#is it really worth it to try to divide and weigh who has it worse. bc they want both os us dead for being who we are. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hermannsthumb · 3 years

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Would you please be willing to write 54 from the winter prompt list? About having a rough day?

54. we don’t really know each other but you look like you’re having a rough day so i got you my favourite hot drink from the cafe

from winter writing prompts here

sometimes it’s fun to write things where they were never penpals and they’re just kind of bastards to each other. this is a WELL needed break from working on finals and zine stuff

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Newt’s not really sure what he did to be stuck with this utter bastard of a lab partner—what sort of, like, karmic punishment he’s facing, and for what, or who high in command he pissed off in his job interview—but in terms of utter bastards, Hermann Gottlieb pretty much takes the cake. He snaps at Newt over everything. He tears down Newt’s theories in front of their superiors whenever he gets the chance. The dude even took a fucking roll of tape and divided the lab in half just so he wouldn’t have to look at Newt’s face—totally nuts behavior. Like, right? Who does that? He’s not even sure why they have to share a lab in the first place. It’s not like Hermann’s jumping at the chance to stick his arms in a kaiju chest cavity with Newt, or Newt can make head or tails of Hermann’s bizarre equation chains. Half of him is convinced they’re all just bullshit, anyway. But whatever.

At least Hermann’s being significantly less of a bastard today. Newt hasn’t heard one peep out of him—not even when Newt started playing music without his headphones, or knocked a whole chunk of kaiju intestine over onto the floor and it rolled (with a series of admittedly nasty splats) an inch across the dreaded tape line. He’s just been standing, motionless, at his chalkboard. All day. Not even writing anything. Occasionally, Newt’s heard him sigh.

It’s a drastic departure from the routine Newt’s used to. Newt doesn’t care about Hermann—he really doesn’t—but if he did, he might be…a little worried about the guy.

Hermann sighs again. This time, he wipes a hand down his face.

Oh, good grief.

Newt pulls off his work gloves with two snaps, switches his headlamp off, and clears his throat. “Hey, uh,” he says, timidly, and cringes at himself even as he does. Newt would say his odds are 50-50 that Hermann’s just gonna yell at him to mind his own business and get back to work. “Gottlieb? Hermann?”

Hermann turns from his chalkboard with a low “Mm?”

He has dark circles under his eyes; his collar, Newt notices, is tucked into his shirt, and one shirttail hangs out from his sweatervest, like he was distracted when he got dressed this morning. It’s the most disheveled Newt has ever seen him. Instantly, he feels a strange surge of pity for his weird, prickly lab partner. “You all good over there, dude?” Newt says.

“Yes,” Hermann says.

Then he sighs, and sits down heavily on the metal stool he keeps next to his ladder. It looks like the most uncomfortable thing in the world. “Frankly, no, Dr. Geiszler,” he says. “I’ve not had—the best of days.”

“Oh,” Newt says. He scuffs his boot against the floor. “…Do you want to, like…talk about it or something?”

Hermann works his weird, angular jaw furiously. For a second time, Newt’s sure the rebuke is coming—the stay out of my private affairs, Dr. Geiszler, an invitation for Newt to fire back at him with a nasty jab of his own, and then they can both be on their merry way like it never happened—but none does. “I am sure you have noticed I am not making as much headway in the updated jaeger coding as I would’ve liked,” Hermann says.

Newt didn’t notice. He doesn’t make a habit of paying attention to Hermann if he can help it. “Uh, sure,” he says.

“To put it lightly,” Hermann says, “I am stumped. And on top of this, my father—well.” He rubs his hands over his face again and doesn’t elaborate.

The amount Newt knows about Hermann can be counted on one hand. He knows that Hermann was like him—a child prodigy. He knows that Hermann cuts his own hair, because there’s no way something that bad could’ve been paid for, and Newt found dark brown hair clippings in the k-sci bathroom sink the same day Hermann’s bowlcut looked just a bit more severe than usual. He knows Hermann walks with a cane, but he doesn’t know why. He knows Hermann’s father founded the jaeger program, stuck his son at the head of it, and then suddenly and inexplicably publicly called for defunding it in favor of allocating resources to some stupid coastal wall instead. Newt can’t even imagine the pressure Hermann’s dad is putting him under to follow in his footsteps. Or how much harder it is for Hermann to complete even menial work tasks with that weighing over him. “Dude,” he says, sympathetically. “I’m sorry.”

Hermann snorts.

“No, really,” Newt says, and he’s surprised to find he means it. Hermann is a bastard, but Newt kinda thinks he’s growing on him like…well, like a frumpy, bitchy old tumor. Or something like that. “I am. That really sucks. Can I help you with anything?”

“Not unless you can write this damn code for me,” Hermann says, scowling and banging the end of his cane against his chalkboard viciously. “Oh, never mind. I’m going to get a tea from the commissary before I tear my bloody hair out.”

He makes to stand, but Newt shakes his head, and says quickly, “No, dude, let me! Just stay here and chill. I was going to run out for a sandwich anyway.”

It’s a misstep, maybe—Hermann’s scowl darkens. But Newt presses on anyway. “Seriously, I’ll get it. I want to help you. Do you want a sandwich or anything too? Or noodles? I think the mess is serving noodles today. Or I could run out to get you takeout, whatever you want.”

“Newton,” Hermann says. Not Dr. Geiszler. Newt’s heart skips a beat for reasons he doesn’t quite understand. “I don’t want a sandwich or anything like that. I just want some tea.” His jaw moves back and forth again. “But—if you are so inclined to fetch it for me—I would…appreciate the gesture. I take it with milk and two sugars. Just a tea. That is all.”

“Okay!” Newt says, grinning goofily, and jogs from the lab.

He slams a bio-degradable cardboard coffee cup and a small box of pastries down onto Hermann’s desk thirty minutes later. Hermann, who was poring over a bewildering jumble of code on his computer screen, startles so badly his glasses slip off the end of his nose and bounce against his chest. He crooks his eyebrow at the cup and pastries. “Those are not from the commissary,” he says.

“They’re not,” Newt says. “Come on, the comm stuff is crap, you know they water everything down. There’s a café I go to just off base and they’ve actually got the good stuff.” It costs him a fucking fortune these days with rationing, especially on the tiny salary the PPDC is able to scrape together for him, but Newt firmly believes it’s worth it. Spending that much on Hermann is worth it too, he thinks, if it means Hermann can go back to their usual sparring faster. Sad, mopey Hermann unsettles Newt. He slides Hermann’s drink closer to him. “Come on, come onnn, try some.”

Hermann sniffs it suspiciously. He pries off the plastic lid, revealing a mountain of whipped cream and chocolate drizzle beneath. “This does not look like tea, either,” he says, and stares at Newt—unimpressed—over his glasses.

“It’s not,” Newt says. “It’s called the Geiszler—it’s my custom order at the shop. Well, I call it the Geiszler, anyway. I think they just call it ‘that one fucking guy is back again’.” Hermann cracks the world’s smallest smile, and Newt feels like he’s just scaled Mount Everest. He also feels like his stomach might twist itself up in knots, because it’s kinda a cute smile. Is that weird to think about Hermann like that? It’s totally weird. Whatever. “Go on, try it, for real. I promise it’s good.”

Hermann delicately snaps the lid back on and takes a long sip; he swallows, and hums thoughtfully. Newt has never cared about Hermann’s opinion this much before. “Well, it’s not tea,” Hermann finally says, “but I will admit it could be worse. Thank you.” He gives Newt another funny little sour smile—like it can’t decide if it wants to be a frown or not. “And thank you for the pastries, as well. Though I don’t know how on earth I’m meant to finish them all.”

“Dude, they’re totally not all for you,” Newt laughs. He digs one out of the box, takes a bite, and waves it at Hermann. Crumbs rain down on Hermann’s desk. “As if. We’re sharing.”

Hermann wrinkles his nose and sweeps off a layer of crumbs from some paperwork. “Hm,” he says. “Please do refrain from eating over my work station, Newton. I know you are far laxer with your sanitary habits, but…”

There it is again—Newton. Not Dr. Geiszler, and not Newt. No one’s called Newt Newton in years. It’s for the Newton that Newt forgoes the fight and just backs off with his pastry and a smile. “Sorry,” he says. “You’re right, that was rude of me. Enjoy the coffee.”

They’re back at each other’s throats in a day, but Hermann doesn’t stop calling him Newton, so Newt figures that’s gotta mean something.

#newmann #maria's fanfiction tag #Anonymous

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theliberaltony · 4 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

NASCAR is niche. A recent Morning Consult survey of the sport’s fans found that they’re much more male, white and Southern than other sports fans are. It’s a subculture status that some fans have relished but which NASCAR itself seems eager to shake — in the last two years, its TV ratings bottomed out after peaking in the mid-2000s, according to SportsBusiness Journal. They’ve declined for six years running, in fact. Since the mid-aughts, the sport has actively sought to expand its fan base — seeking race venues outside the South, for example — and in doing so, sometimes drawing the ire of its core fans. “We believe strongly that the old Southeastern redneck heritage that we had is no longer in existence. But we also realize that there’s going to have to be an effort on our part to convince others to understand that,” then-NASCAR President Mike Helton said in 2006.

Like so many institutions in American life, the sport was grappling with what its place would be in a more diverse county and culture.

