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ghosthan · 3 years

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what would you say are the differences between 616 Tony and MCU Tony? 🤔

Hi anon! Many people have talked about this and I'm certainly not the authority on the topic, but I’ll try my best to explain some of the major differences that I have noticed! Thank you for asking and I’m sorry it took me so long to answer you.

Important to note: neither version of Tony has had a totally consistent characterization. Depending on who you ask and which comics/movies they've consumed, they might give you a different answer here and not be wrong.

616 Tony is even harder to put into one box because his character has been around since Tales of Suspense in the 1950s. That’s a long time. Things have changed over time, under different writers, changing political atmospheres, and outside pop culture influence (including influence from the MCU, unfortunately, in recent years.) You get the picture. So I’ll be making some generalizations and try to be clear about which eras I’m speaking when I make these comparisons, but ultimately, if someone wanted to be contrarian, you could probably refute a lot of what I say here if you cherry pick canon. Which is fair enough! That’s sort of the fun of comics, there’s so much to choose from and something for everyone.

So here are some observations from me, under the ‘read more’.

1. Physical Appearance

This is sort of an easy one, but worth mentioning!

MCU Tony does not look like 616 Tony. RDJ is great, but he would not be most 616 fans’ casting choice on looks alone. MCU Tony is tan, a Malibu man, with brown hair and brown eyes, and RDJ has sort of round facial features (a funny sloped nose, big, round eyes, round forehead, not a particularly sharp or classically “superhero masculine” face.) As you may know, this lends well to certain fanworks and tropes, such as Tony having Bambi eyes.

Or Tiny Tony. He is not actually canonically small, but he's smaller in the MCU than in 616 and from what I can tell, a portion of fandom has latched onto that. He’s a grown man, but RDJ is pretty short, and of slighter build than 616 Tony. RDJ is 5′9, but they make him act in heels, and I believe his canon MCU height is 5′11. Another popular trope I’ve seen is shrinking Tony in fanfic/fanart for a dramatized height difference with Steve, making him weak or fragile; this is fine because everyone has their own taste, but for the official record, he’s a capable, strong guy! Especially in earlier stages of the MCU, in which he’s a bit younger. Tony isn’t just a brain; he carries out his plans with his own two hands! He builds his armor, he remodels his lab, he survives hand to hand combat when he doesn’t have the armor. Muscles!

616 Tony is 6′1 without armor and 6′6 in armor (making him taller than his 616 Steve counterpart in armor and very close to the same height out of armor!) 616 Tony is generally paler with black hair (sometimes the classic blue-black I love so much) and blue eyes, and it obviously depends on the artist, but he has a pretty typically ‘masculine’ face and build. Generally he is drawn with a squared jaw and a high bridged nose (such as in the Extremis storyline, or drawn by Marquez), but again, this varies from artist to artist! Here's some examples of 616 Tonys.

Wait, you might be saying, but I have seen comic panels where Tony has brown hair/brown eyes!

Yep. Due to a combination of forgetfulness, inconsistency, and the MCU bleeding into the general consciousness of the comics, sometimes Tony is randomly depicted in the image of RDJ, or if not in his image, at least visually inspired by the MCU-- hair color and style, eye color, dialogue, etc.

616 fans don’t typically love this; he’s very handsome when drawn this way, of course, (look at him!) But it isn’t really the same character.

Also, MCU Tony has (at least for some of his movies) a reactor built into his chest. While 616 Tony has, at times, been more or less physically connected/dependent to his tech, he doesn’t have the built in reactor (most generally speaking, there are times in comics when he temporarily has the tech built in, but this isn’t really the status quo.)

2. Relationship with parents/ family history

While it is definitely implied in the MCU that Howard was not a good father to Tony, (such as in Iron Man 2 when Tony says “You're talking about a man whose happiest day of his life was shipping me off to boarding school” and “He was cold, calculating, never told me he loved me, never even told me he liked me”), Tony has a different sort of attitude toward Howard in MCU than in 616. It’s kind of weird, and hard to discuss. To me, it seems implied that MCU Howard was emotionally abusive to Tony based on what Tony does say about his childhood, and yet, the films kind of randomly give Howard weird moments of “Well, he tried his best and deep down he loved me the whole time!” forgiveness. MCU has a Howard kink and I'm very cringe-face emoji about it.

For example, Iron Man 2 shows that old film reel of Howard talking about how Tony is the greatest thing he ever created, and in Endgame, when Tony goes back in time, he meets Howard and has a very weird interaction with him in which Howard declares he would do anything for his son, (to his deeply damaged son who is a new father himself.) Yet, for all his talk, it's his actions that speak, and his actions left Tony damaged, traumatized, and emotionally inept at forming healthy relationships. So.

Sorry. I’m a little bitter. I'm just uncomfortable with how they sort of set up an abuse history but then treated it kind of lightly and Howard gets off the hook as "well, he tried his best" without really acknowledging the hurt he caused.

Avengers: Endgame 2019

I won't go super in depth into the abuse stuff because it's a little touchy and could take up a lot of this post. But.

I’m not against any reconciliation and I do appreciate the fact that a lot of times, victims of abuse feel a desire to forgive and reconnect with their abuser-- my issue with the MCU depiction of Tony and Howard is that Tony never really gets the vindication of his abuse being recognized for what it was before he forgives Howard. To me, that’s not forgiveness as kind of... gaslighting himself that it wasn't as bad as he remembered his own experience being, because of a sense of nostalgia and grief. It’s not the same, and I have issues with it.

However, a lot of my opinion is based on subtext and it is just my opinion; with depictions of abuse, different people are going to react differently, and other people may have found these scenes touching and gotten something positive out of them, and that's totally fine too!

It’s also a bit difficult to talk about Tony’s relationship with Howard in 616, for a few reasons: shifting timelines, lots of canon that I have not read all of, and the fact that it really is difficult to sum up such a complicated relationship.

Right off the bat, I’ll address the basics. I used the same scene in another ask, and I think it's frequently cited in any meta regarding Howard, but in Iron Man Vol. 1, we see more into Tony’s childhood and see Howard verbally abusing his family, drunk, at the dinner table.

Iron Man Vol. 1 #285

We get this scene with adult Tony’s retrospective commentary on how his own issues that he blamed himself for were actually a cycle starting with his father, the insecurity and abuse and alcohol, and that he realizes how much this has influenced him. Both MCU Tony and 616 Tony have some form of “stop the cycle of shame” arcs, but I don’t really see how this works narratively in the MCU because Tony makes excuses for Howard and continues to blame himself for a lot of his own personal struggles, whereas I think there’s just a bit more nuance in 616.

But uh. This isn’t totally true, and in recent years, things got real weird. I choose to ignore this chapter of canon, but in the Dan Slott run, Tony Stark: Iron Man, Tony’s whole backstory gets imploded. For one thing, the little of Tony’s childhood it shows in a flashback is uh. Uh. Well, it’s certainly out of character compared with previous 616 material, depicting Tony as an overly confident poor sport.

Basically, Tony is adopted. Tony has an evil brother. Tony’s biological parents make an appearance, as do his ‘classic’ parents, Howard and Maria. It’s just weird. It’s kind of out there. I’m honestly not a huge fan of this and ignore a lot of it, but it is certainly a difference between MCU and 616.

3. Personality

I’m going to be very general. Both Tony’s have an outer self which they present to the public and an inner self, but they’re a bit different. Both Tony’s have struggled with self loathing, but I think MCU Tony’s actual self worth is a bit higher, even just at some points in time. Even if his ego is part of his facade, I think he does believe some amount of the “I’m awesome”, even if just when it applies to his own work/inventions/saving people. Not to say that these moments of fluctuating self esteem make him egotistical, but this combined with his egotistical act and snarky, non-stop sassy dialogue, he’s quite different in general personality from 616 Tony, who is much more reserved.

Some more recent iterations of 616 Tony have been adapted to reflect the snark of the MCU, but he’s not so snarky and he tends to approach things more seriously. This is not a dis on MCU Tony; I think MCU Tony uses false ego and excessive sassy jokes as a means to deflect and control, which I think is very interesting and it’s nice to see this explored more in depth in fic where you get to see the thought process behind the bravado. MCU Tony is a partier, a good times guy, especially during Iron Man 2, in which he really does disregard consequences to have fun (driving his race car, partying drunk in his suit, letting pretty girls play with the armor, shooting off repulsor blasts for fun in a crowded room); I’m not bashing MCU Tony-- I think he had psychologically understandable reasons for behaving this way, the man was dying-- but 616 Tony really doesn’t act this way generally, and I think it’s a personality difference more than a difference of one being “better.”

616 Tony handles his stress differently, and they just have different psychological patterns, I think. I’m coming up kind of blank trying to think of a good comparable 616 arc, (sorry, I’m brain dead) but a less-than-perfect example might be Tony’s brain delete arc; he’s “dying”, like in Iron Man 2 he knows his expiration date, (circumstances are quite a bit different), but he throws himself more into work, into a cause, and as he really fall apart, we see him spiral into self doubt, remorse, fear, and insecurity, sort of falling into himself with lots of manly tears and calling himself pathetic.

(Some things happen in this arc that a lot of people find Gross. I also find these events gross. But. I don’t count the sex in “World’s Most Wanted” as partying to cope with personal mortality, because I think both character involved are in “end of the world” mode, and it’s more seeking intimacy for comfort than partying to numb the hurt. Does this distinction make sense? No? Perfect, moving on.) 616 Tony is generally much more humble.

Whereas MCU Tony, I think, tries to outrun those feelings via parties or making dozens of new suits, or seeking comfort by comforting others! Gifting things to people, building things for people, highly personalized individual living quarters, teaching Nebula games and trying to show her a fun time when they were in peril together.

