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pluraldeepdive · 3 years

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The Website That Started Natural Multiplicity

Disclaimer: This is a post covering a deep dive of archived events that took place in the past. DO NOT harass or send hate towards anyone mentioned.

Introduction

So, who came up with natural multiplicity? When I’ve asked this question, most people reply by saying “Nobody! It’s always existed!” But that’s not exactly what I was asking them. Sure, the experience has always existed, I agree with them there. But what I’m asking about is the name! Someone was experiencing or observing something and then they put a name to it. They decided to name it natural multiplicity—so who did that? Who came up with that?

Through my deep dive, I ended up finding the answer for myself.

As you may have read in one of my previous posts, multiplicity and multiple personality were terms that were often used interchangeably prior to the 21st century. They were used exclusively in reference to DID (more often called MPD at the time). Their origins are clinical, and they also held a lot of importance to the pre-Internet and early Internet dissociative community. (See my post on that here.) During this time, multiplicity and multiple personality meant a trauma-based dissociative disorder. The term natural multiplicity did not exist at that time—at least not in any relation to DID.

Prior to the term natural multiplicity, discussions about multiplicity being natural were usually discussions about how it’s natural to dissociate after trauma. Whenever someone mentioned that multiplicity was not a disorder to them, it was usually because the terms disorder or even MPD/DID had negative connotations to them, because they personally didn’t want to identify with medical terminology for other reasons, because they were not personally distressed by their alters, or because they had reached a stage in recovery where they were no longer struggling—not because they saw the experience as inherently non-dissociative or non-traumagenic.

But someone came along and kickstarted a changed in that narrative. This person was experiencing something that they felt wasn’t trauma-based or dissociative...and believed that it was the same multiplicity that everyone else was referring to as trauma-based and dissociative. This person decided to take that concept and redefine it to be inherently not trauma-based, not dissociation, and not pathological.

So, who was that person? Who decided to name something that was very obviously not DID the equivalent to natural DID? Well, your answer is: Astraea’s Web.

Evidence & Archives

Evidence of this wasn’t really hard to come by because, well...they’ve talked it! While they don’t go around bragging about it, it’s certainly come up a fair amount of times. Other people have talked about it, as well.

“The concepts of natural multiplicity and healthy multiplicity are very new. We only introduced them about ten years ago on our website, and while several other websites exist now and plenty of online multiples know about these ideas (whether they agree with them or not), this is still a very small subset of the online multiplicity community, which is a very small subset of multiples in general. Most people do not know about these ideas because they haven’t been publicised enough; that is what Pavilion is for, but it’s gotten off to a very slow start.” - From Bluejay Young (a member of Astraea Household) on Livejournal Multiplicity. (2005)

“Astraea’s page was the first multiplicity page that was NOT about DID.” - From Amorpha System on Livejournal Multiplicity. (2005)

“(1995) Astraea’s Web, the first Internet website to describe non-disordered and self-recognized multiplicity, goes online in September.” - From Multiple Personality Controversy on Psychology Wikia (2006)

“I’m also putting Astraea’s Web back in. It was the first website to propose the idea of healthy multiplicity.” - From Bluejay Young (a member of Astraea Household) on the DID/MPD Controversy Wikipedia discussion. (2007)

“It’s important to allow the concept to be inclusive of everyone who fits, regardless of past abuse history or origins, much as is currently being done for ‘multiplicity.’” - From Anthony Temple (a member of Astraea Household) on “A brief history of midcontinuum”. (2007)

And, yes, this all checks out. During my deep dive, I could find no website that existed before Astraea’s Web that talked about multiplicity/DID as something natural; natural meaning not trauma-based, not dissociative, and not pathological in their own words. Here are my posts on how they introduced natural multiplicity to the Internet:

Their first theory. (1998 or earlier)

How natural multiplicity went from a theory to a fact. (2000)

When they began separating multiplicity from DID. (1999)

Boycotting DID. (2000-2003)

But it’s also important to hear it straight from the source. The archived essay “What a long, strange trip it’s been...” was published sometime in 2002 or possibly earlier. In this, members of Astraea Household reflected on their journey to joining the dissociative community, realizing that they were actually not dissociative, and introducing their idea of natural multiplicity to the Internet.

Part 1 (Discovering DID & their multiplicity)

Part 2 (Coming out & wanting DID normalized)

Part 3 (Experiences in the dissociative community, doubt, introducing natural multiplicity, & backlash)

Part 4 (The empowered multiple community)

My Thoughts

Obviously, natural multiplicity has evolved and changed so much over time. Present day non-dissociative plurality is so different from its origin! It’s like a dinosaur versus a duck. One comes from the other, and there are similarities, but they shouldn’t be looked at like the same exact thing. Even though the term natural multiplicity has died out, and it’s ableist as Hell, I still find its origins so fascinating and I hope that you guys can agree.

Like I’ve stated several times before, I don’t fault people much for their past actions. The times and circumstances were very, very different. DID research back then was bare bones, filled with inaccuracies, and being bombarded with controversy and skepticism. Also, Astraea’s Web has always presented itself as an anti-psych website so it’s not that much of a surprise that they were against diagnoses.

While I personally do not agree with how Astraea Household went about certain things, I could also empathize with the situation that led up to them coining natural multiplicity. Astraea Household’s journey read to me like a story of misdiagnosing a self-diagnosis...a mis-self-diagnosis?

Sometimes people self-diagnose because it feels like a certain disorder is the only explanation they have for their experiences. It can be frightening if that one explanation turns out to not be the answer—ESPECIALLY if you got heavily involved in communities related to that disorder.

If I self-diagnosed DID but then later realized that I didn’t relate to its causation or symptoms that much, then I’d probably just think I was experiencing something else. I wouldn’t be so inclined to think that it was the professionals who were completely wrong...but what if DID was the closest explanation I had for my experiences? What if most of my friends were in the dissociative community? What if me being multiple was a big part of my closest relationships? What if I had been telling people I was multiple for years and years? What if I had a hugely successful website on me being multiple? What if I had a big influence on the dissociative community? What if my entire career revolved around me being multiple? Damn, maybe I would have come up with natural multiplicity as well in that case. (Not saying this is why Astraea Household did it.)

Anyways, please go and make your own opinions on this stuff. That’s why I share it.

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legionofpotatoes · 3 years

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we decided to watch all story cutscenes from the new resident evil village videogame on a whim, since it’s not really our cup of tea gameplay-wise but seems to be this massive zeitgeist moment that made us morbidly curious. And I know how much everyone cares about my thoughts on things I know very little about, so. let’s get into it huh gamers. and yeah spoilers?

for context, I’ve only played resident evil 4 and a small portion of 5. I also read the wikipedia entry for 7’s plot recently. all this to say I was only vaguely aware of how tonally wacky the series was going in

I also completely gave up following the plot of the mutagens’ soap opera, so that paid off in spades here as you might imagine

anyway so that baby in the intro. that baby’s head is just massive. humongous toddlerdome. when ethan finds the baby’s head in a jar later on. there is no way that head would fit into that jar. bad game design. no not even game design. basic stuff. one hundred years in prison for jar modeler

if I see a single functional hetero marriage in video games I will cry tears of joy. I understand their misery is kind of The Point irt them badly working through the hillbilly romp trauma but like. sheesh. at least set that up as an emotional story goal the plot will help resolve. but nope they start off miserable and it goes nowhere

I know I know the mia thing has a huge wrinkle in it but like. not really in terms of dramatic function?? set up a happy end to the re7 nightmare (miranda can keep up appearances for all she cares) and then take that all away from angry griffin mcelroy for manpain. it will still absolutely work to set up the dramatic forward momentum. why throw in this cliche Hollywood Tension in their marriage if you’re not going to address it oh maybe because it’s normalized as automatically interesting because nuclear families are a self-propagating pit of a very narrow chance at emotional happiness relying on social stigma to preserve their empty function oops my baggage slipped in yikes abort mission

I called him griffin mcelroy because I saw his face on twitter and. yeah. I will continue to do this occasionally. my house my rules

... fuck the reason I’m hung up on this is specifically because the rest of the game is so tonally dexterous (which is a shining point to me! more on that later!), and yet they felt weirdly compelled to create the aesthetic trapping of a family-at-odds trope without following it through too well. a sign of both the good and the bad stuff to come

but listen the real reason why I wanted to talk about any of this is to nitpick the fascinating backwards-engineered nucleus of the entire thing; in that this game essentially creates a melting pot of just SO many disparate horror tropes and then makes a no-holds-barred unhinged effort at weaving thick lore to piece them all together. it is truly a sight to behold. like straight up you got your backwoods fright night situation, your gothic castle vampires, your rural-industrial werewolves, and don’t forget your bloated swamp monsters over there, with then a hard left turn into robotic body horror, and the entire ass subgenre of Creepy Doll writ large, and the bloodborne tentacle monsters, and a hellboy angel bossfight, which rides on the coattails of a mech-on-mech pacific rim bonanza, and just jesus henry christ slow down

almost all of these are textural hijack jobs that don’t really get into the metaphor plain of any of those settings but the game sort-of makes an argument that the texture IS the point and revels in it. It is kind of admirable almost. The same reason why the intro felt boxed in and unmotivated is also why the rest of the game just blasts off of its hinges to the point of complete and self-indulgent tonal abandon. I kinda loved that about it. lady dimitrescu made sure to hold her hat down as she bent forward in mahogany doorways and then suddenly she’s a giant gore dragon and you settle in your temp role as dark souls man with Gun to take her ass down. Excellent??

this rhino rampage impulse to gobble up every horror aesthetic known to man comes to head when the game wrestles with its FPS trappings in what is the most hilarious solution in creating visceral player damage moments. Since most cinematics and the entire game is in first person, that leaves precious little real estate for the devs to work with if they really want to sell griffin’s physical crucible. To wit. This dude’s forearms. Specifically just the forearms. They are MASSACRED throughout the story. The poor man lives out the silent hill dimension of a hand model. by the end cutscene he looks like a neatly dressed desk clerk who had decided to stick both his grabbers into garbage disposal grinders just a few hours prior. like in addition to everything else it manages to rope in that tinge of slapstick violence into its general grievous genre collection except this time it IS for a lack of trying! truly incredible

but wait his miracle clawbacks from everything his poor paws go through are retroactively explained away, yes, but far too vaguely and far too late to console me as I sat and watched everyone’s favorite baby brother reattach an entirely severed hand to his wrist stump by just. placing it on there. and giving it a lil twist ‘n pop terminator-style. and then willing his fingers back into motion right in front of my bulging eyes. this game just does not care. it does not give a shit. and boy howdy will it work to make that into one of its strongest suits

cause generally speaking resident evil was THE premiere vanilla zombie content destinaysh for like a decade, right? and as the rest of the world and mainstream media started encroaching and bloodying its blue ocean it went and just exploded in every single conceivable horror trope direction like a smilodon on catnip. truly, genuinely fascinating franchise moves

yeah the big vampire milf is hot. other news; grass... green. although I do love the implication that her closet is just identical white dresses on a rack. cartoon network-level queen shit

apropos of nothing I’ve said there’s also this hobo dante-devimaycry-magneto man, and I can’t believe this sentence makes sense. anyway he made that “boulder-punching asshole” joke referring to chris redfield and it was probably the only easter egg that really landed for me and boy did it land hard. I have not seen him punch the boulder in re5, mind. I had only heard about how funny it is from friends. and here this dude was, probably in the same exact mindset as me, trying to grapple with that insane mental image. with you on that ian mckellen, loud and clear

I advocate vehemently against the shallow pursuit of hyper photorealism in art direction but I gotta admit it works really in favor of immersive horror like this. the european village shacks especially gave me super unchill flashbacks to my rural countryside retreat in western georgia. I could smell the linoleum dude. not cool

faces are weird in this game. can’t place it. nice textures, good animation, but the modeling template is... uuh strange? and the hair. it has that clustered-flat-clumpy look that harkens to something very specific and unpleasant but I just don’t know what. sue me

griffin’s mental aptitude to take all this shit in stride and end every seemingly traumatizing bossfight involving some fucking eldritch being yet unseen through mortal eyes by essentially throwing out an MCU quip is just. What the fuck dude? I mean that was funny how you casually yelled the f-word at a god damn werewolf that you considered a fairy tale an hour ago but are you like, all right?? it was swinging a sledgehammer the size of a bus at you, ethan

oh oh the vampires are afraid of cold and your last name is winters. I get it haha

Pro Gamer Nitpick: boss fights seemed a bit unnecessarily long?? idk why the youtuber we picked decided the ENTIRE propeller man fight counted towards the vital story scenes he was stitching together, but man mr big daddy lite there really had some get up and go huh??

why are they saying dimitrescu.. like that. is it really how you say that word or is the english language relapsing into its fetish for ending every single word with a consonant at all costs

I’m not saying it’s a dramatic miss of a twist in context of all that’s going on, but the “you died in the last game actually and have been DC’s clayface ever since” revelation is low-key. it’s. it’s just funny to me, I dont know what to say. century-old god-witch fails her evil plan after she mistakenly removes heart from what was definitely NOT just some white guy with eight fingers after all

chris realizing he’s about to become the player character and immediately swapping out his tsundere trenchcoat for the muscletight sex haver sweater

the little bluetooth speaker-sized pipe bomb he taped to his knife was nuclear?? really??? I must have missed something because that is just too good. I buy it though I totally buy it. chris just got them fun-sized nukes in his car trunk for, you guessed it, Situations

anyway this is all for now just wanted to briefly touch on how unexpectedly funny and tonally irreverent this seemingly serious game turned out to be. did not articulate any cathartic story beats whatsoever but my god it had fun connecting those plot points. he just fucking put his severed hand back on his stump and it Just Worked todd howard get in here

#text #another one in my bulleted review series with no rhyme or reason #sorry resident evil fans this could be a painful read pls turn away #i know almost nothing about it but i am gonna be super fake familiar and critical of this one hey ho

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a-skyfull-of-starz · 4 years

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Anime in the Time of Quarantine

This fine quarantine period, I have made it my mission to watch as much anime as possible, because I don’t know, I guess it’s better than wallowing in self-pity. Here’s a list of everything I’ve watched to date and how much I recommend them, because I don’t know, I’m bored or something.

This list does not contain anime I’ve previously watched, because that would make it normal life anime. So don’t ask me why Shingeki no Kyojin is not on the list. Of course it remains my favourite and I will continue to recommend it until my dying breath.

Also, this list is ordered in the order I watched them in, and does not reflect any standing other than that. Also also, I get bored really easily, so if an anime doesn’t grab me immediately, chances are I’ll close it very quickly. I’ve started a lot more anime than is on this list but got bored and closed it. Hence, this list is almost entirely positive recommendations. Also also also (I swear this is the last clarifier), I’ve been in a slice of life kind of mood, because my slice of life is boring and uninteresting to the extreme, so that genre is kind of over-represented here. So with that being said, on to the list (sorry that it’s so long, I have an issue with verbosity).

Stein’s Gate: I started watching Stein’s Gate two years ago, but didn’t make it past the five minute mark, because I just didn’t get it. I started watching it again a few weeks ago, and I still didn’t get it, but I persevered because I was bored and high on chocolate. By the end of the first episode…I still didn’t get it. I continued to not get it until probably midway through the third episode, but when I got it, holy hell did it hit hard. I absolutely enjoyed every second of this anime. I loved watching Okabe’s journey from imagined insanity into actual insanity and then back again. He went on a true hero’s journey, and I loved every second of it. Miyano Mamoru gives a masterful performance (I always watch the subbed animes, and I recommend that everyone else does too). The chemistry between Okabe and Kurisu is probably the best in anime that I’ve watched thus far (sorry Asuna and Kirito, your time has finally come). This anime is rich with emotion, humour, tragedy, (some) romance, friendship, mad scientists and beautiful characters. If you can stand being confused for the first three episodes, this anime will be an incredibly rewarding journey for you. I highly recommend it.

Ao Haru Ride/Blue Spring Ride: I saw a clip of this anime in a seiyuu video and I fell in love with the art style and decided to give it a watch. I have mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, the plot is interesting, although having watched similar anime, a lot of it is kind of cliched. That being said, I did like the message of being true to yourself, no matter the cost. And I appreciated the fact that Futaba (our main hero) wasn’t a stereotypical anime girl (although she really does cry a lot and I agree with Kou that it is annoying). I found Kou (our love interest) a very interesting and compelling character. The clear winner of this anime though is the art style. It is beautiful to look at. Unfortunately, the first season ends on kind of a cliffhanger, and there doesn’t appear to be a second season coming any time soon, which is really disappointing. If you like high school romance stories with an edgy bad boy in it, then this is the anime for you, but don’t expect a satisfying ending, because, well, there isn’t one.

