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vaguely-concerned · 4 years

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The Mandalorian Fic -- And we are kind to snails

Gen, 3700 words. Story time on the Razor Crest! It was obviously way too early to introduce the kid to combat training, but there were other ways to prepare a child for the world, surely.

If that meant Din was occasionally stuck trying to imitate animal calls for the enjoyment and edification of a delighted and indefatigable one-person audience, so be it.

Can also be found here on AO3

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Din had, he was slowly becoming aware, created a monster.

“Da-wah,” the baby announced, reaching his arms out to be picked up and dropping the holodisc next to him in Din’s lap once he was safely positioned.

“...oh,” Din said faintly, slumping back a little in the pilot’s chair as he kept the baby steady with one hand. “Again?”

The baby turned wide expectant eyes on him, and Din — who had in fact been planning to troubleshoot the concerning noise one of the engines had been making the last time they took off — sighed. Well, he supposed that would be easier to get done uninterrupted once the baby was asleep anyway.

“Right, again,” Din agreed, and went to activate the ship’s holoprojector on the dashboard before sliding the disc in for the second time that day.

The reading had been a bit of a shot in the dark. It was obviously way too early to introduce the kid to combat training and he may never be suited for it in a way Din would be able to teach him, even in maturity — and for all Din knew about the kid’s species that might not even be within his own lifetime, it didn’t seem worth holding his breath on this one. There were other ways to prepare a child for the world, though, surely. It was probably a bit on the premature side for engineering too, since the kid still had a marked tendency to put everything he could pick up into his mouth at least once, which ruled out most of Din’s own expertise.

He’d mulled it over for a few days until a half-buried memory of his parents reading to him had presented itself for consideration. He no longer recalled what exactly they’d read — only the feeling of sitting nestled between them, his mother’s fingers running through his hair, the way his father’s voice had taken on a specific cadence when he read aloud. That they would sometimes switch off doing the voices for the dialogue so it became almost like a real conversation.

It was… well. He still remembered some of it.

Recognizing in himself no great talent for acting Din had elected to aim for something more practical, at least to begin with. In the end he’d chosen something he hoped would be both suitable for a kid and something useful to teach him and gotten, among a few other things, a holodisc that included information on and pictures of a great variety of animals from around the galaxy. Despite the breezy assurances of some people who were born and raised in the tribe, Din suspected that there was such a thing as too early an age to be introduced to the bloodthirsty treatises of Mandalore the Conqueror.

As it turned out the kid had taken to the whole thing with so much gusto that getting him to go to bed without reading at least a little first was starting to become a minor diplomatic incident. It didn’t seem to matter so much what they actually looked at — Din sometimes wondered if he could have gotten away with reading the ship’s manual aloud every night and had the same entranced reception. But for that space of time every night and sometimes during the day, the kid was glued to Din’s lap and poured his full undivided attention into whatever was set before him, and filling that time with anything less than worthy of that attention felt unacceptable.

If that meant Din was occasionally stuck trying to imitate animal calls for the enjoyment and edification of a delighted and indefatigable one-person audience, so be it.

The holoprojector sprang sluggishly to life and the image flickered until Din leaned forward to give the dashboard a succinct and practiced thump. He really should open that up and take a proper look at it one of these days, it’d been acting up for years and the components were likely older than him. “There we go. Okay, then. What are we looking at today?”

In the flickering light of hyperspace illuminating the cockpit he squinted at the small hovering icons that served as previews for the full articles, looking for one that seemed interesting or failing that an old favorite. Before he could settle on something the kid leaned forward and pointed at one of the icons with an intent yelp, so Din opened that one and gave a surprised huff of laughter when the large four-legged bulk of the creature rose from the holoprojector, its horned head immediately familiar where it was lifted in a silent roar. He hadn’t realized the disc included extinct species. The kid glanced up at him, waiting for him to start the normal routine of saying the animal’s name.

“That’s a mythosaur,” Din said, unaccountably pleased the kid had zoomed right in on it. “Our people used to ride them, a long time ago.”

The kid made a long intrigued coo and reached out towards the hologram, moving his hand like he meant to stroke the mythosaur’s horned, ferocious head.

“Too bad they’re extinct or we could’ve gotten ourselves one,” Din said, genuinely a little wistful. “Wouldn’t that have been something?”

Apparently the kid got just enough of that to fix Din with a wide-eyed look, ears perking up in breathless expectation.

Regretful to burst his bubble Din was forced to clarify: “I don’t have one. They aren’t around anymore.”

After a moment’s pause the baby took this revelation with somber dignity, turning back to the mythosaur. “Bah-ta,” he intoned, waving his little hand at the hologram like he was bidding the creature a solemn farewell.

“You still got one here, though,” Din said, in the hopes of softening the blow, tugging gently on the mythosaur skull pendant the kid wore around his neck most waking hours. ”See how they’ve got the same horns?”

The baby grabbed the pendant and glanced down at it, then between it and the hologram a few times, before holding the pendant up for Din’s inspection with a triumphant happy cry.

“Yeah. We keep the important parts,” Din said, grinning a bit at the enthusiasm.

The baby absentmindedly stuck the pendant in his mouth, small toes wiggling in contentment as he turned back to the hologram, clearly awaiting what was next. Biting his lip Din added ‘toy mythosaur?’ to his inner list of things to look out for in markets when he went to resupply and then read off the sparse information the holodisc’s compilers had thought worthy of inclusion.

“Remind me to find a more exciting version of this for you one day,” Din said as he closed the article. “There’s gotta be some better stuff about them out there.”

The baby gave a garbled sound around the pendant, idly swinging his legs while Din picked a new article at random, coming up with something aquatic and vaguely frog-like from a planet covered almost entirely in shallow oceans. The kid’s eyes sparkled.

“I think you’ll find that’s a lunch buffet too big even for you, buddy,” Din told him, moving through the different pictures of the sort-of frogs flitting between corals and strange tentacle-like sea plants. “They’re at least twice your size and squirt poison. Which apparently has psychedelic effects for some species. Huh. Let’s definitely steer clear of that, then.”

Quite apart from anything else Din had no idea how much the baby’s inexplicable mind powers were controlled by conscious thought and how much was purely instinctual — Din already felt out of his depth enough as it was with this, he could only imagine with dread the results of any unforeseen variables. If Din had already wondered whether the kid could lift himself into the air as well as things around him, it was only a question of time before the baby’s inventive and ever-active brain came up with the same idea. Din tried to keep it out of his mind most of the time, outside of the involuntary planning for endless contingencies he engaged in when he couldn’t fall asleep at night. One particularly fevered evening he had, for a while, seriously considered padding the entire ceiling of the interior of the Razor Crest, just to be safe.

After the frogs were duly ‘ooh’ed and hungrily ‘aaah’d over they continued through a few types of bugs until Din used his veto by right of being the person in control of the holoprojector to get them over onto something else. He never knew the universe contained quite so many beetles or that they all looked basically the same. The Naboo guarlara got a raucous reception, though Din suspected this might have more to do with the fanciful and brightly coloured costumes of the royalty depicted riding on them than the animal itself.

Hm. Maybe hunting down a history book or two might be a good call, actually, and not just for the kid. Din had never had much of an interest in the subject himself — surely the world was bleak enough without going around dredging up the muds of ancient strife and suffering to cloud the waters even further. But these Jedi were currently the best lead he had on finding anyone like the baby out there, and if they had once been powerful enough to challenge a Mandalore… they had to have left tracks somewhere. He couldn’t imagine the Empire having tolerated information about formidable sorcerers, however ancient, being freely available, and sometimes knowledge faded surprisingly quickly if it was stamped out hard enough. Off the top of his head he was having a hard time coming up with anyone among his established contacts who might have an interest in banned literature on the side. People in his line of work did not tend towards bookishness, by and large. But then again they might have clients who did and who had the credits to back it up. It could be a useful trail to pursue, anyway, and less risky than trying to ask around about such a loaded subject in person.

What he’d do if he actually found these people was a bridge he’d have to cross — or burn behind him while fleeing blaster bolts, he could only wryly extrapolate from recent events — if he ever managed to get to it.

Still half-lost in thought Din switched to a new animal at the kid’s urging, then startled out of his distraction when the kid sat up straighter in his lap and gave a call of accusation and reproof that came straight from the depths of his little body.

“Huh? What’s wrong?” Din blinked at the hologram of the round-faced fuzzy creatures and tried to understand what was freaking the kid out about them.

“Eh!” the kid insisted, gesturing hotly at the hologram.

Realization finally dawned; Din had to push down a laugh. “Oh yeah, you had a little run-in with one of those on Sorgan, didn’t you. It’s called a Loth-cat, it’s a type of tooka. It’s not dangerous,” he added, chuckling a little despite himself when the small body in his lap remained rigid with outrage and resentment. He wrapped his arms more securely around the kid and stroked a calming hand over his side. “Some people keep them as pets.”

The kid still scowled distrustfully at the image of the Loth-cat like he found this very hard to believe, but burrowed closer against Din’s chest, tucking himself into the crook of his arm.

“See there,” Din said, pointing out the kittens cowering behind the bigger animal. “It has little ones to take care of. That’s why it’s hissing, it’s protecting them.”

Blinking slowly the kid seemed to consider this, his tiny hand wrapped around one of Din’s fingers. He gave a quizzical sound and looked up at Din, pointing at a kitten too.

“Uh-huh,” Din said. “It’s a baby. Like you.”

Softening slightly the kid lowered his hand again and tilted his head to one side.

“That’s the parent,” Din said, indicating the adult. “Buir. And they’re its children. Ade.”

He still couldn’t quite tell how much language the kid actually understood yet, but it felt like the right sort of thing to do, so he kept going.

“Together they’re a family. Aliit. I, uh. Don’t know if they really do clans, but it’s the same word.”

The kid gave a thoughtful sound and fumbled for a handhold on Din’s armor. Din gave him a squeeze, stroking his head when he butted his forehead against his palm to ask for it without taking his big dark eyes off the hologram.

“Every being gets scared and angry if its children are in danger,” Din said quietly, rocking the child gently on his lap. Since this one had sparked an interest, and to give the kid some time to get used to seeing the animal without fear, they read all the information provided, going through galactic prevalence, social structures, speculated planet of origin for the tooka, anatomy and behavioral patterns, history of domestication and hunting strategies. Din was almost sure most of it went right over the kid’s head, but the attentive tilt of his ears never wavered and he seemed to listen the whole way, even glancing questioningly up at Din when he fumbled a little in getting to the next page at one point and left a pause in the flow. Maybe the facts weren’t the most important part.

The last image of the article was of the Loth-cat asleep, its kittens tucked close all around it. Apparently reaching a place where he was ready to bury the hatchet and extend a gracious hand of peace the kid finally leaned forward and tried to pat the Loth-cat’s head like he’d done with the mythosaur, making a soothing sort of warbling sound.

“Yeah, we’re not gonna mess with its babies,” Din agreed. “It doesn’t need to be scared.”

“Nahwa-lah,” the baby babbled sagely, sitting back and leaning against Din’s side again.

“Well, while we’re on things you’ve already seen before...” Din did a quick search and found the large one-horned head he’d had the dubious pleasure of surveying from extremely up close several times.

The baby stilled in his arms, ears perking up.

“You remember this one too, huh. Guess it’d be hard to forget. Well, it’s called a mudhorn,” Din said. “In the capacity as your father, let me take the opportunity to advise you to learn from my mistakes and leave their eggs the hell alone. My vision still goes double sometimes if I turn my head too quickly.”

“Aaah,” the kid said, imperiously waving his hand in the way that meant he wanted the next page of the article, then let out a squeak when the next picture was a mudhorn contentedly grazing with its calf, plump and with a head nearly comically oversized, the horn only about the length of a human hand. The baby pointed to the calf, his excitement so radiant that Din had to smile.

“Yeah, that’s another baby. Actually...” Din knitted his brow as he scanned through the article until he found the section about anatomy and brought up a hologram of the mudhorn’s skull in profile. “Look familiar?”

The baby’s mouth turned into a little ‘o’ of surprise; he glanced up at Din, stretching up as far as he could to tentatively poke the edge of a shoulder pauldron.

“That’s right,” Din confirmed, twisting a little so the kid got a clearer view. “That’s our signet. Which you should rightfully get most of the honour for, honestly, I wasn’t doing so hot on my own.”

Running a three-fingered hand back and forth over the edge of the signet the baby babbled away, his free hand gesturing towards the hologram. Din nodded and ‘uh-huh’ed dutifully along until the kid’s story culminated in him throwing both his arms up with a shout and looking up at Din in a ‘can you believe it?’ sort of way.

“I did go flying a couple of times back there,” Din hazarded while sitting up straight again, and was rewarded with a firm nod. The kid chattered some more and patted Din’s breastplate as if in reassurance, pressing his small round cheek to the smooth metal and blinking cheerily up at him.

Din’s chest did some strange twisting things he didn’t quite understand.

“How could I be worried out there when I’ve got you watching my back, huh?” Din said thickly, cupping the back of the baby’s head in his hand and stroking his thumb along the downy crown of it, making his ears droop in contentment and his eyes slip closed as he craned into it.

Clearing his throat Din turned back to the hologram and indicated the bundle of nerves right behind the mudhorn’s jaw on the anatomy cross section. “Anyway, it went down so quickly because I managed to get it right here after you incapacitated it. Cut that connection and it’s lights out right away. Odd quirk of anatomy, but there you are. You’d do better to snipe it from a distance, though, under normal circumstances — if I didn’t have a set time I had to be back with the egg it probably would have been smarter to lie in wait until it emerged from the cave on its own, shoot it before it even knew we were there. Even tossing a few grenades into the cave would be a better choice than taking it on up close, if you don’t have to worry about the state of the egg. I’m sorry, I realize it is probably a bit on the early side for tactical reviews for you,” he added apologetically, as the baby blinked at him in what looked like well-meaning and attentive incomprehension. “...I’m not very used to having conversations about anything else. I’ll work on it.”

Thankfully the kid was already a far smoother conversationalist than Din and simply tugged on Din’s hand insistently until they could go back to the mudhorn calf, squealing happily as he spotted it again, so Din rather assumed he was forgiven.

