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cryptidcircuslife · 3 years

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Hi unofficial compilation of Getting Away From A Place tips

this is tailored to a specific situation so please do your own research for stuff more specific to you

running away tips subreddit

Short Term Preparation:

These are the things you can prepare now if you have to get out fast and unexpectedly

Do not tell anyone about your plan other than those directly involved in helping you.

Make a plan for your cash. You don't want to access an account your family can access or freeze. Slowly withdraw money and hide it if it's at risk of being taken. Withdrawing it all the day you leave will raise a red flag and have you on camera (atm or bank), if you even have time. As a legal adult, you may be able to get away with this because you aren't doing anything against the law. Just make sure to do it before your family finds out about you leaving. When you leave, if you don’t want to be traced- don’t use cards.

For hiding paper cash- you know your house and its occupants best. Determine what objects you have that won't be thrown away or tampered with by someone, and if they have a hollow space, store it. I used to use opaque pill bottles, hidden pockets or bindings in notebooks, the linings of old dvd or game cases, water bottles, gum cases, (all of these put in clothing or backpack pockets), opening the lining of coats and backpacks and hiding it inside of that, inside of hygeine products like the hollow part of a deodorant stick. Inside old electronics. in the stuffing of a plushie. Underneath the insoles of shoes you dont wear often.

Even if your money isn't at risk of being taken, store some of it separately anyway for emergencies.

I heard the bare minimum for running away with no destination or job is $1k. Judge for yourself your needs.

Get a backpack. Waterproof/resistant is better, but any is good. Don't pack it yet, so you don't arouse suspicion. But test out packing it to see if everything fits, and unpack it. Modify some hidden compartments so that when you travel, you will have places to hide your IDs and Cash- it's necessary so no one steals it. You want to travel light, regardless of your situation, because packing and carrying a ton of stuff takes time and you don't always have time on the day you leave.

Get a secondary bag. I learned the hard way that a backpack doesn't fit everything you'll need. Especially with amenities, food, clothing, personal possessions.... A duffel bag, one of those canvas grocery bags. A tote. Something to hold by hand.

Packing lists for running away are surprisingly similar to emergency evacuation pack lists.

Clothes to pack: 1 short sleeve shirt. 1 long sleeve shirt. 1 pair of pants. 7 sock pairs. 7 underwear pairs. 1 jacket. Some winter gear if you can, because nights will always be cold especially if you are stuck outside.

Hygeine to pack: deodorant. toothpaste. toothbrush. floss. baking soda if you’ll be on the road for a long time. Special products you may need- cream for a skin condition, sunscreen. I recommend a small essential oil bottle as a bug repellent, and some have antibacterial properties to help you/your clothes not smell musty af, and they're safe on the skin.

Must-haves to pack: you should have your social security card and another form of ID, like a state ID or drivers license. Pass port if you have one, and birth certificate or a copy if you can. Your cash. A map of your state/region.

Valuables to pack: bring a few things to keep you entertained that are small. A small book, or a notebook and pen. Try not for anything too heavy or bulky. Any survival gear you may own (sewing kits, first aid, multitools, matches, lighters).

If you will be staying outside, get a sleeping bag. Thermal blanket for cold temps.

Food to pack: bring healthy nonperishable food. Junk food won't do much for you on the move. Go for granola/protein bars, dried fruit, meat bars, jars of nut butters, canned food. A water bottle. Bring all medication you need.

Stuff to wear on you: go for baggy and multi-pocketed stuff. Don't wear your favorite clothing if you don't want to be identified, and make sure they blend well into the environment. Grey is the most unnoticeable color, then black, then neutrals. If identification isn't a problem, only wear and pack your favorite things. Wear comfortable and travel safe shirt and pants. Wear a hoodie or tie it around your waist so it doesnt take up bag space. A hat. Keep some cash in a hidden pocket if you can. Wear comfortable sneakers you can move around in for a long time and is good for the weather of where you live. Keep your self defense on you - knives, pepper spray, etc. (and learn the laws for those in your area)

Note: Storing some of these supplies around or in hiding places won't be too weird. Keeping the 'valuables' in the backpack won't be too strange to anyone either. Keeping everything nearby so you can quickly dump everything in the bags and go is a good idea. But Do Not Pack the clothes until the day you leave. clothes are a warning signal for leaving. And you cannot let them find out about your plans, especially if you are in a dangerous place.

Last note: know these are flexible to you. You can add or change stuff, as long as you have the most important things.

Long Term:

These are the things you can prepare for better

Save as much money as possible. You can secretly sell things.

Research more about what you may experience, be that attaining financial independence or how to train hop and live on the streets temporarily. Look at other people's tips for running away, or their experiences. Research moving out tips. Research specific to your area or where you will be headed. Libraries, shelters, charities, support organizations, 24-hour restaurants and locations. Research ticket prices, gas prices, etc. Apartment search. Be sure to remove those from your history. Cleaning it entirely may be suspicious if someone monitors that.

Build a budget and a food plan for how you will use your savings on the road.

As an adult, if you manage to get hired secretly for a job in your target location, you can apply for housing there, too. You will get set move-in dates and can give dates you can start working that work with your runaway schedule.

If you're running away as a minor, you can't stay with friends. However, as an adult you can. If someone is trying to find you, you'll have to be careful still.

If you need to leave fake trails because someone might search for you, there are some excellent resources by people trying to hide from domestic violence. The main tips are leaving fake trails in cities far away from wherever you will be- job applications you have no intention of following through on, apartment applications, phone calls, internet searches, purchases, etc. These can go more in-depth.

If you will be tracked, figure out how to get a burner phone. These are pretty cheap, and so are their service plans. You may want to consider this anyway to pay for your own service if your phone is taken off the existing one. Write down phone numbers you want to keep.

Make sure you have the proper amounts of medications you will need.

Be careful with this one, but figure out if you have any smaller hard-to-replace valuables that you want to bring to your new life but can't pack for your method of travel or might get stolen. Only do this if you have a place you are going to, and are going to get a job and housing there. Make a plan with a trusted friend to hold on to a few things you cannot carry in your bags and arrange for them to be mailed or picked up later. Only do this with one or two things that are easy to carry, because you will need to get it to them somehow, right? dont do this if you don't have the methods or the time before your runaway day. A good example is that I don't want to replace my laptop but I can't tow it through town and across state lines on a train. my friend can take care of it until I am settled.

Tie off any loose ends that you need to. This can be waiting for a responsibility to be gone, waiting for a last paycheck, or attending something you wanted to go to one last time.

Delete old accounts, and eventually deleting your emails and social media associated with your identity.

Note: The best thing you can do with time is make your supplies as efficient as possible, and plan. plan plan plan.

Schedule your leave date. or a range of leaving dates. But know sometimes it can be unpredictable. Make it a day when no one is home- especially if it's a dangerous situation.

On Runaway Day:

Hopefully you have a small window of time where you are alone.

Make sure you’re wearing all your runaway clothes you have prepared.

Pack your backpack and duffel bag quickly.

Leave a note, even if you don't want to. This is important, because you don't want a search for you because someone thought you were kidnapped or murdered. This way, officials can pretty much ignore it since it was voluntary.

Don’t look nervous or afraid while you are out, since that’ll draw unwanted attention.

If you made a plan for someone to pick you up, or to meet someone, make sure they are punctual. Don't meet right in front of your house if possible. Go a few streets away or somewhere less noticeable. Again, make sure whatever you bring is easy to carry so you move fast and no one tries to steal it.

If unfortunately you have to leave very quickly and haphazardly, leave anything not immediately important to survival behind.

Buy your burner phone with cash. Add your written numbers to the contacts. Create your new email and social media from there. If you're hiding, don't take pictures of yourself. Don't use your real name or information. Keep private accounts, and don't interact with anyone who will give you away.

If you have other travel plans, make your way there. Head to your safe places, your shelter, wherever you have planned. You are in your new life.

Once You Are Out:

Take care of your immediate needs. Find resources for food, water, and shelter.

Start accessing any support resources, regardless of what your situation is. In a town I lived in, there was an LGBTQ+ resource center that had entertainment/food/clothing/education clubs/showering/laundry/other amenities and programs for both lgbtq+ and homeless youth. I also took part in a gift drive for a specific minority that I qualified as, which gave me a lot of food.

Start working towards your future goals. Start job searching, and from there being able to secure housing. Start making friends. build a support structure. i hope it goes well

Rebuild your supplies and closet when you have the location security to do so.

#runaway #running away #runaway help #runaway tips #running away help #running away tips #abuse survival

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hypocrisyofandrewdobson · 3 years

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Dobson's Patreon: An Addendum to His Monument of Sins

(The following is a submission from @soyouareandrewdobson, meant to be an addendum to the multi-post submission @ripsinfest made a while back. Ironically, this one also had issues when being submitted, so I’ll be copypasting it here with all the images and links originally intended.)

In 2018, user @ripsinfest wrote a multipart series of posts for THOAD, recounting Dobson’s attempt to establish a patreon in 2015 and how it resulted in failure on a massive scale, to the point that his patreon is arguably “a monument to all his sins”.

Personally I think the post series is extremely well researched, rather “neutral” in terms of tone (letting the posts provided as evidence speak more for themselves than the opinion of the writer) and gives a detailed but quick rundown on what went wrong. Primarily that Dobson overestimated his own “value” as an artist and did NOT attempt to give his few supporters what they wanted through his artwork posted around the time.

I do however want to use the opportunity to also point out at certain obvious things that in my opinion (and likely the opinions of others) added to the failure of the patreon account, that were not accounted for in detail and are primarily related to how the internet perceives popularity and Dobson’s inability to understand, how to “sell” and make himself look good to the public.

To begin with, let’s just point out a certain truth about making money via Patreon: To do so, depends a lot on your popularity as a content creator online. That is simply because the more popular you are, the bigger your fanbase is and as such the more likely a certain percentage of people may be willing to donate money to you and your work in hopes they get something out of it, even if it is just the altruistic feeling of having helped someone they “like”. It doesn’t take a genius to see, how e.g. internet reviewers such as Linkara or moviebob (around 2800 and 4400$ earnings via patreon each month respectively) can make quite some money, while other, more obscure content creator or artists barely make money to go by, earning essentially pocket money at best.

In addition, popularity is fleeting. A few years ago e.g. internet personality Noah Antweiler aka The SpoonyOne managed to earn 5000$ a month via patreon, just shortly after establishing his account. But his lack of content over the years AND his toxic behavior online resulted in a decline of popularity and with it people jumping off his Patreon. As such, Antweiler only earns nowadays around 290$ a month via Patreon and most of that money is likely form people who have forgotten they donate to him in the first place anyway.

And Noah is not the only one who over the course of the last couple of years lost earnings. Brianna Wu makes barely more than he does, despite having once been the “darling” of the internet when the Gamergate controversy was at its peak. Many Bronies who once made more than 2k via video reviews on a show about little horses at the peak of its popularity (2013-15) earn less than 300-800 on average nowadays because interest on the show as well as people talking about it has declined.

Heck, in preparation of writing this piece I found out, that one of the highest grossing patreons nowadays is “The last podcast on the left”, a podcast that earns more than 67k a month by making recordings on obscure and macabre subjects on a regular basis.

So there you have it folks: As the interests of the internet users change, so does the popularity of certain people online and -in case they have a patreon account or similar plattforms- their chances of making money via their content.

Which now brings us back to Dobson, who was not popular at all at that particular time and managed to become even less popular as the months and years passed by.

Sure, Dobson had his fans via deviantart, people knew who he was. But the later was more because of “infamy” than popularity and the number of fans he had accumulated online were representing people interested in him at least since 2005 and did not quite represent his actual present day numbers of supporters at the time.

And mind you, the number of supporters was less than 100k, most of them likely underaged deviantart users. And if my research indicates something, then that most content creators with a halfway decent patreon earning need at least 100k+ followers in total. Because of those fans, only around 1-3% will on average then spend money on you, if you actually create content they enjoy and on a regular basis.

Which brings up the next major problem: Dobson did not create content people enjoyed and that in more than one meaning of the word.

On one hand, as pointed out by ripsinfest, he barely released any content at all over 2015 after a few initial months, despite the fact that he was obviously active online a lot, as shown by his presence on twitter. On the other hand, the few things he did create were not the stuff people wanted.

As an example: If you go to a restaurant and pay for a pizza, you expect the cook to give you a pizza. If however for some reason he just gives you a soda, you get ripped off and never come back. In Dobson’s case, the thing people wanted was not pizza but comic pages. But what he delivered was mostly bland fanart, such as of Disney and Marvel characters crossing over or KorraSami. Sure, a few strips of “So…you are a cartoonist” were still released at the time, but not really many.

To give an overview: Taking the release dates on Dobson’s official SYAC site into account, he released around 16 strips of it between March and August of 2015, the last two being “No Leia” being titled “Zip line”

Afterwards, the next official strip released was “Anything at all” in October of 2016.

Now to be fair, there was at least one more strip at the time Dobson released via patreon, that is also save to see on kiwifarms and other plattforms, which has not been uploaded to his official SYAC page. Likely because he simply forgot about it.

But I think that in itself should tell you something about Dobson’s work ethics when it comes to his webcomics. He promoted his patreon in his own video as a way to ensure he can make comics in a timely fashion again for others to enjoy, but in an environment where certain artists are capable to create multiple strips per week at minimum, Dobson could overall not manage to produce more than 16 over a course of six months, which means an average production of 3 strips per month.

For comparison, Tatsuya Ishida of the infamous sinfest webcomic (a garbage fire of epic proportions from a TERF who I think should be put on a watch list) has produced on average 4 strips per week, including full page Sunday strips, for years and nowadays even releases stuff on a daily basis to pass the covid crisis. So a mad man who wants to see trnas people die, has better work ethics than Dobson.

In other words, people expected Dobson to actually get back into creating comics (with some even expecting a return of Alex ze Pirate), but he got in fact even lazier than before, releasing only SYAC strips and random fanart as a product. Which he then also tried to justify as his choice to make because a) he had mental health issues and b) no one can tell him what to do.

And sure, people do not need to tell you what to do. But when people pay/donate money to you expecting to get a certain product in return, they should get the product. Linkara e.g. by all means doesn’t NEED to review comics to have a fullfilling life, but he got famous for his reviews, people want to see his reviews and they pay him for those reviews. So obviously, he will continue those things.

Then there is also the fact that despite Dobson’s claims how he wants to create comics for everone to enjoy and that he aims to keep his artwork online for free so anyone can view it…(his exact words in his promotional video AND text on his patreon once upon a time)

youtube

…the reality was, that he wanted to use patreon as a paywall. Something I actually kinda pointed out at on my own account (shameless self promotion) once, but want now to elaborate a bit. Basically at the time Dobson opened up his patreon, he also was on the verge of leaving deviantart as a platform people could look at his work behind. Which he eventually did.

Meaning that the only major platforms for people to watch any “new” stuff by him were his patreon or art sites such as the SYAC homepage or andysartwork. Which granted, he did EVENTUALLY put his stuff on.

But unlike other content creators who would put “patreon exclusive” new content up on more public plattforms often within a few days, weeks or a month after making them “patreon only” at first, Dobson waited longer and did barely anything to promote his sites as places to look his stuff up for a public audience. In doing so creating a “bubble” for himself that hurt him more than it helped, as Dobson made himself essentially come off as a snob.