Stein’s Gate 0: I watched this because my friend said that it made her cry after every episode (I personally didn’t think Stein’s Gate needed a sequel, but oh well). Based on her recommendation, I went in with high expectations, which were kind of mostly unmet. The plot was way more confusing, less compelling, it felt like the stakes weren’t that high, mostly because they were only introduced way later in the series (I know Stein’s Gate did the same thing, but it somehow felt more shoved in with this one) and because we already knew how it would end. Also the ending felt incredibly rushed. The only episode I really wholeheartedly enjoyed was the reunion between Kurisu and Okabe (sounds weird out of context, but I’m trying to remain spoiler free). For the rest, I was left with mixed feelings, although I have to say, I probably love Okabe even more in Stein’s Gate 0 and Miyano Mamoru gives us another stunning performance. I would probably have been happier if this entire series had just consisted of Okabe trying to move on from the fallout of what happened in Stein’s Gate and there was no drama of World War III. So, I guess if you’re curious to see what happens if Okabe does not look for Stein’s Gate in the previous season, this is for you. Honestly though, I’d probably be happier if I hadn’t watched Stein’s Gate 0.

Shigatsu wo Kimi no Uso/Your lie in April: THIS ANIME OH MY GOSH!!!! I did not even know that this anime existed until I saw it on Kaji Yuki’s Wikipedia page (I’m a fan, so what?). He’s barely in this by the way, but that doesn’t matter, because this anime is amazing. I knew how it ended because I unfortunately saw spoilers when I was reading what the plot was about when I was deciding whether or not to watch this, and I still cried for about an hour after the ending (and I don’t cry easily, especially not with anime). The writing here is probably the best in any anime I’ve watched (yes, better than SNK, the king has been toppled from his throne), the soundtrack is amazing (I’ve been listening to it on repeat for a week now), the acting is beautiful, the artwork is gorgeous (apart from Kosei’s disappearing glass frame, that was weird), and all around, this anime is just…perfect. If you enjoy teenage romance and drama, if you love classical music, if you feel like bawling your eyes out for an hour because right now your life is pretty boring and pointless, then this is the anime for you. And even if you aren’t any of those things listed, I still recommend this anime because it is gorgeous and deserves recognition for how incredible it is.

Welcome to the NHK: this is probably the direct opposite of Shigatsu wo Kimi no Uso in every way possible. I haven’t finished this anime yet because it is extremely heavy, and I can only manage two episodes a night, but I still highly recommend it. It’s a fascinating take on a lot of modern Japanese culture, specifically surrounding mental health, the hentai industry and consumerism. It’s also got a lot of black comedy in it, which I love. All in all (and depending on the ending of the series), I highly recommend this one for its interesting writing and plot and excellent acting.

Lovely Complex: honestly, this anime sort of crept into my heart as one of the most adorable, refreshing, hilarious and unexpected love stories of all time. It basically tells the story of two idiot friends who slowly realise they’re in love with each other, how this impacts their friendship and how they navigate the very dark waters of teen romance. If you’re looking for an uncliched high school romance anime, where the heroine is the opposite of a cute anime girl, where the broody handsome guy is not the object of our affection and where you get flashbacks of just how dumb you were as a teenager and how grateful you are to be out of that age group (if you’re my age I mean, I’m mostly talking about myself here), then this is definitely the anime for you. Also, the opening song is ska, how cool is that?

Orange: another time traveling story, except the time traveling is even more confusing here. Just kidding, the time traveling is probably the least interesting part of this story, which examines suicide, depression, guilt and bullying, and does it in a pretty mature way. Our hero (dear lovely confused Naho) is unfortunately not very smart, but that’s ok, because she has Suwa, the best human being in the whole world, to help her out. Honestly, this story would have ended very differently if Suwa had not been around and he deserves every award that can possibly be given to amazing human beings. This anime is sort of 13 Reasons Why, but in reverse, less exploitative and with better friends (you’ll understand what I mean when you watch it). If you aren’t going to be triggered by discussions of suicide, depression and bullying, then I really do recommend this, as it is very interesting, well-performed, and largely well-handled.

So that’s my anime watch list thus far. I plan to finish Welcome to the NHK soon, and then start watching Mushishi, as I’ve heard a lot of great things about it. Also, now that you guys have seen what my tastes are, I would love it if I could get more recommendations. Lord knows, I’m not going to be doing anything else until I can find a way home, so I might as well expand my horizons. Also also…no, that’s it. Have a good quarantine folks!

#anime #stein's gate #ao haru ride #stein's gate 0 #shigatsu wa kimi no uso #lovely complex #welcome to the nhk #orange #anime recommendation #anime review #quarantine thoughts #gimme recs please #textpost

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sumukhcomedy · 4 years

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The Duke Lacrosse Case: A Generation’s Example of Systemic Racism

In March 2006, I was a couple months away from graduating from Miami University. This is when the event known as “the Duke lacrosse case” began. I was in college just like these players were. I was on a campus a lot like Duke University (and that probably wishes it was Duke University). Now, 14 years later, I can look back and know that my fascination and frustration with the case at the time was based off something I can describe now a lot better than I could then: systemic racism.

For ease, if you would like to read up on a summary of the case, the Wikipedia article will suffice.

In the wake of the news of this story and how much press it was getting, Black and Brown people across the country reacted in anger and frustration. We saw this as an example of rich white young men wielding their power to violate a young Black woman’s body. This is a practice as old as the start of the slave trade and it was now on the front pages of every newspaper. As a result, there was a desperation for justice to be served in this case much like the desperation we see now with the many Black lives that have been killed.

But the great failing of the Duke lacrosse case was of course its fabrications. The story by the accuser, Crystal Mangum, was not accurate. These young men did not rape her. These young men were subjected to months of scrutiny and their reputations tarnished as a result. Sure, if I hear the name, “Reade Seligmann,” I’ll think “Duke lacrosse case” or “rape” immediately. It’s certainly unfair but it’s how we became to be programmed.

But how all of us became to be programmed is why the Duke lacrosse case is such a fine example of systemic racism, an example of Black Lives Matter years before it existed, and an example of how racism works hand in hand with class oppression and the patriarchy.

We must first understand that our entire interaction with the case was based off the optics presented to us of it and even to this day those optics have been skewed. At the time, we looked at it pretty simply: rich, young, drunk white kids rape poor Black stripper. Our reactions and our anger were affected by however we may react to that sentence. We separated not just by race but also by class and even by our judgment of the profession of exotic dancing.

When it became apparent that Ms. Mangum’s story had too many discrepancies and the case was dropped, the attention now turned to Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong. Nifong, possibly for political motives to ensure his re-election, was disbarred for the various ethics violations he committed in handling this case. Whatever Nifong’s underlying reasons may have been, he used the media and the feelings of Black people victimized their entire lives by systemic racism in an attempt to benefit himself.

When we look back at the Duke lacrosse case, our reactions are likely very simplistic and not focused on the systemic racism that pulsates through the whole story. Even the 2016 30 for 30 ESPN documentary, Fantastic Lies, did not capture it properly. Much like the documentary, our reaction is to focus in on how bad it must have been for the white players to go through such a false accusation. It focuses in on how terrible of a district attorney Nifong was. It focuses in on the racial dynamic on the campus as compared to Durham. It focuses in perhaps, in a small way, on Mangum’s mental illness. But we have never actually cut to the depths of this case and how it is perhaps my generation’s finest and most accessible example of systemic racism.

First, we must ask ourselves why our primary focus is on the Duke lacrosse players? Yes, they were not deserving of being falsely accused. No one should have to go through that. But do we focus and feel bad for them because they are white and privileged? Even in the documentary, a player says, “Not a month goes by when I am not reminded of the damage those accusations have had on my reputation and the public's perception of my character.” That’s true and that’s terrible but the accused have gone on to formidable lives. They’ve gotten advanced degrees in law school or Wharton Business School. While they endure a lot for the accusation, their lives were able to progress on the same trajectory as would have likely happened without the case and they still have the same privileges.

How do we then look at Nifong? Simply a power-hungry, media-obsessed District Attorney? Why don’t we actually look at him as yet another white man in the system who used Black people and, in particular, one Black woman for his own advancement? There has been no criticism of Nifong on that aspect nor any culpability on his part for those issues.

Mangum is now serving time in prison for killing her ex-boyfriend. She claimed she did it in self-defense. We look back at Mangum as simply a tragic tale. She is a woman who has mental health issues and was an exotic dancer. She could not get herself out of those issues and ultimately ended up in prison. For some, it’s a sad tale. For others, she is a liar and the sadness should only be assigned to the lacrosse players who were accused of rape.

But, as we begin to examine ourselves and how we interact with systemic racism, we should use the Duke lacrosse rape case and its 14 years in our lives to retrospectively and currently examine how we felt and how we analyzed it.

I can say that, at age 21, I immediately assumed these lacrosse players were guilty and I wanted to see justice for this young woman. Why did I feel that way? Because I also have been a victim of systemic racism. Because I also was of Brown skin on a predominantly white, upper middle class campus. I saw guys on my campus just like the Duke lacrosse players every day. I certainly knew that those type of men were capable of such behavior. So I reacted emotionally and presumed guilt. Once I was made aware that the story had holes, I accepted that this was unfair to these young men and that they were innocent and I accepted that it was unfair because I believe in proper justice. I agree that they didn’t deserve to go through what they did. Even my look at Nifong has progressed over the years. I went from thinking “Why would he do this?” to realizing he is yet another white man wielding his power for his own gain and the feelings and the lives of Black people in his process to do that did not matter.

As for Mangum, there’s nothing to do but to feel bad. Her life to begin with was subject not just to systemic racism but also to the patriarchy. She had whatever reasons for becoming an exotic dancer, but that occupation in our society also subjects an individual to even more heightened levels of systemic racism and the patriarchy. As a result, it only could have intensified her already present mental health issues. Now she is yet another Black person that is incarcerated.

If we want to accept racism’s existence in our society then we must accept the fact that while the young white men involved in the Duke lacrosse case were innocent of rape, they were not innocent of systemic racism. None of us know what truly happened on that night at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. in Durham. But, just understanding the party was filled with white upper middle class men, the fact they shared emails referencing American Psycho, their age, their consumption of alcohol, and the fact they ordered strippers, the behavior was not perfect. The power dynamics involved touch issues of potential racism, classism, and sexism. So, yes, even though I was not there, I believe some insulting things were likely said by these men to these women. I’ve heard insulting things in my life under far less difficult circumstances and I’m a middle-class Brown man. And, once you heave enough insults at an individual at one of the lowest realms of systemic racism, classism, and the patriarchy, it’s unclear what the possibilities could be. In this case, it was an accusation of rape. It later sadly became her incarceration.

If my generation truly wants to think deeper on race, then we must reflect back on the Duke lacrosse case. Think about what you thought about then. Think about what you think about it now. But, most importantly, ask yourself this question: who is the real victim here? Your answer could help you understand your place in systemic racism and systemic racism’s place in our society.

#duke #duke lacrosse #black lives matter #blm #systemic racism #racism #sports #espn #classism #sexism #patriarchy #durham

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nimblermortal · 4 years

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Why Is the Universe 10-, 11-, or 26-dimensional, and Not Some Other Number?

This is in response to @kittydesade‘s post questioning why those numbers, and the rough answer is: because it is referring, respectively, to either superstring, M-theory, or bosonic string theory. In any of these cases, the answer is “because that’s what makes the math work”, but I want a refresher on the distinctions.

Cookies to me if I reach the end of this post without typing “Strong Theory” and failing to correct it.

Oh, and string theory is the idea that - well, you know how E=mc^2 which means that mass and energy are equivalent? Well, to link those, atoms are made up of subatomic particles like electrons, which are made up of sub-particles like quarks, which are made up of vibrating packets of energy in the form of strings, which may or may not form loops like hair ties. The mathematics of this is complex and it’s a generally questionable discipline of physics (or it was when I was a kid and first learned about it on PBS) but it’s Neat. It’s one way to understand gravity at a quantum level. Because despite its intuitiveness, gravity is really one of the most difficult forces to understand (which I am not actually sufficiently steeped in physics to understand, more’s the pity; I thought magnetism was at least as bad? but to some degree the more intuitive an idea is, the easier it is to ask why about, and therefore the less we end up understanding about it).

Bosonic String Theory is the oldest version, and so called because it includes bosons.

Bosons are not fermions; fermions are particles that, if identical, cannot occupy the same quantum state, whereas bosons can. Another way this is described is that fermions have half-integer spin (1/2, 3/2, etc) whereas bosons have integer spin (0, 1, 2). Exactly what this means is another discussion. This paragraph exists because I always forget the distinction, so there we go.

Bosonic string theory only covers bosons and does not cover supersymmetry, so in fact it is an outdated model and we can ditch the 26-dimensional option, which is nice because that’s a lot (as Caduceus Clay would put it)*. I want to go in more depth and reading about open/closed, orientable/non-orientable systems, and what a worldsheet is, and explain to you guys things about D25-branes (and branes in general), and work through the actual math in the Wikipedia article linked above, but this is supposed to be an overview of the differences between string theories, and I need to go grocery shopping. So I shan’t. For now.

Superstring Theory is the update to bosonic string theory. Apparently there have been multiple “string theory revolutions”, which is a fascinating statement to make and I want to know more. Superstring theory is nice because it incorporates supersymmetry, which we want to be true because it makes math elegant.

Elegance essentially means ‘small formulas, simple relations’. Historically speaking, the more elegant an equation is, the more likely it is to be at least broadly correct - think F=ma (Newtonian equation for force) or E=mc^2. Very short and nice! As opposed to our current Standard Model for particles, which requires more than one sheet of paper just to write down, and almost as John Mulaney* would put it, nobody likes that.

But we don’t have any proof of supersymmetry, we just want it really badly. If you are a (Christian-raised) atheist, you probably think of Christians as wanting there to be a God the way I am thinking of physicists wanting there to be supersymmetry. It makes everything easier, simpler, nicer to think that there is supersymmetry out there, and if we can just find proof then so many things will be more straightforward. (For the record, this is not how I think of God or theists.**)

Supersymmetry says that every boson has a partner, opposite fermion in mirror to it. In typically cute physicist fashion, they have decided that the partner for an electron is called a selectron. This solves all sorts of problems that I don’t have the space or time to go into here. The problem with this is, of course, the Fermi paradox: if these aliens* (particles) exist - where are they? And so far, we have not been able to answer this question, about either aliens or particles.

And the Fermi paradox is an ongoing problem with all of these theories. If there are these particles, where are they? If there are strings, where are they? If there are all these extra dimensions, where are they? The stupidest explanation I have heard for this last is that they are curled up very small inside each other. I have no idea how that works (fractals maybe?) but it seems much less intuitive than the simple answer “outside”. Referring back to A. Square’s perception of a sphere: Where is the sphere when A. Square does not perceive it as some form of a circle? Outside A. Square’s plane of perception. So that is what is intuitive to me, but maybe I am missing something.

M-theory unifies various superstring theories and apparently precipitated the second string theory revolution, which I think deserves capitals but sometimes we can’t have nice things. And apparently what happened was, we had about five major string theories, and then people started poking around and pointing out that if we used various dualities (situations in which two seemingly different things turn out to be the same in a nontrivial way) then several of these major string theories look to be the same thing.

One of the major dualities was S-duality, which says that strong couplings and weak couplings are the same thing, if you translate them into a different space (probably by something akin to Fourier analytics, which I am not going to explain here). And that’s... a lot, as Caduceus Clay* would say. First off, what is a coupling? Well, you know how if you are fitting data you can fit it to a polynomial? And if it’s random data, well, maybe a line (polynomial to the first power) doesn’t fit well, but a parabola (polynomial to the second power)is a little better, and if you keep raising that exponent you can get better and better fits, even as it becomes a meaningless fit? Well, some things are expressed better as polynomials of infinitely many terms. For example, Taylor series. And as long as the thing you are raising to a power is less than one, this gets more accurate without exploding (because, for example, 1/2^1 = 1/2, 1/2^2 = 1/4, 1/2^3 = 1/8, and so it keeps getting smaller and less significant). Those are weak couplings. Whereas if that term you are raising is greater than 1, it gets bigger and bigger (because, for example, 2^1 = 2, 2^2 = 4, 2^3 = 8...). Those are strong couplings, because naming convention is terrible.

But! There are ways and ways of looking at things. Because, say, I am looking at things in Cartesian coordinates, I plot something as being a units from the center on the x axis and b units from the center on the y axis, and it is at point (a, b). But if I switch to polar coordinates, I plot that as being c units from the center in straight radial distance and d degrees from the x axis if you rotate a line of length c from the x axis, and then that point is (c, d). And this is still the same point, but we are starting with different base assumptions for how we plot it. And if we want to move it, in Cartesian coordinates we might go a few units on the x axis, which is very simple, but in polar coordinates in order to do the same thing we would have to move some units on the radial axis and then some more rotations in order to get to the same point, and it is much more complex; or vice versa. And we can do that (not plotting, but changing how we look at things in order to make the problem we are working on simpler) in a lot of different ways, depending on our assumptions about how things work; the one I am most comfortable with is Fourier analysis. So if we do something akin to that to a strong coupling, it might start to look like a weak coupling - and then we have S-duality, and we start looking askance at just how different our major string theories are.