The next animal was another bug, so Din quickly skipped it while the kid looked the other way. They detoured through the squills of Tatooine, who despite being largely composed of leathery skin, teeth, aggression and generalized malice got a much friendlier initial greeting than the small fuzzy Loth-cat had. Go figure.

Then they reached one that made Din trail off mid-sentence and grow quiet.

The creature itself was something small and pointy-faced and furry that lived in the high mountains of Alderaan — or at least it had, before, well. There was a twinge of something he couldn’t place in his gut; he’d heard about it, of course, since he hadn’t been actively living under a rock at the time and the destruction of an entire world is the sort of thing that fights itself to the front of people’s minds no matter where you go. It had seemed nearly absurd, though, hard to really imagine, enough so that he hadn’t thought much about it one way or another until he’d seen the look on Cara’s face when she heard the name of her homeplanet spoken by the wraith-like shade of the empire that destroyed it. She had looked the way Din felt hearing ’Mandalore’ from Gideon’s mouth.

This holodisc must have been put together a while ago. The creature wasn’t marked down as extinct yet.

Din glanced down at the kid, who was already looking up at him, getting a bit heavy-eyed but otherwise perfectly cheerful, not seeming to suspect anything was amiss. A collection of memories stirred in the depths of Din’s mind, though mercifully vague and transient — something about the beginning of the war, his parents’ voices, low and worried, conferring in the kitchen when they thought he’d fallen asleep, the slight brittleness to his father’s smile when he called him home from play in the evenings, just a bit earlier than he would have before. He wondered now if they’d been planning to leave or if they had surmised, probably correctly, that there would be nowhere truly safe to go and that the only thing they could do was to shield him from the worst of the fear.

He’d been frightened anyway, of course, but they’d tried. It seemed to him an ancient, unspoken sort of pact, that trying and that fear. A bittersweet creed all its own.

“Let’s skip this one for now,” Din said, as lightly as he could manage while he skipped the article and wrapped one arm more protectively around the baby. “Maybe another time.”

The kid didn’t seem to mind, only gave a contented yawn and turned towards Din’s chest in that way that meant drowsiness was finally catching up with him, his ears fluttering languidly. Din found a smile tugging at his mouth and started on the next animal anyway, in the knowledge that it would probably do the trick.

Din’s hunch was right; between the rdava-bird’s colouring and their mating calls the baby’s eyes were starting to slip closed every so often and he had curled himself up completely in the crook of Din’s arm, sucking absently on the pendant while he fiddled with the edge of the cloth of Din’s gambeson. Finally, in the middle of a description of the bird’s favoured habitat, his head drooped towards his chest and Din decided it might be time to call it.

“Time to sleep?” Din asked, stroking his thumb over the kid’s forehead. The baby gave a weak cry of protest and struggled to sit up a bit, managing to keep his eyes open for all of five bleary seconds before they fell closed again. “Sssh. Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere, you can sleep. I’ll be here.”

Whether because of the words or simply the cadence of his voice the baby relaxed, gazing up at Din with soft-eyed sleepiness and the perfect trust that still made Din feel a little dizzy if he let himself think about it too hard. He swallowed and stroked the baby’s ear, rocking him slightly when his eyes finally slipped all the way closed and stayed that way.

“I’ll be here,” he repeated quietly, holding the kid for longer than he probably needed to before getting up to place him in his seat and tuck him in.

You have no idea how desperately I NEED Mando having to actually tackle a children’s picture book about mythosaurs and being persuaded by big hopeful eyes to do the voices, I’m probably going to have to write it for the sake of my sanity if nothing else

Title is from Fleur Adcock's poem 'For a Five Year Old', because the combination of that poem and this show, what is the word... absolutely devastates me emotionally.

#star wars #the mandalorian #the mandalorian fic #baby yoda #my writing #here you go it's literally just 3 000+ words of baby and mando being adorable and no plot lol #plot? who's 'plot' never heard of her

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theassociatedpross · 3 years

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When Math Doesn’t Add Up: A Defense of Anti-Racist Instruction & Resources in Mathematics Classrooms

Recently, a friend posted an article from Fox News on their Facebook page, called “Oregon promotes teacher program that seeks to undo ‘racism in mathematics’: A toolkit includes a list of ways 'white supremacy culture' allegedly 'infiltrates math classrooms.’” The article was posted with concerns that mathematics instruction was being eroded by the curricular toolkit mentioned in the Fox article. In the comments to my friend’s post, there was a mix of responses. Some responses sought to understand the tool and its use and some expressed deep frustration and confusion. One such comment provided, “I wasn’t aware arithmetic could even be ‘racist’…so confused! I could see if something was subjective, but math …change my mind.” Others questioned the validity of the article because it was from Fox News.

After reading the thread I read the article, and after reading the article I explored the part of the toolkit singled out in the article: “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction: Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction.” I didn’t read all 81 pages of it (many of the pages were reflection guides for teachers to complete), but I did explore it thoroughly. I then posted a response, which I have shared below. After examination of the resource, I concluded that Fox mischaracterized the toolkit. My response in the thread intended to correct Fox’s mischaracterization by providing an example of how and why anti-racist practices are relevant and necessary in mathematics instruction. The response to my post has so far been positive and appreciated. Here is the response in its entirety (edited only to embed hyperlinks and for structural clarity):

There seems to be a lot of confusion about what this curriculum is and isn’t, and I think I can help clarify. Background for those who don’t know me (which will be everyone but [my friend]). I’ve been an educator for over a decade. A middle school social studies and ELA teacher for a decade, a high school assistant principal for two, and was a lawyer before that. For transparency, I’m what you’d call a progressive liberal and am fully invested in dismantling oppressive systems from public education. That said...

This resource is designed to provide teachers a tool to improve their instruction. One way any teacher can improve their instruction is to identify the ideas and beliefs they have that are rooted in bias (typically implicit bias, in that they aren’t aware they have the bias) and replace those ideas with more accurate ones. And I mean this broadly, in terms of their practices. Here’s an example. In college I had a professor that stopped using multiple choice tests because the evidence he came to learn was multiple choice tests (for whatever reason, you’d have to read the research) favored men over women. Men scored higher on average on such tests, consistently, in a way that revealed the test had embedded biases. These affects were eliminated when the same content was switched to short answer. And it makes sense, right? A multiple choice test frames answers in specific ways, limits choice to only those phrasings, and if the test is largely written by men, then the language chosen will reflect the point of view and experiences of men. I’ll note this wasn’t a math class - it was a law and policy class - but the idea remains that written course materials aren’t written in a vacuum; they are written by people with their own experiences, and those experiences can bleed into content, even if unintended.

So let’s look at mathematics instruction and the use of this particular tool.

The biggest concern I see above, a fair one, is that the implication here is that math isn’t objective, and teachers are going to start teaching 2+2=5. This is not what the tool is saying, and I can assure you no math teacher would agree to teach 2+2=5. The objective/subjective description in the tool isn’t about the computations. Rather, it’s about the presentation of mathematical problems and the insistence that, for the application of math to real-world problems, there can be only one solution.

Let’s consider a relevant example. If we look at COVID, we can find concrete numbers about the rate of its spread, the distance it travels in the air, the permeability of masks and their degree of protection, etc. If you were to take this information and phrase it in a math question: In a city of 100,000 people, how many citizens will contract COVID given these concrete data points? This question seems fair, right? The virus doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t know if a person is white or black. So, this seems like a straight-forward, computational problem. If it were, you could run the numbers and find an answer. The math used, the computations, would be the same for anyone who answers this problem. The computations are objective. This isn’t controversial.

But, the above question is problematic, and it’s the implicit problems that this anti-racism tool is seeking to remedy. Let’s explore why it’s problematic.

In the problem I imagined, I provided you with a specific scope of information. I stipulated what was relevant to determine the “correct” answer. But, there are relevant conditions that would need to be considered to answer a question like this in the real-world that were omitted from my presentation of the problem. What considerations were omitted that would need to be considered if we were trying to solve this problem in the real world? For starters, you’d have to consider population density. We know the virus spreads faster in areas where there are more people. If each person is a vector of transmission and you place more people in a smaller space, then density matters. And if density matters, you are now opening up the data and history of population density. This includes neighborhood designs and housing designs (single-unit, multi-family, apartments). Now you are including social context, social data, into the mathematical data set to arrive at the accurate answer. But there’s more. We know that neighborhood design in the United States was not created in some objective way. Neighborhoods were explicitly segregated (through redlining and other explicitly racist policies and practices), neighborhoods continue to be de facto segregated (through gentrification), and this plays a role in who lives where - in the denser cities or the less-dense suburbs and rural areas. Specifically, the data shows that Black families tend to live in areas of higher population density. These facts are relevant in terms of generational wealth (who can afford health care), access to health care (how easy is it to get from home to my doctor), access to healthy food (e.g. less fresh produce in high poverty areas, which include the denser cities, which affects community health), and access to good paying jobs (e.g. higher paying jobs that can accommodate working from home, which decreases a person’s risk to contracting COVID, versus working in jobs that have to be done in-person). So now, if we’re looking at what seemed to be a cut-and-dry math problem, an “objective” problem, what we see is, to get to the most accurate answer, to really know what the rate of spread will be, the mathematicians in the real world would have to include these data sets from the realm of social science.

And it’s the inclusion of data like this, that most teachers wouldn’t think to consider, that this tool is seeking to help with. So, when a teacher says there is only one right answer, we can push back to say “what do you mean by that? Do you mean that we just run the numbers from the initial question?” Traditionally that is yes. But this tool says, “Hey, we need to be able to identify, and teach students to identify, those problems that omit essential information relevant and necessary to truly arrive at the correct answer. At what the true rate of COVID spread is.” And this is so important! If we don’t include this data and miscalculate the rate of spread, then our policy decisions will be misinformed, and our own personal behaviors will be misinformed. And we know that my characterization above is accurate because it’s supported by the evidence. (No less than the CDC outlines the above, too: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/health-equity/race-ethnicity.html). Black people are 2-3 times more likely to contract COVID as a result of the system’s design, which is rooted in systemic-racism and white supremacy (PBS has a wonderful documentary and resources on the history of redlining and its affect on the ability of communities of color to accumulate wealth). But Black people are far less likely to have access to the vaccine (see Scientific American article).

When we look at this question now we see that the initial framing was problematic, and indeed racist. Omitting data sets that affect Black communities is racist. Framing the question in a way that only considers some raw numbers, and implying that those are the only numbers needing to be considered to arrive at the “correct” solution, is racist. Training teachers to spot weaknesses like this in a curriculum, or in their own practices, to ask deeper questions and train their students to ask deeper questions, is good for math instruction and good for student learning.

So the tool isn’t eroding the objectivity of numbers. Rather, it’s examining the subjective role that teachers play in the creation of math problems, the subjective role of defending which numbers are considered relevant to answering a problem, and the subjective role of limiting or allowing discussion on math problems like this. If the initial question were asked in class and a student raises their hand to ask: “Do these numbers take into affect the increased rate of spread in high-poverty neighborhoods and its disparate impact on Black communities?” will the teacher say, “Wow, that’s an important question to ask if we’re to accurately model and calculate the impact of the spread,” or will the teacher say, “Those numbers don’t matter. Just calculate the numbers in the problem.” This matters. Because either we will honor the lived experiences of our students and examine questions relevant to their lives, or we will gate-keep and shut down inquiry that explores questions raised by students. The tool is designed to prepare teachers in mathematics to have these considerations in instruction.

No one is being told to change how numbers work, but they are being asked to change how they develop questions and to change how they consider which numbers are relevant to a problem’s solution. When they say math isn’t objective, this is what they mean, that real-world calculus doesn’t exist only within certain numbers, that there are variables we often omit, and that those variables are often directly tied to systemic and structural racism and white supremacy.

#antiracism #equity #EquityInstruction #AntiRacistTeaching #AntiRacistInstruction #EquityInMath #Teaching #SocialJustice #Math #MathInstruction #Mathematics #MathematicsInstruction #TeachingResources #TeachingEquity #TeachingAntiRacism

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bluewatsons · 3 years

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Carl Tollef Solberg & Espen Gamlund, The badness of death and priorities in health, 17 BMC Med Ethics 21 (2016)

Abstract

Background

The state of the world is one with scarce medical resources where longevity is not equally distributed. Given such facts, setting priorities in health entails making difficult yet unavoidable decisions about which lives to save. The business of saving lives works on the assumption that longevity is valuable and that an early death is worse than a late death. There is a vast literature on health priorities and badness of death, separately. Surprisingly, there has been little cross-fertilisation between the academic fields of priority setting and badness of death. Our aim is to connect philosophical discussions on the badness of death to contemporary debates in health priorities.

Discussion

Two questions regarding death are especially relevant to health priorities. The first question is why death is bad. Death is clearly bad for others, such as family, friends and society. Many philosophers also argue that death can be bad for those who die. This distinction is important for health priorities, because it concerns our fundamental reasons for saving lives. The second question is, ‘When is the worst time to die?’ A premature death is commonly considered worse than a late death. Thus, the number of good life years lost seems to matter to the badness of death. Concerning young individuals, some think the death of infants is worse than the death of adolescents, while others have contrary intuitions. Our claim is that to prioritise between age groups, we must consider the question of when it is worst to die.

Conclusions

Deprivationism provides a more plausible approach to health priorities than Epicureanism. If Deprivationism is accepted, we will have a firmer basis for claiming that individuals, in addition to having a health loss caused by morbidity, will have a loss of good life years due to mortality. Additionally, Deprivationism highlights the importance of age and values for health priorities. Regarding age, both variants of Deprivationism imply that stillbirths are included in the Global Burden of Disease. Finally, we suggest that the Time-Relative Interest Account may serve as an alternative to the discounting and age weighting previously applied in the Global Burden of Disease.

Background

It is evident that longevity is not equally distributed across the world [1]. The state of the world is also one of scarce medical resources. Given such facts, setting priorities in health entails making difficult yet unavoidable decisions about which lives to save. Moreover, the business of saving (i.e., extending) lives works on the assumption that longevity is valuable and that an early death is generally worse than a late death. There is a vast literature on health priorities and badness of death, separately. However, there has been little cross-fertilisation between these academic fields. Our primary aim is to connect philosophical discussions on the badness of death to contemporary debates in health priorities. More precisely, we will show the relevance of the following two questions for priorities in health: Why is death bad? When is the worst time to die?