A snob who did not create content for everybody to enjoy, but ONLY for those willing to pay him at least one dollar per month. As evident e.g. by the fact that as time went by, certain content was never released outside of his patreon at all, such as a SYAC strip involving Dobbear screaming at the computer because he saw a piece of art that featured tumblr nose.

Lastly, there is the issue of his patreon perks and stretch goals.

See, his perks were essentially non existent. Aside of the beggars reward of “my eternal thank you if you donate 1 dollar”, two other perks that come to my mind were the following: If you donated up to 5$ at minimum, you got your name thrown into a lottery to potentially win buttons and postcards of his artwork. Unsold cheap merch from years prior he failed to sell at conventions basically. There was just a problem with that thing: That lottery thing, which he also was only going to initiate when he reached a stretch goal of 150 dollar a month? It was illegal!

Patreon itself has in their user agreement a rule that forbids people from offering perks that essentially boil down to “earning” something via gambling, which this lottery by Dobson was.

(THOAD chiming in here to add that, in addition to all this, he fully admitted he would be excluding Patrons that he “knew were clearly trolls” from the lottery. Which made the already illegal lottery also fixed, so...yeah.)

The next thing coming to mind was his “discount” on previous books of his he offered online, if you donated at least 10 bucks per month to him. Or to translate it: You would get a bare minimum discount at pdf files of books such as Alex ze Pirate and Formera (you know, the permanently cancelled Dobson comics) if you paid up 50-75% of their original price on Patreon already. And considering the quality of his early works, he should have given you at least a book per month for free if you dared to donate him that much.

As for the stretch goals… lets go through them, shall we:

100$: A wallpaper per month. Something he did provide with eventually, but barely. And after less than five of those he stopped to make them overall

150$: Monthly Gift basket Lottery, which as I stated, was illegal and almost got him into serious trouble with his account. Also not an initial stretch goal he made up but instead came up with a few months into his accounts existence. Finally it got temporarily replaced by Dobson playing with the idea to use 150$ per month to open up a server and art site where people could upload stuff for free similar to deviantart, but under his administration. Promising a “safe space” for other artists. Which considering Dobson’s ego and inability to accept criticism or delegate responsibilities would have likely ended like this:

175$: Establishing a Minecraft server for him and his fans to play on. Meaning Dobson would have just wasted time he could spend on creating comics to endulge in his Minecraft obsession.

200$: Writing a Skyrim children book. Aside of the legal nightmare that this could have been (I doubt Valve would have been happy of someone else profiting of their property) I have to ask, who was even interested in Skyrim by 2015 anymore? Sure, Skyrim was a popular game and it had its qualities, but it was also a trend that had passed by that time. So in other words, there was not a market to cater towards here.

300$: A strip per week guaranteed.

… are you fucking kidding me? 75$ per strip essentially? Something people expect you to produce anyway if you want to be considered a “prolific” creator worth supporting online? Imagine if certain internet reviewers would do that, telling you that if they do not earn at least a certain amount of money, they will not produce anything, period, or less than usual. And Dobson had already proven that he can release more than just one comic within a few days, if he is motivated by enough spite.

600$: Starting a podcast with his friends to talk about nerd culture. In my opinion could only work under the assumption that people even like the idea of listening to Dobson and his opinions. Which considering how very little people like talking to him sounds doubtful. Also, considering how Dobson tends to be late to the party when it comes to nerd culture, likely tending to be out of date faster than he could upload. Finally... what friends?

700$: Returning the love, as he says it, by donating some of the money patreon users gave him to other content creators. This in my opinion is the most self defeating cause possible. On one hand sure, being generous and all that. But essentially Dobson admits here he would blow the money people give him to support HIS art on others, essentially defeating the purpose of HIS own account. He also does not clarify how much of that money he would donate, meaning there was a high chance that he would spend less than 10% of it on other creators, only creating the illusion of support while putting the actual earnings/donations into his own pocket.

2000$: A massive jump ahead. 2000$ per month would result in him getting better equipment (as in a new computer e.g.) and as such “potentially” make more comics. Mind you, only potentially.

This goal in my opinion is also the most fucked up one. Primarily for the following reasons:

Lets say Dobson would have achieved the goal and actually earned over 2000$ per month for at least a year. His annual earning would have been 24k, minus whatever he had to pay as taxes and payment for using the patreon service. And what would he do with this money? Get himself a better computer and equipment by paying a minor fraction of it once. Then he could use that computer for years to come while still having over 10k in his account, plus his monthly earnings. And he may still just produce 3-4 comics a month of a series that has as much depth to it than Peppa Pig if not less.

Sure, many patreon users have 2k+ as a stretch goal on their accounts to signify that if they could make that much monthly, they could have the necessary financial security to focus their time primarily on their content instead of a regular job. And if the content they create is actually well made, many people would support that or be okay with it.

But 2000 dollars to buy ONE computer and not account for how this money will add up over time? And that in light of such profits people may actually expect you to create more than you barely do already? That is either a case of narcissism, plain stupidity because you can't look further than 5 feet or just shows how Dobson did not understand at all the tool he had at his disposal.

Bottom line: Dobson, like many times before, fucked it up. He overestimated the potential support and resulting profits he could make, he expected that his name alone would be enough to assure gainings instead of creating content to justify support and he was unwilling to really give his supporters anything worthwhile back.

And while I am sure that there were also many other factors guaranteeing his failure, those at least to me, were his "common" mistakes most other people familiar even with the basics of internet popularity would ahve avoided.

#long post #patreon #syac #submission #very long post #andrew dobson #adobsonartworks #tom preston #adobsonart #soyouareandrewdobson #ripsinfest

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Tom and Jerry 2021 Review: It’s Almost Adequate!

Hello you happy people, and welcome to a surprise review! While this was on my schedule, I moved it out to make room for my new Patreon Sponsored review. Yes at the 5 dollar tier you too can get a review a month.. but enough shilling. Point is I had some thoughts on the film, and felt I could squeeze a review of it into the schedule since my review for yesterday, the 90′s Tom and Jerry movie, got canceled as I both had to finish up my tex avery birthday review and hadn’t noticed it wasn’t on HBO Max like I thought. I could’ve sworn it was once but not anymore. Gee it’s almost like they removed their overtly awful Tom and Jerry movie from the service so people woudln’t be reminded of it when they watched the mediocre new one. Or it was never on there because HBO wants to bury that mistake in a hole. You make the call.

Point is I had some room in my schedule, so if I can’t cover the 1990 movie this weekend, though I FULLY intend to still do that at some point as it still fascinates me, might as well cover the one everyone’s actually watching. So join me under the cut with spoilers to go into why this film is .. ehhhh. under the cut

Tom and Jerry follows, as you’d expect, our working boys up to their ass in shit, what is this buisness. In this case Tom literally rides in on a rail with his keyboard wanting to be a big musician one day, while Jerry is shopping around for a home but can’t find any in his bracket. The two end up fighting, as you’d expect, when Tom performs as a blind cat in a park, a great gag, and Jerry first steals his customers by dancing to his music, but then when Tom tries to stop him, not only exposes his scam, but gets Tom’s beloved Keyboard broken.

In the process of Tom trying to get Jerry back for runing his day, Tom ruins the day of Kayla, a cynical young lady played by Chole Grace Moretz who like Robin in the last theatrical film, is a blonde girl who takes up way more screen time than our heroes for some reason. Tom accidently destroys the clothes she was sent to deliver, and she gets fired from her Task Rabbit esque job... despite the fact that TaskRabbit is app based, entirely built around how you do jobs for hire as needed, and that at most she’d get a bad review and that the app dosen’t actually hire people. I know this both because i’ve seen the apps and parodies of it show up on tv shows I watch, most recently Close Enough, and because I took the 2 minutes it took to google it , read some of the Wikipedia article and do the bare minimum that me, a paid only by commissions and patreons reviewer, did to prove a point, and that the writers of this film, who likely got paid at least 10000 for a rewrite, and more for whoever wrote the treatment, which is about 30,000 at lowest as told to me by this article on what screenwriters get paid I looked up solely to prove a point. So they got paid tens of thousands of dollars, probably more than standard... to not spend 5 minutes looking up what task rabbit is, becuase they wanted to give her a “hip” job instead of just having her work for a dry cleaner. Then again they got thousands upon thousands to half ass it and i’m getting paid nothing to go on a rant about how they half assed it, so maybe i’m the dumbass, I dunno, but at least I take pride in my work. And i’ve had trouble spellchecking at times so take that as you will.

But so far the film is not bad: the slapstick is blended really well, the action is pitch perfect and our heroes are given good motivations: Kayla’s to find a job, Tom to play piano professionally and Jerry to find a proper home. You ready for some letdown?!

All three of our heroes converge at the Royal Gate Hotel, a prestigious hotel that’s been host to popes, dignitaries and Drake. Jerry sneaks inside, and soon finds himself at home and making himself home, Tom TRIES to and ends up getting on the wrong side of Butch, the black cat from the shorts played in this film by reggaton performer Nicky Jam. Why they choose him over a comedian or anyone who could actually act, especially since Butch dosen’t have a musical number or anything, is a riddle for the ages. My best guest, as it always is, is that Tim Story owes him a Wookie-Style life debt. Not only that but even more bafflingly Butch’s gang, who to the films credit like him are all his gang of cats from the classic shorts, are played by Kevin Hart’s Improve Troop, The Plastic Cup Boyz. I got a preview for what passing a kidney stone’s going to feel like just typing that name. I thought I had no explanation for this, not even a wookie life debt can explain how Kevin Hart’s posse, because he has one for some reason but at least unlike Adam Sandler he’s helping his smaller named friends get big instead of just promoting guys who really shouldn’t have a career or dragging poor guys like Shaq or Terry Crews into your bullcrap because they like you., can explain how this happened. But I forgot I looked up Tim Story’s filmography when I first found out he was director here, more on him later, and found out he directed both Ride Along films, both think like a man films, and one of Kevin Hart’s specials, so the two presumably are friends or at least have a solid working relationship, and given how successful the first Ride Along was for both men, I doubt Tim would turn down a favor from him and vice versa.

And while I find the Plastic Cup Boyz inclusion in this film bizzare and wish it was fellow comedy troupe and starkid adjacent wonderkinds the Tin Can Bros so I could get Joey Richter voicing an animated cat, they at least try their best, their just not given much to do and I don’t get casting them in these side rolls or not giving the butch role to one of them as Nicky Jam just sucks in the role. And I get Butch isn’t the most solid or complex character, but it still isn’t THAT hard, with the 80 drumloads of great comedians out there, to find SOMEONE better, and it’s weird Kevin Hart himself isn’t in the roll. If it wasn’t a wookie life debt i’m betting Hart was going to play Butch, had to back out due to scheduling conflicts or whatever, and Tim found the first guy he could who’d take almost nothing instead of an actual actor.

Kayla meanwhile somehow takes herself from sympathetic to wholly unlikeable in the span of the scene by maniuplating and terrifying a poor woman into not taking the job, outright STEALING HER RESUME, meaning if she screwed up this might go on the poor woman’s record, and lying her way into the job. And if the woman had been you know a classist dick or something, i’d understand but this is a perfectly nice lady who worked really hard, and who looses out on a job because some little bitch talked her out of it and then stole her identity. This one act really just makes me not care: It’s one thing to do what you gotta to get a job, I myself have never lied on an application but I get new york’s insanely expensive. Even if she presumibly lives in a hole that’s cramped, has roaches or rats, who given this unvierse probably have tiny tv’s that are still way too loud and binge watch way too much Jersey Shore at 2 in the morning, and is probably haunted, probably by Droopy wearing a bedsheet going boo but still, and yes he’s also alive here but he has identical cousins. Not the point. Point is even if she has sympathetic motives.. what she did is not okay and when she get flashes of guilt throughtout hte film it’s never long enough to feel like it’s not her simply feeling bad she didn’t get this herself and not that she STOLE IT FROM ANOTHER PERSON. Again if she’d FAKED her resume, this would’ve been fine, simply set up some websites, and it would’ve worked so why they went with this elaborate setup that takes her into outright crimes is beyond me.

Point is she gets hired by the manager/owner, Mr. Dubrois, played by Rob Delany, but since his name isn’t used enough i’m just going to call him Mustache Manager. Her direct superior whose against her being hired is Terrance, the Gate’s Event Manager played by a way too good for this film Micheal Pena, who sadly is given nothing to work with. Terrance.. is supposed to be the bad guy because he distrusts kayla. And while one of those reasons is stupid, she makes a joke about the goldfish being an aquatics manger and he takes it dead seriously, he’s rightfully supscious she’s not who she says she is, since one of the places on her resume is a place he knows people from. The only way the film manages to make him the bad guy is he is COMICALLY out of touch: he dosen’t get sarcasm, as seen before, dosen’t want people posting jerry to “snapgram or instaface”, and seems to have trouble relating to his guests. What makes this not work is that he’s manger at a ludicrously expensive hotel. As such a good chunk of his events would be for Celebrties, since New York’s a big hub for them, having tons living there and visiting for films, apperances on late night talk shows, SNL and what have you and being a prime spot for events and it’s clear part of his job is talking to the guests as the two the film focuses on, more on that in a minute, know him and have met him before. He also mentions Drake having stayed there... he would NOT have kept this job.

You’d need to do through research on these kinds of celebrates and social media is the easiest way to do that, to get what they like, what they don’t, what they don’t want to talk about, what scandals or gos might be going on to keep paparazzi out. I don’t even know how this business works nor did I google it.. and I didn’t to prove a point.. that even with no real idea how this works.. I still get what you’d probably need to know to make events for rich famous people. I’m not convinced Terrance knows how an internet works. And given writer Kevin Costello wrote the well received and weird film I still want to see Brigbsby Bear, I get the sense a lot of this nonsense was added in rewrites demanded by executives and credit him more for what works in the film. More on that in a moment.

Kayla is hired on because the Royal Gate has it’s biggest event ever, the wedding of Ben, played by Colin Jost, and Preeta, played by Pallavi Sharda. Why is it big? What do they do exactly? Are they trust fund babies? Did Ben invent an app? Did Preeta cure global warming? Did they both help defeat Galactus DEVOURER OF WORLDS?!... I dont’ know. If the film told me at all why their big names, even if it’s just because their famous for being famous which would be fine, why this is bigger than a fucking pope visiting, I missed it and I actually went back to their first scene and the scene where Mustache Manager brings up the wedding in the first place to Kayla, and found nothing. We just know their rich, their getting married, Ben doesn’t listen to Preeta and is insufferable, and that they own two classic Tom and Jerry characters: Ben owns spike whose played by Bobby Canavale who isn’t bad but dosen’t try to sound like spike at all and that annoys me given unlike Tom and Jerry, the former of whom’s signature noises from the cartoon were used archivally and otherwise dosen’t talk and only sings on occasion or does that wonderfully weird “don’t you belivie it” thing., has a distinct voice they could’ve got someone to imitate. The other is Preeya’s cat toodles, that white cat Tom is always trying to bang, who got a neat less anthro redesign.

Toots, Toodles whatever you call her the redesign works, making her more of a cat, and only speaking in meows for some reason, and combinging the two female cats tom’s liked, but while still being just funny animal enough that him wanting some pussy, so to speak, isn’t too creepy.

