#yeah its better to have more developed cultures than just slapping a name on it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

oriigami · 4 years

Text

looking to the sky to save me

[Part three of my wings au, featuring Law this time! Also on ao3 here.] [There’s also Part 1 (ASL) and part 2 (Strawhats).]

“Come on, just show us!” Baby Five’s voice was wheedling and eager, her half-black half-white plover wings fluttering excitedly. “We won’t tell nobody what they look like!”

“Wonder if he doesn’t have any,” Buffalo said. “Izzat why you won’t show us?”

Law hunched his shoulders and glared harder. Baby Five flinched and teared up a little, which was marginally satisfying. “I already told you why. Where I’m from-”

“Yeah, but who cares ‘bout some old culture thing? Your country’s gone, right? Not like anybody’s gonna know,” Buffalo said with a level of oblivious bluntness that was almost impressive. Law’s fingers twitched for a knife.

Baby Five frowned up at Buffalo from under his arm. “Buffalo, that’s mean.”

“Oh. You should still show us, though,” Buffalo said.

“If you don’t,” Baby Five added, “we’ll tell ‘bout how you tried to kill Cora-san that one time.”

“Yeah!”

Law gritted his teeth hard enough that he could almost feel them creak. “Fine. But-” he continued, before either of them could look too triumphant, “You gotta promise not to tell anybody. I’m serious. I’ll kill you if you tell.”

Baby Five crossed her heart. “Promise!”

“Yeah, promise,” Buffalo echoed absently, already leaning to the side to see Law’s back.

Law scowled, but reached up to unfasten the cloak he wore. It was a shabby thing, scavenged out of a dump somewhere along the line, but it worked well enough to hide his wings, especially since they were smaller than they should have been.

(Before the crawling, creeping white, one of the first visible signs of amber lead poisoning had been the stunted wings of the people of Flevance.)

He shrugged off the fabric, looked down at the concrete rather than at the eager faces of Buffalo and Baby Five, and focused on letting his wings stretch out slowly. The movement sent shooting, cramping pains down to his shoulders, both from how long they’d been tightly folded and from the buildup of toxins in the joints. Moving them had hurt for months now.

“Whoa,” Buffalo said. “Weird.”

“Are they like that cause you’re sick? Did it make your feathers fall out?” Baby Five asked, sounding genuinely distressed by the prospect.

Law glanced over at one of his wings- small and skeletal, featherless, skin so deep blue it edged on black stretched over bone. The white patches had grown since the last time he’d looked at them properly, starkly pale against the dark skin. “No,” he said. “They’ve always been like that.”

Buffalo reached out as though to touch one, eyes big behind his glasses, and Law slapped his hand away with a snarl, yanking his wings closed again despite the shooting pain of the sudden movement. “There. You’ve seen ‘em. Now leave me alone about i-”

A hand closed around the collar of his shirt and yanked him off his feet, cutting him off mid-sentence, and he yelped, struggling to twist around as he was dragged away. He only needed a glimpse of black feathers to confirm who it was.

“Corazon? Oi! Lemme go! Put me down! What do you want?”

Corazon didn’t answer- obviously- and didn’t even seem to notice Law’s struggling attempts to twist free of his grip. Law had never resented the slow seeping loss of strength over the past months so much. His kicks had about as much effect as if he’d been fighting against solid concrete.

Corazon turned into an alley, and tossed him to the ground, turning his back. Law stared up at him for a moment without moving, wary of what he might do next.

Corazon had the biggest wings he’d ever seen, except maybe Doflamingo’s- a thick, unkempt mantle of solid black crow’s feathers that dominated his silhouette. His wingspan was as ridiculous as his height, which just made it extra problematic that his wings had a tendency to snap open on instinct whenever he fell over.

Law had never seen him fly. Nor Doflamingo, now that he thought about it- not with his wings, at least, massive though they were. Only with his strings.

“What’s your name?”

Law startled, and looked around for the source of the voice. There was nobody else in the alleyway, though, besides the two of them, but that meant-

“Your full name. You’ve got a middle initial, haven’t you?”

There was no way-

Corazon finally turned around, huge black wings fanning out with the movement, filling the alleyway wall to wall, and said, “Law, what’s your name?”

Law answered without really even meaning to, the words stunned out of him before he could think to hold them back. “Trafalgar… D. Water Law.”

Corazon nodded, like that was all the confirmation he needed- for what, Law didn’t know- and sat down on a nearby crate. Even sitting, he positively towered over Law. He tossed a bundle of cloth underhand, and Law caught it instinctively, realizing a few moments later that it was his grubby brown cloak.

“Put that back on,” Corazon said. “Quickly. You need to make sure Doffy never sees those wings of yours. You’ve done good so far, but it’s only a matter of time. You need to get away from here.”

Law did no such thing, standing frozen with the ball of cloth in his hands. “You can talk.”

“Yeah.”

“Since when? Does Doflamingo know? Does anybody?”

Corazon sighed, exhaling a cloud of smoke, and leaned forward, mantling his stupidly big wings around the two of them so they blocked off the alley on either side, blocking the conversation from the view of passers-by.

Things Law learned in the ensuing conversation: Corazon was a liar; Corazon had a devil fruit; Corazon said Doflamingo was a monster; Corazon was a liar, and Doflamingo didn’t know. And-

“If Doffy found out about those wings of yours,” Corazon said, “he’d kill you on the spot.”

And Corazon was a liar liar liar, but something about the flat, grave seriousness in his voice when he said that sent a slight chill of fear up Law’s spine, enough to make him tug the cloak back around his shoulders and pull his stunted wings even closer against his back. He glared up at Corazon, wordlessly demanding explanation.

Corazon waved a hand, trailing cigarette smoke from his fingers, accidentally brushing too close to a wing and singing a few feathers before slapping the fire out with his free hand. “Wings like yours are characteristic of a certain… family. The clan of D. That’s why I asked you your name. I wanted to be sure.”

He took another drag on his cigarette, and sighed out an exhale thick with smoke. “There’s a place- the place where Doffy and I grew up- where people with those wings, and that name, are considered demons. God’s natural enemies. Their wings are supposed to be proof of it.”

Law took a jolting step back, felt himself paling under the white stains on his skin. Demon monster demon-

He ran- dodged Corazon’s attempt to grab him, ducked under a flailing wing and sprinted for the docks.

As it turned out, he didn’t get away for long.

“I really wouldn’t,” Corazon said out of nowhere, some weeks or months into their stupid pointless voyage, yanking Law’s attention from the vast expanse of sea and sky over to his erstwhile kidnapper.

“What?” he snarled, leveling a glare at Corazon, who as usual didn’t even seem to notice.

“Flying away,” Corazon said. “That’s what you were thinking, right? Wouldn’t work. Not with wings like yours. You’d barely make it ten feet.”

“Shut up!” Law snapped, and, something raw and hurt entirely too honest working its way into his voice despite his best efforts, “You think I don’t know that? I’m not stupid, Corazon.”

He folded his arms around his knees, hugging them tight to his body, and glared mutinously at the floor of the little boat. Of course he knew what it meant, to have wings stunted and fragile and so riddled with heavy-metal buildup it ached to so much as move them.

It had happened to Lami and all the other children of Flevance, too. There had been hopes, back when Flevance was still foolish enough to have hope, that they might be able to cure the sickness in time for the damage to be reversible, that the wings might grow out as normal once the poison could be removed. Children’s wings were usually developed enough to let them take at least short flights by the time they were ten. Law was years past that.

“Of course I know I can’t fly.”

He shot another defiant, poisonous look over at Corazon, silently daring him to respond- and was caught entirely off-guard by the look on Corazon’s face, frozen for a half-second in something that looked guilty and shocked and dangerously close to sympathetic before it smoothed out again, the unidentifiable expression vanishing as he turned to glance out at the ocean.

“...Sorry,” Corazon said.

Law blinked. Then he said, “Hey, what the fuck was that-” and that’s as far as he got before Corazon snapped his fingers to toss up a bubble of silence between them, ending the conversation rather definitively.

The weeks eked on, one after another, and Corazon became Cora-san, and Law learned to bury his face in the thick black mantle of Cora-san’s wings to block out the smell of ash from the burning hospitals and the memories of the White City that it always brought, and things got better little by little, even as his fever rose and his strength waned.

Cora-san’s feathers were a mess, all broken and bent and burned. When Law had first joined the Family, it had just been one more factor that made Cora-san’s oversized crow-winged silhouette so uncanny and intimidating, but now, for some reason, it just made his fingers twitch. He’d never had feathers, but he couldn’t help but look at the mess Cora-san had made of his own wings now and again and frown at how uncomfortable it seemed.

The campfire was burning warm, trying to chase away the shudders and the cough that had settled in Law’s lungs lately and not entirely succeeding. Cora-san was smoking a cigarette, staring out over the ocean.

Law quietly shifted himself a little to face Cora-san’s back, his big fanned-out black wings- it brought back memories, of a knife and a newspaper and a red spray of blood, and he bit back an unexpected flash of guilt.

He reached out, and wordlessly pulled a burned feather loose. Cora-san didn’t say anything, though he must have noticed. He just kept smoking his cigarette, occasionally tapping the ashes loose, as Law began to steadily work his way across the wide black expanse of his wingspan. Before long, the dusty ground around them was scattered with damaged black feathers, thick as snowfall.

Law didn’t say anything. He didn’t say, This is a family ritual. I remember, I used to do it for my sister.

He didn’t say, So why are your wings such a mess, why haven’t they been cleaned in years, when you’ve still got a brother?

(He didn’t need to ask, really. He knew why.)

(Letting someone clean your wings necessitated turning your back on them.)

Working his way down the outer edge of one wing, his fingers reached a joint- then he paused, a frown flickering across his face, and prodded carefully at the skin.

He’d grown up in a hospital, after all, trailing in his parents’ footsteps and lurking in their examination rooms, reading charts and diagrams and rocking up on his tip-toes as his mother took his hand and ran his fingers along bones and joints, or listening intently as his father narrated his way through simple surgeries. He knew how the human body was supposed to fit together.

“Cora-san?” he said, in a voice that came out smaller and more uncertain that he would have liked. “...What happened to your wings?”

“Ah?” Cora-san glanced back over his shoulder, looking puzzled. “What?”

“Your wings,” Law said, studying them with more attention now, finding the breaks and irregularities easily now that he was looking for them, something sinking a little in his chest at the extent of the damage. “They’ve been broken, at the joints- here, and here, and here- especially badly here…”

Cora-san was quiet for a long moment before he said, “I didn’t realize you could tell that.” Law couldn’t see his face from where he was sitting.

“...I was gonna be a doctor, once,” Law said by way of explanation, and didn’t quite manage to not sound sad when he said it. He hastily changed the subject, unwilling to dwell too long on what could have been. “But- these breaks- they’re all healed wrong-”

“It was a long time ago,” Cora-san said, like that made it remotely alright.

How long ago? How old were you? Law didn’t ask. Instead he pressed his lips together tight and then said, almost automatically, “Did you even see a doctor?”

“Eventually,” Cora-san said after a moment, taking another inhale from his cigarette. “They did their best.” He looked back over his shoulder again, and something in Law’s expression must have worried him, because his brow furrowed slightly. “Oi, Law, don’t look like that.”

“But-”

“Doffy’s angry enough for the both of us,” Cora-san cut in, and Law’s mouth snapped shut.

Oh.

They were both quiet for a moment, the conversation killed completely by the weight of Doflamingo’s name dropped into the middle of it. Law’ hands kept working on autopilot, plucking away damaged and burned feathers, just because it was something to do, just because if he didn’t his hands would ball themselves up into fists so tight his fingernails cut his skin.

“So,” Cora-san said into the silence, “...you wanted to be a doctor?”

Law bit down on his lower lip so hard he tasted blood, and then said, “...Yeah.”

“Tell me about that?”

And after a halting pause, Law did.

(“He’s going to be free,” Rosinante said, coughing up blood between words. “There’s no birdcage you can hold him in. Not anymore.”)

(Law couldn’t see it, but even as he died, Rosinante’s wings were unfolded to their full width, cloaking and shielding the treasure at his back, feathers pitch black against the deathly paleness of the snow, and he might not have ever been quite as tall as his brother but in that moment his wings were greater than Doflamingo’s had ever been, and-)

(“He’s going to fly.”)

(And then the gunshot.)

Cora-san died.

And Law lived.

Because that was how it went- everyone he cared about died, and he didn’t, by some trick of fate or joke of luck.

Once he’d cried himself hoarse and wiped his eyes and hardened his heart (he was so tired of losing people-) and found himself shelter, he finally set to the grim, ugly task of cleaning himself out, piece by piece. It was less a race against the clock and more a slow, grinding march, carried out by shaking hands and punctuated by relentless bouts of fitful unconsciousness.

The years of sickness had already wreaked havoc on his stamina, and it seemed use of his new abilities rapidly drained what little he had left. He had to start from what was most important- head, heart, lungs- and work his way out. He had to be thorough, had to be sure to claw every gram and speck of toxic white out of his system.

So it was edging on days of feverish work and intermittent consciousness before he even thought about his wings.

He cleaned them out like all the rest of him, but without much thought or hope. His hands moved on autopilot, because he was so tired, but he felt like he couldn’t sleep, really sleep, until he got this done, until he was finally clean. Until there was no more poison left in him.

Once he was done, his wings were still as batlike and featherless as they’d always been, and still far too small for his age, but the creeping white patches were gone completely, and that was all that mattered.

It had been customary, in Flevance, for children to cover their wings in public until they reached the age of apprenticeship, at thirteen. There was some ancient reason behind the rule, Law was sure, but he’d long forgotten it, and there was no one else left to remember. But all that mattered then and there was that he’d clung to the tradition even after everything else was reduced to rubble and ash, whether out of habit or some desperate grasp for familiarity he couldn’t say.

If Cora-san was right about what Doflamingo would have done, that choice, the choice of a lost little boy still clutching for the ghosts of home, might have saved his life.

He’d lost track of time while travelling with Cora-san, he realized with a muffled kind of surprise. It was the first time in years he hadn’t been counting down the days to his own expiration date. Which he didn’t have anymore, a fact that still had yet to fully register. He had years, now.

He’d lost track of time, but he figured he was probably close enough to thirteen for it to count.

When he was finally strong enough to make his way off the island, he left his ragged cloak behind, and let his wings see the sun.

Law built himself a family crew much the same way he’d survived up until this point: piece by piece and mostly by accident.

It was good to have other people around, though, even if they were mostly idiots. They were fun, and spending time with them (and stitching them up, more often than not) kept him busy, kept his mind in the present instead of lingering in the past. He was never short of trouble with them around, that was for sure.

So, in Law’s opinion, it made sense that it took him as long as it did to realize his wings had started growing again.

His fledgeling crew disagreed.

“What do you mean, you didn’t know?” Shachi asked incredulously, squinting at Law like he was waiting for Law to give up on the joke. Law glared back, midnight blue wings arching up indignantly around his shoulders because they were big enough for that now, what-

“I mean I didn’t know! They were stunted until I was thirteen, of course I figured they were just done growing! I didn’t think about it!” Law snapped. “It’s not like we have mirrors around here!”

“They’ve been growing for months, dude,” Penguin interjected. “We all noticed. I figured you were just like, a late bloomer and didn’t like flying or something.”

Bepo raised a paw. “Um, I didn’t notice.”

“Well, of course you didn’t,” Penguin said, “you don’t even have wings-”

“Hang on,” Shachi interrupted, and he was starting to smile, grey-black wings twitching with sudden excitement. Law wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than the flat look of disbelief it had replaced. “Hang on. Does that mean- you’ve never flown before?”

Law glared and said, “Why’s it matter?” which was as good as confirmation and they all knew it.

Shachi grinned wider. “Cause that means we get to teach you!”

Penguin pumped a fist. “Yes! Finally something we know and you don’t!”

“I don’t need your help,” Law said, tightening his wings around his shoulders. “I can figure it out fine on my own-”

Shachi shrugged. “I mean, yeah, probably, but you don’t have to.”