This paper proceeds as follows. First we outline a case of illustration that sets the stage for the subsequent discussion. Next we discuss the question of why death is bad. Here we begin by introducing some relevant distinctions, and then we present two competing theories on the badness of death, Epicureanism and Deprivationism. We defend Deprivationism and suggest some implications of this view for health priorities. In the final part we discuss the question of when is the worst time to die. Here we present two variants of Deprivationism, one continuous and one discontinuous. We show the relevance of these two views for health priorities, and suggest that a continuous view is preferable to a discontinuous one.1

Discussion

A case of illustration

Before we begin, we make three central assumptions. First of all, that death is followed by permanent non-existence. Secondly, we presume that there are goods and evils in life (although we do not presuppose a particular theory of welfare). Thirdly, that every individual saved will live until the age of 86, and those not saved will die within a short time-span. Moreover, we discuss health priorities from a population perspective, and we will use the following hypothetical priority case to set the stage for our discussion. In Table 1, we present six age groups where each group comprises a thousand individuals.

Table 1. Each group comprises 1000 individuals. The groups saved will live an average of 86 years with a similar average quality of life. Those not saved will die within a short time-span. This is in line with the Global Burden of Disease

Suppose first that we have to choose between E and F. Here, most people would choose E. One reason is that the 30-year olds would gain a greater benefit from being saved. This is in accordance with the greater benefit principle, which states that resources should be accorded to the intervention with the greater health benefit [2]. Moreover, the 30-year olds will be more productive, able to reproduce, and will have people who are dependent on them such as children and parents. Call this the societal value principle. Another reason for prioritising E is that the 30-year olds have had fewer years of life than the 70-year olds. This is in line with a standard version of the fair innings principle, according to which resources should be directed to those who have not yet had their fair share of life [3, 4]. Group E will also draw support from a modified youngest first principle, according to which extra priority should be given to individuals between 15 and 40 years of age [5]. The principles mentioned explain our intuitions about the trade-off between E and F.

But suppose we have to choose between saving B and D. How do the principles apply in this case? The youngest first principle and the greater benefit principle would support saving B over D. According to one version of the fair innings principle, it is of moral importance that the infants have lived fewer years than the 15-year olds, and so have had less of their fair share. However, both a modified youngest first principle and a societal value principle would support prioritising D over B. The question is how these different principles should be weighed against each other? For example, how important is societal value in the trade-off between B and D? On the assumption that all these principles are relevant, we get a weighing problem. We will not attempt to solve this problem.

Why is death bad?

All health care systems share two basic goals: saving lives and improving the quality of life. The first goal gives rise to two essential questions: (i) Why should we save lives? (ii) Which lives should we save first? In the health priorities literature, the second question has received the most attention. We believe (i) and (ii) are closely connected, and that an answer to (ii) presupposes an answer to (i). In order to make claims about which lives to save first, we need an account of why we should save lives in the first place. One justification for saving lives is simply that death is bad. Saving lives entails postponing death, which is justified on the assumption that an early death is worse than a late death. One could, however, argue that we should justify saving lives with reference to considerations of fairness. Although we do not deny this, our aim is a different one, namely that of investigating the reasons we have for saving lives that stem from considerations of the badness of death.

We will briefly clarify the concept of death before we proceed. “Death” can refer to at least four dimensions: “the prospect”, “the process”, “the incident” and “the loss”. The prospect refers to our knowledge of being mortal, which as far as we know is unique to human beings. The process of dying is an event that may be filled with pain, as in some instances of cancer, or it may happen abruptly, as in a traffic accident. The incident of death is when someone goes from existence to non-existence. Finally, there is a permanent loss when death occurs because there is no future for that individual.

Although many tend to focus on the process of dying, our focus will be on the loss. Arguably, if dying had not been followed by permanent non-existence, then perhaps dying would not be so bad after all. Interestingly, the loss dimension of death seems to play an important role in current health priorities debates. One example is the estimation of health loss due to both morbidity and mortality in traditional cost-effectiveness analyses; another is the Global Burden of Disease project [6]. A third example is two recent articles by Ezekiel Emanuel and Govind Persad, which we discuss shortly.

If the loss dimension is accepted, the question is for whom death represents a loss. There are two rival theories to this question: Epicureanism and Deprivationism. Epicureanism refers to a contemporary view on the badness of death inspired by the ancient philosopher Epicurus, which states that death is not bad for those who die [7–9]. Both theories are compatible with the idea that death can represent a loss for others (such as family, friends, and society), but only Deprivationism accepts that death represents a loss for those who die [10–19]. First, we discuss Epicureanism and priority setting implications, followed by a discussion of Deprivationism.

Epicureanism

The two arguments normally offered in favour of Epicureanism are the experience argument and the time argument. The experience argument is best illustrated by the expression, “What you don’t know won’t hurt you”. One interpretation of this is that in order for something to be good or bad for us, we must experience its goodness or badness. But of course when we are dead, we cannot experience. Therefore, death cannot be good or bad for us.

There are, in fact, cases within life where something is good or bad for us, even if we cannot experience it. Roughly speaking, we can imagine two types of such cases, moral and medical. Examples of moral cases are infidelity, lying, tale bearing, and stealing. It can be argued that such actions are wrong independently of whether those affected by cheating and lying will experience this [17]. Examples of medical cases are prevention, loss of senses, coma, asymptomatic diseases and risk factors. For instance, it seems clear that having cancer is bad for a patient even before the cancer is detected.2 If we accept that there are goods and evils within our lives that we cannot experience, we are left with no reason to deny that death can be a similar evil.

The time argument states that for something to be good or bad for us, there must be a time at which things are good or bad for us. But death is not good or bad for us while being alive. Nor is death good or bad for us while being dead. Since there is no time at which death is good or bad for the person who dies, death cannot be good or bad for this person [19].

There are at least four views one can adopt in responding to this argument. One view is that death is bad before it occurs, another is that death is bad when it occurs, a third is that death is bad after it occurs, and a fourth is that death is bad at a time which cannot be easily identified. One can successfully object to the time argument on the basis of one of these four views. We believe the fourth view is the best strategy for responding to the time argument. Here are some cases of analogy in support of the fourth view. For example, never having an education, freedom, or children can be bad even if its badness cannot be ascribed to a specific time. Moreover, at times, people may be grateful for not being a victim of accidents or suffering from severe sickness, even if “the evils that they never suffered” cannot be so easily located in time. Finally, consider a case of prevention. Somewhat paradoxically, prevention works when nothing happens. When, for instance, a vaccine proves successful, the individual does not suffer the disease in question. The good that follows from not suffering the disease does not occur at a particular time.3 If these examples are accepted, it follows that there are goods and evils within life that cannot be so easily located in time. In our view, death is an analogous evil in this sense.

If one accepts either the experience- or the time argument, it follows that death cannot be bad for those who die. What does this imply with regard to health priorities? If death is no loss for those who die, it matters less whether we suffer a premature or a late death. Consequently, age will play a less significant role (if any role at all) to health priorities. With Epicureanism we are, however, left with the option that death is bad for third parties such as family, friends, and society. This implies a higher emphasis on saving lives for the sake of others. Moreover, this suggests that what matters from a moral point of view are things like the emotional attachments and investments of family, friends, and society. In addition, the death of individuals can be bad by virtue of being a loss of caring relationships, productivity, or simply in terms of the world being deprived of a person.

While these considerations are no doubt important, none of them concern the individuals who stand at risk of dying prematurely. But this is clearly problematic. Epicureanism would still fail to account sufficiently for those who are already orphans, those without friends and people who are not productive in society. More precisely, it fails to account for our obligations to save individuals’ lives for their own sake. In this sense, Epicureanism would be radically different from current priority practice, where we primarily save lives for the sake of the individual whose life it is. In view of these remarks, Epicureanism is vulnerable to important objections and fails to capture everything we care about when saving lives.

Deprivationism

In this part, we offer a positive account of Deprivationism. This account is inspired by Thomas Nagel, who says that, ‘If death is an evil at all, it cannot be because of its positive features, but only because of what it deprives us of’ [17]. Some things in life can be good or bad in themselves, such as pleasure and pain. Death, on the other hand, is a different kind of evil. Suppose you suffered from paralysis in both your legs as a result of an accident. This accident deprives you of the chance to do a lot of things, like walking or playing tennis. In a similar way, death deprives us of the opportunity to continue with our lives. And assuming that continued life contains value, death is bad for us. Deprivationism explains how we can make judgments concerning the badness of death by comparing at least two different outcomes: (a) how well off individuals would have been if they continued to live and (b) how good it is for individuals not to continue with their lives. As long as (a) is better than (b), death is an evil. In some cases (b) might be better than (a), in which case death is not necessarily an evil [15].

Deprivationism is the standard view on the badness of death. We suggest that Deprivationism is relevant to health priorities in at least four areas. First, Deprivationism brings attention to the kinds of values that are lost when death occurs. Secondly, it emphasises that age matters. Thirdly, Deprivationism will favour a person-affecting theory.4 Fourthly, it may say something new about who the worst off are.5 Jointly these four areas can provide reasons for saving lives. In what follows, we discuss the first two areas of relevance in more detail.

With regard to values, it should be clear that they are lost when death occurs. But exactly what kinds of values are lost? Philosophers typically discuss the values that occur within our lives, with less attention being given to the values that death deprives us of. Here, we highlight some categories of values that are important when thinking about death. One dimension is value for others, such as ‘societal value’. This type of value has two dimensions, a wide and a narrow one. Call wide societal value the value individuals have or can have for society, for example, productivity and societal investments. Call narrow societal value the value individuals have or can have for friends and family. Importantly, Deprivationism highlights a second value dimension, namely the value of the future of an individual if he or she is saved. Call this ‘personal value’, which in our context refers to the values lost when individuals die.6

When a death occurs we tend to focus on the loss of the good or bad conditions present in us, such as knowledge, language, and memory. This is undoubtedly important, but death also causes a loss of future possibilities. This entails a focus on good or bad potential future states of individuals. It includes everything the future might hold for them, such as having intimate relationships, having aesthetical experiences, and simply enjoying the pleasures of life. In this sense, death is bad to the extent that it deprives individuals of personal value. If one accepts that personal value is important, and that personal value is lost when death occurs, then it follows that we have reasons to prevent death or save lives for the sake of those whose life it is.

Regarding age, there is an on-going debate about whether it should matter to health priorities at all, indirectly or as an independent criterion [20]. We suggest that age indicates something about three important dimensions: life stage, years lived, and future life years. Deprivationism focuses on life stage and future welfare. Life stage is important because it says something about the extent to which individuals have ownership to their future. Future life years indicate the potential future individuals can have. Moreover, if we accept either life stage or years lived, age will matter. This means that if we accept Deprivationism, it follows that age is morally relevant to health priorities. In any case, it seems that age will matter somehow to priorities in health.

When is the worst time to die?

Though the idea that age matters to health priorities has gained a certain acceptance, there is bound to be disagreement about which age groups to prioritise. This issue is the subject of contemporary debate. Since the launch of the Millennium Development Goals, mother and child campaigns have been high on the agenda. The goal of reducing under-five mortality has received special attention. In 2015, we got new Sustainable Development Goals that replaced the Millennium Development Goals [21]. Against this background, one important question is whether to give special attention to infants and young children, on the one hand, or to adolescents and young adults, on the other. Our claim is that in order to prioritise between age groups, it is relevant to consider the question of when it is worst to die.

As a starting point, we propose to consider some claims about death drawn from the health priorities literature:

“It is terrible when an infant dies, but worse, most people think, when a three-year-old child dies and worse still when an adolescent does” [22].

“While every premature death is distressing, death in childhood is particularly tragic, as children lose more future years and stages of life than adults” [23].

“The death of a 20-year-old young woman is intuitively worse than that of a 2-month-old girl, even though the baby has had less life” [5].

The second paragraph states the intuition that death is worse the earlier it occurs. In this sense, Colleen C. Denny & Ezekiel J. Emanuel support a youngest first principle [23]. In their article, they motivated a greater focus in the USA on prioritising mothers and young children. The first paragraph presents the intuition that the death of adolescents is worst, whereas in the third paragraph it is assumed that the death of young adults is worse than the death of young children. The intuitions stated in the first and third paragraphs support a modified youngest first principle while the greater benefit principle is here given less weight. The paragraphs demonstrate three things. First of all, intuitions about death play a role in justifying certain priority principles. Secondly, such intuitions diverge on the issue of when it is worst to die. Thirdly, the authors are silent on the distinction between death as bad for those who die and death as bad for others.

When intuitions conflict, as in the question of when it is worst to die, reasoning becomes especially important. To this end, Deprivationism can provide theoretical support. To begin with, an early death is worse than a late death. Age and the number of good life years lost matter to the badness of death. Different theories exist about the badness of death. Some theories consider the death of infants worst, while others consider the deaths of young individuals to be worst. We will focus on deprivationist theories, which comes in continuous and discontinuous forms. The Deprivation Account is an example of a discontinuous theory, whereas the Time-Relative Interest Account is an instance of a continuous theory.

The deprivation account

The standard view on Deprivationism is the Deprivation Account. According to this account, death is generally worse the more good life years it deprives us of. This implies that death is worse the earlier it occurs. Given this claim, some have questioned the plausibility of the Deprivation Account. Ronald Dworkin, for instance, believes this account amounts to what he calls ‘the simple loss view’. According to Dworkin’s interpretation of the Deprivation Account, the badness of death is only a function of the amount of life lost when someone dies. Applied to our case of illustration, this would favour saving group A (20-week fetuses). Dworkin claims that this is counterintuitive. He argues that if the loss of life years were the only thing that mattered, then an early stage abortion would be a worse than a late stage abortion. He points out that almost everyone holds the contrary assumption; late stage abortion is worse than early stage abortion. Thus, there is a conflict between the simple loss view and people’s intuitions [22].