And this is where the film undergoes a bit of a shift. While the 20 or so minutes are rightfully focused on our boys with a bit of focus on Kayla, from here on out she’s our defacto lead. Given the last film did the same damn thing of making Tom and Jerry not the main leads in their own movie, you can see the problem. I will say to the film’s credit it is still LEAGUES better in a lot of other ways than the 90′s film in that the plot is actually centered around them: Jerry, when stealing some cheese, and runs afoul of the tempermental Chef Jackie played by Kim Jeong. Though i’m 100% not convinced Ben Chang didn’t just lie on his resume at some place and has now somehow become a michline star canditate. He finds Jerry, and Kayla volunteers to catch him to help her own career and validly points out her doing this discreetly with only the staff knowing about the mouse will keep it from becoming a social media nightmare.

The 90′s film could work without them, replacing them with any animal sidekick for Robin, since nit’s so far removed from Tom and Jerry their really an afterthought. Here the film DOES feel like a tom and jerry plot at it’s core, Jerry’s somewhere he shoudln’t be, Tom wants to chase him either due to personal greivance or his job depending on it, in this case both. The small side cast are all involved, and given decent if thin justifications for being there: Butch is an ally cat and Spike and Tootles are the pets of the happy couple.

And honestly the slapstick portions, the portions that are tom and jerry focused or use the humans well, are BRILLIANT. No really, it’s good stuff once in a while using a bit from the classics but mostly coming up with new gags and the animation is gorgeous. I won’t lie and say it’s always perfect, sometimes the models are a bit off and look unfinished and that’s not forgivable when you delay your film two months, and thus have extra time to work on that. But that’s a few shots here and there versus the majority of hte film where the various animals all blend perfectly. Unlike most Live Action adaptations of an old cartoon, this one actually seemed to have good reason, as they’ve taken the basic roger rabbit tech of decades ago and expanded on it well. Just like that classic you often wonder how the hell they pulled this off, and outside of one egregrous sequence where tom sets up an elaborate trap we spend far too much time on, when they do use CG for any props, you can’t tell. This is best highlighted by what I consdier to be the film’s best sequence and what brings Tom into the plot proper after lurking on the fringes for a good 15 minutes: Tom, miserable in the rain, finds jerry living it up in an empty room, and after some fun shenanigans trying to get in, finally succeds leading to a good 2-3 minute sequence of the two chasing after each other in the room. There are no actors, no one else and the room is empty, but perfectly gimmicked to time with thier movments. Wether they used cg and I couldn’t tell or just simply timed things great, it’s utterly fantastic and shows why this film is live action: while i’td be fine animated they cleary ahd the tech and ideas to do it live and thus did it this way. Naturally Kayla meets Tom again, and after finding out the room was trashed by both him and Jerry gets Mustache Manager to hire him.

But this is the problem: While there are great set pieces like this, or a REALLY damn impressive one later where Terrance gets dragged into a ball of violence while walking Spike for Ben and we see INSIDE IT, with Terrance not moving as fast but that being okay. And I love the movie’s commitment that ALL animals are animated. So it has it’s charms and gets a LOT right.

It’s clear to me from this strong core that the script was messed with, either by director Tim Story or the execs. Some misguided and stupid bits I get even if it was a bad idea: Tom does do the piano at one point, after he thinks he’s gotten rid of Jerry thanks to again an unwieldy overly long bit of CGI that’s a down spot on the usually good just tom and jerry stuff. And he STARTS singing a 40′s jazz song, and I thought “Okay they really got this and are doing something like is you is or is you ain’t my baby this will be fun”. Then T-Pain started using autotune, because of course, and Tom’s shoulder devil started scratching next to him...

By the way Tom’s Shoulder Devil and Angel are played very well by Lil Rel Howrey , aka Rod from Get Out. So good on you man, one bit of non miscasting. There’s one or two cringe inducing moment of trying to be hip here or there though for a film like this it isn’t nearly as bad as you’d expect. Still bad but i’ve seen so much worse at this point i’m not going to bother getting mad or upset over it. I’m used to this kind of thing from kids movies.

But while the film dosen’t really lack Tom and Jerry, it sidelines them way too often> There’s just too many scenes just about Kayla, whose not only not a great character despite Chole trying her absolute hardest god bless her. Her hitting it off with the bartender, her arguing with Terrance whose even more insufferable and her bonding with Preeta and Ben being annoying, we’ll get to him.. WE’LL GET TO HIM. But they aren’t funny or interesting, there’s nothing THERE to really get me interested, nothing new or fresh that we haven’t seen done better before. There’s just nothing, it feels like large parts of blank space. And to illustrate this my Niece, who I watched the film with and really loves Tom and Jerry after I showed it to her... played with other stuff during most of those scenes. And she’s young, her attention span is not great.. but noticably during the actual scenes of slapstick she was glued to the tv, just like she was when I showed her the classic shorts. It’s not just old farts like me who remember tom and jerry from their youth.. it’s the kids your TRYING to appeal to that don’t want this. If you can’t get kids, who in general and speaking from my own personal experience will watch just about anything, to pay attention YOU. HAVE. FAILED.

Okay took a second to compose myself, let’s move on to the rest of the movie. So after T-Pain stabbed music in the throat, we get to the worst section of the film as Kayla brokers peace between the two to get Preeta’s ring back after the three end up in the aformnetioned violence ball with Terrance, who she ducks his claims that she didn’t catch the mouse.. which she did not but for once she’s sympathetic as Terrance is much more likeable either, though gaslighting him and getting him put on leave is a bit extreme. Bafflingly, Kayla gets his job as event cordinator for now, and thus has to broker peace between the two warring factions.. and does so in the strangest way possible: by booking a day for them in new york to hang out and be BUDDIES!. This isn’t bad as the last film as it dosen’t last, but it is just.. surreal seeing the two having a hanging out montage around new york. Like the film just took a really weird turn with this, the montage itself isn’t weird, it’s standard shenanigans minus the fighting but still good stuff. Unlike the 90′s movie instead of singing about being palls or helping a small child, they just get into cartoony shenanigans together. More proof the film could’ve been so much better just with them.

Speaking of proof the film would’ve been better without them , Ben fucks around with a drone for the wedding, after Preeta confided in Kayla the wedding’s getting to be a bit much. So let’s talk about Ben shall we? While Preeta is just nice, friendly and down to earth, Ben... is a dumbass, a jackass and just an ass. His whole schtick is that he keeps escalting the wedding despite her wishing he’d stop, and i’ts just.. not funny. A guy ignoring his partner’s wishes, constnatly doing big gestures in large part to try and win over her dad who RIGHTFULLY hates, and in general just sucks. I do not blame this on Colin Jost: He’s perfectly charming on SNL, and Weekend Update is usually damn fun under him and Micheal Che. But like with Pena and Mortez, he’s given NOTHING to work with, and furthe rmore can’t improvise.. aka the skill most SNL cast and almnus walk away with. So it’s no suprise he instead comes off like an anoying plank of wood you want to see fall down a manhole and never return so Preeta can marry someone else. I dunno the Doorman’s a pretty cool guy, and if he’s taken or something there’s always Droopy. Droopy’s the smoothest motherfucker and we all know. And if HE’S taken there’s mustache man. The point is we have a Dating Game’s worth of elligble bachelors and the film tries to sell a plank of wood who clearly wants to bang Preeta’s dad more than he wants a genuine equal relationship with Preeta.

So that dosen’t help the final act.. which is started with something REALLY weird to round off tom and jerry’s day as Tom catches a ball, interupts a play and get.s. thrown in the pound for it?

I don’t know how tha’ts a crime, I don’t get it either, point is the animal control guy is a creep who shows them off as they pass some angry dogs.. and..

MY BOY. There was an earlier joke with him taking the place of The Joker, and I thought that was it sadly but nope there he is! While, given they don’t really have much to do with each other, it is a tad weird he’s been grafted onto the tom and jerry legacy.. I really don’t care because it means Droopy gets to show up every so often in other stuff like this.. And hopefully the spinoff series coming in the summer. I”ve talked before about how much I love this dog so having him show up here was a HUGE delight and easily the higlihgt of the film and the gag is perfect. WHy is he in prison? I don’t know. But given who we’re dealing with I also assume he just disappeared later and showed up at the Wolf’s place again to get the evidence to clear his name and to help a young brodway hopeful played by Peyton R LIst get to her audition in time. And yes I just imagined another live action film with a classic character.. but admit it you’d rather be watching that one. They also run into butch who tries to force him to eat Jerry or they’ll kill him.

Terence saw the arrest on the tv though, so he bails the two out, pits them against each other, and sets them loose at the wedding. This goes how you’d expect. the two cause chaos and thanks to Weekend UpDumbass there’s pecocks, tigers and elephants, and Jerry naturally spooks the elephants, Spike, who has it in for tom as usual, goes after tom the tiger goes after him and the wedding is destroyed. Preeta breaks up with Ben and leaves, and Kayla is fired.

Less good is that Tom gets thrown out because Terrance backed out on his deal because he’s a fucking asshole. So while Kayla gripes to her sorta loveintrest bartender man, and wishes she could fix things, T and J show up, both realizing it’s their fault and both with a plan to fix things leading to our climax. Kayla goes back to the hotel, and while Terrance tries to boject she rightfully blackmails him. Sadly neither get their commupance and while Mustache Manager puts two and two together, he’s all for ending this PR Nightmare and helping with Kayla’s plan to get ben to stage a wedding in central park that Preeta actually wants while our two actual heroes go to stop her and do some light kidnapping of toodles to get Preeta to stop.

So it ends how you’d expect: Preeta makes a huge mistake, seriously Droopy go to their honemoon I guarantee Ben will wonder off into the ocean because he thought it looked sick bro, Kayla gets her job back and in a move that makes her almost tolerable hires the woman she stole from who Terrance clearly wants to bang, and Tom actually catches Toot’s eye, but then Jerry mucks it up because cockblocking tom has been his job since the 40′s, they fight, Kayla tells them to cut it out, they put an the end thing over it. Roll credits.

As you could tell I had issues with this film and had more the more I thought about it. So it’s not very good.. but I still recommend watching it if you have Max right now. Yes really. While the human parts are pretty awful as you could tell, you can have some fun mocking them, and it’s worth suffering through them for the bits with our boys, as those bits are geneuinely energetic, fun and what you came for. If you like tom and Jerry, you probably won’t like this movie.. but you’ll enjoy those bits. Hopefully if there’s a sequel, and this film was a suprise hit so their probably will be, they’ll learn their lesson from this one and focus less on the humans and more on the hyjinks but overall this is just a medicore waste of some really great technology and slapstick. This is just one huge ball of dispaointment instead of cartoon violence and i’m sorry it ended this way. If you liked this review, you can follow me on my patreon at patreon.com/popculturebuffet. Even 1 dollar a month helps and my next stretch goal nets a Darkwing Duck episode a month, so if that excites you, please sign up. And if you can’t afford to that’s fine and feel free to stick around anyway. Times are hard and I get that. And I will see you at the next rainbow.

#tom and jerry #tom and jerry 2021 #tom and jerry movie #tom and jerry the movie #tom cat #jerry mouse #droopy #toodles #spike #micheal pena #chloe grace moretz #kim jeong #colin jost #hbo max #mgm #warner brothers

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acaseforpencils · 5 years

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David Ostow.

Bio: I'm a cartoonist and stay-at-home dad, not necessarily in that order. I came late to cartooning, because I thought I wanted to be an architect. In grad school, my professors were always hung up on the fact that I was more interested in drawing pretty pictures than in designing interesting spaces. Anyway, they graduated me, and should really answer for the disservice they did to the design industry.

Find this print here!

I came to cartooning by way of illustrating some books for my sister who's an author. To date, my work has also appeared in and on a combination of print publications and websites, including The New Yorker, Mcsweeney's Internet Tendency, The American Bystander, Buzzfeed, and The Weekly Humorist. My work and I were also featured in a New York Times piece about artists addressing gentrification in their work. I don't know if that counts. Does that count?

I live in New York City with my son and my wife, whose support is the reason I'm not drawing on grocery bags in my parents' basement, and raking their yard for allowance.

Tools of choice: Where to begin? I got an iPad Pro earlier this year, and I've been using it pretty exclusively since. But finding and experimenting with tools has been an odyssey unto itself for me, and I'd be remiss not to give a bit of history.

I started out employing a lot of the tools that I learned about in the architecture world. I went to UVA, and when I was there my sketching professor [fun fact: he was also the mayor!*] encouraged us to draw with Micron pens using a very loose hand. Check out the sketches of Michael Graves, and you'll see what we were emulating. My hand was naturally pretty shaky. Years of drawing have rendered it less so, but at the time, my peers teased me (in good fun) for being a teacher's pet with my wobbly broken lines. That introduction to sketching was definitely formative to the style I would eventually develop for cartooning. Sometimes I find myself trying to force my hand to be as wobbly as it used to be.

Architecture school was also where I first began using Photoshop as a diagramming tool, and I became more facile with it when I moved into the professional world, where it's a common tool for rendering presentation drawings. Since then, Photoshop has been my go-to for applying washes and colors to my drawings, although now that I have an iPad and I'm experimenting with Procreate, the Photoshop era may be coming to a close.

After taking a class on comics creation at The New School in Manhattan, I got up the nerve to add some ink and brushes into my toolkit, and while it was an adjustment, it was also fun to have a brand new way of making varied and expressive lines. At the height of my "pre-digital" period, I was using a combination of ink and technical pens. The accompanying photo shows my spread in more detail. All the tools pictured are easy to find, and easy to use, and I recommend them for anyone looking to take a stab at drawing cartoons or comics.

From there, I waded slowly and awkwardly into the world of digital drawing. I had a hybrid moment when I was roughing my drawings in pencil, scanning them, using a Wacom tablet to ink in a program called Clip Studio, and then adding colors / washes in Photoshop. It was an incredible time suck, but, for what it's worth, the cartoons I produced that way were some of the first I sold to The New Yorker. So there's that.

Since getting my iPad I've been drawing with Procreate, which seems to be the preferred drawing application among my iPad savvy colleagues, and which I enjoy, but I feel like I'm still getting comfortable with it. When it comes to new technology, I have a habit of doing the bare minimum to educate myself, and every time I need clarity on a finer point I'll do a tad more research. It's called the "Dave Ostow Kicking and Screaming Method" and I recommend it to no one.

Tool I wish I could use better: I've never had any formal fine arts training, so I lack the kind of mastery of many traditional tools that some of my peers have attained as a matter of course. One time I tried to use a dip pen, and was so overwhelmed by how hard it was to draw a single line that I put it in my drawer and just kind of forgot about it.

I also used to own a set of Koh-i-noor Rapidograph pens, which make amazing lines, but require saintlike patience to maintain. The nibs are super delicate and If you're not careful, they'll break and leak (or — worse — explode) all over your drawing.

In an ideal world, I would have the patience and time to master some of these more traditional and delicate tools, and I think I'd be a better artist for it. Maybe some day, but right now my schedule doesn't allow for much extracurricular activity.

Tool I wish existed: Kind of a no-brainer: an iPad / digital tablet that felt almost indistinguishable from real pen and paper. Think the Beyond Meat burger of digital drawing tools.

The iPad is great, and of course it's wonderful to have digital editing capabilities, but there's simply no hiding the fact that you're drawing on a screen that lacks the kind of tooth you'd get from dragging a pen across paper. Also, when I zoom in to do detail work, I'm always thrown by the pixelation.