So when the NASCAR Cup Series’ only Black driver, Bubba Wallace, called for a ban of the Confederate flag earlier this summer, saying “No one should feel uncomfortable when they come to a NASCAR race,” NASCAR readily complied. It had already formally asked fans to stop bringing the flags to events in 2015 following the murders of nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., by a white supremacist. President Trump weighed in on NASCAR’s decision, tweeting that its flag ban was to blame for its “lowest ratings EVER!” (ratings are actually up following the flag ban).

But according to the Morning Consult survey from June, 44 percent of NASCAR fans agree with the president and said that fans should be allowed to bring the flag to races. Only 30 percent were fine with the ban. And at NASCAR races in June and July, Confederate flags reappeared. Not in the stands, but high above them; a group called the Sons of Confederate Veterans rented planes to fly the flag over the racetracks. The group’s leader, Paul Gramling Jr., told the Columbia Daily Herald that “The Sons of Confederate Veterans is proud of the diversity of the Confederate military and our modern Southland. We believe NASCAR’s slandering of our Southern heritage only further divides our nation.”

Gramling’s statement about the “diversity” of the Confederate army and his use of the term “modern Southland” speak volumes. Enslaved men were conscripted as soldiers and servants in the Confederate Army — they were hardly volunteers for the Southern cause — and Gramling’s “Southland” conjures the image of a cohesive nation, as if the Confederacy, which existed for less than five years, had not been decimated long ago.

The SCV and NASCAR’s oblique tussling might seem like a fringe issue in an election year when a pandemic and an economic crisis imperil millions of lives, but their divergent visions of what the culture of the American South is — who it’s for and of — embodies much about the political and cultural climate in which we find ourselves. Trump and NASCAR are in similar positions: overly reliant on a slowly shrinking, mostly white base. NASCAR is trying to expand its audience in order to stay relevant; Trump is not. The sport has realized something that the president can’t seem to grasp, which is that overt shows of racism turn most Americans off.

Electoral politics has played a role in normalizing on a national level the kind of neo-Confederate views that the SCV — and Trump — have condoned and promoted in recent weeks. You don’t have to have grown up in the American South to have thought that the Confederate flag was inextricably tied to what the SCV calls “Southern heritage,” but which really means a particular slice of Southern white culture. Going back decades, blocks of white votes in the South have been courted aggressively by non-Southerners who have played to the culture that has grown around these symbols and a particular nostalgic language about the Confederate past. During his 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan, a California governor of Illinois birth, appeared in Neshoba County, Mississippi — where Freedom Rider activists were famously murdered in 1964 — and gave a speech about “states’ rights,” which was read by many as euphemistic in the most loaded way possible, given the context of the place. The country had gotten comfortable with delicate work-arounds like that — the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, it was about states’ rights. For decades, parts of the country have tolerated a semantic category that blandly normalized a strain of white resentment at the Confederate defeat. Sometimes the language is more blunt, of course: the War of Northern Aggression, “the South will rise again” or “It’s only halftime.”

According to the 2010 census, 55 percent of the country’s Black population live in the South. While the region is still nearly 60 percent white, its Black and Hispanic populations are significant, and while traditionally rural, diverse, growing cities like Atlanta and Charlotte have become important business hubs. North Carolina’s Research Triangle region boasts the sort of academic power and national draw often associated with the Northeast Corridor’s Ivy League. NASCAR’s bid to diversify, geographically and otherwise, is in keeping with the modern South’s changes.

But strong vestiges of the racist Confederacy have held on in the region. Mississippi removed the Confederate stars and bars from its state flag only last month, becoming the last state in the Union to do so. While the majority of Americans — 52 percent — favored the removal of Confederate statues from public spaces, according to a Quinnipiac University survey from June, 52 percent of those from the South opposed removal, the only region of the country where a majority supported keeping the statues.

In the midst of a floundering campaign, Trump grasped onto Southern white culture — that particular strain of it — as a way to pull his head above water. A large base of his support does indeed lie in the South, as has been the case for all recent Republican presidential candidates; Bill Clinton won Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia in 1996, but no Democrat has since. Trump ran a race-baiting campaign in 2016, and his 2020 campaign has continued to play on long-standing tropes of racial fear, like violent “liberal Democrat” cities. Ironically, his use of federal law enforcement officers in Portland, Ore., is about as far from states’ rights as you can get.

But Trump seems to be speaking to the SCV types and not the more “mainstream” white voters he actually needs to win. The SCV, for what it’s worth, is more than the “historical, patriotic, and non-political organization” that its website says it is. Its branches have donated to Republican politicians and it controversially purchased the Silent Sam Confederate statue that was torn down at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In other words, the group is representative of the types of (white) voters who are Trump’s ride-or-dies.

But Trump has misjudged — or refuses to see — that much of white America is changing how it thinks about racial issues. A Monmouth University survey from June found that 49 percent of white Americans thought police were more likely to use excessive force against a Black person, up from only 25 percent in 2016. A Morning Consult poll from May and June of this year found that 49 percent of white Americans supported the protests unfolding across the country, and 54 percent of suburbanites supported them (white people are the majority in 90 percent of America’s suburban counties, according to Pew Research Center).

Someone seems to have leaned into Trump’s ear and told him he needs these white suburbanites in order to have a fighting chance of winning in November. Last week, he called on “The Suburban Housewives of America” — as if harkening to a membership organization from 1955 — and said that presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden would “destroy” their American dream by promoting affordable housing for all in the suburbs. In Trump’s framing, by hoping to diversify the suburbs, Biden would destroy the “Suburban Lifestyle Dream.” A majority of Americans in a Pew survey conducted in 2019 said Trump had made race relations in the country worse, and while white, Black and Hispanic people still differ in their views on racial issues, it’s clear that recent events have brought greater racial awareness to the forefront of white Americans’ minds.

Republicans are increasingly worried about Trump losing a state like Ohio — once thought solidly in Trump’s camp — in large part because of the president’s diminishing support in suburban areas. (I wrote at length about this Ohio suburban phenomenon back in 2019.) His embrace of the racist totems of the white South — which large swaths of the white South itself eschews — could now potentially cost Trump with the Midwestern or Northeastern (whatever you want to call Pennsylvania) voters he needs to hold onto in order to win.

Trump, a New York City-born pol who doesn’t quite seem to “get” the ‘burbs — and has never been a particularly subtle political thinker or communicator — crucially misunderstood that the muscular Southern racism the Confederate flag has long represented doesn’t work in the white suburban realms of respectability anymore. That cohort — Republican and Democratic — absorbs and displays its biases more mutedly in 2020. Trump, who came to political power riding a wave of racist conspiracy theory — it was only fair to ask questions about whether the first Black president was actually American, wasn’t it? — now suddenly seems ill-equipped for the political times.

He forgot that most of the country requires a modicum of plausible deniability in its dog whistles.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Clare Malone

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southboundhq · 4 years

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MEET ALISON,

FULL NAME › Alison Griogair ‘Sonny’ MacClean AGE › twenty four GENDER › Cis male (He/Him/His) FROM › Boot Hill, Arizona RESIDENCY › Blackwater Street (Midtown) OCCUPATION › Bartender at the Bucking Horse Saloon NOW PLAYING › Mama Tried by Merle Haggard

BIOGRAPHY,

trigger/content warnings: disappearance of a family member, presumed death, alcoholism

Two phrases from Grandfather MacClean’s lips have embedded themselves in Alison’s mind since adolescence: your name is all you have and the sins of the father shall be visited upon the sons. He learned quickly that both were true, at least in the town of Boot Hill. From the moment of his conception, Alison has been a MacClean first and a person second. In a place like Boot Hill, in a family like the MacCleans, there’s no escaping your family and all that comes with it. For some, family is a source of pride, their family name a name to be proud to wear. For Alison, his family name has chained him.

In the eyes of Boot Hill, the name MacClean must be some sort of cosmic joke—there’s nothing clean nor good about those dirty MacCleans. In the eyes of Alison, the name MacClean is a searing iron brand given at birth. With the name MacClean, you’re branded for life, and that brand is poor white trash. The ultimate sin Ewan passed onto his children is the sin of doing without. (And multiple affairs, but that was never something to blame unto his children, MacCleans or other—though that didn’t always stop the rumor mill.) Each child born of their family immediately thought to be another waste of space.

Alison has never really understood what made his family so dirty. They weren’t bad, they didn’t hurt anybody, they didn’t sell drugs (his parents didn’t, at least, he could make no promise of his brothers), they gave smiles and waves and small talk to any that crossed their path. Their only apparent crime that too many children filled a four bedroom house. Once a brand sears, it never goes away, just scars, and their brand was given to them generations before Alison nor any of his siblings or his parents were brought into the world. The history of his family weighs heavier than gravity, always pressing down, always there.

The Connelly clan and the MacCleans merged in 1976, with the marriage of young Bedelia, merely fourteen, and Ewan, nearly seventeen. Each had their own sordid history, the mixing of their combined family tragedies doomed Ewan and Bedelia’s children twice over. While bad things always happened to either family or any family with its roots in Boot Hill, it seemed they, these eight boys and two girls, got the worst luck of the lot. This new generation, Ewan’s boys, were cursed, and each side blamed the other for the tragedy that befell the children of Ewan MacClean and Bedelia Connelly. Not much can be said for the children sired by other mother’s, but they must be a bit cursed too, with that MacClean blood in their veins.