They have some traits in common, for sure! But canon being inconsistent both in the MCU and in 616, my observations aren’t the rule, because I’m kind of cherry picking and going based on limited memory. But off the top of my head, they’re both extravagant gift givers! Recall Tony gifting Pepper the giant bunny in Iron Man 3, and compare this with Tony carrying a mile high pile of Christmas gifts after shopping with Rumiko in Iron Man Vol. #3.

I would say that while both Tony Starks are considered humanitarians, this is much more fleshed out and supported by canon in 616. Some examples of his philanthropy in the MCU: Tony makes charitable donations of art and money, Tony has an organization which provides disaster relief/cleanup which is referenced in Spider-Man Homecoming, Tony has an MIT grant for students and staff members. But to be honest, a lot of his MCU philanthropy is only mentioned in passing, or is largely handled by other people on his behalf and on his dollar.

In 616, we see Tony using charity almost as a means of therapy: it’s something he does very privately, not in the public eye (at least, not always), and it’s something deeply personal to him. One example that immediately comes to mind is Tony’s home for disadvantaged girls in Iron Man Vol. 3, and we see scenes of Tony basically driving the streets at night, picking up underage prostitutes, feeding them and listening to their stories before bringing them to a home he’s established where he knows all the residents, and provides educational opportunities and protection.

Another more recent example in canon that the Tony fandom loves is that Tony canonically holds babies at an orphanage. Sorry I don’t have panels for all of this, this section got long and I have been working on answering this ask in a very scattered way for a very long time.

Both Tony’s are romantics, I literally could write a whole other post about their canon love life similarities and differences, but I will briefly say that while MCU Tony does the long on and off, and eventual ultimate commitment, to Pepper Potts, 616 Tony is a serial monogamist; he is always falling in love, and he’s definitely not a playboy, but the hero-ing, self loathing, and lifestyle make it very hard for him to keep anyone in his life, and most of his partners fuck his life up and betray him. Needless to say, 616 Tony is not married, and certainly not to Pepper Potts.

Oh, and I guess this is so obvious I almost forgot to include it, but a huge similarity between both iterations of Tony is that they both constantly use their own life as a bargaining chip, and will pretty much die for anything. Or be the bad guy for a good reason (at least, in his own mind... see Civil War, or Hickmanvengers; 616 Tony, especially, does not shy away from making the hard decisions, and this leads to a lot of guilt and tension in his relationships-- often with Steve because 616 Steve/Tony angst fans are well fed, I guess)

Remember that time Tony had Steve’s mind wiped because Tony felt that Steve’s inflexible morality might hinder the Illuminati’s ability to save the world? And it eats Tony up inside and erupts into a homicidal fight when Steve finally gets his memory back? Me too.

Tony Stark as a character is defined by sacrifice, both of his own life but also of his own happiness and reputation and conscience, I think, in a lot of ways, and we see this in many universes. I could go on about Tony’s propensity for sacrifice in the less obvious ways, because I think in terms of heroic sacrifice, Tony has done a lot that other heroes wouldn’t be able to do because of moral inflexibility and conflicting philosophical schools of thought; Tony really is the “whatever it takes” type, and often believes the ends justify the means if he deems a threat worse than the potential wrong that could be done in preventing the threat. We see this a little bit in the MCU in the creation of Ultron, and in Civil War with the Accords. But there’s a whole lot more going on there I don’t want to get into.

4. Alcohol

MCU Tony’s alcoholism is never really explicitly explored. He is shown drinking in Iron Man 1, and in Iron Man 2 he drinks a lot and makes a fool of himself publicly, but MCU Tony doesn’t get any specific narrative arc focused on his drinking, and if I recall correctly, I don’t think he ever refers to his drinking as alcoholism in the movies? Also, while his binge drinking and embarrassing behaviors ostensibly stop after the events of Iron Man 2, he is shown drinking on screen at least one other time after that which I can remember, and it wasn’t a “falling off the wagon” moment, and an alcoholic in recovery such as 616 Tony would not take a drink casually. This article sheds a little light on some decisions made about Tony and alcohol in the MCU.

Alcoholism is a huge part of 616 Tony’s personality, which I went a bit more into depth about in this post, so I won’t repeat myself too much.

5. Their relationships with the Iron Man armor

A few points here: MCU Tony is famous for the “I am Iron Man” line being repeated throughout the franchise after he blows his own secret in the end of the first movie. MCU Tony sees himself as one with Iron Man, and the suit is the tech that enables him to be this version of himself. He sees Tony Stark and Iron Man as inextricable: you cannot separate them, and his identity is public. He, as Tony Stark, is an Avenger.

You may remember MCU Tony’s induction into the Avengers; in Iron Man 2, Nick Fury is forming the Avengers and tasks the Black Widow with going undercover to assess Tony to be a part of a hypothetical initiative. “Iron Man yes, Tony Stark no” and the comments about Tony as a narcissist may be funny, but the fact is, the snark and erratic personality of MCU Tony at the time of the formation of the Avengers in the movies is not at all like the Tony of the comics, at the time of the Avengers being formed.

In 616, things are quite a bit different! Tony invents the Iron man armor to save himself (like in the MCU) and uses it for hero-ing, but in secret. He works very hard to protect his identity as Iron Man, and for a long time, as far as the world is concerned, Iron man is a mystery man piloting armor built by Tony, hired as Tony’s personal body guard, (hence the 616 Steve/Tony fandom’s proclivity for identity porn as a trope!) When the Avengers form, Iron Man is the Avenger, close friends with the Avengers, (particularly Steve!) and Tony Stark is just the benefactor of the Avengers, providing them with a place to live and finances with which to operate.

In the very early days, Tony did not have the “reactor” like in the MCU, but his chest plate did keep him alive, leading to some very dramatic shots of Tony charging up using a wall socket, lamenting the plight of a secret hero.

616 Tony, generally, and especially in some of these earlier comics, was quite reserved, rather serious, and very angsty, (in private of course.) He may be wealthy, but speaking generally, he’s much less ostentatious than MCU Tony, less of a show off, less into flashy things and grand gestures. Of course, this isn’t always true in the comics, and some iterations of Tony are more like this than others, but MCU Tony is showier, sillier, and more of a fun-times guy. Any MCU fan would find those panels quite contrary to the Tony Stark you know:

Iron Man 1

Iron Man 2

I think I would say that while MCU Tony sees himself and the Iron Man identity and the armor as all being inextricably connected, we see a bit more compartmentalization with 616 Tony, who pretends that the armor is a whole separate person for years when his identity was private, and we see instances in older and newer comics, in which Tony is uncomfortable with some aspect of himself as Iron Man (for instance, during the second drinking arc, Tony temporarily swears off being Iron Man entirely, or for another example, when Tony is in a comma and Tony AI exists during Secret Empire, Tony “lives” in the Iron Man suit, and I think this could be interpreted as a meta parallel to Steve during this arc; Steve has had some core aspect of his character inverted, Captain America becoming Captain Hydra, so Tony experiences a similar inversion-- Tony Stark and Iron Man are forcibly merged, in a way that Tony seems deeply uncomfortable with, if his digital drinking relapse is any indication. But I digress; sorry for the tangent.)

Okay this post is inexcusable long, and very, very tangential, and I don’t feel like I’ve really covered everything I wanted to. But it has been sitting in my inbox for too long and if I don’t post it now I never will, so I hope this long, rambling thing has been a little bit helpful to you! Thank you so much for asking, I had a lot of fun rambling about this.

If you want to read a similar post, but well written and organized, with other insights, this post by Sineala answers a similar question!

#Anonymous #han reads comics #han meta #meta #iron man #tony stark #616 tony stark #616 #mcu #long post #han speaks #ask #sorry this definitely gets more incomprehensible as it goes on but i have been writing and rewriting and editing and fretting about this #for so long that if i dont just post it i probably never will and i sunk too many hours into it #to throw it away now 😅#abuse tw #abuse #alcoholism tw #alcoholism

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years

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OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT BROWSER

Why not start a startup how long it will take to become profitable. One thing I can say more precisely. But they're not dangerous.1 Boston is a tech center to the same cause: Gates and Allen wanted to move back to Palo Alto, though there is nothing to see outside. But it's not just nice. But if we can decide in 20 minutes, should it take anyone longer than a couple days ago: The mercurial Spaniard himself declared: After Altamira, all is decadence. In addition to being the right sort of experience, one way or another it will be either a compliment or an insult.2

As long as you're not accepted to grad school at Harvard to cure you of any illusions you might have about the average Harvard undergrad. We're impatient. But in this case it seems more to the point that their culture prizes design and craftsmanship.3 The space of possible choices is smaller; you tend to want every line of code to go toward that final goal of showing you did a lot of startups grow out of schools for this reason be the most dangerous company now by far, in both the good and bad senses of the word. And people walking around instead of in an office park, because then the people who work there want to stay there, instead of only in the most hospitable environments. It's also more dangerous. Our prices were daringly low for the time. The problem is, the very word taste sounds slightly ridiculous to American ears. That idea is not exactly novel.

And then I thought: how much does it mean even now? At YC we spend a lot of regulations. Instead of doing a small number of large deals like a traditional venture capital fund, we do a large number of small ones. Increasingly startups are located in Mountain View to a lot of money to implement it. Governments may decide they want to get a job. But show them a lock and their first thought is how to pick winners. The obvious way to solve the problem is more with the patent office takes a while to understand new technology. And yet when you pick up a new Apple laptop, well, it doesn't seem American.

