morality of bringing a child into a world on the brink of unavoidable ecological catastrophe - Tollet is forced to reckon with his own deeply repressed guilt, along with his rapidly deteriorating health, and quickly finds himself buried under the spiritual weight of his own sins, and those of humanity, writ large. 

In his search for answers, Tollet whispers into the void, and in return comes nothing but silence. This profound absence drives Tollet deeper and deeper into the clutches of despair until, in the film’s breathless final moments, the void finally shouts back. It’s one of the more profoundly, beautifully surprising conclusions in recent memory - one that suggests that our only hope for true salvation is not in blind faith, but in transcendental human connection

First Reformed takes on a wide range of themes over its 90 minute run-time, but Schrader is most directly concerned with this eternal and fundamentally human struggle between faith and despair. 

At its psychological foundation, faith is a willful confrontation between the human capacity for hope and a cold and uncaring universe - it’s sold to us as the only true antidote to existential despair. But First Reformed – driven to the knife’s edge by Hawke’s powerhouse lead performance – argues convincingly that the line between bravely confronting the abyss, and being wholly consumed by it, is perilously thin.

[prorevenge]

Ridiculed, accused of lying and incompetence, I shoved burning facts down their throats and made a successful business in the process.

"The best revenge is massive success." -Frank Sinatra

TL;DR; Told I was lying and didn't know anything about game design. Made a spite video game that became a huge hit. Jackass is also forever immortalized within the game credits.

PREFACE

This is a very unusual story compared to the typical posts you've read here. There's a lot to unpack but I'll try to summarize everything as best I can.

I hope you'll find it as entertaining as I did. And, what's great about this story is that it happened very recently, it happened here, evidence is searchable, and it's still kinda on-going. It's a tale of trolls, video game addiction, self-righteous arrogance, harassment, winning an impossible bet, a viral hit in Russia, and massive success with even some little revenge sprinkles for added measure.

Quick background about me: I've worked with game developers for decades and I'm an avid researcher and supporter of unorthodox and ethical video games used for educational and clinical purposes.

HOW IT STARTED

Two months ago, there was a new reddit post about "using video game to ease depression" that caught my attention.

The reason it caught my attention was because it was a game & study that I had in-depth knowledge of (from over a year prior.) Unlike everyone else in the thread, I was the only one who had actually seen the game, played it, knew the developers, and even had the original technical game design documents.

The article discussed a variety of topics but never addressed exactly HOW the video game was able to ease depression. So, I provided a quickly summary of what the game actually did.

[SKIP THIS SECTION IF NEUROSCIENCE & GAME DESIGN DON'T INTEREST YOU]

A quick side note about this article, for those that like extra details: One of the cool properties of ketamine is that, not only can it provide rapid and temporary relief for depression, it also actively heals damaged brain circuits. Then there's dopamine. A chemical that we internally produce, that has similar but less potent effects. There is no cure for depression, but these are promising treatments for some. The article focused on what's called "flow". Using certain game design methods you can induce a "flow state" by causing a sustained dopamine release. When used ethically, it can be highly beneficial in stimulating/training the brain to perform certain activities, improve or learn memorization, adapt to challenges, learn new concepts, exercise motor skills, and meanwhile rebuild pathways/synapses. While all of this is happening, the user is receiving pleasurable rewards without realizing it. This process can create new pathways, repair old circuits, and increasing their neuroplasticity. Increased neuroplasticity means improved cognitive functioning, reducing impairment of the reward process, and improving the effectiveness of antidepressant medications. Video games can be a unique non-drug option to accomplish this while easing symptoms. Research has already shown that many popular games can already accomplish this (unintended effects by the game developers). By comparison, the game design they used in this theoretical study was highly limited in scope, so permanent benefits were negligible compared to the temporary respite brought about by basic dopamine release. Science is still barely scratching the surface of neurotransmitters and flow state. There are still many unknowns, but dopamine isn't just a pleasure chemical that the media would like you to be believe. It can do quite a number of things. Research has shown that "flow state" can modify synaptic plasticity, improve connectors between cells/synapses, ultimately helping cells in the brain communicate better as a network and improve neural system intrinsic properties.

My summary posting was fine for a while, until predictable trolls arrived led by an "armchair game developer". Dr. Armchair definitely did not appreciate my post. It was an affront and insult to his profession. Within a few minutes, it dropped 30 karma. I don't care about imaginary internet points but I don't like being accused of lying. Dr. Armchair and his pals started with the usual "do you even lift?" Then it was quickly asserted, from their armchairs, that I knew nothing about flow, psychology, dopamine or game design at all. From their high horses, they contributed nothing useful; only taunts, defamation, attacking my character and physical appearance, and accusing me of being a liar and incompetence.

Apparently it was a very sensitive topic. Who knew?

It quickly devolved into Dr. Armchair gleefully, and repeatedly claiming, that he won, he was right, and I was wrong. He demanded that I essentially write a 300 page peer-reviewed study to prove him wrong, and when it couldn't be provided within 5 minutes, there were more gleeful cheers of "HAHA! I WAS RIGHT! I WAS RIGHT! I'M NOT LISTENING TO YOU LALALALALA.."

Obviously, it was going to be impossible to reason with Dr. Armchair and his buddies. But actions speak louder than words.

So, I claimed that I would provide undeniable proof in the form of a video game "a few months from now" that he could actually play for himself. Once again, claiming that I was lying and it was impossible. And more of the usual "It's been 5 minutes, where is it? Oh, you can't do it can you. HA! I was right! I BEAT YOU! I BEAT YOU!"

It was weird.

Eventually the mods had enough. Dr. Armchair and his cronies harassment, ad hominem attacks, accusations and inflammatory attacks resulted in multiple posts being removed. But my promise still stood and I fully intended on keeping it.