The other major duality was T-duality, which is an equivalence between quantum field theory and string theory. The simplest example has to do with strings propagating around a circle of radius R being equivalent to strings propagating around a circle of radius 1/R. Another example (or an example of this? my understanding is breaking down here) is that momentum is inherently particulate, a word I am using to mean ‘comes in discrete quantities’ because quantum is taken, and equivalent to the number of times a string wraps around one of these circles (which are the same circle). In terms of this being particulate, it makes sense in the same way that individual grains of sand become a beach, or Xeno’s Paradox - and again, it puts a floor on how finely one can divide something, which is something that humans a) keep trying to do and b) keep getting dissatisfied with and trying to break the smallest particle down again, most recently into strings. Anyhoo. In terms of these two circles being the same circle... well, Christians ought to be comfortable with that anyhow.

In general, T-duality relates two theories with different spacetime geometries - e.g. our two circles being the same circle. And now we really start looking askance at our different string theories, and asking questions, because both of these dualities apply to different options.

So one fellow, a Mr. (or more likely Dr.) Edward Witten sat down and looked at these two dualities, and he looked at something called eleven-dimensional supergravity, and he said, “What if there were in fact sufficient dualities that all of these string theories were the same?”

And physicists, presumably, went nuts trying to make this happen, because 1. it was elegant 2. it made things seem like they might make sense again 3. it was only 11 dimensions 4. he said that the M stood for “magic, mystery, or membrane” depending on what we eventually learn about what this theory actually is, and physicists love that sort of naming.

Personally, I like to think that M is the number of dimensions it takes (presumably 11), or theories (presumably 6), or physicists who die trying to make it happen (presumably infinite).

Every description of string theory I have ever seen has included a physicist who says something along the lines of, “String theory is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow; it’s the Philosopher’s Stone. People keep devoting their lives to making it happen, but there’s just no evidence that it should. So it’s lovely to read about, but it’s such a waste of effort.”

But then - so is all art. Art is elegance, art is beauty, art is making a point about the nature of the world we live in; and so is string theory, whether it is true or not.

*See? I’m making this approachable by putting in popular culture references. Nyah.

**It is representative of how I think of (Christian-raised) atheists, because a lot of (Christian-raised) atheists are assholes about it.

Additional posts to make:

-What does spin mean, in a quantum sense? -What is an open, oriented system? What does it mean for a string to be closed and non-oriented? -What is a worldsheet? -What does the math for bosonic string theory mean, in terms of giving it a simple description? -What is a superstring theory revolution, how many were there, and what did they mean? -What are the following problems and how does supersymmetry solve them: the hierarchy problem, gauge-coupling unification, dark matter, “other technical motivations” -What is eleven-dimensional supergravity?

#some crude language #to do #string theory #made more or less understandable assuming an arbitrary level of familiarity with physics and math #one which changes over the course of this depending on how much I want to explain #and whether I have a good idea of how to do that off the top of my head

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fastpacedfreefall · 5 years

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InuKag Week Day 5: Jealousy

AN: I’m gonna get back on track today if it kills me.

I included a few of my personal InuKag fanbabies in here, but the majority of the focus is still on Inu and Kag. My mom recently had a health scare, and it got me to thinking about how parents see their personal hurts and losses in relation to their own children. Idk, I'm not explaining it very well.

Kemari is, in the plainest words, a Japanese version of hacky-sack. Wikipedia can explain it better than I.

Hiroaki is the eldest, about 8 or 9. Yumiko is around 3 or 4.

Can also be read here

Hope you guys enjoy!!

Inuyasha tried to ignore it at first.

Nothing about the scene should have set him off—it was just he and Hiro coming back from a hunting trip, Hiro's chest puffed out over the young boar he'd managed to take down before his father could stop him.

(Maybe if he said the kid snuck away from him, Kagome wouldn't kill him over the shredded kosode.)

They had just passed through the last copse of trees hiding the hut, and Yumiko's squeal was the first sound to greet them as she slipped out of her mother's grasp to take a running leap into his arms.

“Good hunt,” she asked, reaching up to hold onto the beads.

“Very good hunt,” he rumbled back, bouncing her a bit while Kagome rushed over to look Hiro over for wounds. Her pointedly raised eyebrow and pursed lips told him that they would be Talking about this later, but she pushed her concern aside for the moment and let a proud, beaming smile wash over her face instead. Hiro whined as she pulled him into a tight hug and gushed about how proud she was of him and how fast he was growing up, his ears laying flat against his hair in embarrassment. Nothing about it was strange or unusual, but it made Inuyasha feel like a hand was twisting his gut.

A pair of warm, familiar arms swung him in a wide circle before pulling him to her chest in a tight hug. The bird he'd leapt off the roof to take down lay off to the side, forgotten in favor of his mother's excited praise.

He hadn't thought about that in years, and the scene in front of him was so familiar that it ached like a physical blow. It had been his first hunt, and she'd been so proud of him, that it made her death just a few months later even more agonizing. He knew the kills themselves made his mother uncomfortable, but she couldn't stop saying how impressed she was with his instinct—that he was so much like his father.

Then she was gone, and there was no one to see his milestones. No one to give him any kind of praise that wasn't a mocking comment on how good he was at getting the shit beaten out of him.

He watched Kagome continue to commend Hiroaki, Yumiko having jumped down to join the hugging and laugh at Hiro's bright red face. His children would never know that kind of misery, even should anything happen to him or Kagome, and a sense of gratitude replaced that awful tightness as he went to join his family.

It stayed in the back of his mind, though.

It should have been just a sweet moment between father and daughter. It shouldn't put a lump in her throat.

Kagome had been finishing up some laundry, the late spring day encouraging her to stay outside as much as possible. She hadn't been the only one feeling the pull, as a nearby shriek reminded her, and Yumiko came rushing over after her wayward ball. She gave her mother a toothy grin before bolting back to where Inuyasha waited to continue their game. Yumiko had become fascinated with kemari after Shippou's tales of the ridiculously complex games the other training kitsune would come up with in their downtime, and Inuyasha had surprised her with a ball he'd made himself one day. Kagome knew the game held some particularly painful memories for him, so the fact that he would put it aside to indulge their daughter...

Well, let's just say she'd quickly instructed Hiro to take his ecstatic sister into the village to show her friends, so she could show Inuyasha her appreciation.

Yumi wasn't all that good at it yet; she was more likely to kick herself or slip on the grass than hit the ball back, but was just as stubborn as the rest of her family and refused to give up. On the few occasions that she did kick it back, Inuyasha would run up to swing her into a big hug, making her squeal loud enough to fill the clearing around their house. It was the most precious thing she'd ever seen.

Which made the burning around her eyelids come with an extra helping of guilt.

“That's my girl!”

Kagome's four-year-old body could barely contain her pride at her father's praise, his grin shining as bright as the sun as he ran after the soccer ball. This was their thing, their little slice of time together, kicking the ball back and forth and happy shouts filling the shrine grounds.

After her father's death, Kagome couldn't bring herself to pull the old ball out of where she'd thrown it into her closet, not without the promise of his sunny smile at the other end. When Souta had taken up the sport, she'd been supportive, and had gifted him with the best ball she could afford for his birthday, but her ball remained hidden. She loved her brother dearly, but she couldn't give away one of the few memories only she had shared with their father.

She should be so happy, and a large part of her was. Her children will never grow up with the hole of their father's absence in their hearts, watching their mother struggle to bring them a sense of normalcy while she dealt with her own grief.

She couldn't kill the pang of hurt in her heart, though.

Apparently she hadn't been as successful at covering her sadness as she thought, because that night, after the children had both drifted off to sleep, Inuyasha joined her by the fire. His eyes bored into her past the front she'd been putting up, recognizing the same hurt in her that he'd felt himself, and he pulled her into his lap without a word, his chin going to its usual resting place atop her head. She let out a shuddered sigh, gripping his haori to center herself, and they let themselves grieve together with matching watery smiles.

They would never rid themselves entirely of the sense of loss, but they could face it down the way they did every other obstacle: together.

#inukag week #inukag #kagome higurashi #inuyasha #freefall writes #fanfiction

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blogs-of-our-lives · 5 years

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I’m sorry to say this, but this may very well be the last of the Blogs of Our Lives post.

I’ve had a lot of fun writing for this, but it’s just not what I want to do with my life. And as much as I enjoy it, it’s taking time away from other creative projects. For my tens of viewers, it’s not the end of a chapter, but the beginning of a new one. Thank you all for reading, and believing that I can make something wonderful and funny out of trash. I just want you all to know that deep down, from the bottom of my heart, no matter how much love I have for you all, I will never ever ever love you as much as I hate Brightburn.

Brightburn suuuuuuuucks. It sucks sucks sucks. I couldn’t wait until later in the post to say that. I had to lead with how trash the movie was, and now I’m going to spend the next couple pages explaining why it’s trash. It’s so bad that I – shitty movie connoisseur, who is making himself watch Days of our Lives and write about it – hated the movie so much that I decided to write a whole paper about it just to prevent someone else from being tricked into seeing it.

I will start with the only good thing about the movie. The concept. Brightburn is about a young kid (I’d estimate about sixth grade) who discovers he has super powers akin to that of a god. He has super strength, he has super speed, he can fly, he can shoot lasers out of his eyes, and he’s almost indestructible. Essentially Superman. It’s not a particularly original idea, but I was intrigued with the fact that the kid seemed to almost immediately become evil. This isn’t particularly farfetched. In fact, psychopathic traits are fairly common amongst children. The brain isn’t done developing, and in some senses the child is a psychopath. Kids simply grow out of it. Luckily, kids are small, they’re weak, they can’t drive, they can’t vote, and they can’t even get a movie ticket to an R rated movie like Brightburn, which I refuse to grant the respect of italicization. The amount of damage a kid could do is extremely limited. So the idea of a middle-schooler with superpowers is kind of terrifying. Imagine a child without empathy who you can kick your ass. If you tell them to go to bed, they can throw you through a wall. And it’s not a one in a million chance the kid will be a psychopath. Plus, when I was a kid I used to think when it rained somewhere it rained everywhere. It blew my mind that it was raining in my hometown but not in my friend’s town. When my dad was a kid he was terrified of this movie called Killdozer. About a bulldozer that came to life and killed people. In his words, “What are you going to do, hide from it? It’ll just bulldoze everything.” Kids are idiots.

Side note, I hope it’s not lost on anyone that I italicized Killdozer but not Brightburn. It’s intentional. I respect a movie about a killer bulldozer more than a $12 million movie.

Anyway, that was the only good part of the movie. The concept. Now I’m going to tear it apart, starting with the pacing. Nobody really knows or cares about the pacing when it’s done right. When it’s done wrong, the movies often feel like they stagnate or are rushed in parts. Brightburn is one of the worst examples I can think of. The buildup just drags on and on and on and on. By the time [SPOILER ALERT] Brendon (or whatever the fucking kid’s name is) turns evil, we had been sitting in that theater for a solid hour. Maybe more. That’s two thirds of the movie (including credits) that was spent just building up. So now, when we finally get the action payoff, it felt like the movie was rushing to the end. The kid destroys most of the house, kills four people, and then blows up a plane in like twenty minutes. It’s like trying to write on a piece of paper and running out of room so you have to make the letters smaller and smaller to fit on one page. But it’s a thousand times worse than that, because the paper had a set length. You could plan out where the letters needed to go and how big they can be. A movie isn’t made with a length in mind. So it’s like reading a sentence but the letters get smaller and smaller for no clear reason. It felt like they didn’t know how to end the movie so they just threw some crap together and tried to play it so fast we wouldn’t realize how trash it was.

On to the acting. I have no real complaints. The mom and the dad did pretty good jobs. Even the kid did a decent job. At times it was pretty weak, but I think most of that was on the writing.

Fuck the writing. The Chekov’s guns of the movie were stupid and obvious. In one of the first scenes, the mother whistles during a game of hide and seek in order to get him to whistle back, like an off-brand Marco Polo. My editor literally leaned over to me (like two minutes into the movie) and whispered “I bet that’s going to come back later.” It did. Later on in the movie, the dad comments to the mom that it was strange Braxton had never broken a bone or even got a cut. Like two scenes later, the kid finds his space ship and immediately cuts his hand on the metal. Sure enough, it comes back later in the film, in a way so stupid that I’m going to struggle to put it into words. The mother jumps to freedom from her house and somehow cuts her hand during the fall. She looks at the cut (which is shaped exactly like Bryson’s and positioned in the exact same place), looks at the barn where the spaceship is hidden, looks back at the cut, and says (I’m paraphrasing) “The spaceship! It’s the only thing that can hurt him.” The biggest sign of a bad writer is when the characters think about what they’re about to do, say what they’re about to do, and then do it. JUST DO IT. I remembered the garbage scene from earlier in the film that established the only thing that can hurt him. Who was that line for? Children who weren’t paying attention? The film was rated R. Maybe they assumed the only people they could trick into seeing this trash were too stupid to follow a plot. And yes, I’m one of the idiots they tricked into watching it. Jokes on them, now I’m tearing their movie apart on my blog with tens of readers.

I’ve told you guys about I, Frankenstein. The movie was worse than that. At least the writing in I, Frankenstein, while bad, followed a formula. There was never a point in which I rolled my eyes, it just in generally wasn’t particularly good. Brightburn, on the other hand, was aggressively bad. It was like all the different facets of a movie (acting, special effects, writing, pacing, visuals) had a competition to be the worst part of this dumpster fire of a film. I’m being too hard on the special effects. They were just wildly unmemorable, not actually bad. But somehow, incredibly, Brightburn was even worse than the sum of its parts. At a certain point, I looked up and started watching the blinking light of the fire alarm. There wasn’t really a pattern to it. I was fascinated. At another point, during the resolution of the movie, a man sitting behind me got out his phone and made a phone call. And you know what, I don’t blame him. It wasn’t like he was taking away from the experience. I was glad he was having more fun than me.

Something I didn’t realize until now, when I looked up Brightburn on Wikipedia to trash how much money went into making it ($6-12 million, so honestly they used the money pretty well), was that it’s called a “superhero horror film.” I took a class my last year in college about Horror as a genre, and the running theme of the class was the question what is horror? I’ll define horror as best as I can, and you are all free to agree or disagree as to whether or not it’s true. I personally do not consider Silence of the Lambs to be a horror film, though it is scary. It’s a crime film. Even if the film contained supernatural elements (like, say, if Hannibal Lecter was a ghost and rather than breaking out of prison he comes back to life), it would still be a crime film. On the other hand, I consider the movie Friday the 13th (the 1980 film with Kevin Bacon, not the trash remake) to be horror. Even if the film contained no supernatural elements, it would still be a horror film. Friday the 13th Part 1 doesn’t actually contain anything supernatural, but if I mentioned one that does (Parts 2-12) I wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity to remind everyone that a young Kevin Bacon not only dies in this movie, but also has a sex scene. It’s arguably his strongest performance.

Returning to my point, a universal part of horror seems to be the haunting. It doesn’t need to be a ghost haunting, it could be a human haunting as well. I’m sure it exists, but a movie about a stalker could easily be classified as horror, depending on the tone of the movie. Hell, The Gift was a great horror movie, and nothing supernatural or even particularly out of the ordinary took place. Looking at IMDB’s top 10 horror movies of all time, it lists The Evil Dead, The Exorcist, The Shining, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, Alien, The Thing, Nightmare on Elm Street (trash), Psycho, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Of these movies, I haven’t seen Psycho, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, or The Exorcist (at least not all the way through). In every single one of the films I have seen, the characters are haunted by some kind of being. In some movies, they’re hunted by it, and in others (particularly the Exorcist), they’re tormented by it. But either way, a haunting is an essential part of every movie. In Silence of the Lambs (IMDB rated it as the 14th best horror movie, naturally), the killer never haunts the characters. He’s a menace, a killer, and a danger to everyone, but he doesn’t haunt them.

Brando from Brightburn never haunts anyone, except for a ten second scene where he spies on his crush, which was honestly more cringey than creepy. So no, it’s not a superhero horror movie. It’s not a horror movie. If you want to call it anything, call it science fiction. The kid’s an alien, for Christ’s sake. Isn’t that like the number one test to see if you’re watching sci-fi? Right now, if you google “horror movies,” Brightburn is one of the first 10 images to appear. THIS IS UNNACEPTABLE.