I'm sure the more I use the iPad, the better I'll get at tweaking the settings to my liking. Like I said, when change is involved, I sometimes drag my feet. But that's okay. As a good friend who's also really my therapist said, "Maybe that's just the way you work."

Tricks: Not a trick so much as a suggestion: If you're drawing on an iPad or some other sort of tablet, get a matte protective cover. It will reduce glare, and soften the feel of the screen against your stylus, so you get an experience more like drawing on paper, albeit only slightly so.

Misc: Yes, that is a Dan Smith Will Teach You Guitar flyer on my bulletin board. I found it on the subway and it just seemed like a fun authentic New York artifact that was calling to be preserved. I look at it every now and again, and find it oddly inspiring. That picture of Dan Smith has been circulating around the city for God knows how many decades. What does Dan Smith look like today and would he still teach me guitar?

Website, etc.

Website

Instagram

New Yorker Link

Conde Nast Store

*Editor’s note: I went to Charlottesville High School with Mayor Cox’s son! I also went to UVA, though not at the same time as David. Small world!

Also, I happily do this blog for free, though there are a lot of hidden expenses that I take care of myself. If you enjoy this blog, and would like to help defray labor and maintenance costs, there is a Patreon! Or if you’d prefer to buy me a cup of coffee, there is a Ko-Fi account as well (which is essentially a PayPal donation)! Your support means a lot, and I'm grateful to everyone who has donated!

You can also find more posts about art supplies on Case’s Instagram and Twitter! Thank you!

#David ostow #how to draw New Yorker cartoons #cartoons #how to draw cartoons #art supplies #artists on tumblr #art process

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arclightbutterfly · 5 years

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Light, Mind, and Hope

This is a Homestuck post, so feel free to ignore it-- it’s only marginally tied in with my transition.

EDIT: IM A FUCKING IDIOT I MEANT HEART NOT MIND

Growing up, I feel like Homestuck was an amazing guideline in understanding how I changed as a person and matured into the character that I am today. I feel like every major step in my life, I discover something new about myself, or about the world, and how I interact with it-- something that would be really difficult to describe in non-abstract terms.

It’s honestly amazing how well Andrew Hussie tied in these aspects of my life, and so much more of them that I have probably yet to discover into a webcomic. It implies that he himself must have understood these experiences and revelations, at least to the extent that he might be able to portray how they should look like in terms of maturity.

So far, I feel as if I’ve only really discovered two aspects: Light, and Mind. Recently, I think I’ve begun finding aspects of Hope within myself. And there’s just so many thoughts bouncing around in my head that I just kind of felt like I had to dump them somewhere.

That being said, I’ll start with Light.

Light

I used to think I was a Light player. This is, of course, after I thought I was a Time Player, which was really just like a superficial thing of me wanting to be all cool and cold calculations and whatever. As a Light player in my high school years, I felt as though the aspect truly resonated with me. A Knight of Light, someone who exploits fortune and information for their own objectives.

Information was always my primary weapon. I prided myself on knowing stuff on just about any topic. Whenever a new situation confronted me, I was always ready to whip out my “little-miss-know-it-all” hat and take charge of the situation with the obviously superior decision making I possessed (this is sarcasm) as a result of my knowledge.

And to be fair, it made sense to me. Information helped me through everything. Knowledge truly was power. I never went into any kind of game casually-- I always searched up guides on the perfect strategies, and did extensive research to ensure I would end up with the best possible outcome. I loved learning, and tried to learn as many talents as I could, so I could appear as competent as possible in any number of situations.

And honestly? It’s been pretty helpful, even in college. I love the feeling of being competent and being able to surprise people with hidden knowledge and talents that I just spent all of high school accumulating.

And honestly, it helped me transition, too. When I was faced with the fact that transitioning was going to be impossible for someone like me, I attacked that reality with research. I spent countless hours scouring the internet for sources and information that would ultimately forge my path.

In real life, I think realized Light players have the ability to not only understand things, but to know what things that they must know in order to understand something. They don’t spend as much time on the minutae; they instinctively understand the bare minimum of information that they must consume to produce functional models of concepts in their head. As a Light player, I think that the ability to apply this information is also a huge part of the aspect-- being able to connect concepts and determine applications for them, so that information is always at the forefront of one’s approach to any obstacle.

Mind

But now I know better. At the present moment, I think I identify more as a Mage of Mind. I know I still have that Knight of Light in me-- I think I’ve just matured enough to gain an understanding of another aspect in my identity. Mind is all about identity. It’s about who you are, the decisions you make, and above all of it, knowing why you made those decisions. As a Mage of Mind, my classpect can probably best be summed up as “know thyself.”

And this motto has held to be quite powerful. I spent a lot of time in introspection, throughout my entire life. My identity as a person, as a collection of memories, and as a sum of experiences has been of constant interest to me, ever since around third grade. I have memories marked in my brain as a child with little notes attached, reading “please don’t forget this memory” and “I know what I did now must seem inconsequential to myself in the future, but please don’t let my motivations die.” I continuously come across notes from my past self that I don’t remember writing, with words of encouragement from snapshots of my identity as it was in the past.

One of my primary motivators is the fact that I know my future self is cheering me on. Just as I now wish that I could go back in time and tell myself that everything is going to be alright, I know that in the future, I will be doing the same thing for my present self now. So, I know that I am being encouraged, and do not need to worry about not being able to tell my past self that things will turn out okay-- she already knows.

Similarly, I take care not to brush off my past self’s memories or ambitions. That way, I can be reassured that my future self will not do the same with mine. My existence is a carefully orchestrated cooperation between my various selves at all points during my life, united as a single identity striving towards a common goal.

Consequently, I’ve found introspection to be an incredibly powerful tool. By understanding how I think, I know how to take control of my mind. You know that one post that was like “being able to have total control of your own mind” as a shitty superpower, and everyone chiming in about how cool that would actually be? I feel like introspection is that superpower. The more you understand about yourself, the more you’re able to control yourself. It’s how I managed to get my time management skills. Once I cracked the code of how I learn and store information, studying became a breeze. I literally never go to any of my classes in college, and I’m doing fine. I honestly cannot express how powerful being able to understand how you learn is. It just unlocks a whole level of processing power in your brain that’s honestly just ridiculous.

In addition, it’s helped me understand other people. I used to have a parlor trick in high school, where I’d try to read someone’s personality / memories. By looking at their behavior, I was eerily good at figuring out specific memories or events in their lives that triggered those behaviors. I had a couple of my skeptical friends test me, and I was surprised to find that even with them, I had a fair bit of accuracy. As a Mind player, I feel as though one of my abilities is to recognize when people around me are on paths similar to ones that I took, but haven’t quite finished yet (this is not to say that I have finished more paths of maturity or anything-- just that we all are on different levels of various paths, and I happen to be able to see those who are on paths that I have already gone down) and understand everything about their personality that’s tied to that path based on my own state of mind when I was at that point myself.

Mind players, I think, have the power of being competent. The aspect of Mind is about unlocking the potential of the self, and discovering what you can do when you push yourself to more and more of your full ability.

Hope

I’m rereading Homestuck right now, and as I’m going through it, I’m starting to notice something else that I resonate with: Hope. Hope is positive energy, but in Homestuck, it also represents the ability to change reality. I’ve always felt a drive within myself that constantly drives me to improve and make a difference in the world around me, but even though I often describe this particular brand of motivation as “spite” or “anger at the world,” I’m not really angry. I’m hurt, for sure. And I know that the pain I’ve felt drives me. But it doesn’t drive me in a bitter way. It drives me because I want to make this world better.

My small group leader recently told me that despite the things that I’ve been through, I always manage to stay positive, but not in a manner that resembles naive optimism. More of an ability to take negative experiences and transform them into positive expressions. A refusal to allow suffering to change me for the worst. A desire to cling on to my humanity.

I found a note written to myself from the past today. It was a note written as a “personality override--” a code that I keep with myself to allow irrational decisions in my reasoning.

(As an aside, I’ve found that permitting controlled irrationality in your decision making process is a fantastic way to program your own mind. I have override protocols that I tell myself to follow without question, even when illogical, and it’s allowed me to stay constant through everything, and cling on to the things that make me who I am. It’s what lets me hang on to memories most people would have let go a long time ago, and feel a connection to myself in the future because of it. There’s other dumb stuff too, like a code I follow for if I end up time traveling back and talking to myself or something-- I have a passcode I’ve never said out loud or written down, which I’ve had since sixth grade, that I can use to verify that someone from the future is in fact myself.)

The note told me to fight off the desire to form defensive mechanisms like isolation. To stick to my personality as someone who loves no matter the circumstances. A combination of my identity as a Mind player and some aspects of myself as a player of Hope.

And I’ve found that as an aspect, Hope represents that ability for that positive energy to create change. I used that spiteful/positive/loving energy to create a non-profit organization in my sophomore year. I used it to drive my exploits as a player of light. That energy drives me to shape the world. I live for moments when people tell me that I remind them of a protagonist. I know I’m going to change the world-- because I have to.

Hope players, in this world, have the ability to shape reality to their will. Things always go their way, because it has to. They will stop at nothing to realize their dreams. Hope is overflowing, desperate motivation and drive and passion.

As I fight through my life, I’m beginning to understand more and more of what that means. I don’t know when I’m going to die. But until I do, I’m not going to stop fighting for what’s right. Trans fucking rights. I’m going to make sure no one else has to go through what I did in my childhood if it kills me.

Anyway, that’s my little spheal on that I guess. If anyone wants to understand how my brain works-- this post right here is a pretty succinct summary.

Hey, if I ever get amnesia, can someone please show me this post? Thanks.

#homestuck #transgender #trans #hrt #teenager #trans girl #mtf #self medicating #aspect #class #classpect #hope #light #mind #introspection #identity #trans thoughts #off topic

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casualarsonist · 6 years

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Monster Hunter World review (PS4)

My first interaction with the Monster Hunter series was way back in 2000-and-something as I watched a mate of mine play Monster Hunter Tri briefly on his Nintendo Wii. I’m not going to lie - I wasn’t that impressed. Not that I watched for long enough to get more than the most brief impression about the game, as his girlfriend turned it off on him before he managed to save because there were ‘guests’, and the entire room uttered a collective gasp of disgust. In any case, while I didn’t feel motivated to buy, I was intrigued by the series’ rather unique premise, and was always tangentially aware of its existence and the zeitgeist surrounding it. So along came Monster Hunter World this year, and along with it came lashings of praise from every angle. Having no experience with the series, I had no context for the compliments it was getting, but I knew more or less immediately that at some point I was going to play this entry, and given the post-release hype, I had no doubt in my mind that I was going to enjoy it. And then I bought it on PS4...

The first thing that struck me as odd when I started the game was the ad for PSN membership that popped up when it tried to log me in online. After having subscribed for a month in order to play Titanfall 2, and then being robbed by sneaky recurring payments that I wasn’t being notified about for another 6 months after that, I refused to buy a PSN subscription ever again. So loading up a brand new game, and having it immediately stop itself to advertise Playstation subscriptions to me felt grotesque. Next came the first cutscene, which I enjoyed right up until the characters started talking and I realised that the lipsyncing hadn’t been localised, meaning that the game looked like a poorly-dubbed Japanese film. Then came the loading screens, and as I sat in front of my console for two minutes and thirty seconds waiting for the first level to load, the incredulity in me rose. And then I entered the opening hub level. And the game ran somewhere around 25 frames per second. And at that point I tried to get a refund, but it turns out that you can’t refund PS4 games after you’ve downloaded them, meaning they could be broken as shit and you’re stuck with the product anyway because fuck you. And I genuinely thought Monster Hunter World on the PS4 was broken, because it ran almost as bad as Mass Effect Andromeda - one of the worst game I’ve ever played. So, barely 10 minutes into my first time playing, I turned off the console in disgust and walked away. So after I researched Sony’s refund policy and discovered that it was utter dogshit, I realised that I was stuck with the game and I sat back down and gave it another go. And...well, it’s okay. Just okay.

I fully accept that this is my first foray into an established series with established mechanics. I hate it when games I enjoy dumb themselves down for a mainstream audience (*cough* Fallout *cough*), so I don’t criticise the game for taking some time to get used to. However, there are some real quality of life issues here that simply shouldn’t exist in this day and age.

First of all - it looks like shit. Not it terms of its design, but in terms of the quality of the visuals. Poor frame-rate aside, the graphics are heavily washed-out, which is a big disappointment given the lush forests and crystal clear waters of the first area. I don’t know whether the colour palette could be balanced better on PC, but there’s a flatness to everything on the PS4 that leaves the beautiful, evocative locales feeling drab and lifeless. This is purely a stylistic choice, and I cannot understand why they would go the trouble of crafting such a vivid landscape, only to broadcast it through what feels like a white filter. Turning the brightness all the way down helps, but there’s no reason why this should be a problem in the first place.

Secondly, Dark Souls and Bloodborn exist, and a number of copycat games like Nioh have proven that there’s no excuse for a game to be clunky in order to be difficult. Difficulty should exist in the gameplay balance, not in dated control systems, and this is a big stumbling block for Monster Hunter World. The larger monsters all have certain weak points that can be broken or severed in order to weaken them. The problem is that attacking these weakpoints is easier said than done when the lock-on system barely works, and the directional controls feel like the nine-point directional system of a PS1 game. Attacks cannot be stopped once they’ve started, meaning that you need to master your timing in order to be an effective combatant, but they also cannot be rotated once you’ve initiated them in a particular direction, so if pointing your character in the right direction is a chore, your attacks will often fall slightly to the left or right of where you intend for them to go. Coupled with the fact that the creatures move at speed, this means that finesse goes out the window and much of your initial combat experiences will involve getting as close to the target as possible simply so you can’t miss. Now don’t get me wrong - there is a sense of skill-building and personal improvement once you start to get used to this system, but it does feel extremely dated in a way that doesn’t inspire nostalgia. If a retro first-person-shooter had no mouse look, you’d be up in arms. So too does this feel like less of a design choice and more of a glaring failure to adapt to modern conveniences.

The last big issue is that the game isn’t marketed as a multiplayer game, instead being sold as a single player drop-in-drop-out experience. Which is true, to a point, yet every time you load it up it freezes to connect to the Playstation Network, and then advertises a PSN membership to you if you don’t already have one. Once you’re playing, the game will constantly remind you that other people are playing online, even going so far as to tell you who is joining your ‘session’ - a session that you aren’t in if you don’t have a PSN subscription. And to top it all off, you can’t simply select a mission and then expect it to start straight away: instead you have to wait while the game ‘prepares’ the mission as if you were in multiplayer lobby, even if you’re playing offline. This can take up to a minute or more, and makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. So even if the game detects that you have no PSN account it will still connect to the internet, then force you into either hosting or loading an online game, then tell you all of the people who are joining a session that you’re not playing in, and then put you in a mission lobby when you’re not waiting for anyone to join. It’s the cherry atop a cake baked ten years ago and marketed as a 2018 release. It's absurd. It’s as if the game was created by people who couldn’t fathom a world in which players wouldn’t play alone, and yet the game is, largely, played and sold as a single-player experience - just like all its predecessors. The greatest effect of having other people join in is that your experience bonus is split between you all instead of going solely to you, and that’s not a bonus, but a deficit.