“Yeah!” Penguin agreed, grabbing Law by the wrist, already tugging him towards the door. “C’mon!”

“Can I come too?” Bepo asked hopefully.

“‘Course!” Shachi said, which was the correct answer, because Law might have had to kill him if he’d made Bepo sad. “You’re strong, you can catch him if he falls.”

Penguin nodded sagely. “Yeah, everybody falls a couple times when they’re learning.”

“Or a couple dozen times, in your case,” Shachi said with a grin.

“Shut up, like you were any better!”

Law tugged his hat down lower over his face to hide the smile tugging at his lips, and let himself be pulled along.

(He only fell three times before he got the hang of it, and immediately resolved to never let Penguin and Shachi forget it.)

“If it’s the marines you’re worried about, they’ve already surrounded the building,” Law said, legs crossed up on the row of seats ahead of him as chaos descended upon the Sabaody Auction House.

Strawhat startled a little, turning to look at him. “Huh? Who’re you?” And then, before Law could answer- “Hey, your wings are kinda like mine!”

It was true. Law’s midnight blue wings blended in with the low lighting of the auction house while Strawhat’s fiery red stood out like a beacon, but if you were looking closely it would have been impossible not to notice that they were both featherless, draconic- lizards among birds.

God’s natural enemies, Law thought, and smirked.

“You’re one of the Eleven Supernovas,” Nico Robin observed from her captain’s side, dark grey robin wings held close. Her eyes were watchful, cautious in a way Law liked but didn’t trust (too familiar). “Trafalgar,” and there was a little pause, almost unnoticeable, a fill-in-the-blank, “Law.”

So you know, do you? It made sense, he supposed, given who her captain was. He grinned just a little wider and said, “The marines have a base on this island; they knew we were here as soon as we arrived. Not every day you get a chance to catch five Supernovas at once, I suppose, though I’m sure they never expected someone would dare to strike a Celestial Dragon.”

“You’ve got a bear,” said Strawhat, incongruously starry-eyed given the situation, and he hadn’t heard a word out of Law’s mouth, had he? Oh, well. Hardly Law’s problem.

After that, everything descended quickly into chaos, and Law didn’t spare much more attention for Strawhat beyond keeping a curious eye on his combat capabilities as the two of them and Eustass cleared out the marine perimeter.

But he couldn’t quite keep his gaze from catching on those bright red wings, and thinking.

God’s natural enemies.

When he later recognized those same red wings on the live feed of Marineford, as the marine headquarters shook itself to pieces and the war shifted from battle to bloodbath, it barely took him a moment to make the decision.

#my writing #opfic #ill fly away #opfanfic #trafalgar law #corazon #donquixote rocinante #op #one piece #heart pirates #long post

44 notes · View notes

mysocialfox458 · 3 years

Text

Sims 4 Cc Tracker Mac

Apple Cc Sims 4

Sims 4 Cc Tracker Zerbu

Sims 4 Corrupt Cc Tracker

Download tens of thousands of free premium quality creations and custom content for The Sims, Sims 4, Sims 3 games - no login required and updated daily. Always check for updated mods after a Sims 4 Patch/Update; at the Mods Tracker on which ones are broken or now updated. Also EA Forums do a regular post for tutorials, mod usage & broken mods/cc. I use Sims 4 Studio for batch fixes it solves a lot of problems in bulk (but not all.) Also available for Mac.

The new chapter in the Sims story

This title has been a cultural phenomenon since 2000, when the first installment was released. The game crossed demographics, and everyone became a fan of the series. Now it’s on its fourth outing; how has the series held up?

From baby steps to retirement

The greatest micro simulation game is back. Sims 4 has big shoes to fill. Is this sequel up to the task?

The premise is the same: create your avatar, build your dream house, fall in love, watch your children grow - choose your life. As ever, there’s a lot that you can buy for your Sims, from stove tops to guitars and everything in between. You can share creations of your with other players online, and the detail work that’s gone into some of the objects in this game is incredible.

But you could be forgiven for thinking that there should be more in Sims 4 than there were in any of the previous games. Sadly, this is not the case.

There’s no swimming. You can’t make pools and you can’t toss your Sims in, remove the ladders, and wait for them to doggy-paddle themselves into an early grave. That was one of the most iconic things about the franchise up until now and it’s a curious thing to remove. The whole point of the game is to have complete control over the life of the Sim, so why take any of that control away from the player?

The avatars are now much more competent than they were in the last game. You don’t have to babysit them all the time, and while that might be good for some, it still takes away the player’s control.

While the game looks good and runs pretty well, it doesn’t really make up for the issues here. The loading screens take forever when you first start the game. This is a legendary trait of any Maxis game, but this time it’s really something else. If that weren’t enough, the most critical visual component in the game is broken: the camera. How can this be? Did the developers not playtest the game? Do they not realize the camera is broken?

It’s frustrating, because the team and Maxis / EA could have had a smash-hit here. But modern corporate practices are probably responsible for the underwhelming game that is The Sims 4.

Where can you run this program?

You can run this game on Mac OS and Windows computers.

Is there a better alternative?

Yes; in fact, The Sims 3 can offer you a better experience. If you’re looking for other Maxis sim titles, try any of the SimCity games.

Our take

While The Sims 4 does little to improve upon the groundwork laid by its predecessors, it’s still a fun game at its heart. The customization and in-game object shopping could take you hours alone, but it feels like this game is being purposefully left empty. Considering that the franchise has always banked on the expansion packs to turn an extra profit, that could be the reason it feels so bare.

Should you download it?

Yes. Despite its flaws, Sims 4 could be fun, and it might be more enjoyable if you haven’t played any of the previous games.

Highs

Good graphics

Attention to detail

Online sharing

Lows

Less content than previous entries

Camera issues

Long loading screens

The Sims 4for Mac

This tutorial deals specifically with fixing Create-a-Sim items. For a way to fix the CC chairs that broke with The Sims 4 in March 2021, read this article.

If you play with Sims 4 mods or CC, then you are probably familiar with the hellish visions of Sims being transformed into punctuation marks that look like they have crawled out from the underworld. (PS: Wouldn’t an underworld pack in The Sims 4 be awesome?).

Moving on. We love using Sims 4 custom content. That’s not hating on EA or The Sims 4 team, there’s just so much gorgeous stuff available. And bunk beds. There are functional Sims 4 CC bunk beds.

Apple Cc Sims 4

The problem with Sims 4 CC is that sometimes it can break. Mods and CC break with updates or sometimes you download them in a broken state. It can be quite traumatising to see the Punctuated Sims from Hell appear.

That question mark slapped in the middle of their virtual foreheads will make you question your life decisions and haunt your dreams.

If you are a bit of a Sims 4 custom content hoarder, then it can feel like a real struggle to figure out which CC is broken.

We have all had that moment where we get so fed up with broken Sims 4 CC that we just go and delete the whole mods folder and start over. Once that recycle bin has been emptied, regret follows instantly.

But there is an easier and far less traumatic way to fix broken CC in The Sims 4. It works best for Create a Sims (CAS) content that’s broken, but you can also use it to get rid of Build/Buy custom content that’s broken or that you no longer use or simply don’t like the look of.

It is also a great way to find any custom content that might be missing from your game. This is useful if you have downloaded some Sims households, lots or objects that do not show up in your game.

Best way to fix broken or bad CC in The Sims 4

To easily fix broken or bad custom content in The Sims 4, you will need to use the Sims 4 Tray Importer from L’Univers Sims. It’s a completely free download and it is safe to use. You can download The Sims 4 Tray Importer from the official website over here.

This little application is life changing for Sims 4 players who use a lot of CC. If you have a bad batch of broke custom content, it can help you clean things up in no time.

Once you have installed The Sims 4 Tray Importer (which runs separately to your Sims game), you will be able to quickly delete any broken CC whenever you want. It can even help you clean up your library if it has gotten a bit full.

To get started, you will have to save a household in The Sims 4 with Sims dressed in the broken custom content.

Don’t worry about how they look. They’re not going for a fashion show, they are going into the bin. Do you care what your garbage looks like before you chuck it out? Yeah, didn’t think so.

How to use The Sims 4 Tray Importer to fix broken CC: Step by step

As mentioned already, save your broken Sims to your library to get rid of CAS CC that is broken. If you are trying to delete build/buy CC, then save a room or lot.

We find it is quite useful to have a “delete me” room next to every build, so that we can easily put objects into it we want to delete later. For this example, we will only deal with broken CAS CC in The Sims 4.

You can access all the households, lots and rooms in your library through The Sims 4 Tray Importer. You can refine accordingly using the filters shown here.

Here is a household of ours. For our American readers, this is the national rugby team of South Africa. Well, our version of some of them anyway. For our English readers: Do you remember the 2019 Rugby World Cup?

Once you have found the offending family (they will show up like the zombies from CAS, or you can name the family “broken” or “delete this” to make it easier).

If you want to just get rid of a household, room or lot without also deleting the CC, you can switch over to the files tab. Highlight the files and right click.

Then select the “Show containing folder” option. Your Tray folder will open with the files highlighted. You can just hit delete in the folder and the files bell be deleted.

To get rid of broken Sims 4 Custom Content or find missing CC by using TS4TI, switch over to the CC tab on the application.

You will see a list of all the CC in use for that household, room or lot. Any missing mods or CC will show up highlighted in red like in the screenshot below.

If you want to find the missing CC, right-click and use the “Find on Google” option. Note: Some users recently reported that there are issues with this option showing up. If you are having problems, refer to the TS4TI support forum. There could be an issue with your firewall blocking access or you might be running an out of date version, or other similar issues. It is best to check with the app’s developers for troubleshooting. If the option is there, a browser tab will open and you will find the websites where the CC is hosted. You can then download it and add it to your mods folder. This is quite useful to help find missing meshes.

If you simply want to get rid of the bad or broken CC, click over to the CC tab, select the items and right click to open your Sims 4 mods folder by using the “show in folder” option (like you did with the household/lot/room files earlier).

Sims 4 Cc Tracker Zerbu

If you select more than one item of Sims 4 CC to delete, several windows will open up with the selected items highlighted in your mods folder. You can just delete them one-by-one by going through each window and hitting delete.

Sims 4 Corrupt Cc Tracker

And that’s it. This easy way to find and delete broken or bad CC in The Sims 4 works for rooms, lots and CAS items. If you found this tutorial helpful, sign up to our Sims 4 newsletter over here or check out the rest of our Sims 4 content here.

1 note · View note

memnonofarcadia · 4 years

Text

The Food Chain Diary

3 December – Location unknown, I’ll be honest But my guides know, and that’s how I’m getting home at the end of this, one way or another. They don’t want to stay here longer than they have to, and I agree. Despite how grand civilization can make a fella feel it only takes one short trip to the Arctic, to real tundra to understand why civilization was built in the first place. Out there on the ice and snow the homo sapiens is, in essence, a slow moving free meal. With the exception of larger hunting parties (who still operate with an unhealthy degree of risk as it is) if you go out there unarmed or even remotely underprepared then there is little chance of anyone ever seeing you again. That is, till you get dug up in the Spring after most of the snow has melted. Say what you will about the grimness of the bodies on Everest, but at least they’ve got company. We’re not on Everest though, this is Northern Canada, beginning in what was once British Columbia, but now is something far, far more savage to the eye. If you’ve never been there before then the culture shock might kill you; best to ease your way into Mooseland slowly. They say there are moose in the Rockies but I don’t know if I really believe that one. I’ve never seen them, but here I saw one on our first day. Caribou too. Pity this wasn’t a hunting party, like I said. A good haul could feed a family for a year, maybe more if it were rationed. But no one wants to live like that, not when there are microwaves in the kitchen. It’s so cold out here. I can hardly think. It only makes sense to start at the beginning, since now, in my current state, hunched over like a bloody gargoyle writing this, it’s difficult to think of the next word, much less the next point. I’m in a tent, shrouded in many layers of warm clothing and blankets, but it’s never enough. Until you’re in the sleeping bag, preferably one that can accommodate two bodies, then the cold you will feel. Bites through anything you might have to protect you from it. Anything. Makes me reevaluate Huskies and other snow-dogs, how they not only survive but relish in the climate. Makes me wonder if Jack London only wrote fiction back then, as well. This hurts. To put it bluntly I needed a break. It had been a good few years on the beat of “nature-reporting” without much past the working class paycheck to paycheck lifestyle. It builds character, and indeed if you want to teach someone the ways of the world then a minimum wage job in some shithole will do it as well as anything, but… I’m not interested in developing something I can’t sell, at least then I wasn’t. Rent had to come first, so it did. The trick, I decided one night at an airport bar (it was dark out so we’ll say night. Truth be told it was closer to four or five AM when I had my last), was to find a lead that not everyone would be able to get. Something so good, so exclusive, that whatever nature-thing it got pitched to would have to take it on the spot. More than that, if I went out and got the article first I could practically name my price, within reason of course. If I got a juicer on my first time ‘round then they might throw me a bone and send me to Brazil to look at some toucans. But I didn’t pick Brazil, because everyone went there, and there was no way to make it in that market. In my infinite wisdom, on that greasy plastic/wooden stool, rewarding myself indiscriminately, I chose to find my way up North, to the real Arctic. People went out there, sure, but past the locals it wasn’t because anyone wanted to. Everyone wanted to be in Brazil, remember? So did I, so once I was clear of any obligations I made plans to fly my butt out there to earn my place. Don’t get me wrong now, I did my research and made sure to pack the required gear, Jack London hadn’t been for nothing after all, but even still as I waited for the taxi to bring me to the airport I wasn’t exactly brimming with hubris. In the same way that resolutions made after midnight never stick, travel plans made under the influence are consistently regrettable. Jesus, what had I been thinking? Maybe if I drank some more I could reconnect with my inner-idiot and find out what exactly, but after half a bottle of wine and God knows how many beers the flight attendant cut me off. She had seen it too many times before to feel sorry for me, tourists who were going somewhere they just remembered they didn’t want to be. Oh well, shouldn’t have bought the ticket then, but I digress. The company chosen to take me on my little trip through the Arctic was handled by two brothers, both fanatic outdoorsmen who were happy to bring a novice like me out and about. Lovely, I thought. A real homegrown thing they had going on there, very nice. They’d even offered to pick me up from the airport, which was very kind, and since I was paying my own bills on this one I took them up on it. Their names were Tom and Pete, which I took to mean they would look like the Canadian stereotype I had in my head: extremely friendly, beer-loving, hockey-worshipping, beaver-hugging folk of the North who walked around in jerseys drinking coffee all day long. However this theory was pretty spectacularly blown out of the water when Pete came to pick me up. He had a little sign with my name on it, and he was dressed in casual-outdoors gear, not ready to head out quite yet but give him 20 and he’d meet you there. What disturbed me greatly wasn’t his garb, or even his frankly rippling physique, but the series of scars that ran from the top of his scalp – where hair used to be – down to below his chin. His toasty smile made me feel welcome, but his weeping eye tore the knots in my stomach apart into open despair. They could take me wherever they liked, obviously, this was their domain, but now I knew that there was only so much they could do to protect me. When something wants you dead out there in the flat, then you’re dead. Bear don’t care, or so Pete told me himself. On the two hour car ride out to where the three of us would spend the night he regaled me with stories of adventures past, far too many to ever hope to write down here, but here’s the gist: “Yeah, see, my brother Tom, he’s the one up at the cabin right now getting everything ready, yeah see we’ve been out doing this thing now for the better part of 15 years, and I tell you ain’t nothing scarier I seen in that time than a 500 pound grizzly hauling ass straight at me. Had my rifle but it was broke from a wolf the night before, which is another story, so it was me with basically a club against this killing machine!” “Is that how…?” I gestured towards his scars, seeing an opportunity to get the scoop. Pete just chuckled. “No no no, that was from the time I almost got gored by a deer,” he said, touching the marks on his head tenderly, like a thing to be preserved. “If a bear gets you you’re dead. That’s kind of the end of it. But back to what I was saying about that last one, it charged me, full on, bat out of hell, and then about three quarters way through it just stops, turns around, and strolls off chilled as you like,” “So…?” I struggled to get the words out, searching for some kind of moral in his God-fueled nightmare. “So, it was a fake-out. Elephants do the same thing I hear, they might charge you but they don’t always go for the kill,” “Like a rattle snake has its rattle?” “Exactly,” Pete said, slapping the steering wheel happily. “Now you’re gettin’ it,” Jesus. Even now as I write this, out in the actual place we were talking about, I’m sure I still don’t “get it” 100%, but I’m also not sure if I ever want to. Not for someone as pasty as I. That was the scene as we pulled into the cabin and met up with Tom, who, barring the lack of scarring, was a virtual clone of his brother. At least it wouldn’t be hard to tell the twins apart, I joked sourly to myself. That first night it was pitch dark by the time we arrived, and the brothers informed me that it’s better to start in the morning, which I wasn’t complaining about. I didn’t want to start at all. We played cards and, yes, indulged in one or two bottles of the frothy good stuff but nothing preventative. If I was going to suffer it would be sober, I resolved. For the good of the article. For the paycheck. Only in hindsight is it obvious that I should have either brought a camera or coughed up the dough to bring a photographer along with me, for no words will ever do the robust architectures of the Cold World justice. The sky, the mountains, the crest, slopes, hills, and all the endless flora and fauna are simply impossible to put into words, not accurately anyway. So I won’t bother here, because it won’t work. Believe me or don’t, but the following is my take on the landscape of the barren North: there is little doubt that the reason for its deadliness is its beauty, for the Gods knew no man alone should possess such a thing. Leave it to the beasts and the wildmen, the things that have nowhere else to go. I mentioned this idea to Pete and Tom, but they didn’t respond, merely smiling at the thought. “Maybe that’s just the world, brother,” Tom finally said. Maybe. Or maybe it’s some mushy-gushy greeting card BS. Not my department either way, thankfully. All told it was only a total of two days (or three, if you count the first night at the cabin) that was spent traversing the landscape, keeping a steely eye out for predators and such. Tom was pointing out different tracks and kinds of scat to follow while Pete could look at a scene and tell you probably what happened: the weather pushed the snow up like this, critters burrowed down here, a predator sniffed them out and got one or two but the rest got away. All from shapes in the snow and the aforementioned scat. Where was I anymore? I couldn’t fathom it, still can’t. There is this world that we choose to ignore, that I do, and the irony is that the knowledge of its existence only drives you further away, unless you were an animal or a wildman, again. For as intense as it all got, what with the awful nights and exhausting days, the beauty and serenity and wonder always remained, even for a layman like me. At one point Pete spotted some tracks and called Tom over to see what he thought. Not more than a few seconds of thought went into it before they both turned around to me and announced that we were going back the way we came, we’re not in any danger but we were going back. I nodded and turned around to trudge back along the same path I’d followed those two on, marked by footprints in the snow. This isn’t really going anywhere, and the wind is picking up outside, again. The brothers discussed it and one of them is going to keep watch overnight, making a little igloo-type configuration in front of the tent. “But we’re not in any danger, not in the middle of camp like this,” Pete reassured me. I nodded and went back to whatever it was I was doing, probably nothing. Clearly since you’re reading this we all made it home okay, but it’s worth mentioning that that was what my last night in the Arctic was like, cold, stunned, often afraid, but never alone, even by myself.

