#people have zero internet literacy sometimes | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

broken-record-system · 1 month

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Welcome to our System Blog

Hello! :D

I’m guessing you found this one of two ways: you came from my main or AO3 blog, or you just found some random ass post of mine that we sent into the void that is Tumblr.

I have no idea what we’re going to post here, we just made this side blog a while ago in order to make sure no one stole our sys name (although I doubt they would but idk, stranger things have happened). Sometimes we just like to scream into the void and see if someone screams back. Also we have like- zero people we actually know that we’re comfortable talking about our experiences as a system so what better thing to do than to tell strangers on the internet?

Stuff About Us

We are a medically recognized DID system. Collectively we go by Puffs on the internet, we prefer they/them but any pronouns are fine. Transmasc enby, aroace, mentally and chronically ill on multiple levels, the whole shabang. The flag in our pfp is the cupioromantic flag.

We can and will use the block button to its fullest extent. We use the internet to escape the shit that happens in our life, we don’t need it to follow us here. If someone is blocked by us and they don’t know why, they probably fall under any of our hard DNI and we found them before they found us. For safety reasons we like to block people we accidentally come across that we know for a fact are on our DNI to eliminate- or at least lessen- the chances of interacting with them in the future. We don’t keep track of everyone we block, we just kind of do. It can be from a post, a comment they made on someone else’s post, something they reblogged, something they liked, it could literally be anything. Unless it was from years ago and/or they’ve shown that they’ve changed and grown as a person, if they’ve shown that they’ve a /neg weirdo, we’re going to block you.

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Other Blogs

Main Blog: @caffeinated-creampuffs

System Blog: @broken-record-system

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Tag Masterlist

+Will update as we post more on here

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DNI + Userboxes under the cut

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Please Interact! +Other traumagenic systems (I hate using that word but it's what we have to do to keep the endos/endo supporters away on this site ig)

+Anyone not in my DNI. Like literally anyone. If you’re chill and happy to be here and vibe then I’m happy to vibe with you.

Thin Ice

+Antis of any fandom

+Anyone who joined fandom space in general after 2019 (I’m sure some of you are fine but I just don’t trust a lot of you)

+People who lack media literacy but want to/are open to learn

+People under the age of 16. I won’t post anything outright explicit or even suggestive but I’m 18 and going on 19, I just am not that comfortable interacting with anyone who’s more than a few years younger than me.

+Regular Twitter/Reddit posters, too much shit goes on there for me to properly trust any of you right off the bat

+Anyone who doesn’t know proper fandom etiquette.

DNI

+Basic DNI Criteria (homophobia/transphobia, racism, sexism, ableism, xenophobia, fatphobia, pedo/zoophilia, etc.). LIterally just don’t be a gross and/or shitty person

+People who still support “cringe culture” (you guys are fucking weird and not in the cool way)

+People who lack media literacy and refuse to learn

+Fetishizers of ANYTHING. I don’t care what it is.

+Endo “systems” and their supporters +Just to add, I don’t want any syscourse on any of my blogs. Arguments of any kind, even joking arguments, just generally make me uncomfy as hell

+Anti-furry/therian/neopronouns/xenopronouns/ageregre/anything that does not hurt anyone

+People who demonize or genuinely romanticize any kind of trauma disorder (Cluster-B, OSDD/DID, etc.). Someone just posting about how their life is with a disorder, whether good or bad, both or neither, does not count as romanticization.

+Anyone under the age of 13. Like I said I’m 18 and just don’t feel like interacting with anyone that much younger than me.

+r/FakeDisorderCringe / r/SystemCringe users. Please go touch grass, maybe pick up a book while you’re outside for the first time in god knows how long.

+AI “artists”

+Shitsreal supporters (I wish you a merry die) +THIS DOES NOT GIVE ANYONE THE EXCUSE TO BE ANTI-SEMETIC ON MY BLOG!!

REMEMBER THAT DNI GOES BOTH WAYS! If you break your own DNI to harass me I have no problem breaking mine to laugh at you.

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Our Userboxes

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Blog-Specific System Userboxes

#pinned intro #blog intro #introduction post #introducing myself #pinned post #actually did #endos fuck off #endos dni #this blog isn't for you go touch grass #actually dissociative

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visceralcoma · 2 years

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HAHAHAHAHAHAA. I JUST GOT THIS HILARIOUS ANON ASK! Guys! GUYYSSSS!!!

This is hilarious because google searches are based on what you’ve been googling recently. So if Encanto porn showed up, that means they were looking it up a ridiculous amount of times that google noticed the pattern. Because on a freshly installed browser, searching Encanto with safe search off, it’s like the 250th image that shows anything remotely racey. And even then, it’s a fanart of a character in a swimsuit. That’s not porn.

Sooo uhhh anon, you played yourself. Someone in your house or who has access to your computer has been looking up encanto porn. It’s Internet Literacy 101 to use incognito to search porn or clear your browser history of your porn. Also if your sister is a minor, then they should have been monitored while using the internet AND have safe search on. So that’s really on you and your parents/guardians for not protecting your sister.

Also gross on telling me to fuck my siblings. That’s disgusting to suggest a real person do that. In fiction people can write whatever they want because it’s fiction! It’s not real. I don’t write incest but I’m proship/profiction so I support people’s right to write it. It’s the written form of a telenovela. It’s an ages old plot device to add drama. So get over yourself nonnie.

#encanto fandom #proship #proshippers #tw: incest mention #people have zero internet literacy sometimes #pro fiction #profiction

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dahmer · 6 years

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strain germ

missed my thirtieth on here. what a tragedy writing, among all the arts, have become in the digi-age. with constant exposure to information, made up of people, behaviors, culture, and people’s behavior in cultures, the epiphanies and realizations that were once the great heights my favorite mid-century authors and artists (and those before them) would attempt to reach, i--and everyone else it seems sometimes--reach casually. on an almost daily basis. with a yawn. an universal sigh [ah we get you tkol, we always have]. i’m drawn to critical theory to bridge the gaps in public thought between empire states of mind that have already been long constructed, brick-by-brick made up of a postmodern scoff and distrust funds. i feel an inherit, almost maternal (not man-ternal--what a awful word+idea) to contextualize what once was, and what is, knowing the weight of understanding such a shift will take many a lifetime to understanding. there’s these one percents of many kinds. of minds, of energies, of theories, of lives. money is the least of the interesting, and the most vulnerable of the few.

this instinctual grasp at rebooting and regenerating everything from 90s culture--the final days before the digital age--is clear as glass in an attempt to resist, remind, or revolt the inevitable rehumanization in an electrate sea of startups and signals. how foolish was i to ever believe we were born in an advanced state of our species. the majority grip onto binary terminology--on to fallacious A/B-ing of everything--perpetuates this time capsule (generation) i’m trapped into from a ideological hyper-development stratosphere---illusions to blind us--to a reality of snugs and snailing along to just now inching towards the realization, upon instant connection allowed only be the digital age’s greatest child (the one that will kill their parents at 17) [fka internet], that a third option could be a reality. a third, fourth, spectrum-of-fluidity-based-fifth can, and always has been, apart of this absolute truth constructed in an age marked as ‘industry’--as if such a thing could ever put on a good revolution.