Why is the simple loss view incorrect? On Dworkin’s account, it is incorrect because it only focuses on future possibilities. It is, however, necessary to emphasise that the simple loss view is only one variant of the Deprivation Account, something Dworkin overlooks. More precisely, he fails to capture the discontinuous nature of the Deprivation Account. It is worth noting that it is not only the loss that matters, but also to whom the loss belongs. If we consider “those who never existed” due to infertility and contraceptives, such “losses” are not equivalent to death. In order for a loss to be personal, the future must belong to the one who dies. Those who subscribe to the Deprivation Account must explain the difference between the loss associated with “those who never existed”, and the loss associated with death. They will need to rely on a notion of personal identity to explain this difference. Personal identity refers to those properties necessary to make an individual at t1 numerically identical with himself at t2 [12]. In this sense personal identity gives someone “ownership” to his loss of life. In Fig. 1, we have tried to illustrate the importance of personal identity for the Deprivation Account.

Fig. 1. The Deprivation Account and personal identity. The figure illustrates how the Deprivation Account relies on personal identity from a population perspective. This is not a priority curve, but rather a badness of death curve. There are actually three graphs in one, each represented by a stipulated line. The y-axis represents the badness of death for those who die. The x-axis represents age with an emphasis on the fetal life. Each vertical line represents a view on personal identity. Moreover, these vertical lines illustrate the discontinuity of the Deprivation Account

Since there are different views on personal identity, there are different variants of the Deprivation Account. The crucial question for this account is therefore when we acquire personal identity (i.e., when we begin to exist). Before personal identity is acquired, death represents no loss. As soon as personal identity is acquired, death is the greatest loss. The figure shows some possible views on personal identity: soul, brain, consciousness, and self-consciousness. For example, if a soul (or DNA) is what grants personal identity, then death is the greatest evil right after conception. This, however, conflicts with widely held views on termination of pregnancy, spontaneous abortions, and the use of in-vitro fertilization clinics.

Our aim here is not to defend any particular conception of personal identity; nevertheless, it is clear that some conceptions are preferable to others. For example, in order for Dworkin’s interpretation of the Deprivation Account to be correct (i.e., the simple loss view), he would have to argue that personal identity is acquired at conception. As far as we know, Dworkin does not provide such an argument in his work. Moreover, there are good reasons for doubting that personal identity is acquired at conception. First of all, it is reasonable to believe that humans cannot be individuated before the point in development when twinning could occur. Available evidence suggests that twinning can occur within two weeks after conception [24]. Furthermore, it is unresonable that DNA grants personal identity since separate individuals can have the same DNA, such as monozygotic twins and dicephalic twins. Secondly, there exist convincing arguments against a soul view [12].

Finally, very few defenders of the Deprivation Account claim that personal identity is acquired at conception. Given these remarks, some of the standard criticism of the Deprivation Account may be off target [12]. This includes the criticism by Dworkin and that related to abortion [22]. Moreover, very few believe that self-consciousness is what gives us personal identity. On the most promising accounts, personal identity is acquired between five months of fetal life and birth [12, 17]. Thus, death is the greatest evil in this time period. The individuals in question will lose the most good life years, and they will (in virtue of acquired personal identity) possess an ownership to that loss.

How exactly is the Deprivation Account relevant to health policy? One case in point is the Global Burden of Disease study. In the most recent version of this study, birth is treated as morally significant. Death right after birth generates 86 Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs), whereas death right before birth generates 0 DALYs. Thus, the study implies that preventing the death of infants is the most important health intervention, while preventing stillbirths is of little (if any) importance. Inevitably, a study like the Global Burden of Disease comes with certain normative presuppositions. This is not necessarily problematic in itself. However, the treatment of birth as morally significant, is problematic and in need of a defence. Although such a claim might find philosophical support, to our knowledge no such view is defended in the badness of death literature [25]. Given the framework that we discuss here, the Global Burden of Disease study might gain theoretical support from the Deprivation Account. But this would imply the inclusion of stillbirths.

One may ask whether personal identity is relevant to the question of which lives to save. An important criticism of the Deprivation Account emphasises the fact that it relies on personal identity. For one thing, the concept of personal identity depends on metaphysical presuppositions that many regards with suspicion. For another, even if we accept the concept of personal identity, there is bound to be disagreement on how the concept should be understood. This suggests that from a pragmatic point of view, one can question whether a reliance on personal identity is helpful in the context of setting priorities in health. In summary, such criticism of the Deprivation Account has motivated the development of an alternative continuous view on the badness of death.

The time-relative interest account

In our view, the most promising continuous view at the moment is Jeff McMahan’s Time-Relative Interest Account [12, 26]. Following this account, death is an evil by virtue of two factors: the number of good life years lost (similar to the Deprivation Account), and how psychologically connected one is to the future that is lost. On this account, personal identity is not what matters to the badness of death; rather it is individuals’ psychological development. What binds us to the future in a morally relevant way are direct psychological connections—such as memory, language, beliefs, intentions, expectations, values and knowledge—and the continuity of those connections [12]. Such direct psychological connections obviously come in degrees. Since psychological connectedness is a matter of degree and is what grants ownership to the future, such ownership will have to come in degrees. In Fig. 2, we present our interpretation of the Time-Relative Interest Account. Notably, this curve is continuous because, according to this account, ownership to the future is graded in accordance with age, understood as the life stage of individuals.

Fig. 2. The Time-Relative Interest Account. This is our interpretation of the Time-Relative Interest Account applied on a population perspective. Again this is not a priority curve, but a badness of death curve. The y-axis represents the badness of death for those who die. The x-axis represents age, once again with an emphasis on fetal life. The curve peaks somewhere around ten years of age. In our figure, we suggest a grading from 0 to 1, where 0 is no ownership and 1 is full ownership

According to the Time-Relative Interest Account, psychological connectedness starts with the development of a brain. By approximately six months of fetal life, such connections are very weak.7 The value of psychological connectedness goes from zero and up to a threshold. By the time individuals reach approximately ten years of age, they have reached a threshold in the sense that their psychological connections have become sufficiently strong to ground a complete ownership to the future.

What does this imply for our case of illustration? We believe that the degree of ownership to the future might serve as a weighting function for the welfare loss caused by death. If this is accepted, the Time-Relative Interest Account implies that those in Group D have complete ownership of their future. Since individuals older than 10 years of age have complete ownership, the Deprivation Account will account for the badness of death for individuals older than 10 years of age. If the badness of death for those who die were the only thing that mattered to health priorities, it would mean that Group D should be favoured over the other groups. The Time-Relative Interest Account does not necessarily guide us in choosing between Groups B and E, but both groups seem to be favoured over Group F. The Deprivation Account, on the other hand, would clearly favour Group B. Group A is given least priority by both the Deprivation Account and the Time-Relative Interest Account because those in this group lack a morally relevant connection to their future. As pointed out by Jeff McMahan, it is as “if the future it loses might just as well have belonged to someone else” [12].

Returning to the Global Burden of Disease, there is considerable debate as to whether future health benefits should be discounted, and if so, why they should be discounted. Three reasons are often mentioned in favour of discounting. First of all, the future is surrounded by uncertainty; secondly, people have weaker preferences for future goods; and finally, future health interventions will improve [27]. In some previous studies of the Global Burden of Disease, DALYs have been time-discounted and age-weighted. Many are sceptical, however, that a theoretical foundation for discounting future health benefits can be offered. Even so, it should be noted that the badness of death curve for the Time-Relative Interest Account would be similar to a time-discounted and age-weighted DALY curve, albeit for different reasons that was used in previous studies of the Global Burden of Disease [28].

The Time-Relative Interest Account can offer a philosophical foundation for a similar Global Burden of Disease curve without relying on discounting or age weighting in the traditional sense. As mentioned, the Time-Relative Interest Account weights future benefits in accordance with the psychological connectedness individuals are expected to have according to life stage. Of course, when discussing priorities in health we are in fact discussing reductions in both morbidity and mortality. By taking into account reductions in morbidity, matters become complicated when considering the implications of the Time-Relative Interest Account. Our suggested weighting function for future health benefits according to age is with regard to mortality only. The curve in Fig. 2 peaks somewhere around ten years of age. In this figure, we suggest a grading from 0 to 1, where 0 is no ownership and 1 is full ownership. As an alternative to time discounting, the suggested grading might serve as a weighting function for DALYs.

What does this imply with regard to saving lives? Suppose we must prioritise between Group B and Group D in our illustrated case. Following the Deprivation Account, we should save Group B since 86 DALYs are generated when infants die, whereas only 71 DALYs are generated when 15-year-olds die. Following the Time-Relative Interest Account, on the other hand, we should save Group D (15-year olds). This is because the individuals in Group B do not have complete ownership to their future, whereas the individuals in Group D have acquired complete ownership. This might be formalised as follows: infants 86 DALYs × 0.5 = 43 weighted DALYs, whereas 15-year olds 71 DALYs × 1 = 71 weighted DALYs. More thinking is needed on how the weighting rates should be operationalized. Still, we believe we have shown that the Time-Relative Interest Account implies some form of weighting.

Conclusions

In this paper, we have discussed different theories on the badness of death and showed some of their implications for health priorities. We have introduced an important distinction between the badness of death for others and the badness of death for those who die. Our conclusion is that Deprivationism provides a more plausible approach to health prioritisation than Epicureanism. If Deprivationism is accepted, we will have a firmer basis for claiming that individuals, in addition to having a health loss caused by morbidity, will have a loss of good life years due to mortality. Deprivationism highlights the importance of age and values for health priorities. With regard to age, both variants of Deprivationism imply that stillbirths should be included in the Global Burden of Disease. Finally, we suggest that the Time-Relative Interest Account may serve as an alternative to the discounting and age weighting previously applied in the Global Burden of Disease. We consider this work to be a first step and have suggested some starting points for further debate. It is our hope that this discussion can stimulate more thinking on how Deprivationism might be strengthened and implemented in health priorities.

Footnotes

This paper builds on some ideas that we have developed previously in a Norwegian paper. See [29].

The following case can serve as an objection to our argument. Suppose that A and B both have asymptomatic cancer. A’s doctor tells A, whereas B’s doctor does not tell B. One may ask whose life is better between the time of diagnosis and the time at which B begins to experience symptoms? Some would claim that B’s life has been better, because knowing that he had asymptomatic cancer has psychologically harmed A. Thanks to Alan Wertheimer for pointing this out.

As pointed out to us by Guy Schofield, it might be that vaccination is a good at the time one is re-exposed to the agent from which one was vaccinated. In response to this, we think it is important to distinguish between (a) the causal effect of the vaccine, and (b) the benefit from the vaccination. Although causal effects occur at specific times, it does not follow that the benefit from the vaccination – in the sense of the disease one never got – can be ascribed to particular times in the same way.

Deprivationism seems to emphasise what is called a ‘person-affecting claim’, which means that nothing can be bad if it is bad for no individual. We think Deprivationism can be relevant to the trade-off between extending existing lives and creating new lives, i.e., extending existing lives is more important than creating new ones.

The ‘worst off’ may refer to the sickest, either currently or in the past, or it may refer to those who have lived the shortest lives. With reference to the badness of death, the worst off may be those who suffer the greatest loss. There is also a question about how to understand the concept of being worst off. For example, there is an on-going discussion about whether it is possible to be worst off in an absolute sense. Some argue that we can only be worse off in a relative sense. Our hypothesis is that Deprivationism, by emphasising intra-individual counterfactual reasoning, may provide an original argument for an absolute conception of the worst off.

Our notion of personal value does not presuppose any specific theory of welfare. It is compatible with hedonism, preference satisfaction theory, and objective list theories. It is important to note that we are interested in welfare in a personal rather than an impersonal sense.

It is, of course, an empirical question when the neurogenesis begins. Moreover, there is currently disagreement on exactly when awareness is realised in the fetal life.

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Johansson J. The time of death’s badness. J Med Philos. 2012;37(5):464–79.

Daniels N. Just health: meeting health needs fairly. Cambridge. New York: Cambridge University Press; 2008.

UN: Sustainable Development Goals. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/?menu=1300 Accessed March 14 2016.

Dworkin RM. Life’s dominion: An argument about abortion, euthanasia, and individual freedom. New York: Vintage Books; 1993.

Denny CC, Emanuel EJ. US health aid beyond PEPFAR: the Mother & Child Campaign. JAMA. 2008;300(17):2048–51.

Hall JG. Twinning. Lancet. 2003;362(30):735–43.

Bermúdez JL. The moral significance of birth. Ethics. 1996;106(2):378–403.

Parfit D. Reasons and persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1984.

Murray CJ, Acharya AK. Understanding DALYs. J Health Econ. 1997;16(6):703–30.

WHO: Health statistics and information systems-http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/daly_disability_weight/en/ Accessed March 14 2016.

Gamlund E, Solberg CT. Når er det verst å miste sitt liv? Relevansen av filosofiske grunnlagsteorier for helseprioriteringer. Norsk Filosofisk Tidsskrift. 2014;3-4:205–17.

#discounting #age weighting #badness of death #death #welfare loss #deprivation account #Epicureanism #global burden of disease #health priorities #morbidity #Time-relative interest account #medical ethics #horror #longevity #life #mortality #premature death #Deprivationism

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dreamworksconvict · 5 years

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She-Ra: Racism Problem Pt. 2

Thanks to everyone who said nice things about my earlier post!!!! I like am really invested in representation and media so I’m glad it’s being received well.

I also want to add a caveat that I’m not trying to cancel She-Ra. I just want to hold media to a high standard and think that we can critique the things we like.

Next I want to talk about some pretty heavy topics: the White Savior trope and colonialism. Again, I’ll be pretty spoiler-heavy here. I also want to warn people that there will be mention of genocide and antisemitism. I’ll be writing about Hordak in the next part.

In the fourth part I want to add an addendum about Catra being coded as Latina, which I think is a valid interpretation. I also want to talk about the ableism present in the show with both Hordak and Entrapta, which is a separate issue so I’ll label it differently.

Imagine a story like this:

“I am a white-coded, able-bodied, implied cisgender protagonist who has a Special Trait that makes me Stronger and/or More Unique than other characters. I also have some connection to Some Evil Colonizers from Space. Oh no! Some Evil Colonizers from Space have showed up to threaten me and my Token Diverse friends who get about half as much screentime as I do! Wait a second, “evil?” There’s no such thing! They’re only Misunderstood Colonizers Who Didn’t Mean It, and/or there was More to the Story. Maybe they came from a Dysfunctional Family or were Abused/Bullied! I think the people/places they colonized may have been Secretly Bad or Just As Bad all along, too! Wowee! Let’s all have a Heart-to-Heart and/or sacrifice one of my Token Diverse friends to save the day!”