#short story #fiction #nature #romanticism #gonzo #melancholy #bittersweet #literature #writing #wattpad

0 notes

saranel · 7 years

Text

The Last Jedi review, sorta

I don’t think I’ve talked enough (if at all) about what a huge Star Wars nerd I am on this blog, mostly because I didn’t love TFA as much as most people seemed to and I just never joined in the renewed fandom frenzy.

TL;DR on my views on TFA: It was fun enough, some interesting new characters, beautiful visuals, but I’d seen that movie before. It came out in ‘77 and it was much better then. Homage is one thing, rip off is completely another. Mostly, I guess I was just disappointed that they didn’t dare to try and move the universe forward a bit, beyond the already trodden path.

Say what you will about the prequels, but I will always, always maintain there’s nothing wrong with them a better script and director couldn’t fix. George tries, bless him, but he can’t write dialogue worth a damn. Not even Meryl Streep could’ve made the line “So love has blinded you” any better than Natalie Portman did, and both she and Hayden have proven themselves to be much better actors than they were in Star Wars. I’m not bothering with Ewan because he was one of the few really great things about the Prequels.

That having been said, what George can do is weave a decent background story, and the Prequel Trilogy’s story is much, much richer than the OT’s. Taking off our nostalgia-colored glasses for a moment, let us be honest: the OT was so successful because it did a very simple thing, and did it well, and had a cast with wonderful chemistry. The story itself is nothing to rave about: just your simple Evil Empire vs Plucky Rebels story. But the Prequels actually got political and much darker than the OT did, they just did it clumsily. Still, it was something new in the Star Wars universe and George always tried to expand the known worlds by giving us even small glimpses of other cultures and planets. Don’t forget that Star Wars was never meant to be high-brow Science Fiction a la Philip Dick, but a space adventure. This doesn’t mean that the story can’t have nuance, but the point of Star Wars was always to be a fairytale exploration of a fictional galaxy.

Compared to that, the new trilogy seemed extremely lacking to me. And seeing The Last Jedi a few days ago really cemented that. Never before have I seen so many things happening in one movie while nothing really happens at all. It makes Attack of the Clones look interesting in comparison, and that’s saying a lot. ALSO LUKE, WTF HAS THE MOUSE DONE TO MY SPACE SON, THE FUCKING GALL.

So yes, surprise-surprise, TLJ manages to rip off Empire (with a dash of Battlestar Galactica thrown in for good measure) and does so poorly. It was not a terrible film by any means, but I honestly thought it was no better than Phantom Menace. And Phantom Menace had the Duel of Fates. So.

(okay, to be fair, TLJ didn’t have Jar Jar so that’s one point in its favor)

In a nutshell:

(cut for spoilers)

THE GOOD

- Poe. Poe was good. Moar Poe, there was a serious lack of Poe in TFA and it has been rectified, this was a very good decision.

- The silent scene. Y’all know the one. People in my theater literally gasped in unison. I was bored outta my skull up until then and as soon as I realized what Holdo was about to do, I sat up, all ‘oshit’ and it was amazing. Beautifully shot, beautifully clever, and the most badass hero death in the SW universe. Only comes in second in terms of best scene in the movie because the other one involved a more established and beloved character.

- MY SON LUKE KICKING HIS NEPHEW’S ASS LIKE IT AIN’T NO BIG THANG. In full disagreement over how shit went down between them in the past, but Luke showing Kylo who’s the most goddamn powerful Jedi in the galaxy (which Luke did canonically become in later years btw) was such a rewarding scene. Also, he was dressed in black. Like in ROTJ. Because fuck yeah.

- Rey’s parentage. Most people probably hated that she’s not a Skywalker but I just... kinda loved the suggestion that she was the Force’s answer to Kylo? It’s happened before with Anakin, so this isn’t exactly new, and Anakin, too, came from ‘nothing.’ I liked it. She doesn’t have to have illustrious parentage to be important in the series, and as much as I love my Space Drama Queen clan, it’s time the universe moves on from the Kardashians of the galaxy.

- Luke’s death. I don’t agree with 99% of what went down with Luke in this trilogy, I think it was deeply out of character, but his ending? That was spot on. Did I want more out of his storyline? Obviously, but examined in a vacuum, his ending was beautiful to me. Especially that last scene. Best scene in the movie from start to end.

- Yoda manipulating the goddamn heavens to rain thunder upon the ancient tree. Ilu Yoda

- Leia and Holdo discussing Poe. This was an A+++ short scene. Get it, ladies.

- Snoke is gone, thank the heavens. Worst-named villain in movie history, I couldn’t stop laughing every time someone said SUPREME LEADER snoke.

- CRYSTAL FOXES OMG

- Luke getting his kicks in that boring-ass island via EXTREME ROD FISHING, lmao the nerd

THE MEH

- So, um... Kylo and Rey? ....ew? (did they not think Finn and Rey were super cute or)

- So, um... Finn and Rose? ....ookaaaay? (did they not see Poe biting down on his lip when he saw Finn in his jacket or)

- I don’t really care for ships in this trilogy tbh, whatever. Guess I’m steering clear from attachment until I know who’s related to whom (THIS IS A DANGEROUS UNIVERSE TO SHIP IN OKAY). Plus, not really feeling particularly strong toward any couple, just... not Kylo and Rey, ew.

- Rose. I liked her, but... they hardly gave her anything to do. That casino storyline was such a mess, made it seem like she was there just to be there.

- Finn’s storyline. Snoozefest. I like him, but... see above.

- lol wtf happened to Chewie...? He was just... there?

THE BAD

- SPACE-WALKING LEIA. I’M SORRY, OKAY, I know this scene will be big with many people, and lord knows I wanted to see Space Mom use the Force beyond that Spidey Sense shit, but this was just so dumb.

- All the ‘humor.’ My god, just... no. Not every scene needs to be steeped in Whedon-speak, please stahp. I will admit the first scene got a chuckle out of me, but the rest...

- The ‘plot.’ This was literally an extended car chase scene in space with some Sense8 type shit thrown in. Rey hardly even did any training, ffs.

- so the force-sensitive member of the trio goes on to be trained by a wise, isolated mentor and finds herself drawn to a place steeped in the dark side and ends up seeing only herself reflected in there, meanwhile the rest of the characters are involved in a chase across the galaxy, running away from the evil empire, and at some point decide to ask for help form a well-known swindler who betrays them and in the end everything seems bleak with just a tiny glimmer of hope. HMMMMMM. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

- quite frankly, I’m still in shock Rey finished the film with two fully biological arms

- O hei, look, it’s The Salty planet Hoth. With pod-racing.

- Really? Rey blushing at shirtless Kylo? Really

- WHERE IS FORCE GHOST ANAKIN TO GO “BINCH I REDEEMED MYSELF IN THE END STOP THIS SHIT, ALSO I DID THIS FIRST AND I DID IT BETTER” TO HIS WANNABE GRANDSON

- The whole damn Casino storyline. I don’t care if it’s meant to set up something for the last movie (probably not) but it was long, boring, and a clumsily written attempt at a storyline that could’ve been more nuanced and a good addition.

- why did we have to see Luke milk that alien Y

- NOT ONE DECENT LIGHTSABER FIGHT THE FUQ.

- Leia (and Han in TFA) giving up on her son instead of beating some sense into his ass with a space slipper. Y’ALL KNOW SHE WOULD. Baaaaad characterization. Space Mom would never.

- Also, fuck whoever decided that Leia, who canonically has the exact same force potential as Luke because they’re twins, never developed her powers beyond Force Sense or whatever. If you’re not gonna give the woman a lightsaber, at least have her Force Push fools out of her way.

- Wtf Rey you obliterated that nice alien’s cart and didn’t even apologize they work hard every day you should be ashamed

- why was it meant to be funny when porgs were slapped around wtf

- “what’s that canon?” “Basically a small death star” kjashKLAFJSHSAJKDFSADFHSAK

- Kylo. Can he just die, plz, the expanded universe did the Evil Solo son storyline so much better. Yet another way in which this trilogy is totes an ~*homage*~ No shade on the actor though, he did a great job. It’s just the violent manchild character I cannot stand.

- So like... we’re never gonna learn what Snoke’s deal was...? Or how he got to Kylo...? ....Okay then.

- This movie was 2 and a half hours long.

#star wars #the last jedi #tlj spoilers #I bet y'all wish George was still at the helm now #VINDICATION FOR THE PREQUELS AT LAST

12 notes · View notes

pcurrytravels · 7 years

Text

Las Vegas - A Love Hate Thang (Chapter II: The Ultimate Paradox)

Something I’ve noticed about my hometown: This place really thrives off of paradoxes and oxymorons.

Our outlook? Perpetually stuck in the future (*points at the innumerable mothballed construction sites dotting our local landscape*). Our attitude? Perpetually stuck in the past (You know, it would have been a good idea to start diversifying our local economy after how hard we were hit by the recession, but instead we went right back to putting all of our eggs in the tourism, gaming, nightlife and real estate industries)

Our demographics (in just about every area imaginable) look like gumbo these days. But don’t hold your breath on that explosion of flavors you were expecting, because culture-wise? We still taste like chicken noodle soup.

“Minors are not to be anywhere near the slots, alcohol, nightclubs or any of the other sinful stuff!” Is that right? Then explain why all of the movie theaters, bowling alleys, video arcades and even high school graduations are located within casinos please.

“We have so much love for our local community!” Yeah, you speak so highly of us when the “needs” of tourists, conventioneers, celebrities and, well, literally everyone except the city’s residents are fulfilled first, effectively rendering us as second-class citizens within our own city.

None of these things sound like they make any sense, do they? Welcome to Las Vegas baby!

I could come up with numerous examples to be honest. I mean, I have lived here for nearly my whole life, so I think I can talk, but the paradox I personally find the most disturbing is this: We love to act like we’re this world class, progressive and forward-thinking metropolitan area on par with places like NYC and L.A. when the truth of that matter is, we’re essentially an overgrown Western hick town that just so happens to have a giant theme park for adults in the middle, a lot of traffic, some fancy houses and more diversity than usual.

When I first went to San Francisco back in 2011, I was in awe. There were so many things that shocked and caught me off guard.....in a good way. I won’t go into detail, but let’s just say they were all things that I KNOW would never fly here in Vegas, and yet we’re supposed to be “Sin City.” (And, although I didn’t see much of it myself during my excursions to these places, some of the people in this thread from Quora are saying that even NYC and LA are more lenient about a lot of these “sinful” things than we are these days. Can’t say I’d doubt it)

Yes, we are Sin City in terms of gambling and sports betting, alcohol, tobacco and now marijuana consumption, sex-related entertainment and services (and even then it’s all so sanitized and PG-13 these days it barely even qualifies), quickie marriage/divorce and a history with organized crime. Beyond that, however? Let’s just say we have a lot more in common with Arizona and Mississippi than we do with Amsterdam.

Remember how in the first chapter of this series I told you all that I felt it was best to keep my thoughts and feelings about Las Vegans in general to myself? Okay, let me give you a tiny little sample: When talking to the typical Las Vegan, you’re more likely to be treated to the stereotypical thought process of either a flyover country redneck, a resident of a southern small town or a suburban high school student than you are that of someone who resides in a city with a global presence. Odd as it may seem, especially when this place’s international influence is taken into account, believe me, tis’ true.

Having to constantly deal with such a smug, judgmental, provincial, insular and occasionally, dare I say it, behind the times populace is already exasperating enough on its own, but this is only further complicated by the relentless insistence that we aren’t. Not at all to say such a mindset is ever okay (nor am I saying that EVERYONE in these types of locales thinks and/or behaves in this manner), but at least towns and cities in flyover country, the old west and the deep south are HONEST about being stuck in their narrow-minded and prejudicial ways.

Vegas on the other hand takes part in a charade wherein an image of being a forward-thinking and cosmopolitan metropolis is played up only to turn around and gag at the thought of actually embracing those same progressive ideals and values when no one’s looking. (Meta-Tangent: Mind you, we actually do have most of the ingredients to be that type of city already. The things we’re missing come as a result of having a populace that’s insistent on talking the talk but not walking the walk) Although I certainly don’t agree with it, I can at least respect the former to a point, compared to the latter which is just annoying, frustrating, and doesn’t make any damn sense. In layman’s terms, we’re total latte liberals.

.......okay, maybe it’s not THAT bad. (Hey, this is called a “Love Hate Thang,” remember?)