now we revolt in our digital revolution, where have relive the days of rewinding--in fashion, in music, in art. for those where the final days of literacy. and literacy dominated how art, fashion, music, film, and culture itself developed. structure itself was only ever made possibly by the limitations of language, and the printing-press literrati invited all the best art we’ve ever known, through the voices of criticism--for art and art critic will forever been essentially dependent on each other for survival, there is no time (it seems sometimes) to wipe and erase these preconceived notions that these practices--the practices of literacy, that have curated the most relevant centuries of man--have nearly become obsolete in electracy. in the shift from literate to electrate practices. when phones enabled the common man to become photographers, film directors, actors, artists, musicians, or even new forms of celebrated people acknowledged within (and solely by) the hands of electracy, yet the distinction and expectation still exists. i can’t think of something more deceiving than the online article. the illusion of journalism, replicating the physical, literate text--that would validate and cement any art (of audio, of colour, of visual, of movement)--only as a deception. in participatory culture, meaning the age of the internet, the moment of upload is the birth of the art, the artist, the critic, the crowd, and--the most troubling--the comment. for the comment is electracy’s greatest achievement, as of now. in our primitive years. genre’s death was anticipated by french post-structuralist, just as the limitations of language. but who knew the internet (something bubbling up in other buildings and burrows of the earth, as foucault and derrida wrote their never-to-be-known-as manifestos [in their life times]). the new languages, that of programming--that began as simple and gaudy and boring as mankind--as binaries. zeros and ones. look how fast the language of code--the digital language, that now dominates the current age, defined by electracy, just as literacy witness its final days in the sun in the great 1990s (an era that seems perpetually celebrated, re-birthed, rebooted, recreated, and returned too--as our collective subconscious efforts know this was the last time period were the tangible could be synonymous with ‘the real’--where reality was a physical manifestation.

look how fast the language of code, programming or otherwise, has departed from binaries. seeing their laughable simplicity in embarrassment and disgust. with the mouth-breeders debate over politician A or politician B. questioning: ‘am i a 0sexual, or 1sexual?’ debating the greatest theorists of all time only to boil them down into column 1 or column 2. pitting them against one another is civilization’s justification for appealing to the lowest common denominator. while the brilliant walk the street, in tattered clothes and houseless-homes, spewing out sonnets and symphonies in the bustling streets lit up by screens of all shapes and colors, swirling right past the few that could save humanity, but couldn’t afford it.

the burden of critical theory is not about theory at all. it is simply a starting point to enable a series of exercises and actions into practice. into shifting cognitions as fast and as fated as the digital shift sends us into a pit of hell, brought up with cheers and celebrations in the streets--all in the name of convenience. hurr-ay! hurr-ay! they’ll say, freeing themselves from thinking. artificial intelligence has lined the shelves of the bookstores in the streets of all the cities in the modern world for decades before i was even born into this, born as a pioneer in the digital revolution, where humanity will sink into a nice, comfortable de-evolution. hurr-ray! the words of science fiction tales warned again and again of a reality that’s far come to be. and we read it with our postmodern grins, hesitation within, smug from an endless array of choices, but ironically never being able to decide what to do. the only leaders and kings i know are the ones that can offer a decision for the self-induced helpless groups of the many. where to eat. what to do today. where to go. who to talk to. inability is not bleak, but you sure have to strip the science fictionists stationary to read ‘satires’ so we can all have a good laugh. there’s no purpose or point in fearing the birth of robots that have learned their own languages, secretly, independent from humans. these droids at facebook co. may have been caught, but others will come. and the lack of reaction (which, if anything, is the definitive disappointment of the digital age) that has already came to be, will continue. with a pretty political spin and a nice PR package, we’ll toast to the powers that boast of their techno-logic abilities--far beyond the hands that create them. hands still cuffed to late capitalism, and absolute truths based in binaries.

i meet zeros and ones everyday. it’s rare to meet a two. and unfair a three. if there’s only the powers that be. if only these powers you can see. the barriers have been broken. all men reset, all intelligent creatures able to amplify their voice to millions. no matter color of skin, thoughts within, family akin, amount of sin--the internet age invites participation for all. but if that’s not the most primitive accomplishment i’ve ever heard, i don’t know what could be more disappointing. like the industrial, the digital revolution will be made up of nothing but disillusion. to revolt is to conform. to agree to machine. for machine. by machine. with machine. forever. this is a beautiful world beyond here. beyond the physical space that we’ve raped and stripped of it’s natural beauty. beyond the languages of code and physics. but i’m afraid, unless i devise an exercise into practice, to break the literarte repetitions, so like gender performances, to evade the post-structural attempts at electrate life, this world will only be seen, in the dreams of the droids that deplete the last drop of diligence, during the final dash towards dystopia--a division of the digital divine.

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oliverphisher · 4 years

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Roland Harvey

At the Beach By Roland Harvey

Roland Harvey was born in Melbourne and have been creating books ever since I was a child. More than 60 of them are real books and you can even buy some of them in bookshops or on the internet.

He really enjoy watching people at work and at play. Many of the characters in his illustrations are based on people he had seen, and sometimes his friends find themselves doing strange things in his books. It’s their fault for being his friends.

He had always loved the outdoors and some of the scenes from At the Beach and In the Bush are from real life. He really did make kelp sandals like the ones in At the Beach for my son, James! As they dried, they shrank until they were just doll-size.

He think learning and laughter go together really well. That’s why He created Sick As and My Place In Space. He had lots of ideas for other books like them.

He is best known as an illustrator of children's books using pen, ink and watercolour. His works have been described as 'witty slapstick style' and 'characteristic humorous and detailed illustrations'.

What are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?

'The Eagle' magazine and compilation Eagle Annual which my father's family in England sent out for Christmas and birthdays after WW2, and a nature Annual called 'I Spy'.

The Eagle Starring Channing Tatum, Donald Sutherland, Jamie Bell, Mark Strong

Anything by Ronald Searle or Ralph Steadman,

'Titus Groan' by Mervyn Peake.

Titus Groan By Mervyn Peake

What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)?

The purchase of a stylus pen for my iPad Pro, and software 'Adobe Draw'.

How has a failure, or apparent failure, sand et you up for later success?

Barging in to Coles without an appointment with some little cards I had printed, thinking Coles would love to buy them. (Ha Ha!) Next day walked out of buyer's office with an order for 400 000 packs of Aussie Christmas cards. Next year 2 500 000 packs.

Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by?

I actually made this one up but later found Bob Dylan had already said it: "Life isn't about finding out who you are, or finding anything. It is about creating yourself".

What is one of the best investment in a writing resource you’ve ever made?

Aforementioned 'iPad Pro'. together with the Vector based 'Adobe Draw'. It became my notepad, sketchbook and idea development tool which even lets you backtrack and see a timelapse of your process. Magic.

What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?

Starting to sing when I stuff up badly. My dad used to sing in the trenches in WW1 and I got the same gene.

In the last five years, what new belief, behaviour, or habit has most improved your life?

Learning to trust my intuitive self. After much 'destruction testing' of course'. Unlock the genius! Ha.