I’m sure I’ve talked about this before, but horror has always been a trash genre. I don’t want to give off the impression that I’m the horror equivalent of a comic book nerd writing about how The Avengers ruined my childhood and it was all wrong because they got one detail wrong from the source material. [Side note: I really enjoyed Endgame, and at the time of writing this, it is the number one highest grossing film of all time, and honestly it deserves it more than the trash blue cat people movie. It was a really satisfying ending to one of the largest franchises of all time]. Even the golden years of horror, the Friday the 13ths and the Nightmare on Elm Streets and Halloween, are all just… pretty good. The writing was competent, the music and cinematography were original and not bad, but it’s not particularly scary, and it looks like every horror movie will eventually become that way, except for the ones that rely on cheap jump scares. That’s the nature of horror, I suppose. It preys on a current and relevant fear, and as that fear becomes irrelevant, so does the movie. So when I complain about modern horror, I complain about the cheap, shitty writing that goes into by uncreative and unoriginal people that disappoints everyone. Modern horror is an easy paycheck. It’s cheap and it’s surefire. The Brightburn garbage raised $30 million dollars on a budget of $6 million. Pet Semetary, Crawl, and Annabelle Comes Home raised a collective $366 million to a collective budget of $66 million. That is a fucking absurd return on investment. None of these movies (except for Crawl, kinda) did anything different. Pet Semetary was a remake. Annabelle Comes Home is a continuation of the Garbage Cinematic Uni-garbage-verse that spawned from The Conjuring. So horror has become a yearly money-maker for big production companies. Just put out some trash that will surprise (not scare) people, and watch the dollars roll in. Financially, this is the golden age of horror. They can make anything with a jump scare and make MILLIONS.

I don’t know what the point of all this is. I’m not telling the genre to do better, because it’s doing pretty fine. Midsommar and Us both got pretty good reviews. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark looks pretty good. It’s not like all the talent dried up. There’s still plenty of creative and original people working on horror movies, and they’re making some really good stuff. I guess it boils down to me hating Brightburn on a deep, personal level, and I’m not really sure why. I watch tons of trash. As I type this, I’m looking at my collector’s edition DVD set of Under the Dome. It’s garbage. Truly truly terrible. But there are scenes I liked. Shots I liked. It was made by people who were bad at what they do, but they were still creative. There’s this one episode where the government tries to blow up the dome, and everyone inside thinks they’re going to die. All the characters, thinking they have minutes left on earth, all finally do something. The plot unravels into something much, much, much simpler, as all the characters stop lying or trying to hide their motives. Everything untangles for just a moment, and after they survive the blast unharmed, it leaves the question what next? Sure, the conflicts were childish and silly, and the character arcs were (to put it nicely) poorly handled. But they tried to do something well, and for just a moment they struck gold. There’s nothing like that in Brightburn. There’s not a single scene that I can look at in the movie and say you’re on to something there. Keep working. If I were given the script and a blank check and told to write a better one, I would strip it down to the foundation. I wouldn’t rewrite it, I would delete everything except the core premise and start over.

It just really really hurts, having to type out that this movie was worse than Under the Dome.

I know it’s too late to convince anyone not to see Brightburn. And that’s fine. Sometimes the world moves too fast for you to make a change. But I just want you to know deep down how much I hate that movie. I resent it for wasting my time, my energy, and my money. It’s worse than Days of our Lives.

Fuck you, Brightburn.

Thank you for reading. It means a lot to me.

#brightburn #horror #superhero #movies #the end #fuck this movie

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bmichael · 5 years

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Cold Takes

You need something extra after you drag yourself out of bed at 450am in a polar vortex to go to the gym long before sunrise. So I was honestly delighted this morning to see a new Chuck Klosterman - Bill Simmons podcast posted.

I’ve had an up-and-down relationship to reading and listening to these two. Growing up, I was a sponge for their ideas, then as a more mature person I outright rejected and ridiculed them, and now as we’re all more or less adults I can relate to their thoughts in a probably more considered way.

Simmons was in the news recently because of this WSJ profile of The Ringer and him that mentioned, among other things, that the Ringer makes around $15MM a year on ad and podcast revenue. Now, I saw some sports blogs and twitter users throw this number around as if it were large. And it’s not zero, but it’s not really a large revenue figure for a media network with you’ve got to figure at least 50 staffers (it launched with 43 and has grown) based in LA. He’s a businessman and a business, man (I will retire that phrase now) but it’s definitely still a pretty small business.

So the podcast. I started listening to it as I went through my usual deadlift-squat-rows day -- not super fun but not the worst (squats-focused is the worst) and found it pretty entertaining. I don’t really care about Tony Romo’s announcing one way or the other and I thought they both circled around some pretty un-nuanced ideas re: basketball offenses. (Is the best offense just having James Harden try to score every play or pass -- maybe?! Three pointers and dunks are really good -- whoa, great point!)

There’s one relevant point to this ramble where they’re talking about the different Fyre Festival docs and what being an influencer means. Neither seems to have a strong grasp on the term. Simmons focuses on it qua job or activity, where you get paid to endorse something while Klosterman sees it more as an Aristotelian category. Neither correctly assesses it as a figure in the culture with great-than-zero brand recognition and a role within the capitalist-media complex to generate added revenue for someone or something and not always yourself. Ie, they’re both influencers, but neither seems to consider this.

(This point sort of comes up later tangentially and unnoticed when Klosterman laments his latest book dealing with all these things currently being made into films and documentaries while he got none of the credit...)

At the 1:15 mark Simmons brings up the movie Green Book and its unfair treatment thus far. Now, in the last podcast with Wesley Morris, Simmons talks about how he likes Green Book and thinks the movie works just fine while simultaneously reading the wikipedia page for the concept of the magic negro (really, he does this). He’s coming from a place of really liking the movie and attributing to it (or to his enjoyment of the movie, maybe more precisely) a nobody-believes-in-us type of moral gumption and gravity.

My reading of Simmons in the last two podcasts is that the movie’s embattled status as controversial and under fire by parts of the media pisses him off slightly and makes him want to see it succeed. In this equation, Green Book is the 2019 Patriots and Simmons treats it accordingly.

So Simmons says to Klosterman (almost a direct quote, but I don’t have time to go back and re-listen. It’s at 1:15:30-ish)

unless you satisfy all these different demographics, a piece of art will be rejected

He doesn’t clarify what “different demographics” he means, but I’m taking him to mean black people, primarily. He perhaps also means young people and/or woke twitter warriors. Simmons continues, saying that he thinks art “should make you think”.

By itself, I found this point uproariously out of touch and wrong, but Simmons kind of continues to sort of tease this point out with Klosterman. I’m saying “continues to sort of tease” not because I write in a folksy, casual style but because he really doesn’t seem to have an argument or single point of view in mind, and this is what I found so fascinating by this part of the podcast.

(Klosterman, for his part, doesn’t really say much about Simmons’ comments except that he grew up in a different era and understands he has a POV or prejudices implicitly that he cannot control.)

So a little later, Simmons brings up the movie Cruising, which I have not seen, but he says is very good. Apparently, its a “ 1980 erotic crime thriller film written and directed by William Friedkin and starring Al Pacino” about a serial killer targeting gay men. Simmons brings this movie up to make the point that people are much more easily mobilized these days (so insightful...) and to say, further, that if the movie were released today it would have been boycotted heavily and possibly not released.

I find this to be a laughable take, but he goes on to say something very revealing in response to something Klosterman says. Chuck says that if Cruising were made in 2019, maybe it would be made by a gay director and/or have a gay star. And Simmons is like, oh so they’d anticipate these issues and get out in front of the controversy.

This was so revealing to me because it snaps into focus a few different domains Simmons occupies and shows he almost ‘code switches’ his thought process, unconsciously, depending on whatever ghost of a coherent thought happens to be haunting his mind in a given moment.

This is clearly Simmons the producer and media mogul. He wants to get this movie, Crusing, made in 2019. Logistically, he knows certain demographics will boycott the film and maybe prevent it from being released.

(By the way, there have been some movies prevented from being released, generally on the basis of a moral panic, but the most recent one I can think of is the Woody Allen Louis CK one which, who the fuck would want to see that anyway? I’m sure it would ‘make you think’... that CK and Allen are pieces of shit.)

This is not really a great place to come from as a critic or even person who runs the Ringer media empire. Speaking to the latter, obviously the Ringer is a vehicle to make money for its owners, but it does seem to have a more coherent, somewhat woke new media 3.0 purpose that’s not 100% cynical in the vein of, ‘hey cast a gay actor for this homophobic film so that it won’t get boycotted’. For the former, sure it would be something you’d note and maybe write about, but would it really ‘make you think’? It would make me think that the movie was a cynical piece of shit floating in the homophobic toilet bowl of American culture.

Drawing back even further, it just goes to show me at least that the majority of influencers in this apparently lamentable influencer culture still don’t really consider themselves influencers. The sort of way saying someone’s a “white male” is kind of offensive because it creates this contre-pied cognitive step where a white man actually has to identify as a subgroup of humanity and not the default setting, as it were, and realize that he has discursive and political motivations that aren’t just ‘natural law’ or something and are generally around to further his demographic’s self-interests.

Simmons constantly spouts this backward, establishment-protecting bullshit when it comes to entertainment - and with regard to everything else. The one arguably moral stand he took, to badmouth Roger Goodell on his ESPN podcast, had the effect of making him more famous and gave his flagging outsider status a little more life, allowing him to pivot to the Ringer. He and his site still slavishly cover football, despite making jokes (I guess?) about CTE and concussions.

There is not a large conclusion to all this except to get my thoughts out there. Like, I don’t think Simmons is evil or anything, but he’s totally unaware of his biases -- the same as anyone, I know.

It just galls me that I think he thinks he’s this establishment-wrecking poster boy for new media when he’s just the same old self-congratulatory, now-middle-aged white guy holding back progress in the name of art or a sophisticated critical view when it’s really about the bottom line and protecting conservative values.

#bill simmons #chuck klosterman

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terrible-tentacle-theatre · 7 years

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The Bestiary Revamped: Vampire Squid (HALLOWEEN SPECIAL)

Disclaimer: While this article is founded in scientific fact, it contains hyberbole and conscious exaggerations for the sake of comedy. Do not take my ramblings at face value. You can find the sources at the end of the article and tools for scientific fact-checking under the “Learn more” link on my blog.

The old article can be read here.

(I intended to post this yesterday but stuff came up. Anyway.)

Ahem.

Cue the spooky music.

*threatening organ music plays at unbearable volumes*

That’s right, dear readers, the Spooky Gourd Day has finally, finally come, and with it the nigh-endless Halloween shitposting that permeates this website every October like the smell of pumpkin pie did my house just a few hours ago, immediately before I ate most of it. (I still have like half of it left, but it’s cold now so it doesn’t have that mouthwatering smell unless I reheat it. And I was too busy watching old Betty Boop Halloween cartoons to reheat it. Anyway, I’m getting off track.)

Frankly, the obsession of internet culture with this innocuous holiday has always fascinated me. What it is about a day when you get to dress up all funky-like, go from house to house acting like an idiot, horf down all the candy you can get away with and watch scary movies all night that is so attractive to them youngsters? I simply cannot wrap my head around it.

However, it is a day of great significance to this blog, since this is the day when we celebrate the utter freakiest of the freakiest that can be pulled up from the stygian waves of the planet’s oceans. This is the third Halloween of the Terrible Tentacle Theatre, and for this notable occasion, I have decided to give one of my earliest poster children a much-needed revisit.

Back in the early days of the blog, when it was still called Hectocotylus and my content mainly consisted of spicing up Wikipedia and Cracked articles with swearing for the sick enjoyment of some 30 followers, the article in question was my first big hit among the people of the Digital Blue Hills of Hell. In the days when most of my articles didn’t go above 20 notes, this beast gathered up 300 notes by using its nebulous tendrils to reach into the deepest corners of the ole ‘web. Not only was this creature my first big hit in my career as a marine biology blogger with tone moderation issues, it would also fit in great as the main monster in a theoretical Universal Horror/Syfy teamup, which would be the Halloweeniest shit ever.

Ladies, gentlemen and other fellows, the vampire squid.

Before you even see this thing in full detail you can already gather that I didn’t choose it for this year’s Halloween special for nothing. Everything from the ghoulish dark red color scheme to the bat-like webbing between eldritch tentacles screams “cheesy Hammer Horror movies written by good ol’ Howard Philips”. And it will become even more evident when you see it in its full, glowy, betentacled glory.

This is how it looks like when you stare down a squishy, floppy incarnation of doom. This thing looked so freaky that the dude who discovered it, a certain German biologist called Karl Chun, decided to name it Vampyroteuthis infernalis. That’s Latin for “vampire squid from Hell”. Yep, that’s right. Remember the part where science is hard fact unaffected by emotion? Well you can throw that right out the window, because this fucker freaked its discoverer out so hard that he named it the vampire squid from Hell.

“The shit I’ve seen, kiddo. You wouldn’t believe.”

Even descriptions of this guy sound like they escaped straight from a 19th century gothic horror novel. For example, in 1925 the Arcturus expedition caught one near the Galapagos Islands and described it as “a very small but very terrible octopus, black as night, with ivory white jaws and blood-red eyes.” Even in the years of the Roaring Twenties, merely seeing the vampire squid was enough to bring out anyone’s inner Poe or Bram Stoker, apparently, which isn’t very surprising considering that it looks like Béla Lugosi had an illicit affair with one of the Star-Spawn of Cthulhu.

You’re welcome for that mental image.

While calling it a vampire is more than appropriate, the names “squid” or “octopus” are much less fitting. While intially appearing to be something of an octopus, it’s actually not one of them; and it isn’t a squid either, which left the confused scientists to place it within its own little private taxon, the order Vampyromorphida. If you know a little bit of Latin, that means “vampire-shaped”, which would imply that this is the general shape for vampires. So next time you read Twilight, imagine Edward as a vampire squid flopping around on the ground the entire time and I guarantee you’ll have a blast reading through several hundred pages of sweaty bloodsucker romance.

Unlike Edward however, the vampire squid doesn’t actually feed on blood. Dashing from shadow to shadow in the cover of a snappy opera cape and hunting for innocent young maidens in the night is the kind of energy expenditure that this malevolent mollusk cannot afford. Mainly because it lives (you guessed it) in the darkest, deepest excesses of the oceans, where the eternal darkness creates an all-year-round Halloween mood. In these waters, even beginners have a hard time finding the tiniest scraps of food, and have to resort to drastic measures to get by. But the vampire squid looks at those beginners and goes “yall are scrubs git gud lmao”. Compared to the vampire squid’s lifestyle, virtually any other denizen of the deep sea lives right in the middle of a goddamn cornucopia.

See, the vampire squid doesn’t just live in the deep ocean. It specifically prefers places called Oxygen Minimum Zones (OMZ), which sounds more like the hardest Sonic level ever than any serious place which can support life. OMZs are vast sheet-like expanses of water in the deep sea which barely contain any breathable oxygen. Some of these zones can contain as little as 5% of the oxygen that saturates air, and barely anything survives here.

And guess what? The vampire squid lives here. Not only lives, but thrives.

This is the game the vampire squid plays, every day of its life. On hard difficulty.

Obviously, living in a dead wasteland of suffocating water has required the squid to adopt some nifty tools of survival. Do not do so would be like entering the final dungeon of a video game with early game gear.

First off is a pair of sensory filaments, which the vampire squid extends through the water much like a spider does its web. They are super long and flexible, and probably the source of so many dick jokes that the squid will choke a bitch if anyone tells one more.

“No, I’ve never heard that one ever. Ha ha ha. Real fuckin’ original.”

Next up is a pair of membranous wings, used by the squid to travel through the aether of space to “fly” through the water, it’s cape-like arm web billowing behind it. The vampire parallels are getting more and more accurate.

Interestingly this wing isn’t the same in adults and juveniles. At one point in their devlopment they start growing a second pair of fins which eventually fully substitutes the first pair, which then atrophies back into the flesh. Thus if you’re lucky enough to catch a vampire squid, it’s not impossible that it will have four fins. The biologists who first found these four-finned squid nearly went insane trying to describe it (and several other developmental stages) as separate species. It was such a mess it took years to sort out, and nowadays the vampire squid is the sole surviving species of its order. He’s standing in the darkness. Alone.

WAKE ME UP INSIDE

The fins and the filaments aren’t just decorative elements the squid picked out at Hot Topic, either. Used in tandem, they’re a fearsomely effective netting tool and the way this crafty cephalopod earns its daily bread. You think spiders are cool with their webs? Nah, Spiders ain’t shit. They’re lazy idiots and their web does all the work for them. the vampire squid’s filaments is where it’s REALLY at.