THE BOLD CLAIM

The plan was simple:

Create a proof of concept that demonstrates just the critical neuroscience principles that induce flow. To prove it beyond a doubt, I intended to also prove that MOST COMMON INGREDIENTS of a game are completely UNNECESSARY to accomplish this.

So, I made the very confident claim that the game would still be fun, addictive, and demonstrate flow state, even after ripping everything out:

No extras or frills. Built within a short period of time.

No music. No sound effects. No animations. No story.

No expensive art. In fact, hardly any at all: I would use ONE SINGLE ART ASSET for the gameplay (plus some lines.)

No feature creep. No sign-in system. No gacha mechanics.

No level design. No achievements. No RPG gamifications.

I could get at least a couple hundred people to play it.

I should have also mentioned that it would be built with ZERO BUDGET and NO MARKETING.

If this sounds like a strange way to make a game, it is. For a typical game developer, this would raise many eyebrows, and they'd consider it highly risky or improbable to achieve any success with both arms figurately tied behind your back while blindfolded.

HOW IT ENDED

While I was preparing to stress test the game online, it was discovered by .ru bots that were scouring the web for new games. Even before the game was ready, they published the game link on several Russian gaming sites.

The game exploded.

It has graphical similarities to Tetris, so it was a nice coincidence that the game essentially launched and did so well in Russia at first. After that, other game sites started discovering the game on their own too, even before I had a chance to submit the game myself. Most importantly, the proof of concept and everything I claimed worked (high ratings and retention). It proved so effective that the game is currently being played by hundreds of thousands of users worldwide. And it's a clear demonstration about the importance of combining psychology and game design.

I suppose you could say that there are many layers of revenge happening here, maybe even karmic justice or backfiring on their part, it's really hard to classify. The best kind of revenge is always massive success, and shoving it in their faces, however. But, on top of that, I also fully kept to my promises while proving these ignorant individuals so wrong they look like fools.

I also added some extra salt to the wound. I figured that success of the game was partly due to Dr. Armchair's ignorance. It was only fair that I included his name within the Game Credits. So, I officially gave this very wonderful human being a very "special thanks" for their support in making this success possible.

(source) story by (/u/postfu)

[dailyaudiobible]

10/18/2019 DAB Transcript

Jeremiah 31:27-32:44, 1 Timothy 3:1-16, Psalms 88:1-18, Proverbs 25:20-22

Today is October 18th. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It's great to be here with you as we continue our journey through this week and month and year, of course. And, so, here we are around the global campfire and I hope morning or your afternoon or your evening is going well. And we have this time that no matter where we are in the world that we can come together out of the dark and be warmed by the campfire as we listen to God's word speak to us. And that's gonna…that’s gonna put us back into the book of Jeremiah. We have been reading from the New Living Translation this week, which is what we'll do today. Jeremiah chapter 31 verse 27 through 32 verse 44.

Commentary:

Okay. So, as we mentioned when we started first Timothy, this is one of Paul's personal letters that are found in the Scriptures, and it's also known as a pastoral letter because…well…it was written from the apostle Paul to his son in the faith who had been raised up in the church and had become a pastor. And, so, in today's reading Paul sort of gave this template for church leadership and the template is also found in a similar fashion in the pastoral letter to Titus, and it’s…these templates have been used ever since. Many of the Christian denominations have their…have their own process of discernment for ordination, like their own way of doing things, but the guidelines that we read today in first Timothy are almost always a part of that process because the guidelines that Paul wrote down, some of these characteristics, some of these morals and temperaments, there in there because they're necessary, like they’re…they’re necessary to successfully shepherd and care for God's people. So, Paul mentions two different offices of leadership today and in our reading and the first one being pastor or priest or presbyter and the second, the diaconate or the office of the deacons. And pretty much in all cases, there’s at least an appointment, like you’re being appointed to this particular function. And in a lot of cases a person is actually ordained and commissioned to perform this office in the church. Its ordained ministry. So, the office of the pastor, which is also called a priest or presbyter or bishop or an overseer or for that matter even a president in ancient writings, is certainly one of the most worthy callings in the church, one of the most difficult callings maybe be in the world, but it's…it's also a very unique, very complicated, complex, difficult job at times. So, a certain criteria, certain baseline temperamental and moral criteria was written down by the apostle Paul because it's required to do this job honorably. A pastor has to watch over and care for the spiritual needs of a community but before God, answering to God. So, according to first Timothy 3, this is what a pastor is supposed to…this…this is what is essential for a pastor. “A church leader must be a man whose life is above reproach. He must be faithful to his wife. He must exercise self-control, live wisely, and have a good reputation. He must enjoy having guests in his home. He must be able to teach. He must not be a heavy drinker or be violent. He must be gentle and not quarrelsome and not love money. He must manage his own family well, having children who respect and obey him. And he must not be a new believer because he might become proud and the devil would cause him to fall. And people outside the church must speak well of him so that he will not be disgraced and fall into the devil's trap.” Now there was another office, the office of deacon that was also talked about today. And the deacons…we saw their formation in the book of Acts, right, when the apostles were preaching, and everybody was kind of having a common…a common life together. And, so, food was being distributed, right? And, so, certain Gentiles and certain Hebrews they were like complaining that, “my crowd didn't get as much is their crowd, my table didn’t get as much is their table.” So, deacons were formed to help in the service of God's people. And that's the purpose, to care for the…basically the earthbound well-being of a congregation and the different functions that community life brings. Deacons were commissioned to assist the pastor in fulfilling this calling locally. So, deacons, according to Paul, must be well respected and have integrity and they must not be heavy drinkers or dishonest with money and they must be committed to the mystery of the faith now revealed and must live with a clear conscience. And they're supposed to be…before they’re appointed, they’re supposed to be closely examined and if they’re affirmed then they can serve and be appointed or ordained as deacons. And their wives have to be respected and must not slander others, and they must exercise self-control and be faithful in everything they do, we faithful to their wives, manage their children and household well. And those who serve in this capacity will be rewarded with respect from others and will have increased confidence in their faith in Christ Jesus. So, a lot of words and a lot of criteria there in our reading today, but if you like…if you have ever wondered or sensed or felt pulled toward some type of calling and that's leading or has led or may lead you toward ordained ministry then…well then the discernment process starts way before you ever say that out loud, way before you ever bring it forward or become what's called an aspirant, somebody who aspires to ordained ministry. So, if…if you’re feeling pulled in that direction you should look at this criteria and look in the mirror and examine your own life because I can pretty much guarantee you that it will be examined in-depth as you go through the process. And maybe if you’ve been at a certain church or you’ve been in different churches over the years and you've seen people be trained and raised up into ministry…well…first Timothy three's gonna very likely be one of the reasons that it's done the way that it's done. And the thing is, looking at this list, looking at what's required, and for that matter, knowing what the job requires, these criteria, this is what you would…this is what you should expect from your spiritual leader or leaders, but also seeing what's required here should give us a sense of honor, of course, but also a real desire to pray for our pastors and deacons. They have to live what they teach, and they have to model what that looks like in front of everybody. But the thing is, like when they were ordained or when they went through this…like…there's nothing that makes them superhuman, like there’s nothing that changes their humanity into something else like they get something special so that they can carry out these criteria other than the anointing of the Holy Spirit. It’s no easier for them to live out their Christian faith than it is for you except for they have too…except for they have to you while they're trying to do this, right? So, they can’t just take this criteria and try to live into it in a vacuum all by themselves. They have to do it while serving God's people, and God's people can be messy at times. And ordinations doesn't lift somebody up above somebody else. And…man…I say this every year because it was so deeply pounded into me through the process that I went through myself. It's…you’re not being elevated; you're actually signing up to become the slave of God's people. It's actually a step down. It's actually a humble posture. It's what Jesus modeled. So, it's not like, “ooh…I get to be several steps above everybody looking down upon them because I'm standing on the platform.” It's actually a person maybe maybe being on that platform saying I got nothing that you don't have and I’m standing here the best I can to be an example and I can't do it alone. And I realize that's not always how things work. I get it, right? I mean…I have met hundreds and hundreds, maybe even…well…maybe not thousands, but many, many, many pastors along the way and I know that our culture really looks for certain things and that can definitely bring pride and arrogance. And some of the things that happen in church can really make a pastor cynical over the years. So, I get it. But what we need to do is pray for our pastors, not devour our pastors, right? Pray for those whom God has put in our lives to actually shield and protect and shepherd us. We should be praying, interceding for those people, holding their arms up, like being behind them because it’s a pretty hard, hard job. It's a pretty difficult calling and we see people shepherding other people in the Scriptures, we see that those leaders always struggle, it's a difficult thing to do.

Prayer:

Father, that's where were at right now. We pray for our pastors. We pray for our priests or presbyters or whatever they're called in the tradition and the denomination or in the church that we’re a part of. We acknowledge that they've been given a worthy job, a very, very important job in Your kingdom, but we don't always realize that it's a very, very difficult job. Often, we’re thinking, “must be nice to just be able to study the Bible all day and get paid”, when they don’t realize just how always on and never off the calling is. And, so, we pray for those in ordained ministry. Today we pray that the presence of Your Holy Spirit would be felt throughout the earth among them with a sense of encouragement and purpose and calling. Come Holy Spirit into this we pray. In the mighty name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website its home base, it’s how you stay connected, find out what’s going on around here. So, be sure to do that. Stay connected in any way that you can.

Stay connected at the Prayer Wall. Pray for your brothers and sisters. This has really always been a community of prayer, a community where we shoulder one another's burdens and…and just be there for each other so that we know that we’re not alone on this journey. And it makes all the difference. So, stay connected to the Prayer Wall.

Check out the Daily Audio Bible Shop. There are resources there for the journey that we’re taking, including the God of Your story, which is fresh, freshly brand-new out, a work that was two years in the making, but is finally seeing the light of day. And it's this...it's just a beautifully hardbound edition that is a daily - January 1st through December 31st - working devotional through the Scriptures like we do here on the Daily Audio Bible and it's…it's the only resource of its kind actually, believe it or not, it's the only one like it in the world. There are a lot of one-year devotionals in the world that are fantastic but this is the only one that actually comments on each day's reading from the one year Bible, which is what we do every day. So, it’s a wonderful…I mean…I wrote it so I was gonna say, “it's a wonderful resource, you should have it” and I believe that and I worked with all of my heart on it but I’m not telling you that because I need you to buy my books like I'm getting nothing from this. I have devoted everything…everything and donated everything that…that would come my way through the Daily Audio Bible Shop to the Daily Audio Bible because this resource is of us and it's for us. And, so, it should go to support the Global Campfire community that we are. And that's just my conviction about it. So, if you haven't got a copy of the God of your story, I am just praying and hoping that everyone in this community will have a hard copy, a physical representation of the journey that we take each and every year through the Scriptures here. So, you can find that at the Daily Audio Bible Shop or you just go to godofyourstory.com and it'll take you there.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com as well. There's a link on the homepage. If you're using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address, if you prefer, is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174,

And as always, if you have a prayer request or comment 877-942-4253 is the number to dial or you can just press the Hotline button in the app, little red button up at the top, can’t miss it and off you go.