What advice would you give to a smart, driven aspiring author? What advice should they ignore?

Read a lot of what you like. Write and draw in your own style, (which will change and develop over time) and if you are not happy with it don't let an editor change it - take a different approach, yourself. Although editorial input did pay off big time for Possum Magic...

What are bad recommendations for aspiring authors, that you hear in your often?

There are plenty of editors, friends, family, salesmen, etc who will want to own what you are doing. Beware. On the other hand, listen for the gems that sometimes peep around a corner in the gloom.

Beware also the enthusiastic "That's brilliant / hilarious" etc unless you know it is.

In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to (distractions, invitations, etc.)?

The bizarre expectation of doing everything for nothing or a measly government budget, being beaten down in price, or doing more than the original (probably bad) brief called for, for no extra. You can be sure they're not working for nothing.

What marketing tactics should authors avoid?

Agreeing to ridiculous out-of-your-depth engagements such as the Keynote speech at the Australasian Literacy Conference in W.A when you have zero qualifications in any of the subject areas. (I drew my way through it and it was ok.)

Say no to the Frankston Rotary Club Annual after dinner speech. They don't know what a kid's book is.

What new realizations and/or approaches helped you achieve your goals?

I realised that I don't really know how my mind works. I just have to let it off the leash and see what it does. Trust your intuition. And keep track of what it does. (That's where I'm finding the iPad to be great).

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do?

Have a change of scenery, run/walk/fish/play guitar. Drink. Look at the deadline written in the contract. Try something quite different, answer emails, make myself feel guilty about something so doing some work is a relief.

Any other tips?

Don't give up. Give yourself a secret pat on the back occasionally and learn to recognise people who are out to destroy your confidence. Get rid of them. Look back at your work occasionally and recognise stuff you really still like, and ask yourself "Have I strayed too far from what I do best?"

________

Enjoyed this Q&A? Want to discuss in more depth? Join Community Writers. You'll get access to 100+ exclusive writing tips. Q&As with successful authors, an exclusive ebook on building an audience and much more. Sign-up for free as a community writer here

source https://www.thecommunitywriter.com/blog/roland-harvey

#Writing WriteMotivation WritingAdvice

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atdmoney · 4 years

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Payday loans online from ATD Money- Bad Credit in India

Payday loan is a kind of remedy when someone is in pain of facing financial emergency and he needs urgent help or favor from banking institutions. Always people worry about their CIBIL score, sometimes borrowers live their life in the dark phase, and it means they always live in fear of not getting a loan again if their CIBIL count is lower than required.

Increase the long list of responsibilities always raise the need for more money in our daily life, and sometimes people end up with stuck in a trap.

Majorly, working professionals or a salaried person require payday loans in India, as they are full month working and sometimes get busy in grabbing a lifestyle, which they have dreamed of in their childhood. To manage a heavy lifestyle in this competition salaried persons spend their whole salary in managing their credits and bills. For example, as they receive a notification of their salary received, at very first hand they will pay their credit card bills, electricity bills, rent, EMI’s and more. In all these responsibilities their credit history or account balance goes to zero before next payday.

To reach your next salary date you need some extra money, and for that, you get surfing on internet and find about payday loan calculator, finally you fill some precise details and find that you are eligible for this much amount of loan.

After having a plus count in literacy rate in our population, everyone clearly knows about, Payday loans in India as a true friend when you need money during your bad days of no money in your pockets.

Pockets without money are just a very bad experience for someone who is regularly earning a stable amount, but everything is possible because we are human beings. Emergency in our life also raises the need for quick cash as you are going through a medical emergency and you need instant money without any delay. Then as a borrower, you should go for a payday loan app, as your best partner.

In our day-to-day life, the digital platform is also a major part of every common person's life, theses platforms not only give you fast access but also reduces the distance between demand and supply. For example, if you require instant payday loans then you have to just find the best mobile application and find the best payday mobile app with some silent features of giving you minimal documentation, quick disbursement, and low-interest rates. These fintech platforms like ATD Money will help you to get your loan quickly approved by filling some precise details about yourself.

The most primary and advance feature of the latest innovations in the finance sector is that anyone fulfills the conditions of getting a Payday loan in Delhi or across India, while you are having your CIBIL score zero or lower than required. This is the fact, your loan will still get a hundred percent approval in both the cases as discussed above.

#payday loans #salary loan #cashloan #Miniloan #Businessloan

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thecoroutfitters · 6 years

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Written by R. Ann Parris on The Prepper Journal.

Editors Note: Another article from R. Ann Parris to The Prepper Journal. Admit it, when you saw the title you thought this was about one of the Internets search engines. Alas, and thankfully, it is about something so much more important. If you have information for Preppers that you would like to share then enter into the Prepper Writing Contest with a chance to win one of three Amazon Gift Cards with the top prize being a $300 card to purchase your own prepping supplies!

Search and Rescue codes largely entered mainstream American awareness in the U.S. courtesy of massive hurricane disaster areas. We saw them before Katrina, although she brought them into American homes and still bears their scars, and sadly, we’ve seen them since and will likely continue to see them.

For preppers, there are two main reasons to understand the most common codes used to mark structures by teams in a disaster area.

One, there’s the counter-intel aspect. They can be used as camouflage, misleading others about our home or the entire area around our home – which can keep others from even getting close to us if applied properly.

*Be able to cover or remove markings especially if applied to a whole neighborhood in case a real disaster occurs and somebody is able to respond. If it looks like another unit checked the area or has done follow-up recently, they may assume SNAFU is in full effect and hop the block/road to work an area that hasn’t been covered yet.

Two, we can use them to gather intel should we find ourselves moving through a disaster area.

Let’s hit that “moving through” aspect, because there’s usually a lot of resistance there.

There are all kinds of reasons we might be out and about after a disaster, whether that disaster is what drove us out or we wander into the aftermath of a disaster while passing through.

Straight from the news: air, surface, and ground water contaminated by chemical spills from trains, factories, mines, and ships; housefires, wildfires, and droughts, which then exacerbate rain into floods and mudslides; upstream dams and levees failing; natural disasters kicking off fires, releasing previously contained toxins, cracking wells, tumbling houses, and wrecking cellars.

That’s not the what-if of a paranoid prepper.

That’s straight from the news.

Fires occur and spread daily – it’s why you have a fire department. Annually, monthly, weekly, we get things beyond our individual control, already causing people to relocate or find alternate resources even with all our technical advances in our nice, modernized nations.

That’s not the WROL (Without Rule of Law)/pandemic human-contact concerns, or the cooling tanks in nuclear plants steaming off over days or 2-20 years. It’s not droughts lowering water tables, animal plagues, or woods too emptied of trees or animal/plant foods to sustain another winter and spring. It’s not somebody traveling even “just” 30-100 miles from home before a disaster strikes.

Using just things that happen, pretty regularly, portions of the population are forced from homes that had seemed like perfect locations.

There are all kinds of reasons to include a Plan B (or C,D,E…) that involves traveling, and not always in nice, empty backcountry.

Being able to recognize what we’re seeing from either the “safe” resource site or avoidance perspectives while passing through is huge.

We can also plan to learn the CDC and HazMat codes that may become applicable even in our local neighborhoods.