These issues make me wonder how the game has come to be critically acclaimed at all, at least in terms of this particular version. I hear the PS4 Pro version can run at 1080p60, and I assume the PC version can as well, although I’ve heard there are some connectivity issues with the PC servers, but my immediate impressions of the standard PS4 version are near appalling. Spiderman runs flawlessly as you swing across the entire city of New York - I didn’t see a single frame drop in my entire playthrough, and yet the detailed but limited-scope environs of Monster Hunter World bring the console to its knees. This, more than anything, speaks to the decline of the console’s relevance as modern graphics capabilities increase. One of the important selling points of the consoles was the fact that you could count on them to run stably, even if their games were technologically inferior to their PC counterparts. If they look worse AND play worse, then what’s the point of owning a console at all? If you have to upgrade to a mid-generation PS Pro now every few years just to be able to ensure your games are going to work, then why not just buy a new graphics card for your PC for the same price, not have to subscribe to the fucking scam that is the Playstation Network, AND have a better quality experience while you do it? Aside from the exclusives, the Playstation 4 is redundant, in my opinion. I can’t think of a single reason to invest in the next console generation, because you know that whatever machine you buy is just going to be obsolete in a few years’ time anyway.

I’m sure that, all the gameplay quibbles aside, Monster Hunter World is perfectly fine to play on a more powerful machine, but I still cannot see why it has garnered such praise. It’s still a niche game, and it’s okay for what it is, but it’s not at all the force to be reckoned with the reviews make it sound like. It’s stuck in the past mechanically, and has the bare minimum of localisation, and while it is fun after you pass a certain teething point, I find that the ultimate experience is defined not what it is, but what it is not. My rating here is for the PS4 version, so take that as you will, but as it is, the PS Store really needs a proper refund policy.

6/10

#monster hunter world #ps4 #capcom #video game #review #nintendo #action #rpg #fighting

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shirlleycoyle · 3 years

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The Many App Stores Before the App Store

A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.

How much credit does Apple deserve for introducing its App Store concept to mainstream consumers? I mean, how obvious is the idea, anyway?

This is a question that seems worth asking as modern app development has become so centered around building applications that exist in digital storefronts like Apple’s App Store, the Google Play Store, Steam, and numerous others. What about app stores that existed when the proverbial dodo was still around? There are more than you think.

“A trip back in time reveals at least one popular one-click store which predates Apple’s attempt by at least 5 years. I know because I built it.”

— Michael Robertson, the software developer best known for his creation of MP3.com, in a blog post discussing his work on “Click-N-Run,” an early attempt at creating a digital download store along the lines of the App Store in the early 2000s. Click-N-Run (CNR), which was an aspect of the commercial Windows-like Linux distribution Linspire that Robertson helped build, was a commercial GUI-style interface for Debian’s apt package manager. It was eventually made available to other distros to much interest, though the results were reportedly a mixed bag. While no longer made, Linspire’s work on CNR (one of a few stabs at the GUI-based software distribution interface in Linux) likely inspired the graphical package managers now commonly offered with many Linux distributions, which largely work the same way.

The question around what an app store actually is probably starts with shareware

Let’s play a game: If you were to access a piece of shareware circa 1991 and wanted to unlock the full version of that application with your computer alone, how would you do it?

No web. Perhaps no Windows. (Perhaps GeoWorks.)

Sure, there were probably lots of ways to download an application, if you had the tools to do so—as in, a modem. Perhaps you might grab it on a BBS, or through a service like Compuserve. Maybe Usenet binary groups were your preferred strategy.

But still, you’d be stuck with a nag screen. Your copy of WinZip would just be annoying you every time you started it.

See, the issue with the distribution of software via computer was never about the download part—that part was figured out relatively quickly. It was the paying part that proved difficult.

Think about how it might work compared to a store: You choose a physical object of interest, you give a physical object of value (i.e. money) in exchange, an intermediary (i.e. a cashier) confirms you bought it (by scanning a barcode), and you walk out, without an object of value but with an object of interest.

Which is why every time you read a story about some shareware pioneer, like the developer of Paint Shop Pro or Tim Sweeney’s efforts to sell folks ZZT, it’s always paired with a story about these developers literally taking checks in the mail, despite the fact that it was entirely possible to purchase things fully electronically with a credit card by this point.

Without the retail element, people were kind of stuck distributing software without a way to easily purchase it. (What’s the big deal, the open-source folks say.) There was no way to secure the process, so therefore, fraud was prevalent. And if people are distributing through multiple systems, the experience of downloading becomes annoying, because it feels wildly inconsistent.

This is the problem a few entrepreneurs worked to solve starting in the mid-to-late 1990s, with varying levels of success.

1993

The year that Tucows, a well-known repository of downloadable software, first went online. The repository was built by Scott Swedorski, a technology enthusiast in Flint, Michigan, who spotted a need for a central resource for basic internet software. Swedorski’s work, while not initially intended to be commercial, proved the basis of a long-running company that came to prove an essential part of the early internet. After all, we needed software to get on the internet, right?

An example of the Electronic AppWrapper, a program for NeXT computers that could be used to distribute software digitally. Image: JohnWayneTheThird/Wikimedia Commons

The first “app store” on a Steve Jobs-operated platform involved a CD-ROM and an email-sending mechanism

The app store that generally gets the nod for being first dates to the early 1990s, on a platform that was responsible for a lot of software firsts. I’m, of course, talking about NeXT, the platform on which the World Wide Web came to life and whose object-oriented approach to programming became a big part of what has made iOS so successful.

That software is called the Electronic AppWrapper. (See, it had “app” in the name way back in 1993!)

It did not exactly have the same kind of distribution method that one might expect for a modern app store, however. Really, what it did that is incredibly clever was that it took the shareware CD-ROM and made it into something that allowed for trials.

NeXT was a good platform for this in part because of its initial target audience—since the NeXT Cube tended to focus on educational and research settings, those settings were often networked well before PC and Mac equivalents, so people were able to purchase software online before other markets.

In fact, Electronic AppWrapper developer Paget Systems, which initially built a print version of the AppWrapper, made this very point in a 1992 article first proposing the idea:

The NeXT community is a perfect testbed for electronic distribution. The market is still small; we know where almost all of the computer owners are, and the community is more fluent with networking than most. And we have more than our share of creative people willing to tackle problems in new ways.

Also helping matters: Since NeXT systems were rare, users of this platform didn’t really have the advantage of being able to go to Radio Shack to purchase software, so it was either do everything through the mail, or go electronic.

Paget Systems’ great gift to the app store concept was the process it enabled. A 1993 issue of NeXTWORLD described the benefits of the tool like this: “To order by e-mail, just click a button; the application automatically displays an order form, asks for your credit-card number, and sends an encrypted message to Paget.”

That sounds pretty simple, right? It was, and it's not all that dissimilar to how we do things today.

(Side note: Jesse Tayler, who helped develop Electronic AppWrapper, has put up an informative documentary website highlighting the history of NeXT and the innovations the company helped to enable—including this. A highlight is Tayler’s discussion of successfully demoing the Electronic AppWrapper to Steve Jobs.)

“Since virtual shelf space is much cheaper than a storefront, Online can represent thousands of products. We can carry Microsoft Word and hundreds of related add-on products, while traditional re-sellers can barely find shelf space for mainstream software.”

— Tim Choate, the president of the firm Online Interactive, discussing the company’s atOnce online software store, which was one of the first examples of a traditional app store for Windows computers. As NetworkWorld explained in 1996, the atOnce software store was something of a test, complete with Microsoft’s blessing, to see if application distribution of commercial software over network mediums was even possible. The process required a more secure approach, at Microsoft’s behest. It should be noted that atOnce provides an interesting case—as it was effectively the app store for the AOL era (along with a very early web presence), though it quickly went away.

The Digital River website, as it appeared in 1998. Image: Internet Archive

The guy who realized that downloadable apps were going to be a really big deal in 1994

Joel Ronning probably doesn’t get the credit he deserves in the grand scheme of things, but he is a figure in this discussion that matters.

In the 1980s, he spent time focused on the Macintosh market, selling software and distributing white-label accessories as well. This gave him an understanding of the digital market, so he could see all the flaws of the retail approach up close.

Around 1993 or so, he had a revelation that proved prescient: downloadable commercial software was going to be big. Really big. Big enough that he should spend the next few years developing processes for making the ideas around secure downloadable software workable, and patenting them. And building a company around them. And turning them into something that other companies would likely want to use.

Ronning’s work led to the creation a dozen patents—and a company called Digital River that could handle the encryption and distribution of applications. Not that anyone knew how to properly contextualize the idea at that early stage. In a 1997 profile with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, columnist Dick Youngblood tried, and came up with this:

What Digital River has created is an enormous virtual warehouse containing tens of thousands of software products offered by hundreds of developers and retailers through their individual Web sites.

In simple terms, the system gives customers the ability to download their software choices with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of security for the credit card numbers and other personal data required for the transaction. I like to think of the operation as sort of the Supervalu of electronic software wholesaling.

Imagine having to describe something that people do over the internet on a daily basis without being able to use the terms “app store” or “cloud,” nor the frame of references that come with those terms, and that’s probably what you might come up with.

A patent drawing by Digital River that showed an early example of its digital-distribution technology, which included encryption functionality. Ronning has a lot of patent filings to his name. Image: Google Patents

The approach Digital River took in this early stage is actually quite similar to what we think of as an app store today—including the idea that the middleman is going to take a cut. (Digital River took just 20 percent, rather than Apple’s infamous 30 percent cut.)

But one difference is that the company represented a provider of purchasing services—i.e., it built the tools for individual companies to create their own storefronts, rather than becoming an app-store player itself. This model worked for them. By the year 2002, Digital River (a still-active company!) had more than 32,000 customers according to NetworkWorld, with roughly a third of those representing three quarters of Digital River’s sales.

“Year over year we continue to see more products purchased digitally.” Ronning said in a NetworkWorldinterview. “People are getting more comfortable with getting a digital file than they were one, two or six years ago. That’s good news because it allows us to deliver a product halfway around the world in a matter of seconds.”

And hey, because the company was in a position to provide the technical know-how of running an app store, there was at least one case where Digital River was tapped to manage someone else’s app store—the creation of Research in Motion’s Blackberry App World in 2009.

Download Warehouse, a.k.a. what app stores would look like if we made no changes to our approach between physical and digital distribution. Fun fact: This is what the atOnce website evolved into. Image: Internet Archive

Not every site was a winner, of course: When looking for info about app stores, I ran across this website on the Internet Archive that literally sold digital software as if it was still in a shrink-wrapped box, which made me crack up so hard. The backend? Digital River.

In many ways, the success of the app store was just as much about the packaging—i.e., the way consumers were pitched about the idea, rather than the shrink wrap—as the commerce itself.

1996

The year StarCode Software, a developer of software for the BeOS operating system, was formed. The company built PackageBuilder and SoftwareValet, which combined together to become one of the first graphical package managers purpose-built for an operating system—and one Be acquired in 1998 and integrated into the operating system.

Stardock Central, a digital distribution service produced by the customization-focused company Stardock. Image: via the Stardock website

Five mainstream examples of app stores that predated the Apple App Store

Steam. The digital distribution service started by Valve in 2003 was effectively the app store that proved the model to the world in a big way. There’s a reason why Steam remains so dominant in the PC gaming space, and it’s because they nailed it the first time—to the point where many of its competitors directly mimic the service.

Windows Marketplace. This circa-2004 online store, targeted at consumers, was an attempt by Microsoft to centralize the often-confusing app distribution options for Windows software. It wasn’t successful, but it helped set the stage for later digital storefront successes for Microsoft.

Club Nokia. This online store for Nokia’s early mobile phones provides a really interesting example of a service that was essentially a direct analogue to the modern iOS App Store, but in a situation where the carriers, rather than the phone-maker, holds all the power. This service, founded in 1997, became controversial as ringtones became more popular, and Nokia eventually folded to pressure from mobile carriers and scaled back its service in favor of the mobile providers’ options. Could you imagine Verizon and AT&T doing this to Apple today?

Xbox Live Arcade. Launched in 2004, this represented an important formative effort in the attempts to bring digital download services to a large group of people. One secret to the success of Xbox Live Arcade was its piggybacking upon what Microsoft was doing elsewhere; it leveraged the existing Xbox Live service to sell people more simplistic games. (Apple later replicated this by using its mechanisms for the iTunes Store to sell apps.) It later proved the starting point for the company’s Xbox Live Marketplace, which could distribute full shrink-wrapped games to consumers.

Stardock Central. I’ve mentioned them in Tedium before, but Stardock is an interesting company historically because of the fact that it was early to a number of important trends that have become even more essential today. One of those trends was customization; another was digital distribution, which it first dipped its toes into with Stardock Central, an app-distribution service from circa 2001. It worked particularly well for Stardock in part because it offered apps in a variety of verticals, including games.

The NTT DoCoMo NEC N904i, a phone that supports the formative i-mode network, is considered the first mobile app store ecosystem. Image: Wikimedia Commons

The turning point of the app store concept, honestly, is the mobile phone

Thinking less about the maker of the phone itself or its general functionality, the mobile phone represents something about technology that a regular desktop computer doesn’t—it is intended as a full package, one that is hermetically sealed and managed by its maker and distributor.

Because it started from a different place, the expectation is different. That expectation creates tension for power users who wish that their phones or tablets worked a little more like their laptops, but on the other hand, the devices aim broader for a reason.

And one can point to the reason for the expectation that applications would be managed by the provider. After all, the first mobile app store that feels like what we got with the modern App Store or Play Store came from a mobile company—Japan’s NTT DoCoMo released i-mode, a service that offered access to digital services through their phones. It worked particularly well in Japan because home internet was rare at the time when i-mode was first released in 1999, meaning i-mode was many Japanese users’ first experience with an internet-style service.

As The Japan Times noted in 2011, the reason i-mode succeeded (and spawned many imitators) was the tight integration of payments and software:

For those of you who may not know, i-mode is the mobile Internet-access service built into cell phones from Japanese communication giant NTT Docomo. It costs ¥315 per month to use and includes the i-mode network, which is Docomo’s closed system, separate from the Internet at large. Within this network there are “official” i-mode sites, which are only accessible from an i-mode enabled cell phone. On sites such as these, users can purchase goods and services and have the payment appear on their cell phone bill. This cell phone-integrated-payment is what makes the i-mode system so special.

Other companies tried to do this same thing during the early 2000s, including firms like Nokia, to mixed levels of success, but the connective tissue was that the phone was treated like an integrated experience of purchasing, distribution, and usage, rather than a vessel for applications.

Perhaps this integration explains, in the present day, why Apple has ramped up attacks against sideloading (or allowing the installation of external applications outside of an App Store experience), something that nearly other mobile platform (including Android) has long allowed. As it wrote in a white paper it recently released:

Allowing sideloading would degrade the security of the iOS platform and expose users to serious security risks not only on third-party app stores, but also on the App Store. Because of the large size of the iPhone user base and the sensitive data stored on their phones—photos, location data, health and financial information—allowing sideloading would spur a flood of new investment into attacks on the platform.

Mobile phones have been built with this expectation that the whole experience is seamless and managed by the hardware developer—and at one point, the mobile provider even played a significant role. In some cases, it still does.