See, the vampire squid’s main diet is thankfully not blood but something called “marine snow”. This is basically the shower of discarded tissue, shit and corpses that rains down upon the lower layers of the deep ocean from the upper layers all year round. Having this fall from the sky for “White Christmas” would probably be quite traumatizing.

DECK THE HALLS WITH BALLS OF FECES SHALALALALALALALALAAAAARGH

The vampire squid, however, has had its resolve steeled by years of isolation in the darkness of the deep ocean, and is willing to chug down anything to survive. Bear Grylls is a picky gourmet chef compared to this guy.

That said, it needs to eat something that’s actually of some nutritional worth. It could spend its life scarfing down every chunk of marine snow it comes across, but that would be a waste of muscle movements since most of it does exactly nil to fill up its stomach. That’s where the filaments/fins combo come in, turning the vampire squid into an angry little tripwire trap ready to snap at any moment.

Note the filament. That’s not a parasite, that’s legit a part of the animal. Nobody knows where it evolved from, it’s not a modified arm or tentacle and it’s a fucking enigma.

Mystery tentacles: the quintessential Terrible Tentacle Theatre experience.

Extending its filaments (one at a time) into the mucky waters around, it waits more still then I do when I go to the kitchen for a glass of water during the night and I hear a sudden noise. The filaments come with a plethora of sensitive nerve endings, ensuring that anything bigger than a flea’s asscheeks landing on them will elicit an immediate response from the squid. And if said asscheeks touch the filaments, responds the squid it does. Specifically, it exhibits a surprising burst of speed (considering it just drifts around all day and it is effectively the consistency of Jell-O), pulled entirely by its fins to perform an acrobatic fucking pirouette off the handle, whipping around in a loose loop and catching its own filament. Millions of dogs around the world enviously sigh in unison.

After this, the squid pulls off its prey from the filament using its arms, which generate a solid slime-like material. The collected chunks of edible whatnot are rolled into a ball of slime, and horfed down by the squid at once. You probably cannot tell but there’s a Michelin star underneath its mantle. “Slimeball à la Vampire Squid” is one gourmet-ass dish.

Molto bene!

Of course, all this fine dining makes the vampire squid itself tasty as all hell. You are what you eat, afterall. But in the deep sea, you do NOT want to be tasty, because everyone is hungry on top of being the most light-deficient gourmet motherfuckers on the planet. So naturally, our subject needs some sort of way to evade the raving food critics hunting him in the deep. And he has this way in the form of a very unlikely tool: bioluminescence.

“But Admin”, I hear you say, “didn’t you just get done telling us last week that glowing in the deep sea will attract everything around you?” That I did, young padawan, and it still stands. However, just like last week’s subject, the vampire squid uses its built-in glowsticks with a very express purpose and doesn’t just flash into the sunset willy-nilly. The glowy parts of this beast have very well-defined places and usages, exquisitely located and timed, just like a laugh track in a sitcom. Underneath its dark-red skin the vampire squid carries clusters of glowing photophores mainly on the tip of its arms as well as in two fake eye-spots on the top of its mantle, ready to flare up in a blue burst of light on demand. The fake eyes even come with their own built-in eyelids, opening and closing as Dracula Jr. sees fit.

Imagine you’re a predator and you see this glowing collection of random bullshit. Now figure out where to bite. Good fucking luck.

These lights are used with great care and consideration in order to troll the fuck out of anybody who is foolish enough to make an attempt on the vampire squid’s life. Upon attack, the squid whips its arms around with the lights on full luminosity, creating a confusing dance of light spots in the otherwise total darkness and messing up the predator’s perception. The false eyes only make things worse, finally creating the illusion that the vampire squid possesses unlimited godlike control over space and time, which may damn well be true.

Question: What way is this vampire squid going? Hint: It’s not facing toward you.

The appearance of the squid as a godlike psychic is surprisingly in line with the whole vampire angle, since Dracula has reknownedly had the ability to charm and hypnotize people. The effect is further accentuated by the squid’s eyes, proportionally the largest of any animal ever discovered. With a diameter a whopping one sixth of the animal’s whole body, this thing's oculars are like if you were walking around with eyes the size of your head. Each.

And for added effect, they glow and change color depending on which angle you’re looking at them from.

DISCO CTHULHU

And finally, if a spooky vampire-looking-ass dark red glowing octopus-squid-thing with hypnotic powers isn’t Halloweeny enough for you, the vampire squid has a final trick up its sleeve that catapults it right into the realm of body horror. This is suspected to be a defensive tactic but who the fuck knows, really. Deep sea creatures are enigmatic as shit, and they guard their secrets jealously.

Alright, I’ll quit beating around the bush and say it outright. Basically the final defensive measure of the vampire squid is turning itself inside out.

Yep.

Of all the stupid shit that Mother Nature could have come up with, she went and decided “alright, it just up and turns itself inside the fuck out. What are you gonna do about it?”

This behavior is known to science as “pineappling” or even more Halloweeny-ly “pumpkin posture” (no, seriously) and it involves the squid taking the webbing between its arms and turning it upside to shield its head and body from harm. Now folded comfortably into a spiky little footbal, the vampire squid knows itself free from harm. The webbings are thin enough for it to see through, but also don’t let its lights to shine around, so doing this effectively means the vampire squid switches into stealth mode. Plus it looks stylishly similar to Dracula popping the collar on his cape.

The vampire squid is every Monster Mash horror cliché come to life and smushed into a vaguely cephalopod shaped package for best user experience. When the stars are right and Cthulhu and his Star-Spawn emerge from the sunken city of R’lyeh to bring the world to ruin once more, these guys will be the first living things they encounter. And then they’ll fuck off back to their stupid city, mumbling things like “what the hell man, that’s plagiarism” and “that’s way too extra, even for us”. The apocalypse is postponed once again, thanks to the vampire squid’s vailant efforts of looking weird as fuck.

Happy Halloween, everybody! I was a day late due to the length of this article, but I hope you don’t mind. Until next Tuesday’s article, have a wonderful time with the aftermath of the day of cheesy horror and confectioneries.

Sources:

Encyclopedia of Life

Tree of Life Web Project

Animal Diversity Web

Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS)

Ellis, Richard. “Introducing Vampyroteuthis infernalis, the vampire squid from Hell”. The Cephalopod Page. Dr. James B. Wood.

Seibel, Brad. “Vampyroteuthis infernalis, Deep-sea Vampire squid”. The Cephalopod Page. Dr. James B. Wood. Retrieved 3 July 2011.

Hoving, H. J. T.; Robison, B. H. (2012). “Vampire squid: Detritivores in the oxygen minimum zone”. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

#bestiary #bestiary revamped #halloween #halloween special #cephalopod #deep sea creatures #bioluminescence #marine snow #vampire squid #spoopy #bela lugosi is spinning in his grave somewhere

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some-thoughts-and-crosses · 7 years

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Visitations!

It is October in Rome…and a lovely month it is. Technically Autumn, it’s only now getting slightly chilly in the mornings. It also marks almost 3 months since I arrived, and what a 3 months it’s been. I’ve settled into a groove, and am enjoying my work. A few trips are on the horizon and a few have just been, which helps stave off the persistent homesickness. Also helping greatly in this regard are visits from my people!

Faeeza and Pria came to Rome! They arrived on Saturday 30th September, bringing their lovely selves, along with home treats, much chat, and the priceless comfort of dear friends. The first thing I did after their somewhat gruelling journey was make them climb to the top of Gianicolo! It did provide beautiful views though – my justification.

The first of several selfies, taken with enthusiasm if not skill!

In the afternoon we traipsed through Rome a bit, visiting Fontana di Trevi (of course), the Spanish Steps, and the Keats and Byron museum.

Sunday took us to Naples! A lovely train ride of a little more than an hour and the friendliest tourist office staff led us to our first destination…Basilica Santa Maria della Sanità in Piazza Sanità. We came for the catacombs! Our first…and probably not the last. Was a really interesting insight into savvy priests and gullible (but rich!) nobles of the time, that saw them pay vast sums to be ‘purified’ and entombed after they died. The price they paid for this saw the church built in just 10 years – unheard of in the 17th century! This is a fresco of a couple that reputedly died on their wedding day. The women is depicted in what we were told is typical, no-nonsense Neapolitan stance – hand on hips! Even then...

After all this excitement we needed sustenance. Perhaps you’ve heard that the best pizza in Italy can be found in Naples…we did! And to be frank, this was the aspect that pretty much decided Naples as our day-trip destination of choice. It turned out to be the perfect choice. We all 3 loved it! There’s a mad energy there, a realness, and so much to see at every corner that is either beautiful, stimulating, or both. Graffiti is wall art. Crazy locals stare from their windows. Seafood is sold on every street corner, and the traffic follows its own, decidedly Neapolitan rhythm. No one wears helmets on the many scooters. We passed scooters with kids standing on the seat as an adult rode, and pizza delivery guys holding the pizzas in one hand and steering with the other. Speaking of pizza…

I really love this pic of the 3 of us, eating our pizza on the pavement and watching the world go by!

The texture of the dough is different in Naples, being more pliable and thicker than in Rome. And while our pies were tasty, I have to say, I will take Roman pizza any day. The below sample is from La Bocaccia in Rome, a spot Pri and Faeez found for me, a dangerous 10 minute walk from my apartment. I would highly recommend it…so good!

After some pastries (for which Naples is also famous), we ventured forth to see the status of the Veiled Christ. It is hauntingly beautiful. We weren’t allowed to take pics of our own, but Wikipedia obliges us. The artist ‘was charged with producing "a marble statue sculpted with the greatest realism, representing Our Lord Jesus Christ in death, covered by a transparent shroud carved from the same block of stone as the statue.":

We headed back to Rome, with Naples leaving its mark. It was a somewhat busy work period for me so I was back to work next day, which left Faeez and Pri to their own sweet wills. Here you see them posing romantically in what is, I believe, the English graveyard Keats is buried in.

On Monday evening we reconvened, and went to the Forum for a night-time audio-visual tour focusing on Caesar. The play of light and sound was incredible – it recreated the Forum and let us see what it would have been like when built. Completely (and expensively) funded by Caesar, he saw it as a way to show-case his glory. As such he refused to have any artists sign their work, lest it detract from him. Kind of a dirt-bag move Caesar…but then again, he did get quite the comeuppance. (This is the first time I’ve used ‘comeuppance’…it won’t be the last).

Too soon, Pri left us lamenting. This gave Faeez a couple days to explore Rome on her own, and on Friday we met again at the airport for the final leg of our adventure…Milan!

Faeez’s fashion credentials necessitated the trip, and almost immediately, the change in dress was visible. The Milanese are a funky bunch. Saturday morning started with coffee and cornettoes in Caffe Armani…

We spent the morning on a fashion tour, with our guide giving us a fashion history lesson and taking us through some of the designer stores, conveniently located around 4 core, inter-leading streets. This part of Milan is really quite small and contained, and the chaos during Fashion week – with celebs in tinted luxury cars on the little, gridlocked streets – can only be imagined. The tour was fascinating…who knew Armani started out his empire by providing clothing for the first wave of professional, working women at the time! The window displays are curated with much care, and are frequently spectacular. We learnt that Valentino has a trademark colour – Valentino Red!

We also realised just how big the fur trade still is…with fur trimming in high demand on everything from accessories to floor-length coats. Interestingly, I just read that Gucci is committing to going fur-free in 2018. This is extremely promising, since it seems Gucci is at the top of its game right now, and was by far the busiest of the designer shops we visited.

Our tour came to an end and Faeez and I went in search of sustenance. We had tea at a venerable old lady of a tea room – 200 years old! Pasticceria Cova…you were a lovely glimpse into what 1800s café society was all about.

The last and most magnificent stop of the day was the Milan Cathedral. Faeez spotted it first as we exited the underground (who knew it would be right there?!) – and it pretty much took our breath away. We lit candles inside and spent a few moments enjoying the loveliness.

Sunday was also a tour day, the primary reason behind it being to secure a viewing of The Last Supper. If you’re going to Milan and want to see it, make sure you book your tickets early. Once they sell out, as they did, you can only hope to access it via a tour. In an attempt to maintain the humidity levels of the room in which it is painted (an old priestly cafeteria!), we passed through 2 sets of doors that seal behind us, and have 15 minute slots for viewings. Pictures are allowed, flash is not. When I was a kid in high school art class, I never imagined that one day I would actually get to see the things I was learning about. It was just so beyond my frame of reference. Each time I do, I am quite overcome. The Last Supper was no exception.

Overall, Milan was lovely. The people were gracious and friendly, and everything seemed to work smoothly. Giulia reckons it’s because the Milanese aren’t frustrated like Romans!

If I had to place Italian cities along a scale of ordered to crazy, I’d place Naples on one end and Milan at the other – with Rome somewhere in the middle. What really made these trips special though, was getting to enjoy it with F & P

Disclaimer: “The information posted on this blog reflects my personal views and opinions and does not necessarily represent those of my employer.”

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 7 years

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Modern Animorphs AU (part 2)

@jollysunflora : The second half of my complete list of modern AU Animorphs headcanons, approximately one per book.

28. “Ax,” Marco says, “How come you can roll out ‘venti dulce de leche dark-chocolate frappuchino extra whip’ without batting an eye, but you giggle every time you have to say the word ‘soy’?”

“It has so many vowel—owl?—sounds, in so little space,” Ax says. “That long sssssssssss, so pleasant on the tongue, but then that odd oooyyy ooy-yah? All in the back of the mouth. Very strange. Sssoooy. Ssususs-oooyaaa.”

“Also, he’s moved on from the frappuchinos,” Tobias adds. “Now he keeps spending all our hard-stolen bitcoins on espresso mack... mach...”

“Espresso macchiato con panna,” Ax explains. “Doppio.”

29. Cassie feels herself sweating as she props the laptop across the room from her, tools laid out and Ax unconscious on the table. She never expected to find a YouTube video on how to perform brain surgery—and to be honest, it’s actually about “how neurosurgeons perform an orbitozygomatic craniotomy,” not intended to be a how-to manual—but it’s the best she can do under the circumstances, and so she’ll follow along for now.

MM3. “That’s the kind of strong leadership we need.” Jake gestures to the full-color television (this year’s latest model) where a program of their current leader plays on a loop. “Keeping the wrong kind of people out of this country, saving America for the right kind of Americans.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Rachel says. She and Tobias and Jake are the only three Animorphs, except when Melissa joins them sometimes, and listening to their “Supreme Leader” blather on gets old sometimes. “All I want to know is whether it’s true that within a few years people will really have phones that plug into their cars. That’d be cool.”

Tobias rubs his eyes against the silk of his wing feathers. They itch constantly, since he doesn’t have a gas mask to wear every time he goes out into the pollution-opaque air outside the way that his human friends do. Jake and Rachel take bets sometimes, idly, brutally, about whether he’s the last raptor left on the face of the planet.

“Magnificent!” Drode appears in their midst, and both the Berensons immediately point guns at his head.

30. Marco is lying on his bed the day after watching Eva fall, staring at a patch of wall above his dresser, when he registers that his phone has been buzzing for a while now. It goes off so many times he assumes he has to be getting a call, but when he checks his notifications he just discovers he’s gotten seventeen text messages in the last hour.

The first is from “Smurfette,” and says “Did you know that there is a type of food that involves baking a cinnamon bun inside of a donut? We must secure as many of these as it is possible for a human to consume, as soon as possible!”

The next one, from “Hawkgirl,” reads: “found out recently that apparently ax still thinks you invented flea powder. i told him that if youd invented flea powder wed all be a lot richer right now.”

“Team Dad” (not to be confused with “Real Dad,” which is how Marco lists Peter) sent along several invitations to team missions on League of Legends this afternoon, along with a threat to have Cassie play Marco’s avatar if Marco doesn’t join in. “we both know that by the time you get back you’ll have only healing attacks and she’ll have trained it to apologize automatically for stabbing people,” Jake adds.

One of the many texts from “Julia Butterfly Hill” suggests that Jake has underestimated Cassie’s diabolical streak, because it’s a screenshot of a clone of his account which has had its name changed to HarambeWasFramed.

The real surprise, however, is the single text from “Xena: Warrior Princess.” It’s a link to an article about a disaster in the local national park and the efforts to clean up the wreckage of an as-yet-unidentified craft which went down in the canyon. Marco has to read it a few times to understand the point she’s making, because it’s all about what’s not there: the article makes no mention of any human bodies being found among the wreckage.

Marco gets halfway through typing a reply to them all which informs them in no uncertain terms that he sees through their transparent attempts to cheer him up and doesn’t appreciate it, but he deletes without sending. He can practically hear his mom’s voice saying it: he can focus on the fact that he’s still surrounded by people who love him, or he can focus on the negative side of everything. And being constantly negative is no way to live.