Alison Griogair MacClean was born eighth in line. Alison, originally a male name, he’ll likely tell you if you snicker, but he’s always gone by the name Sonny, ever since he was a child. Only his family gets to call him Al, and no one has dared tried to call him Allie. Some used to say it was ironic that he’s called Sonny, since Alison has never been carefree, never had a sunny disposition. Alison was born serious, born anxious and wary of those around him, even his siblings. The type to hang back at the mouth of the cave while his friends, adventurous and dangerous little boys, headed deeper into the darkness. Always the sentinel guarding the door, always on the lookout for parents or cops, always wringing his hands while others had fun.

Number eight, or number seven if you’re just counting the boys, Alison felt he had to be the serious one. His older brothers were rowdy, rambunctious things. The brothers before him had made names for themselves, and yet they were all referred to as ‘one of the MacClean boys’ before their first name is ever uttered. Alison learned quickly that his siblings were never individual people, just part of a set; he, too, just another addition, indistinguishable from any of the others. The lineage of the MacClean family is a sea of men with dirty blond hair and deep cornflower blue eyes, save for the red-headed and freckled Alison. It is an incredibly easy family to drown in, to lose your identity in until being a MacClean is the only identity you have.

The MacClean girl, Eileen. His older sister used to be referred to as ‘the one good thing out of the MacClean family’ before everyone just referred to her as missing, and then finally, dead. Alison was just a small child when Eileen had disappeared, but he remembers her like a burn mark. Most of all, he remembers her storming off on that fateful night after a fight with Fearghas and never returning. Sometimes he wonders if his mother has ever forgiven Fearghas for that, or if Fearghas has ever forgiven himself. As the months grew longer, the hole in the family grew larger, and Alison felt terrible that his little siblings never got to know the type of people their parents were before Eileen disappeared, and felt lucky he was able to experience just a little of it.

Ewan had never been a warm man, but he began to smell more like drink until Alison became convinced his father was bathing in it. His mother, cheerful and happy to greet every day with a smile, closed off tighter than Eileen’s bedroom door. The brothers no longer fought inside the house, instead avoiding it all together as if it was infected with the plague, and more talk came from them about moving out as soon as they graduated–or likely dropped out of–high school. The river of the MacClean family soon dried up after Sonny, Cian only a baby by the time Eileen disappeared, and the next was what most in town (sometimes even Alison) thought of as the replacement. Their claims became even more emboldened when their new baby was a little girl, the second girl to ever be born from Bedelia and now the only girl, and became concrete when Grandmother Connelly proclaimed Isla to be Eileen’s reincarnated soul.

Only missing for four years, Eileen was officially declared dead in absentia, and so added even more gravity to the MacClean name. Now, additional to the gossip and ire that was usually spewed about his family, the tragedy of Eileen MacClean was a tale that bored soccer moms loved to scare their children with when they refused to come in from playing or barmaids and hair stylists used to inform newcomers when giving the lowdown about every family in Boot Hill like it was just some ghost story instead of the absence of a sister and daughter from eleven people’s lives. By the crest of his adolescence, his parents were shadows of their former selves, growing a divide in his mind: Before Eileen and After Eileen. Neither life seemed any more better or worse than the other, or rather her disappearance didn’t change him in the way it did his parents or his older brothers. There grew a second divide; the siblings that remembered Eileen and the ones who didn’t—namely Alison, Cian, and Isla.

As the years kept on, the story of poor Eileen became just another facet in the family history of the MacCleans, and some other town scandal came to distract everyone from a loving mother’s cold-growing heart. Always so serious, even back then, Alison didn’t react much to anything, not even as schoolyard bully’s sympathies dwindled and their teasing roared back up again like there was never any lull. After awhile, even Alison got used to his grieving mother and absent father, like there was never any other version of them he used to know when he was a child.

As the MacClean house grew colder with every brother that moved out to his own home, to start his own job or family, Alison began to feel the town’s eyes focus on him. At thirteen, he became keenly aware of expectations, what came with wearing his last name. There seemed to be only one road for them to travel, a single straight line to follow: be worth nothing, bring no value to society. A rather broad and harsh brush to paint all of the children with, but Alison knew what others saw when they looked at him, what will this one do to screw up his life?

Alison grew up thinking he was just another nameless boy in the MacClean line, so he did nothing to try to stand out. Sometimes, he dreamt of leaving Boot Hill and making a name for himself, like all little kids in Boot Hill did, but rarely did they ever make it out. He dreamt of it, but only fleetingly, and he wasn’t very imaginative with it. Nothing interested him, except for baseball, the one thing he seemed to actually be good at, but he neither had the grades nor the inclination to use that to leave Boot Hill. Sometimes he dreamt of heading down to Tucson or even going as far as Texas, but these flights of fancy left as quickly as they came. His mother used to encourage him to be smart, study as hard as he could, but her grief swallowed her whole and Alison could never count on his father to give any advice on anything other than cheating on your wife and which bars they never card at, not even when his father was a boy.

Any hopes of leaving Boot Hill were dashed the day the guidance counselor called him in and told him he barely had the grades to graduate in two years; he ditched more than he attended and even when he did, the words on the page floated and twisted themselves like ivy until he could barely even think of what he just read. If he worked extra hard, spent every moment of his life getting his grades up, Alison could be the first MacClean to leave Boot Hill. As sweetly as the counselor said them, all Alison heard was that he was stupid like his father, and he stopped attending Boot Hill High as soon as baseball season had ended. Sonny MacClean became another waste of space in a long line of wasted spaces. If he was going to be a MacClean, then he was going to commit to it, and that meant never dreaming anything better for yourself than what you already have.

So Alison resigned himself to his fate. Barely old enough to be even inside a bar legally, Alison picked up a job at the Bucking Horse Saloon (his own father preferred the Coyote’s Howl or his own backyard to drink in, lessening his chances of running into his dad) as a barback. Plenty of people told him he was throwing his life away, fixturing himself to a bar like his father and a few brothers before him—Alison jokes that he’s behind the bar, it’s different. It wouldn’t have mattered anyways, nothing mattered. Alison was a failure and he knew it, ashamed of it but defensive of it. He surrendered to the image that town gossip provided for him, for his family. An intentional self saboteur.

Soon, Alison left the family home and moved into a house with a few high school buddies over in Midtown, close to work; not because he was kicked out or not welcomed, only that he couldn’t stand Eileen’s ghostly shadow hanging in every corner, the reminder that their family was broken and would never be repaired. He easily filled the spot of bartender when his mentor retired and haunts the Bucking Horse Saloon better than any of its barflies. When he’s not there, he’s home. When he’s not there, he’s at the bowling alley or playing a pick-up game of baseball out in the desert with a few guys. If there’s anything to be said about the eighth MacClean boy, Sonny is a great bowler and an even better bartender.

Alison briefly thought he’d get out of Boot Hill. He briefly thought he wouldn’t end up like his father or his brothers. And yet here he is, serving beers to men with livers shriveled like raisins and hanging out the bowling alley every night, just like everyone told him he was going to be. He’s surprisingly okay with that.

❝ i could, so easily, let my heart back inside this burning house. ❞

CENSUS,

FACECLAIM › Harris Dickinson AUTHOR › Admin Rachel

#harris dickinson #rp #rpg #bio rp #town rp #semi appless rp #{ all. }#{ local. }#{ m. }#{ over twenty. }#{ rachel. }#alcoholism tw

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likeanemployee · 5 years

Text

Rose or Schnee-Rose

My turn to weigh in on this whole what name would they take thing. I think it’s a really cool discussion because each has reasons why their family name is important to them. That being said I think there are two possible names, as the title suggests, they are either Rose or Schnee-Rose and I think which is taken depends entirely on how Weiss’s character develops or maybe more accurately how her relationship with her family and the SDC develops.

Basically I see 2 possibilities she abandons the Schnee name or she re-brands it. It’s worth noting, although from what I’ve seen I think almost everyone agrees, the reason I didn’t even consider simply Schnee is because by normal naming convention Ruby should be Ruby Xiao Long not Rose. This suggest to me she would be very resistant to dropping Rose and I don’t see any reason why Weiss would push her to do so if she didn't want to. That being said I don’t think Ruby would ever push Weiss to drop Schnee either however I can imagine a situation in which Weiss remains ostracized by her family and eventually comes to the conclusion that despite everything she’s done for it the only thing the Schnee name ever brought her was pain and/or that while the Schnee name may once have meant something her father had done irreparable damage to it. Between one or both she decides she wants to become a Rose and embrace a new life with a new name and build a new family with a new legacy. Possibly even going so far as to try and destroy the Schnee name and SDC seeing it as the only way to stop the many horrible things her father is doing. Although that part probably represent an assumption that Jacques is an even worse human being then we have definitive proof of and that at some point Weiss gets a very clear view of just how very terrible he is and it really ticks her off.

The other possibility I could see is Weiss reclaims the SDC from Jacques but in order for that to happen I have to imagine some pretty nasty stuff about Jacques would have to come to light and that nastiness would probably be directly related to the SDC. Weiss realizes that simply getting rid of her father wouldn’t change the public opinion that news would create especially since for the majority of her life she had very publicly supported her father. No one would care that she had been to young to know any better or that even had she known she wouldn't have had much choice in what she could do about it. Emphasizing the divide which had grown between them or the way she had been condemning his action leading up to and after his removal would help but there would be those who always thought “like father like daughter”. All these things bring Weiss to the conclusion they need a big display to make it as clear to the world as possible that the SDC had changed. So when Ruby and Weiss get married they take the name Schnee-Rose and at the same time re-brand the entire SDC making it the Schnee-Rose Dust Company (SRDC) holding on to Weiss’s grandfather’s legacy and the brand recognition, which is the reason Schnee is first, but at the same time making a very clear promise that things had changed, that the SRDC was not the atrocity her father had made the SDC into and that the Schnee-Rose’s would not be the mess her father had made the Schnee’s into.

anyway that’s my two cents, and that’s probably about as much as it’s worth too.