But one wonders how strong Apple’s case against sideloading will actually be, given that, y’know, it also sells desktop computers that allow sideloading … or as we call it over that way, downloading and installing apps from the Web.

It’s long been said that Apple, when it released the iPhone, launched a device so compelling that it made people forget that there was years of prior art that predated the moment.

In many ways, the App Store made people forget about app stores. It was such a brilliant concept, idea, and execution that when Steve Jobs announced it in 2008, people basically ignored the nearly two decades of prior art that wasn’t even particularly well-hidden.

In some ways, the move to centralization was arguably disappointing, because it wasn’t perfect, and it put a middleman in control. Apple’s approach to the digital storefront had flaws—most notably the size of its cut (which companies like Microsoft are now explicitly counterprogramming against) and the weirdness of putting a single company’s moral compass in charge of the apps that people downloaded.

But we can look at the positives of their approach as well, and sort of the element that they nailed that few others were able to in quite the same way. The integration of the App Store into the operating system made both better; the integration of commerce into the App Store using a common system solved the problem of having to give a credit card number out every time you wanted to download an app; and the integration of a development strategy that worked in tandem with the App Store gave (and still gives) Apple a reason to constantly improve its programming interfaces so they remain at the top of their class.

No developer of a prior app storefront had been able to nail down quite this mix (with Steam possibly getting the closest), which explains why it was so effective when Apple did it.

But prior art is prior art, and one hopes that the technology industry takes a step back to learn the lessons from both the Apple App Store’s strengths and weaknesses going forward. After all, so many others got there first.

The Many App Stores Before the App Store syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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travelingtheusa · 3 years

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TENNESSEE

2021 May 4 (Tue) – We went to Oak Ridge this morning. It was called the Secret City back in the 1940s. Oak Ridge was one of 3 cities where the atomic bombs were produced. Its population went from 1,000 to 50,000 people in 6 months. Unfortunately, the museum was closed. So was the Museum of the Appalachia and the Museum of Tennessee. We got to see a short film at the NPS office, which was a little booth located in the corner of the Children’s Museum.

We then drove to Knoxville. There wasn’t much to see but we drove around to look at the city. We drove into the Old City and past Market Square. The city had lots of old buildings mixed with new construction. We stopped at Corner 16 for lunch. It was an excellent choice. The food was outrageous. We bought some of the chili to bring home for dinner.

2021 May 3 (Mon) – We packed up and left Lebanon at 9:30 a.m. It was raining and rained for most of the drive. About three-quarters of the way to our destination, the skies opened up and it poured. The rain was so heavy we could barely see past the hood. There was a break in the rain just as we arrived at our new campground – the Windrock State Park Campground in Oliver Springs. It rained all night long, sometimes ferociously. There was lightning and thunder and, at times, hail.

The campground is very high class. We spotted at least 3 Prevost RVs. Those are very expensive rigs. This campground is up in the mountains and is nicely laid out, neat and clean with plenty of space between sites. There is extra space for ATVs. This seems to be a favorite spot for ATV riding. The campground is at the head of many trails leading off into the wilderness. We’ve been watching them come and go for the two days we’ve been here. Covered in mud and debris and smiling from ear to ear.

2021 May 2 (Sun) – We drove into Nashville today to go to the Johnny Cash Museum. His life story was quite interesting. His parents couldn’t agree on a name when he was born, so they named him J.R. Years later, when he tried to enlist in the Air Force, they insisted that he had to have a first name so he chose John. That morphed into Johnny as his musical career took off.

It cost us $20 to park for two hours. The parking lot appeared to be 3 in 1; three different machines for different areas of the same parking lot. It was strange. The town was bustling with people. It was so crowded that we had to step off the sidewalk to go around clusters of folks gathered outside restaurants and shops. No one was wearing masks outside, although you still have to wear a mask indoors. Looks like things are finally starting to loosen up. Infections around the country are dropping as people get the vaccine and venues are beginning to open again. It feels very hopeful.

We wanted to have lunch in Nashville but it was too crowded. We hopped in the truck and drove back to Lebanon. First stop was at the number one and number two restaurants, according to Trip Advisor. But, you guessed it. Too crowded with long wait times. We finally wound up at Cracker Barrel. The gal who checked us in said it was 20 to 30 minutes. We waited almost an hour. The food was good, as usual, but the long wait took the bloom off the rose.

After lunch, we stopped at WalMart to get some groceries. Then it was a stop at the liquor store to pick up some spirits. And finally, we stopped at a gas station to fuel up for tomorrow’s trip. We got back to the campground at around 3:45 p.m. It started raining later in the evening. Weather forecasters are saying it’s going to rain for next two days.

2021 May 1 (Sat) – We packed up and after a brief stop at the dump station to empty the tanks, we were on our way. It was 2-1/2 hours to Lebanon where we are staying in a KOA. This campground is very tight and also on uneven terrain, like our last campground. It is lucky we have a pull-through site. It would be very hard to maneuver between all the rigs and on a hillside.

Once we were set up, we took the laundry to the machines and did the wash.

2021 Apr 30 (Fri) – We drove to Lexington (still in Tennessee) for lunch at Dan’s Café. It was a small house converted to an eatery. It had a 50’s flair to it. The food was good.

After lunch, we drove to Parker’s Crossroads and toured the battlefield. The north and south clashed there and had an intense 5-hour battle where neither really won. The confederates were able to escape and cross the Tennessee River but not before causing havoc for many miles on their mission to disrupt Union rails and resources. The battlefield is spread out with walking tours and storyboards recounting the activities that went on at that point. The Visitor’s Center had a video that told the story of the battle. It was quite informative.

Next door to the visitor’s center was the Tennessee State Veteran’s Cemetery. We drove through the grounds. There were only about 50 graves. It is a new cemetery just established in 2018.

After getting some fuel, we stopped at a gas station shoppette to pick up milk. They had loads of beer and soda to go with lots of snacks, but no milk. The closest supermarket was 24 miles away. We drove over the bridge to the next gas station shoppette and were able to find milk there. Thank goodness!

We got news that the Washington, D.C. caravan we signed up for has been cancelled. The caravan was scheduled to take place the first week in July and the plan was to march in the National Parade on Independence Day. The parade, which is run by the National Park Service, has been cancelled. In addition, several other tourist places around Washington, D.C. will not be open. Also, the number of rigs signed up for the caravan fell to 11. That’s below the minimum threshold of 15 rigs for the caravan to go. We will still go to D.C. for the 2 weeks we planned to be there. So will our friends, Rick & Brenda from Florida. Our other friends, Hank & Brenda from Texas, cancelled out of the D.C. caravan but they will join us on the drive from D.C. to New York for our caravan around Upstate NY. I sent an email to the manager at Fort Belvoir to tell her we will still be coming for the 2 weeks we reserved.

2021 Apr 29 (Thu) – We pulled up stakes and left Memphis at 10 a.m. It rained during most of the drive. In addition, as accident occurred right in front of us. The traffic was at a stand still for an hour and a half. Two tractor trailers and two cars got into it. One of the cars had 3 kids in it. Luckily, no one was seriously hurt.

We finally arrived at the Natchez Trace RV Park at 1:30 p.m. It was a little tricky getting into our site around the trees. The slick mud didn’t help things a bit. The trailer wouldn’t level right either. It kept resetting itself and the RV was on a tilt.

2021 Apr 28 (Wed) – We dropped off Bonnie’s urine sample to the vet’s office this morning. The vet came out and told us there is no urine infection. She also refilled Bonnie’s liver medication for 3 months. I asked for 4 but they only had 3 boxes. Oh, well. You take what you can get.

After the vet, we drove to the Blue Plate Café where we met Steve & Diane for breakfast. Not only was the food good but the company was also enjoyable. We stayed for over an hour and a half.

Next stop was at Vitamin Shoppe where I got some vitamins. Paul is still not feeling well. He’s still suffering the effects of the vaccine.

2021 Apr 27 (Tue) – I took Paul to lunch (or did he take me?) at Las Tortugas Deli Mexicali. It was a different kind of set up. You ordered at the counter from a menu that was in Spanish with English in parentheses. We recognized very few of the dishes. We both wound up ordering sandwiches which were very good. We brought leftovers home.

I called the vet’s office where no one knew anything about what I was calling about. I left a message for Dr. Bates to call. I called again at 5:30 pm. The doctor got on the phone and said she left a message today. There was no message on my phone. She didn’t know anything about a urine sample so we agreed to bring another one in tomorrow. She said she would refill Bonnie’s liver medication. Five months’ worth will be waiting for us when we drop off the urine sample tomorrow.

Just as we were sitting down to dinner tonight, there came a knock on the door. It turned out to be Diane. She and husband, Steve, were on our Utah caravan. He served as the Weatherman. They will be staying here in the campground until Friday. We agreed to get together for breakfast tomorrow.

Paul is feeling cruddy tonight. He is feverish and achy. Guess the vaccine is doing its thing.

We got a call from a campground in Ticonderoga, NY today. The manager had looked over the list of RVs I sent her and decided they couldn’t accommodate the larger rigs. They cancelled our reservation. What a disaster!!! Less than 3 months to go and we lose a campground. We would be lucky to find another place that can fit 22 RVs at this late date during the height of the tourist season. I felt sick. Paul jumped on the Internet and did some research. I tried calling the campground we were going to stay at before the cancelled one to see if we could just extend our stay. No luck. They are booked solid for the week after us. Paul found a place 65 miles east in Peru, NY. I called and they were able to fit us in. I sent a list of campers and RV sizes. Hopefully, things will go OK. I also got a call from another campground on our caravan saying our deposit was due May 1st or our sites would open up. I quickly sent off a missive to SMART HQ to send out a check. That could have been a serious problem! Luckily, the fates were looking after us.

2021 Apr 26 (Mon) – We went out to lunch at a BBQ place. The food was good. Then we dropped off a urine sample at the veterinarian. Bonnie is acting like she has a urine infection again. *sigh* She just can’t seem to get past this thing. The vet she saw last time was not in, so a tech took the sample and said he would handle everything. Also pass on our request to refill Bonnie’s liver medication.

We then went to CVS where Paul got his second COVID shot. I picked up some Mother’s Day cards. As we were standing on line, Paul saw a young man wearing a motorcycle helmet put two car chargers in his pocket and walk out. He yelled at the guy but the clerk, who was ringing up a customer in front of us, just giggled about the incident. She just shrugged it off.

I called the vet’s office later to see what happened with the urine sample but nobody had anything to say about it. Guess I will talk to Dr. Bates tomorrow.

2021 Apr 25 (Sun) – It was cold this morning. The heat pump went off about 2:30 a.m. this morning. We keep that off because of the noise it makes. It turns out the furnace was not working. It looks like the techs did something that made the controls work improperly. We cannot get the furnace to turn on.

All Vanleigh personnel were gone early this morning so I posted our issue on Facebook. Sure enough, the tech folks were still monitoring the website and responded to my post. The tech said he would send us a new program for the Spyder Control Panel. Apparently, he knows exactly what they did. Aaaaarrrggghhh!!! We’ll have it sent to Travis & Sam where we will be in two weeks.

We packed up and left Hot Springs at 10 a.m. It was a long drive. We pulled into a parking lot at a mall around noon to make ourselves lunch. We arrived at Agricenter RV Park in Memphis around 2:30 p.m. The host couldn’t find our reservation and it turns out that I had made reservations for a different date. He was able to clear up the confusion and find us a spot.

After that lovely RV resort in Hot Springs, this feels like a slum. Lol. The RVs are very close to each other in rows with grass that needs cutting, no trees, and stone campsites. The road is asphalt that needs some repairs. Several of the campers are long term as we saw 40 lb. and 100 lb. propane tanks outside their RVs. The cost was higher than I expected but reflects a military discount. Guess we can expect charges to continue to increase with all the new RVers out there and no new campgrounds to accommodate them.

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allthebest20 · 3 years

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Kindred

by Octavia Butler (1979)

This was easily one of the best books I’ve read in a while. I finished it in only a few days. It’s a 9/10, maybe even a 10/10.

The writing style feels almost made-for-the-screen, as it is pretty dialogue heavy, but also very plot driven. (Note: there is no movie, but there is a graphic novel). There is not a lot of descriptive paragraphs, but the writing is still very vivid and detailed, giving just enough information at just the right times for your brain to see the scene clearly, but not be distracted from the plot. Sometimes the dialogue felt a little bit unnatural, but only because the events of the book (fantastical time-travel) are quite unnatural.

The publisher, on the back cover, claims this book is Science Fiction / African American literature, but I think I might disagree. I mean, it’s definitely A. A. lit, but I’m not sure it’s science fiction? There is no time machine or other works of science involved. Instead, what connects Dana to the past is her own history, her own spiritual connection to her ancestors, specifically her great-grandmother and grandfather, Alice and Rufus. I think that makes this book fantasy and historical fiction. Obviously, Butler did a lot of research to make the book’s setting in Antebellum Maryland historically accurate, and in some ways, it reminded me of The Land by Mildred Taylor. I loved that book when I first read it in 7th grade, before we read it in class, and I think it had a big impact on the way that I think about race. That book was so sad, so vivid, so real, and it introduced me to the feeling of being stuck in a system stacked against you. Similarly, Kindred helps one understand how slavery could never have ended with just one proclamation or even one lost war. The ideals of slavery were so forced on both white, black, and mixed people that extricating oneself from it was nearly impossible, especially for white folks. It was never an individual problem, it was always societal. Even Rufus, who had all the ingredients to be a “good white man,” couldn’t even do the bare minimum for Dana or Alice, woman he claimed he loved.

At the same time, Rufus could have made a positive difference in the lives of the people he owned, and I think it says a lot about the white psyche, even today, that we so often say we want to do good things, but ultimately feel as though we cannot be expected to act outside our own best interest. I feel that for myself sometimes: like it is so ingrained that we must do what’s best for ourselves, and that we should expect everyone else to do the same, and somehow that will equal out to having things be best for all. Sure, in an ideal world that MIGHT be true (I’m not sure what an ideal world would even look like), but unfortunately, there’s almost always a power dynamic or some other unevenness. Rufus was de-facto put in charge of all these people, even though he never asked for that, never qualified for that, and I think that must be one of the excuses he uses to justify his actions.

The book explores the difference between White Sadness and Black Sadness. Here, the black sadness is everywhere: Sarah losing her children, but keeping one and living for that girl; all the other people who lose family members forever to causal slave sales and the fear that they could be punished in that way at anytime; the way the field hands dislike Alice, Dana, and Sarah for their proximity to whiteness; the patrollers and the precarious position of even the free Black people; the hopelessness of trying to run away; the constant threat of rape and then the dispensability that comes when the white man is no longer interested; the violent punishment and the over-working; the total lack of control over one’s circumstances, one’s job, one’s religion and education, one’s family, even one’s own morals; and the idea that no one can enact revenge on the slave owners without hurting everyone else. |I mean, I could go on, the book is steeped in sadness for the characters and anger for the readers at the apparent helplessness of these strong, smart people. Dana says it best when she talks about how she does not have the endurance, the strength, that the enslaved people do, because I feel the same way. I do not have the will to live like some of these people do. I’d rather be dead than enslaved, but Butler shows how the enslaved people both do and do not feel that way. It brought up so much anger in me when Dana kept saving Rufus, and he kept treating her like shit. Made me want to kill that little fucker myself. But, at the same time, she simply cannot do that until her grandmother is born. This is very similar to the position Alice or Sarah is in: “I would kill that fucking devil, but that would tear apart my family and the family of everyone I know, and definitely come back on my kids.” What a genius way to portray this.