31. “Sharing this again, because its been 3 months,” Jake’s cousin Brooke posts on Facebook. “Anyone who has any news at all about Saddler, no matter what it is, PLEASE contact my family. Big brother, I dont know if youre still out there, but I miss you. I miss you like crazy.”

Jake turns up his Spotify’s Offspring channel a little louder to drown out the sounds of Tom and his dad shouting at each other downstairs. His eyes flinch past Brooke��s post, but they can’t move fast enough to prevent the thought that flashes across the surface of his mind: Is this going to be me a year from now?

32. Tobias texts Rachel and Jake an article from Audubon.Org, where several birdwatchers are going into ecstasies of scientific fascination at the bald eagle and peregrine falcon seen flying in close formation in a cell-phone video taken near a highway overpass downtown. His only comment is, “Told you so.”

33. In the aftermath, Rachel does a Google search: “PTSD treatment symptoms outcomes.” She reads through the WebMD site, the NIMH page, the Wikipedia link to a DSM-5 entry. She thinks of Tobias’s withdrawn silences, his antipathy toward so much they used to enjoy, but she thinks of other things as well. How exhausted Jake seems any time they’re not on-mission. How badly Cassie flinches when the school bell rings and doors slam. How Ax seems to be gradually losing interest in the things—cooking shows, new condiments, human history trivia, These Messages—that once drew his fascination. How last week Marco flicked an ant off the back of his hand and then went white like he’d just kicked a puppy. How good it had felt when she’d hurt David, spreading the pain around, giving it back.

She catches an Uber to the clinic downtown, filling out forms in the waiting room based on the checklist written on her phone for “how to get tobias an ssri”: Yes, she often feels tense and worried. Yes, her heart often races for no reason. No, she hasn’t thought of ending her life. No, she doesn’t feel out of control when she eats.

She gets as far as developing a cover story—it’s about how she’s never felt the same since her parents’ divorce—but in the hallway to the office she panics and calls Cassie. “Am I doing the right thing?” she asks, after she’s explained.

Cassie is silent for a long time, never a good sign. “I’m not sure an SSRI would work on a bird,” she says at last, “and that’s even if we could figure out a dose that would work without killing him. I know you want to help, and I think you should, but...”

Rachel hears what she’s not saying: but what if her mom asks too many questions? But is this risk really worth it? But what if the psychiatrist (the receptionist, the pharmacist) is a controller? But isn’t it them, and only them, against the world, and isn’t that just how it has to be?

“The war won’t last forever,” Cassie says weakly, and Rachel hates her a little for it. “When it’s over, when we get to tell everyone what’s happening...”

Rachel hangs up. She goes home, morphs, and flies out to the woods.

«You know I love you, right?» she asks Tobias later that evening.

«Of course I do.» He sounds exhausted. She’s never felt more helpless in her life.

34. The Yeerk Peace Movement, as it comes out, has a Twitter feed. It is rather painfully obvious that it has been set up and run entirely by aliens who are doing their very best to communicate with humans, and not quite succeeding. Most of the posts are couplets, for some reason that none of the Animorphs can fathom.

“Want to be On Fleek? When you see someone’s rights threatened, speak!”

“Don’t be a Belieber anymore - end slavery and even the score.”

“#tbt: Remember when we were symbiotes? Give taxxon freedom your sympathy votes!”

“Nickelback is super lame, and keeping involuntary hosts is just the same.”

“Respect your host’s rights today, and make your human into your bae!”

35. It’s Marco who comes up with the idea for how to take down William Roger Tennant. This is a guy, after all, whose cockatiels have their own Instagram account: he runs his fame on the internet.

“It's simple,” Marco explains. “We start a hashtag—#notsonicetennant—and we make it go viral. All we have to do is film this guy everywhere he goes, and eventually the yeerk will slip up.”

It proves not to be simple after all. Their gif of Tennant twitching madly mid-EPA speech gets overshadowed by the news story about One Direction nearly getting poisoned with spiders at the same banquet. Ax does not understand the concept of hashtag, and keeps adding #notsonicetennant to his retweets of what Marco calls “food porn.” They train one of Tobias’s repurposed GoPros to follow poodle-Marco, but that becomes a meme mocking the world's most obnoxious stray dog rather than Tennant himself.

The plan finally, finally comes off when they pull out all the stops and just confront him in morph. The smartphones that Rachel rigged up in the surrounding buildings don't pick up the thought speak, but the audio of Tennant screaming at the aliens to leave him alone comes through just fine.

When the scandal breaks, the internet (in truly predictable fashion) drops #notsonicetennant and starts using #tennantgate instead.

Ax reposts an old photo of Tennant eating a quinoa salad—zoomed in on the salad—and tags it #tennantgate. All of his teammates assure him they appreciate the attempt.

36. “All right, that’s just weird,” Marco says, looking at the final entry in the underwater creepshow they’ve been walking through for the past hour. “All the other ships have been getting more modern as we’ve gone, but this one? Looks like it was made in the sixties, at the latest.”

«The world’s creepiest museum curators are getting sloppy with the placement of bodies as well,» Tobias points out. «There’s no way that many people could fit on a boat that small. They’re practically falling over the sides.»

Jake and Cassie look at each other, seeing the same realization reflected in each other’s eyes. Neither one of them wants to say it out loud.

Jake becomes the one to bite the bullet. “Don’t you get it?” He points to the ragged clothes, the emaciated bodies, the modern smartphone tucked in among the antiquated radio equipment. “They were refugees.”

37. Rachel shuts the window on the library computer as soon as she hears someone walk into the room, but she can tell she was too late by the look on Jake’s face when she turns around.

“Roy Ludvig, huh?” Jake says. “Heck of a name.”

“He was at the T.V. studio when we attacked.” Rachel looks down, picking at her nail polish. “No civilians were supposed to be in danger.”

Jake’s expression softens, as much as it ever does. “And now you’re scrolling through his Facebook, looking for something that’ll let you sleep at night.”

“He’s got a grandson,” Rachel blurts. “Jordan’s age. He...” She shrugs. He’s dead, and it’s more or less her fault.

“Shouldn’t be looking on Facebook.” Jake sets his phone on the library table next to her, taps the screen to bring up an official-looking report. “You should be, say, borrowing my dad’s computer. Sending an email from his account to ask for the guy’s medical records. If you had, you’d know that Mr. Roy Ludvig had a heart condition. That he had maybe a year to live, at most, and doctors said he might die at any old time.”

Rachel looks down at the report for a long time, and eventually looks up at Jake. “Doesn’t make it okay, what I did,” she says. “He’s still dead.”

Jake shrugs. “You don’t have to forget it ever happened, but you do have to live with it. Live, and fight another day.”

38. In the aftermath of Estrid's visit, Tobias is flying over the boardwalk when he sees a henna artist who clearly smokes way too much pot to be a Yeerk. He gets Ax, they morph human, and both get henna tattoos of Elfangor's name. (Ax had previously expressed an admiration for the human tradition of commemorating a lost loved one by making markings on one's body.) They know the tats will disappear when they demorph, but they're both glad they did it. The artist asks how long they've been together, and Tobias says in a scandalized voice, “he's my UNCLE!” Thus, Tobias succeeds in both of his goals: making Ax laugh, and reminding him he has family here on Earth. Honestly, the reminder doesn't hurt Tobias either.

39. “You know, not all squirrels are like that,” Marco is fond of saying after a morph goes wrong. “Not all termites are horrifying worker drones.” Sometimes it’s, “You know, some of my best friends are fleas.”

It’s Cassie, however, who gets the last laugh out of that one. «You know, Marco,» she says as they swim away from the wreckage of the helicopter, «Not all ants are like that, right? I shouldn’t say that all ants are killers, right?»

Marco stares at her in silence while the others snicker, watching him war between the two impulses: to keep the joke going forever, and to express his honest hatred of ants.

«Come on.» And now Rachel has joined in on the teasing. «You’re just going to let that kind of besmirching of the ant community stand?»

«Okay, okay!» Marco gives in. «Ants suck. Yes, all ants!»

40. “Our experts have examined the video extensively, and near as we can conclude, this footage is genuine and unedited,” the newscaster says. “Given how viral this video has proven to be, with over two million views since it was posted to YouTube on Wednesday, everyone wants to know: is this footage proof that aliens exist? Is this a publicity stunt for the upcoming Fantastic Beasts sequel? Or, as one YouTube commenter asks, did a Smurf just have sex with a centaur?”

«Potential new ally?» Tobias suggests. He’s already tapping out a search for the original video in his modified tablet.

Ax laughs. «Of course not. He’s crippled. A vecol. Useless. We must respect the privacy of his isolation.»

“You know what? Fuck that,” Marco snaps. He shoves to his feet, posture tight with anger. “Just... Fuck that,” he tells Ax. “I have ADHD. Attention Deficit whateverthefuck. I take a pill every morning to help me function because my brain isn’t good enough to filter stimuli all by itself. I got a fucking 135 on the world’s most boring IQ test and I’m still failing half my classes. I’m a vecol. You think I’m useless, huh? You gonna start refusing to talk to me because of some bullshit about ‘respecting’ my ‘privacy’? Huh?”

«That’s different,» Ax says. «You’re not...» He doesn’t seem to know how to finish that sentence.

«If he’s an exception, I hope I am too,» Tobias says more gently. «I got screened for anxiety disorders as a kid, and I guess we’ll never know if I qualify or not, ‘cause my aunt decided that doctors cost money and if the test said I needed one then she didn’t want to know about it.»

Ax doesn’t answer for a long time. He doesn’t seem to know where to look.

«Let’s go tell the others what we found.» Tobias taps a button to send the video to himself. «We can talk more about this later.»

MM4. Tobias flinches when his phone makes the small ping sound that means he has an alert. The new kid is the easy target in every school on the planet. He wonders what it’ll be this time: another Facebook post where the semi-anonymous account Toby IsALoser tags him in another meme about how he has to pay people for sex because the sight of his body would make any normal girl run away screaming, another unnamed Instagram ping telling him he should kill himself so that no one has to look at his stupid fat face anymore, another Snapchat image of a puddle of vomit with the caption “me when I think of you,” an email with the most disgusting gif anyone could find after a quick search...

It’s not, though. It’s an invite to join a private Facebook group, called The Sharing, with several hundred local members. Most of the names Tobias recognizes are cool older kids from the high school. Intrigued, willing to trust for the moment that this isn’t some ridiculously elaborate prank, Tobias clicks “join.”

41. Jake looks around at the enormous open field, concrete pitted with openings and low hovels of corrugated steel and rebar. He can see for nearly half a mile in every direction before the smog makes it impossible, and the tallest things around are the hunched hork-bajir. “Where are we?” he asks.

Cassie frowns. “This? Jake, this is downtown Manhattan.”

He gapes at her. “What happened to it?”

“Tall buildings are targets for drone strikes,” she says casually, turning away. “The only way to be safe was to go underground.”

42. Marco doesn’t bother going to the house of the guy who photographed them, nor does he try to catch the kid before he uploads the video anywhere. Instead he waits for the image to appear on YouTube, then becomes the first commenter. “Sweet manip!” he says. “Is that Photoshop, or can you do that in free programs like Gimp?”

43. “EarthIsOurs-dot-tumblr-dot-com?” Marco says incredulously. “What does Taylor do there, post pictures of her pet taxxon? Reblog plans for planetary domination?”

«Judging from her archive history, she’s had this blog for many years,» Ax says. «She recently changed the domain name, but some of the content on here is from as early as 2008.»

Jake and Marco get caught up in debating with Cassie about what exactly to send to her, but Tobias just scrolls quietly through Taylor’s old posts. She didn’t lie about being beautiful, he realizes, or about being popular. There’s a long blank period in her tumblr account in mid-2014. And then she posted one selfie—just one—after the fire.

He can’t bring himself to read the names that the trolls call her, or the discussions about how much money they’d have to be paid to have sex with her. But there’s no overlooking the suggestions that she kill herself. The posts are too numerous, too vitriolic.

“Every chick ever to wander onto the internet has gotten that crap,” Rachel says; clearly she’s been reading over his shoulder. “She should’ve developed thick skin, not joined the Sharing.”

Tobias thinks of the Facebook page made at his old school just to discuss the fact that he’s a chubby zit-face, of the posts which eventually overwhelmed his Instagram with death threats. «Yeah, I guess,» he says.

44. It takes a long time for Cassie to get home from Australia, but at least they’re not too worried for most of that time; she texts them her location and a brief description of the insanity that landed her in the Outback as soon as she gets in contact with Yami’s family.

45. “None of this makes any sense,” Peter says. “I’m hallucinating, or you’re delusional, or else—”

Marco sets his phone in Peter’s lap. “Check the timestamp, Dad. I took that six months ago.”

Peter stares at the phone for a long minute, and then slowly looks up at Marco. At a clear loss for words, he tilts his head back toward the screen.

“I know.” Marco laughs, the sound wet with tears. “That blond wig looks terrible on her. But it’s really her, Dad. I swear.”

46. “So they’re going to get the U.S. embroiled in another war,” Marco says. “And this one with a country that can actually fight back.”

«Seems like,» Tobias says. «Only why bother with all the secrecy and political wrangling? Why not just send a couple mean tweets to Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un? That’d probably do the job just as well.»

“No, it wouldn’t.” Jake runs a hand through his hair, looking around at them all. “The yeerks need a total war. Everything the U.S. and its allies can pull out, against everything China and its allies can muster. Our military has gotten too used to sending drones to fight its wars, to ‘tactical strikes’ against insurgents. If the yeerks want half the species annihilated, they have to do a lot more than poke a couple of egos.”

47. “News flash,” Marco says. “Your average suburbanite ain’t gonna accept a seven-foot-tall alien for a neighbor. You know the number of times my mom’s been asked for proof of citizenship before she was allowed to vote or cash a paycheck or buy a car? How many times she’s been pulled over by cops while driving the speed limit with her seatbelt on? And she’s a regular old human being. Toby’s right—the hork-bajir have a whole other fight coming if we ever win the war.”

48. Rachel feels the blood drain from her face when she opens the Facebook message and sees the name attached. David’s Facebook account has been defunct for almost two years now; there’s no one left who would want or even be able to access it from the outside. Should be no one.

Miss me? the message from David’s account says.

Who are you? she types with shaking fingers. What do you want?

I know what you did. I’m coming for you. I’ve got friends all over the place and they’ll find you. They’ll kill you. Amazing the allies you can get, when you know where the bodies are kept. On the internet, no one knows you’re a—

Rachel hits “block.” She tells herself that the screaming nightmares she has all that night and into the next are the product of having a stressful life, she’s an Animorph for pete’s sake.

She doesn’t stop shuddering every time she gets a message for the next two weeks, but she never hears from whoever (It wasn’t David. It couldn’t have been.) it was ever again.

49. They stagger away from yet another hopeless fight, all of them injured, half of them missing limbs or bleeding to death. Dragging their damaged bodies behind the first dumpster they find, they demorph, remorph, and force their minds to focus long enough for the long flight home. It’s only when Rachel is in owl morph, staring around the dimly lit alleyway, that she sees the security camera pointed directly at their location.

«They must not check it that often,» Marco says without much hope. «Or else they’d be out here already to come looking for us.»

«Doesn’t matter,» Tobias says harshly. «It had a perfectly clear view of all your human faces. And that building is owned by the yeerks.»

They all stare at each other in dull shock as the realization sinks in. They always knew this moment was coming—they could only be so careful for so long—and yet, on some level each of them hoped it never would.

«Take one more night to be with your families,» Jake says at last. «We evacuate everyone in the morning.»

Jake loses his phone, again, somewhere amidst all the chaos. This time around he doesn’t bother to replace it. It’s not like his mom is going to be wondering where he is, not anymore.

50. “So,” Jake says, “this is going to sound crazy, but—”

“Aliens are invading the planet, and you’re the only kid terrorist who can stop them?” James suggests. “We do have wifi up here, you know. You’re Jake Berenson, right? You’re all over the conspiracy theorists’ forums right now.”

“Um.” Jake runs a hand through his hair, starts again. “Yeah, pretty much.”

James nods. “In that case, you’ve got thirty seconds to convince me your story’s not a load of crap before I call security.”

51. Ax secures their wifi in something a billion times better-hidden than Tor. With that reassurance, they all end up starting blogs.

Marco’s is a rambling string of wry comments about everything from the invasion to his parents’ science projects. Sample post: “Insider source (aka my mom): Visser Three has morphed human and eaten AN ENTIRE BAG OF MARSHMALLOWS in one sitting, ON MORE THAN ONE OCCASION. Pass it on!”

Jake’s is the place that people go to find out how they can help, and to get his reassurance that the help means something. Sample post: “As Barack Obama says, ‘We the people recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom without a commitment to others is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.’ This fight will never be over just as long as we keep supporting each other. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you all for the KickStarter donations.”