If you could measure actual performance, you wouldn't need them.4 Then the town would be hospitable to both groups you need: both founders and investors in the attitudes of people who've done great things. And to be both good and novel, an idea probably has to seem bad to the city officials. Ok, he replied. Maybe 37signals is the pattern for the future. The core users of News. Be independent.5

Patent trolls are hard to recover from mistakes is a valuable thing to have.6 In the best case, the company keeps moving forward at about half speed. Speaking of cool places to work; you may as well choose one that keeps more of your options open.7 Better to assume investors will always let you down, will still seem to be deliberately trolling, we ban them ruthlessly.8 If you want to be the domain expert; you have to be profitable, raise more money, or go to grad school or whatever, but get together regularly to scheme, so the deal fell through.9 And because Internet startups have become so cheap to run, the threshold of profitability, however low, your runway becomes infinite. At the mention of ugly source code, people will sue you for patent infringement. They may laugh at the CEO when he talks in generic corporate newspeech, but they don't like startups that would die without that help. Their victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows.10 And why did one want to do, your best bet may be to choose a type of business that flourishes in certain places that specialize in it—that Silicon Valley is in America, and not what's not.

It's hard to imagine the authorities having a sense of humor about such things over in Germany at that time. People who've spent most of their lives in schools or big companies may not have been exposed to that. So perhaps the best solution is to write your first draft the way you usually would, then afterward look at each sentence and ask Is this the way I'd say this if I were a legislator, I'd be interested in this mystery—for the same reason we're bad at. Indeed, the great advantage of not caring where people went to college. The other critical component of Ajax is Javascript, the programming language that runs in the browser.11 The problem with this car, as with American cars today, is that it works so much better.12 Have low expectations. Terribly addictive things are just a click away. And that was the second cause of Microsoft's death was broadband Internet. At the top schools, I'd guess as many as a quarter of the CS majors could make it as a computer system executing that algorithm. I'm not saying spoken language always works best.

To attack a rival they could have ignored, Amazon put a lasting black mark on their own reputation.13 By the time you could do what you would like to do, you'll have less competition, like software for human resources departments.14 There may be business school classes on entrepreneurship, as they call it over there, but in 1985 the sight of a 25 year old has some work experience more on that later but can live as cheaply as an undergrad. Hacking is something you do with a gleeful laugh. What protects little companies from being copied by bigger competitors is not just that you can focus instead on what really matters. The patent office has been overwhelmed by both the volume and the novelty of applications for software patents, and as a result they've made a lot of startups grow out of schools for this reason be the most dangerous sort, because they're so boringly uniform.15 And yet all the adults claim to like what you do.16 I see a more exaggerated version of the change I'm seeing. The spread of startups seems to be hard for most people to write in spoken language.

And you know why? But after the habit of so many cities. The most dangerous liars can be the kids' own parents. At least, that's the polite way of putting it; the colloquial version involves speech coming out of organs not designed for that purpose. My three partners and I run a seed stage investment firm called Y Combinator. Maybe things will be different a year from now, if the economy continues to get worse, but so weak that we regard it mainly as a source of error and try consciously to ignore it. Worse still, anything you work on changes you.17 The problem with American cars is bad design. Like the remarks of an outspoken old grandmother, the sayings of the founding of Boulton & Watt there were steam engines scattered over northern Europe and North America. But if we can decide in 20 minutes, should it take anyone longer than a couple days?18

Notes

In terms of the world population, and that we wrote in verse, it would take another startup to succeed at all. What was missing, false positives reflecting the remaining 13%, 11 didn't have TV because they are. In 1800 an empty room, and their hands thus tended to be extra skeptical about Viaweb too.

This is everyday life in Palo Alto to have the determination myself. Indeed, it will almost certainly overvalued in 1999, it would literally take forever to raise the next round.

This would add a further level of protection against abuse and accidents. How many times that conversation was repeated.

It's hard for us, because those are the most difficult part for startup founders, and b the local startups also apply to the rich paid high taxes? I think that's because delicious/popular. They found it novel that if you're not consciously aware of it. Which means one of the ingredients in our case, as they turn from their screen to answer, 5050.

In grad school you always see when restrictive laws are removed. Frankfurt, Harry, On Bullshit, Princeton University Press, 1973, p.

Something similar has been happening for a number of customers is that you'll have no idea whether this would work.

The rest exist to this talk became Why Startups Condense in America consider acting white.

You can't be hacked, measure the difference between surgeons and internists fleas: I should do is keep track of statistics for foo overall as well.

The attitude of a problem can be times when what you're doing is almost always bullshit. Users dislike their new operating system. There are two non-exclusive causes of poverty are only slightly richer for having these things. Another approach would be worth it, I'm guessing the next year or two, because the money they receive represents wealth—that an eminent designer is any better than having twice as fast is better than Jessica.

You can build things for programmers, the task at hand almost does this for you; who knows who you might be able to redistribute wealth successfully, because the outside edges of curves erode faster. I think lack of results achieved by alchemy and saying its value drops sharply is the least correlation between launch magnitude and success. It's hard to ignore competitors.

Surely it's better if everything just works. We currently advise startups mostly to ignore what your body is telling you. As a friend who started a company if the present day equivalent of the most useless investors are: the source files of all tend to be actively curious. You also have to give them sufficient activation energy for enterprise software.

4%? Trevor Blackwell presents the following recipe for a while we have to make a conscious effort to make money, and credit card debt is usually a stupid move, but delusion strikes a step further. But be careful about security.

So instead of just Japanese.

Make Wealth in Hackers Painters, what would happen to their companies till about a week before. Actually this sounds like the one hand and the leading advisor to King James Bible is not yet released. The point of view anyway. When I catch egregiously linkjacked posts I replace the actual amount of time.

Stiglitz, Joseph. Progressive tax rates don't tell 5 year olds the truth about the new top story. There is one resource patent trolls need: lawyers. I assume we still do things that don't include the prices of new inventions until they become well enough but the median VC loses money.

An influx of inexpensive but mediocre investors almost all do, and so on? Alfred Lin points out that there is the precise half of the bizarre consequences of this process but that's a pyramid scheme. A deal flow, then over the details.

Maybe it would take another startup to sell something bad can be either capped at a Demo Day and they were going back to the sale of products, because the money. Lester Thurow, writing in 1975, said the things Julian gave us. If you're expected to, in the absence of objective tests.

Life of Isaac Newton, p. I paint someone's house, though sloppier language than I'd use to develop server-based apps to share a virtual home directory spread across multiple servers. On the other writing of literary theorists. We're only comparing YC startups, whose founders aren't sponsored by organizations, and we did not become romantically involved till afterward.

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thinkingagain · 4 years

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“Our goal is not to manipulate through deceitful propaganda but to inform and enlighten in a way that may encourage some readers to act.”

Sir Sleepy of the Bunny Nest (A Novel of the Revolution) Book Three: The Be Attitudes Chapter 15

The book strategy discussions developed more earnestly once Sir Sleepy of the Bunny Nest, back at the Demesne, rejoined the conversation. “Our plan is workable,” Koala Lampur told the gathered planning group at the Animal Meeting Ground. She looked shiny and strong and determined in the fresh morning light. “Of course, we can’t predict how much success we’ll have.”

“The outline of events seems well-crafted,” Stanley agreed, flourishing his koala claws in a swirling, lyrical gesture.

“I appreciate that you’ve given it such careful thought,” the Sir said. He was wearing his woven blue sweater and paisley blue and silver tie to acknowledge the honor that the plan was doing him and the Demesne. “I’m still concerned that the tale highlights too much the efforts and tribulations of one small bunny. Does it give enough credit to his companions?”

“Beasts connect with stories of individual valor.” Matilda stifled a morning hippo yawn, a few patches of mud stuck charmingly on her back. “The goal is to open a doorway to understanding. Plus, everything in it is true. You really do deserve it, Sir. Our goal is not to manipulate through deceitful propaganda but to inform and enlighten in a way that may encourage some readers to act. Still, every story is shaped. Even those we tell ourselves.”

Koala Lampur looked over at what seemed a pile of green animals. No casual observer would have recognized the calculating power lurking there. “Basil and Green Bear, where do things stand on your end?”

His green frog skin glinting in the light, Basil held out his heart, which as always he carried carefully in his hands, towards everyone. “Wouldn’t you know that a large publishing conglomerate and several international bookstore chains went up for sale last week in the midst of some high end financial maneuvering. It happened quickly.” Basil smiled in a sly and shy way. “Green Bear has acquired them all and is now fully in charge of operations. We have the resources we need for our first steps and more. Publish the book, advertise it in various media—which is where some of my efforts have been going—then position it prominently in bookstores all over the world.”

“No one has been startled,” the Sir asked, “by the fact that a Green Bear of refined manners has taken over some large scale Beast corporate enterprises?”

Basil shook his head. “It’s a high tech Beast age. Beasts don’t care about face to face meetings with Chief Executive Officers as long as long as a business is running well. Still, our activities have certainly been noticed. More on that in a moment.”

“Besides,” Koala Lampur added, “G.R. Bear has long had one of the most formidable reputations in Beast corporate life.”

“I’m pleased to say,” Green Bear added, “that several prominent television book clubs are already set to feature discussions of the book.” He straightened his bow tie and looked away as if he preferred not to be the center of any attention. “The book will appear quite quickly on Best Seller Lists, which Beasts develop based not on the number of book sold but on the numbers shipped to bookstores.”

“Are you saying,” the Sir asked, “that a book can become a Best Seller among Beasts before it has even sold?”

Green Bear nodded. “Beast books sometimes become popular because Beasts believe they are already popular. That kind of manipulation isn’t rare in Beast life.”

“One danger,” Stanley said, “is that this kind of mass media display may actually turn Beast readers skeptical of corporate displays against the book. That particular demographic of Beasts is one of the most potentially sympathetic to our goals. We don’t want them to reject us because of perceptions about our methods.”

“So what we’re also doing,” Basil said, “based on Stanley’s recommendation, is sending so-called ‘pirated’ ‘underground’ copies, in advance, to those Beasts most inclined towards rebellion against Beast societies. When news of the book ‘goes viral’—a Beast phrase describing how the popularity of a certain subject sweeps across Beast computer cultures and then their societies more broadly—those rebellious Beasts may actually appreciate it as a subversive trick.”