There’s a lot to be said about what’s wrong with Rufus, but I think one of his driving motives is his sadness. This is why Dana is called to him in the first place, I think, because he is sad and reckless. He does not feel loved by his father, who arguably had never been shown love by his own white parents. He was probably raised by black woman who he was simultaneously taught to disrespect. That’s probably also why he has no respect for Rufus’ mother, and why, in turn, Rufus also has no respect for her. She probably also did very little of the work to raise Rufus, even if she tries to be there for him. Her own psyche is so damaged by the messages of slavery and misogyny that her weak brain cannot possibly understand her place in the world or how to feel about it. It’s funny that after her husband dies, Margret is able to be friendlier, more open, and even less racist. Rufus’ only friends seem to be black people, who are probably a bit weary and cautious around him, because their little “friend’s” father can decide to beat or sell them or their families at any time. So Rufus never learns true friendship, true love. He doesn’t understand and cannot work on the different parts of himself because he does not have the vocabulary or the experiences to differentiate selfishness, empathy, and justice. This makes him sad, lonely, and angry. He should have listened to Dana, but there is no space in his head to understand a smart Black woman. I don’t mean to sound like I’m excusing him in anyway, he’s the devil, but Butler made him a very dimensional character in a way that makes me reflect on my own whiteness and how I experience whiteness in the world. Still, it is mind boggling how Rufus again and again has a chance to make the right choice, or a better choice, and chooses something else. It is clear that he has no sense of morality or objectiveness, only his perception, his desires. His father, on the other hand, is painted to be a much more close-minded, violent, and cold man, but he still has intacted, yet warped, sense of morality, at least towards other white people. At least, Dana and Rufus seem to believe this, but there is very little evidence of it in the book.

Being white is all about mixed and purposefully misleading messages. My favorite is how we are taught to fear black men, even though most violence enacted on white woman is from white men. However, the fear of blackness keeps us from suspecting the white pedophiles, abusers, and rapists in our midst.

It would not be a proper remembering of this novel if I didn’t at least briefly mention Kevin, the white husband. In 2020, we are no longer marrying dudes that doubt our intuition, who makes us unpack all the boxes, who hold their career success over us so that they can hopefully cajole us into doing their secretary work. Like the fact he didn’t even consider coming back with her again, even though she was in much more danger their then he would be. All around, I found him unimpressive.

Alice was also interesting. It was almost as if Dana felt more kinship with Rufus than with Alice, which makes sense given her circumstance -- that she was called to the past by Rufus’ potential deaths. Still, sometimes I forget that Alice is Dana’s great-grandmother, because she doesn’t seem to connect with her as inimitably. At the same time, Dana knows that she is doing Alice a disservice, knows that there are things worse than death, and still, plays a role in creating Alice’s hell to save Dana’s family’s own existence. Perhaps that is why she cannot be as close to Alice, just like some of the people who work in the fields hate Sarah and Dana. Perhaps it is a way to illustrate the contentious relationships between black people in that era created by the white people or more specifically, created by the white people’s power and privilege. I read some on the internet about black unity and black community, and it seems like some of these trends still play out today. I read on sishi.rose’s instagram today about how when she spoke out about racism in her workplace, black people where some of the most skeptical. Even today, there is issues in the black community regarding proximity to whiteness on both sides (ie both “your too close to whiteness” and also “I want to be close to whiteness”). I can’t really speak much more about that, but I haven’t read many narratives about the negative aspects of intra-slave relationships. It was also interesting to hear about how they created justice within their enslaved communities. Obviously, the want justice between themselves and the whites, but because that was unobtainable, it felt so... vindicating? empowering? surprising? in the plot when they got to do that in their own community. A few of them beat up the woman who tattles on Dana when she runs away -- that woman, too, displays more morality in her pinky finger than Rufus has in his entire body when she refrains from telling on her attackers. Is she scared of being attacked again or being ostracized for her actions? Or does she know that telling on them could lead to their deaths or their movement away from the plantation -- is morality innate or enforced by our surroundings? Either way. When that man gets sold and his family blames it on Dana, I think it is Alice who later sets them straight.

All in all, it is a riveting story, that makes a lot of points about race relations in America not only 200 years ago, but today.

#fav #book #butler #1970s #octaviabutler #9/10 #10/10 #mildredtaylor #theland #racism #blackauthor #womanauthor #dialogue #historicalfiction #scifi #fantasy #maryland #whiteness

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bookandcover · 3 years

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[Note: Most of this post was written in July/August 2020.]

The second book my family read for our Anti-Racism Book Club, Just Mercy, details decades of Black attorney Bryan Stevenson’s fight for criminal justice reform, particularly focused on the sentencing and treatment of prisoners on Alabama’s death row. Stevenson’s experiences seem like those of a military doctor—harrowing, horrifying, and addressing at breakneck speed each horrible emergency in case-after-case immediately before him. While his organization, Equal Justice Initiative, continues to bring about policy change and positive impact in diverse ways, I was struck, repeatedly, by how often this book matter-of-factly captured and expressed the challenges of a tremendous uphill battle—Bryan Stevenson looked like one person (or one of a small group) trying desperately to hold back an overwhelming tide. The book captures being “on the ground,” “in the field,” “in the heart of battle,” in the cruel, immediate fight for racial justice and human dignity.

The novel’s structure reflects this proximity to the fight. Each chapter, while addressing a different element of criminal justice reform (women’s experiences, children charged as adults, mental illness and the death penalty) chooses as its central focus a specific case or few cases Stevenson worked on. By telling the stories of these cases—which Stevenson does with a sharp eye for detail—our author reveals the humanity and individuality inseparable from each case. I loved this. Stevenson knows that, in making policies and laws, we tend to talk about statistics, numbers, and averages. We build “systems” for justice (ideally, that is...acknowledging that we’ve mostly built systems for injustice). But it’s the specific cases, and the specific people (such as innocent Walter McMillian, who spent six years on death row and returned to a life completely obliterated by the process of his wrongful conviction, multiple trials, imprisonment, and overwhelming press coverage of his case), that reveal the miscarriages of justice that show where our systems (and our hearts) need a lot of work.

The structure of this book around the stories of specific people achieves several things central to both Stevenson’s mission and worldview. First of all, it puts humans first. Stevenson is a lawyer. He knows the law and he believes in it. But he also knows it exists (or should) to serve and to protect people. He maintains incredible humanity when faced with diverse people and perspectives. “We’re more than the worst thing any of us has ever done,” he writes. Even with those who stand in his way, who express cruel and racist viewpoints, Stevenson is always looking for positive change, is always aware of the capacity of humans to grow through receiving mercy. Stevenson talks about the poorly-trained and ill-prepared workers who are given the job of delivering lethal injections because doctors cannot do so under the Hippocratic Oath. He is sympathetic for these workers. He includes the guard at one of his client’s prisons who gives him a very hard time when he comes to visit. The Confederate-flag-toting, blatantly racist guard, trumped up on his own power, is given the opportunity, and the grace, to change. Stevenson even acknowledges change in the man who stood strongest against Walter’s retrial.

Stevenson’s capacity for mercy seemed, to me, superhuman. I cannot imagine displaying the grace he did in so many situations. [Later, I also pondered whether other Black writers I’ve read this year would agree with Stevenson’s approach? Did his grace in the face of racism present an unrealistic bar? Did it school his tone and his approach into one that others would view as too non-confrontational, too loving? I’m not sure. I will try to do some research about how other Black writers and activists have responded to his book.] At the same time, I did feel incredibly moved by Stevenson. I believe him, believe in his conviction and poignant insistence that we, as humans, have incredible capacity for mercy and that mercy is the tool that can reshape our systems of injustice. As he turns his capacity for mercy on the criminal justice system, which enacts harsh punishments on people, even when correctly “judged” (if such a thing is possible) to be criminals, he shows how quick we can be to disregard human life. Why do we—any of us—think we have the capacity to judge another’s life? To enact a punishment as final as the death penalty?

In addition to humanizing the systematic criminal justice process and focusing on the humanity of criminals, Stevenson’s narrative structure in this book highlights the overwhelming scope of the problems in criminal justice that are in desperate need of reform. This could be a different book if it focused on political science or on legal policy—more systematic, more big picture. Instead, it makes a connection with our hearts. It shows how, as I’ve mentioned, Stevenson struggles to get through the bare minimum of what he’d like to achieve. He helps the people with the closest execution dates first. He cannot take on every case. Over and over he fights for a stay of execution. In many ways, this work is like putting a band-aid on a gushing wound.

But Stevenson more than justifies this work through his narrative focus on individual humans. One significant impact of the structure of this book—of its focus on individual people as people, humans, real and complex—is that it pits the weight of EVEN ONE human life against the whole criminal justice system. Even one failure of justice, even one wrongful sentencing, becomes a crime weighing on all of us as human beings. Because how can we sit, complacent in our own homes and lives, while any one of the situations Bryan Stevenson describes occurs? We, through our own willfulness or our own blunder, condemn other people to the situations described in this novel—brutal execution by failing electric chair of a mentally-ill young man, repeated rape of a child tried as an adult and sent to an adult prison, imprisonment for years of a completely innocent individual—these are crimes that have no reckoning. How do we answer for them? Should we ever, this book asks, have this kind of power over another human being? The power to condemn another person to death, to choose extreme punishment over mercy?

And, yet, we do these things, and we exert this power. We have imperfect systems and the idea that we have systems at all keeps us in complacency, complicit. Of course, this is the world and not utopia—any justice system designed by humans, even with superhuman attempts at fairness and racial equity, will be imperfect. But some systems could, certainly, be much better than others depending on who designs them and for whom they are designed. Stevenson’s central focus on humanity—on the experiences and cases of individuals made real and concrete to us through his depictions—reveals a worldview focused on the idea that any improvement of an imperfect system has incredible significance. Because each human life is worthy of every iota of effort. One life saved, one innocent man freed—the improved, the better system that saves only one more person than the slightly less good system—this is not a slight difference at all. This is a human life. Something that should never be traded in casually nor played around with. Any miscarriage of justice, Stevenson shows us, ought to rest heavily on all of our souls.

[Here I am, again, looking back at and editing writing I did about racism and racial justice six months ago. I can see the ways in which my thinking has evolved in this span of time. I feel like, with each piece of reading and thinking and talking and acting that I do about race, I am more aware of how far I have to go. I’m alarmed by huge blunders I’ve made in the past. But what I should feel worse about was all that time, before now, of ignorance. I’ve been ignorant enough to not see my racism. I still am, I’m sure. I’ve got to keep going.

Also, I write these book reviews for myself. But I put them on the internet. If anyone who reads this wants to talk to me about anything I have written here, I hope that you feel you can. Thank you.]

#just mercy #bryan stevenson #tw: death penalty #law and legality #criminal justice reform #tw: discussions of racism #anti-racism reading #important reading

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autumnleaves--wintertrees · 7 years

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Made on June 20, 2017 12:09:09pm Posted: June 21st, 2017 11:45:06am

This makes me sad but more angry and confrontational towards the person who said it than anything, since it clearly depicts the boundless ignorance of people:

http://whisper.sh/whisper/0552694324fbea960222df16148b58f14ae7a3/Women-in-fact-can-NOT-do-everything-a-man-can-do-Thats-why-there-are-

I just checked the link to make sure it was still working and it no longer is. I’ll still keep the link up though. | The white text with black shadow outline is displayed over an image of a u.s. american flag and a soldier, and says: Women in fact can NOT do everything a man can do. That’s why there are not a lot of pastors, police officers, marines, and firefighters as women. Following the text is a picture of the ‘Okay’ hand sign, and the number 100 in red and underlined twice in red.

This shows stupidity too, as this person won’t even consider looking outside their own little bubble of a world for another answer to this ‘confusion’ that they are so sure they figured out. Congratulations! You were able to see that there are more male soldiers than female ones, but do you even know (or care) why? I'll use the united states as an example since the text of the above whisper app post is displayed over an image of the u.s. flag: female soldiers were not even allowed on the front lines until 2016; do you really think that is the only country to discriminate by gender for their military? Listing the amount of female soldiers as an example for the stupid notion that women are naturally weaker than men has as much structural integrity, clearly, as the way your mind works. You also say “women are not as good at certain things” in the first part, and then “that’s why there aren’t as many…”. If women were not as good as men then there wouldn’t be any women in these fields at all. I think what you are trying to say is that these women in these fields are trying, and failing; yet you are the one who has failed to construct a simple sentence. Something else is that it’s quite odd for you to list ‘pastors’. You don’t seem to know the vatican church refuses to allow a woman to become a pope, even the current pope who seems quite open-minded has said women should not be allowed to become priests, and some churches don’t allow female priests at all (Women are the ones who literally give and create life but that can get lost on someone with low intelligence. It’s the woman’s body doing all the work.) I thought it was embarrassing enough for you that you tried using soldiers as an example but pastors? Really? The soldier thing at least takes research but the vatican’s (and other churches) historically negative attitude towards women is such common knowledge, so this is another show of your poor mind. *later edit*It’s all part of sexism anyways; if you’re of adult age and have full-time access to books and the internet, and you socialize with people, talk with them, live your life, you’re really unaware of the inanity of both of these sexist things, as well as any impact either of them have on women. Therefore, all of it is actually a show of your poor mind.

Firstly, women, as a gender, as an entire population of people in the general sense, are raised from day one of birth to seek out softer, more nurturing and empathetic roles. This is an indisputable fact. Women are discouraged from taking on certain careers. Women are ridiculed for taking on certain careers. Whether these messages are intended to outright subdue a woman’s aspirations “Being a soldier is for men. Go be something like a nurse. Or a mother.” or not “You’ll have an easier time not being an engineer as a woman.”, they will have a negative effect as they build up and get worse. Secondly, for the most part, women’s male counterparts get all the attention for the more ‘hands-on’ things. For example- If a girl has a brother, growing up it will be her brother that is asked to mow the lawn or help fix the car. Someone will ask the male cousin or stepson to help with the fuse box, or fix a flat tire on the side of the road. Sometimes it isn’t that the parents refuse teaching their daughter these things, it is that the thought of teaching her these dirtier, messier, more physical things never enters their minds. It never occurs to parents to teach their daughter self-defence as she grows up vs. automatically pushing their son towards things like boxing, or contact sports like hockey. *No, this attitude of some parents and people is not because women ‘naturally’ fit certain roles and men ‘naturally’ fit others. If there were natural roles to fit, then we would not. Be having. This conversation. As a society. At all. There would be no debate or argument about it, there would be no ballerinas who are male, and there would be no car mechanics who are female. Debate the world over would however surround whether or not butch lesbians, soft gay boys, and trans people should be institutionalized and/or sentenced to prison and criminalized, and then put to death. I have certainly noticed a regularity among women, especially mothers, that thinks, “If I’m not going to take care of this, then it will not get done.” because we believe, “Who else is there to do it?” The men. The men will do it, send them in to clean the kitchen after a big family night while the women sit in the living room to talk and drink beer.