And that's it for today. I'm Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hey this is Brian in Florida calling in for Cindy in Seattle. I heard your message on the 10th I believe it was where you had a meeting at 2:30 Pacific and it was related to your job and your relationship with your manager and I want to see my heart goes out to you. It sounds like it has been a very difficult situation for you, but I also feel a sense of victory for you. So, I want to encourage you. I prayed for you. And I pray that God would give you triple for your trouble. Double for all the trouble that you have dealt with all the heartache, the late nights, the stress, the extra work that it is to go through the tough situation with a boss like you have, but triple that He would go above and beyond and that you would have unexpected blessings above and beyond. Now, I look forward to hearing how that meeting went. So, I really hope you will share how the meeting went. And I’m also praying for mercy and grace for your boss and for quick restoration for him or her following this situation. God bless you.

Hi, my name is Jason and I’m just calling because I was listening to the Daily Audio Bible podcast for October 12th and a young woman called in for her ex-boyfriend who is also named Jason and I’m just calling to encourage her and anybody else that might be struggling right now. I’ve been going through a really tough season myself and it sounds like this other gentleman and I have been going through something very similar. I’ve lost a lot in the last year and got to the point where I wasn’t able to feed myself and was faced with becoming homeless. I was also struggling with depression, suicidal thought, I have bipolar disorder, I’ve struggled with addiction, and I’ve had so many other struggles I just don’t have time to talk about them all, but there is hope and God…God will give you strength and bring you through it all. You just have to keep the faith and keep pressing on and He will help you. Don’t give up.

Hi family this is your sister Julie from North Idaho. Father God, Lord Jesus, please be with Aaron from Oklahoma. I lift up our brother to You. Thank You that You’re comforter, healer, restorer. You bring us out of the pig’s pen and clean us up. I pray for Erin’s wife and that You would soften her heart, that she would turn from her sin and seek You and that You will forgive her Father God, that she would seek You first in Your kingdom that she will receive Your forgiveness and restore their marriage Lord as You did for me and my husband. Thank You, Father for allowing Aaron to forgive and may he lean on You for Your perfect peace and comfort and help him to go to You before making any decisions or reactions. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Hey Aaron brother, please hang in there. I so know what you’re going through. I was that woman at one time in my life. The best thing…best advice I give to you is just love her, love her through it and He will replenish what the locusts have eaten no matter what the turnout is. I pray for your comfort and peace and just know that you are not alone, and we love you very much. Hang in there, brother.

Hi family this is his little Cherry in Canada. I wanted to let To Be a Blessing know that I’m praying for your brother for his sleep. Sherry in Kansas, I’m praying for your friend Sherry whose cancer has spread and now they’re telling her it’s stage IV. Praying for a miracle for her. Melissa in Southern California, congratulations on getting married in June. I am praying for you and for your husband, especially for his salvation. Clowning for Christ, thank you so much for calling in and letting us know that your wife’s pain has gone away, praise the Lord. I am praying for you because I assume that you’re a clown. Clowning is a lot harder than it looks and it’s a wonderful way of entertainment and ministry. Praying for you, praying a blessing over you as a clown. Keith, I am praying for your wife and your family that God would restore and move and work in your marriage to bring restoration. Tom, I’m praying for your wife who has cancer and is in an out of hospital, bedridden now. Praying for a breakthrough in her health, for a miracle. I am a Child of God, praying for your niece’s daughter, Crystal, whose only four and there’s something concerning on her lungs. Praying for healing. Abby in Maryland on praying for your sister who’s in a relationship that does not seem good or her. Praying God would intervene. And Michael way out west thank you so much for calling and with the song that you wrote. It was gorgeous. I love cowboy poetry. Please continue to call in with anything that you write. I really enjoyed that Michael. __ Maxwell, I am praying for the Gideons Bible distribution in Austin Texas at the end of October. May many people be touched and drawn to Christ. Roxanne in Mobile, I’m praying for your sister. That’s it for now family.

[allthefilmsiveseenforfree]

Vice

When I first saw the trailer for this movie, I thought, “This is gonna be an amazing story told at the worst time possible.” I know it’s hard to hearken back to the halcyon days of the early 2000s when there was a sociopath in the White House, our money was on fire, and leafy green vegetables were being recalled left and right, but Adam McKay takes us there using his particular brand of sly, can-you-believe-this-fucking-happened direction that he debuted in 2015′s The Big Short. So what do you get when Christian Bale (under layers of latex and makeup) gets a chance to embody Dick Cheney - one of the most secretive, manipulative, power-hungry men that has ever risen through the ranks of the American democracy - during a time when the idea of a functioning American democracy is, itself, a farce? Well...

It's not subtle, but then again, most things in 2019 aren’t. I personally don’t mind McKay’s smug way of speaking truth to power, because it doesn’t bother me when someone is acting like they’re smarter than I am, especially when they’re armed with as much research and due diligence as they can muster. Vice does as good a job as possible of asking the two most important questions about Dick Cheney’s legacy: “Where did this guy come from?” and “How did we end up here?”

The film is told Tarantino-style, jumping forwards and backwards in time to explore particular themes or revisit significant moments. From the beginning, we are presented with the two people who shaped Cheney the most - his wife, Lynne (Amy Adams), and his political inspiration, Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell). There’s some fourth-wall-breaking, some narrative fake-outs, and even a Shakespearean interlude - much like an episode of SNL, some of these “sketches” work better than others - but the real strength of the film lies in Bale’s performance, and the slow, methodical untangling of the puzzle that is Dick Cheney’s rise to power. 

Some thoughts:

I find it amusing that most of the other reviews I’ve read think the film either goes too far (it’s all liberal propaganda and character assassination) or not far enough (it’s too meta, too scattershot, and doesn’t castigate Cheney strongly enough for the results of his actions as VP). Perhaps it’s impossible for anyone to make anything even remotely political without this type of division of opinion, because I’m not sure why the reviews are so polemically divided based on the merits of the film alone.