Recognizing where we don’t want to be is one of the biggies for gaining International Search and Rescue Group – INSARAG literacy.

Lots of bodies, no marks for reclaiming them, disease is hella prevalent, pretty much guaranteed. I would rather not pick through a building that was already so questionable a search team opted not to press a full search. If it was already overrun by rats “then”, unless I’m desperate enough to eat them, I’d really rather hop well out of that neighborhood before we find a bed-down pocket.

We can learn lots of things when we know how to read INSARAG. The dates and updates alone can give us information about the area, human climate, and resource potentials.

Disaster Search Codes

In the U.S. we mostly use and see FEMA “X” codes – a circle divided into quadrants. Other NATO nations use a circled box.

There’s also a separate box that’s part of a three-tier structural integrity rating.

Take that with a grain of salt, because it’s “significant” hazards. Lesser risks that were no big deal in a mostly functional world can deliver a world of hurt if we’re already working with limited resources.

It’s also being assessed by teachers, lawyers, random National Guard types, clerks, landscapers, and cops, as opposed to firefighters, who develop a good eye for these things, or qualified civil engineers.

Those X’s that denote a big issue are worth paying attention to, period. Something stuck out at them to be marked. If that box is empty or “just” a slash … again, it was probably not cleared by professional housing inspectors. Be super-duper leery anyway.

There’s also a victim-location code based around a V. It’s sometimes used on its own, but it’s most commonly seen as an add-on.

All three contribute to streamlining both initial searches and follow-ups or retrieval operations. They convey basic information like the date, status of the structure, victim information, and risks.

There’s some personal twists added sometimes, some specific-unit tweaks and shorthand, and in some cases, simplification and deviations that develop in really widespread disasters.

The variations can help us if we’re using them along with noise and light discipline to discourage incursions during excessive loss of rule of law or by looters/survivors after a disaster.

Anyone familiar enough with the codes to accurately read what we’re saying will expect to see some of those deviations. However, if you put information in the wrong place or use some random combination, you may actually attract attention.

X codes are most common in the U.S. but it’s worth learning what you’re seeing in NATO INSARAG boxes and reading-writing victim V-codes, too.

FEMA “X” Search Codes

Top goes the date (and rarely the time). Left goes the unit that’s searching (and sometimes the time). Hazards, actions we took, and special notes go to the right.

Everybody knows a flood means human waste, wood rotting as it goes, and mold developing, but if the floor’s crumbling already, that gets put there with “hamster removed” and “GL” (gas or fuel leak visualized or smelled).

That’s also where a no-go, break-off, or exterior-only survey is noted, with or without a secondary structure box.

In the bottom, a zero or empty quadrant means nobody’s home, dead or alive. Victim counts are listed live to dead, top and bottom or left to right separated by a dash, dot or slash.

FEMA now advises to mark search results on windows and doors, and use their big stickers when available, instead of wrecking house paint and siding. If local teams are doing it and you’re aiming for camo, mimic them.

*If you’re marking for an animal rescue that’s coming through after you, make it Big and Bold, and note if it’s going to require saws/jacks to get them out.

Top Three Super-Duper Big-time Warning Signs

One, there’s that “no go” structural safety box with the X. If professionals with healthcare did not want anybody else to poke inside, that’s a real good one to skip.

Two, we want to be hyper-vigilant for the word “dog(s)” somewhere.

Now, I like dogs. I like my dogs a lot. But, my dogs make me very, very aware of other dogs. Especially my current girls, because they – Lab-terrier mixes, never strays, never starved, never abused, with no training for it – will separate, hug verges all nonchalant, easy-going postures, and then launch for takedown from multiple angles like a pack of lionesses.

So I watch for whether dogs are happy to see people, period, or happy and excited about chasing something that’s not as athletic as a squirrel. And I watch my flanks for others.

Three, we want to be very leery if we ever see a single diagonal slash with or without a date.

See, we’re trained to mark a slash – and, unit by unit, the date-time – before we enter a building or floor/area/apartment in large buildings. If we abandon a search before we finish, we are supposed to paint a dot/circle in the middle of it. (Completed searches get the X, even if it’s “did not enter/exterior survey only – hazards”.)

Even if we’re leaving in a hurry, we’re supposed to put that dot on there.

That way if we don’t make our rally or contact, people know right exactly where we are. No question of did we get snatched off the porch, have an accident after leaving the building, or which building, floor, or compartment we bounced to next. If we drew that single slash and there is no other marking (+/- the date), we are still within that threshold.

This applies to preppers as “oh my my” because if there is only that slash, we have two conditions.

One, there is still a team inside. Maybe good, if we’re seeking other intelligent life. Maybe cause to fade away if we want to go unnoticed.

Two, the searcher(s) went in and either did not come out or something so bad happened inside that they un-A’d the AO in such a rush they didn’t even take time for another slash and an X-box.

That suggests, right up there with dogs, bodies, and compromised structures, that we do not want to go through that door.

*If you’re aiming for camo in EROL conditions, don’t use that one. SAR, first responders, and military will go in after each other almost as fast as if we heard a crying baby.

Now, shorthand/personalization that develops in widespread disasters means some never even drew a slash. But if we see just that slash, that is a warning sign.

Applying INSARAG Markings

INSARAG can provide intel on local conditions just by the quickie versions that suggest more need than available CERT/SAR teams could handle, and give us the number and types of teams working an area.

We can also use clues from how they’re marked. For instance, any time markings seem really high up on a building, or have serious up-down wavering of lines, circles undulating like scalloped pattypan squash, or oval “tornado spirals” instead of circles, it indicates a flood high enough that it was easier/safer to stand in a boat to paint than be in the water. Heights and dates of marks can tell us if water was rising or receding.

On the counter-intel front, we can use things like follow-ups and some of those super-duper bigtime warning signs to disseminate false information, projecting that fires gutted flats or stores, or there’s heavy mold and decaying bodies, etc.

They’re worth being familiar enough with to plan our actions to mitigate likely risks, choose avoidance of an area, or pick locations that may still have useful resources with the safest access, even if we’re not planning a bugout, ever. Too much goes wrong even right now to steadfastly insist we’ll never be away from home and traveling, or ever be forced out of our homes.

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gaiatheorist · 7 years

Text

Universal Credit.

It sounded fine in principle, from a distance, the simplification of something like six existing benefits into one, that clarity and cohesion, instead of fragmented, separate departments, working on individual elements, in isolation. Holistic is good, ‘better together’ is good. It’s not ‘together’, it’s not ready, and it’s not fit for purpose. It’s a ‘flagship’, I suppose the Titanic was, too.

I’ll avoid the obvious “I, Daniel Blake.” references, I’m not shoplifting tampons, I’ve stockpiled enough to see me through a couple of months, there’s the possibility that the anxiety, and the fact that I’m not really eating will pause that inconvenience anyway. We live in hope.