Please get this through your heads, especially parents: your daughters and nieces, stepdaughters, and sisters have a wealth of untapped potential (just as much potential as their male counterparts). Raise them from the ground up in realizing their potential they have with their own physical strength and minds so they can have and make their own choices. When you say you will raise your daughter as never depending on a man, mean it. When you say you will raise your son to respect women, make sure you don’t pass off anything but the message that women are people first and mean it (treating people based on their being people really isn’t hard).

There are women out there who side with the misogynistic man-child who posted the above image (yes, women besides traditional-thinking grandmothers), women who are willing to settle for the bare minimum and not fight. I am not speaking of women who would rather stay at home to care for their kids than have a career as one of the core messages of feminism is simply making sure girls know they have options, that they don’t have to be something based on their biology or misogynistic expectations. Choosing to be a housewife is great when it is, you know, your choice. I want all of the women who don’t support or are against basic rights for women to have options to know that unimaginative, passive, brainwashed, one-sided, apathetic, lackadaisical women like you are the main reason why for however many steps we take forward, we end up taking double that amount backward.

A fact that people don’t bring up much: As far as physical strength goes, women are not the ones that go down like a lamp with one swift kick to our genitals. A lot of tiny-minded males will be threatened by that last line.

#side two lapis lazuli #ignorance #stupidity #sexism #misogyny #chauvinism #gender #career #goals #food for thought #job #whisper #whisper phone app #whisper app

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nightshade--witch · 5 years

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I'm either always getting compliments on my skin or being accused of lying about not wearing foundation. So I'mma just going to share with the internet the bullshit routine I have.

I'll start with water. Oh yay, the thing that everyone tells you to do but it doesn't seem to help. Just fucking drink your water. Your lips are gonna thank you and your wallet won't cry every time you have to buy another $4 lip balm because you lost yours for the hundredth time. Cool. Done. Drink.

Cleansing. Do it at least once a day, twice preferred. I'm bad, I only do it when I shower unless my face is feeling very grimey. I have combination/dry sensitive skin. Though, more dry than anything. If I use too many oil-based products I break out, too many drying products and it looks like I got a chemical peel that wants to last a week. I have to be careful will mismatching products otherwise my skins gets pissy with me. I found that using an oil-based cleanser to get rid of makeup when I do wear it and a regular foaming cleanser for oily skin does the trick. This gently strips away any excess oils on your face. If you do choose to do this and you also have dry skin you HAVE to moisturize. Otherwise, your skin will just dry up even more. I use Cerave’s Foaming Facial Cleanser that you can pick up at Walmart. It doesn’t make me break out like so many other cleansers I’ve tried either, though it doesn’t do very well at removing makeup so keep that in mind.

Exfoliation. Dear god, everyone is so harsh on their face it hurts me. Your face is delicate! Be gentle! I only exfoliate when I feel like I’m going to break out, or at least once a week. I use Tatcha’s Deep Cleanse because it’s so gentle and I apply it using Tarte’s Star Brush (you could use any brush, I got this as a gift), If you’re combining exfoliation things, like an exfoliation liquid with an exfoliation tool, be extremely gentle. You don’t need to push down hard, it’ll make your face red and irritated. Your goal is to scrub away the dead skin, not the fresh skin underneath. Be nice to your face. You can also make your own exfoliation scrub (I do all the time). Personally, I just do a spoonful of sugar, a spoonful of honey, and occasionally some cinnamon or baking powder. I’m harsh on my lips because they flake all the time, but I do use it to srub the rest of my face. Don’t use a tool if you do this, you’ll scratch your skin instead of exfoliate.

Toner. It depends. I think toners are more for people with oily/acne-prone skin. I use a toner once a week after I exfoliate. If you have dry skin, you might just wanna ditch it altogether. Again, your face is delicate. Treat it as such. I use some Walmart bullshit thing that I can’t even find online. It’s orange and smells like shit, that’s all I know.

Essence/Treatments/Oils. I like these; Serum A, Essence, Serum B, and Oil. I only use the oil about once a month, everything else I use when I feel like I need it. Only a small drop of each one is all you need, just barely enough to feel like you put some on every part of your face. It should feel like you just came out of the shower, dried your face, but your face still feels a tad bit damp because of the steam. If you put too much, you might break out or make your face oily.

Masks. I used to not use masks often. I do now because it really helps everything from before set in nicely and does its job. Personally, I like sheet masks because all it is is just more essences for your skin to absorb. Once that wipe or peel off are nice, but use them before toner and don’t exfoliate. I haven’t found once set one that I personally really like and have gone back to buy said specific one again, so feel free to experiment. I always go for collagen ones, but mask wise it’s entirely up to whatever you want out of your skin. This is another thing you can make yourself, I do a bit of food-grade dark cocoa powder and a small splash of whole milk to make it into a thick paste, and just slather it on your face and leave it until it’s completely dried. Makes your skin very soft :)

Moisturizer. I’ve tried a lot of different lotions and I have to say, I do have a few different favorites. I’ll start with one that I liked, but stopped using it because I found better ones. Tarte’s Drink of H2O was pleasant but somewhat pricey. It worked well, didn’t dry out my skin, but it wasn’t enough moisture for my skin. I then found Cerave’s Moisturizing Cream that I still use and love. You can get it at Walmart or even Amazon for really cheap, you get a ton of it, and it works wonders. It does feel very thick so I usually only use it at night, but it does set VERY well under makeup. Just let it dry up a bit first. My absolute favorite moisturizer is definitely Tatcha’s Dewy Skin Cream. Dear god does it work. It doesn’t feel sticky or thick, it dries fairly quick. You only need so little that the little travel size that I got I haven’t even dented and I’ve had it over a month. I only need to do my skincare routine once every three days (I cleanse every day) because of their stuff. VERY expensive but so worth it. Because I don’t need to do an entire skincare routine every day, I’m actually saving money because I’m not having to refill my stuff every month.

Finally, Night Cream. I use another Tatcha product once a month and some other Walmart bullshit item that I randomly picked up that I can’t find online again. It’s made of donkey’s milk (lol) but feels good. You have to wash it off in the morning though. I like night creams because of the extra boost of moisture but once again, I found that using them every night just made my skin more oily than anything else. Less is more.

I’m slowly switching over to Tatcha products because they work really well for me, but due to their price, I’m usually only able to get an item every other month. I work a minimum wage job but I make tips, so I use that to get myself some nice things when I can. So, no, I’m not rich by any means. I just save my spare coins and wait a long time.

I also want to mention this is just what works for me, and it might not work for you. Everyone is different, just experiment until you find something that works for you.

For those who are young and don’t have a job and whose parents don’t want to blow $100+ on skincare products, you would be surprised at how well cheap little things work. Everyone starts small, and it’s okay. Do your research on good, cheap products and find something that you think you might like. It’s what I did, and it’s what a lot of others did. It’ll help you discover what works on your skin and what doesn’t so that you’re not wasting money on expensive products that may or may not work. For example, experimenting with cheaper supplies helped me discover that I have very sensitive skin and that anything with citrus in it will burn me. (Don’t forget to test new things on the inside of your wrist and wait 24-48 hours before applying to your face. I’ve saved myself from so many rashes by doing this).

Good luck to all, hopefully I helped some.

#skincare #beauty #beauty problems #beauty products #skincare routine #facecare #skin complexion #skin concerns #silkyskin #dryskin #combination skin

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goarticletec-blog · 5 years

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Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Endgame May Be in Sight

New Post has been published on https://www.articletec.com/special-counsel-robert-muellers-endgame-may-be-in-sight-3/

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Endgame May Be in Sight

History may show that Monday ranks among the most consequential days yet of Robert Mueller’s 18-month special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

As George Papadopoulos, one of the most enigmatic characters to emerge in Mueller’s investigation, reported to a Wisconsin prison Monday, a confluence of small developments may indicate that by the time he emerges from Federal Correctional Institute Oxford two weeks from now, we might know far more about the breadth of Russia’s efforts—and the Trump campaign’s ties to them—than we do now.

In fact, as the holiday season begins to unfold, it’s clear that Mueller knows who’s been naughty and who’s been nice.

Paul Manafort, for one, is topping the naughty list.

The ‘Mueller Report’

A report Tuesday in The Guardian claims that Manafort met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a few months before the group leaked the hacked emails of Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. It’s a potentially explosive revelation, one that Manafort has denied. ” I have never met Julian Assange or anyone connected to him. I have never been contacted by anyone connected to Wikileaks, either directly or indirectly. I have never reached out to Assange or Wikileaks on any matter,” Manafort said in an emailed statement.

But even before that item, Manafort might have unwittingly given Mueller just the opportunity he requires to make public even more details about the former Trump campaign chair, Russia, and the Trump campaign’s activities in 2016. In a court filing Monday, Mueller’s team alleged that Manafort had lied to investigators, asking the judge to move immediately to sentencing. They also said they would provide a “detailed sentencing submission,” outlining “the nature of the defendant’s crimes and lies.”

In other words, Mueller plans to quickly issue a “report” on Manafort’s activities, one that—if it’s anything like every other court document Mueller has filed—will be more informed, more knowledgeable, and more detailed than anyone anticipates.

He’s been writing the long-anticipated “Mueller Report” bit by bit, in public, since his very first court filing.

That Paul Manafort may have been caught lying again is hardly surprising: The core of the underlying charges against him—like bank fraud and tax fraud—stem from years of lies to the IRS, the government, and financial institutions. What is surprising about Manafort’s apparent misbehavior, though, is the extent to which he seemingly never internalized just how much Mueller knows. The special counsel has apparently caught Manafort twice already in embarrassing lies: When he tried to deny ghostwriting an op-ed supporting himself, prosecutors showed the court the Microsoft Word track changes edits he’d made; when he tried to align his story with a witness, Mueller’s team hit him with witness tampering charges and showed the court his encrypted text messaging conversations.

Nor is it surprising that Mueller would potentially seize the opportunity of Manafort’s plea agreement violation to introduce all manner of evidence about his misdeeds.

In fact, such a move would be entirely consistent with one of the most surprising and least noticed aspects of Mueller’s approach all along: He’s been writing the long-anticipated “Mueller Report” bit by bit, in public, since his very first court filing.

Those waiting for Mueller to issue some massive, 9/11 Commission–style report at the end of the investigation often overlook the sheer volume of detailed information Mueller has pushed into public view already. Nearly every court document he has filed has been what lawyers call a “speaking indictment,” going into deeper detail and at greater length than is strictly needed to make the case for the criminal behavior charged.

Similarly, his “criminal informations,” the indictment-like documents filed as part of guilty pleas, have often included extraneous evidence of additional, formally uncharged criminality. In former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s plea agreement, Mueller detailed how Flynn served as an unregistered foreign agent for the government of Turkey. Manafort’s criminal information—a document that often is only a few pages, the bare minimum that prosecutors and a defendant will agree upon—this fall stretched to nearly 40 pages, including voluminous details about the so-called Hapsburg group, European politicians enlisted in Manafort’s alleged scheme, information that hadn’t appeared in any of the indictments or charges against Manafort until that point.

With his major court filings, Mueller has already written more than 290 pages of the “Mueller Report.” As Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes has said, if a 9/11 Commission–style body had gathered in the wake of the 2016 election to study Russian interference, its findings would read much like Mueller’s novelistic charges against the Internet Research Agency and the military intelligence agency commonly referred to as the GRU.

Together with the charges against Michael Cohen by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York—which stemmed from findings by the Mueller investigation—the Justice Department has outlined over the course of this year two separate alleged criminal conspiracies that aided the election of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

But even that’s not the full story.

Loose Threads

Mueller’s courtroom strategy—guided surely by Michael Dreeben, one of the nation’s top appellate lawyers—has been all but flawless. His prosecutors have batted away numerous challenges, and he has notched a steady stream of guilty pleas. Earlier this fall, when Manafort became the first and only of those cases to go to trial, Mueller’s team convinced a jury of his guilt in each area of crimes they charged and, according to reporting afterward, came within a single vote of conviction on all 18 charges.

And now, Manafort’s apparent dissembling has given Mueller’s team an excuse to publish everything they know about Manafort’s “crimes and lies,” whether they’ve been publicly discussed yet or not. That could potentially include new information about that mysterious 2016 Trump Tower meeting—prompted by a Russian offer to help the campaign—or details about the apparent Assange connection.

A Manafort sentencing submission, meanwhile, would sidestep the current awkward question of delivering a “Mueller Report” to the acting attorney general, Matt Whitaker, that could be suppressed politically or redacted before release.

Beyond the surprise twist in the Manafort case, a number of signs in recent weeks indicate that Mueller might be moving toward further indictments—and perhaps even some big ones, an end-of-year denouement.

Mueller’s team has reportedly been laser-focused since the spring on Trump aide Roger Stone, who has said for months that he expects to be indicted. Stone has long been suspected of contact with WikiLeaks, potentially relating to the hacked Podesta emails. Likewise, the screws have recently tightened on Stone ally and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, whose plea deal with Mueller, The Atlantic reports, appears to have fallen through.

It’s clear that Robert Mueller knows who’s been naughty and who’s been nice.

All of which further coincides with an odd flurry of activity around Assange himself, who has lived at the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012 in self-imposed exile to avoid potential criminal charges. The ambassador who has helped protect and negotiate on Assange’s behalf since 2015 was removed from office last week by Ecuador’s president, adding to an exodus of staff who have supported Assange over the years. After the departure, WikiLeaks said Thursday on Twitter, “All diplomats known to Assange have now been terminated to transferred away from the embassy.” Similarly, WikiLeaks has tweeted that Assange’s lawyers have now been barred from visiting him.

The increasing isolation of Assange comes after news leaked earlier this month that the US has prepared criminal charges against him—leaks that apparently were confirmed by a too-hasty cut-and-paste job in unrelated court documents.

In another critical thread of the investigation, President Trump over Thanksgiving finally turned in long-awaited written answers to Mueller’s investigators. Knowing what we now know—that Mueller took no public action during the entire period while he waited for Trump’s responses—it stands to reason that Mueller wanted to avoid taking any action that might spook the president.

For instance, Manafort’s lack of cooperation happened in mid-November. The special counsel’s office delayed the filing until Monday, after it had Trump’s written answers safely in hand.

And still there’s more. According to Vanity Fair, the president’s son, Donald Jr., told people earlier this month that he expects to be indicted soon—action, again, that might have been purposefully delayed until after his father turned in the answers to the “law school exam”–like questions.

Meanwhile, alleged Russian spy Maria Butina is in plea negotiations too; the charges relating to Butina and her ties to conservative gun rights groups like the NRA are technically separate from Mueller’s special counsel investigation, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s unrelated to his case.

Similarly, earlier this month, a number of Mueller’s prosecutors were hard at work on Veterans Day—when Michael Cohen mysteriously appeared in Washington too.

All of which is before you even get into more speculative questions, like ABC News’ recent reporting of the abnormally large number—three dozen, in fact—of sealed indictments filed over the course of the year in DC. Fully 14 of those sealed indictments have been added to court records just since August, a period where—as far we publicly know—Mueller’s investigation remained quiet.

Put all those pieces together and it’s clear the special counsel is building toward something. He knows how this story ends. The only question that remains: Who else in the Trump orbit should expect coal in their stocking, courtesy of Robert Mueller?

Garrett M. Graff (@vermontgmg) is a contributing editor for WIRED and the coauthor of Dawn of the Code War: America’s Battle Against Russia, China, and the Rising Global Cyber Threat. He can be reached at [email protected].