There are certain pockets that are slowly evolving into the sort of environment that reminds me of SF and LA where things are more laid back and “free” if you will. See: DTLV/East Fremont, 18b Arts District, The Naked City, Huntridge, Winchester, the “Central” East Side if that makes sense, Charleston Heights, West Sahara (for the Las Vegans reading this: sounds general AF, I know), the Fruit Loop/Harmon Corridor, the University District, Paradise Palms/Maryland Parkway Corridor and (to a lesser extent) Chinatown/Asiatown.

The rest of the city and the suburbs on the other hand leave quite a bit to be desired in the department of open-mindedness in my not so humble opinion. So it should be no surprise that I spend nearly all of my time in the aforementioned neighborhoods these days. I feel much closer to my element in these places than I do even in my home neighborhood/suburb of Spring Valley, most of which I don’t even touch with a ten foot pole ever since moving away.

Meta-Tangent: Having grown up in Spring Valley and the Western suburbs, I know from experience that most people out there are DEATHLY afraid of venturing into any of these areas. A lot of it has to do with the perceived danger of them, despite all the evidence to the contrary (I know, I know, pretty general article, but given that I live here, I can tell ya: these murders, robberies, violent and sexual assaults have been occurring EVERYWHERE. However, a large amount of residents as well as our local media would be insistent in having you believe it’s all taking place Downtown or in the long-maligned northern, eastern and central portions of the city/metro area).

On the other hand, there’s also a lot of people who condescendingly put these parts of the city down just because they’re old, even though those horrible old houses they’re talking about are actually of far better aesthetic quality and much more structurally sound. Meanwhile, these same snobs are living in cheaply-built, cookie-cutter homes that were probably slapped together in a week and will likely start falling apart in five years.

As for my honest opinion? These are only half-truths. I know for a fact that a lot of them are just being low-key racist and high-key classist/elitist. I also have a pretty strong theory that the strong hatred, fear and/or disdain people in the western suburbs have for these areas is because they know it’s a different world from the provincial, suburban bubbles they choose to live in. Oh well, that’s fine by me. Let those of us who actually are forward-thinking and progressive have all the fun. /tangent over.

Truth be told, none of this should really come as a surprise if you take a deeper look into this city’s history. Although, eschewing the thousand year legacy of the Paiutes, the modern-day origins of Las Vegas can be traced to Spaniards; being along the Old Spanish Trail and even being named “The Meadows” in Spanish due to the abundance of grassy meadows, hot springs and rivers in the area back then (all of which have long disappeared thanks to urbanization), the first permanent settlement here was a fort built by Mormon missionaries.

That’s right, “Sin City” owes it’s existence to the same people with a stance on women that’s perpetually stuck in the 19th century, have beliefs that not-so-subtly imply black people are afflicted by the curse of Cain and wear very prudish undergarments (although the whole polygamy thing is probably what we have to thank for our quickie marriage/divorce culture). On top of that, while hidden from the naked eye, Mormons still have an active influence on the politics and overall society of this city with some very vocal moral guardians, always letting themselves be heard when things get “too” sinful.

Oh, another thing: In the early/mid-20th century there was a place that was known as the Mississippi of The West. Where do you think it was? Utah? Arizona? Nope! It was right here in Nevada. They really did go hard with the Jim Crow thing here back in the day. Why, Sammy Davis Jr. couldn’t even walk through or have a drink in the same casinos where he performed to rave audiences for goodness sake. Now, that level of injustice and segregation is unheard of nowadays, but there’s many lingering signs of this era that can still be felt. They’re subtle, but they’re there. (Psst! The mascot of our local university was originally a confederate soldier. Seriously. In more recent years he’s been made to look like a cowboy instead but still)

Lastly, we grew from a small town in the desert where people from California and the Midwest came to gamble and watch showgirls to a rapidly growing metro area which plays host to a world-renowned resort, nightlife and fine dining destination that attracts people from all over the world. Almost literally overnight. Just about any Vegas native born before the late nineties can tell you stories of playing in the desert as a kid, including yours truly. All of us can remember when that housing development, Walmart, school, park, or whatever was a vacant lot. In turn, despite the growth, this leads to a fairly large portion of natives who are very much stubbornly stuck in their small town ways, many of whom are insistent on teaching their ways to their offspring unfortunately.

The ingredients and the potential. We already have it. In terms of demographics, we’re a total melting pot. We’re located in one of the nine states where recreational cannabis use is legal and the only one where prostitution is legal (even though it’s not allowed in our county for whatever strange, puritanical reason). We have all the makings of a sexually-liberated, alternative/counterculture/subculture/generally non-conformist paradise. There is a growing and active community of creatives. And yet, a lot of this growth in the realm of free-thinking is borderline stunted thanks to the Mormon influence, the Mississippi-esque history and the small town attitude.

Alas, even though Vegas may be living proof that a physical city can grow and change overnight, culture and community are two things that can’t change overnight, no matter how you slice or dice it. I regularly find myself pining for the Vegas of my childhood during the nineties; when it was far larger than a town but barely a city. I’d also love to experience Vegas during the 60s, 70s and 80s (minus the racism part, obviously), but at the end of the day, these are just frivolous ideologies. A more substantial wish would be that the local attitude and mindset finally catches up with the rapid population growth, urban development and all of the related side effects. My fondness for the neighborhoods listed above is a direct result of this desire I have. They represent what I wish all of Vegas could be.

As a new age and generation comes into play, perhaps this wish will be reality one day soon. Until next time.

#Las Vegas #a love hate thang #musings

1 note · View note

wearetakingthehobbitstogallifrey · 7 years

Text

Thanks for the tag, @theamiableanachronism! I really enjoyed this one!

rules: choose any 3 fandoms (in random order) and answer the questions. then tag some friends.

i choose: • Batfam • Scarlet Heart Ryeo • The Walking Dead

the first character you loved:

• Bruce Wayne and Alfred. My first real intro to the Batfam and DC was Batman Begins, and I thought Bruce Wayne was the coolest, bravest guy ever. And Alfred was THE BEST. Kind, fatherly/grandfatherly, loyal, sarcasm lord

• Wang So. Obviously. Even before I had actually seen a single episode, because I heard he had a tragic story, and he was also as beautiful as an angel. A dark, wounded angel, but an angel none the less. When he stormed onto the scene and revealed himself to totally be a murder angst cupcake, as advertised, well, I was bewitched

• Dear sweet Glenn, who sasses the heck out of Rick while saving his butt. Yeah, Glenn, the pizza delivery boy who was the bravest, most unselfish of them all. Who became one of the most trusted leaders. He could have turned and left Rick to die, no one would have known or cared, but he didn’t. He helped out a stranger, and saved a heck ton of other people by that simple act.

the character you never expected to love so much:

• All the Robins, honestly. Look, when I watched the Dark Knight trilogy, all I knew about Robin was from a clip or two I had seen of the old campy Batman show, and I kind of was glad a legit Robin never showed up in the films just because I thought it would be ridiculous. I was SO wrong. I had no idea. I had no idea what dark, tragic, beautiful, light, funny, DEEP stories surrounded the MANY kids who would take up the Robin mantle

• Eun, I guess. I never hated him, but since he was always rather immature, it was easy to laugh at him and make fun of the things he did. Then things happened, and while he remained naive in many ways, it was rather sweet and sad at the same time. My dorky son deserved better

•Daryl Dixon. Starts out seeming like a rough, angry, slightly racist redneck whose one redeeming quality is his concern for his even more messed up brother. And then I realized how much of a softy he was underneath everything, how much he cared about Sophia, and how it destroyed him what happened to her. I saw him connect with Carol, and befriend Rick and Glenn, and become Rick’s brother essentially, and be softened by Beth. And as the seasons go on he becomes more badass, more caring, more indispensible to the group, and he loses the undesirable traits he picked up from his childhood. We find out what his childhood was. Daryl with Glenn is Rick’s right-hand man, and HE JUST CARES SO MUCH ABOUT EVERYTHING DON’T EVEN TRY TO DENY IT MAN

*I’m gonna cheat and add another person for TWD: Carl. In the first season or two he is a little kid, kind of annoying at times, but boy does he grow up and mature. It’s a terrible tragedy what he goes through, the things he sees and has to do that no kid should ever have to. But he is so freaking strong, and he respects his dad so much, and I love his friendship with Michonne. I love his concern for his little sister. I love how he shoulders responsibility, how he does what he thinks is necessary, how he worries sometimes that he is becoming a monster too. I FREAKING LOVE HOW HE WILL nOT PUT UP WITH NEGAN HE HAS NO EFFS TO GIVE FOR THE GUY HE IS TOO MAD AND HAS SEEN TOO MUCH

the character you relate to the most:

• Well, I can relate to Jason’s love for books, to Tim’s often more quiet and reserved nature. However, I definitely relate to Dick Grayson the most. He is more outgoing than me, more outspoken, but he has such great love for his friends and family. The care for his little brothers (in canon and fanon) is something that particularly calls my attention. You see, besides two older siblings, I have four younger brothers, and I have helped raise them, I have fought against them, fought with them, fought for them, laughed with them, and busted with pride over their accomplishments. I have been the person who tried to organize them, to tease them, to keep the peace, to enforce the peace. And maybe I am projecting but I just really see a lot of myself in Nightwing. The man who hopes, the man who tries to bring light to the darkest of places, the man others trust to help them when they fall. (I also just hold him in the deepest admiration and its a thing, I try to be a better and braver person so that if he were real I would be worthy of his friendship and respect...)

• A little bit Hae Soo, because I also would get increasingly frustrated by the culture at the time. We also share a deep love with Wang So :) Seriously though...maybe Baek Ah? Because he is the quiet and introspective type, he suffers quietly, he listens and hears things and tries to help those who need it, he tries to bring the outcast brother back into the family. He is a healer of sorts, a healer of the heart, and he loves little kids and everything beautiful. He sees things.

• Maybe this is me projecting again but Glenn? Kinda small and nerdy, scared of a lot of things, but bravely keeps on trucking. And slowly rises to being one of the most integral parts of the group. A man who has strong morals and isn’t afraid to punch an ex-military man twice his size if that man gets between him and the people he loves

the character you’d slap:

• I’d say the Joker but honestly he deserves something more like a bullet to the head. I would totally slap a lot of the writers who don’t know what character development means, and I would slap at least half the Batfam because sometimes they just don’t know how to communicate feelings properly. And they frequently hurt each other even without meaning to. After all of this, however, I would pull them all in for individual hugs. Oh, I will also totally slap anyone who ever so much as tries to give Dick Grayson grief about the awful things that happened in the Blockbuster and Tarantula incident

• Wook. UGH. Also his sister and Queen Yoo. The king, whatshisface. Taejo? also the little creep Won. I would slap Yo but I would be afraid to mess up his eyeliner, which is on point at all times and is too wonderful to destroy

• Andrea. I am so sorry but I could not stand that woman ever. I rarely actively dislike a fictional person, and I apologize to fans of the comics, I realize that the show screwed over her character, but I despise Andrea with everything I’ve got. Mostly because she runs around proclaiming how much better she is than everyone while at the same time making colossal mistakes. And honestly her end was ridiculous. If Glenn can take out a walker while beaten up and duct-taped to a chair, you can figure out how to pick up pliers with your feet

three favourite characters (in order of preference):

• Dick Grayson is the love of my life, and then I guess Bruce, Jason, Tim, and Damian are tied for second place, and then directly behind them are Barbara, Cass, and Steph (I need to read more comics and fics about them, and I am sure they will advance to make the second tier even more crowded). Alfred is in a special category all on his own

• Wang So (love of my life), Bae(k) Ah, and I guess a tie with Hae Soo, Jung, Woo Hee, and Lady Oh

• Glenn is first in my heart now and forever, and Carl, Daryl, Carol, Michonne, Maggie, and Rick all hold second place. I like a lot of the other characters, but I’m going to give third place to Tara, and she doesn’t have to share with anyone. She is just that cool (also awkward and adorkable)

a character you liked at first but not anymore:

• I love every single member of the Batfam to with all my heart. (The ones I am familiar with, don’t know much about Duke and Harper yet.) To go beyond, to characters in the universe, well I won’t say I ever liked the Joker but I thought he was a really great bad guy, Batman’s ultimate foe, someone who should always be around throwing wrenches into things and whatnot. This was after I had seen him in the The Dark Knight. Then I started actually reading comics related things and HE KILLED JASON TODD. MY SON. NOW I DON’T CARE I WANT THE JOKER DEAD I WANT HIM DESTROYED, OBLITERATED, AND NEVER LOOKED BACK ON.

• Wook. I thought he was occasionally sweet, if not exactly the strongest of persons. And then I met his wife, who deserved SO MUCH BETTER. And then Wook revealed himself to be a jealous little eggshell

• SHANE. He’s kind of like The Walking Dead’s version of Scarlet Heart Ryeo’s Wook. Originally a decent guy, a good friend, but when things go south, he gets selfish and self-centered and bad things happen.

a character you did not like at first but now do:

• No one really? I think? Unless you want to bring the show Gotham into this picture...which I don’t, because that would also make me want to write a book about my love for it and certain of its characters

• can’t think of anyone this applies to

• Hmm, I guess Herschel? He was kind of annoying with his whole “let’s round up walkers and take care of them in my barn.” Then tragedy and a near death experience and eventually he winds up being the cool old grandpa

3 otp’s (in order of preference):

• I actually don’t have a strong preference as of yet...I kind of like BatCat, Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle. I haven’t experienced much media with either pairing yet so I have read and enjoyed both DickBabs (I still say it should be Dabs) and DickKori. Ooh I like Tim/Steph (is there a ship name for that?). I ship Jason with happiness. Actually I ship the whole Batfam with happiness and peace and a good night’s sleep. I don’t ship Damian with anyone because he is just a bby birb :)

• SoSoo, Baek Ah x Woo Hee, Eun and Soon Duk (Deok?). Also, So x Happiness/Peace/A Living Family Who Loves Him

• GLENN AND MAGGIE FOREVER. TO INFINITY AND BEYOND. Richonne is great and I definitely like Caryl. (I shipped Bethyl just a little, once upon a dream.)

this was fun :) if any of y’all want to do this @itspileofgoodthings @thelonelybrilliance @nalavistahlia @blackaquokat @castieltaking-hobbits2gallifrey @camsthisky @abadpoetwithdreams @tabbyofwisdom ...I feel like there are other people I want to tag but it is way late (early) and my brain is dead forgive me if I left you out and please consider yourself tagged!

#tag games #fandoms #batfam #scarlet heart ryeo #the walking dead #those are all very different things

4 notes · View notes

thepoeticwit · 6 years

Text

SPM: School, Parenting, Mental Health

(image credit: Lasie Slezac; Source: unsplash.com)

For some, if not most of us Malaysians, we would have gone through the local government school system. This school system can be broken down into three levels: primary (UPSR), lower secondary (PT3) and upper secondary (SPM) excluding Form 6 (STPM) which is pretty much pre-university already. Those days in school were when memories both good and bad were made, and the gravity of stress and expectations were on your shoulders. Do you remember that? Do you remember whether your parents were strict or harsh on you just to get grades that would satisfy them? Do you remember breaking down and questioning yourself if going to school was really worth it? How about when you were looked down upon by many because you were inadequate? Have you ever feared that you would never make it out alive?

These are the things that students today have to put up with. If you are an adult or elderly reading this, there is only a small chance that you are able to relate to the feelings above. Chances are that the circumstances and environment of the schooling system back then in the past 50 years or more were different compared to how things are as of now. The strictness of parents was present, as always. You already knew that school was worth it because back then education was the key to surpass poverty, and everything was less developed compared to now.

It would seem that it has been deeply ingrained into the roots of the Asian culture, especially that in Malaysian families to regard strict discipline in all things especially education as a necessity in order to strive for personal greatness, honour and pride to the family name. Thus, this has been made into a cycle that goes on for generations. Some families may misinterpret this value and take it to the extremes, to the extent of abuse and violence. For instance, as I was browsing through Facebook, I saw a post made by an anonymous user on a university confession page who was deemed to be an SPM candidate.