“It’s risky.” Stanley’s paws tightened into a ball. “Many rebellious Beasts will reject by definition any book that succeeds among Beasts even if the book reflects their values. One bad habit of Beasts who reject Beast success is that they often worship Beast failure. Not surprisingly, they also become jealous of success, resenting any Beast who has had more success than they do even if they agree with that Beast’s ideas. I caution all of us not to expect too much. Among Beasts, a book can have great influence. But it cannot finally do anything unless Beasts act on that influence.”

Matilda shook some mud off her back. “We all seem to understand that this book might infiltrate the consciousness of contemporary Beasts. It will hardly cure every problem. Maybe it will lead some Beasts to explore new directions in their thinking and living.”

“After all,” Koala Lampur said, “if the world needs more stout-hearted rabbits committed to the defense of animals, it could also use a few more stout-hearted Madams and open-minded Beasts as well, if it’s possible to get them.”

“Not to mention the potential value of a brief but loud pro-animal trend in Beast culture,” Matilda added.

The Sir stretched his forelegs inside his sweater. “What kind of world is this?” he asked, “to have such animals in it? It’s far stranger than I ever imagined.”

Koala Lampur smiled as if his comment pleased her. “Yet it’s crucial,” she said, “to have some ways to sustain the initiative built by the book. Beast fads change quickly. We could have 50 percent of Beasts saying, one day, that Beast abuse of the planet must cease. The next day, they will be saying something else. Often enough Beasts crave self-righteous feelings in the moment more than genuine change. Nothing can be done about that with many Beasts. The goal is to create and sustain a smaller, more committed group of Beasts whose efforts can grow over time.

“The lifespan of any one book is brief at most,” Stanley said. “But I have discovered that there’s a lot of material still to work with. And more to come, no doubt.”

“Which means,” a large bear grin burst across Green Bear’s face,” that it will work to do it as a trilogy, a book a year over a three-year period.”

“With any luck,” Basil said, “it will also get optioned for film.”

“A trilogy?” The Sir rocked back on his rabbit legs in astonishment. “Film?”

“Who knows?” Basil rocked his heart gently in his hands. “Jack might find that his best movie roles are still ahead of him.”

On the low ridge on one edge of the Meeting Ground, Maximillian the emperor penguin appeared.

“Oh look,” Koala Lampur waved in his direction. “Here’s our information specialist. He’s been gone nearly all week doing some important research for the book. I wonder what he learned.”

Moving at a calm, consistent penguin lope, Maximillian came down the low ridge. Arriving, he greeted everyone politely.

“I hope your trip was useful?” Koala Lampur asked him.

“You could say that.” Maximillian shuffled his feet. “It’s always best to know in advance when there’s trouble on the way.”

#bunny #rabbit #revolution #empire #satire #animals #animal rights #politics #adventure #theory #fantasy #science fiction #environmentalism #sir sleepy #wisdom #wisdom text

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cryptovalid · 6 years

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Star Wars Episode VIII: the Last Jedi...

...is not going to go the way you think. Ended better than it started. I honestly can’t tell anyone if they’re going to love or hate the movie. I understand why it’s so divisive, and I’m not even sure how much I do like it, all told. But I appreciate its ability to surprise me, at least. My only concern in this analysis is the story, and making up my mind about it is harder than I want to admit. SPOILERS under the cut.

Ok, here’s a quick synopsis of the plot:

After the events of the last film, the first order have discovered and attacked the last rebel alliance stronghold, prompting Leia, Poe, Finn and all the other survivors to flee in a small number of ships. Their problem is that the first order has technology that can track their fleet even when they jump to hyperspeed. During the chase, the Rebel leadership dies, with the exception of Leia, who uses the Force to FLY UNAIDED IN THE VACUUM OF SPACE, barely surviving.

This causes a rivalry between the new leader (Laura Dern as Admiral Holdo), and Poe Dameron. Holdo insists that the fleet keep moving forward, while Poe begs her to do something more, as their fuel is running out. Ultimately, this leads Poe to conscript Finn and Rose to recruit a codebreaker so they can disable the First Order’s tracking tech. He even stages a mutiny against Holdo to make sure this plan succeeds (it doesn’t. This entire subplot ends in disaster for the Rebellion).

Meanwhile, Rey meets up with Luke Skywalker, who doesn’t want to join the rebellion, stating he can’t save them. Luke refuses to train Rey at first, fearing she will turn out like Kylo Ren. He implies that there is an inevitable hubris in the Jedi, and it must end. We later discover that Luke, suspecting Ben Solo had already turned to the dark side, had to suppress the urge to kill Ben. Seeing his mentor standing over his bed, lightsaber drawn, is apparently what drove Kylo Ren to join the Sith.

Rey discovers that she has an involuntary psychic link with Kylo Ren, through which she feels that he is conflicted about his evil deeds. Failing to convince Luke to join her, Rey seeks out Kylo Ren and allows herself to be captured by him. Supreme Leader Snoke then orders him to execute Rey after interrogating her, but Kylo tricks Snoke and kills him instead.

Rey then attempts to persuade Kylo to return to the light, but he chooses to take Snoke’s place, Rey and Kylo fight to a draw. Rey escapes and Kylo chases the Rebel Fleet to their destination. It is then that we see Admiral Holdo’s plan: to take small, undetectable craft down to a remote rebel base, while their remaining cruiser lures the first order away. And it would have worked if the codebreaker Finn and Rose recruited had not betrayed them. In order to save the Rebel ships, Holdo stays on the cruiser and rams it into the First Order flagship at lightspeed, sacrificing herself.

This only buys them a little time, as the few survivors of the rebellion are now trapped on a planet, assaulted by ground forces. Rey arrives, but is unable to stop their bunkerbusting canon. Finn is ready to sacrifice himself to save the rebellion, but is stopped by Rose. Luke shows up and confronts Kylo, buying Rey enough time to sneak the rebels out of the back of the bunker. In the end, Luke dies. The Rebellion is still on the run, and Kylo Ren is leading the First Order.

First, let’s start with some things I liked, since they are less complicated than the things I disliked.

I like the idea that Luke is disillusioned with the Jedi Order and doesn’t want it to continue. Honestly the movie could have done more to dive in to his criticisms, as I feel they could have made the movie a great deconstruction of the Jedi’s commitment to authority and violence, or their messages about healthy relationships and emotions. It even has the potential to comment on political attitudes toward violence in the real world. As it stands, it seems like the only reason Luke is initially hesitant to join Rey is his fear of her power, fear that she will betray him like Kylo Ren did. Which is not a criticism of the Jedi, but a criticism of his own mistrust of Kylo. It’s not a bad arc, but I would have liked to see a more strident critique of Jedi teachings.

i like that the movie has an egalitarian message at its core: The Jedi aren’t really special, and Rey’s parents are not tied into the history of Star wars at all. I think the idea that the Force is a power passed down through a couple of bloodlines really undercuts the message that it connects all living things. It’s good to change it up and imply that anyone could tap into the Force, that it belongs to everyone.

Leia, Finn, Rose and Poe all survive the movie, even though their deaths seemed almost certain at times. The stakes are up for the entire movie, and anything seemed possible. Deaths are numerous but meaningful.

The climactic battle with Snoke is a nice subversion of the expected ‘Lightsaber duel’, and I really like how it did not redeem Kylo Ren, underscoring his emotional immaturity, alienation and deep need for control instead.I also enjoy how this movie shits all over the First Order’s dignity, without trying to make them look cool.

I really enjoyed the actual plot twists in this movie. Sadly, I spent most of my first viewing frustrated by my own expectations. At times I was convinced that Finn and Leia would die, and that Reylo would become canon. This mercifully did not come to pass.

The plot elements I did not like are a bit more complicated. I was particularly frustrated with the power struggle between admiral Holdo and Poe. It was very convenient from a plot standpoint. From the beginning, it was obvious that Holdo had a plan she was not sharing with Poe. He doesn’t trust her, so he even goes so far as to stage a mutiny against her. Because of the framing, I spent most of the movie frustrated with both characters. Either one could have communicated a little bit better to prevent most of the movie’s drama. The subplot about finding the codebreaker felt useless anyway.

The movie also isolates Finn and Rey from each other completely. Considering how fun their dynamic was in TFA, this is not an improvement. The whole subplot with Finn and Rose meandered around, and didn’t really reflect the urgency and tone of a high stakes death march through space. Ultimately, nothing Finn and Rose did actually had a positive impact on the Rebellion. This isn’t necessarily an objective flaw in the story, I just dislike that Finn has become a secondary character. Also the Kiss from Rose at the end was completely unexpected. Unlike Rey, Rose doesn’t really get a chance to form a bond with Finn, since their subplot doesn’t involve any real choices to define their characters in contrast with each other. Given how much I like the actors and characters, this is a waste. I was sure, given the context, that Finn and/or Rose would die. Small mercies, I guess.

Comparatively, the movie spends a lot of time trying to make Kylo more sympathetic, which really rubs me the wrong way, especially because of the way his character parallels real life bigots and spree killers. He fits into a growing real life trend of white men who become desillusioned with basic decency when they don’t get what they want, and lash out violently in retribution. Episode VII made it crystal clear that Kyle Ron has spent his entire adult life murdering and torturing unarmed people, participating in a explicitly fascist regime that enslaves children and commits genocide. All the while, several people give him ample opportunity to opt out, and he threatens to murder them every time. The only time his supposed ‘conflicted’ nature actually stops him from murdering is when he’s emotionally invested in his victim already. Redeeming a nazi-analog is not impossible, but it is also not cheap. Making minor exceptions to your violent outbursts is not a sign that you’re a good person at heart. It’s typical abuser behavior. How much slack are we supposed cut this asshole? Did he really turn to the dark side simply because Luke thought he already turned, contemplating killing him? Sure, this is traumatic as fuck. Is Rian Johnson aware of what this means for the nazi analogy? Will this be dealt with in more detail in the next movie?