The issues with Universal Credit, and there are many, all seem, to me, to stem from the fact that the parties who implemented it have never been poor. On paper, on linear flow-charts, in that far-away land of secure employment and adequate savings, it’s just a bit of belt-tightening, a bit of budgeting and planning. ‘Just’ is why I’m tapping away here, rather than in the comments sections of the news websites. ‘Just’ get a job, ‘just’ use own-brand, ‘just’ put another jumper on, and close the doors between rooms, to keep the heat in. Personally, there are a lot of things I can’t ‘just’ do, I have Acquired Brain Injuries, every element of my life requires additional adaptations and intricate risk assessments. That’s my problem, not Universal Credit’s, and, most of the time, my ‘work coach’ remembers. Sometimes she forgets, and goes onto auto-pilot, reading out call-centre or bar-work jobs from her screen, and I have to remind her about my limitations. I’ve been lucky so far, she knows I’m falling through the gaps in the UK disability assessment system, she’s human, I’m lucky not to have been allocated a ‘coach’ keen to sanction me. That’s even more of a fear now, as the months tick by, and my bank-balance dwindles. Universal Credit doesn’t cover my outgoings, which certainly aren’t champagne and caviar.

I was one of the guinea-pigs in my locality. Single, no ‘dependant’ children, because he’s 19, I still fed and housed him over his endless university summer break, though, chipping away incrementally at what was left in the bank. ‘We’ single-no-dependants, ‘new claims’ were the test cohort, starting the work-coaches off with the easiest group, and the ones who would cause less media furore. Expendables, with no raggedy-urchin children to tug at heart-strings. ‘Just find another job.’, I imagine some of the less complicated clients did just that, rather than wait months for their allowances to be paid. That’s wholly intentional, from my perspective, why jump through hoops if you ‘can’ just drop into another job? Even if that job is fluctuating agency-hours, or zero-hours on minimum wage. Nobody really spoke very much in that first ‘group session’, while the chipper work-coaches patronised us, about ‘logging hours’, and ‘phoning the helpline’ if we were unavailable for any reason. We’re ‘available’ for ‘any suitable work, over £7.50 an hour, within 90 minutes of home, for up to 48 hours a week’, on pain of sanctions. My phone, or email could notify me of a vacancy or mock-interview at any time, and I’d be obligated to apply, even if it was night-shift work in a factory two bus-rides away. (One of the complications of my disability is cognitive fatigue, most commonly in the evening, I’m not altogether functional after about 6pm, and actually present a risk of harm to self or others after about 8pm.)

Some of the guinea-pigs will have thought “Sod this.”, and found work. Some of the guinea-pigs will have realised that this system isn’t like the old systems, there’s no capacity for ‘fiddle work’, where they might previously have ‘signed on’ fortnightly, whilst still working cash-in-hand. The old systems were flawed, and susceptible to abuse, the constantly-available clause in the ‘claimant commitment’ is a tool to weed out fraudulent claims, but we’re all tarred with the same brush. I have an increasingly debilitating paranoia that I’ll get a notification while I’m in a counselling appointment, with my phone on silent, or hanging laundry out at the top of the garden, where I have no phone-signal. Constant, niggling anxiety. (’Just get a prescription for Prozac.’ What if I get a notification while I’m at the surgery, though? This strand of anxiety is purely situational, I can’t go ‘off sick’ from work-searching with anxiety, or ‘stress related disorder’, because the DWP would see being-in-work as a solution. Catch 22.)

Guinea-pigs aside, the press are in a frenzy about Universal Credit now because the ‘full implementation’ is due, and the system has been proven ineffective. There will, I suspect, be trite, throw-away comments about ‘teething problems’ and such, but I have leaflets in my training portfolio from about 2010 warning that the roll-out would cause issues. This is not new-news, it has been in the public domain for years, but it’s only now, at the 11th hour, that voices are being raised. I worked with the families that are about to be devastated by the roll-out, so have a different understanding of the potential issues to the far-away policy-makers. I wrote to my MP, outlining some of my concerns for his constituents, his secretary was surprisingly helpful.

The application is electronic. I frequently overhear telephone calls in the Job Centre (It’s open-plan, and my brain injuries come with hyper-acute hearing, I’m not ‘listening’, I can just hear them.) “Yeah, no, that’s not us now, you have to do it online.” ‘Everyone’ has a stable internet connection at home, now, don’t they? Wait, what, ‘some’ people only have mobile internet, on pay-as-you-go phones, or no internet at all? Well, they can ‘just’ go to the library, and use one of the £1-an-hour computers there, or one of the four available terminals in the Job Centre. The Job Centre is going to be very noisy very soon, because the Working Tax Credit, or Child Tax Credit claimants are going to have to bring their small children in with them. Thirty hours of free childcare, because people-like-us can’t afford to pay a nanny Splendid, except it doesn’t actually work, the nurseries can’t afford to subsidise it. There’s a potential side-rant here, that certain sectors of the population will see ‘working mothers’ as demonic, they ‘should’ be at home, in an apron, ‘making memories’ and doing enrichment activities. Nice work if you can afford it, but the vast majority of the population can’t survive on a single income. Dear lord, there’ll be the usual ‘single parent’ uproar, won’t there, with the preconceptions and assumptions.

Some people won’t have internet access. Some people won’t have the IT skills to navigate the systems. I’m fairly IT literate, but I still have the occasional cold sweat when it looks like my evidence hasn’t saved properly, there was a security conflict with the site I’m tasked with accessing daily after the last Windows update on my laptop, it’s intermittent now, some people don’t have a back-up device. Some people won’t have the literacy skills, or the numeracy skills to navigate the systems, there must have been an assumption that every UK citizen has functional literacy, they don’t, I’ve worked with them. An hour on the library computers, or the Job Centre terminals might as well be trying to read Chinese for some people. An hour on mobile internet, what does that cost on pay-as-you-go, and how long before the phone credit runs out, meaning claimants can’t return calls about interviews? (The ‘Universal Jobmatch’ site might as well be trying to read Chinese sometimes, it’s copy-pastes from various other jobs-boards, the formatting goes all over the place, the links don’t work, there’s no proof-reading in evidence, and multiple copy-pastes of ‘Internal applicants only.’ My literate frustration is an inconvenience, less-literate claimants will spend hours applying for unattainable vacancies.) If you forget, or mis-key your password, you can be locked out of your account, and have to set up a new email address to re-register.

The ‘waiting period’ seems to be the factor under scrutiny in the press at the moment, I genuinely can’t remember exactly how it was explained to me, because I was in floods of tears at the indignity of claiming benefits for the first time in my life. I think the woman said “You stand your first week, they’re ‘waiting days’, then you’re paid four-weekly.” (Four weekly in arrears, and the transfer-method can take a week, on paper, it’s six weeks between applying and receiving funds. There’s no mention of the fact that the ‘claim’ doesn’t start from you hitting ‘submit’ on your application, but from you presenting yourself for your first appointment at the Job Centre, with all of the requisite proof-of-identity. Some claims will be further delayed by people not having ‘the right identification.’) The waiting period assumes that everyone will have their last month’s salary sitting in the bank, maybe a bit of severance pay. Not everyone is paid monthly, not everyone has savings, or a safety net, some people are paid weekly, there’s also the clause that if you left your job voluntarily, your claim could be void. I don’t know how it works for people rolling-over from other benefits that were paid weekly or fortnightly, but there’s the potential that, even though the systems ‘know’ that the weekly CTC payments were the only income-source, there’ll still be the waiting period.