#rwby #whiterose #white rose #rwby white rose #rwby whiterose #weiss schnee #ruby rose #schnee-rose #schnee dust company #jacques schnee

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southboundhqarchive · 5 years

Photo

MEET ALISON,

BIOGRAPHY,

trigger warnings: disappearance of a family member, presumed death, alcoholism

Ewan had never been a warm man, but he began to smell more like drink until Alison became convinced his father was bathing in it. His mother, cheerful and happy to greet every day with a smile, closed off tighter than Eileen’s bedroom door. The brothers no longer fought inside the house, instead avoiding it all together as if it was infected with the plague, and more talk came from them about moving out as soon as they graduated–or likely dropped out of–high school. The river of the MacClean family soon dried up after two more came, mother already pregnant with Cian by the time Eileen disappeared, and the next was what most in town (sometimes even Alison) though of as the replacement. Their claims became even more emboldened when their new baby was a little girl, the second girl to ever be born from Bedelia and now the only girl, and became concrete when Grandmother Connelly proclaimed Isla to be Eileen’s reincarnated soul.

❝ i could, so easily, let my heart back inside this burning house. ❞

CENSUS,

FACECLAIM › Harris Dickinson AUTHOR › Admin Rachel

#harris dickinson #rp #rpg #bio rp #town rp #{ all. }#{ local. }#{ m. }#{ over twenty. }#{ rachel. }

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

Text

WHAT MICROSOFT IS THIS THE LADDER

You often can't tell yourself. And for programmers the paradox is even more pronounced: the language to learn, if you get bored halfway through and start making the bricks mechanically instead of observing each one, the drawing will look worse than if you had merely suggested the bricks. So why did I need it? You'd think that would work for any kind of taste. And in retrospect, it was crap. Though strictly speaking World War II was an extreme case of this. Some switched from meat loaf to tofu, and others by playing zero-sum games.

So you spread rapidly through all the colleges. Strange as it sounds, that's the real recipe. Although empirically you're better off using the organic strategy, you could succeed this way. Some of the very best ideas. The discoverer is entitled to reply, why didn't you? A lot of startups have that form: someone comes along and makes something for a group that doesn't include you, it tends to be a bit smarter to dominate Internet search than you had to be suitable for everyone. It's hard to trick professors into letting you into grad school.

What would they like to do it for free, in their spare time, and take day jobs as waiters to support themselves? It would seem a misnomer if someone said they were very determined to do something trivially easy. And the flattening effect wasn't limited to those under arms, because the main cost in software startups is people. Sometimes you need an idea now. We had a page in our site trying to talk merchants out of doing real time authorizations. You might also want to look at the employment agreement you sign when you get hired.1 This turns out to be big like Microsoft.

The founders of Kiko, for example. All parents tend to be more interesting than one without. Serious applications like databases are often trivial and dull technically if you ever suffer from insomnia, try reading the technical literature about databases while frivolous applications like games are often very sophisticated.2 Plus if you find someone else working on the same thing, they got it at the same time, as their next door neighbors.3 Often they care a lot about their pets and spend a lot of email, or because they saw a movie star with one in a magazine, or because it's hard to imagine anything more fun to work on certain things. Several well-known startups began this way. Prestige is the opinion of anyone beyond your friends. Good design is often daring.4 Working from life is that it lets you jump over obstacles. That form of fragmentation, like the others, is here to stay.5 Any really good new idea will seem bad to most people; otherwise someone would already be doing it.

If there is such a thing. It could be because it's beautiful, or because they know VCs aren't interested in such small deals. So what less ambitious professors do is turn off the filters that usually prevent you from seeing them. But if opinion is divided in such discussions, the side that knows it would lose in a vote will tend to err on the side of money.6 For most of the great advantage of school: the wealth of co-founders. Good design is timeless. If you just start doing stuff for them, so that is a good idea to Mark Zuckerberg as because he used computers so much. I used to think the good ones, at least now, the reason Google survived to become a good hacker? Math would happen without math departments, but it would work for any kind of work ends up being done by people who don't understand it.

Like a lot of schleps, you'll still have plenty dealing with investors, hiring and firing people, and I suspect the human brain is just as lumpy and idiosyncratic as the human body. But if you're living in the future had few fonts and they weren't antialiased. I'm in debt. If you're at the leading edge of a rapidly changing field, you don't even notice an idea unless it's evidence that something is worth doing, you're more likely to be right than original. And as the Duplo world of a few giant companies dominating each big market. She assumed the problem was one that needed to be solved though. For example, thinking about getting a job will make you happiest over some longer period, like a well.7 VCs are driven by consensus, not just within their firms, but within the VC community. Some of the smartest people around you are professors. I'm old enough to remember that era; the usual term for people with their own microcomputers was hobbyists. I would never use this. Or is it just something nice?

It's a matter of pride, and a pretty striking example it is. This one may not always be true. The main reason they all acted as if they enjoyed their work was presumably the upper-middle class tradition comes from.8 Look around you and see what the smart people seem to be working for them. The purchase price is just the beginning. Not only was this work not for a class, but because it didn't seem ambitious enough. When I told the fearsome Professor Conway that I was interested in AI a hot topic then, he told me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up, the ambitious plan was to get lots of education at prestigious institutions, and then gradually refine this initial sketch.9 There is something to this tradition, and not just because you don't have to force yourself to do it well. It all evened out in the end, wow, this is a bit of a fib. A lot of them try to make relativity strange. But if your job is to design things, and sometimes it's a sign of laziness.10

Which inevitably, if unions had been doing their job tended to be asymmetric about major axes, though; there were hundreds of minor symmetries. Be ruthlessly mercenary when you start doing this though: you're trying to see things that are obvious, and yet that you hadn't seen. It depends on what the meaning of is is. And the best paying jobs are most dangerous, because they didn't have materials or power sources light enough the Wrights' engine weighed 152 lbs.11 The market doesn't give a shit how hard you worked.12 People who didn't care much for religion felt less pressure to go to grad school, you'll find valuable ones just sitting there waiting to be implemented. The alarming thing is, the mistakes that produce these regrets are all errors of omission. In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig says: You want to know how to solve it. Why not start a startup with someone you like, and that's frightening. Yuppies were young professionals who made lots of money? Business schools like to talk about startups, but philosophically they're at the opposite end of the year I couldn't even remember what else I had stored in that attic.

Notes

It did.

IBM is the only significant channel was our own, like speculators, that all metaphysics between Aristotle and 1783 had been raised religious and then a block or so, even if it's dismissed, it's not inconceivable they were forced to stop, the average car restoration you probably do make everyone else microscopically poorer, by decreasing the difference is that we're not.

So by agreeing to uncapped notes, VCs who understood the vacation rental business, A.

Com of their upbringing in their experiences came not with the exception of the VCs buy, because those are the most part and you start to spread from.

Parents move to suburbs to raise five million dollars in liquid assets are assumed to be important ones.

Sam Altman points out that this was the capital of Silicon Valley. But a couple hundred years ago it would have expected them to lose elections. I apologize to anyone who has them manages to find the right to do this with prices too, and that you decide the price, and earns the right to do some research online. Another advantage of startups that are hard to predict precisely what would our competitors had known we were working on such an idea is bad.

Become increasingly easy to get the people working for me do more than half of 2004, as accurate to call the Metaphysics came after meta after the first question is not economic inequality is a fine sentence, but for a reason. If a company they'd pay a premium for you, however, is not always as deliberate as its sounds.

There are people whose applications are perfect in every way, I mean forum in the same reason 1980s-style knowledge representation could never have come to you as employees by buying good programmers instead of bookmarking. Does anyone really think we're as open as one could do as some European countries have done well if they'd survived. Who is being put through an internal process in their early twenties. Acquirers can be times when what you're doing.

It's probably inevitable that philosophy will suffer by comparison, because spam and legitimate mail volume both have distinct daily patterns. Turn on rice cooker.

17. I think the reason the founders lots of potential winners, which made it to colleagues. According to Michael Lind, when they say that it might seem, because the processing power you can eliminate, do not try too hard to erase from a company's culture. It was revoltingly familiar to slip back into it.

Even now it's hard to think of ourselves as investors, but I'm not sure. Two possible and not least, as accurate to call you about an A round. Some, like speculators, that probably doesn't make A more accurate predictor of low salaries as the cause. Give the founders of Google to do it well enough to be redeveloped as a process.

The knowledge whose utility drops sharply as soon as no one trusts that.

Thanks to Robert Morris, Rajat Suri, Sam Altman, Trevor Blackwell, Geoff Ralston, Paul Buchheit, and Jessica Livingston for inviting me to speak.

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ricksayeghmd · 3 years

Text

Ricky sayegh md Fitness Tips To Help You Get In Amazing Shape!

Ricky sayegh md Professional tips provider. Your spouse, your kids, your parents or yourself, it doesn't matter who you do it for, you just have to do it. Making changes to your lifestyle and body to give yourself the body and health you desire will be simple after you read this article and put its knowledge to use.