Which story am I referring to? Well...

Voltron... or She-Ra... or Steven Universe.. and probably others...yeah.

(And for those who claim that Keith isn’t the protagonist of Voltron, well... I mean he is... but that’s an entirely different essay. But notice how Lance and Hunk are actually smaller than the other characters on the screen and are partly transparent, and that Allura gets pushed to the back row and is mostly covered? Yikes...)

(On my previous post, someone also noted that Steven is half-Jewish. I was not aware that Rebecca had confirmed this officially. As I am not Jewish myself, I don’t want to speak over this, but I do want to point out that you can be white and Jewish, as it is a Diaspora identity. There are many Jewish ethnicities, such as Ashkenazim, Sephardim, and Mizrahim. I also wish that we had seen more of that in the show--like Steven celebrating Hanukkah, or learning Hebrew, or having a Rosh Hashanah celebration... From what I can tell, Rebecca only confirmed this on a Reddit AMA post. So I don’t know specifically how Steven identifies because that was never clarified in the show, but it seems like he is coded as white. Definitely feel free to disagree, this is just how I’ve interpreted the show, especially given its treatment of colonization.)

On top of all three of these shows recycling a very similar plotline, they all share the White Savior trope. Teen Vogue has an article talking about how this is linked to colonialism and I highly encourage checking that out. I’m going to pull a large chunk of text from there because I think it’s really important and applies to animation, not just live action films.

“Many white people in films based on the stories of POC are often subliminally depicted as godlike saviors, heroes who are rational and judicious to the core. They are usually deified men or women — glorified and righteous — like scripture out of a Holy Book. Look at Hillary Swank in Freedom Writers. The white savior somehow always ends up usurping the narrative. And in this centering of whiteness and white characters, the POC characters end up becoming props, which only perpetuates ideas of our otherness and unimportance, which then establishes a status quo of racism. Whiteness is again normalized, and POC are decentralized. This is particularly problematic because whiteness is not only favored in Hollywood but also in society at large; white privilege is ever-present and ubiquitous.”

Look at the center poster for She-Ra: Adora is pictured in white and gold and red as an accent. She’s bathed in a golden light. This color combination is no coincidence, because we already associate that combination with religious iconography, like the Vatican.

(I also want to make a note that this is specifically associated with Christian/Catholic iconography. A lot of these shows could be classified as antisemitic in their handling of colonialism and genocide. I would argue--and will be arguing in my thesis--that Season 6-8 of Voltron’s plot heavily relied on antisemitic tropes, especially as it related to Lotor and the Alteans. But that’s for another day.) (Also see my discussion of Steven Universe’s Jewish identity above.)

So how exactly does She-Ra follow the White Savior trope, how is it similar to other stories’ utilization of the trope, and how does this all relate back to colonialism? I would say there are two main factors: setting up Adora as a white heroine with a darker-skinned foil (Catra), and setting up a narrative where Hordak “isn’t that bad of a guy, really.” For this part I’m gonna focus on Adora.

1: Adora as the White Savior

Adora is from the Horde. Keith is half-Galra. Steven’s mom is Pink Diamond.

All three of these protagonists have some personal tie or connection to a group of colonizing villains. The Diamonds want(ed) to take over earth and suck the life force from it, as they’d done on other planets. They also used a super-weapon to with the intent to kill all the rebel gems. The Galra created an empire and also sucked the life out of planets. They also created a super-weapon that could kill an entire planet, and had already committed genocide against the Alteans. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Big Bad of She-Ra, Horde Prime, has similar goals. Hordak certainly does.

There is an ever-so-slight separation of Adora from the other two protagonists, who, at the start of the series, do not know they are related to the villain group in some way. (Steven doesn’t know he’s a Diamond.) Adora, on the other hand, starts the series as a villain. She’s part of a group that has actively been fighting and destroying the Princesses and the planet. The first episode notes that she is particularly good at her job, with Hordak nominating her for Force Captain. Adora also notes that “this is what [she’s] been working for her entire life.” When Catra and Adora leave the Fright Zone, it is not out of goodwill. They simply want to go for a joyride on a skiff.

When Adora gains the power of She-Ra, she acts ignorant of the Horde’s actions. The first episode, Adora is completely defensive of Hordak. She even claims that “Hordak says we’re doing what’s best for Etheria.” It is not until the second episode that Adora begins to have any remorse for her actions--but also note that Adora’s main motivation during the first half of this episode is to continue onward with Bow and Glimmer because she wants to know more about herself, not repent for her actions. It is not until the end of the episode that she begins to become a bit more self-aware, but there is a key phrase that Glimmer utters that is very key to the White Savior narrative: “I feel like maybe you’re here to help us.” This line comes after Glimmer apologizes for not trusting Adora. Adora. The Horde soldier. The soldier from the group of colonizers who were responsible for the death of Glimmer’s father.

Ok sure.

Consider how realistic this is. (Not that fantasy has to be realistic, but when you’re working with a narrative based on systemic violence, you need to at least be considerate of how this works in reality.) Adora has been trained to fight and kill Princesses and their allies. She’s been trained to take over Etheria and strategically destroy and/or take resources to weaken them. Yet she acts as if this is all news to her. Suddenly meeting the people she’s been trained to destroy causes her to repent, and suddenly the people who have been victimized forgive her and trust her within two episodes.

Here’s what I think is going on here: given the current hyper-conservative political climate and rampant xenophobia in the world right now, white creators feel the need to put a white person as the hero as if they’re claiming, “See, this character--and subsequently myself--aren’t like those other bad white people!” They want a degree of separation from the reality that they have white privilege and are part of the problem.

There is no truly “woke” white person. White people have been raised in a society where they benefit off the oppression of the chosen “other,” in this case black and brown people. Even if you do your research like I’m doing, you still will mess up. White people cannot rid themselves of privilege no matter how hard they try, because in this current society, the legacy of colonialism, imperialism, and racism have made it so that white people will ultimately be more successful and have more opportunities for success than others. (Also, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, so even attempts to be considerate about taking advantage of laborers cannot be completely successful.)

All of this results in a lot of White Guilt. Thus, we end up with narratives where the white colonizer character suddenly has a change of heart and fights against the system without really challenging the core mechanics that put that system in place. But fighting against oppression and violence doesn’t make a white person special--it just makes them decent.

It also ignores the fact that white people, to be blunt, haven’t done shit to advocate for inclusion and equity compared to literally everyone else. I want to pull another quote from the Teen Vogue article:

[White saviors] perpetuate an idea that is essentially a historical banner of colonialism: People of color need white people to save them. To this day, some people still latently believe what imperialists such as Rudyard Kipling said, that colonialism was important for everyone: the conqueror and, most importantly, the conquered. That without the colonizers, the colonized had no hope of survival. And by constantly churning out movies with plots in which white people "save" people of color, Hollywood reinforces colonialist dictum.

Why does Glimmer think that they NEED Adora to be saved? Why is this white woman the only one who can do it? Sure, Adora has the power of She-Ra, but remember that giving Adora, a white woman, that power was a CHOICE made by the writers. They could have given the sword to someone else, they could have made Adora a PoC... but they didn’t. So suddenly, because Adora, ex-Horde soldier, is there, the Princess alliance can be reformed, people start working together, the rebellion is saved! etc. etc. etc....

So then it’s extra ironic (and honestly is pretty predictable given this White Guilt narrative) when the White Savior trope goes right along with The Colonizers Weren’t Actually Evil, Just Misunderstood.

This post is way too long so I’ll continue in the next part.

#she-ra #racism #colonialism #white savior

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unabashedyouththing · 4 years

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Apoliteic music: Neo-Folk, Martial Industrial and 'metapolitical autocracy'

In 2000, when I was simply the proofreader of a little distributed melodic magazine, I got a CD entitled Victory or Death by the Swedish band Folkstorm.2 The CD contained ten tracks of brutal Industrial music and the circle was enriched with a Nazi-style Reichsadler on an unfilled oak wreath.3 The back spread was ornamented with runes and recorded the tracks 'Feldgeschrei' (Field Turmoil), 'Cruel Discipline', 'Promulgation', 'We Are the Resistance', 'Social Surgery', to give some examples. The expressions of the tunes were indistinct, because of the exceptionally twisted vocals, yet all that else ambiguously recommended the extreme traditional nature of Folkstorm's 'belief system'. Shockingly, the band guaranteed 'No legislative issues. No religion. No norm', a judicious articulation composed on the plate itself STGMT : neofolk & industrial.

In the event that the band renounces any reference to governmental issues while these signs recommend the inverse, what sort of 'publicity' right? Folkstorm's message has little to do with that of a portion of its comrades like Totenkopf, whose track 'Can't Be Beaten' wholeheartedly declares: 'Give them where you stand and feel no regret, my Aryan sibling, it's the ideal opportunity for race war.'4 Neither is Folkstorm's message an incitement like the late Punk Rocker Sid Vicious' infamous presenting in a shirt with an insignia on it. In the event that the message isn't the White Noise communicated of racial hatred,5 or the 'spit notwithstanding average society', at that point what's going on here? In this article, I contend that there exists a specific sort of extremist conservative music that doesn't advance out and out viciousness, isn't identified with the exercises of political associations or parties, and isn't a methods for enrollment to any political propensity. Consequently, I take Folkstorm's 'No governmental issues' announcement truly, despite the fact that I want to reconceptualize it in a manner that stays away from any useless endeavor to deplete the plainly conservative message of its embodiment. I allude to this music as 'apoliteic' (a term clarified beneath), and this article will examine its inclination and noteworthiness by thinking about two melodic kinds, specifically Neo-Folk and Martial Industrial, that are frequently utilized by groups and craftsmen for scattering an apoliteic message. I want to show that apoliteic music and White Noise are social impressions of the two diverse political methodologies that one party rule had to continue in the 'antagonistic' states of the post-war period.

Before I continue, it must be noticed that neither Neo-Folk nor Martial Industrial can be considered 'fundamentalist melodic kinds'. In contrast to White Noise, which alludes explicitly to philosophically spurred music, these two classes are most importantly typological builds that grasp specific sorts of consolidated sounds. Without a doubt, regardless of whether Neo-Folk or Martial Industrial can be likened with fundamentalist or neo-Nazi purposeful publicity has been fervently bantered since the mid-1990s when various groups playing in these classes began to get—because of their broad utilization of extremist symbolism—consideration from left-wing columnists just as assaults by hostile to extremist gatherings. On a few events, against extremist fights, petitions and pickets were upheld by the specialists who restricted exhibitions of specific Neo-Folk/Martial Industrial groups. In 2004 the significant Austrian Martial Industrial act, Der Blutharsch, needed to drop a presentation in Israel because of fights by, among others, the Israeli bureau part Natan Sharansky, the Knesset part Yossi Sarid, the city hall leader of Tel Aviv Ron Huldai and the Anti-Defamation League. The next year, the most popular Neo-Folk band, Death in June, lost the option to sell its collection Rose Clouds of Holocaust in Germany after an examination directed by the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien (BPjM, Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young People).6 Neither of these groups is important for the White Noise scene, however both grasp—as I will contend beneath—unequivocal components of the extremist Weltanschauung.

Significant terms and ideas

There are a few terms that columnists, public authorities and researchers use to allude to specialists or groups that—from the onlookers' perspective—perform music impregnated with fundamentalist or extraordinary traditional thoughts. A portion of these are umbrella terms that incorporate diverse melodic classes, while others allude to explicit ones.

The term 'Repetitive sound' from White Noise Records, a mark that delivered Skrewdriver's single 'White Power' in 1983. Skrewdriver was a British band that transparently advanced progressive ultra-patriotism through their records, and their exhibitions once in a while transformed into mobs of neo-Nazi skinheads. Skrewdriver's late chief Ian Stuart was an individual from the British National Front (NF), while the band itself was firmly connected with both the NF and the British National Party (BNP). Indeed, Skrewdriver may be considered 'the melodic wing' of the NF, as it raised assets for the association and helped enroll new individuals. Also, in 1987, Stuart established the Blood and Honor network that advanced super patriot groups, composed their shows and filled in as a nexus for neo-Nazi skinheads in Europe and the United States.7 Since Skrewdriver played a kind of Punk Rock music known as Street Punk or Oi!,8 the term 'Repetitive sound' alluded to Punk Rock acts that proliferated outrageous traditional ideas.9 Currently, because of the nonexclusive assortment of groups that play at Blood and Honor shows, one can apply this term to any forceful exciting music that is saturated with a straightforwardly extremist or bigoted message.

It is significantly critical to feature two highlights of White Noise. To begin with, this kind of music is described by plain bigotry or progressive ultra-patriotism. Repetitive sound don't shroud their messages and a portion of the groups' names—also the collections and melody titles—represent themselves: Race War, Totenkopf, Final Solution, Jew Slaughter, Legion 88, Konkwista 88, Angry Aryans, Brigada NS, RaHoWa etc.10 Second, White Noise is related with either direct viciousness against an Other or the political reason, anyway minimal, that rouses it. It is regularly the situation that White Noise artists don't disguise their participation in progressive super patriot groupuscules, bigger associations or even discretionary gatherings. As referenced above, Skrewdriver worked close by the NF, while the Romanian band Brigada de Asalt (The Assault Brigade) is an essential aspect of the neo-Nazi association Noua Dreaptă (New Right), probably upheld by the Romanian extremist conservative Partidul Noua Generatie (New Generation Party). Countless White Noise groups show up on the alleged 'schoolyard' CDs ordered and delivered by the extreme conservative Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (National Democratic Party of Germany) with the expectation of complimentary circulation among German youth.

#STGMT : neofolk & industrial

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ufabetting-blog · 4 years

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How to Make Soccer Bet Online

Have you at any point considered what the most mainstream sport on the planet was? Marvel no longer since we have the appropriate response you're searching for! Soccer positions number one out of an assortment of nations around the globe, with their matches continually drawing in huge crowds. Soccer destroys every single other game.