“Ever wonder what it’s like to be a teenage girl getting beaten by your parents? Not that slipper whacking. Being slammed to the wall, punched and slapped. Yeah, that's right. While having someone pull your hair so tightly and while you're crying wishing that you could just die that moment and end it all and that person brings you to the mirror and tells you to look at your shitty self.” She adds that she had suffered injuries such as bleeding in between her eyes, bruises, insults such as “retarded” (and other obscenities that won’t be mentioned here), broken spectacles, threats involving money, and a show of religion saying how God can see how useless she is. All this was done to her by her parents. “If God thinks beating up your daughter, constantly bullying her and wanting to make her kill herself then it is no God at all—it’s worse than a demon.”

Having read that confession posted on that particular Facebook page, I wondered: does the local parenting culture make allowance for extremities such as this? Does parenting in Asian culture determine the methods of raising the child to be good and effective? Or does this do more harm than good, especially if the culture even allows this extreme? “It is definitely doing more harm than good,” said Grace Chan, a counsellor and Psychology lecturer at Methodist College Kuala Lumpur (MCKL). “This whole 'strict’ culture, particularly in achievement of grades is a selfish approach. Yes on one hand, parents are eager for children to succeed. But the definition of success for a lot of Asian parents are cookie-cutters; they are essentially the same. This cradle-to-grave path would likely start by achieving outstanding grades in university and to get a professional role and of course, to earn a sizable income.”

In my own opinion, should such an instance of child abuse exist in families under the name of “discipline” and for the sake of culture, we have come to a point where change is needed in the methods of parenting in order to facilitate a healthier and more holistic growth and building of character. Otherwise, it is downright bullying and condescending upon a child-- the child has thus not failed the parents, rather it was the parents who have failed the child. Miss Suria (not her real name) a lecturer in Sociology had put it nicely, “Parents do not know what real learning is, so the only way they can measure how good the child is getting is by how good their results are”, She had also added that the strictness of parents is usually out of fear of not being able to provide for the child, and also wanting to use the child as a status symbol to improve their social standing among friends and family.

Let’s take a look back to what we’ve observed comparing the education system then and now. As of now, there are still tiger mums and dads out there forcing strict discipline on their child; heavy pressure overwhelms students, while the students themselves barely know how to cope with it and are thus easily crushed; having been crushed and mentally worn out, students develop anxiety and depression which easily gets the better of them; they do not view school as being worth going to because they are going to get backlash for even trying to do something to learn; all in all, they would also have a low view of themselves which may (and God forbid) lead them to the point of even taking their own lives.

“Academic success becomes more and more important to the point they don’t care about anything else, then you will get small children killing themselves,” said Miss Suria. “So we’re not talking about 18-year-olds killing themselves, we got 10 or 12-year-olds killing themselves. So, the more serious it becomes, the more earlier the effects can be seen. I personally have seen children as young as six, seven, nine-years-old who are depressed and stressed because of this ‘kiasu’ culture that we have.” Here is a general fact: 20% of adolescents (aged 13 to 18) may experience a mental health problem at any given year, making it the group that is most susceptible to mental illness. Another fact is that 10% of children and young people (aged 5 to 16) have a clinically diagnosable mental problem, yet 70% of children and adolescents who experience mental health problems have not had appropriate interventions at a sufficiently early age.

Just read the news: there are cases of suicide due to academic stress. The most recent case was reported on October 1, when a Form 3 student jumped to her death just mere hours before the PT3 examinations. This is only one of the many cases. How about that time three years ago when an SPM candidate hung himself in his room out of frustration of being unable to answer his Additional Mathematics paper 1 that afternoon (Nov. 25, 2015)? Again, only another of the many cases. What does this say? Would the correlation between academics, expectations, and mental health entail a causation? Rightly so, for if it were not for the extremely harsh attitude of parents toward their child (not even taking into account bullying in school, among other things) it would not have lead them to develop anxiety over the stress of grasping academic excellence for the sake of pleasing parents that are hard to please anyway. So, life is a mess, we are all screwed up, nobody loves me, I hate myself, school is not worth going to, and it is probably for the best that I leave this cruel world.

So what shall we say about discipline? Should corporal punishment still be accepted to an extent, or completely eradicated for good? On one hand Grace Chan says, “Have no involvement of physical punishment; impact that would most affect a child in such a situation will definitely be on mental health.” Yet, on the other hand, Miss Suria says, “It’s the expectations that the parent has on the child that drives the child insane into mental illness.” She goes on to say that it is not entirely the parents fault but that parents get such an attitude from the pressures they receive from society and its expectations.

Don’t misunderstand me. I do not condemn the discipline of our parents. Strictness is necessary where it is due, to correct and to shape our character. However, if it goes to the extent of it being overboard, abusive, merciless and unloving, then it is a grave sin to repent of. Perhaps there is a lesson to learn: we should gauge where to draw the line before strict discipline becomes abuse. Ever more rightly so, we should see children as human beings having intrinsic worth and the capability of doing whatever gift or talent they have been blessed with—we shall see past their flaws with eyes of grace and nurture them on the path they should lead. As I would go with Miss Suria’s verdict: parents need to be re-educated on what real learning is, and then they will know that it really is not about the grades.

#school #parenting #mental health #essay #article #feature article #malaysian #principles of journalism #IACT College #thepoeticwit #Train of Thought

0 notes

secret-diary-of-an-fa · 7 years

Text

Blog in which Anne Hathaway is a Giant Tree Monster (AKA: Secret-Diary Reviews ‘Colossal’).

Right. Righty. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight. I recently watched the film Colossal, and I have a lot of thoughts about it. It’s very important that you sit down, shut up and hear all of them.

My initial reaction to Colossal can be summed up as “yeah: that was a fun way to spend 1 hour and 50 minutes.” It’s funny in a low-key, quirky kind of way and the protagonist (Gloria- played by Anne Hathaway) is likeable and relatably fucked-up enough that it’s easy to care about her. Oh, and there’s giant monsters in it, which is always nice. It’s a good film- there’s no denying that. If you want a fun way to squander some time that will make you feel vaguely intelligent by association (because its an indie thing rather than typical block-buster fare), then go ahead and knock yourself out: this is the film for you.

However, the more I think about Colossal, the more off it feels. It’s like someone put all the elements of a good film together, but not necessarily in the right order.

OK. Before I can review it, I need to spoil it completely. Sorry. If you already know the plot, just feel free to skip this paragraph. It’s basically just a synopsis. Gloria (once again, played by Anne Hathaway) is an alocholic, out-of-work writer who gets kicked out by her boyfriend and returns to her hometown, ostensibly to rethink her like but, in reality, to get shitfaced on a nightly basis. While doing that, she reconnects with an old friend from childhood (I can’t remember his name, so we’ll just call him Neckbeard), whose behaviour seems slightly creepy and manipulative from the get-go. While Neckbeard is situating himself as Gloria’s patron-slash-enabler, Gloria herself discovers that, when she stumbles home drunk through a particular part of town, a giant tree monster materialises in Seoul in Korea and mimics her movements. She lets Neckbeard in on the secret and inadvertantly kills hundreds of people in the process. Neckbeard discovers that when he enters that bit of town, a giant robot shows up in Seoul and mimics his movements. Gloria tries to stop him making the giant robot appear in case someone gets hurt and his behaviour escalates from slightly offputting to abusive and violent. Oh, and he makes his giant robot deliberately go on a killing spree, because of course he does. Inevitably, Gloria is forced to kill him using her crazy giant tree monster powers. Then she stumbles into the nearest bar so that the film can spend its final sixty seconds hanging a lampshade on the fact that she’s still an alcholic.

All caught up? Good- now that I’ve explained the film, I can start picking it to death. Firstly, let’s address the elephant in the room. How come, in a film where all the giant monster action is taking place in Seoul, there isn’t a single named Korean character whose actions have any real impact on the plot? Actually, you know what? Don’t answer me just yet. We’ll be coming back to that a little later. Just ackowledge the room elephant and move on for a minute.

The thing that’s been really bugging me though is infinitely more pedantic and less political: the entire second half of the film was completely avoidable. Let me explain, there’s a scene, right after Neckbeard discovers he can make a giant robot appear in Seoul when tries it out deliberately for the first time... but first he makes sure that there’s no-one in the area surrounding the giant robot appearance site who could get hurt (apparently, there’s an app for that). And there it is: plain as day. Gloria has an opportunity to get away before Neckbeard becomes a full-on abusive arsehole and Neckbeard’s own sense of biting inadequacy is ameliorated by his ability to make a giant robot materialise in Seoul and start breakdancing. Even Seoul gets its own resident giant robot, which has got to be the world’s best tourist attraction. At that point, if Gloria hadn’t decided that Neckbeard Must Not Summon the Giant Robot and started a fight over it, all the awful, harrowing shit from the second half of the film just wouldn’t have happened. Not that I blame Gloria as a character: she’s obvs meant to be traumatised by all the death she caused when she was the giant tree monster, so her reaction is understandable. It’s just that, knowing the whole clusterfuck was easily preventable and could have had a happy ending for all concerned robs the film’s ultimate payoff of any sense of catharsis. Instead of being viscerally satisfied when Neckbeard finally gets killed by a tree monster, I just felt a bit sad and empty. He didn’t have to evolve into the world’s most ginormous douch-kanoo: he could have wiled away his twighlight years boosting Seoul’s tourist trade through the medium of interpretive being-a-giant-robot.

Incidentally, that whole scene raises another nagging complaint. Gloria intervenes to stop Neckbeard doing his giant robot thing, but walking right up to him (meaning that her Tree Monster thing also manifests in Seoul) and slapping him in the face. If that fight had actually escalated, thousands of people in Seoul could have died... which is what Gloria was trying to prevent. She aims to prevent a giant robot killing hundreds of people by starting a fight with that giant robot, which could potentially kill many more people. Not to drag geopolitics into this, but you can tell the characters in this film are Americans, can’t you? Cough cough regime change cough. Seriously, had she been taking ethics lessons from Mass Effect’s Reapers? YOU CAN’T SAVE PEOPLE BY ENDANGERING THEM, DIPSHIT.

Actually, that brings us back to my point about how there are no fully-developed Korean characters in this film where giant monsters are attacking a major Korean city. Throughout the majority of this film, Seoul and people of Seoul don’t really matter: they’re just used as the manifestation of the psychodrama bewteen Gloria and neckbeard. That could be a deliberate comment on the way American popular culture views eastern countries, but it doesn’t feel like it. Maybe the writers just needed to signpost it better. Also, it means that when Neckbeard goes kill-crazy and destroys half of Seoul, instead of being shocked and appalled, I was just kinda hoping for a few juicy shots of the giant robot kicking over buildings. You can’t paint an entire city as nothing more than the backdrop for some mellowdrama between two self-destructive a-holes and then expect your audience to feel emotional when it gets stomped on. That’s not how movies work.

A few other annoyances remain to be addressed, but they don’t really work towards the overall theme of this piece, so I’m just going to splurge them in any order I feel like.

Firstly, there’s the issue of Gloria’s boyfriend (his name is Tim, but you’ll only ever think of him as ‘That Guy from Legion’). He’s way better villain than Neckbeard, but the film does nothing with him. He kicks Gloria out and then stalks her a bit and that’s it... but the subtleties of his behaviour and the way he goes about being a nob make it clear that, if the script had any interest in him whatsoever, he could be a really compelling, hateable villain. Unlike Neckbeard whose name I still can’t fucking remember.

Speaking of which, what fucking idiot came up with Neckbeard’s bad-guy motive. He hates himself and how small his life feels? What is he, a school bully in a 1990s infomercial? Look, we’re told he’s motivated by self-loathing, but we’re never told why. He’s relatively erudite as small-town villains go; he has a circle of friends and owns a respectable little bar; he has good memories of going around setting off illegal fireworks with his bezzies. There’s no compelling reason for him to despise his life other than the fact he lives in a small town and comes from a vaguely working-class backgroud, which just makes the film-makers seem weirdly classist and snobby. I imagine the pitch for this idea went something like this “Oh, of course he hates himself, Baron Fucksmythe: he’s rural and does an ordinary-person job. I mean, I hate him and you hate him- why wouldn’t he hate him.”

Then there’s the guy who hovers in the background for most of the film, then has sex with Gloria, delivers some furniture and fucks off never to be seen again. You know how non-sequiters are usually phrases or jokes that come out of the blue and bear no relation to the rest of the film? Well, Colossal may be the first film to have a whole character be a non-sequiter.

Finally- and I realise this is a trivial thing to piss-and-moan about, but I’m going to anyway- very few alcoholics caught in abysmal self-destructive spirals look like Anne Hathaway. Nobody whose liver is slowly failing them while they pour themselves another round falls asleep against a wall and wakes up with perfect skin, fabulous hair and impeccable (if hipstery) dress-sense.

Colossal is a good movie. Sort of. It’s even got a nice feminist subtext with Gloria realising that many of the men in her life are abusive fuckwads and learning to make herself independent of them. But it undermines itself at every turn. It can’t decide what to focus on. Is it a movie about alcoholism and the psychopathology of addicts and enablers? No, because that plot line never goes anywhere. Is it a movie about abuse and victimisation? Kind of, but there’s so much else going on, it’s hard to feel viscerally invested in that plot-line, so it lacks impact. Is it a comedy movie that tackles multiple issues with a tongue-in-cheek attitude? Sort of, but its not consistently funny enough to get away with it.

The film’s attitude towards small town, rural, working class America and literally the entirity of Korea undermine its progressive, feminist credentals with a faint air of classism and not-quite-racism while its light, quirky comedy creaks audibly under the weight of the hefty subject matter. With a little bit of polishing, these issues could easily have been resolved, and a lot of the film is enjoyable as is. But a bit of tighter focus, better characterisation and a more global attitude would have been very welcome additions.

#Secret Diary of a Fat Admirer #colossal

1 note · View note

jenniferasberryus · 5 years

Text

The 25 Year-Old Japanese Game Getting an Improbable French Sequel

In 2020, a group of French developers are launching a sequel to Windjammers, a Japanese arcade game first released in 1994. It’s an improbable story, even before you get to the fact that this obscure title nearly faded from history - with what seemed like little chance of a re-release, let alone a follow-up - before a small, fanatical community of players nurtured it back to health, and helped raise it to new heights of popularity. But, for the uninitiated, what even is Windjammers? I’ll let a panel of (French) experts answer that for you.

Cyrille Imbert - CEO, DotEmu: “Windjammers is a mixture between Pong and Street Fighter.”

Kévin ‘Keikun’ Creff - Windjammers Pro: “It really is the Street Fighter 2 Turbo of Pong.”

Arnaud de Sousa - Head of Marketing, DotEmu: “The game is crazy. It’s like muscular dudes throwing frisbees with fire, and it’s crazy fun.”

Romain ‘Pyrotek’ Godart - Windjammers Pro: “It’s crazy.”

Édouard Ardan - Musician and Windjammers Fanatic: “It’s a crossover between a Street Fighter game - with Kamehameha, Hadouken, things like that - but the game, it’s a Pong game. But with dynamic fire!”

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/01/08/a-full-match-of-windjammers"] Windjammers (or Flying Power Disc in Japan) was released for Neo Geo MVS in February of 1994. Described as a Battle Sports Game, it took an easy-to-learn, hard-to-master approach, adopting the fundamentals of Pong, adding the technicality of Street Fighter 2, and slapping on the looks of some kind of California spandex muscle beach fever nightmare. Because of the sheer cost of the Neo Geo home console and its cartridges, you’d find it most commonly in arcades, its clean neon looks contrasting with the explosions and gunmetal on neighbouring attract screens. It went down… just fine. No one really went crazy for it, but (and I may be editorialising here) no one could truly dislike a game this vibrant, silly, and easy to pick up. The exception to that relative disinterest came in France, where a community of players began to take notice of this arcade oddity.