Do I even need to say that Christian Bale is a literal goddamn chameleon? He’s flawless in every way. His mannerisms, his blinks, the way he breathes for fuck’s sake - he just disappears and makes someone who on the surface is SO BORING into a fascinating figure to watch and try to dissect. Much like the fly fishing Cheney is so passionate about, Bale’s performance is one that rewards patience and attention to even the tiniest details, and he knocks it out of the park. 

I wish I could say the same for the rest of the cast. Sam Rockwell is a hell of a lot of fun as George W. Bush, and I appreciate that he doesn’t stoop to a cartoonish level. He’s not splashing around in the parody pool, which would be so easy to do. But he’s honestly not in the movie that much, so it’s hard to call him a standout. 

Amy Adams is my everything, but this isn’t her best, unfortunately, mainly due to Lynne’s one-note personality. 

Steve Carell is probably the closest thing to a runner-up to Bale, because his Donald Rumsfeld steals every scene he’s in, but he also plays a bit one-note, and doesn’t have much to do for long stretches of the film. No, this is Bale’s world and we’re all just living in it, which fits pretty well given the character he’s playing.

The moments in which the films feels the most human and the least stylized revolve around Cheney’s daughter, Mary (Alison Pill), a lesbian who Cheney refuses to use as a political pawn or punching bag. When she comes out to her parents, Dick embraces her and says “It doesn’t matter, we love you no matter what” and you think you see a glimpse of the man behind the monster. But in 2014, when his eldest daughter Liz (Lily Rabe) is running for Senator in Wyoming, Cheney blesses - nay, encourages - her decision to disavow gay marriage and therefore, her own sister’s marriage. It’s a devastating scene, and one that undercuts any possible reading of Cheney as an antihero. He’s not the amoral career man who is just trying to do whatever it takes to protect his family. He’s ruthless, calculating, and convinced of his own divine right to seize power at all costs. In other words, he’s a mediocre white male politician living in a country that’s basically designed to be DisneyWorld for mediocre white male politicians.

For anyone who lived through the GWB presidency, Vice may not offer a lot of information that is new or unfamiliar. But for those of us who were maybe a bit too young to be glued to the news constantly, this film offers a glimpse into the machinations of a man who seeks the power to govern by any means necessary. The ultimate lesson is to beware the man imbued with too much singular power. Regulations, checks and balances, and transparency are the only ways to thwart them, and if we don’t, the consequences will be felt for generations to come. 

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Sun Myung Moon’s ultimate truth is ... absolute obedience

Allen Tate Wood, author, lecturer and consultant on the cult phenomenon.

Interview with Allen Tate Wood at North Texas State University in the mid 1980s.

Hello, I’m Tom Waldren and with me today I have Allen Tate Wood, former chief political officer and former state leader of the Unification Church, commonly known as the Moonies. He has been working to inform the public about the dangers of destructive cults since 1975. Some of the public has probably forgotten about Sun Myung Moon.

Tom Waldren: Was this training center type approach, was that Moon, or was that something that grew out of everybody?

Allen Tate Wood: I’d say it’s both. I’d say it comes out of Moon, out of his experience, out of his understanding of the world, out of his understanding of his own life. It also grows out of the teaching, which is essentially dualistic. It gives you a psychology [with an] adversary. For instance those of us who are inside a cult group, we are the chosen people, we are the special people, we are the remnant of God. We are the ones that God has placed his trust and faith in. Anybody who is outside of our group who is critical, they are the adversaries and they are the enemy. So Moon, like other demagogues and dictators before him, has become very adept at identifying an external enemy. For Hitler it was the Jews and the communists. For Mr Moon, it’s the communists and/or anybody who is opposed to his movement. Once you have that adversary setup then it’s much easier to control and manipulate people.

I think that when one goes inside the cult group one is initiated into its rituals, its teaching, its experience, its language, its world-view and that becomes fixed and absolute. Anything which serves that image or that picture, or those goals, is defined as good. By definition anything which is critical of it, is satanic and wrong. So the person who goes into that system has entered a kind of never-never land in which they don’t have access to alternative sources of information. You know this notion that we have [or used to have] in the United States, in our political system, of the loyal opposition. Inside totalist social systems, or destructive cults, you do not have any concept of a loyal opposition. There is total unity. It’s monolithic.

TW: Getting back to when we were talking about Moon being the messiah, and you are not being made aware of that until later on. You talked about an inner circle, or a protection from knowledge. Can you explain how that works.

ATW: Sure. I think that the Unification Church, and other totalist social systems, wind up participating in this mystique of this inner circle. Or this mystique of the, what I like to think of as the gnostic character of the organization. That word gnostic comes from the Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge. And if you study the history of the Christian church you find that, in the period of early Christianity, there were many gnostic heresies. These splinter groups off of Christianity felt that they had special revelation. That God had spoken to them specially. They had a special connection to the truth. And the idea that is most apparent in gnostic groups is this idea that you can’t be saved, you can’t get to heaven, you can’t realize the purpose of your life unless you in contact with that special secret revelation. That idea is very prominent inside the Unification Church. Also this idea of the inner circle is manifest in the Unification Church in the sense that when you hit the borders of the Unification Church, you hit one level of understanding and knowledge. If you join the church and you go in for another year, you hit another level. If you are in for two or three years you hit another level.

It is like the skins [or layers] of an onion. It goes all the way and you get into the center and there is nothing inside. It is vacuous. It is empty. So an example of that would be, for me, meeting the Moonies and hearing on the surface of things that Moon was a pure virgin at the age of 40. That’s one story. After a year I hear he had an earlier wife. That’s another story. After sixteen months I hear that he’s actually had three wives. That is another story. So in effect the cult member who enters this system never really knows what the truth is. He or she always has the sense that the truth is just one level deeper into the organization. As I go deeper in, as I mount up the hierarchy, little bits of truth are dribbled down to me as a reward for performance and obedience. So in the end I’ll get in closer and closer to the circle and I’ll be hearing all kinds of dirty laundry, or facts about the organization that are unsavory. But in so far as I am participating in the mystique of the organization, I now hear that knowledge or that information as divine truth.