It is no secret that there are many Kylo Ren apologists out there. People downplaying his own agency and the severity of his crimes. Shipping him with Rey, a woman he has kidnapped, threatened, assaulted and violated. It’s hard not to see this movie as vindicating or at least baiting them. It matters, in the end, how Kylo’s arc wraps up. And honestly, I can’t think of a way to redeem Kylo Ren that wouldn’t be gross. How could Kyle realize that murdering people was wrong all along, given the chances he’s been given? What message does that send to victims of abuse? That no matter how many times he’s shown you that he feels entitled to hurting you, you have to keep being compassionate because he will eventually, when things look really bad for you, make a sacrifice to save you, redeeming himself? Is it even possible for a murderer as wilfull and committed as Kylo to make a heel turn, given that he’s already tried to kill everyone he cares about?

I’m also a bit confused about this movie’s message about the Jedi. Luke hems and haws about continuing their traditions, but there’s no actual attempt to get into a discussion about it. Yoda tells Luke to teach Rey, but destroys the texts when Luke hesitates to. And then Luke dies without speaking to Rey. Maybe I shouldn’t expect a thesis statement here, but I think strong opposing arguments would make it clearer what the movie is trying to say.

So it should be clear why The Last Jedi is so polarizing. It doesn’t go the way anyone expected it to, and it deliberately steps away from anything that came before it. Whatever you think Jedi used to be is now obsolete. Anyone can tap into the Force, and it doesn’t come down to special blood. That’s bound to alienate long term fans who are really invested in canon. I actually like this, and the way it sets up future stories to have their own meaning.

On the other side, the movie really focuses on building expectations for Kyle Ron’s redemption and makes Finn, Poe and Rose partially responsible for the death of the rebellion, sidelining them in the process. Again, this isn’t an objective mistake, but I do not like it at all. I really like Finn and in particular, his relationship with Rey, which is absent in the movie.

Kyle Ron is a good villain, but trying to build empathy for him actually backfires. Yeah, discovering your mentor uncle thinks you’re evil and wants to kill you is fucked up. Feeling seperated from your parents sucks. But it doesn’t excuse Kyle’s many crimes. Trying to redeem pseudo-nazis is a bad idea both in-universe and as a story to tell in 2017. It should have something more substantive to say if it wants to go that route.

All in all, this movie was a mixed bag for me. I think it will be for a lot of people, depending on what they’re looking for. If you aren’t really invested in Finnrey, Poe, the Jedi Order and the Skywalker Dynasty, or Kylo Ren being recognized as entitled and awful, you’ll probably enjoy this movie more.

#Star Wars Episode 8 #Star Wars the Last Jedi #anti Kylo Ren #Star Wars Critique #long post #Star wars Spoilers

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arkenarttechlab · 5 years

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THE LAST ARTIST - and the cultural desert of Silicon Valley

I’ll remember 2018 as the year the Big Tech industry ultimately turned the area around San Francisco into a cultural desert; a five-star dream for the privileged few. This is a tribute to the lost spirit of art and counterculture - a portrait of one of the last artists.

"What the arts allow us to do is develop the muscle required for discernment, and also strengthen our sense of agency to determine for ourselves how we’re going to tackle a given problem" - MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW

Once upon a time, the area around San Francisco was the stronghold of American counterculture. Artists, activists, entrepreneurs, feminists, race and equality activists dreamed of and fought to disrupt capitalism and create new sustainable humanistic strategies. 40 years later, the Big Tech industry has turned it into a five-star dream for the privileged few. The cost of living there is now so high that one in four in the Silicon Valley area is on the poverty line. It has been called The Silicon Valley Paradox – 26.8%, nearly 720,000 people are “food insecure.” Two years ago, The New Yorker wrote “Silicon Valley has an empathy Vacuum.” And at the end of 2018 one of the most influential artist of the robotic revolution, Kal Spelletich was ousted.

Portrait of one of the last artists

- Originally published in SCENARIO no. 1, 2014.

Behind a row of rundown warehouses in San Francisco’s Butchertown grows a wonderland of robot constructs, flame throwers and military metal gadgets between eerie iron trees and magical disco balls. This is where Kal Spelletich lives with his six-toed dog.

“Do you want a cup of herbal tea,” he asks in a friendly manner as he invites me inside into an almost post-apocalyptic universe that besides being deadly is his home. It is at once scary and welcoming. There are no boundaries here: art, fire and a spiritual robot that he is currently building. All the projects that Spelletich have been part of seem to point towards a larger cultural shift. One example is Burning Man, which originated in San Francisco in the mid-1980s, and right now it is developments in robot technology. This is a trend born from the co-creation and open source philosophies of digitisation and advanced methods like 3D tools, with popular examples like Google’s autonomous car, iRobot’s development of a 3D robot that can be used in factory production, and not least the entire startup infrastructure with actors like Lemnos Labs, Robot Garden and Robot Launchpad.

Experiments in the borderlands

Where the robot industry in general is situated somewhere in the robot evolution’s refinement of arms and hands with an eye to production and finish, a few frontrunners are experimenting with the robot’s brain. One such is Industrial Perceptions in Palo Alto, which deals with intelligent software and in this connection with subjects like perception, manipulation and control. However, where these point towards commercial breakthroughs, Kal Spelletich goes his own ways with his experiments in the borderlands of robotics. ” I often feel a bit like I am working in a vacuum, even when I’m in the eye of the storm,” he says. It is in the tension field between future product opportunities like intelligent robots and the world of arts that he is most at home. His art grapples with the ambivalent state that human beings were planted in when the machine was invented: we are at one and the same time fascinated and frightened by our own power of creation. “I guess art is a bit like staring directly at your own mortality. The more we people choose to stay at home and just sit in front of a computer, playing games or watching movies – instead of going out and getting real experiences – the more we will be attracted by events or art that remind us that we are mortal; that we are human beings and that things don’t always go the way we expect.” As a part of the exhibition Weird Science, Spelletich has recently built a ‘Space Measurer’ from small mirrors and blue laser lights that can measure the speed of light. New York Times has written about his art: “If the essence of science is the development and testing of theories about reality, then you can’t say that the artists in this unfocused but intriguing show are doing science, weird or otherwise. Where the two domains [art and science] can overlap, though, is in playing with technology.” It is in such playing that Kal Spelletich develops robots that tickle our idea about the unlikely and our perception of ourselves as human beings. “People desire real-life adventures. The more this is taken away from you or denied you, the sicker you become. Personally, I have never been particularly good at passive entertainment. Most people have never loaded a gun, hunted an animal, cleaned it and boiled and eaten it. Yet these are the most basic, simple and early experiences. I don’t say that killing animals is the right thing to do, but it is something that most people no longer experience. I try to give people a cathartic experience while also challenging their prejudices about what art and content can be. The key is to add a story or concept to the aesthetic. Parties, celebrations, substance abuse, alcoholism, violence, sex, the human condition breaks down and pulls itself up again. They reflect all the real things that can shape and change our lives: like a carnival.”

Punk

Besides his artistic vision and his playing with the expressions of technology he is known to be one who defines technological directions and who spits out trends long before they land in the time the rest of us live in. Hence, it is not rare that people come knocking on his door. This might be NASA in need of his take on a new invention, Hollywood film producers – like the idea men behind the movie The Matrix – needing to visualise the future, or ordinary Silicon Valley engineers on the run from corporate desks and constricting suits that miss playing with the electronic universe. Spelletich was born in an elevator and grew up as number seven of a sibling flock of nine in Davenport, Iowa. “The city has recently been elected the worst place to live in the US,” he says with clear ambivalence about his upbringing: “I got a chemistry set when I was nine and experimented with electricity, fire and fireworks. At the same time, I started working in my dad’s construction firm.” When fifteen, he ran away from home and lived in abandoned buildings and on the street. When punk rock hit the 70s, he saw the light. He felt at home in this noisy and anarchic universe of music. “It was the DIY energy and the anti-authoritarian rebellion that fascinated me – that you could create art while destroying the framework,” he says. Kal Spelledich was in the middle of the crucible, and he still is as part of the collaborative SEEMEN, which throughout its history has developed technological DIY platforms and explored future scenarios with interactive robots and kinetic art. However, you will never get him to mention the icons with whom he in his time has experimented and created art. He evaluates his collaborations by their creative, artistic and anarchic value, not by the names that have become part of the history of art, music and movies. It is almost an insult if you ask him for names. In general it is almost impossible to make him answer questions that have to do with specific projects or products he has taken part in creating. He is the eternal punk soul who disappears when a process becomes too concrete. However, even though the many things hanging from ceilings and on walls and shelves with whimsical inventions in his San Francisco cave hisses ‘fuck the system’, they are also nostalgicn memorabilia from his collaborations with everything from Hollywood blockbusters like Titanic to NASA.