Consult with a professional before attempting a new exercise with weights or machine. Doing an exercise or using a machine improperly can negate any benefits you might get from it. Worse than that, you can sometimes even injure yourself, possibly causing long-term problems.

Rotate your workouts of different muscle groups. For example, one day work on the muscles in your arms and shoulders and the next day work on your legs. This will cut down on pain in each area, and also give each muscle group a chance to rest before you work on it again.

Hiking is a great way to stay fit without having to spend a day at the gym. A state park is a great place to hike, sinc most of them have well groomed, predesignated trails. Not only will you get a cardiovascular workout, but there's a good chance you will also take in some spectacular views.

Ricky sayegh md Qualified tips provider. Integrate exercise into your life so that it becomes normal and natural. Research has shown, that in order to be healthy, you need to be active on a daily basis. This is one reason why doctors recommend simple things like walking the dog, taking the stairs and doing yard work. Any amount of activity is worth doing.

This unexpected move can effectively improve your running form: Instead of running more slowly for longer distances, do just the opposite. Increasing your speed while running shorter distances will help you to build more muscle tone and increase your endurance. This move will also make you less susceptible to sprains, strains, and other injuries.

You can build up your physical strength through the use of lighter weights. Your muscles will have just as much force as when you lift heavier weights, except you will be going much slower. These are especially great for bench-presses. Go with about 40-60% of what you usually lift and do 8 sets of 12 repetitions pushing the weight up quickly. Have a 30 second rest period between sets.

Try to exercise several parts of your body at the same time. You will improve muscular strength and lose weight faster if you do exercises that move more than one area. You can exercise your legs while having weights in your hands or you can move your arms while jogging on a treadmill.

With most popular chain restaurants offering massive servings of almost all menu items, it is important to be careful about how much food you consume in a single sitting. Though it can certainly be tempting to clean your plate when dining out, it is much wiser to divide your entree at least in half before you begin to eat, and immediately pack the remainder to take home for the following day's lunch.

Form is crucial in many of the exercises that you will be doing. Many people do not have the right form when they perform a squat. To do this, but a bench underneath you before you squat. Then bend your knees until your butt touches the bench.

To avoid straining your neck when you are doing crunches or other abdominal exercises, try putting your tongue against the roof of your mouth. This will help you keep your head properly aligned while you exercise, which will reduce the strain on your neck. If your neck starts to hurt, stop right away.

Run with fully inflated lungs to help with endurance and speed. Your legs, as well as the rest of your body, need the maximum amount of oxygen they can get, especially when you are exercising. Make sure that you are pulling enough air into your lungs to make your belly push out.

Try to reduce the amount of stress you have in your life. Find a nice relaxing place and maybe take a break from your work out and try and meditate or do some yoga. This will really help your fitness routine, and your body will love you for it.

Using a treadmill to warm up before exercises is not effective. It is not stretching out the muscles you will be using during your workout routine. Instead, hold on to a bar and two sets of ten repetitions each of the bent- over row, squats and deadlifts. These will stretch the proper muscles.

A great way to motivate yourself to keep up with your fitness is to track your results. About once a month, weigh yourself, and take all your measurements to see how much you have improved since you started. This is good because you will see actual tangible results of your accomplishments.

Ricky sayegh md Proficient tips provider. For a better workout, make sure to keep your wrists bent when you to bicep exercises. Your wrist should be positioned backward while you do your biceps curls. It might feel odd at first but you'll get accustomed to it.

To improve your fitness, get a workout partner. Once the burst of enthusiasm for a new fitness routine wanes, it is easy to find reasons to skip workouts. If someone else is expecting you to show up, though, you are more likely to follow through. So find a friend with a similar fitness level and buddy up.

Pay attention to your food intake. Learn about what kind of food is healthy and plan ahead of time, just what you will eat for each meal. Shop accordingly and take the time to cook. A healthy food intake will help you lose weight and build up your body through fitness.

Ricky sayegh md Proficient tips provider. Whether it's to look or feel good, changing your body is also a key part of staying on top of your health. If you want to live a long, happy life with your loved ones, building muscle and staying in shape will help you achieve your goals, so use what you've read here to change your life.

#ricksayeghmd

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jesawyer · 7 years

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Balance in Single-Player CRPGs

Someone on twitter asked me this question and I think it’s worth answering in a longer form than twitter allows. I’ve already answered this question in brief and in video form at various points, but I think it’s important to address here:

Something that bothered me from PoE was the constant updating to classes and races to balance them. Did you guys worry about this>

In Baldur's Gate I or II or even the Icewind Dale series? I mean really who cares if one class is OP or Race or Hybrid class? >>

You guys are making a single-player RPG not an MMO or game with a online multiplayer component.

Variants of this question are common in single-player CRPG circles. The implication is that balance is important in an MMO/multiplayer environment but it is not important (or so much less important that it doesn’t merit addressing in patches) in a single-player CRPG.

I would like to repudiate this in two general ways: 1) I will argue that overall balance is important and valuable for players in single-player CRPGs 2) I will argue that individual CRPG players and CRPG communities overall do not present consistent objections to tuning and this undermines the general complaint. It is not the responsibility of individuals or communities to be consistent in their feedback, but it is the job of the designer to design, which means considering the needs of the audience by listening to and interpreting feedback on a broader scale.

Yes, Balance is Important in Single-Player CRPGs

I think it’s easy enough to make the first point through reductio ad absurdum: why not give AD&D fighters 1d4 hit points per level, a worse THAC0 than wizards, and worse saving throws than any other class? Obviously it’s because playing them would feel terrible. Why don’t we give all of the enemies attacks that do 1-3 damage, a quarter of the hit points of the PCs, and rock-bottom defenses? Because playing through that would feel boring for anyone who had the slightest interest in combat content and systems.

Some may say, “Hey, no one is arguing that balance isn’t important at all,” but in fact that is what many people directly say or suggest. Maybe they don’t really mean it (which I will get to later), but that is often what comes up. If we can agree that some degree of balance is important, then there’s no point in suggesting anything to the contrary and we’re really just debating to what degree is balance important and worth a) design consideration pre-launch and b) patching.

In my view, balance in a single-player CRPG is important to the extent that it allows players making different character and gear choices to be viable through the content of the game. It is always important to remember that system design (including class, race, ability/spell, and item design) is one part of the equation. Content makes up the other big part (setting aside UI/UX for purposes of this discussion).

When our area and system designers build encounters, they have to be built around an understanding of party capabilities: their overall statistics, their available gear, their consumable items, and their various abilities. In a traditional D&D-style CRPG, this spectrum of possibility gets wider and wider the higher the levels get and the more gear becomes available to the player. The less balanced individual choices are from level to level and item to item, the more difficult it is for area designers to design content that works for a spectrum of choices.

It Was Actually a Problem in the Infinity Engine Games

One of the questions was, “Did you guys worry about this in... even the Icewind Dale series?” Well, no. I certainly didn’t worry about it in the original Icewind Dale. I assumed everyone who picked up the game was as conversant as me in AD&D 2nd Ed/Forgotten Realms rules and lore, had played hundreds of hours of it in tabletop with similarly aggressive psychogamers, and had weathered fair but diabolically brutal DMs whose scenarios demanded quick thinking and ruthless min-maxing tactics.

You might not believe the number of Black Isle QA testers (and developers) who yelled or cried in anger, virtually or in person, about how difficult some of the IWD scenarios were. One in particular was the Idol/priest fight in Lower Dorn’s Deep. I had a tester hootin’ and hollerin’ about how it was “impossible”, how he had tried to beat it for two hours and couldn’t make any progress. It was a scenario that I and my office mate (Kihan Pak) both beat on the first try.

On Heart of Winter, Burial Isle practically split QA in half. One half thought it was a cakewalk. The others acted like they were being forced to dive into a swimming pool full of razor blades.

The dividing factor was system mastery. AD&D 2nd Edition (and 3E) are systems with a boatload of trap choices, inherently bad builds, garbage spells/feats, and generally inferior options. They’re not presented as inferior options to the player. They’re presented as options... that turn out to be implicitly awful even in the best circumstances. To the next part of the question, “I mean really who cares if one class is OP or Race or Hybrid class?” The answer is, “The person being brutalized by content designed for the OP classes/races because they picked the ‘bad’ option.”

The broader that spectrum of choices is for players, the more difficult it is to design content that will be at a similar level of challenge for those players given any given combination of choices within that spectrum. And to restate what I wrote before, the balance is mostly important to the extent that viability, i.e., the ability to get through the content, is supported. BG, BG2, IWD, and IWD2 often failed that test. Once viability is addressed, I’m not particularly concerned about balance.

Tuning Down High-Powered Outliers

The exceptions are abilities and items that are so incredibly powerful across the board that it’s almost impossible to make any content challenging with them in play. If we design content to be challenging with those abilities/items in mind, any players who lack those abilities and items will effectively be crit path blocked. Their game has either ended or become so incredibly difficult that it’s no longer enjoyable. And if we don’t design content with the overpowered abilities and items in mind, any player who coincidentally or intentionally uses those items effectively no longer has any challenge going through the game. It becomes an unlabeled Easy difficulty slider rendering all other options/choices irrelevant.