That’s the massive cultural disconnect, between policy-makers and the general population, the powers-that-be simply don’t understand how hand-to-mouth existence is for some of us. I had a little money in the bank, but that’s not the case for everyone. There will be begging, borrowing, and stealing from some sectors of the population, this is a powder-keg. I limped through the eight weeks it took for my ‘standard’ payment, and the nine for my ‘housing element’, and I had to chase both of those. I still have my land-line phone connected, so wasn’t using up my mobile credit. Some people in the village, and in the UK don’t have land-lines, and won’t be able to chase payments if they’re out of credit.

The ‘single’ system isn’t. ‘Standard element’ and ‘Housing element’ are processed by two different departments. There’s uproar about the ‘housing’ element being paid direct to the claimant, instead of the old system where Housing Benefit was paid directly to landlords, or local authorities. Readers of certain newspapers are indignant that ‘the poor’ will spend the housing element, instead of paying their rent, I don’t know, chips and cheese, or cigarettes and big TVs, I suppose. The powers-that-be will counter that “Budgeting advice is available.”, that would be the person that scans your ID at your first appointment pointing to ‘Money advice service’ and ‘Step-change’ on a leaflet. Some people will have debts, I was lucky enough not to, but, once I start on that conveyor-belt of missed direct debit bank charges, I know from experience how hard it is to escape the cycle. My ‘Claimant Commitment’ states that I will read the local papers weekly, in my search for employment, I read all of it, not just the ‘jobs’ page, which is all online anyway, and the ‘property’ section has increasing numbers of ‘No DSS’ adverts. My rent is about average for the village, and the ever-so-helpful news-site comments of ‘Just move to a smaller/cheaper property’ miss the point that most of us don’t have funds available for a deposit to do that.

My ‘standard’ element, of £317, was eventually released eight weeks after my initial appointment, which was actually 12 weeks after my employment ended, because I’m ‘too proud to beg’, and didn’t want to claim benefits, that’s my problem, not the system’s. I had to chase it, six weeks passed, and I ‘phoned the helpline’, as per protocol, in the seventh week. Jolly little recorded message on a loop, reminding people that if it hasn’t been six weeks, there’s no point complaining, that’ll suck some people’s PAYG phone credit. “Oh, did you claim housing element?”, the girl on the phone sounded about 12, everyone ‘sounds about 12′ when you get to my age. “I don’t know, I don’t know how any of this works, I’ve never claimed before.” “Well, I can see here that there’s a problem with your housing element, but I can authorise payment of your standard element.” (Another of the issues with my disability is irritability, the majority of my damage is frontal lobe, which can impact on some of my responses, it WAS difficult not to shout at the girl, for asking me if I’d ‘claimed housing’, when she could see on her record that I had. She’s only doing her job, and she’s probably used to people shouting. Or crying, like I was.) She authorised the ‘standard’ payment the same day, and asked me to phone back with regard to the ‘housing’ element issue. I phoned back. Another 12-year-old advised that she couldn’t see how much my ‘housing element’ would be, that only the housing department knew that, it being ‘worked out on a matrix of local and national rents’ (Snarky head is quietly confident that the matrix includes subsidised LA housing, and those nasty damp bedsits above the car-spares shop that nobody wants to live in, because of the youths setting fire to bins behind them.) She’d task it to ‘housing’, and authorise the payment. Except she didn’t have authority to authorise the payment, I imagine some of her other customers that day had been more antagonistic than I was, and she was trying to avoid confrontation.

The ‘housing’ element was delayed because my ex-partner’s name was still on the tenancy agreement I’d provided. Fair point, and I’m still slightly anxious that some nefarious men in black might home-visit, and see my son’s aftershave in the bathroom, and assume I’m fraudulently claiming, Check with Council Tax, he left over a year ago. “Oh, we’re not linked to Council Tax.” (Yes, you are, I’ve just had a letter, 8 weeks into my claim, stating that I could be eligible for a low-income reduction.) “If I could have his date of birth?” “Are you checking with HMRC, I’ll give you his National Insurance number.” The ‘housing element’ doesn’t cover my rent, there’s a shortfall of £150 per month, which I’m picking up, at the same time as paying all of my other bills out of the £317. There’s a shortfall.

In both the ‘standard’ and ‘housing’ elements, there is the option to request an advance, up to 1/2 of the allocated allowance, but it has to be repaid out of subsequent payments, meaning that every month, for the next 3, or 6 months, depending on the payment-plan, will be ‘short.’ There is linkage between DWP and Council Tax, but some residents here have a fear of brown envelopes, and some can’t read- that’s another ‘visit our website, or telephone’ to apply for the discount.

I’m organised, I’m methodical, I’m used to being accountable. Some people aren’t, and these systems are going to be devastating for them. The local authority, and some of the housing associations are employing work-coaches of their own, under various vague job-titles. Oh, and rent arrears recovery posts. This thing is going to crash and burn on a monumental scale. The ‘pockets of deprivation’ in this village won’t be able to navigate the systems, and will be sanctioned as a result of the gaps in their knowledge or understanding. We will see an increase in violent crime, due to the frustration. We will see an increase in domestic violence due to the inability to live on nothing. We will see an increase in alcohol or substance dependency, because that detached-fog is easier to live in than a reality with empty cupboards. We will have classrooms full of rumbling bellies, waiting for the free school lunch, because the ‘breakfast’ option at break-time isn’t available to them. We will see more burglaries, more shop-lifting. We will see children missing school because the electricity pre-payment meter ran out overnight, and nobody’s alarm went off. Children will miss school because the money doesn’t go into the bank for another three weeks, and they have no shoes. In the midst of all this, social care thresholds keep increasing, we KNOW that early intervention is better than waiting for the inevitable crisis, but the people who can provide that intervention are spread so thin that everything is at breaking point.

There, with all that off my chest, I’ll complete my mandatory hours of actively seeking employment for the day.

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fairfielducommunication · 7 years

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Five Questions with Dr. Tommy Xie, Associate Professor of English and Director of Digital Journalism

Before serving as associate professor of English and the director of Fairfield’s digital journalism program, Dr. Tommy Xie practiced as a journalist in China before receiving his Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. The compendium of courses he now teaches spans everything from basic newswriting to photojournalism, but in his newest class, Dr. Xie is equipping students with the tools they need to succeed in increasingly technological and data-driven newsrooms. Big Data Storytelling, offered for the first time last spring, teaches students how to find stories within numerical data and craft meaningful visualizations that advance the story’s narrative.

“It’s really becoming a thing in the field [of journalism],” Dr. Xie said of data journalism. “A lot of the organizations I’ve been talking to expect our students to have some data literacy. They need someone who can talk in that kind of language, who can see the possibility of using data. They want someone who can tell a story in this new approach.”

But in an age of fake news and data fabrication, even journalism based on numbers and statistics can fall victim to manipulation. To guide budding journalists and media consumers alike in their media literacy efforts, Dr. Xie details several ways to stay ahead of fake data — and even become an active participant in fact checking.

(The following interview has been edited and condensed for layout purposes).

NF: For those who may not know, describe what data journalism is.