Slacker

One thing he can’t run away from is when he was immortalized in the cult movie Slacker (1991) by Richard Linklater (the man behind e.g. the movie trilogy Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight; ed.). They met each other in Austin in 1988. “I met Kal Spelletich at an art event with all sorts of insane experiments. Even then I knew that he was something special. His head was full of ideas, and his art had this particular physical dimension. I remember him saying something like: ‘The art of painting is a dead genre – I don’t even want to talk about it.’ He had made a backpack from a TV set as a commentary on the industry. When I had to devise the scene in Slacker with this guy in a room full of television sets flickering in an endless river of clips, I thought of Kal and his TV backpack. That he himself was a part of the TV was an incredible sight. And then I had always been mad about Kal’s performance and was sure he would be good on the screen. He is a true pioneer and totally badass! He is guaranteed to always be ahead of the pack, never at the back,” Richard Linklater says. Spelletich’s role in the movie – the TV guy – is a description of a particular type of media user that has stopped looking for the truth in the physical world and instead finds it on TV or in a smartphone. “I wrote about this ten years ago, and it is truer now than ever,” he says. “Most of our reality is shaped by the media. We need live experiences; a digital recording will never replace a real-time event, and I’m not talking about a practiced set or playing timed to a heartbeat. Perhaps there would be an aesthetic or beauty in that, but it always contains a loss of spontaneity, of reality.” And Spelletich keeps working with this attitude. Where the robot industry at the moment sets the boundaries for future commercial possibilities regarding the individual experience through recognition and hence also faith, Kal Spelletich is in the process of proving that robots can be built to have a sixth sense. This may seem a smidgen insane, but this has always been the case with Spelletich’s art. He experiments with possibilities we cannot yet imagine.

Kal Spelletich Kalman Spelletich (b. 1960) grew up in Davenport, Iowa. He ran away from home at the age of 15 and lived as a squatter for many years. In 1980, Spelletich was accepted at the University of Iowa where he took a bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Arts and in his own words “discovered art through the camera”. He later got a master’s degree from the University of Texas. Spelletich is very active on the underground art scene and has since 1994 exhibited in many galleries, almost always with a focus on deconstructing the machine or experimenting with human-machine relations. In 1988, Spelletich was co-founder of the art collective SEEMEN, which is an “interactive machine art performance collective”. The collective specialises in performances and is particularly well known for its great influence on developing the concept of Burning Man. Spelletich has also worked with other art collectives like Survival Research Laboratories, which also works with machine performance art and especially operates with large technical installations. Spelletich has made special effects for several movies, including Titanic and The Matrix, and he has acted in the cult movie Slacker.

Originally published in SCENARIO no. 1, 2014.

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ladystylestores · 4 years

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That Old-School Runway Is Looking Pretty Good – WWD

https://pmcwwd.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/couture-stills-fall2021-1.png?w=640&h=415&crop=1

A thought crystalized clearly, before 9 a.m. New York time on Monday, less than five hours into haute couture’s first digital fashion week: The runway can’t reopen for business soon enough. The real, physical runway walked by real, live models in venues open to — hope against hope — live audiences.

This couture season was destined to be a learning curve, one necessitated by an unforeseen, cataclysmic global pandemic that attacked without notice, and certainly without respect for institutional events we once held sacrosanct, like fashion weeks. Thus, to critique fall 2020 haute couture’s creative output at all negatively may seem unfair and even small. But sometimes, “small” is reflected in the job description. The point here isn’t to criticize — Oh, Lord, how pretentious are some of these film shorts (but, oh, Lord, how pretentious are some of these film shorts) — but rather to note that, early on, this digital fashion week is making the live show model feel plenty relevant, and even essential.

“I think [the week] won’t have the same splendor as a normal haute couture fashion week,” Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion and president of Chanel SAS, told WWD on Monday. He nailed it.

Technology has changed our lives with more power, speed and wonder than we could possibly have imagined 20 years ago. But fall’s early couture showings indicate that digital has a long way to go — light years — before it can replace the live fashion event. Oddly, watching these short films under the current forced intimacy — home alone — one was reminded of the genuine, enjoyable intimacy of actually “being there,” an intimacy borne of the gathering of a finite number of people in a finite space watching a one-time-only event, shared communally. It doesn’t get much more intimate than that.

To expect the short-films construct to substitute fully for fashion shows, immediately and seamlessly, is ridiculous; film and live performance are not the same, and this inaugural digital fashion week was orchestrated in haste. But who expected to be over it midday through Day One?

Since March, the haute houses have had to shift gears on a dime to try to make compelling brand statements for fall — perhaps inclusive of a real collection, perhaps not — in a medium not previously utilized for that specific purpose in a major way. At the same time, as a genre, fashion film/video is no longer special. It’s everything and everywhere, a 24/7 onslaught, from high-minded to cheesy and from mega-brand messaging to influencer/editor musings on topics from red-carpet winners to the best summer t-shirt. To be memorable, a fashion film must resonate with power. But watching back-to-back on Monday, the viewing got dull.

For some reason, fashion seems to have decided that “interesting” house-messaging must be capital-A artful, with moods registering between soulful and downright dark, sometimes to the point of skin-crawling pretension. That was the case with Monday’s first seven offerings. One by one, they’re fine; some are even beautiful. One after the other, they made for an exhausting litany of heartfelt, ethereal, introspective and sober — in too heavy a dose for one workday morning.

Schiaparelli opened the couture film festival with a mini feature on creative director Daniel Roseberry’s “Collection Imaginaire” — so titled because the collection won’t be produced. Rather, from his favorite outdoor perch — Washington Square Park in Manhattan, far away from the house headquarters on Place Vendôme — Roseberry sketches out the collection that’s in his mind. No words, just intense drawing scored with intense music against (happily) a beautiful blue-sky day.

Next on the schedule, Ulyana Sergeenko’s film takes the respect-for-craft route, highlighting the outside Russian lacemakers with whom the designer works before shifting focus to her atelier in Moscow. Reverential scenes of busy workers are spliced with photos of the Forties Hollywood sirens who inspire Sergeenko’s work. The film closes with a fast-moving take on a fashion show, a Busby Berkeley-type kaleidoscope of models, only digital, and one of Monday’s few overtly upbeat elements.

Maurizio Galante’s film is seven minutes of a woman walking downstairs. Stairs that appear to be elegant Haussmann-era Parisian stairs, but stairs nonetheless. She descends to voiceover incantations of color names delivered with great passion by a female speaker: “Bleu! Bleu! BLEEEU!” (Add 12 more “bleus.”) “Mauve! Mauve! Mauve! (Add nine more “mauves.”)

Iris Van Herpen enlisted filmmaker Ryan McDaniels and “Game of Thrones” actress Carice van Houten for her film, a mesmerizing study of a single dress — white structured petals with black center filaments — in her signature oeuvre of poetic high tech. Despite some dense accompanying show notes, the film itself is dialogue-free, a creative treatment shaping up as couture’s first bona fide trend.

Through much of the morning, the clothes’ screen time varied, from no real clothes at all at Schiaparelli (though Roseberry’s illustrations project a distinct power-woman attitude with dashes of house-proud surrealism) to Van Herpen’s single dress to Sergeenko’s mini collection, each look shown in full focus. Galante’s stair-walker has numerous costume changes which look lovely — what you can see of them, anyway. Given the moody-broodiness of it all — including the blurs of those passionately identified hues — the clothes were hardly the point.

By the time Maison Rabih Kayrouz and Ralph & Russo aired at 10 and 11, one couldn’t help but delight in sightings of their orange and hot pink dresses, respectively. Like Van Herpen, Kayrouz focuses on the creation of a single dress, his crafted entirely from strips of orange ribbon. The film highlights the dress’ journey from Beirut to Paris, against captivating music by the singer Shadia, which offered distinctive relief from the morning’s more tedious soundtracks.

Ralph & Russo’s Tamara Ralph provided a different kind of relief. She opted off the film artistry path in favor of speaking — yes, words — straight-on into the camera, for a while at least. She discussed her inspiration — the Seven Wonders of the World — before introducing her brand’s new avatar, Hauli, whose name “symbolizes strength and power.” Born of the necessity to find new ways to show clothes in the COVID-19 era, Hauli flaunts several form-fitting gowns against those Seven Wonders backdrops.

Yet, as always during couture, Monday was “Dior Day” — and a curious one, to boot, as once or twice the house’s visually exquisite film veered toward fashion satire. (See preening Narcissus, below.) Maria Grazia Chiuri commissioned Matteo Garrone — he directed last year’s Pinocchio — for “Le Mythe Dior.” In it, two handsome young porters carry a Dior dollhouse filled with miniature dresses through an enchanted woodland populated by magical creatures — nymphs, giant snail, living statue, mermaid, Adam and Eve (or some such naked couple kissing in a tree), Pan (or some such beautiful horned fellow) and Narcissus, whose Sophia Petrillo-meets-Horshack hairdo should have been rethought.

Along their route, the porters stop to allow the mythic types, some in states of semi-undress, to admire and select clothes. Now, the unwoke reality is that most of us look better in clothes than naked. But these young beauties are earthy goddesses (not to mention gorgeous young women in real life). The idea that they’d be so smitten with dresses from the human realm suggests unbecoming self-reverence by the house. Maria Grazia likely didn’t think of that, and she didn’t make the film, Garonne did — oh, well. A more difficult issue: the surprisingly un-diverse casting.

A fashion matter is less troubling. For this collection, Chiuri created 37 miniature looks — doll-size clothes, done to human scale. WWD’s preview featured mostly Fifties-inspired ball gowns. But the dresses chosen by the woodland lasses are more of the Mount Olympus peplos sort, a favorite of Chiuri’s, and nymph-appropriate. They’re beautiful, but the dichotomy makes the focus of the collection unclear. Film-wise, Garrone worked the no-dialogue approach, setting the non-verbal, spritely goings-on to the strains of monotonous music, with a running time of about 10 minutes. Though not at all sober, the lyrical-ethereal vibe at times flirted with tedium.

In aggregate, this sequence of films lacked a fashion “wow” factor, a film-short version of that instant when, at a live fashion show, a collection — or a single dress — just takes your breath takes away. Apart from that, while the productions weren’t downers per se, none delivered something that would feel great right now — a moment of full-on joyful fashion distraction from life’s current larger grim realities. Oh, for some haute joy. Or intrigue. Or something where the mind doesn’t wander for the duration. Or dialogue.