Rachel’s has beauty tips for the American girl on the run, light and self-deprecating enough that you often don’t notice the undercurrent of desperation. Sample post: “If you want to be able to look at yourself in the mirror, try fixing your hair using reflective surfaces such as pots, ponds, or pieces of Bug fighter wreckage. Alternately, just say ‘fuck it’ and never look at yourself again.”

Cassie’s tells people how to stay safe, and how to keep their environments safe as well. Sample post: “Everyone please remember, it’s important to stock enough food and water for family pets as well as humans when retreating to an apocalypse bunker!”

Tobias’s has a lot of good-natured grumbling about everyday life in the valley. Sample post: “In other news, my girlfriend’s mom is currently arguing with the smartest being on the face of the planet about where to put the new latrine facilities. Sorry Naomi, but my money’s on Toby.”

Ax’s has a lot of food reviews, of course, but again there’s that undercurrent of desperation, almost like he’s trying to convince someone else (or maybe even himself) that humans are worth saving. Sample post: “Marco assures me that there are no less than 23 distinct flavors contained within every sip of Dr. Pepper. Just think of the years of experimentation and innovation it must have required to produce a drink which can inspire 23 different reactions from human taste buds, all at the same time. Truly inspired genius.”

52. They run drills upon drills for what to do in case of a drone strike. Using any morphs they have that can dig or build—mole, taxxon, elephant, beaver—the Animorphs create an extensive network of tunnels and shelters, posting guards at all times to keep their eyes on the sky. The hork-bajir valley doesn’t show up on satellite imagery, which they only know thanks to Peter’s definitely-illegal fact-gathering missions on the darkweb, but they don’t know for sure whether an overhead camera would be subject to the same strange perceptual distortions they all experience when flying there as birds. They nearly lose their precious secrecy when Naomi sends several emails from her work account, claiming she’s being held hostage and asking anyone who will listen to come rescue her. Eva generates a hasty follow-up from the same account asking people to ignore “the prank that I now realize was in poor taste,” but none of them are sure it worked for the next several days.

53. Rachel makes one last post on her nearly-extinct Instagram account. This time the scrap of paper she uses appears to be torn from the back of a food label, but the penciled script is as intricate as ever. It reads “Who wants to live forever? —Freddie Mercury, 1986”

54. After it’s all over, Tobias retreats, he hides, but he keeps a thread of communication open. Cassie shoots him an email with the subject line “Hawk patient with intermittent aggression and lethargy—any idea what could be causing it?” Marco sends him idiotic memes that now feature the Animorphs’ names and faces. Ax asks for constant updates on the new wing of Taco Bell being built downtown, and repays the favor by leaking confidential information about the search for the Blade ship.

And then he gets one of the stranger emails he’s ever received. It’s an offer of a full legacy scholarship to Harvard University (which has just found the means to explain some inconsistencies in the records of one “Alan Fangor,” who graduated in the ‘80s) in exchange for Tobias teaching one class per semester on any subject of his choice. He agrees, with the stipulation that all his classes be online.

The resultant course (Ornithology 442: An Insider’s Perspective) is like nothing the students who participate have ever seen before. Tobias will write out rambling treatises on Why Blue Jays Suck or All the Ways Hawks Are Superior to Eagles with a thought-speak-to-text recorder. He’ll deliver online lectures from a shaky webcam pointed into a nonspecific tree, occasionally wandering off for hours at a time to go hunting. Students who ask him personal questions about Rachel get regurgitated mouse skeletons Fed-Exed to their campus mailboxes. Essays that don’t demonstrate much effort get feedback such as “even I can tell this sucks and I have a seventh-grade education” or “my grandmother could make better sentences than this AND SHE’S AN ANDALITE WHO DOESN’T SPEAK ENGLISH.” Assignments include “find one bird fact in a textbook and explain why it’s a load of crap” or “go film a Boston pigeon until it does something interesting, I dare you.”

Nevertheless, enrollment is so popular that Harvard has a three-year waiting list and charges students an extra $500 just to sign up. When Tobias finds out about the extra fee, he promptly video-calls the Intrepid, gives Ax remote access to his computer, and explains why he needs Ax to convert the course illegally to a MOOC. Harvard University fires him for breach of contract; Yale hires him on that very same afternoon.

part 1 here

#animorphs #modern au #long post #ableism #mental health stigma #food #racism #cyberbullying #fatphobia #ptsd

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iamlordmoldyshorts · 7 years

Text

In direct contrast to my trip to Spain, my trip to Belgium was entirely relaxed. Rather than flying, I decided to take a bus just so I’d be able to say that I’d partook (partaken?) in that particular experience. (Never Again)

My trip to Belgium fell directly on the tail-end of my trip to Spain. Upon arrival at the airport from Madrid, I hopped on the bus and went straight to Kings Cross Theatre, determined to see if I could wisely conduct my 18 hours in London before departing for Brussels. As it turned out, I ended up with a ticket to see In the Heights (again) at 8:00pm that very night. With six hours to spare before the show, one would think I’d use my time wisely, go home, unpack, repack, relax a bit before traveling again.

One would be wrong.

I went to go see Rogue One.

I finally returned home at 11:00pm and got my life together. I was up at 5:00am the next morning to book it to my bus. (I very nearly missed the bus due to the confusing system of six different bus lines heading to the same place…but I made it!)

I slept through roughly the first two hours of the trip but was wide awake by the time we reached Dover. (You know…the one with the cliffs? I couldn’t get a great photo from the bus, but here you go anyway.)

After waiting quite a while to get through passport control at the docks, our bus drove onto a ferry where we were told the crossing would take about an hour and a half. We were allowed off the bus, so I went to explore the ferry a bit. Found a seat by a dirty window and proceeded to be impressed and intimidated by the vastness of the Dover Strait.

The water was very choppy but we survived.

First view of France! Calais.

Second view of France. Looks a lot like midwest USA, to be honest.

Once we hit Dunkirk, we hung a right and traveled Southeast towards Lille, then Northeast towards Brussels. I arrived at Gare de Bruxelles-Nord (the Northern train station) at about 6:00pm (it was a looong day on the bus…) and took the metro to get to my hostel (that was an adventure all on its own).

Brussels was the very first place where I opted into a mixed dorm rather than a female dorm (simply due to cost) so of course, when I went to drop my stuff, I discovered that I was more than likely rooming with three guys (they weren’t there…but I could tell by the general state of disarray of the room.)

Anxious to be out and walking around (you would be too, had you spent that long on a bus,) I bundled up and went for a walk.

Stumbled upon a Christmas Market here.Wandered until I found some waffles…cause Belgium.

After waffles, I wandered through the drizzle and came across a plaza with a Christmas tree and this building. Stunning, but I had no clue what I was looking at…

From here, I wandered back to the hostel and relaxed for the rest of the evening. Read a book. Hung out in the common room (literally hugging the radiator) and talked to a lovely guy from Australia who was traveling Europe for a year.

By the time I went upstairs, the three guys I was sharing a room with were already asleep so I tiptoed around, getting ready for bed, and called it a night before midnight (unlike me, I assure you.)

The following morning, I realized I wanted to go on a walking tour, so I made my way to the center of the city to find the highly-touted 10:30 tour. As it happens, I got to the plaza early (10:10) and latched onto a 10:00am tour instead. Hindsight tells me this was a great decision because I got to experience Brussels through the eyes of Adrien Deslandes with Sandemans New Brussels and it was a wonderful experience.

I truly didn’t realize how much a tour guide makes or breaks your trip until my poor experience in Cambridge, so I’m quite glad that I found a fun and energetic tour guide with a propensity for bad jokes that no one but me laughed at.

We started the tour in Grand Place, a large Market Square. In fact, the same one I had found the night prior. Please note, to my eternal dismay, that the building itself is not symmetrical. WHY WOULD THEY DO THIS TO ME?

Adrien told us the history of Brussels in this square, including its destruction, reconstruction, and relevance to WWII.

Huge Christmas tree. (Slightly more decorous than the glowing blue monstrosity in Madrid.)

Cute little cottage in the middle of Grand Place.

A brief history of Brussels largely paraphrased from Wikipedia (history included only because Adrien made it so fascinating. Feel free to skip this if you don’t care about historical relevance. ;)

Brussels was founded sometime around 979 when it was determined to be an optimal position of trade between Bruges, Ghent, and Cologne. The surrounding marshes were eventually drained and by the 13th century, the city got its first walls.

By the 15th century, became the Princely Capital of the prosperous Low Countries, and flourished. In 1516 Charles V, heir of the Low Countries, was declared King of Spain and in 1519, became the new ruler of the Habsburg Empire and was subsequently elected the Holy Roman Emperor.

In 1695, King Louis XIV of France sent troops to bombard Brussels with artillery. It was the most destructive event in the entire history of Brussels. A third of the city, including 4000 buildings and The Grand Place, was destroyed. However, the subsequent reconstruction of the city profoundly changed the appearance and left numerous traces still visible today.

Captured by France in 1746 during the War of the Austrian Succession, the city was handed back to Austria only three years later. Brussels remained with Austria until 1795, when the Southern Netherlands was captured and annexed by France. It remained a part of France until 1815, when it joined the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. This was all well and good for 15 years until there was a revolution in 1830 that began at the opera house (a proper rage…at the opera house…)

Brussels became the capital and seat of government of a new nation.

Because of its convenient location, during World War I, Brussels was an occupied city, but German troops did not cause much damage. It was once again occupied during World War II and was spared major damage during its occupation by German forces before it was liberated by the British.

Because of its history, the people of Belgium speak two different languages; Dutch and French.

Wandering out of Grand Place, we crossed a few streets and headed for the second stop on the tour.

Adrien explained that comics were (and are) a large part of Belgian culture. As a result, there are art pieces like this all around the city, sanctioned by the city, complete with placard detailing where to find the next in the series. Like an art scavenger hunt, if you will!

Right around the corner from the first art piece, we happened upon Brussels most famous statue, Manneken Pis.

Mannekin Pis literally translates from Dutch to mean “Little man Pee.” No one actually knows the origin or inspiration of the statue. As Adrien tells it, this location was likely near the city tannery and the statue is an homage to these tanneries, where urine was used in the processing of leather, as the ammonia in urine helps make leather more supple.

Though he wasn’t when we visited, throughout the year, Mannekin Pis gets dressed up for a variety of holidays and has even been stolen quite a few times.

From there, we walked straight through the city:

Another comic installation.

Supremely cool facade of a building.

Not even original content, but it got a hearty guffaw as we walked by.

Our next stop was the Operahouse where we were told of the 1830 revolution. This is great.

Catholic partisans watched the unfolding of the July Revolution in France, details of which were being reported in the newspapers. On 25 August 1830, at the opera house, an uprising followed a special performance of Daniel Auber’s The Mute Girl of Portici, a patriotic opera telling the story of an uprising against the Spanish masters of Naples in the 17th century. After the duet, Sacred love of Fatherland, many audience members left the theater and started riots. The crowd poured into the streets shouting patriotic slogans. The rioters swiftly took possession of government buildings.

Never let it be said that the Belgians aren’t passionate about art.

We stopped at a restaurant/bar for a bit of a break, whereupon I went out to scour for some frites (french fries) because that’s a thing that happens in Belgium.

We trekked up a large hill and found ourselves at the St. Michael and St. Gudula Cathedral, the national church of Belgium.

Although St. Michael is the patron of Brussels, St. Gudula is the most venerated patroness. She is depicted on a seal of the church holding a candle in her right hand and a lamp in her left, which a demon is trying to extinguish. This refers to the legend that she went to church before daybreak and a demon, wishing to stray her off the right way, extinguished the candle, but the saint obtained from God that her lantern should be rekindled. She was interred in this Cathedral. However, in 1579 the church was pillaged and wrecked by beggars, and the relics of the saint disinterred and scattered. (Womp wah…)

From here, we continued our walk through the outer rim of the city and stopped at the Royal Palace of Brussels.

Wide street in front of the Palace.

The Palace itself, which, of course, has a controversial history.

First built in the 11th and 12th centuries, the Royal Palace has been renovated and updated several times, even being destroyed in a fire in the mid-1700’s. The most notable changes, however, were developed under the reign of King Leopold II.

After the Belgian revolution the palace was offered to Leopold I when he ascended the throne as the first King of the Belgians. Just like his predecessor, he used the palace mainly for official receptions and other representational purposes and lived elsewhere. During his reign little was changed. It was his son, Leopold II, who judged the building to be too modest for a king of his stature, and who kept on enlarging and embellishing the palace until his death in 1909. During his reign the palace nearly doubled in surface.

How’d he afford this, you might ask? Well…

Leopold laid claim to the Congo, (now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo,) and at the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, the colonial nations of Europe authorized his claim by committing the Congo Free State to improving the lives of the native inhabitants. From the beginning, however, Leopold ignored these conditions (like a dick…). He used great sums of the money from exploitation of a mercenary force in the region for public and private construction projects in Belgium.

Leopold extracted a fortune from the Congo, by the collection of ivory and eventually by forced labor from the natives to harvest and process rubber. Under his regime anywhere from 2-15 million of the Congolese people died; a consensus growing among historians that the total was around 10 million. Human rights abuses under Leopold’s regime contributed significantly to these deaths. Reports of deaths and abuse led to a major international scandal in the early 20th century, and Leopold was ultimately forced by the Belgian government to relinquish control of the colony to the civil administration in 1908, just one year before his death.

So all in all, he was kinda an asshole. Good times.

We finished out tour at Mont des Arts Garden.

Garden

Building-side clock.

Art piece surrounding a set of stairs. Even functionality can be beautiful here.

We asked Adrien why the trees were white. He joked that it was artistic in nature and when we just stared at him, he confessed that it was due to an overwhelming number of drunks running face-first into the trees at night. The city colored the trunks white so they could be seen at nighttime. (A MUCH better explanation.)

At this point, our tour ended, so another girl from the tour and I set off on our own to find food and wander a bit more. On the recommendation of a friend, we returned to the Opera area and visited a restaurant called Drug Opera, known for their waffles.

So sweet and fluffy that they aren’t offered with syrup.

We wandered a bit more and, determined to try all the foods, we stopped in at a Tex-Mex place to sample their wares. God, I miss Tex-Mex.

Fajitaaaaaaas!

We meandered the Christmas Markets a bit before going our separate ways.

An extremely blurry photo of a street-entertainer I saw on the way home. Playing three or four instruments simultaneously, he was also making two puppets dance. He had quite an audience.

That night at the hostel, I finally met my roommates, three delightful guys from Malaysia who were studying architecture in Germany. They had spent the day in Bruges, a pilgrimage I was making the following day, so I discussed the sights with them for a bit. (A good decision, as they kindly informed me that Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child was in Bruges…this statue being the inspiration behind the historically semi-accurate film/book The Monuments Men.)

I went to bed, thinking happy thoughts of the following day when I’d get to visit small-town Bruges and spend the entirety of the trip quoting a film I hadn’t seen in years.

But more on that in my next post.

All in all, I went to Brussels without a plan. I spent the majority of the time wandering around both with and without a tour guide. I scoured several Christmas Markets (as one does when in Europe during Christmastime.) I made friends with Malaysians, Australians, and Canadians. I enjoyed the simplicity of visiting the city–the fact that I didn’t have to stick to a plan aside from traveling to/from each city.

I don’t necessarily think I’ll be able to handle traveling without an itinerary every time I travel, but for the first time I could definitely see the merits. (For example, I’m doing three nights in Latvia later this week. No plans. Just…three nights in Riga. More to follow.)

Next blog: Bruges!

Waffles and Fries but Not at the Same Time In direct contrast to my trip to Spain, my trip to Belgium was entirely relaxed. Rather than flying, I decided to take a bus just so I'd be able to say that I'd partook (partaken?) in that particular experience.

#Belgium #Brussels #Europe #Travel #Wanderlust

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citizendino · 4 years

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2020: Early Morning Musings

Facebook is a sewer of ignorance, incivility, inaccurate information, and bad behavior posting as ‘community’ or whatever buzzword we want to apply to it these days. It is chock full of divisive nonsense put forward by people we have never met, or by people empowered by the idea that they will never meet us, so they can say any gross bit they feel like. We are all becoming a troll version of ourselves, self-demeaned for whatever psychological reason we want to apply. And this, sadly has been going forever it seems.

I am not a member of Facebook. I deleted my account in November 2 years ago. Not in some particularly noble gesture, but I think Facebook is a demonstrably predatory and unethical company, and I was an asshole on Facebook. I was the absolute worst version of myself, and I was being taken advantage of while alienating people, this seems like a bad combo.

But, in a desire to be relevant or some sort of chemical addiction I look at Facebook. I primarily look at a musician in Texas I like, or here at the Wausau Pilot page. And I got to say the Wausau Pilot comments are gross, ill informed, and people should be ashamed of themselves.