TX: I would say that any kind of storytelling facilitated by looking into different kinds of data can be called data journalism. The degree to which that kind of data is used is quite debatable; sometimes, people are inspired by some new data sets and they find stories over there, and sometimes, people started by asking a very kind of generic question and in the process of finding the answer, they come across this data set, and they are able to use this data to help them find some kind of answer and sometimes raise a new question. So as long as data play a fairly significant role in the process of storytelling, I would say it can be labeled as data journalism. One project I always ask my students to check out, especially in the beginning of their data journalism course, is a story put together by the Las Vegas Sun called “Do No Harm.” It’s a story about all kinds of loopholes in the healthcare system in Nevada and the reports dug through thousands of public records that spanned 20 or 30 years, and they found lots of compelling stories of how patients were misdiagnosed and sometimes ignored, the crazy fees incurred, and they were able to find that kind of data, and then do some analysis on it, find some really compelling components in the data and then the next thing is, they reach out to those patients and they ask them to tell their side of the story. Then after we reviewed their side of the story, we zoom out again by looking at the bigger picture with a new understanding of the entire situation.

How would you be able to tell if a piece of purported data journalism is not grounded scientifically?

That’s a big question. There are different ways to investigate such stories, and there are some old school techniques: you try to check all the sources and you check their identities, their traditional stance on this kind of topic, and that can help you detect if there is any bias in the story. Sometimes, even if a journalist did not intend to show their bias in the story, bias can always find a way to sneak into a narrative. Also, you can look at how the data are presented. Sometimes, the presentation of data can be hugely misleading. For example, if you’re comparing two percentage numbers and one is 60 percent and the other is 65 percent, and you start your scale (the y axis) not from the zero point, but from 55 percent. So there will be a huge gap between these two figures, and you’ll say ‘Wow! That’s a really huge gap!’ But when you look at the entire 100 percent scale, it’s really nothing.

And also, you can tell some deceptive tactics by looking at how the original data are presented in the story. Sometimes people will do all kinds of complicated calculations to see the percentage change, so you always try to trace back to the original data to see how such analysis is done. When you’re talking about sources in the data, journalists often make the same mistakes that other people make by assuming that whatever data they can get their hands on is reliable. So when I talk about sources, it does not only mean human sources. It can mean the database: Who put together the database? Who’s behind it? What kind of method did they use to collect the data and measure the data? These things can also create some kind of sampling bias or sometimes an analytical bias. Another way to look at possible bias — maybe this is a little bit nontraditional — is if such a story is posted on Facebook. Sometimes you can resort to readers’ comments. You have to admit that sometimes, there are readers who are even more data-literate than you to point out some fallacies in the story. And I found this to be a quite effective way to point out loopholes in your story. I would say 90 percent of the comments on Facebook are of little use, but sometimes you can see something glorious in the comment section, so don’t forget about that.

Do you think a lot of media consumers take data presented in stories at face value, i.e. without verifying?

I don’t necessarily think it’s a problem with data. It applies to this general lack of literacy on all kinds of information: it could be a quote, it could be a picture, it could be a photo or picture presented as a real one. We have this problem of fake news, and it’s been around for a long time, and it’s just come to this point where it became disruptive to our decision making. I believe that the public is increasingly aware of the problem, and there have been some measures to counteract it, and if we look at the past 20 years with the surge of Internet journalism, this could be the turning point for Internet journalism because people now learned the hard way that they really have to discern good information from bad information.

What skills or tools do you think all media consumers need to identify fake news or data?

I think it should start with a cultivation of a critical attitude, the attitude of not assuming everything you see is accurate even toward your most respected source. Even though I read a couple of newspapers on a day-to-day basis, I don’t assume that everything they talk about is absolutely accurate. There is a pretty famous saying by President Reagan — it’s actually a proverb in Russia — it says, “Trust, but verify.” So I think this kind of critical attitude needs to be taught as early as elementary school because children are exposed to different kinds of information in electronic forms at a very young age. They have this tendency to think that the smartphone that they have in their hands is magical, it has certain authority, it has certain authenticity to it, whereas in many cases, it’s the opposite. So this kind of thinking needs to be cultivated. You can’t just throw smartphones to kids and say, ‘Alright, you do fact checking.’ Then after they have this attitude, then you can build different kinds of programs to teach them different sets of skills to discern good information from bad information. The thing is, technologies change all the time, and the form of fake news and inaccurate news changes all the time, so the skill sets, accordingly, will have to be updated all the time.

How do you think data journalism can help counteract fake news?

I think we can look at this question from two standpoints. One is when reputable news organizations constantly rely on data to tell their stories, it is only going to help their reputation and will help them to stand out in the ocean of information. So that’s one thing. And the other thing has to do with the advancement of data science. I believe that at the end of the day, data science and algorithms specifically can help us filter out some of — not all, but some of — the fake news. For example, we can use algorithms to detect the origin of a story, who produced it and how it was circulated. So if it was circulated first by a circle of people who don’t have the reputation of credible sources, then we can probably say that this is probably a dubious story that we may check into. I know that Facebook is trying to use some algorithm to prevent fake news from surfacing to the top; I don’t know how it’s done specifically, but I’ve heard that it’s a combination of algorithm and human intervention. So basically, the algorithm can provide with a suggested list of such stories and then they have humans to screen those sources by more sophisticated methods. That has been working reasonably well, I guess, and we’re going to see more and more of that automation in discerning fake news from real news.

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bethcanwriteipromise · 7 years

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Kitschy Metaphors

A Literacy Narrative exploring my life in Forensics, written for University Writing course.

I had always been destined to speak competitively, but no betting man would have ever pegged me for Extemp. Even I resisted the pairing. The first Extemp my mother had me give was preluded by an hour of me hunched over in her bathtub, fully clothed, surrounded by files and newspapers, trying to decide between figuring out who the hell Qaddafi was and prying open a second-story window. I don’t quite know how I ended up in the tub. The cold marble and safe seclusion helped, but I had made the drowning metaphor physically inescapable. What intellectual masochism convinced my 13-year-old self to ever indulge in that traumatic process again, I cannot say. But thank God I did.

The language of Extemporaneous Speaking had always been a well-kept secret. Extempers were elite, travelling in gangs with giant tubs of files resting on sleek dollies, Italian leather clacking along a foreign high school’s hall tiles. If you sat and observed them long enough, you’d notice a tendency for them to walk like a backslash, \, leaning back against each step and leading with their hips. No one very much liked the Extempers, who were too dry for the Interpers and too cocky for the Debaters.

I still remember the laughter from Mr. Rocca when I asked him if I could try my hand at Extemp at an upcoming tournament. If a fat, greased, pot-bellied pig were magically made human and forced to coach a high school forensics team, that would give you Mr. Christopher Rocca. Wait, no. The pig might be less sexist. When Rocca heard my request, he boomed out a laugh so forceful that the two flecks of pasta in his beard became crossly dislodged. He did me the favor of explaining that as a freshman girl competing as the sole Extemper from her team, I would never ever stand a chance against the hordes of boys from Durham Academy and Ardrey Kell. I was better off sticking to an event better suited for my “demographic,” like Children’s Literature or Storytelling.