TW: When do you reach absolute knowledge? …

ATW: Yes, you are in contact with the truth, but you find out that actually there’s more. There are hidden teachings.

TW: So it is not absolute.

ATW: No, it is not. And your point here is wonderful, because it’s leading to a kind of transformation of terms. What happens at the first as you’re told you’re going to be initiated into the absolute truth. Further down the track all the terms change, and what you find out is, is that absolute truth is not knowledge. Absolute truth is total obedience. And that that is the path to the truth and understanding. So the highest knowledge is total obedience, with a suspension of the critical faculties, with the suspension of the imagination, with a suspension of the independent functions of the conscience. So one of the men who was a Unification Church trainer and leader up at Barrytown, at the Unification Church Seminary, at a place where they had 120 day training sessions from about ’75 to ’77, he said in a speech to the 120 trainees, he said many of you imagine that you can follow Master, that you can understand him, that you can follow him if you understand him. And what this guy said is, those of you who think in this way, Master cannot use you. Master wants the ones who are willing to follow even when they don’t understand it.

TW: But still have absolute knowledge. [laughs]

ATW: There is a contradiction there.

TW: Right, OK

ATW: The real disciple is the one who can follow even when he has no understanding.

TW: How did you feel about that? The whole hierarchy, the whole circles, it just seems to me to be a mass of contradictions. Why, if you have absolutely knowledge, absolute truth, did Moon put so much control over the individuals?

ATW: Well one of the things that the teaching embodies is this idea that the problem with the world has been man’s disobedience to God. And he uses a lot of Old Testament references to buttress that. He says, now the project of God’s dispensation at this time in history is to re-establish obedience. And the Unification Church is at the center of that dispensation, and our job is to find people who will begin to follow Mr Moon no matter what he does. Because throughout history men have been disobedient to God. Now at this time of restoration, men have to demonstrate total, absolute, obedience to God’s representative, Mr Moon. And there are lots of stories from the Old Testament that he uses to buttress that—the story of Abraham and Isaac, the story of Noah and his sons. He also uses the New Testament to buttress this idea.

But in the space of an interview, I don’t think I can make a plain to you. I think that really what is necessary is a lecture like the other night. The talk in which there is a systematic explanation—number one, of the variables that constitute a totalist social system, and number two, an exposition of the variables that are at play inside the training session. Those variables, all working together, produce a situation in which somebody leaves the world that you and I inhabit now, in which we believe in things like shooting from the hip, honesty, basic integrity, and you enter that magical world where the end justifies the means; where you have become one of the elect. You are not just a normal human being, but now you’re one of the chosen people, and you’re not just a servant of mankind, but you are one of the architects of history. And as such you have the right to lie, to cheat, to steal, to deceive, in order to accomplish the sacred mission.

TW: When was that clear? When did it become clear that that is what it came down to? I take it that’s what happened when you finally got into the inner circle. You realized this.

ATW: Yes, I began to accept the idea that it was our job to follow Mr Moon no matter where he went. In effect, since he was the messiah, he could not make a mistake.

TW: But then as you’re following, you see all the mistakes he’s making and the contradictions.

ATW: Yes, but you understand that what he’s doing is correct. And the story I would give to illustrate that is the story of Esau and Jacob. And this is the way Mr Moon explained to us how it was alright for us to deceive people either in recruiting or fundraising, and what Moon says is, take Esau and Jacob, the twin brothers in the Old Testament. Esau is the elder brother and Jacob is the younger brother. Esau’s out in the fields doing something. He comes home into the kitchen. There’s Jacob fixing some food. Esau says, ‘I’m hungry, give me some food’. Jacob says, ‘No I won’t’. Esau says, ‘Come on, I’m very hungry. Please give me some food’. Jacob says, ‘No’. Esau says, ‘Come on, give me some food’. Jacob says, ‘I’ll give it to you if you give me your birthright’. Esau, thinking it’s a joke, says, ‘Go ahead, you can have my birthright’. Later Jacob, the younger brother, puts lamb’s wool on his arms. He takes a special dish of food. He approaches his half-blind father, Isaac, and says, ‘Father, here I am, Esau your first son, please bless me’. Isaac says, ‘You don’t sound like Esau. You sound like Jacob.’ Then he touches Jacob’s arms which have lamb’s wool on them, and Esau was a hairy man. Isaac says, ‘Well, you must be Esau because you’ve got these hairy arms’. Then Isaac blesses Jacob. Jacob is very important in Old Testament history. He’s very important for Christians also. Jews pray, ‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob’. Out of Jacob come the twelve tribes of Israel, and ultimately Moses, King David, and Jesus. 

Who is Jacob? He’s a man who lied to his father and stole from his brother. 

Mr Moon says, I, inside the Unification Church, am the universal Jacob. Everyone who stands inside the church with me is Jacob. What’s our relationship to the outside world? They are Esau. Our job in relationship to Esau is to steal the birthright from him. Every single person inside the Unification Church exists on a different moral level than anybody on the outside. People on the inside have the right to cheat and to steal. Mr Moon says, in one of his speeches, ‘God lies’.

Note: The above text is a couple of extracts from an interview. It has been slightly edited for readability.

Sun Myung Moon: “Your unity is the measure of your love, and the source of your joy.”

The full interview, with links to the original videos, is HERE

Sun Myung Moon’s theology used to control members

[less-than-hash]

Holes in the Firmament

Every dev I know has at least one dream game - stuff that they'd love to be able to make some day. The more ambitious these get - the more complex or long - the less likely they are to get made. And in a collaborative medium like games, the more people (and the more money!) involved in a project, the less control any given individual has over it.