In those cases, I advocate reducing the power of the abilities/items so players don’t trip over “Hey I guess I win” options and our testers can still use them in playthroughs and give meaningful feedback. There is one salient example I can think of: sniper rifles in Fallout: New Vegas. In Fallout 3, Bethesda had given sniper rifles a x5 crit rate modifier. Keep in mind that any attack from stealth (e.g. shooting an unaware target with a sniper rifle from long range) is automatically a crit. The x5 multiplier made even standard/close range combat shots have an incredibly high chance of critting. I didn’t notice that sniper rifles had that multiplier and it didn’t come up in testing prior to release. In release, players noticed it quickly and sniper rifles became the de facto way to handle most encounters. Why use a 12.7mm SMG or hunting pistol when any shot from a sniper rifle was likely to crit and do 90+ damage?

In one of the first patches, I reduced the crit rate multiplier to x2. There was initially a lot of complaining about it, as there always is when anything is tuned down, no matter how overpowered, but the sniper rifle retained its role and continues to be used in that role. It’s a sniper rifle. It’s good at sniping. It doesn’t need to be great at close range.

Inconsistent Player Feedback

There is one trend about player feedback regarding tuning that’s hard to argue against: communities generally complain about tuning anything down but applaud (or at least do not complain about) tuning things up. I can tune up 10 things in a patch and detune one thing and will hear far more feedback about the one thing that was detuned, no matter how marginal or necessary that detuning was. If there’s negative feedback about tuning something up, it’s usually because players feel it needs to be tuned up more.

In Patch 3.03 for Pillars of Eternity, Matt Sheets and I tuned up seven rogue abilities, five barbarian abilities, and a variety of other spells and abilities. Players generally seemed to like this, though some wished the rogue abilities had been tuned up more.

In Patch 3.04, the soulbound dagger The Unlabored Blade had a bug fixed where its 10% Firebug proc was never firing. Two weeks later, Patch 3.05 reduced the 10% proc to 3%. This was a change I had requested for 3.04 but it had been overlooked. I requested the change because daggers have a fast attack rate and that dagger has a +20% attack rate enchantment.

Which set of changes do you think I heard more feedback about? If you guessed the marginal drop in proc rate on the soulbound item that had only worked properly for two weeks, you’d be right. The rogue and barbarian changes affect far more players and more significantly, but “loss” (even if imagined for most players) weighs more heavily.

Despite having a reputation for only detuning, I tuned many more abilities and items up in PoE patches (and in F:NV patches, as well as the JSawyer mod) than down. Players remember the losses more than the gains, but both are a necessary part of the tuning process.

I could abstain from tuning, but I don’t think most players would benefit from that. Players remember early Diablo 3 tuning as particularly bad, but the game at launch (especially the economy and itemization) was poorly balanced, as Travis Day elaborated on in his 2017 GDC talk. In the long term, Diablo 3′s economy and itemization today are much better than they were at launch and I believe most players benefit from and appreciate that. Even if you effectively never played D3 as a multiplayer game, you still benefit from that.

I don’t expect players or communities to be consistent in their feedback, but as the director and, in many cases, the lone system designer, I have to make decisions on more than just the volume of feedback on any particular topic. Changes that make bad options better are almost universally good. Changes that make overpowered options worse are often still a good idea if I believe more players will benefit from the change. I didn’t hesitate to reduce the Petrified damage bonus from x4 to x2 in Pillars of Eternity because that affliction was far and away the best way to deal with difficult encounters, either through the Gaze of the Adragan spell or trap.

I Will Tune Again

Just to make this clear, while there will always be a point where I stop tuning a particular game, I’m never going to stop using patches as an opportunity to balance items, abilities, classes, encounters, enemies, etc. I’ve been house-ruling and tuning games since I noticed trap options and OP garbage in 2nd Edition AD&D in middle school. I re-wrote 5th Edition Ars Magica’s certamen system because it’s a cool idea that’s really uninteresting in play. I re-wrote Pathfinder/3.X’s armor system because, as many players have noted, it doesn’t actually provide many interesting options.

If I think players will benefit from adjusting the rules or the content and there’s an opportunity to make those changes, I’m going to do it. I certainly don’t expect players to like all of the changes I make, but if you object to the idea of post-launch balancing, you should probably never play any of the games I direct. I’m always going to tune them, if possible.

Thanks for reading.

Portrait by Jason Seow.

#game design #pillars of eternity #fallout #fallout new vegas #fallout 3 #icewind dale #baldurs gate

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campmurderparty · 5 years

Photo

MEET ALISON,

BIOGRAPHY,

trigger warnings: disappearance of a family member, presumed death, alcoholism

Ewan had never been a warm man, but he began to smell more like drink until Alison became convinced his father was bathing in it. His mother, cheerful and happy to greet every day with a smile, closed off tighter than Eileen’s bedroom door. The brothers no longer fought inside the house, instead avoiding it all together as if it was infected with the plague, and more talk came from them about moving out as soon as they graduated–or likely dropped out of–high school. The river of the MacClean family soon dried up after two more came, mother already pregnant with Cian by the time Eileen disappeared, and the next was what most in town (sometimes even Alison) though of as the replacement. Their claims became even more emboldened when their new baby was a little girl, the second girl to ever be born from Bedelia and now the only girl, and became concrete when Grandmother Connelly proclaimed Isla to be Eileen’s reincarnated soul.

❝ i could, so easily, let my heart back inside this burning house. ❞

CENSUS,

FACECLAIM › Harris Dickinson AUTHOR › Admin Rachel

0 notes

nothisis-ridiculous · 7 years

Text

Proxy Cosmos- Andromeda

(An alternate reality where Alec Ryder lived, and both twins were awake during the events of Andromeda.)

Chapter One:

The Hyperion hummed to life, lights and the first breaths awakening the crew from a six hundred and some years long journey. What was once a dark and dead ship burst into a sudden flurry of life, pounding feet and racing hearts preparing for a new start. The most notably active room of the ship was the med bay, where the first explorers to awaken from cryo. An Asari and a couple human doctors split themselves between the patients, working over each one in a quick but thorough manner: a few lines of conversation and a scan to read vitals.

Elsee glanced across the aisle at her brother being questioned by the Asari (Lexi? wasn't it?) curious as to his impression of waking up, but not feeling bold enough to bring up the conversation for herself. She wanted to remark on how she always was a minute ahead of him, but it seemed inappropriate at the time. He would not like being called out in front of this many strangers, so Elsee waited.

"So, how does it feel to finally be in Andromeda?" The patient beside her asked, his British accent thick in his speech. His gentle nudge waking her completely.

"I'll tell you once I don't feel so popsicle-ish," she murmured. Her brother's gaze turned to look at both of them.

The man chuckled, "one of the many things the brochure does not cover."

"Yeah, that might be bad P- OUF!"

Andromeda was off to a rough start.

======

Scott's eyes kept pinned on the door, watching, tapping, waiting to see if Elsee would show. Dad already had left and reentered the room several times over the course of an hour. True to his nature he said nothing, only leaving with an agitated shake of his head and a flex of fingers before they balled into a fist.

Another hour passed, and Alec's fist clapped on his shoulder.

"Scott, I don't think-"

"Did you even expect her to show up?"

His grip tightened, "Your mother wouldn't want the Ryder family to be divided."

"Maybe you," no, you was unfair- it was just as much him, "should have considered that before you screamed at her."

"She wasn't taking training seriously." Still, Alec was slow to see that he could be wrong.

"Have you ever taken her seriously?"

Alec's face knotted, a slow scowl crossing his lips, "Now this is entirely my fault? Your temper also has-"

"Well, I got my temper from you," Scott interrupted, "and she got your stubbornness. So I guess us Ryders are just fucked."

"Scott-" but Alec found his words stuck.

"Yeah, keeping saying nothing like you usually do," he huffed, pulling away from his father. It was desperate, but he found himself at the windowsill hoping that his sister would appear. "She has a life here, Dad. Friends, maybe even a lover. We don't have anything keeping us here, hell if anything we are being chased out. But maybe Elsee is better off here; we should accept that."

Alec grimaced, he knew it wouldn't be safe much longer, "Have you tried calling her?"

"Dad-," he sought to control the hiss, "she wouldn't pick up."

"You haven't tr-" Alec always regretted pushing Scott to this point.

"Dad!" Scott whirled away from the window, "You should have tried years ago! I should have tried years ago. We both needed to be there when mom died, but we decided it was easier to run away. Not to mention the alienation act you-"

His turn for interruption was not from Alec, but the door opening behind him. Elsee's lower lip tucked under her teeth, sensing that she had just walked into something that she should not have. With both of the men unexpectedly turning to look at her, she grew mortified.

"I'm so-, I was... am late," she stuttered.

Their father's grin just etched her former expression deeper into her face.

======

Andromeda was a hell hole.

Or, at least Habitat Seven was.

The shuttle ride was certainly meant to be among the least of their worries, but as it tore apart in the wind like wet paper the hope of a smooth ride to the planet faded. The jump jet malfunction was just an added bonus, leaving Elsee and Scott screaming for their lives. The mountain approached quickly.

It had ended a bit happier than a hard collision with the ground. Elsee's helmet had suffered a crack, but it left them little worse for wear. Even Liam, the fellow she had briefly spoken to on the Hyperion had shown up again. But that was the end of their luck, in regards to what was on the planet.

The lightning storms were manageable if one watched for the rocks that floated before it struck. The mysterious enemies were far from a creature of myth but went down between the three of them without much of a struggle (after First Contact Protocol had been followed). It could be a pleasant place for a summer home.

They found the shuttle their father had taken, to end up in another fight with the bone covered creatures. Gaining Cora just before the short jaunt to Alec's nav point. The old marine surveyed the movements of the beings below, eyes darting between the scattered lightning rods. Barely turning to greet the party behind him.