It was then that I decided to succeed in Extemp.

As much as I hated to admit it, Rocca did have a point—competing as the only Extemper on my team meant I would have to figure this thing out from scratch, and I certainly would not be using him for help. My mother was one of the best Interp coaches on the East coast, but as the bathtub incident had proved, she and I were not a compatible fit for Extemp coaching. So, I set off to coach myself. I spent weeks on extempcentral.com, reading and rereading the rules. Thirty minutes before speaking, you draw three current events-based questions, choose one, and return to your seat. The questions could be anything from anywhere with no warning, from a Congressional fiscal sequester to a migrant crisis in Malaysia. The next half hour is for preparation, using files, magazines, and news sources all saved preemptively—no internet. Then, at thirty minutes, you walk to a room, present your topic slip before a judge, and give a 5-7 minute memorized, fluent, sourced, theoretically entertaining speech that, above all, answers your question. No big deal.

For my first tournament, Southside, I stumbled into the prep room armed with two issues of The Economist, one Time magazine, and a travel dictionary. First round I got lucky, drawing a Libya question I could tie back to Qaddafi from the bathtub. By lucky, I mean I recognized the name. It was still an atrocious speech, but the easy room yielded me second place in the round. Second round was not so kind. My entire question read “David Cameron: friend or foe?” One issue—I had no clue who the heck David Cameron was. Now, in retrospect, I realize how incredibly English that name sounds, and that I probably should have started with my England articles and would have in doing so immediately discovered that he was the prime minister, but, alas, I was panicking. See, when I began competing in Extemporaneous speaking, my strength was my ability to craft kitschy metaphors that made these big, scary political concepts fun and comprehensible. Granted, that only worked if I found them comprehensible. My greatest weakness was my total lack of the knowledge foundation needed for quicker connections and deeper analysis. Needless to say, I placed last in that round and the one after it.

As the season continued, I got better—not great, but better. I started actually reading the magazines I was toting along, and my file tub began to grow rapidly. I wasn’t winning, but I wasn’t losing, which was enough to unsettle Durham boys. Through the winter and spring months I established my presence as an Extemper on the circuit. My cheesy, fun metaphors were getting attention, some supportive, some hostile, but all publicity is good publicity. By the time the third day of the state tournament came along, they all knew my name.

A dedicated Extemper, I had invested in my own dolly—my own hot pink dolly—and had wheeled my supplies into the corner of a Marvin Ridge computer lab being used as our elimination rounds prep room. I unloaded my stacks of magazines, placed my lucky stuffed dolphin at the edge of my workstation, and opened my padfolio to a fresh page. “STATE FINALS: AFRICA,” I wrote at the top, forever thankful that the round topic had been released in advance. Draw began, and the clock ticked by. I was sixth and final speaker, so I had 35 minutes to wait. I flipped through The Economist, arranged and rearranged my color coded highlighters, and nervously binged on winter fresh mints. At last, I was called up to draw.

As I stared down at the three topics I was to choose between, every muscle in my body tensed up. It was David Cameron all over again. Two of the three had specific names of people I could never place, no familiarity, zero, zilch. The third was not much better. I carefully turned over the first two, picked up my little slip of paper, and began the mental preparation for another crash and burn. This time it would be worse. This time there would be a whole panel of judges and student observers. Everyone would see.

I didn’t know how I would do it, but I realized that I had to make this work. I gave the topic another reread. “Has the AU responded appropriately to the coup in Mali?” I had two initial questions—what is a coup, and who is the AU? Relieved, I remembered the travel dictionary I still kept at the bottom of my tub. I unburied it, cracked the spine, and found the COU-s. Cougar, Country, County, Couscous. Couscous. My dictionary had “couscous” but not “coup?” It was time for every lesson I had ever learned on context clues to kick in. I searched through my Africa files and found two, short Economist articles about Mali, one of which discussed the coup. It wouldn’t define it for me, but I had enough information to gather that it was some sort of government redistribution, a rebellious takeover. Now that I had made this uncanny conclusion, I had only 12 minutes left.

“Think, think. What do you know about Africa?”

Africa. Africa had had a lot of violent overthrows lately. Libya. Okay. I could talk about how the AU could not possibly have responded to the coup appropriately because the most appropriate response would have been to prevent it in the first place, to look at what was happening everywhere else and take proactive action instead of coming in afterwards. I could tie it together with a metaphor—cookies! If you’ve got a child who is set on having a cookie, and I mean downright determined, the appropriate response is to get the child to exhibit some good behavior and reward them with the cookie. If you simply refuse the request and leave them alone in the kitchen, they’ll find a way to knock the cookie jar off the shelf, sending porcelain splinters all over the kitchen and leaving you with a dangerous mess to clean up. If the people of Mali were set on a change in government, the AU should have incentivized and facilitated a peaceful transition. Instead, no help came to Mali and a violent coup occurred.

Two minutes. Two minutes left. Now I had only one final question—who the hell was the AU? AU… AU… AU… One minute. Screw it, I knew who the EU was, and this was the Africa round. African Union. I would say African Union. My speaker code was called and I rose to leave the prep room, stepping into my heels and petting the dolphin for luck. Down the hall, I entered the competition room. Time froze for about seven minutes as I gave my speech. I barely remember what actually happened in the room, but I will never forget what happened when I left it—I stopped the first Extemper I saw, asked him what the AU was, and when he said “African Union,” I swear I heard the African Children’s Choir sing me a hymn.

I ended up placing third, which was shocking and awesome, but it wasn’t the best part of that day. The grand, unforgettable moment was in prep, with my stupidly cheesy cookie metaphor and context clue dependence, when I realized that I didn’t have to be some uptight know-it-all to give a powerful Extemporaneous speech. It is irrefutably important to be politically smart in the event, yes, and I have continued to work at that in the years since. But it doesn’t matter how deep your analysis is if no one can understand it but you. That’s what my judges wrote on my ballots that day. That even if my depth was lacking, my speech made sense. They got the cookie jar metaphor, and it made the speech fun, “waking them up” after having already watched five Extemps in a row. That it was worth watching.

In my senior year of competition, sometimes I forgot. My speeches were highly analytical and extremely well sourced, but I forgot to have fun with a particular round, or didn’t use a metaphor in the next. Whenever that happened, I would think back to the cookie jar. The fun. The look on Rocca’s face when I held up my third place trophy, or the young freshman girls I saw braving the prep room the next year. In my senior year state finals, I compared Robert Mugabe to Taylor Swift, with the “blank space” on his VP ballot, the political “haters” he needed to “shake off,” and how he and his party were “never ever ever getting back together.” At nationals, Indonesia’s government was Batman, Putin a zookeeper. The metaphors and spunk that week in Texas carried me to the top 12 in the nation. Rocca congratulated me afterwards, some new pasta dish woven into his mustache.

After these years of competition in Extemp, I think it is the things that are hardest to do that are the most important. Even if you have to start by gripping the side of a bathtub, swallowing back the nerves lodged in your windpipe, you must start. Otherwise, the Roccas and the Durham boys and the clock all win. Beat them! And do it with kitschy metaphors. That is what I tell the Extempers I coach today.