I want to bring in a real-life example of something from the Pilot comments showing up in real life. Recently I had read someone call the pandemic the ‘Rachel Maddow flu’. I thought it was fun because rather than sticking it to the organizations worldwide that let us down, that all got replaced with a return to sticking it to the libs.

I live in Weston, where we have the greatest dog park ever created. It is big enough that we can social distance the crap out of a visit. I bundle up in a mask, some gloves, a jacket, etc. A guy I know walked up to me to say hi, then stood right next to me. I backed away, and he laughed and said, “Come on, you’re not taking that Rachel Maddow flu, seriously are you?” and went on to explain to me how it is a hoax, how the death numbers do not accurately reflect cause of death based on multiple causes of death, etc. I walked away rather than have an argument in which I would have asked for source material for his opinions and he would not have any but would have kept going in his opinion, and that would have ended with me calling him stupid, and the two of us having a blood feud for generations.

So, when I got home I hit the old google box and wanted to track down some of the nonsense he spewed. Right on time it was right there on Infowars, Limbaugh, and Breitbart, the Wall Street journal, the Blaze. But, what is fascinating is the same sort of nonsense was on what we would consider liberal media sites like Bloomberg, or BBC, or Huffington Post. It was all just dressed up differently.

And we are falling for it, all of us. So, if we go with the anti-President Trump folks, he has been incompetent and cavalier and gotten people killed by reacting poorly to an unprecedented worldwide pandemic of a novel virus. If we believe the people on the right, it is all a hoax that democrats are using to tank the economy and prevent President Trump from being re-elected. If we believe the right there is no real science that supports, the social distancing or stay at home orders and we should all get back to work.

This last bit is where I want to focus a bit. That there is no science that supports any of the actions taken by Governors through out America. Mainly Democrat Governors, but Republicans also closed states, but we do not see as much criticism of them. But, on the Pilot website there is tons of people calling this a hoax, that it is the flu, and whatever else they want to spew. I want to call these people selfish and ignorant.

I get it, we are afraid, we are inconvenienced, and we live in a country that has spent the 50 years of my life destroying institutions intended to support our freedoms. But, saying it is not real is dumb. I mean, it is worldwide at this point. Even if we do not believe Rachel Maddow (you know, sticking it to the libs), we should believe the BBC or at least one other media source in the world somewhere showing you pictures of trucks full of dead bodies and nurses and doctors exhausted.

I would ask these people calling it a hoax to support their opinion with anything resembling a supporting document. I mean, if we want to call it a hoax, you should be able to find a local public health official willing to call it a hoax, right? My life experience has allowed me an opportunity to get to know a solid percentage of the people who work in public health in and around central Wisconsin. I have family members that work in high level medicine in the area as well. NONE OF THEM HAVE CALLED IT A HOAX. NONE OF THEM HAVE SAID OUR GOVERNOR IS OVER REACTING. What they have said is that by the time this is done we will all know someone who died of Covid19.

So, I get it, the manipulative media has lied to you. Elected officials have for generations lied to you. And now you are locked in your house with a smart phone and internet access. That in NO WAY makes you an expert. I studied poetry in college, and my career is built around writing. So, if you want to talk about thematic consistencies in the work of Alan Ginsburg over time, or the similarities between the fetishization of drug use in the work of William Burroughs and the descriptions of violence in the early works of Bret Easton Ellis, I am totally your man. If you want me to have an opinion and tell you what to do in the face of a global pandemic involving a novel virus, nope not your guy. And I would wager that less than 1 percent of you posting on the Wausau Pilot Facebook page have any sort of public health credentialing which would by its nature make you accountable for your posting. You do not know anything, so you can fall back into your life experience as the basis for your nonsense common sense opinion. To which I would say, have any of us ever experience the Covid19 pandemic before?

The answer is NO. It is a novel virus. Which as defined by Wikipedia is a virus never seen before. So, you do not have ANY LIFE EXPERIENCE WITH WHAT IS GOING ON.

I get it. I am 49 and over the course of my life the institutions that we looked to for comfort and stability have debased themselves, been shown to be corrupt, or some sort of variation of these. The people in Congress have willingly given up the luster of their roles as leaders, and as an institution (both sides) have become corrupted by entrenched special interests, and the need to raise money to get elected. The media split itself a long time ago as documented as far back as George Seldes in 1940 in a bi weekly newspaper called ‘In Fact: Antidote to Falsehoods in the Daily Press”.

The first President I really remember was Gerald Ford. The first Presidential insult I remember is when people called Jimmy Carter a stupid rube huckleberry with a moron for a brother. It just spun up Presidentially from there, Bush 1 and 2, Clinton, Obama, and now Trump have all been forced to deal with (or in some cases create) an escalating gross, ill informed, and intentionally divisive criticism and support machinery.

And we are the victims, and the symptom is our attack on things like science and credentials and expertise, instead replacing it with what might be solipsism or might be Dialectical Materialism for all I know. What I do know, we are faced with a life altering event and instead of talking about Victory Gardens, or what changes we are going to take on during what will surely be an economic recession caused not be one party here or there, but rather a friggin virus. We dig in and call scientists’ names, call Governor Evers name, call each other names in ways we would never would standing next to someone in Target or Bigby Coffee.

It’s cool though, have your opinions. Know what you know, your life experience has taught you some real stuff. But, also know that you are probably not an epidemiologist or virologist. And know that calling that person a name on a Facebook thread is not really doing any good. It is not a real conflict, and sticking it to the libs, or shaming conservatives, really is not a victory. I hope that the pandemic will in fact teach us a lesson in what is significant and what is insignificant.

Go Wash Your Hands.

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pixelatedflood · 7 years

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Why Fulbright Matters: A Subjective Account of Randomly Consistent Facts

Being the good old procrastinating developer who has 10 million ideas none of which is finished and most of which are not even started, I’ve been trying to write an article about the Fulbright program, my experience as a Fulbright scholar so far and some thoughts about its value. But a chance never came I was busy fighting code bugs with a laser saber it was simply a headache to try to summarize such an intense experience in one article without making it a long boring “yet another PR piece”.

Recently however, news came that the Trump administration is planning a huge budget cut to the Fulbright program. This made the idea for this article resurface in my mind and start to take shape.

As I’m writing this, I’m sitting on a bench in Central Park in NYC. A big deal for a Pittsburgh resident, right? The contrast between the old-looking trees, wild rocky shady green surfaces and the skyscrapers in the background is haunting.

To be honest, I don’t have a particular affection for big cities. New York is different, in a way that still puzzles me. I mean this is still the same place where Leonardo Di Caprio lead a ferocious knives-and-teeth battle and murdered the psychopath butcher and his lackeys! This is also where theater, late shows and musicals blossom! And yet it’s also the home of the monstrous Wall Street and its Charging Bull, with people lining up to touch its scrotum and wish for money. New York City is weird. Delicious Pizza and ground smoke. NYC public library, the very edge of sophistication, and huge advertising screens and billboards. It’s unclassifiable, a big mass of everything American and non-American. A shake of protein and carbs with a touch of animal lard, something awe-inspiring yet aggressively bold for the sensitivities of a quiet-loving OCD-stricken guy like me.

I used to roll my eyes whenever that moment comes in a Hollywood movie where someone says “The U-S of A, greatest country in the world”. Other than the fact that Tunisia is that for me, and that I associate chauvinism with other -isms that aren’t that nice, I used to think from the outside looking in: what’s the big deal? Okay so the US is living its historical prime, but so did many empires that eventually declined, and people should be aware of that cycle and should therefore stay humble and skeptical about such statements.

9 months in, I started to see why people say that and feel that way. I mean yeah, we could drown into the liberal discussion of “they don’t know anything else, they haven’t seen the world, so it’s an illusion”, etc. but I still realize why someone would say that more than I did in the past. It’s not about the numbers, nor is it about the good life (well, that depends actually, like CMU software engineers like to assert all the time about everything). Some kind of magic is in the work, to make this place the Eldorado of the world. Obviously, I’m not speaking out of some knowledge in sociology or any other -ology, really. It’s personal experience, from a guy who lived in different countries, so take it as you will: but it is nothing more than my personal sincere experience, if that has any value.

I personally believe it’s about people, what their interactions are creating and the general proliferation of passion in the nature of people here. For a 200-some-year-old country, the US has way more history and stories than that number indicates. It hosts a uniquely amazing mix of cultures and ways of life. And as much as that sounds cliché, I have experienced it first hand and can assert it now with more certainty than ever. Diversity in people, cultures and origins makes this place the miniature world it is. The best - and worst - of everywhere in the world is represented here, and is constantly brewing and boiling, accelerating processes that evolve slower in isolated cultural and social sandboxes in the rest of the world. The greatest country in the world is actually the focal point of summation of humanity’s experiences and drive to produce the new, the unpredictable and the awe-inspiring.

***

What’s the Fulbright program? To spare you the Wikipedia search, it is a program financed by the US Department of State and other organizations to sponsor academic exchange from and to the US. I, personally, am a grantee of the Foreign Fulbright program, which sponsors international students like myself to come to the US and pursue Master and PhD degrees in domains across the spectrum, and sponsors US students to do an academic exchange abroad with the same rationale of learning about the other, and bringing back new ties and knowledge to one’s society. Why does it matter? Why is it important to keep financing it and supporting its long-established legacy? Well, I offer two reasons.

***

The first reason is extremely subjective in that it stems from my own personal experience, and only from that. The Fulbright program saw something in me, and offered me, a 27-year-old software developer with international experience and big dreams, the opportunity to come to the US seeking knowledge from Carnegie Mellon University (my literal reply to the grant offer email from Amideast’s Matthew was: “Thank you for what is the most awesome news I received in my life!”, and I’m married, ladies and gentlemen, so I’m probably going to get questioned about that after this article goes public, so wish me inspiration for evasive answers), as well as the opportunity to come get a taste of that constant summation of the human experience fueled by passion for the better, in a big boiling magic potion that makes this country “the greatest country in the world”. I mean sure, it’s phrased in more sensible terms on the Fulbright website, but that’s my own version of it. I wanted to know what makes US universities the best in the world? What makes the US the birthplace of most of what matters in software engineering and technology in general? Why do people succeed here when they can’t do it elsewhere? What does the US provide that the rest of the world does not?

Being given that opportunity, and seeing its initially reputation-backed importance become more and more clear in practical personal experiences as days go by makes me reflect that I owe this country a big debt for irreversibly transforming my views on how humanity works and evolves. I know more now. I learned, I worked, I interacted, I befriended, I went around, I observed people, organizations and systems, I unconsciously internalized social and economic mechanisms and I answered most of the questions I came with to this country.

And for that, I owe the Fulbright program and the United States a big debt that transformed me to a friend and an ally of the people that made this happen: the Fulbright program, Amideast, Carnegie Mellon University (more specifically my beloved Institute of Software Research faculty, staff and friends) and more broadly the American people who supported the Fulbright Program and made it all possible for me and for thousands of people like me. I also assume I’m not a unique case when it comes to this feeling. In a Fulbright graduate, a small community in the US, as well as the country itself have a new ally and friend.

***

The second reason comes to answer the question of: “So what? New friends and allies, big deal! That’s a lot of money to make new friends! Why are we paying for this?”. As you can see I’m not a fan of sugar-coating, and I would legitimately ask myself the same question if my country, Tunisia, was spending on a program like the Fulbright Program.

I will make this more fun: I actually got to know new amazing fellow bright fools (Fulbright, get it?), and I think that in their stories, comes the answer to that question, because not only are they now friends and allies, but I firmly believe that they are the kind of friends and allies any country would love to have.

Let me start with the Pittsburghers!

Cecilia, Jebrane and I first met at the Fulbright Gateway event in Boston (Suffolk University, August 1st to August 5th 2016). We were the three Pittsburghers of the group, and as soon as we settled in Pittsburgh, we kept in touch.

Jebrane is a Moroccan national, “maghriiiibi” (obvious emphasis on the series of “i”s, that’s how Moroccans say they’re Moroccan) who was sponsored by the Foreign Fulbright Program to pursue a Master in International Political Economy at the University of Pittsburgh. For a boy of his age (I’m 28 and he’s 24, so I get to call him a boy to compensate for his overwhelming knowledge whenever we start a political/economic discussion), he is exceptionally well-read and composed when analyzing economic, political and social phenomena. I enjoyed meeting him on a weekly basis to hang out and discuss big ideas, and was always fascinated by his culture and intelligence. His personal history is full of initiatives where he put his strong character and exceptional wits to work in order to establish partnerships across the Mediterranean, managing events, contributing to academic seminars as an undergrad, etc.

Cecilia (pronounce “tchetchiiilia”, but not like Super Mario’s voice, NO) is from Italy (hence the Super Mario voice reflex I suspect). She is a smart young lady, passionate about architecture and design, and is completing her Architect knowledge with a Computational Design Master degree at CMU. Her team recently won the first prize of the HP-Intel NASA Design Challenge "Life in Space" “for creating a wearable exercise system for astronauts that relieves muscle atrophy in microgravity”. Big brainy stuff, but more than anything: an ingenious eye for opportunity, a realistic and elegant solution with high impact. If you look at her Linkedin profile, you quickly realize this distinction is not actually an exception: she has an impressive track record of winning and excelling.

Now for the Tunisians!

Seif is my long time friend since my undergrad days in ENSIT, University of Tunis. Seif is a fun person, very smart and talented in entrepreneurship and management. I worked with Seif in different student activities during undergrad, where he and I as well as our legendary gang did so much volunteer work and achieved so much together. Seif is now sponsored by the Foreign Fulbright Program to pursue a Master in Technology Management at the University of Bridgeport. He won “the coveted Best Venture Enterprise Award at the 20th fall Connecticut Business Plan Competition for scholar-entrepreneurs” (http://news.bridgeport.edu/news-releases/ub-student-entrepreneur-wins-ct-business-plan-competition/), rewarding the great potential that I have always seen in him.

Narimane, or Nari like Americans like to call her, is one of those people about whom you discover amazing things little by little. Today we actually met during her lunch break and took the above selfie, and I learned that she grew up in Saudi Arabia, surrounded by Egyptian and Lebanese nationals, studying in a French school, returning to Tunisia at age 14 to integrate into her home country for the first time and to join its educational system, which is a tremendous challenge she successfully completed. She later joined INSAT (one of Tunisia’s best engineering schools) to graduate as a biology engineer, then working in healthcare management, now pursuing an MBA at William and Mary, and interning this summer at CBRE (leader in real estate) in New York City doing real work instead of dummy intern tasks. And there’s a reason for that, she knows her stuff. Changing specialties or rather application domains never stopped her from adapting quickly, learning and making impressive progress each time. It shows on her CV, it shows when you talk to her, in her people skills and in her exceptional intelligence.

I also met amazing US Fulbright grantees in San Francisco, who did an academic exchange outside the US. Stories such as the observation of difficulties in teaching medicine in third world countries and deciding to launch a startup to create the largest library of annotated medical imagery in the world, or being inspired by Tunisian traditional craft of “fouta” to create a startup which shares the charm of those products in the US are what happens when US nationals are sponsored to go on an academic exchange elsewhere an bring back new ideas and inspiration to add to the United State’s magic potion of diversity.

There’s a pattern here, recognized around the world beyond my personal experience: Fulbright grantees are exceptional people with amazing potential, tremendous ambition, and unique talents.

I could really go on, but the article is already too long. The gist of it is this: the Fulbright program benefits the US by supporting people like Jebrane, Cecilia, Seif and Narimane, people who will someday achieve great things. Fulbright grantees are selected among thousands and thousands of candidates, and are people with exceptional potential to achieve great things in the future. Fulbright involves them with US-based universities and communities, Fulbright makes of them partners for the future, the US gains allies all around the world, thousands of Jebranes, Cecilias, Seifs and Narimanes. That is a gain which cannot be quantified with money, and the Fulbright Program is probably the best performing academic exchange program in terms of achieving these goals, simply through its sheer scale, hence its prestigious reputation and very notable alumni. (US Fulbright, Foreign Fulbright)

The Fulbright Program is the ingenious product of that unique US magic potion: senator J. William Fulbright got the idea, fought for it, successfully implemented it, and since then, the US gained an incomparable edge in terms of international networking thanks to the dynamic of partnership and mutual understanding this program created.

That is why the Fulbright Program is worth it. That is why I hope the US keeps funding it even if I’m finishing my program this August: it is one of those rare experiences working towards improving the United States’ and the world’s condition, and I deeply hope it does not get killed by a temporary self-isolating political impulse.

***

The Fulbright program is now threatened by a budget cut that would incapacitate it and gradually destroy it if budget cuts like the one suggested become a habit.

So to you American reader, and to you international reader: save Fulbright.

#fulbright #fulbright scholar #budget2017 #trump budget #budget cut #cultural understanding #strategic networking #scholarship

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