Édouard Ardan: “25 years ago [on] the arcade game, the Neo Geo MVS. You know, the big one? And I remember there was Metal Slug 1, Metal Slug 2, and I saw the Windjammers game with, again, the cool powers, visual effects. That was amazing when you were a child. And 10 years after, I worked for 6 months to save a lot of money to buy a Neo Geo AES with Windjammers. That was a crazy thing to do. But now I’m cool, I have the game. I’m a big fan of this game.”

Romain ‘Pyrotek’ Godart: “I think I was 12 or 13 with a friend on the Neo Geo CD.”

Arnaud de Sousa: “[At] every tournament there was Windjammers. It’s like, yeah, it’s the game in the corner you look at it: ‘Oh looks nice, but I have my tournaments to do, so maybe another time’. And [then] you see people get excited and you say, ‘OK, I need to play that game.’”

Such was its popularity, that some I talked to weren’t fully aware that it was such a French phenomenon. When I start to tell Ardan that it never really made an impact in England, he interrupts me:

Édouard Ardan: “What? No, I can’t believe that.”

[widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=windjammers-2-concept-art&captions=true"] Uncaring of the rest of the world, that little French fanbase kept growing, and getting more and more fervent. Kévin ‘Keikun’ Creff - who’d go onto become one of the world’s highest-ranked Windjammers pros - tells me he bought a Neo Geo cabinet, and hired vans to drive it to fighting game tournaments across the country. He didn’t do it for any reward other than introducing people to the game. Eventually, some of those fans organised - Windjammers France was born, a community with the sole, virtuous purpose of helping people learn and play the game, long after Neo Geos had disappeared from shop shelves.

Cyrille Imbert: “There was this association called Windjammers France, they started to gather people around, because the game is really cool to play. So it was, kind of, I would not say easy, but it was not that hard to gather people around. And then [...] the founders of the association just decided to go all the way into the game, and because of that people saw the level of complexity and depth that Windjammers could bring. Basically, because of a small team of French players, they started to really nail the game and understand all its core mechanics and show people the possibilities behind it - and other people gathered around it and developed a whole culture around this game.”

Kévin ‘Keikun’ Creff: “Yeah, we’re a big part of the coming back of Windjammers, and what Windjammers is today, and it’s part of that French love.

The community only kept growing from there, to the point where it became as much a talking point as the game itself - the first time I was ever told about Windjammers, it was introduced to me as an amazing game with a weirdly big following in France. If you want to know how much some people like Windjammers, Édouard Ardan is a founding member of Powerdisc, a band inspired by and named after the game. Seriously: [youtube clip_id="jpmCx6g5H7w"] All of this leaves me with a major question. Why is this odd little game quite so popular with French players?

Cyrille Imbert: “It’s a very good question. I think it’s a bit random. Video games are really big in France, particularly video games from Japan. France is one of the biggest markets for Nintendo in Europe, contrary to other consoles. So, I think there was a fertile background for Windjammers, I would say.”

Édouard Ardan: “It’s cool in France because we love the California vision from the '80s - you know, the frisbee, the dog, the girl, the sunshine. That’s cool, that’s a cool vision.”

Arnaud de Sousa: “Maybe we’re super-competitive, so that’s why, maybe, French people really thought it was cool to build a community around it. For me it’s more like a fighting game than a sports game - there's a lot of debate around the office about that - but for me it’s more like a fighting game, so there’s a lot of mind games, stuff like that. And we love our fighting games in France, there’s a huge community.”

Édouard Ardan: “Windjammers, it’s magic. I don’t know why. Because, again, the frisbee.”

[ignvideo url="https://uk.ign.com/videos/2016/12/03/windjammers-psx-reveal-trailer"] But no matter how much some people liked the game, a true revival for Windjammers seemed highly unlikely up until recently. Developer Data East ran into financial troubles not long after the game’s release, stopped making games in 1999 and, by 2003, had filed for bankruptcy. Its properties and trademarks were systematically sold off, primarily to mobile game company G-Mode. But not Windjammers. Aside from a Japanese-only Wii Virtual Console release, France’s favourite power disc game seemingly disappeared altogether, with emulation the only meaningful way of playing the game on modern machines. That is, until French retro gaming experts DotEmu went looking:

Arnaud de Sousa: “Bringing back the first one was a big surprise, because everybody thought the rights were lost. And it kind of was, actually - they were a bit lost. The game was released in '94, and wasn’t released until the release on PlayStation 4 which was in 2017, so it’s almost 25 years. The rights holder never thought about bringing it back [...] But we thought differently.”

Cyrille Imbert: “So I said, ‘OK, let’s find who has the license and let’s try to do something with it.’ I don’t remember exactly how we tracked it down but usually what we do is we do some research on the internet - very basic research - and then with our contacts in Japan we try to ask around: And basically we narrowed it down to Paon DP, which is the actual owner of the license, because former employees of Data East joined this company at some point. And so we met Paon DP four years ago I think.

“We explained that there was a huge community in France, that we were ourselves playing a lot of Windjammers in the office, so they kind of felt that we were the right people to take care of that. They really saw that we had passion for it. Because it’s not a super-famous game, right? It’s famous within the fighting game community, it’s famous within the Neo Geo fans, but it’s not that famous, so they kind of knew that we were not there to have an easy cash grab, you know? It was more about something that we were passionate about, and that we wanted to spread a bit more because the game really deserved it. And especially because we had this long-term strategy of not saying, like, we’re just going to do a simple port of the game and that’s it.”

Windjammers, somehow, was back. In its 2017 port for PS4, PS Vita and, later, Switch, DotEmu created a game that looked and ran exactly as the original did in ‘94, primarily by digging into Data East’s code to perform digital archeology. The only major addition came in the form of online play, finally allowing people to play Windjammers across continents without emulation. It played perfectly into DotEmu’s goal to spread the game to more people. Across the world, people began to talk about the game - helped massively, it must be noted, by some tireless campaigning by the team at Giant Bomb. Some even began suggesting it deserved a place among the great and the good of the fighting game community. In 2017, Windjammers unexpectedly broke into the upper echelons of the Player’s Choice poll for games at Evo, the world’s biggest fighting game tournament. The next year, it would do even better.

Cyrille Imbert: “So of course it got into the loop because we were relaunching it and people were hearing more about it. So were like, OK, we need to push for that. We did a full campaign called ‘Road to Evo’, where we tried to kind of spam Evo with, like, ‘Hey, let’s have Windjammers at Evo!’ and everything. And then AnimEvo, which is like a side tournament for fans and smaller games, they were super interested in it, until we got in basically.

“The whole idea behind it was to first get people more familiar with the license, with the original games, with the exact same game, but with online multiplayer so that people can compete online and the community can grow around this competition. And the second step was Windjammers 2.”

[widget path="global/page/imagecomparison" parameters="comparisons=%7B%22comparisons%22%3A%5B%7B%22caption%22%3A%22%22%2C%22images%22%3A%5B%7B%22id%22%3A%225e15baa2e4b065e1d37b54ae%22%2C%22label%22%3A%22Windjammers%22%7D%2C%7B%22id%22%3A%225e15baa4e4b065e1d37b54af%22%2C%22label%22%3A%22Windjammers%202%22%7D%5D%7D%5D%7D"] Part of DotEmu’s pitch to the license holder was that, after it recreated Windjammers, it would get to create a sequel too. Windjammers 2 - which arrives on Switch later this year - is aiming to add extra complexity to the game, without ever losing the core formula. Its biggest change is in its looks, which swap pixel graphics for a '90s cartoon style that aims to emulate the original game’s boxart. And who better to test whether those changes worked than Windjammers France, the community that helped keep the game alive for all these years?

Arnaud de Sousa: “The first time I heard about maybe bringing Windjammers [back] at the office, I was like ‘Yeah I know the guys at Windjammers France, that little community that are really into the game, so it could be nice to have them try the game, tell us if it’s good and just help us bring the best Windjammers possible.’”

Cyrille Imbert: “So right from the port of Windjammers, the first one on console, we included people from Windjammers France. It’s super practical because they’re around - they’re not all in Paris, but they’re in France, and it’s easy to make them come. And they’ve been super nice, and given us a lot of feedback. So we’re making sure that the emulation was pixel-perfect on console. That was the first step. And then, little by little, we kind of revealed that we were working on a sequel - because we didn’t tell them from the beginning.”

Arnaud de Sousa: “Of course there’s pressure. There’s a lot of nostalgia for it. So of course they’re waiting for something - they want something new but also something that is close to the original.”

Kévin ‘Keikun’ Creff: “We’re kind of patriotic, so yeah, we’re really happy. And for us it’s also reassuring to be able to talk to the devs to give ideas on how we see the game.”

Cyrille Imbert: “So we do a lot of playtests with [Windjammers France] because, for us, they’re the best players in the world, and they’re the ones that would be able to break Windjammers 2 [...] The developers of Windjammers 2 here at DotEmu are really good at Windjammers, but they’re not the same level - these guys have being playing for years, they, like, read The Matrix in the game. So that’s what we really want to do, and it's super exciting to see them playing with this new toy, trying new strategies and trying to exploit new stuff. So that gives us a really good idea of what’s the right way of doing it.”

[ignvideo url="https://uk.ign.com/videos/2019/08/22/windjammers-2-10-minutes-of-gameplay-gamescom-2019"] It’s not just behind-closed-doors testing - DotEmu recently held the world’s first Windjammers 2 tournament at Ultimate Fighting Arena 2019 in Paris, with two-time Evo champion Romain ‘Pyrotek’ Godart taking home this crown too. The developers probably couldn’t have wished for a better confirmation that they’re on the right track.

Romain ‘Pyrotek’ Godart: “It has a lot of options, it forces you to be more aggressive because if you stay at the back you’re going to lose. You really feel it’s Windjammers just like the first one, but there’s more - just more dynamism to it.”

Arnaud de Sousa: “It’s the community that help make a game, you know? If the people don’t play the game it won’t go to Evo, so it’s like we all have our part to play in bringing back Windjammers and making it really crazy.”

So the pros are happy, and the devs are happy. But surely the most important group are those regular French fans, the people who quietly loved this odd little game for a quarter of a century. How do they feel about getting a sequel - a French sequel no less - after all this time? I ask Édouard Ardan, the man who saved up for a console to play Windjammers, made a band based on it, and smiles literally every time he talks about it. He drums his hands on the table, a sheer physical reaction to his happiness: “Yeah! I am so happy with that! It’s amazing.” After 25 years of simmering delight, it feels like sheer French enthusiasm has helped summon a new Windjammers game out of nothing - some kind of emotional alchemy. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's UK Deputy Editor, and he will jam at a moment's notice. Follow him on Twitter. from IGN Video Games https://www.ign.com/articles/the-25-year-old-japanese-game-getting-an-improbable-french-sequel via IFTTT from The Fax Fox https://thefaxfox.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-25-year-old-japanese-game-getting.html

0 notes

buytabletsonline · 7 years

Link

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

Netflix

Fans of the dystopian-noir novel Altered Carbon surely had to wonder what form it would take when turned into a TV series. Or, to borrow the 2002 book’s lingo, what “sleeve” the show would slip into.

The result, whose entire first TV season debuted last week on Netflix, is a pretty surprising one: it’s totally solid. The results walk a tricky tightrope between book-allegiant and TV-appropriate, and as a result, neither end of the viewer spectrum will come away 100 percent satisfied. This is not necessarily must-see TV; not quite the sci-fi world’s version of Breaking Bad or The Wire. You can nitpick it enough to classify the show as good, not great.

But if you take even one glance at the show and think, “yeah, I might like this,” then you’ll be just fine. Its grand scope, well-rounded cast, consistency, and ambitious pacing make it a high-water mark among Netflix-exclusive action series. So long as you’re over 18, at any rate.

Gutsy? Or just guts?

Takeshi Kovacs, as played by Byron Mann.

Takeshi Kovacs, as played by… Joel Kinnaman. (At least one other actor portrays another Kovacs “sleeve” before season one runs out.)

Kinneman gets the most screen time as this season’s Kovacs, a character who is originally of Germanic and Japanese descent. We wish the TV series talked a LITTLE more openly about this cultural weirdness, honestly (even if it’s authentic to the book).

Either way, at least he sports this ridiculous backpack on occasion. (It’s always full of guns and drugs.)

When Kovacs comes to after a prolonged suspension, he is as confused as all of us as to who he has become.

A demonstration of how “stacks” work in the world of Altered Carbon includes this hologram.

Go on, slap your stack into an upgraded sleeve. For a price (moral, monetary, you name it).

Two Kovacs…es.

The locals don’t take too kindly to upgraded sleeves ’round these parts.

That age-gating is very unfortunate. In my dream world, Netflix would create an entirely new edit of Altered Carbon‘s first season that pulls a few of its needlessly violent and sexual punches—let alone the egregious moments that gratuitously combine those two extremes.

The compliment that I want to give this series is how awesome it could otherwise play for any sci-fi hungry teenagers in your life—for young adults coming to terms with identity, morality, and altruism. But in fulfilling a promise of book authenticity, Skydance Media’s take on Altered Carbon turns words into blood and genitalia—and often with little character-development payoff. Bad guys don’t look worse because more blood gushes, or because we see how horrifically prostitutes are beaten. Brutality and subtlety require different measurements in books and on screen, and this is possibly Altered Carbon‘s greatest failing.

Otherwise, this book’s filmed series nails something really important in TV sci-fi: it raises obvious existential questions without talking down to viewers. Altered Carbon imagines a near-future world in which humanity has figured out how to cheat death: by slipping our personalities into discs in the back of the neck, known as “stacks,” that can then bounce from body to body. Stackless bodies, as hinted to above, are known in this world as “sleeves,” and these work as a point of controversy and contention among this future world’s citizens (not to mention capital and bartering chips).

This ten-episode series follows Kovacs, a once-powerful and rebellious “envoy” who has been resurrected and slapped into a muscular, combat-ready sleeve. In his new life, Kovacs works as a bodyguard and detective for one of the world’s richest men, Laurens Bancroft (James Purefoy). If Kovacs can solve a tricky murder case for Bancroft, then he becomes a free man—but, as you might imagine, nothing about this murder investigation is easy.

If you own an HDR-compatible 4K TV, get thee to Altered Carbon, stat. It’s easily Netflix’s best showcase for the format since Planet Earth II.

A look out into the dystopian-future night sky.

If Blade Runner-esque cityscapes bore you, worry not. This series also has ridiculous cloud cities.

Kovacs, alongside his sometimes-partner-sometimes-rival Ortega (Martha Higareda), is taken aback by these cloud cities.

What unfolds can be described as two very good TV series battling each other for position and dominance. On one hand, we have a flashy, sexy, gorgeous-in-4K exploration of dystopian-future themes that are admittedly well-trodden territory. The world has changed thanks to so much body-swapping and other high-tech developments, and we see those concepts explored as a mix of broad, obvious strokes of plot development and thrilling action scenes. This series’ producers waste no time visually proving their admiration for Blade Runner and The Matrix—and when this show’s fisticuffs, gunplay, and sword fighting are at their best, such shameless homages are easily forgiven.

On the other hand, Altered Carbon is simultaneously a noir crime show that relies on sometimes-strong, sometimes-cheesy character development. Many of the show’s sequences feel like a squishing together of Veronica Mars with Star Trek: The Next Generation (and I say this as a fan of both), as Kovacs and his eventual partner/rival Ortega (Martha Higareda) cross paths while solving their own respective mysteries. This material sometimes shines with a bright sheen. These two lead actors are given a lot of room in the script to carve out their identity, their moral shades of gray, and ultimately, their likability even when they’re at their most selfish and foolish.

One major problem is that Kovacs exists as a major player in both extremes… as two different people. We see actors Byron Mann and Will Yun Lee portray Kovacs’ older existence as a murderous, taking-down-the-system envoy, but he takes much longer to open up as anything other than a stone-faced, cold-blooded murderer. (Most of his character’s opportunities to express emotions are drowned out by his timeline’s sci-fi war content, though these sequences still prove quite arresting—particularly thanks to the killer chops of actor Renée Elise Goldsberry, who nails that timeline’s character Quellcrist Falconer.)