This isn't intrinsically bad. (It can also be wildly valuable to a project and rewarding personally.)

But we devs still dream of those games we'd make if we had, say, the resources of a two hundred person studio, the backing of a major publisher, and absolute freedom.

Three of mine are behind the cut.

As a note, none of these reflect upcoming Obsidian projects. Nor are they projects Obsidian would likely ever make. They don't fit the studio's brand. Which is why I'm dreaming about them here, and not pitching them internally. 

So, first up!

A Squad-Based 1st-Person Firefighting Game with a Robust Relationship System and a Branching Narrative

I don't understand why there aren't more games about firefighting - though if I had to guess it's largely because making fire look good in-game is extraordinarily difficult. As is making an environment decay over time (though I suspect there are probably some pretty good, easy solutions for this using dev sleight-of-hand).

There are actually a Iot of interactive sim games about firefighting for training purposes. Much like war and flight, firefighting is something best trained without risking real life and limb.

Firefighting appeals to me as a gameplay space because it's actively protective - it's about limiting destruction and saving lives. But it can very easily be modeled with similar gameplay loops to shooters - ultimately both are about emptying rooms of danger - here it's just with water instead of bullets.

I could be water!

In short, firefighters engage in almost unequivocal good. They're heroic. They’re human. They’re flawed. And they brave dangers every day. But our industry basically ignores them.

Firefighting would give us the opportunity to set games in the modern world with people who, during their off hours, experience much more relatable struggles than your average freedom fighter, super spy, or elite soldier - relationship difficulties, debt, children, and the like.

So what would this game actually look and play like? It would likely be mission-based (calls come in of their own accord, after all), make use of movement and environmental hazards (not unlike a cover-based shooter), and have simple companion-direction mechanics similar to the Mass Effect trilogy or Spec Ops: The Line.

(Alternatively, the action could be dialed down a bit to focus on positioning a la Valkyria Chronicles.)

The gameplay would be focused on keeping your squad alive while saving as many people as possible.

Between missions you hang out at the station, or the bar, or at home - or try to balance all three, a la Catherine. You build relationships, helping your squad perform better together. You never recruit anyone, but your companions, your fellow firefighters, can die in missions, altering the narrative in both tone and content.

tl;dr: Mass Effect 2 meets Rescue Me with some dashes of Catherine

Next!

Narrative-Focused Urban Fantasy RPG/Immersive Sim

How does this not exist yet? Where's our Dresden Files or Hellblazer inspired RPGs? Or even The Magicians or Harry Potter, for that matter?

Where my Chilling Adventures of Sabrina RPG?

There's Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, which, while fantastic, is 13 years old.

While I'm looking forward to Necrobarista, that seems like a pretty tight, focused experience.

We've plenty of games with magicians in fantasy realms or in space - AKA BioWare's entire oeuvre - but few in the AAA space set in the modern world.

Unless you count superhero magicians.

Wait. Did Dr. Strange even get a game? Google suggests no. What’s going on here, videogame industry? Why won’t you suffer a witch to live?!

Honestly, I get to an extent why this is. There's a reason there've been Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse games, but no Mage games, either for Ascension or Awakening. Magic is broad, and often (especially in games) wildly destructive, which can be at odds with a modern setting (or rather what makes a modern setting interesting).

Art by Jason Chan, from Reign of the Exarchs by White Wolf.

But it doesn't have to be.

The flexibility of magic actually allows for a lot of different gameplay styles. You can do straight up first-person action like The Darkness or stealth survival like Last of Us. If I were to adapt Phonogram, a comic I love deeply, you can bet your ass there'd be beatmatch spellcasting.

A lot of gameplay mechanics we take for granted are actually damned-near magical. 

Maps that point you where to go and tell you where your enemies are? 

Dropping from a second story window without difficulty? 

Regenerating health? 

Items that make you smarter, stronger, or more likable? 

Bullet time? 

Rewinding to an earlier point in time to avoid death or a bad decision? 

So that's another question a developer has to answer: if magic comes in so many shades, what color is yours? What are you hoping to accomplish?

For me, the presence of magic in the modern world demands a layer of secrecy that implies other layers of secrets. A modern world in which magic functions immediately deepens. What else lurks out there? Where are the other magicians? How are they using their abilities?

Additionally, magic is surreal. Bend and twist reality, and you're forced to look at it from new angles. If you can tweak people's emotional responses to you, how do you know the relationships around you are real? 

And that's before you realize your dreams literally might come true - especially the nightmares. Is the face in the mirror a reflection, or something sinister and jealous? Is the ghost haunting you your literal past reaching out to reclaim you?

My dream modern magician game is an open-world immersive sim in an urban setting. Drop Prey, Dishonored, or BioShock style gameplay into a sprawling city filled with physics objects ripe for transmutation and NPCs waiting to be enchanted. Add an otherworld accessed by stepping through mirrors (the entire map within is reversed).

It's about what power can accomplish, what justifies its use, and what its limits are.

Populate the world with a few powerful magician NPCs with their own agendas; dozens of NPCs to chat up, learn more about, seduce, and manipulate; and a threat that could consume reality's very soul if someone doesn't step up to deal with it. Shake. Serve.

tl;dr: Dishonored meets Vampyr by way of Hellblazer and Hellboy

And finally!

Friendship Simulator 2019

My favorite parts of the Persona games and Catherine are the things outside of the core gameplay loops. The bits where you're hanging out with your friends, chatting with them, finding out more about them, and guiding and supporting them (or tearing them down).

Or hiding in the toilet to text your significant other.

One of the things I love about Persona 5: Dancing Star Night in Starlight is that the narrative is almost solely in this mode. It's entirely about learning more about your fellow Phantom Thieves.