Indeed, even in the United States, soccer is beginning to develop in ubiquity. Indeed, it was around twenty years prior that the World Cup was held there. Significant League Soccer has become a really decent quality alliance, and numerous Americans observe abroad soccer. The English Premier League, for instance, is secured widely by NBC Sports.

Normally alluded to as football in many nations outside the US, soccer is likewise a well known game for wagering purposes. Truth be told, it draws in more wagering interest all around than some other games. This is maybe to be expected when you consider exactly what number of matches occur. There's such a significant number of various groups and rivalries around the globe that it would take perpetually just to show them all.

There are numerous reasons why soccer wagering is so across the board, with one being that is it's very easy to begin. With only a tad of information, it's conceivable to have a decent possibility of bringing in some cash to bet online of ufabet. There is, obviously, much more to learn on the off chance that you need to make reliable benefits. This soccer wagering aide can help. The two novices and talented bettors the same can discover what they're searching for here.

About Soccer

We could never venture to state that you should be a soccer master so as to bring in cash from soccer wagering, however that doesn't imply that information isn't significant. An incredible inverse really, information is ground-breaking in the realm of wagering. The more you know, the simpler it will become to settle on instructed choices.

That is the reason we've gathered our "About Soccer" area. This area will disclose to you all that you have to think about soccer. Trust us when we state, this WILL merit your time.

Here's a brief look into what's secured, alongside a connect to the area.

History of the Game

Rules of the Game

FIFA and Other Governing Bodies

Significant Clubs

Significant Tournaments and Leagues

Top Players and Managers

Soccer Betting for Beginners

Soccer wagering isn't excessively troublesome, in any event, for novices. So as to begin on the correct foot, however, there are a couple of things you have to know. That is actually why we set up this careful bit by bit control for amateurs.

Become familiar with the Basics of Sports Betting

You can skirt this progression on the off chance that you're as of now an accomplished bettor, albeit and, after its all said and done it won't damage to revive your memory on a portion of the essentials. On the off chance that you're totally new to wagering, at that point this is a significant advance. It's one we can help with as well, as our tenderfoot's manual for sports wagering fills in as a complete presentation. It includes a few articles covering all the fundamentals, and everything is clarified in an exceptionally straightforward manner.

Tenderfoots Guide to Sports Betting

Know The Different Types of Soccer Bets

An incredible aspect regarding soccer from a betting point of view is that there's a wide range of bets that can be put. There are unquestionably a larger number of choices than simply wagering on which groups will win matches. In spite of the fact that this implies there will be a lot of chances to make a benefit, it likewise implies that there are various kinds of wager that you should be comfortable with. This article should cover all that you have to know.

Sorts of Soccer Bets

Choose Which Betting Markets to Focus On

How would I pick? Have you each posed yourself this inquiry with respect to what you should wager on? With such huge numbers of soccer groups and rivalries around the globe, there is NO simple answer. It very well may be enticing to utilize a wide range of bets on a wide range of alliances, yet this is seldom the correct methodology. Except if you have a great deal of extra time, and an all encompassing information on world soccer, it's simpler to just concentrate on only a couple of wagering markets. Peruse this article to find out additional!

Picking What to Bet On

Comprehend Key Factors Affecting Soccer Matches

This is the place things begin getting serious. The subsequent stage is to begin pondering how to really settle on wagering choices. Understanding the different variables that can influence soccer matches is fundamental, however you additionally need to ready to survey the potential effect of things like current structure, in general quality and calendars. This is the main way you can make educated decisions about what is probably going to occur. This article will give you the assets you have to exceed expectations around there.

Elements to Consider

Maintain a strategic distance from the Basic Mistakes

It's no distortion to state that realizing what NOT to do is similarly as significant as realizing what you ought to do. Most of individuals who lose cash from wagering on soccer do so on the grounds that they commit essential errors that are effectively evaded. In the event that you can keep away from these missteps yourself, at that point you'll promptly be in a greatly improved situation to bring in cash. In any event, you'll lose less frequently.

Peruse this article to find the most widely recognized wagering slip-ups and tips on the best way to abstain from making them.

Regular Soccer Betting Mistakes

Online Soccer Betting

There are a couple of various approaches to wager on soccer, contingent upon where you live. On the off chance that you live in the UK, for instance, at that point visiting the nearby bookmaking shop and wagering in real money is a feasible choice. Phone wagering administrations are accessible in many pieces of the world also, and there are considerably increasingly cloud choices accessible in different nations. While these choices are fine, we presently can't seem to specify the absolute best approach to put down your wagers, and that is through an internet wagering webpage!

Web based wagering offers numerous focal points over the customary approaches to put bets. It's snappier and progressively helpful first of all, and there are typically a lot all the more wagering choices accessible, for example, wagering on the World Cup. At that point there's the rewards and awards on offer, which can be quite important. On the off chance that you've never wagered on the web, at that point please investigate our manual for beginning. This will disclose to you all that you have to know.

Beginning With Online Sports Betting

Good: since you realize how to begin, it's an ideal opportunity to pick which site you're going to utilize. There are various locales to browse, which implies we must be specific. Not all destinations are of a similar norm, and they're unquestionably not all dependable and reliable. For the most ideal experience, you'll need probably the best site. We're here to help! Investigate our rundown of driving soccer wagering destinations that meet an assortment of key rules.

Soccer Sites CTA

Essential Soccer Betting Tips

Wagering on soccer doesn't need to be confounded. You don't need to pay attention to it especially, as there's nothing amiss with simply wagering for entertainment only. Whether or not your essential objective is benefit or diversion, shaping great propensities will be advantageous. We can make this simple for you. Simply follow the beneath tips and you'll be destined for success.

Continuously Have a Budget and Bet Responsibly

Soccer is eccentric. Wagering on it is troublesome. The one thing you do have power over is how much cash you put into it. Set a spending plan, and never wager with cash you can stand to lose. We put this exhortation at the highest priority on our rundown for an explanation; we realize how significant it is!

It doesn't make a difference how great you are, or think you will be, you ought to consistently have a reasonable spending plan for wagering with. You ought to likewise have some characterized rules for the amount of this spending you'll stake on any one bet. This is known as dealing with your bankroll, and it's an essential aptitude for all types of betting.

Stick to What You Know

There are a horde of soccer groups and rivalries around the globe. We view ourselves as entirely learned on the game, however even we don't have any thought precisely what number of there are. What's more, we unquestionably wouldn't have any desire to wager on any of the classes and rivalries that we know nothing about. Numerous individuals do however, and it's a mix-up.

It may be enticing to back a group that you've never known about when they're playing another group you've never known about, despite the fact that we can't generally envision for what reason you'd need to. In any case, it's not something you ought to do. Wagering on groups inside associations your acquainted with is sufficiently troublesome. We should not make it much MORE tiresome.

You'll show signs of improvement results while focusing on groups and rivalries that you're acquainted with. You shouldn't be hesitant to extend your insight and find out about different alliances and rivalries around the globe, however don't begin wagering on them until you've increased some understanding about them.

Disregard Tipsters

There are several self-declared soccer wagering tipsters, perhaps even thousands. Twitter specifically is brimming with them. Just an exceptionally little level of them could truly be viewed as specialists however. It's difficult to recognize the two. Most of these tipsters once in a while give valuable exhortation, however rather they simply give proposals for what to wager on. There's no damage in what they do, however they're not so much contribution a significant assistance. We haven't found any that success frequently enough to make their tips worth after all the time.

No offense, however following tipsters is the apathetic methodology in any case. You'll improve over the long haul in the event that you figure out how to shape your own sentiments about what to wager on, in view of strong thinking. This is the immediate way to progress.

Peruse Blogs and Forums

We've quite recently focused on the significance of framing your own sentiments, so this tip may appear to be marginally conflicting. We're not alluding to wagering web journals and discussions here however, we're alluding to websites composed by soccer f

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lowcarbnutrients · 5 years

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If You Sleep Less Than 8 Hours, This is What`s Happening to Your Body Right Now

According to the docudrama, Sleepless in America, coproduced by the National Geographic Channel, 40 percent of Americans are sleep deprived. Many get much less than five hrs of rest each night. Percentage-wise, teens are among the most rest deprived.

The consequences are dire, not simply for the individual that isn't really getting sufficient rest, yet for those around them. While most individuals do not provide lack of rest much thought, there are in fact lethal consequences.

Notably, "professionals currently believe that sleep deprivation might have played a role in the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the Staten Island ferry crash, and also the Three-Mile Island nuclear meltdown," the film states. Numerous individuals have actually also lost their lives to worn out vehicle drivers who merely fallinged asleep behind the wheel.

It's essential to understand that getting less compared to six hours of rest each evening leaves you cognitively hindered. Rest deprivation has actually additionally been connected to wellness results such as weight problems, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer's, 1and cancer. Anxiety as well as anxiousness conditions are likewise adversely influenced by absence of sleep.

The Importance of Staying in Sync with Nature

Maintaining an all-natural rhythm of exposure to sunlight during the day and also darkness in the evening is one critical fundamental element of sleeping well.

This was attended to in a previous interview with researcher Dan Pardi. In it, he clarifies how direct exposure to intense daytime functions as the significant synchronizer of your master clock-- a group of cells in your mind called the suprachiasmatic cores (SCN).

These centers integrate to the light-dark cycle of your atmosphere when light enters your eye. You likewise have other body clocks throughout your body that are integrated to your master clock.

One reason why many individuals get so little sleep, and/or such poor sleep, can be traced back to a master clock disturbance. In other words, a lot of individuals invest their days indoors, protected from intense daytime, then spend their nights in too-bright fabricated light.

As a result, their body clocks obtain out of sync with the all-natural rhythm of daytime and also nighttime darkness, when that happens, corrective rest ends up being elusive.

An approximated 15 million Americans also function the evening change, as well as the damaging health and wellness impacts of functioning evenings are well documented. As just one instance, 3 years of periodical graveyard shift job can raise your threat for diabetes by 20 percent, and also this risk continuouslies climb with time.

What Takes place When You're Rest Deprived?

What makes rest deprivation so detrimental is that it doesn't just impact one aspect of your wellness ... it impacts several. Among them are 5 major dangers to your psychological as well as physical wellness:

1. Reaction time slows: When you're sleep-deprived, you're not going to react as quickly as you normally would, making driving or various other potentially unsafe tasks, like making use of power tools, unsafe. One research even located that sleepiness behind the wheel was virtually as dangerous as drinking and driving.2

2. Your cognition suffers-- both brief- and long-term: A single night of resting just 4 to 6 hours can influence your ability to think clearly the following day. In one animal study, 3 rest deprived mice shed 25 percent of the nerve cells found in their place coeruleus, a nucleus in the brainstem related to cognitive processes.

Hence, if you're sleep-deprived you will certainly have difficulty refining information as well as deciding. This is why it's so vital to get a great evening's sleep before crucial occasions at the workplace or home.

For example, study reviewed in the film located that diagnostic blunders soared by 400 percent among medical professionals that had actually functioned for 24 successive hours.

Sleep denied clinical residents likewise reported a 73 percent rise in self-inflicted needle sticks and scalpel stabs, and also when driving home from work, they had a 170 percent boosted threat of having a significant automobile accident.

Research4 also suggests that individuals with persistent sleep problems might create Alzheimer's illness quicker compared to those who rest well. Among the reasons for this is due to the fact that rest is crucial for brain cleansing-- a procedure throughout which damaging healthy proteins linked to Alzheimer's are removed out.

3. Memory and discovering decreases: The procedure of mind growth, or neuroplasticity, is believed to underlie your mind's capability to manage behavior, including discovering as well as memory. Rest and sleep loss change the expression of a number of genetics and also genetics products that may be important for synaptic plasticity.

Furthermore, specific forms of lasting potentiation, a neural process linked with the laying down of learning and also memory could be evoked in sleep, suggesting synaptic links are strengthened while you slumber.

4. Emotions are heightened: As your reaction time and cognition reduces, your emotions will certainly be kicked into high equipment. This means that debates with colleagues or your partner are most likely, and you're probably reallying going to be at mistake for blowing things out of proportion.

The amygdala controls fundamental feelings like worry and anger. As talked about in the movie, an additional location of your brain called your frontal cortex, plays an essential part in the policy of feelings, and also rest is crucial for its function.

When you're well relaxed, your frontal cortex is well connected to your amygdala-- that deep emotional center-- and also functions virtually like "a break to your emotional gas pedal."

Sleep starvation triggers a detach between these two brain centers, permitting your emotions to run amok. Sleep deprival likewise plays an important role in mental disease, and has the tendency to cause even more negative psychiatric outcomes.

5. Immune function and also health wears away: Sleep deprivation has the same effect on your immune system as physical anxiety or disease, 5 which could aid describe why absence of sleep is linked to an increased threat of countless chronic diseases.

For instance, research study shows that resting much less compared to six hours per evening greater than triples your danger of hypertension, as well as females who get less than 4 hrs of slumber per evening double their chances of dying from heart disease.6

You Need Around Eight Hrs of Rest Every Night

The research studies are rather clear and most experts concur, you are seriously deceiving on your own if you believe you can do great on less compared to eight hours of rest. Eight hours of sleep is not 8 hours in bed. If you go to bed at 10 pm and also rise at 6 am, you might claim you've slept for 8 hrs. Actually, you probably spent a minimum of 15-30 mins going to sleep and also might have woken throughout the night several times.

With the development of fitness-tracking devices nonetheless, we now have accessibility to actual sleep information (as well as much more) from wristband customers. The data is rather beneficial on an individual level as well as they assisted me understand that I have to start obtaining to rest around 9.30 PM if I intend to obtain a full eight hours of sleep, which I currently normally do.

The Glorification of Sleep Deprivation

According to the 2013 International Room Survey by the National Sleep Foundation, 7 25 percent of Americans report having to reduce down on rest due to lengthy workdays. Typically, Americans obtain only 6.5 hours of sleep on weeknights, yet report needing 7.25 hrs in order to operate ideally. As noted in a previous article in The Atlantic: 8

" For some, sleep loss is a badge of honor, an indication that they don't require the eight-hour biological reset that the remainder people softies do. Others feel that maintaining up with peers needs sacrifice at the personal level-- and at least in the short-term, sleep is an undetectable sacrifice."