Kovacs’ rebirth in the skin of actor Joel Kinnaman is a far more compelling one in terms of the script and character-development opportunities he gets. This is probably the most glaring way that the book shines brighter than the TV show: in allowing Kovacs to feel consistent, as a man who’s grown and changed over centuries but is unified by major principles. Having each TV actor handle such different parts of his life, and having those scenes framed in such different ways, creates a schism in his character development and in the show’s pacing.

(If you’re looking for top-notch timeline-hopping sci-fi on Netflix, you may very well be happier watching Travelers. Or Hulu’s Future Man, even.)

Being Takeshi Kovacs

But the series is still pretty nimble at finding opportunities to expand book moments, or build upon them, in ways that make sense without remaining entirely tied to the book. My favorite not-a-spoiler example is when an entire “B plot” of an episode revolves around Ortega’s family. They’re celebrating Día De Los Muertos while arguing about the spiritual and religious beliefs that all these stack- and skin-swaps conjure up—and one family member forces the conversation into an uncomfortable zone by pulling a surprise, last-minute switcheroo using stacks. Multiple generations of a family look at each other in entirely new ways as a result, and every actor involved gets to dance around the scene with performances full of life and energy.

This is what damned good sci-fi accomplishes better than any genre: it lets characters become equal parts other-worldly and familiar. It finds a way to laugh and revel while tackling serious life subjects.

Ortega and Kovacs get ready to team up in a strange arena.

A holographic AI butler named Poe (Chris Conner) gets the comic-relief stuff right without being obnoxious about it. Very good turn, honestly.

Vernon (Ato Essandoh) pleads for his daughter’s survival in a simulation.

Miriam Bancroft (Kristin Lehman) makes moves.

Vernon, Kovacs, and Ortega exchange weaponry.

One of the most brutal scenes in the series features a shape-shifting VR torturer.

Two bystanders face off in a zero-G fight. The winner gets an upgraded sleeve.

As the plot unfolds, every character enjoys a mix of these high-mark moments of self-discovery and tedious, should’ve-been-trimmed moments. Supporting characters like a holographic AI butler (Chris Conner), a shape-shifting upper-class wife (Kristin Lehman), and a grieving marine (Ato Essandoh) all enjoy brief opportunities to steal scenes and round out the other main characters in revealing their eccentricities and shades of gray. But some of their episodes’ B plots do as much to dull the momentum.

That kind of criticism about plots with tertiary characters, honestly, is par for the sci-fi TV course—and we’ve certainly seen more obnoxious padding in longer-running series (lookin’ right at you, newer Battlestar Galactica). Altered Carbon really does a good job keeping its casting in a “quite good” range from bottom to top, and every major character mostly nails a mix of intensity, believability, and humanity in a show all about people magically swapping bodies and flying around cloud cities. (It’s also fun to see a few actors pull double duty as multiple personalities in the same “sleeve.” The results aren’t as charming as on Orphan Black, but they come close.)

I could level a few criticisms about the show’s later-season surprises, along with some irrational turns in how characters get along. But beyond their spoilery nature, they’re also just not the kinds of bummers that will tank the full season’s impact, should you get through all ten hour-long episodes. Netflix and Skydance Media clearly invested in making a TV show worthy of the Altered Carbon namesake—which was never about blowing away sci-fi conventions. That book series was just as shameless about its forebears, but its compelling twists and badass core characters kept you flipping its pages. Netflix’s version does just enough to deliver the same thing for your “play next episode” button.

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); http://ift.tt/2EByy7Y February 11, 2018 at 10:44PM

#buytabletsonline buytablets buytablet iphone5s technology iphonegraphic mobile electronics

0 notes

jeroldlockettus · 7 years

Text

Thinking Is Expensive. Who’s Supposed to Pay for It?

Google spent nearly $5.4 million on lobbying in the second quarter of 2017. (Photo: Vladislav Reshetnyak/Pexels)

Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “Thinking Is Expensive. Who’s Supposed to Pay for It?” (You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.)

Corporations and rich people donate billions to their favorite think tanks and foundations. Should we be grateful for their generosity — or suspicious of their motives?

Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.

* * *

I’m sure you’ve been hearing the ever-more-anguished calls to regulate the huge tech firms collectively known as GAFA: Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple.

Barry LYNN: These companies, these super-large platform monopolists, they have developed the capacity to manipulate us, to control us, to control the information that is delivered to us, to control the pricing at which products are delivered to us, to control us as producers.

The GAFA companies are far bigger, richer, and arguably more dominant than tech companies in the past. Google, for instance, has more than 80 percent of global search-engine market share. Facebook has nearly 2 billion monthly active users. Amazon has an estimated 90 million prime members in the U.S. — that’s something like 70 percent of all American households! It’s estimated that 40 percent of all online spending goes to Amazon. This kind of scale creates a lot of concern. We’ve examined this concern in previous episodes, like “Who Runs the Internet?” and “Is the Internet Being Ruined?”

Zeynep TUFEKCI from a previous Freakonomics Radio episode: We’re seeing the birth of a new center of real power. We depend on these technologies that have been, in many ways, wonderful and fascinating. But they’re making significant decisions unilaterally.

There’s also the question of whether the mission of these firms is as socially beneficial as many people believed they were in the early days of the internet:

TUFEKCI: There’s all these really smart engineers. They’re the brightest computer scientists, and all they’re thinking about is, “How do I keep someone on Facebook for 10 more minutes? What’s the exact combination of things that will keep them staying on the site as long as possible so that we can show them as much advertisement as possible?”

So here’s a question: if you were one of those huge, dominant, super-wealthy firms, what would you do to ensure that the good times stay good? You’d probably spend a lot of money lobbying politicians — which, yes, they do. There’s been a huge ramping-up lately in lobbying by tech firms. But you might also do something a bit subtler than that.

Robert REICH: Yeah. There’s been a parallel ramping-up of the philanthropy that’s associated with the tech firms. That philanthropy comes in a variety of different forms.

Today on Freakonomics Radio: corporations using philanthropy to shape the public debate — and how that can go terribly wrong:

Barry LYNN: That was on June 27th. And on June 29th, I was told that my entire team had to leave.

* * *

Our story today begins with a journalist …

Franklin FOER: I’m Franklin Foer, a writer with The Atlantic.

Stephen J. DUBNER: You are one of three brothers who write books. Talk about that for just a minute, and the family that produced all of you.

FOER: Right. So I have two brothers: Jonathan, who’s written a good number of novels, including Everything is Illuminated. I got a younger brother named Josh, who is a science writer [and] wrote a book called Moonwalking with Einstein. It’s actually incredibly uncomfortable for us to talk about growing up in a family of other writers just because— I’m sure in some ways, we benefit from the novelty act of being three brotherly writers. But then we all, of course, want to be known for our own accomplishments.

DUBNER: Right.

FOER: But our parents didn’t do anything— They didn’t force us to play violin four hours a day or sit down and study the great chess masters. We watched a lot of He-Man and Addams Family reruns on television when we were growing up. But one of the things that they did was they gave us a credit card, which they said we weren’t allowed to spend essentially on anything except in the event of an incredible emergency. There was one exception to this: they said that we could basically spend the credit card at will at the bookshop. They basically guided us to one thing.

DUBNER: Your first job in journalism was at Slate, one of the very first mainstream online publications, which was started by Microsoft. There was this huge enthusiasm, certainly among the chattering classes.

FOER: There was a certain amount of utopianism that was associated with the emergence of the internet, this idea that we were going to tie the world together. I love search engines. I love the fact that I can access every book in human history in a nanosecond. I love that I can get things delivered to my door incredibly quickly. These things, arguably, make life much better; maybe inarguably make life much better. These technologies were incredible! Amazon is an incredible company. The Kindle was an incredible invention. The iPad and the iPhone were incredible innovations. We were right to marvel at them.

DUBNER: After writing for Slate for a while, you moved on to the New Republic — as you call it, the “intellectual organ for hard-nosed liberalism.” You ultimately became editor there not once, but twice.

FOER: The New Republic was this little magazine that always had outsized influence in politics and culture. It was an incredibly elitist organ and it managed to persist over a hundred years while never really turning a profit. As we entered the Internet Age, that became a more and more difficult thing to continue to do. We ended up shifting from one ownership group to the next. I got so exhausted trying to find an owner and sick of that, I ended up resigning as editor. But then a couple of years after I resigned, the magazine got bought by a guy called Chris Hughes who had been Mark Zuckerberg‘s roommate at Harvard, and co-founder of Facebook. He bought the magazine and, to me, this seemed almost too good to be true. You had this guy who understood social media, who had incredible number of resources, and seemed devoted to this little magazine that I was also devoted to. So I came back, I edited the magazine, and Chris and I tried to re-make it.

DUBNER: The relationship in the beginning seemed like it was unbelievably good.

FOER: We became really good friends and it was exhilarating. We felt like we were trying to save something that was imperiled in the world and that maybe we could help provide some dignified solution to the rest of journalism, which was grappling with a lot of the same issues that we were grappling with. But there was a moment when things just took this turn. Chris had always talked about wanting to make a profit with the New Republic, and he suddenly decided that he didn’t want to lose, at least not a whole lot of money with it. So we had to turn around our financial position incredibly quickly. He insisted that we start chasing clicks. In 2013, the surest way to get clicks was to post a clip from last night’s Daily Show with Jon Stewart. You slap a headline on it and maybe write a couple sentences about it and everybody would click on it.

DUBNER: You got caught up in, at least, monitoring the numbers, right?

FOER: Yes, I did. Look, data is crack cocaine. If you’re the guy who had a hard time getting a date in high school, to suddenly find yourself producing things that are extremely popular — you become obsessed with replicating that popularity. In some ways, everybody in the magazine wanted to be successful on Facebook. We wanted to master social media and this new environment. But we didn’t want that new environment to dictate how we did our jobs.

DUBNER: All right, so we should say that [you were] quitting as you were about to be fired from the New Republic.

FOER: Yeah. I took the brave decision to resign when I learned that there was some guy who already had my job and was offering other people jobs at the New Republic.

DUBNER: It’s funny. You’re describing what was happening to you at the New Republic. But it sounds as though you’re also perhaps describing your view of what happened at places like Google and Facebook over time, where you may begin with a certain set of motivations, but as those motivations lead you to this overwhelming commercial success, you’re so seduced by the magnitude of that success that you can’t help but want to replicate it over and over again.

FOER: Yeah, that’s completely right. In retrospect, I realized that I was living this compressed version of recent history.

The recent history of the internet at least. Over the years, Franklin Foer’s views of the internet had shifted. The same guy who used to think this …

FOER: There was a certain amount of utopianism associated with the emergence of the internet.

And this:

FOER: I love search engines!

And this:

FOER: These technologies were incredible! Amazon is an incredible company.

Has now come to think this:

FOER: Amazon thinks of itself as “the everything store.” It’s gotten itself in pretty much every conceivable business. It owns Whole Foods, it powers the cloud, it houses data for the C.I.A., and so on. There’s really nothing that it doesn’t try to squeeze into its empire.

He also thinks this:

FOER: As Facebook shapes the way that we consume news, as Google shapes the way that we interact with information, and as Amazon has shaped the way that we interact with books, the dominance that these companies exert ends up trickling through the cultural intellectual ecosystem. With Amazon, my concern is that the book business has become utterly dependent on them, that they hold one of the few true monopolies in the world.

Actually, that’s not quite true.

Swati BHATT: My name is Swati Bhatt. I teach at Princeton.

One course she teaches: The Economics of the Internet.

BHATT: The existence of a monopoly — of a single firm in any product space, unless it’s a government-granted monopoly — is rare in the digital economy.

So even though Amazon has, for instance, at least 70 percent of e-book sales, that doesn’t make it a monopoly.

BHATT: Technically, no. Because that leaves 30 percent for some other set of firms.

When describing firms like Amazon, Google, and Facebook, Bhatt prefers the term “behemoth.”

BHATT: Yes, there is a difference. “Behemoth” suggests that it’s simply a large firm, whereas a “monopoly” suggests that it’s the only firm.

Okay, economic semantics aside: Bhatt does see strong parallels between these modern behemoths and what we traditionally think of as monopolies. But a modern tech behemoth has a particularly modern advantage:

BHATT: Ownership of a scarce resource is the definition of a natural monopoly. What we’re seeing with the behemoths today is an ownership of a scarce resource called “personal data” or “data” in general. There’s an interesting self-reinforcing dynamic here. Whereas a firm transacts, buys and sells, [a behemoth] acquires data about its consumers. That enables it to grow by producing more personalized products by advertising more effectively. That brings in more customers, which brings in more data, which then enables the firm to grow even further and that leads to the behemoth status.

And that is what Franklin Foer, and a growing chorus of other critics, are so concerned about. Foer recently published a book called World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech. It’s part-memoir, part-screed against the dominance of the big tech firms. It’s not a particularly empirical book; and it’s hard to say how much of Foer’s argument was informed by personal experiences, like the New Republic disaster. It also turns out that Foer’s family, in addition to encouraging his love of books, encouraged his distrust of monopolies.

FOER: My dad was a University of Chicago-trained lawyer who’d worked in the antitrust division of the Carter administration. I grew up in this household where antitrust was part of the family religion. My dad would drive around in a car that had a bumper sticker that said “bust the trust” on it. It was a real obsession and passion of his. For a long time he was this lonely activist who was railing for greater, more aggressive enforcement of these laws prohibiting monopolistic behavior. I always admired him for this quixotic stand that he took, but I never really fully bought into his arguments until Amazon got in this fight with the book publishers, when it started to hit close to home.

DUBNER: This was the Hachette deal, yes?

FOER: Exactly. Let’s just say something about book publishing, which is that book publishing is an incredibly oligopolistic industry. There are four or five big companies that dominate book publishing. They’re oftentimes jerks. It’s hard to have a whole lot of sympathy for the book publishers. But suddenly you have these five big companies that were up against one big company, which was Amazon. Amazon basically controlled their access to the marketplace. Amazon was renegotiating their ebook contract with the publishers one by one, trying to strong-arm them with their market power into pricing their books lower and lower. To me, it was grotesque and ominous that Amazon was able to use its market power to try to dictate to the publishers in this incredibly aggressive way.

DUBNER: Where do you draw the line between winning — or competing — and being evil?

FOER: Right.

DUBNER: Persuade me that it’s not just a case of big companies being really good at what they do and winning and you having sympathies with the people who are not winning.

FOER: My book, in some ways, is a valentine to competition. I believe that a marketplace is most healthy when you have a number of market players. I might not love book publishing. It might be too concentrated in some ways for my taste. But at least there are five companies competing against one another for the marketplace. If I don’t like the way that one company is treating me, I can always go to another company. Or if I don’t like the goods that one company is selling, I can go to another company. The problem with Amazon, and the problem with Google, and, to an extent, with Facebook, is that they become the only market player. The choice that we have as consumers is limited and competition is limited. My argument is against the big technology companies, which are racing to expand into every nook and cranny of our lives.

As it happens, this expansion had just raced into Franklin Foer’s own life. We spoke to him in early September, just before his book was to be published. And there had been a plot twist.

FOER: The New America Foundation supported my book.

The New America Foundation is a center-left think tank devoted to “renewing American politics, prosperity, and purpose in the Digital Age.” It’s run by the political scientist Anne-Marie Slaughter, who’s a former top official in the Obama State Department.

FOER: One of the cool things that New America does is that they give money to journalists who are writing book projects. I didn’t get a lot of money from them, but I got a small sum. They were especially generous to me because I’d just been fired from a job at the New Republic.

And the partial funding of Foer’s book about the dominance of firms like Google suddenly became relevant because—

FOER: That’s since become relevant just because they fired a vociferous critic of Google from the foundation. Which is noteworthy because the foundation has received a fair amount of money from Google chairman Eric Schmidt.