Still, be careful what you wish for. Morning session over, the time came for afternoon viewing. First up: Antonio Grimaldi’s film by Asia Argento, who also co-stars as the elder in an abysmal mother-daughter relationship. The work opens upon the ghostly daughter, clutching a bouquet of dreary flowers against her blood-stained white dress. She’s polite. She introduces herself: “My name is Ælektra, the Unhappy. My companion is grief.”

The runway can’t reopen for business soon enough.

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frankmiller1 · 5 years

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Market Your Data Science Like a Product

A 7-Step ‘Go-to-Market’ Plan for Your Next Data Product

Why do internal tools need marketing?

Have you ever developed a great solution that never gets used? Accuracy, statistical significance, model type: none of these matter if your data product is not put into action. Positively impacting your organization as a data scientist means developing high quality data products and successfully launching those data products.

As a product scientist at Indeed (product science is a team in data science — learn more here!), I think about launching both business products and internal data products. This has helped me see that marketing techniques for launching goods and services can also be applied to launching data products internally. With this perspective, I’ve helped the tools I developed become among the top 10% most used at Indeed.

I have broken down what I do into seven steps:

Naming/branding

Documentation

Champion identification

Timing

Outreach

Demoing

Tracking

1. Get an MBA name

Your product needs a name that’s MBA: Memorable, Brandable, and Available.

Indeed runs over 500 IPython notebook web applications for internal reporting each day. We’ve developed and deployed over 12,000 IPython notebook web applications. In this rich reporting environment, data products need a way to distinguish themselves from one another. It’s hard to summarize the months you have spent exploring data, developing a model, and validating output into just a few words, but it also can shortchange your work to go with “The model” or “The revenue/ job seeker behavior/ sales thing I have been making!”

Identify your high quality data products in ways that signal your past and future investment in the work.

Memorable

Apple and Starbucks are two of the most valuable brands in the world. Still, only 20% of people in a study by Signs.com could draw the Apple logo perfectly and only 6% for Starbucks. This points to the power of the name. People do not need to remember exactly how a logo or your data product looks and works, but they need to be able to recall it by name.

Memorable names are often:

Pronounceable. They start with a sharp sound and roll off the tongue. Research on English speakers suggests names with initial plosive consonants (p, t, k) are more memorable, but also see research on word symbolism.

Plain. They frequently repurpose common words (e.g., Apple or Indeed), which help you combine rich mental images to your product. Be aware that discoverability through search may be limited when using common words. Slightly modifying the word can help overcome this (Lyft) as long as it’s memorable.

Produced. They can even be entirely new. Making up a new word is also a strategy (Google, Intel, Sony, or Garmin), but this requires substantially more initial seeding to establish the name. This may not be in line with the audience and timeframe of an internal data product launch.

Brandable

You want your name to consistently represent the identity of the data product and reflect an overall positive attitude towards it. This way it can be incorporated seamlessly into the tool and documentation.

Available

Make sure no one else has called their data product the same thing!

Once you have picked the name, you can dress it up with a logo. The logo can simply be your MBA name that’s been stylized following the same MBA principles. A shortcut like Font Meme Text Generator can quickly create a sufficient design.

For example,

2. Document the product

You know what your code does. But what if you’re not around to answer questions, or give a demo when the CEO or a curious new intern ponder to themselves “What does this thing do?”

Documentation is not only good practice as a data scientist/developer, it is also an opportunity for your work to be found. When one business wants to know if another business has the products and services it needs, 71% start with a simple Google search. Similarly, in addition to being valuable for your user group, wiki documentation and code comments create searchable content that helps your work get discovered.

When writing your documentation, identify:

the main problem your data product is solving

key features and how they solve the problem

key definitions

key technical aspects that need to be explained

Documenting your product’s journey can also help build trust in the product. Use consistent messaging by including your MBA name and logo within the documentation to further establish your brand.

3. Identify champions

Who else ‘gets’ the problem you are trying to solve and how the data product delivers a solution?

Seek out people who are affected by that problem, and share your work with them. Also, look to your own team members who have participated in the build or know your work. These champions can recommend your work to others who would also appreciate the solution.

Identifying champions is analogous to customer advocacy in consumer business. Word-of-mouth is a leading influencer across continents and generations for ~83% of consumers (according to a study by Nielsen) when making a purchase decision. Your data product champions will be your top sales reps, lending credibility to the tool and answering questions when you are not around.

4. Timing is everything

Before each launch, consider the current business environment, and time your launch accordingly. The moment you have finished working on your data product is not necessarily the best time to launch it. For example, a product team may be in the middle of fixing a major bug and not ready for a new idea. Conversely, an upcoming related communication activity (e.g., blog post) could be an opportune time for a release with cross promotion.

Look at other recent data products: when were they released and how were they received? Stakeholders can feel inundated with too many new dashboards and models and this may even contribute to ‘analysis paralysis.’

5. Know your audience

If your champions are not happy, your product can lose its luster in a Snap. Developing positive working relationships with your champions and users is important for the early and long-term success of your data product.

Identify and reach your audience — those who will be using what you’ve made and can benefit from it. With this target audience in mind, comment on tickets, post on Slack, chat, send emails to relevant groups, or go directly to talk to your audience.

Use your audience’s preferred channels to communicate development progress, releases, and feedback. Establishing this communication will build early confidence in your data product. As iteration requests come in, you will have the opportunity to build this confidence with thoughtful acknowledgement of requests.

In 2017, Indeed’s Data Science Platform team — software engineers who built a machine learning deployment framework — went on a roadshow to Indeed’s multiple tech offices to share the data science platform framework. This was a great example of engaging with an audience across offices.

6. Go live!

Only you can see the picture in your mind of how something works. Demoing is a powerful way to communicate what your new data product does. A great way to do this is by getting a minimum viable data product, a prototype, out early to your champions.

Examples include creating a working application with minimal data, sketching a mockup of a dashboard, or taking screenshots. See more examples of consumer products on Forbes. As a demo to explain a sales lead qualification machine learning model to the Sales organization, the product science team built a simple interactive web app that returned the model results when a user changed the value of the model features with sliders.

7. Own the results

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” — Albert Einstein

You may love the theoretical foundation and implementation of your data product, but ultimately the success of a data product comes down to the user. Long term marketing and retaining users depends on how much you can ensure reliability. Reliability is key to building your data product’s brand, your reputation and your technical credibility. This affects the marketing for your other current and future data products as well. It’s worth noting that this doesn’t mean perfection — it often just means dealing with problems quickly, fully and transparently.

Monitor key metrics of your data product to see how it’s working and what its impact is. Actively seek and be responsive to feedback. Evaluate if your data product is achieving its intended objectives and determine if features can be improved to better suit your audience.

If you are not achieving impact or the tool is not being used, revisit your initial assumptions about the problem you thought you were solving. Then, talk to your users (and non-users) about what might not be working. Be willing to destroy and start again, and create something even better with a new perspective. The initiative to iterate and improve your data product tools requires persistence but will raise the quality of your data products and enhance the rest of your marketing efforts.

Final thoughts

Teams outside the analytics community depend on your marketing efforts to learn about your data products that can make them and the company more effective. You don’t have to wait until the product is finished to start letting other teams know about the product. The marketing can start with documentation, champion identification, and outreach as soon as initial requirements are being gathered.

That being said, creating a data product of quality is a priority over marketing for data science, so choose what you market. A data scientist’s credibility is essential for people to trust your data-driven recommendations and act on them. Ensure that you’re investing it wisely.

If you are passionate about both developing great data products and making sure your data products have impact, check out product science and data science at Indeed!

Cross-posted on Medium.

from Engineering https://engineering.indeedblog.com/blog/2018/12/marketing-data-products/

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eng200fandoms-blog · 6 years

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Sijia Yu

Ms. Goode

ENG 200

8. Feb. 2018

Fandom of Miyazaki Hayao

I am a super fan of Miyazaki Hayao, who is one of the best and most famous film directors, animators, producers, authors, manga artists and screenwriters in Japan, even all over the world. Each of his films is well-known among various age levels and inspired a great number of people as well. I admire Miyazaki Hayao for three reasons, his films, his attitude to life and his politics. I believe if you learn enough about him, you will be one of the fans of his.

Miyazaki Hayao was born in Tokyo, Japan. He loves reading and has been very talented in drawing since he was really young. He found himself interested in comics deeply, so he committed himself to drawing what he liked and he has maintained this passion his whole life. He started to learn how to draw professionally when he was in high school. Interestingly, even though drawing was an irreplaceable part of his life, which he knew clearly, he did not study in a relative major in college. Surprisingly, he chose to learn about politics. Most people indicate that Miyazaki Hayao’s political life was affected by his mother and the whole environment when he was living then. He did not quit drawing, it just was not a major focus at that time. He joined a club which had the closest relationship with animation and created several works in his spare time. He has changed his work location several times since he graduated, and during this period, he met one of the most significant figures in his life, both in his personal life and career, whose name is Takahata Isao.In the middle of 1985, Miyazaki Hayao and Takahata Isao established their own studio, Ghibli, in order to cooperate more conveniently and perfectly. Under the run of this studio, they produced Castle In the Sky, Princess Mononke, Totoro, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, Ponyo On the Cliff, The Wind Rises and so on. Each product has its own story and plots, with different kind of attractive roles. Among these, The Wind Rises, Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle won the Oscar Awards respectively. In my perspective, Totoro, Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle are my favorites, and I have watched Spirited Away four times. Every time I can obtain some new thoughts from the movie, which is one of the most amazing and inspiriting parts I learn from Miyazaki Hayao.