Modern male's propensity for equating sleep with unproductiveness (if not outright laziness) can be traced back to the heyday of Thomas Edison, that was understood for working around the clock. According to the highlighted post: 9

" Edison spent considerable amounts of his very own and also his team's energy on in publicizing the idea that success depended in no little part in staying awake to remain in advance of the technological and also financial competition." No one ... did even more to frame the problem as a simple choice in between efficient job and also unsuccessful remainder ...

Over time, kids's books as well as journals started to promote this sort of Edisonian asceticism ... Edison encouraged all Americans to follow his lead, asserting that resting 8 hours a night was a waste as well as also hazardous. "There is truly no reason why guys need to go to bed in any way," he stated in 1914."

This society of sleep deprival began with the innovation of the light bulb, and has just worsened with the proliferation of light-emitting electronic devices, which disrupt your all-natural waking-sleeping cycle. The complying with infographic, developed by BigBrandBeds.co.uk, illustrates just how your electronic gadgets damage your sleep when recruited before bedtime.10

The Importance of Attending to Rest Apnea

As gone over in the film, sleep apnea is another usual reason of rest deprival. Rest apnea is the lack of ability to breathe properly, or the restriction of breath or breathing, during sleep. Obstructive sleep apnea consists of the constant collapse of the air passage during rest, making it hard to take a breath for periods lasting as long as 10 seconds. Those with an extreme form of the disorder contend the very least 30 interruptions per hr. Not only do these breathing disruptions conflict with rest, leaving you uncommonly tired the following day, it additionally lowers the amount of oxygen in your blood, which can harm the feature of interior organs and/or intensify other health problems you may have.

The condition is closely connected to metabolic illness such as excessive weight as well as type 2 diabetes mellitus, and also according to research, 11 also a small weight decrease can stop the development of obstructive rest apnea. Shedding excess pounds could also cure it, according to one five-year lengthy study.12 That claimed, you do not have to be obese to suffer from sleep apnea. As discussed by Dr. Arthur Strauss, a dental medical professional and a diplomat of the American Board of Dental Rest Medication, factors such as the sizes and shape of your mouth, and the positioning of your tongue, can additionally play a substantial role.

If your rest apnea is associated to your tongue or jaw placement, specialized qualified dental professionals could design a customized dental appliance to deal with the issue. These include mandibular rearranging devices, developed to change your jaw ahead, while others help hold your tongue onward without relocating your jaw. Relief could likewise be discovered through speech therapy treatment called oral myofunctional therapy, which assists to re-pattern your dental and also facial muscle mass. To learn more about this, please see my previous interview with Joy Moeller, who is a leading professional in this form of treatment in the US.

How to Support Your Circadian Rhythm and Rest Better for Optimum Health

Making little changes to your everyday program as well as sleeping area can go a lengthy method to make sure undisturbed, relaxing sleep and also, therefore, much better health and wellness. I suggest you review my full set of 33 healthy and balanced sleep guidelines for all of the details, however to start, take into consideration implementing the complying with adjustments to make sure even more shut-eye:

Avoid seeing TELEVISION or recruiting your computer system in the evening, at least an hour or so prior to visiting bed.These gadgets give off blue light, which techniques your brain right into assuming it's still daytime. Generally, your mind starts secreting melatonin in between 9 as well as 10 pm, and these gadgets discharge light that could stifle that process. You can likewise download a cost-free application called F.lux13 that automatically lowers your monitor or screens in the night, which can assist decrease the damaging results if you have to recruit them in the evening.

Get some sun in the early morning, and also at the very least HALF AN HOUR of BRIGHT sunlight direct exposure mid-day. Your circadian system needs brilliant light to reset itself. 10 to 15 mins of early morning sunlight will certainly send a solid message to your body clock that day has arrived, making it much less likely to be perplexed by weak light signals during the evening. If you work inside your home, make a point to get outdoors for at the very least an overall of 30-60 minutes throughout the brightest part of the day.

Sleep in a dark room. Also the slightest little light in your room can interrupt your body's clock as well as your pineal gland's melatonin production. I recommend covering your windows with drapes or blackout shades, or using an eye mask.

Install a low-wattage yellow, orange, or red light bulb if you require a source of light for navigating during the night. Light in these transmission capacities does not closed down melatonin production in the means that white as well as blue transmission capacity light does. Salt lights come in handy for this purpose.

Keep the temperature in your bedroom below 70 degrees F. Many individuals maintain their homes too cozy (especially their upstairs bed rooms). Studies reveal that the optimal room temperature for rest is between 60 to 68 degrees F.

Take a hot bathroom 90 to 120 minutes before bedtime. This raises your core body temperature level, and when you obtain out of the bathroom it abruptly goes down, signifying your body that you prepare to sleep.

Avoid magnetic fields (EMFs) in your bedroom. EMFs can interrupt your pineal gland and also its melatonin manufacturing, and also might have various other adverse organic impacts. A gauss meter is called for if you wish to determine EMF degrees in various locations of your residence. Preferably, you must switch off any type of wireless router while you are resting. You don't need the Internet on while you're asleep.

Use a health and fitness tracker to track your sleep. Chances are you're not getting almost as much rest as you think, and using a physical fitness tracker that monitors your sleep can be an useful device to assist inspire you to obtain to bed previously so you can get 8 hrs of sleep. When I initially began making use of a fitness tracker, I was striving to obtain 8 hours of sleep, but my Jawbone UP commonly tape-recorded me at 7.5 to 7.75. Part of the equation too is going to sleep earlier, as the majority of us have to obtain up at a predetermined time.

#diet #health and wellness #lemonade diet #wellness

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pudgy-puk · 6 years

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so, one thought i have been returning to frequently over the past several weeks is concerning zenos

and it is that not since og sephiroth has squeenix presented a villain so totally sexlessly and yet wound up with a very large and incredibly thirsty and eroticized fandom for them, and it makes me wonder if, since 4.2 and especially the 4.2 stinger is what it is, sephiroth’s meta trajectory over the compilation might be an informative and useful thing to consider

now, let me clarify my terms here

first off, what i mean by “sexlessly presented.” i do NOT mean anything about the character’s attractiveness, nor do i mean to say said character is asexual, nor do i say anything about the validity one way or another of sexy fanart/fanfic concerning the character. what i mean is that the creators of the work went to some lengths to avoid either presenting the character as sexual or in an eroticized way, positive or negative. just a big “mu” there on the topic of character sexuality. this is very much a doylist (out-of-universe) analysis rather than watsonian (in-universe) going on here, so i’ll go in further, and in doing so bring up the other final fantasy villains whose presentation cannot be described that way as counterexamples.

so! sex in the presentation of a character can refer to one of two (or both) facets, i’m going to phrase here in the form of questions: “does the work care to inform the audience about that character’s sexuality/sexual interiority?” and “does the work invite its audience to consider the character’s sexual attractiveness to them personally?” if the answer to either of those questions is “no,” that indicates the character was presented sexlessly. do note that all of this is concerning how the creators intended the character to be read, which is not the same as audience reaction; “i think [character] is hot therefore they were presented sexually”/”i think [character] is ugly therefore they were presented sexlessly” are not valid responses here. --in fact it’s important to note that presenting an “ugly” character in a sexual way is a common tactic to increase audience revulsion; presenting a character sexually doesn’t have to mean titillation or pleasant fantasizing. also important to note is that, for those questions, the answer to one can be “yes” while the answer to the other is “no,” and to further elucidate this, i’mma grab two other final fantasy villains as counterexamples, ultimecia and seymour.

ultimecia is, i would say, an example of the answer to the first question being “no” but the second question being “yes,” due to her character design and the long history of male gaze in visual works. cut of outfit, posing of character, angles of shots, yadda yadda, y’all should know this please don’t ask me to redo the past sixty years of film criticism in a tumblr post for free. and despite the eroticization of ultimecia’s character design, in the work there’s basically nothing regarding what she thinks and feels concerning sex, who or what she’s interested in if indeed she is interested in anything at all. (do note: for the purposes of this analysis, i do count explicitly confirming a character to be asexual as presenting them sexually; essentially because in so confirming it does inform the audience about the character’s sexual interiority). meanwhile, seymour is an arguable example of the reverse situation; the audience isn’t invited to think sexy thoughts about seymour (most of FFX fandom considers him ugly/repellant) but we do have something of an idea of the character’s sexual interiority because of how plot-relevant his marriage proposal and his relationship (such as it were) with yuna are. so yeah, in summary both characters are presented sexually though in very different ways.

i would say that zenos is presented in such a way that the answers to both questions are “no”: the work offers no insight regarding the character’s sexual interiority, nor does its presentation of the character encourage sexual consideration in the audience. yes, zenos is handsome, with his long blond hair and striking features, but that is not the same. all we ever see of his skin is his face, he is always clothed in armor bulky and concealing--its silhouette obliterates that of his own body, disguises it to look like a Scary Monstrous Thing rather than anything sensual or fleshy. his motions and poses are intended to make the audience fear and be awed by him--his slow walk is to inspire dread and impress the audience with his power, not to seduce, when he stands he looms intimidatingly. within 4.0 itself, no other character is shown as thinking or feeling anything sexual about him--indeed, that’s explicitly shot down in the scene where nameless characters we understand to be bitter and jealous of fordola accuse her of gaining her position via sexual favors to zenos, which we know did not happen and have further reinforced later in her post-experimentation scene, with her in her underwear with zenos and aulus and it being totally serious and focused solely on the surgical aspect. similarly, zenos as a being with a sexuality is unaddressed--yes, there is fandom interpretation of his feelings towards the player character as potentially sexual, but 1) fandom does that with literally everyone and 2) thanks to characters like haurchefant and aymeric, we do actually have something of a model for what it can look like when romantic/sexual interest towards the player character is textual, and zenos don’t do it. so--strictly in the context of 4.0 text, yes, i would say zenos is presented near-totally sexlessly, both as a character for audience consumption and as an in-universe person whose sexual inner life is left unaddressed.

and yet, like the last time squeenix made a villain a handsome man and presented him sexlessly, he’s gotten an enormous and enormously horny fandom. now, the compilation of ffvii has acknowledged and capitalized on this response, but it remains to be seen if the same will happen (or happen the same way) in the patches in the 4.x series. it’s interesting to me then that not only has zenos been “brought back to life” (i remain unsure if it’s the genuine article or some manner of magitek/ascian fuckery), but the same installment that did so also introduced asahi, frighteningly devoted zenos fanboy extraordinaire. this could go a lot of directions, it remains to be seen which one will be chosen.

#ffxiv #stormblood #spoilers #shut up zodiarch you're a nerd #idle irresponsible baseless speculation #two sentences of analysis #one thousand words of 'if you try to twist this in order to use it as ordnance in your ship war i will murder you irl'

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ofcounseltech · 3 years

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Many Hands Make Light Work

In the second installation of our Collaboration Series, we are going to discuss the use of document sharing with tools such as Google Docs, Office 365, and DropBox. These software packages allow documents to be drafted, viewed, and formatted by multiple parties in multiple locations. The most obvious upside to working with document collaboration tools is the ability for people in different locations and different time zones working on the same document at the same time. In the last year, we have all experienced an increased need to have multiple individuals work on documents while not being able to be in the same physical location.

That being said, we can’t ignore the fact that these collaboration tools present certain risks if they are used improperly. With multiple users, changes to documents are being made without other collaborators knowledge, are being made at different times of the day (and night), and sometimes it can be difficult to know, or be guaranteed, that you are looking at the most recent document version, the most reliable version, or a version that will be unchanged in the future.

In the legal world, there are typically three scenarios that document sharing is best used: 1) collaborating with fellow attorneys in your firm, 2) sharing files with clients, and 3) sharing and collaborating on files with opposing counsel. We cover the benefits and challenges of these three situations below.

Collaborating In House

In today's Covid world, collaboration in many forms has become absolutely necessary. When our world gets back to normal, and law offices start becoming more populated, many of the tools and the capabilities they provide, and we have learned how to use seamlessly, will not become obsolete. One of these capabilities is having multiple users all working within the same document in real time or at separate moments. For any law firm with more than one attorney, or a sole practitioner working with a co-counsel, most of us appreciate having another attorney take a look at our legal writing and filings. We may not be looking for a “co-author” per se, but sometimes it is nice to have a second set of eyes look at our documents just to double-check administrative details, language usage, proper citation form, and sometimes just the punctuation.

A tool like Google Docs is ideal for this type of situation. Once a document is created, access to the document can be shared with really anybody you like, but let's start with fellow attorneys, paralegals, or secretaries inside your firm. Once the sharing is set, those people can add comments, make textual changes, content additions or deletions, and formatting modifications. In fact, two people can be “inside” the document at the same time and work together with the proofreading or document creation. These two people can technically be anywhere in the world but let’s make this simple and place them across the hall from each other at different desks and simply working together through speaker phones to edit and fine-tune the document. It sure beats the days of having someone reading over the shoulder of the person who is at the keyboard—if you had more than one person working on a document, it was really a mess.

We will use Google Docs for our examples, but most document sharing editors will have similar functions. When you invite someone to collaborate, there are a couple different levels of “editing rights”. If you're sharing a document with someone and give them the full editing rights, you have given that person full access to view the document, the ability to modify it, the ability to add comments, the ability to accept or reject “suggested” modifications and comments, the ability to reformat, the ability to add content, and the ability to delete content. Fundamentally, granting someone full editing rights is effectively making them a co-author to the document for all intents and purposes.

The next level of editing rights allows the collaborator to create what we might think of as a “redlined” document. Google Docs calls this mode “suggesting”. Other programs provide similar capabilities with different names and mechanics of how to set it up; to keep things simple, in this article we will stick with Google Docs in our examples.. This level of access allows someone to make suggested changes that will turn up in the document as an identified—but not made—change. This “redline” change has to be accepted by the actual author/owner of the document, or, technically, anyone who has full editing rights.

The third type of document collaboration access is the basic “viewing rights”. This really just means that you have shared the document with someone so they can view it and acknowledge its existence without any real ability to manipulate the document in any way. This may be beneficial with a large group of people who need to see your working version but will allow you to avoid too many cooks in the kitchen.