DUBNER: Right. How much fun is it for you to be publishing a new book and already distancing yourself from the foundation that funded the writing of it?

FOER: It actually doesn’t feel good because New America has been supportive of me over time. I’d rather not seem like a jerk and disavow them when they’ve been so nice to me. But this does feel sadly reflective of a much bigger issue.

DUBNER: Who was the critic who was fired?

FOER: His name is Barry Lynn and he ran something called the Open Markets program there. Very active opponent of monopoly and a very vociferous critic of Google.

LYNN: We used to have an affiliation with the New America Foundation, but that ended on August 31st. We were kicked out of New America.

And that is Barry Lynn.

LYNN: And I direct the Open Markets Institute.

So the name of his project has not been taken away; but his affiliation with the New America Foundation has.

LYNN: We’re working out of a WeWork on the 1400 block of G Street in Washington.

Coming up on Freakonomics Radio: the story is not as neat as the headlines would have it:

Anne-Marie SLAUGHTER: At no point did Google or any funder tell me to fire Barry Lynn.

Also: funding controversies can reach across many decades. Like all the way back to the founding of Stanford University.

REICH: There is an effort to unearth the sordid history of the university’s initial benefactor.

* * *

Barry Lynn started out as a journalist …

LYNN: I worked in Venezuela and in Peru as a foreign correspondent. Then, I ran a magazine called Global Business Magazine.

We should say it was a pro-business magazine.

LYNN: We were a magazine that aimed at the people who ran businesses. We had a[n] inside look at how globalization actually works at the institutional level.

That inside look led to Lynn crossing over to the other side. He came to believe that corporations are too powerful, and that their power is too concentrated. This was a theme he pursued in a couple of books and, since 2002, with the New America Foundation. His project came to be known as Open Markets.

LYNN: We got the work going. We did it with increasing effect over the last seven years, to the point where in 2016, we had a number of folks on the Hill starting to understand that, indeed, America has a monopoly problem. The first person who really reached out and said, “I want to actually help shine a light on this problem,” was Senator Warren. The result was a speech that she gave on Capitol Hill.

Senator Elizabeth Warren’s speech was part of a conference, organized by Open Markets, called “America’s Monopoly Problem.”

Elizabeth WARREN: Today in America, competition is dying.

LYNN: This was probably the most important speech about concentration in the United States, about the monopoly problem, since a series of speeches that F.D.R. gave in the 1930s.

WARREN: Google, Apple, and Amazon provide platforms that lots of companies depend on for survival. But Google, Apple, and Amazon also, in many cases, compete with those small companies. That platform can become a tool to snuff out competition.

LYNN: She said, “It’s not just an issue that affects us as consumers. It also affects our democracy, because it’s this concentration of power that leads to concentrations of wealth. Concentrations of wealth lead to concentrations of control over government, and other institutions of authority.”

This line of criticism would seem to be very much in sync with the mission of not only Open Markets, but also its parent organization, the New America Foundation.

SLAUGHTER: In my own scholarship, I’ve written about monopolies and risks of consolidation and data ownership.

That’s Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former State Department official and Princeton professor, who’s now president and C.E.O. of New America.

SLAUGHTER: What convinced me to leave Princeton and become head of New America — which was a big move, because I had a wonderful position at Princeton — was this idea that we really could be a place that hosted fundamental debates about our future in the digital age.

But as Barry Lynn tells the story, New America didn’t share his enthusiasm for the conference he put together where Senator Warren spoke.

LYNN: Well, a few people in my organization at New America were not happy with the way we were framing the conference, and the fact that we were focusing some of our attention on the platform monopolies and especially on Google.

What was wrong with focusing on Google in a conference about monopoly? Remember, they do own some 80 percent of the global search market.

LYNN: Or I guess the question is, “Why was our work at New America problematic for Google?” Eric Schmidt, who is now the chair of the board at Google, was also, for a long time, on the New America board and then for a period of time served as the chair of our board.

Eric Schmidt, who was C.E.O. of Google for 10 years, has also given New America a lot of money, both personally and through his family foundation. So did Google itself. Between Schmidt and Google, New America had received roughly $20 million since its founding in 1999.

LYNN: There was a relationship between our two organizations. This is a relationship goes back to the very early days at New America and actually had never seemed to result in any problems at New America up to this point.

But now, it seemed, there was a problem. Were Schmidt and/or Google leaning on New America as Lynn’s critique of the company grew more intense? A year after the New America conference where Senator Warren spoke against Google’s domination, European antitrust regulators hit Google with a huge fine, $2.7 billion, for allegedly tilting search results in its own favor. Barry Lynn posted a statement on the New America website. It congratulated European regulators for giving Google such a good spanking, and it urged American regulators to do the same.

LYNN: We released this statement in support of the decision in Europe. That was on June 27th. And on June 29th, I was told that my entire team had to leave. We had two months to leave.

One natural conclusion to draw was that Google had stepped in and asked New America to do something about Barry Lynn. Indeed, that’s how it was portrayed in The New York Times. Their headline read: “Google Critic Ousted from Think Tank Funded by the Tech Giant.”

LYNN: At that point I asked for this decision to be reconsidered, and if it could not be reconsidered, I asked for more time. I was told that neither of those was possible.

The writer Franklin Foer, who happens to sit on the board of Barry Lynn’s Open Markets Institute, told us a similar version of events. He made it clear that Lynn’s statement about the European regulators’ decision—

FOER: This was something that was a bit too far for Google. New America was very generous in supporting me, and they never did anything to interfere with my own work. But I was fairly outraged by their treatment of Barry. I can’t resign from New America because I’m not affiliated with them. I’m not taking any money from them now, but I’m extremely disappointed.

But Anne-Marie Slaughter offered a substantially different portrayal. First of all, she says—

SLAUGHTER: No funder at New America has ever influenced New America content in any way.

And, this:

SLAUGHTER: New America has a set of principles on our website that makes very clear that no funding can affect the integrity of our research and/or shape the research in any way. We do not pay to play. We take funding and we do our work. Those two things are separate.

But the timing of Lynn’s firing certainly gave the appearance that Google and/or Eric Schmidt had asked Slaughter and/or the New America Foundation to get rid of Barry Lynn and Open Markets. And Slaughter found herself on the defensive.

SLAUGHTER: At no point did Google or any funder tell me to fire Barry Lynn, and at no point did Google or any funder try to influence the work of anybody here. If any funder ever did tell me that, I’d tell them to take a hike!

That’s Slaughter at a New America event a few weeks ago called “Is Big Tech an Existential Threat?” The event was actually in support of Franklin Foer’s book.

SLAUGHTER: I did not part ways with Barry Lynn for anything to do with Google. I decided that Barry Lynn and I had to part ways because he could not work respectfully, honestly, and cooperatively with his colleagues.

So Slaughter says she got rid of Lynn, not because of a funding conflict of interest, but because he was a difficult employee. That said, she acknowledges a real and long-standing tension between the people who fund research and the people who do research.

SLAUGHTER: I don’t actually think this is just a think-tank issue. I worked at three universities, and universities have private funders for centers and for different bodies of research. Even newspapers have constant tensions between advertisers and reporters that reporters don’t have to navigate, but the management does. There is a general tension wherever you need to protect the integrity of research and you also need to fund that research.

New America says all its major funders are listed on its website. We asked Slaughter for a breakdown:

SLAUGHTER: Only 12 percent comes from corporations. By far, the largest amount comes from foundations and then from private individuals.

LYNN: Taking corporate money does not mean necessarily that the work of the entire institution is suspect—

Barry Lynn again.

LYNN: —but it definitely can create a slippery slope that will lead to pressures being brought to bear on those people who are questioning concentrations of power or the use of corporate power in other ways.

REICH: People are right to have a skeptical, maybe cynical, orientation to corporate lobbying or corporate philanthropy.

And that’s Robert Reich, a political scientist at Stanford.

REICH: My research interests these days focus a great deal on philanthropy and the role philanthropy plays in democratic societies.

And that philanthropy increasingly comes in the form of foundations.

REICH: There are lots of foundations.

DUBNER: What is the median size of assets? It’s really small, right? A million or so dollars—

REICH: Oh yeah, it’s not much. It may be a couple of million dollars. But there’s an enormous growth in the number of foundations, and that’s just a logical consequence of the growing inequality in the United States.

DUBNER: Just talk about your thesis essentially — the role, the influence, and the complications around modern philanthropies.

REICH: I’d start by saying most people’s attitude about philanthropists and about foundations is that we should be grateful that people are trying to do good with their own money. That’s the attitude I want to try to sweep away. I don’t think philanthropists deserve that amount of charity, if you will. Why is that? Because philanthropy, especially large philanthropy, in the form of a foundation or especially wealthy person represents the exercise of power in which they attempt to use their own private wealth to affect public outcomes or to produce public benefits or make social change. Power deserves scrutiny in a democratic society, not gratitude. I’d add on top of that that a foundation, in particular — which is a legal form that allows a wealthy person to create a donor-directed, unaccountable, barely transparent, perpetual, and tax-subsidized corporate form in order to use their private assets to affect the public — is an especially interesting and potentially worrisome form of power.

DUBNER: Let’s talk about think tanks, per se. Is there such a thing as a truly nonpartisan think tank, or is it just too hard because of where the money is coming from?

REICH: Well, I’d say that you’re more likely to make the case that there are nonpartisan universities, universities which are funded in not entirely dissimilar ways from think tanks. Officially, they have to be nonpartisan, so do think tanks. In other words they can’t declare themselves in favor of particular political candidates. But think tanks have become far more popular in the United States as a result of the polarization and inequality in the United States. Idea generation that happens in think tanks — the policy frameworks and proposals that get disseminated from think tanks — flow from philanthropic interests with particular policy positions in mind.

DUBNER: Tell me what you know about Google’s history of philanthropic, foundation, or think-tank giving and especially the timeline because I understand it’s accelerated quite a bit recently.

REICH: Google, like lots of other tech firms, has gotten much more aggressive in its formal lobbying efforts. I think it’s now the case that the top five Silicon Valley companies are amongst the largest sources of lobbying, greater even than the five top Wall Street firms in New York. There’s been a parallel ramping up of the philanthropy that’s associated with the tech firms. That philanthropy comes in a variety of different forms.

DUBNER: Rob, knowing what you know about the situation with the New America Foundation and the Google money and the controversy, what would your advice be for them, for the New America Foundation?

REICH: The New America Foundation needs to be aware of the soft power, the agenda-setting influence that donors can have to the think tank even in the absence of calling someone up and saying “we disagree” or “we object to the work that someone does.” When Anne-Marie Slaughter — whose job is chiefly to ensure the existence of the New America Foundation into the future, which involves fund-raising — does her work, she needs to be cautious that she hasn’t internalized the policy preferences of the donors such that she shapes the work of the foundation around the donor interests. The idea is you’re worried about the conversation you’ll have with your donor in the future. You orient the work that you do to please the donor, rather than to displease the donor. That has, functionally, the same outcome from the donor’s perspective, without even having to say anything.

DUBNER: Now, your own fine university, Stanford, benefited, was founded from the private largesse of a man, Leland Stanford. Most of history paints him as a classic robber baron — a railroad man who did all kinds of stuff that we would frown upon today. Talk to me about that and whether that’s a conversation that takes place regularly at Stanford. Or is it avoided?

REICH: I’d say people here are aware of the history of the university and the deep connection between philanthropy and the well-being of especially wealthy universities. People here, I think, know something about the history of Leland Stanford. There is an effort on campus to unearth the sordid history of the university’s initial benefactor.

DUBNER: Has there been any movement of any magnitude to rename the university?

REICH: Not that I know of. They’re starting with lower-hanging fruit — monuments and places on campus named for people with no obvious connection to the university and whose historical records are not so appealing.

DUBNER: Let’s say I have some money, Rob. I want to set up a foundation. I come to you and I say, “I’m a big believer in bringing critics into the inner circle. I know that you’ve been critical of how foundations behave, and that it’s undemocratic, and so on. But Rob, I’d like to make you the executive of my foundation.” Let’s say I made my money in ammonia fertilizer. How would you go about setting it up in a way that takes advantage of my largesse to try to accomplish something that we could all agree is some public good without falling into all the traps that you’ve been describing to us?

REICH: First, I’d say, despite the fact that laws don’t require me to be especially transparent about what the foundation is doing, I pledge to make completely available to the public all of the grant-making we do, the evaluations of the grants that we make. I’d want to invite in outside experts as well. I would want to find ways in which to organize the foundation’s efforts to seek out the most severe critics of what we were doing in order to try to learn the most in order to give grants away to greater effect.

DUBNER: Let’s say I also make you chairman of the board. Tell me about that board, how you’d set it up. What would the elections look like? What would the terms be like? Who’s on it?

REICH: Well, “elections” already reveal that you don’t know much about how foundations are operating. There are no elections on the boards of foundations. The boards are hand-picked by the initial donor. You can create the governing board of a foundation in such a way as you guarantee that only family members and heirs ever serve on the board. There’s no public representation necessary. The Gates Foundation, with something in the neighborhood of $40 to $80 billion devoted to philanthropy, has as its governing trustees Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffett, and, I believe, Bill Gates Sr. I’d like to see possibly experimentation with a form of foundation peer review in which an effort analogous to what happens in academia happens within the foundation world. It would be surprising if the philanthropic efforts of corporations were purely altruistic. Corporations seek to advance their own interest especially in their lobbying — quite possibly often in their philanthropy. I’m trying to stimulate people to be morally awake and in the same moment, to get people to consider what types of public policies or frameworks ought to govern and structure our collective lives, which is a moral and philosophical question.

That was the Stanford political scientist Robert Reich. We also heard today from Anne-Marie Slaughter, Barry Lynn, Swati Bhatt, and Franklin Foer. Coming up next time on Freakonomics Radio: my Freakonomics friend and co-author Steve Levitt drops by to answer your FREAK-quently Asked Questions:

Steven LEVITT: That is one of the weirdest definitions of social good I’ve ever heard in my entire life—

LEVITT: The thing you want to do, from a public policy perspective, is not put people’s identity and their morality in conflict with efficiency—

LEVITT: As you take the knife and think about whether you’re going to stab the person with it, you’re not thinking about what’s going to happen 15 years later when I apply for a job and I have to check the box—

That’s next time, on Freakonomics Radio.

Freakonomics Radio is produced by WNYC Studios and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Brian Gutierrez. Our staff also includes Alison Hockenberry, Merritt Jacob, Greg Rosalsky, Stephanie Tam, Eliza Lambert, Emma Morgenstern and Harry Huggins; the music throughout the episode was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook, or via email at [email protected].

Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:

SOURCES

Swati Bhatt, professor of economics at Princeton University.

Franklin Foer, staff writer at The Atlantic.

Barry Lynn, executive director of the Open Markets Institute.

Robert Reich, professor of political science at the Stanford University.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, president and C.E.O. of New America.

RESOURCES

“America’s Monopoly Problem: What Should the Next President Do?” Elizabeth Warren, New America (June 29, 2016).

“Antitrust: Commission Fines Google €2.42 Billion for Abusing Dominance as Search Engine by Giving Illegal Advantage to own Comparison Shopping Service,” European Commission (June 27, 2017).

How Digital Communication Technology Shapes Markets: Redefining Competition, Building Cooperation by Swati Bhatt (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).

“Is Big Tech an Existential Threat?” Anne-Marie Slaughter, New America (October 5, 2017).

“Repugnant to the Whole Idea of Democracy? On the Role of Foundations in Democratic Societies,” Rob Reich (July, 2016).

“What Are Foundations For?” Rob Reich, Boston Review (March 1, 2013).

World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech by Franklin Foer (Penguin Press, 2017).

EXTRA

“Is the Internet Being Ruined?” Freakonomics Radio (July 14, 2016).

“Who Runs the Internet?” Freakonomics Radio (November 14, 2013).

The post Thinking Is Expensive. Who’s Supposed to Pay for It? appeared first on Freakonomics.

from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/thinking-expensive-who-pay/

0 notes