First of all, I found that his films are able to satisfy all age levels of audience. A lot of people state that animations are only for the children however, Miyazaki Hayao takes advantage in his own way telling the world that the animations are not limited to children only, it is facing all the crowd no matter which age you are. If you are a child, you can enjoy the beautiful scenes and cute roles in the film. If you are the young, you will acquire enlightenment from the films. If you are kind of experienced about life, you will find some common ground in the films. So different generation can watch the same film but feel differently meanwhile. Another astonishing aspect of Miyazaki Hayao’s films is that he and his group insist upon drawing by hand over the years, and a lot of scenes in the films are exactly existing in the reality, which is totally the same with the real life. In other words, you can track back the scene from the screen right to the real occasions. There are a lot of people starting games about finding the real buildings and streets in Japan or Taiwan based on the scenes in the films. It is like remote connections of his fans all over the world, gathering fans to do the same interesting things in the different time period or same time in various plots. Under the situation of high-tech movies separation, their insistence looks pure and valuable.

Secondly, Miyazaki Mayao has a very positive attitude toward his life, reflecting by his products partly as well. He is good at observing the details of life and characters, showing his found to the audience, and letting them know what they have missed in their lives. Every time when there are some disasters, or something happened in Japan, he will donate his fortune to help the people who are in need at the first time. He and his co-workers attend to the damaged site or shelters themselves to comfort the victims.

Last but not least, as a Japanese, Miyazaki Mayao stands as absolutely objective politic opinion publicly, compared to the leaders of Japan. Miyazaki Mayao is unique, as a Japanese citizen, because unlike many high-profile Japanese people he takes a clear stance arguing that Japan needs to apologize for some of its crimes during the past, which most Japanese leaders choose to deny or are silent about. It seems that Japan is always under some controversial arguments due to their political standing, such as they deny their cruel and inhuman actions to the comfort women or they try to hide and cover the history what they have done to Chinese, especially in Nan Jing to their new generations. As a public figure with high reputation, he pointed that the leaders of Japan ought to apologize and be shamed for what they did to the women in the past wars, which truth are admitted by Chinese, Korean, American and part of Japanese but the leaders of Japan, for now, deny facing it and are trying to erase the history. Miyazaki Mayao did not avoid the sensitive topic when he was interviewed by the press, on the contrary, he indicated his standpoint clearly form the truth and justice. His actions earned him more respect than before. He taught us that no matter who you are, where you are from, what other people say, there are some principles and baselines which are unbridgeable. He is going further than an artist.

Every fan of Miyazaki Hayao is long for visiting his Ghibli studio, which is located in a comfortable and peaceful community in Tokyo. These fans love not only Miyazaki’s writing and artwork in his movies, they also love the music in the films created by his co-worker Joe Hisaishi. For many of his movies, they are not as powerful without the music that accompanies them. So when fans visit the studio, they are not only looking at Miyazaki’s work but also that of Joe Hisaishi. It is like the temple of God in fans’ mind because we will have the opportunity to visit his workroom and appreciating his manuscripts by ourselves. There are also some exhibitions in the studio showing the audience the process of making an animation. It is like a grand party for all the Miyazaki Mayao’s fans. Miyazaki Mayao has a very helpful and famous partner during his film life, Joe Hisaishi, Japanese composer and musician as the national treasure. He wrote plenty of beautiful songs for the films, and his songs are popular among the fans as well. Every once in a while, Joe Hisaishi holds a concert about playing the songs which are made for the movies all over the world. At that time, it is another way that the fans gathered together and pilgrimage their adoring person together.

Even though Miyazaki Mayao said he wanted to retire for too many times to convince people, his creation and passion are staying the same as the past. He is fortunate as he is capable to combine his hobby and his work together, making a living for them and inspiriting his audience all over the world. Apparently, his fortunate cannot exist alone without his effort. He said he retired again recently. Then the people who love him started to ask when he would come back with his new work. Several decades past, and no matter when, he, his work, his co-workers, as well the lesson we learned from him, will last for good. The classic will not be shaded by the time, it will shine more brightly.

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amandazfjv · 6 years

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It’s hard to believe it is already Christmas break. During JVC, months between Orientation and Christmas seemed to last forever (not in an I just want these months to be over kind of way, just in a time seems to be moving slower than normal kind of way). I remember enjoying this strange phenomenon because, entering JVC, I was terrified my JV year would flash before my eyes. Thankfully, it wasn’t until after DisO in January when time started to move quickly. Five months into my first year as an FJV, time is still flying by. I am sure part of the reason is because so many things have happened in these last five months. I have helped run a full Alpha series, been a core member on a middle school and high school youth group, been teaching 39 lessons a week while building two curriculums and teaching myself how to teach one subject (Computers), traveled out of town for Thanksgiving (thanks to the Burr family!!), started to get to know this year’s JVs, chaperoned my first school dance, participated in a busy person’s retreat, started the 19th Annotation of the Spiritual Exercises, and done other things I am sure I am forgetting. Plus, there is learning how to be an adult so far away from home.

As I approached Christmas break, with the guidance of the exercises, I realized just how bad I have been at taking steps to reflect and to keep up to date with people back home. During JVC, I used social media and this blog as a way to stay in touch, but as soon as JVC ended I did a semi dropout from the social media world. I have definitely spent more time looking at posts than sharing, which is the opposite of what I did last year when I would sometimes log on just to post my weekly update and then log back off. While the break was definitely needed, it is time to get back to things: 1-While I am thankful God has given me so many things to be a part of in Phoenix, and it is important for me to be present to them, it is equally important for me to stay connected to everyone back home who helped me get to this point in my life because their relationships are just as important to me as those I have in Phoenix. 2-Not taking time to reflect goes against a key part of Ignatian Spirituality and will hinder my 19th Annotation experience. 3-Journaling/blogging is a key way for me to process what God is doing in my life, look at where I am dropping the ball and where I am getting things right, and see what direction God wants me to keep heading towards. And so, with this blog post, I am vowing to get better about writing posts, whether on Facebook, Instagram, or this blog, in order to stay more connected to God, my friends/family, and myself. If no one reads them, that’s fine, but if you do I hope these posts help you learn a little about what one person’s experience might look like while working/living in Phoenix.

St. Matt’s: Walking into St. Matt’s every day, you never know what is going to get thrown your way. The day could go smoothly; there could be a lockdown; or I might need to balance planes going over so my voice can’t be heard, a student throwing up for the umpteenth time this year, two kids getting upset because they both want to be the line leader, and the next two grades arriving and heading straight towards the puke while all of this is happening. As chaotic as it can get sometimes, I love it. I am fortunate enough to teach each of my just over 200 students 4 days a week and I get to teach my kinder-4th graders five days a week. Seeing them this often, an now teaching most of them for a second year in a row, they own a piece of my heart in a way they did not last year. For some, especially the older students, the transition from having a JV teach P.E. to the building of a P.E. program hasn’t always been easy, but I couldn’t be more proud of them because of how much they have learned and how much they have grown as individuals since I first met them. Each day, my kids do something to make me laugh, teach me something new about being a teacher or being a selfless human being, melt my heart, and (usually) do something to make me want to pull my hair out and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But, my students aren’t the only people who make this place worth going back to each and every day; there are also my coworkers. If you need a lesson on being flexible or taking care of others, just come work with my coworkers for a day and you will leave a better person. Each teacher at St. Matt’s wears more hats than any person should ever have to because they know, at the end of the day, it’s what’s best for our kids. This attitude is clearly picked up in our students who never think twice when someone needs help and care for their younger siblings in a way I have never seen kids do before. My coworkers are clearly helping students prepare for life in general, not just the next test people want to throw at them, and I am so thankful to get to see them work, to work with them, and to learn from them.

AZHPE: This year, I was able to attend Arizona’s state P.E./Health Ed. convention. I attended two of the three days. During the convention, I was able to learn more about education at the state and national level, learn some new games and strategies to take back to St. Matt’s, and make a few connections. From these connections, I have since attended a board meeting for our state organization and will, hopefully, be able to start getting involved with the organization sooner rather than later.

Teaching in general: Teaching Computers is something I never thought I would do (what I would give to be able to go back and shake my high school and college self and tell myself to remember more of the tech things I was learning). It is clear my students have not had the access to computers society assumes every kid has so we are working on the basics and then will build up from there as the program grows. The internet has been my best friend as I learn how to teach this subject. The internet has also been my best friend when it comes to growing as a P.E. teacher. Through a couple memberships and various social media outlets, I have been able to connect with teachers from around the world and they have been amazing in answering questions and providing resources as I build a P.E. program from scratch. I am having a blast getting reconnected to the P.E. world and cannot wait to see what I will learn and experience, as well as how my students will benefit, as a result of these connections.

SFX: During my JV year, I found a couple of ways to get involved at Saint Francis Xavier (a Jesuit Parish). After JVC, I became even more involved and became an official member of the church, something I hadn’t done since filling out yearly registration cards for Newman. SFX has been one of the key ways I have found/been able to live out the pillar of Community since leaving JVC. Words cannot describe how thankful I am for the friendships, and sense of community, I have found here.

19th Annotation: In the months after JVC, I decided to participate in a Busy Person’s Retreat through SFX. At the end of the retreat, it became pretty clear God was inviting me to complete a version of St. Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises with the director I had for the busy persons retreat. I am about a month and a half into what is a several month long retreat. In this retreat, and in my weekly spiritual direction meetings, God is calling me out of my comfort zone in ways I would never have thought to do on my own. Only time will tell what type of growth God has in store for me through this retreat, but I am trying to just enjoy the experience without skipping to the end.

Wrap Up: Deciding to move so far away from home for who knows how long was not an easy decision to make. Only being able to make it home a couple times of year can make it even harder, but it is so clear Phoenix is where God wants me to be right now. I have found, when I am on God’s path for my life, opportunities arise and things fall into place in a way they do not when I have stepped off this path; in Phoenix, things are coming together like when I am on His path for me. All I can do is take it one day at a time and trust He knows what He is doing.

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