Security for Sharing with Collaborators

In setting up any kind of collaboration situation, there are several security concerns that need to be addressed. The first is who controls, and has access, to the original document. As we mentioned above, there are various levels of access and ability to manipulate the document. Understanding who has these rights, and who doesn't, is very important to the success of the document. Access to these different levels can be very granular, meaning that they can be granted on an individual basis, as well as to entire named groups. Not all collaborators need to have editing rights, and not all collaborators need to be suggesting. Each individual collaborator can be given different levels of access.

Similarly, this access can be revoked, per user, at any time. Anyone who has editing rights, can go in and see who is part of the collaboration team and can change that access. This is another consideration when you are giving access. In other words, if you are giving full editing rights to a fellow collaborator, understand they have the ability to grant rights to others as well. Even if you as the owner and original creator give 10 people only suggesting rights, the ability for them to change others is denied. This is important.

Sharing Files with Clients

The second scenario that comes up with document collaboration is sharing with clients. There are two situations where this occurs: when the client sends files to the attorney and when the attorney sends files to the client. We’ll start with when clients want to send documents.

Early on in every new matter, there comes a point where you are probably going to ask your client for all the documents that have any relation to the matter at hand. This typically includes any photographs, contracts, handwritten notes, invoices, or there materials that would relate to the matter at hand. Inevitably the client asks the question, “how much do you want?” To which every attorney always replies “I want it all.” That is just the nature of attorneys; we generally want everything and then will judge what is relevant and what is not.

A digital “dropbox” or a “data room” up in the cloud may be ideal for this scenario. The dropbox is just what it sounds like: it is a digital file folder that clients can upload digital documents to. Everything the client has relating to the matter can be stored digitally. (Seriously, data rooms can be set up with terabytes of storage space.) You can ask your client to have everything they have in hard copy digitally scanned, and then have them upload the entire digital file including any relevant Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, whatever they have. By putting the documents in one digital location, both the client and the attorneys have access to these documents.

A word of caution: most attorneys know that sharing documents with clients can be tricky business. Clients often lean towards inundating an attorney with documents. This may have some drawbacks, but not nearly as damaging as when the client decides what is important and what is not. Don't get me wrong, we all “love” our clients, but as attorneys we understand that they may be seeing a matter in a very different light than we do and their definition of what is important and more critically, what is not may differ radically from ours.

Again, just to clarify, it’s not that we don't trust our clients, but once these documents are uploaded it can be a good idea to move the files into a folder in which they do not have full access. As the matter progresses, the last thing you need is for the client to decide that a particular document is embarrassing or, in their opinion, not relevant. With full ongoing access, the client could reach back into an editable dropbox and remove that document without your knowledge. We are not advocating doing anything unethical, or treating the client as an adversary, but just know that once the document is on your system and has been disclosed to you, you may be deemed to be responsible for understanding its contents and certainly, as a good attorney, you're going to want to know at minimum that the document exists.

The second situation comes when an attorney wants to share a document with the client. Some more sophisticated clients with corporate legal departments, or a more savvy legal client, may actually want to see copies of pleadings, opposing counsel's exhibits, hearing notices, or draft draft discovery requests coming out of your office. In this case, generally avoid sharing source files (i.e., Word Documents, Spreadsheets, and forms where the results and contents can be easily modified). It is better practice to use something like a PDF file. Instead of sending files to clients, create or upload a PDF to a Google Drive folder and share it with the client with a link to the document.

Security for Sharing with Clients

Using a link gives you more control over the document access. You can revoke their access to the document at any time and the document resides on your system. Of course they can always make a copy of the document - but the official or the working version is yours.

By using a PDF, there is an added benefit. The client will see the document as you see it no matter what computer, operating system, or software they use to view it. If, say, this is a contract and you want their feedback on it (i.e., collaboration), then you do want to grant them access to the source document (i.e., Google Doc) and give them suggesting” permission which lets them annotate the document, but you must approve the changes. Do not forget to revoke their permission to edit the document (even if it’s only suggesting) once they have given all of their input to you.

You don’t want the client to think they can still make changes to the document once it has been submitted elsewhere. A worse situation would be if the client made changes to a document after your “final review” but before you sent it out and didn’t tell you, and now there are some “surprises” lurking in your document. You don’t want to learn about them in the middle of a hearing or during contract negotiations.

Sharing Files with Opposing Counsel

The third common scenario is sharing documents with opposing counsel. This happens actually more than most people realize. Anyone who has litigated knows that if you really are getting close to trial, judges will often want a joint exhibits list or stipulated pre-trial orders. Judges may also want the attorneys to agree beforehand to the validity of a document to avoid all kinds of objections, examinations, and verifications of documents during trial. Situations like creating joint settlement agreements, joint pretrial orders, stipulations to adjourn dates and other items like that can definitely speed up the process in getting everyone on board to stipulate to a particular order or evidentiary ruling.

As described above, there are a couple different ways to do this. If the document needing to be shared is an original drafted document, the sharing/redlining tools work well. If you need to create and distribute a common group of exhibits or similar collection of documents, having a shared folder/drop box with the documents can be of great benefit in this situation.

Security for Sharing with Opposing Counsel

Like everything else we have discussed, there are some security issues. Similar to our prior blog entry regarding Zoom (Is This Thing On?), if an attorney has the ability to “take control” of this process, it really does behoove them to do so. If you are in control of who is being who has access to the document, what their level of access is, and the ability to track all of the changes, then you really are in the position to trust but verify.

In other words, you trust opposing counsel generally, at least we hope so, and by the time you're working jointly you certainly would like to feel that you are at least trying to achieve the same goal or satisfy the same court directive. If you are the owner of the document, it certainly allows you the ability to take control over the situation and make sure that the document is accurate to the parties’ intentions. Please do not construe this ‘control’ as any kind of suggestion of how to bend the rules and make some strategic final change at the midnight hour with no one knowing. Don't do that. Doing something like that could not only quickly end your collaboration, but it could start your incarceration.

Kill the Access

As a caveat to all of these collaboration scenarios, all collaboration must come to an end. In other words, at some point in a shared document’s life, like all good things, it must end. If you are in control, and the Joint Resolution has been signed and ratified by the judge, the Settlement Agreements are signed and the ink is dry, the matter has been tried and the appellate deadlines have run, it's time to kill the project. It's time to close the doors to all of the outside collaborators. If they need access to the document down the road, they can contact you. If they have saved their own copy — that's fine. It may not be the most recent but that's not really your concern.

This is very important to do. The Internet does not forget. If you grant access to a document to someone today, and you don't revoke it, for the life of that document they will have access. That document could be buried deep inside your hard drive and could be a decade-old, but they will continue to have access to that document. It may not matter, it may be a stale document, it may be out of date, or it may have no relevance, but just understand that the person(s) with access could still be crawling around inside your drive or folder.

Also, be aware that you are not actually sharing it with a person, rather you are sharing it with an ID tag, typically an email address. Generally there is a one-to-one correspondence with an ID to a person, but it could be a role, like [email protected] or even [email protected]. The person who originally had the role (and the access) may not be the same person (who now has access) ten years later. As stated above, if they have a need for that information, they can contact you and you can grant them access to it.

Use document sharing tools. They can help you collaborate easily where multiple people simultaneously need to edit or view a document. You can grant and revoke permissions to people to be able to upload documents, read them, make suggestions and comments, and edit. Follow best practices for security and be aware of what you’re doing and who has access to what. Follow the principle of “least privilege” where only people with a need get access to resources and the access they are granted is to do only what they need to do. Remove access when the task is complete. Be careful to maintain data integrity on files — in other words to make sure no one has changed things while you’re not looking.

Be aware of security and use it to protect your data. But at the same time, use the technology that lets you share data with those who need it as part of the normal course of business.

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hopefulfestivaltastemaker · 3 years

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February 7, 2021

This is my weekly roundup of things I am up to. Topics include anthropocentrism, modularity and risk, minimum lot sizes, and the Great Stagnation.

Flavors of Anthropocentrism

This Twitter thread was helpful to me in clarifying different notions of anthropocentrism that are common in philosophical discourse. While there are many such definitions, two in particular I think are important.

1) The belief that humans (and human values, if you’re a weak anthropocentrist) have high or exclusive moral weight relative to ecosystems or other organisms.

2) The belief that humans are special in the kingdom of life and have unique roles and responsibilities.

In the thread, Nils Gilman conflates the two definitions, while Wolf Tivy decouples them, as does the original piece linked; David Grinspoon on the Sapiezoic. David comes fairly close to defining a view that is similar to what I want to advocate. My view has two main components: first, that civilization, as a unique form of emergent complexity, does deserve special (though by no means exclusive) moral consideration, and second, that scientific advancement allows us to play positive-sum games between values systems and thus is something to be pursued.

Wolf also referenced Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, an early 20th Century French Jesuit priest who is best known (at least by me) for introducing Omega Point cosmology and the idea of the noosphere. But I know little about his broader work. Now I want to investigate more thoroughly.

Modularity and Risk Reduction

The main tradeoff in urban design is between economies (good things) and diseconomies (bad things) that come with scale. The diseconomies of scale tend to grow faster than economies, but from a smaller base, and from a sufficiently large size. For this reason, there tends to be an optimum city size, though this optimum varies widely based on the city’s economic specialization, transportation infrastructure, and other factors. I am interested in the question of whether and how these principles might be extended to networks of cities (e.g. civilization). While there are clearly economies of scale, there also seem to be observable diseconomies of scale. One such diseconomy is what the Effective Altruist community identifies as existential risk, or its slightly less severe cousin, global catastrophic risk.

For this reason, there is great interest in tools that reduce risk without also harming economies of scale. That’s where this article on mitigating x-risk through modularity comes in. It calls for forms of modular civilization design to decouple risks across regions. An example would be cities that are better able to prevent arrival and departure to control infectious disease outbreaks. The article mentions space colonization as a form of modularity but notes that this is not a practical option for the foreseeable future.

The ideas here are interesting, but I’m not sure how they would work in practice. The article also doesn’t note the scale/risk tradeoff mentioned earlier, which I think has to be a central consideration of any risk reduction measure.

Relative to the EA community, I am more concerned about technological stagnation and demographic decline, and less about nuclear war, AI run amok, etc. (though I acknowledge that these are serious issues as well). This makes me think about modularity in somewhat different terms. For example, charter, private, and homeschooling as a way of reducing the ideological pressures that are prevalent in public schooling; decentralized social media; charter cities, quantified health; and so forth. These areas too require rigor in terms of social polyculture gained versus the costs of decentralization.

Minimum Lot Size

This week the Oregon Legislature considered a bill, HB 2655, that would put a statewide cap of 1 acre on minimum lot sizes for residential areas that countries can impose. The cap is currently 5 acres. According to research that Urban Cruise Ship has done, minimum lot size regulations are the most impactful regulation, per housing unit affected, of widely used zoning rules on land use. There are 13 pieces of written testimony submitted against the bill, 2 asking for clarification, and 1 (namely, mine) in favor (on Twitter I said there are 15 testimonies against, but I mistakenly double-counted two of them).

Aside from the usual NIMBY stuff, the most prevalent argument against the bill is that it would encourage rural development and hence sprawl. Rather upset at the time, I marveled on Twitter how minimum lot size regulations could be packaged as anti-sprawl tools. I guess the rationale is a sort of Simpson’s Paradox situation: while the new rules should densify rural development, they would increase rural development relative to urban development and lower density overall. In theory at least. I’d have to do some calculations to know whether this argument holds water. I haven’t done so, and I am quite certain that the opponents of the bill haven’t done so either. At any rate, in my testimony I was more concerned with affordability than density, and the rules would indisputably improve affordability.

I only became aware of the bill because of some comments that Randy Tucker, Oregon Metro’s state lobbyist, made in a work session. Randy, presumably representing Metro’s official position, is against the bill, apparently concerned primarily about retaining local control over land use decisions. I am bothered that (what appears to be) Metro’s official position would make housing less affordable, which clearly goes against my interest, though I don’t think this is something worth making a stink to my representative about.

Another big question in my mind is where the state’s pro-housing establishment was. They got a major land use reform bill, HB 2001, through the legislature a couple years ago. I get it that it’s hard to trawl through everything that the legislature does. A person almost has to be a full-time lobbyist to keep track of everything, and I certainly don’t keep track of everything. But even with this dynamic accounted for, the pro-housing movement seems to be very selective about what they will and won’t support, and housing affordability is at best one of several priorities that they bring to the table.

Great Stagnation

There were several pieces in the last few weeks about whether the world is in a “Great Stagnation”, and what, if anything, we can reasonably do about it. For the sake of clarity, I consider the Great Stagnation to be the observed secular slowdown in growth of Total Factor Productivity, but the term has a somewhat broader meaning.

Discussion was kicked off by this Jason Crawford post, where he seems to have come around to the idea that there is in fact a secular TFP slowdown. Crawford points out that we are currently seeing significant progress in information technology, but in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, we were seeing significant progress across the board.

Eli Dourado breaks down technology growth here, and he calls specifically for innovation in areas that make up the lion’s share of the budget for poor households: housing, energy, food, and health care (education isn’t mentioned but that is another important area). He calls for a progressive supply-side approach to these issues, which he rightly identifies as much superior to simply writing checks, which has become a sort of default option for dealing with social challenges.

The Nintel blog added this piece, arguing two points. First, there is no evidence of a technological slowdown. Second, trying to identify a unified theory for stagnation is not very helpful, and we should focus on reforms that we know will raise TFP, like raising birth rates. The piece is interesting. I would be inclined to agree with the second point but disagree with the first; it seems to me that there really is a slowdown in basic science, though the jury is still out on my mind whether this is something that can be reversed.

I’ve been thinking about this issue for a long time without any clear answers, and I wonder if I have reached a point of diminishing returns. One final observation: to say that there is a slowdown in TFP is to use a fixed annual percentage rate of TFP growth (or exponential growth in the economy) as a baseline expectation. But why should we expect that? In a different context, I’ve criticized the emissions/GDP (carbon intensity) metric as one that implicitly expects these two quantities to be proportional and then seeks to explain deviation from proportionality. But I think there are inherent reasons to not expect them to be proportional, and so declining carbon intensity is not a thing that needs to be explained, at least in that form. Maybe declining TFP is in the same boat.

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