Lest you think I uncritically and unabashedly love it, P5D has some major narrative problems - it entirely fails to pay off its initial premise, for example, and there's no persistence to the player choices or (player-driven) reactivity within the narrative.

Nor does the way the player "progresses" the narrative make a tremendous amount of sense within the fiction of the world.

Sorry I got distracted.

Point is, from a narrative perspective it's a game about getting to know people better - literally exploring their lives - and then supporting (or undermining, if you're terrible) them.

Similarly, nothing the player says in Persona (or, for the most part, Catherine) has any impact on the game. The player might progress a Social Link more slowly by being an ass to the protagonists' friends, but they'll still increase that Link over time, provided they put time into it.

And I don't want to be dismissive here. Time management is one of the major ways in which the player engages with the Persona games. Outside of combat and maybe monster-training, it's probably the most important mechanic at play. Taking longer to max out a Social Link means you're missing other content and missing opportunities to increase your stats. Or maybe the Social Link doesn't get completed at all. (Sorry, Haru.) Or maybe you’re not powerful enough to overcome the next Shadow in time and your game ends. Those are non-trivial consequences.

But the story of the Social Link, or the story of the game, will never change based on (the vast majority of) the player's interactions with their buddies.

Despite that, the games give the player a lot of freedom as to when (or whether!) they approach those relationships.

On the other end of the spectrum, Life is Strange (and Before the Storm) does a fantastic job of letting the player get to know the characters around Max (and Chloe) and responding logically to the player's choices.

The kid who has a crush on Max (Warren, I think?) remembers what the player promises him and then responds to whether or not the player follows through on it.

If Chloe plays A Game That Absolutely Involves Neither Dungeons Nor Dragons with her friends, they'll refer to it excitedly later and ask her to join in another round.

The TellTale games are also pretty good at this, especially Wolf Among Us, but that'll take me a bit far afield.

What Life is Strange does not provide the player is any control at all over the flow of the narrative. When the player completes a narrative beat within a scene, they're rushed along to the next scene, which is never one of their choosing. There's plenty of flexibility within the relationships (and within many of the smaller subplots), but little within the game's larger structure.

Ultimately, Persona provides little variability, while Life is Strange provides little narrative control.

I want to make a game that grabs the strong aspects of both of these while jettisoning their weaknesses.

(Far, far easier written than done!)

Basically, I want to make a game focused on the exploration of relationships. Where the personalities are the mysteries to unravel, and the interpersonal relationships between characters the dungeons to be navigated. Where the inner demons are the beasts in need of slaying - not through mystically entering the subconscious and doing battle with the Shadow, but through conversation.

I want a game about building a community, a family, and helping it come to support itself.

I think that one essential change that would make this significantly more doable is discarding the larger threats to the characters, especially those supernatural in nature. The relationships among the cast of Persona 4 are propping for the story of the Midnight Channel Murders. Arcadia Bay's pending apocalypse distracts from the relationships that seem to be the actual core story of Life is Strange.

(I find Before the Storm a stronger narrative than the original Life is Strange in large part because it's not being torn in multiple directions.)

Which isn't to say that there can't be threats, obstacles, and dangers. The world presents all manner of difficulties. Most of them requiring far more challenging and interesting solutions than "stick a sword in it."

That's a lot of abstraction, so what would this game actually look and play like?

Well, as I mentioned above, I think the Persona games, esp. Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5 already do a fantastic job of providing the player the framework for exploring a space and approaching relationships at their own pace.

Add into this characters that the player can engage with in order to learn more about them (not unlike Vampyr), help with their problems, and build (or break!) relationships with them or others, and you have something of an open-world interpersonal relationship game. 

The narrative of these relationships would change based on the player's actions (both in regard to how they interact with the character and how they deal with (or fail to deal with) the character's problems). So would the player's reputation, which impacts their interactions with other characters.

(The reputation system is actually one of my favorite ideas in Pillars, but I think we sometimes fail to use it to its full potential. I certainly know I do.)

Side note: in this dream game, the relationships I'm describing are not expressed in a systemic way. They're not ranked like Social Links, and they don't have reputation bars like in Dragon Age or Tyranny. It's much more akin to Life is Strange here, with each character containing their own narrative(s) to be navigated.

Over time, you bring some of these characters closer to your protagonist, recruiting a tight-knit circle that helps you face the game's primary conflict. These relationships bounce off of one another. You can never make everyone happy, after all, and some people will never get along. Late game play requires that the player balance these relationships and help forge friendships or avoid catastrophic fallings out.

Yeah, but what is that primary conflict? 

Potentially anything the world could throw at a person. A lot of television shows have provided us a framework we can borrow from. Veronica Mars comes immediately to mind. (Or one of my favorite films, Brick.) Then there's Lost, which is overtly about building communities and relationships in order to survive. The Wire is another possibility. (Imagine playing as a Stringer Bell type trying to build a crew while maintaining relationships with rival crews.)

My point being that we already know what these kinds of stories look like. We just have to be brave enough to make a game that's focused around understanding other people rather than shooting them.

tl;dr: Life is Strange meets Persona, minus the strange and the personas

And that’s three glimpses into my brain. Into my dreams.

You may have noticed a few through lines. I'm pretty clearly interested in making games:

Set in the modern day

That tackle modern, realistic (and I use that term extremely loosely) concerns

That are largely non-violent

With non-linear narratives

That involve exploring the lives and feelings of non-player characters

And give those interpersonal relationships systemic narrative bite

Obviously, the projects I've been involved in recently don't check off every one of those boxes on my wishlist. That's generally how it is, if you're making games with other people.

But if you're very, very lucky, you get the opportunity to work on projects that scratch at least one or two of those itches.

I've been very, very lucky.

Cheers, <3 <3 <#