"Who are these guys?" Cora questioned Ryder Sr.

"Visitors, just like us. I don't think they're native to the planet."

"They're not. We found an abandoned lab like they've been studying the place," Elsee injected.

"Good work, you actually did some scouting."

It was likely meant as a compliment, but she never saw her father meaning it, so a slightly sarcastic response was in order, "wouldn't be much of a recon specialist if I didn't."

"Well, you're off to a good start," his chuckle was deceptive.

"Baptism by fire," stealing his words was sufficient. Scott's hand grazed her elbow, calming whatever was left below.

Cora intervened, returning the subject to the weather and the enemies below them. Alec had set charges around the rods to even out the math, yes it meant they could get hit but thinning out enemies was worth the risk. Her father had already decided these Aliens were the enemy, so who was she to fight it? With a team as large as the one gathered and with the help of SAM, storming the ancient structures would be easy.

Alec was a force of nature all unto himself, burning and cleaving his way through the enemy forces with an ease that left the sibling Ryders quite jealous. The small team behind him seemed only to slow him down, rather than help his steam roll through the strange structure. Within minutes they stood before a door that was unlike the rest of the structure surrounding it- matching closely to the strange tower swirling with clouds and lightning above them.

"Scott, I need your help over here! We need to get this door open," of course, calling for Scott above all others.

"On it," he replied obediently, putting his back into lifting the heavy door.

"Do you really think we can shut this thing down," Scott questioned.

"I don't know yet, SAM's decoded part of the language," trying in his way to reassure the Ryder less comfortable with taking risks, "Now we'll see if I can have a conversation."

"I think we should wait for the shuttle, just in case," he cautioned, causing Alec to give that thought pause, so Scott finished the thought, "if it blows we'll be out of luck. It would suck to get this far just to be killed by the security system."

"We have enough firepower to hold this position," Liam chimed it, "sir."

Alec's face skewed, weighing the risks and benefits of reacting rashly to waiting for a safer plan. Liam was right, and so was Scott. Pushing unknown technology was asking for trouble, but they would have never breached the Charon Relay if it had not been for brash action- but then again, it had started an entire war. Not the best start for his family.

"SAM, start translating," deciding on waiting for the evac shuttle to be en route, "Elsee, what can your Prothean expertise tell us about this?"

She jumped from her investigation of the strange aliens, leaving it behind with a last look. Truth be told, she would rather be studying the corpse than looking at strange glyphs. She was trained in biology, not archeology- or whatever this could be considered. The little evidence they had pointed to these aliens being responsible, but just as much evidence pointed away from them as well. It was frankly too early to have any real grasp.

Walking into the small room did little else but daunt her- the glowing blue triangles throwing all theories out of the window.

"Indexing," SAM announced.

"I don't see much correlation to the alien structure around the- this structure- the styles are opposing. A scan of the earlier site I found dated one of these structures to be three to four hundred years old, but the base we just fought through is only a few decades old at most," Elsee gathered what little she had hypothesized, "the newcomers style is circular, while the settlers or civilization that created this were more geometric. I don't think they are the same group, but you already figured that."

Alec nodded.

"Unless they felt the need for complete aesthetic difference from their ancestors because even the stark difference of color could indicate-"

Scott made a loud snore, interrupting the further musing of his sister. Alec rolled his eyes.

"Translation complete," SAM's interruption ending any possible conflict.

Alec cleared his throat, "Let's see what we have." Approaching the display beside his daughter.

"Nothing on this planet has listened so far. Just... be careful."

"Worried about your old man, huh?," He snickered, "I won't tell anyone."

Elsee huffed, her attempt to turn away stopped by her father, gently grabbing her hand.

"Come on, these are the moments that make it all worthwhile."

Rather than lifting his hand to the display, he guided his daughter's upward. Letting her interface with the alien tech. He had made his own first discovery for the textbooks; he was willing to let his daughter have this one. Releasing his grip once SAM started to interface with the display, and turning to walk out of the room the bright blue lights silhouetting his departure.

"I'll be damned... it's working!" Scott called to his father, holding his hand at his brow to shield from the suddenly piercing sunlight, "We did it!"

"There's hope atleast."

"And our shuttle, for sure," Scott commented with a smirk, "this is turning out better-"

No, Scott- optimism was never a good color on him. As the world took a three sixty on him, sending him flying off the edge of the platform in a rush of fog. His sister's screaming rising above the rest of the sounds he could not pinpoint. It was instinctual, after all, hearing the screams of his closest friend above all others. Finding his body reaching out to find that sound, even after it had ended. Panicking when he found the sound transformed into gasping and sputtering.

Forcing his body to cooperate he stumbled to the smaller figure of his sister clawing through the dirt. Face plate exposed and open, beyond what the Omni-tool could manage to fix. Her muted brown eyes looking at him in worry, knowing this would be the end. Her first experience breathing in this air had already warned both of them to the dangers of breathing in the air.

Why did she always play hero? If only she hadn't pushed him from tumbling down the mountainside. Sometimes, he thought, she took the role of big sister too seriously. Made too many rash decisions just to protect a little brother that did not always need it.

"Scott! Scott! The shuttle!" Alec's voice came with a sharp shove, toppling him out of the path to his daughter. Picking her up with with a surprisingly gentle motion, his face etched in a worry that Scott had not witnessed for years.

"Run, boy!" Alec worked toward the unthinkable, removing her helmet as the first step. "Run, like our lives depend on it."

#alec ryder #ryder #mass effect andromeda #female ryder #male ryder #procos

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geraldinesnell · 7 years

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5am thoughts in February 2017

**ADDENDUM; pervaded by sneering inner voice of depression, hyper-aware of my privilege, just trying to exorcise some of this internalised authority/capitalist bullshit and someone else might find it cathartic to read or identify with, perhaps, maybe, it’s worth it if so. ALSO there is a better way to DO we need to be aware and vigilant but not to the point of following the ins and outs of it all and burdening ourselves to the point of illness or debilitation, accept chaos but also accept that we CAN resist but we have to do it together and we have to be well**

Defeat << LOL don’t be so melodramatic you depressive shit! Easy for you to say, in any case.

Art?! What good is art right now? The stakes are too high. Step up, step out of the bubble. Echo chamber fuckin fuckheadz (see video below for comic relief); we’re all being played. Data streams and like-like enclaves have so much to answer for.

youtube

But then depression gives you a false sense of insight, AND doom!! That deep grief feeling is here anyway, whether the world is burning or not, find comfort in that, if nothing else…

You say to friends:

What can we do?

Thinking about number one, what if that money you managed to save up becomes worthless?

War time is a possibility in our lifetime! Imagine being a refugee!! THIS IS STILL HAPPENING IN 2017, just not to privileged complacent fuckheadz like us. *yet*

Is it a case of resisting or escaping? And what about those who aren’t able to escape?

And what if we can’t escape because the world is nuked?

You suppose if you care about all this then you’re not really depressed? Or the opposite; this degree of caring, this compulsion to burden and guilt-trip yourself with it is the epitome of some grand depressive strategy your brain has invented to fuck yourself over with even though you’re perfectly able and capable. There you go again - BRAIN! As if it’s limited to your brain and not your whole being ‘lol’.

Protests, when represented in the news, just become a soundbite; lefty luvvies with nothing better to do causing a nuisance disrupting shit with their social justice crusades. ‘Suddenly everyone is an expert on politics’ TROLLFACE.

ARGH

IS there a plan? Are far right religious nuts in government actually religious or do they just know that the ONLY way to get people behind them enough for them to do whatever they want in terms of handing the whole state over to corporate / capital interests is to drum up this war of ideologies Christian crusade / general extreme divide and rule bullshit? Like, is Steve Bannon actually a Christian? Does Donald Trump actually think women shouldn’t be able to have abortions? Of course not!!! It’s likely he’s paid for many fuckin abortions for women he’s knocked up (I don’t even want to think about this). It’s likely maybe that one of his daughters has had an abortion. They will all indulge in ultimate ‘vices’ (WHY THESE STUPID MORAL STANDARDS IT’S 2017 FFS!!!!) behind closed doors, putting on the respectable stiff suited righteous-pious WHITE-SUPREMACIST MISOGYNIST public persona. This is all about rich white dudes cementing their rule of the world, and creating and exploiting religious fervour is really the only way to gain ultimate control.

Maybe the middle ground wasn’t so bad after all…

Can’t there be a way to divide and rule which isn’t so extreme, so white-supremacist patriarchal bullshit?

Although Joe Stillwater made an astute point about America and white priv: ‘The culture of “the flaying of backs; the chaining of limbs; the strangling of dissidents; the destruction of families; the rape of mothers; the sale of children" (Ta-Nehisi Coates) still sits beneath this place. It's not gone, only just rearing its head again. We thought that maybe it's gone, or at least, those of us who aren't black. Those of us that are black know that shit isn't true. Time for those of us that aren't black to look harder at that nasty turd of deep cast racism (now embodied by a tangerine), and ask yourself where that beast lives within you, and if you can eradicate it now that it lives again in the light.’

Some will read this and think, “what is she on about, that’s America. We’re Britain, it’s not even our concern or fight.” (Never mind our government’s complicity and the indications that we’re going the same way, never mind their current policies and strategies of divide and rule) Those that don’t see the bigger picture…

You console yourself by looking at this chart; at this particular bigger picture. But humanity is showing no signs of pressing pause, of consciously re-evaluating its (lack of) purpose and strategically bringing about the fluid mode. You think this chart is very optimistic. You think of all those conversations among similarly-educated friends and peers about the world and how it’s lovely that you are all so optimistic and utopian in your thinking. Like, it’s 2017! Let’s all get our shit together, press pause and plan out how this can play out in a way that benefits everyone, not just the elite. How sweet!

You’ve gotta block it out, you’ve gotta save your spoons. you’ve gotta just take it one day at a time and not weigh yourself down with all this, because you’re no good to the cause if you’re ill-ill.

“Just don’t think about it.”

“Capitalism has won”

“You can only do your bit”

“You’re fuckin deluded, it’s not your job to save the world, stop reading articles!!”

“There’s every indication that the world is descending into fascism, that the elite are turning everyone against each in order to stabilise their hegemony. But it’s happened before, we’ve been relatively lucky so far in our lifetimes. But there’s nothing you can do about it on your own, and there’s nothing you can do if you’re ill”

World is a fuck and it doesn’t owe you SHIT

You say --- what about the Dadaists, didn’t they all go to Zurich and sit in cafes acknowledging and exploring the utter fuckin absurdity of it all, albeit whilst adopting equally daft nihilist stances, but, can’t we all just escape? --- YEAH BUT THEY mostly all FOUGHT IN WORLD WAR 1, AND THEN THEY SAID FUCK THIS SHIT, YOU GOT YOUR PRIORITIES WRONG, WORLD, FUCK YOUR IMPERIAL MONEY-DRIVEN WAR THAT YOU SHROUD WITH NATIONALISM TO JUSTIFY SENDING A WHOLE GENERATION OF MEN TO AN EARLY GRAVE in the trenches of France --- yeah but we don’t have to fight a hollow, horrific war to know that it’s absurd and not the answer! We already know there is no answer, but that we need to proactively structure the world with that in mind, in a way that distributes wealth fairly!

“Fuck the world before it fucks you”

“Life isn’t fair”

The world is a hostile place, but you knew that already because you’re aware. People say: is it really that much worse? All this shit was going on anyway, it was just covert, systematic, embedded, institutionalised, the ‘DEEP STATE’. But it is worse, it’s tangibly worse for many real fuckin people who are being continuously dehumanised and scapegoated at best, abused, deported or worse at worst.

Maybe you should get laser eye surgery for the ‘pok-ee-lipz

Maybe you should go to sleep (oh wait, you did, you switched off at 5pm after accomplishing work and avoiding the news, you got pissed and did a bit of shaking and you sang your songs and made time for yourself and drew without it having to be ‘work’. Then you woke up at 4am with your mind racing, and you tried to sleep, but you knew you had to come and write. Now you’re here. Go back to bed, rest, be well. You’re no good to anyone when you’re ill.

youtube

#world #2017 #politics #depression #writing #thoughts #personal #america #trump #brexit #data streams #algorithms #art #war #systems #meaningness #philosophy #ethics #bigpicture #ill #spoon theory

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southboundhq · 4 years

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MEET ALISON,

BIOGRAPHY,

trigger/content warnings: disappearance of a family member, presumed death, alcoholism

Ewan had never been a warm man, but he began to smell more like drink until Alison became convinced his father was bathing in it. His mother, cheerful and happy to greet every day with a smile, closed off tighter than Eileen’s bedroom door. The brothers no longer fought inside the house, instead avoiding it all together as if it was infected with the plague, and more talk came from them about moving out as soon as they graduated–or likely dropped out of–high school. The river of the MacClean family soon dried up after two more came, mother already pregnant with Cian by the time Eileen disappeared, and the next was what most in town (sometimes even Alison) thought of as the replacement. Their claims became even more emboldened when their new baby was a little girl, the second girl to ever be born from Bedelia and now the only girl, and became concrete when Grandmother Connelly proclaimed Isla to be Eileen’s reincarnated soul.

❝ i could, so easily, let my heart back inside this burning house. ❞

CENSUS,

FACECLAIM › Harris Dickinson AUTHOR › Admin Rachel

#( bing bong. )

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leonorakidd93 · 4 years

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claremal-one · 4 years

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What Trump Could Learn From NASCAR

Like so many institutions in American life, the sport was grappling with what its place would be in a more diverse county and culture.

He forgot that most of the country requires a modicum of plausible deniability in its dog whistles.

from Clare Malone – FiveThirtyEight https://ift.tt/2X5fSWr via https://ift.tt/1B8lJZR

#clare malone #clarethings

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investmart007 · 6 years

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TEHRAN, Iran | Iran weighs response as US sanctions bite

New Post has been published on https://is.gd/94Ahfk

TEHRAN, Iran | Iran weighs response as US sanctions bite

TEHRAN, Iran — As Iranians awoke Tuesday to renewed U.S. sanctions that had been lifted by Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers, the question on everyone’s mind remained: What happens now?

From deciphering President Donald Trump’s tweets on Iran — including one demanding “WORLD PEACE” — to trying to figure out how much their cratering currency is worth, Iranians on the streets appear divided on how to respond.

The same goes for inside its theocratic government. President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate, has taken an increasingly confrontational line in recent weeks, applauded by the hard-liners who had long opposed him. Meanwhile, Rouhani seemed to suggest on live television the night before that direct talks with Trump could be possible — something of which North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-hu, who visited Tehran on Tuesday, has personal experience.

Whether Iran should choose a Singapore-style photo-op with the American president who backed out of the nuclear deal or abandon the unraveling accord and increase its uranium enrichment remains a fiercely debated question. But everyone agrees something has to be done soon, as sporadic, leaderless protests across the country of 80 million people only add to the pressure.

“Their sanctions are very effective, as you can see, the government should find a solution,” said Mahmoud, a 62-year-old former civil servant who only gave his first name. “They should first solve domestic problems because people are really drowning in poverty and misery.”

The newly imposed American sanctions target U.S. dollar financial transactions, Iran’s automotive sector, and the purchase of commercial planes and metals, including gold. Even-stronger sanctions targeting Iran’s oil sector and central bank are to be re-imposed in early November.

As uncertainty over the Iran nuclear deal grew after Trump entered the White House, Iran’s already-anemic economy nosedived. The country’s monthly inflation rate has hit double digits again and the national unemployment rate is 12.5 percent. Among youth, it is even worse, with around 25 percent out of a job.

Iran’s currency, the rial, now trades over double its government-set rate to the U.S. dollar. Trying to stem the loss, the Iranian government five months ago shut down all private currency exchange shops, but the black market has thrived.

On Tuesday, however, new central bank chief Abdolnasser Hemmati allowed private currency exchanges to reopen. Shops welcomed customers, though some displayed no exchange rates late into the morning amid confusion over how much the troubled rial was truly worth.

“The situation is not good right now; nothing is clear,” said carpenter Ebrahim Gholamnejad, 41. “The economy is turning into a jungle.”

Iranian authorities recently arrested 45 people, including the central bank’s deputy chief, as part of a crackdown on financial fraud, according to judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehi.

On Tuesday, Iran’s state-controlled television aired a 30-minute documentary applauding the central bank’s new economic decisions. The hard-line Keyhan newspaper, which previously lampooned Rouhani, bore his picture on the front page with a large headline quoting him saying: “The way we can surpass all sanctions is to have unity.”

But what to do next remains an open question. Iran continues to abide by the 2015 nuclear deal it struck with the Obama administration and other world powers, which limits its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of sanctions, and makes it impossible for Iran to quickly develop a nuclear weapon. Iran has always said its nuclear program is entirely peaceful.

In recent weeks, Iran has prominently displayed its centrifuges and threatened to resume enriching uranium at higher rates. Rouhani, whose administration struck the deal, also has taken a harder line himself, at one point renewing a long-standing Iranian threat to close off the Strait of Hormuz, through which a third of all oil traded by sea passes.

Trump for his part has ricocheted between threats and promises to speak with Iranian officials without preconditions, offering mixed messages to both the Iranian public and its government. That continued Tuesday, as he described American actions in a tweet as “the most biting sanctions ever imposed, and in November they ratchet up to yet another level.”

“Anyone doing business with Iran will NOT be doing business with the United States,” he wrote. “I am asking for WORLD PEACE, nothing less!”

Though Iranians already are angered by Trump putting their nation on his travel ban list, some say talks with the American president might be necessary. Others insist that Iran, which has weathered decades of previous sanctions, should stand its ground.

“I believe America cannot do a damn thing,” said Farzaneh, a 54-year-old housewife who declined to give her last name out of privacy concerns. “It can’t do anything, because Iranians are backing each other.”

Direct talks with the U.S. also would challenge the Islamic Republic leadership, which for nearly 40 years has encouraged flag-burning demonstrations against “the Great Satan.” On Tuesday, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-hu visited Tehran and met its leadership. It’s unclear what he discussed with them, though he was involved in Pyongyang’s Singapore talks with Trump.

For now though, Iranians say they can only wait for the next Trump tweet or their government’s decision on how to respond.

“People should just keep calm, because the other party wants to disrupt our peace,” said Gholamnejad, the carpenter. “America, who imposed the sanctions, wants to create chaos.”

By AMIR VAHDAT and MEHDI FATTAHI , Associated Press

#everyone's mind #Iran #Iran weighs #mind remained #President Donald Trump #Tehran #Tehran nuclear #TodayNews #trying to figure #U.S. sanctions #US sanctions bite #weighs response #WORLD PEACE

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