the topic is a bit top of mind rn so it could be a bit of recency bias but im rereading the fifth season and the fantasy swearing really is jarring. i wonder how much of it is due to the translation as well

DAY 5535

Jalsa, Mumbai              Apr 12/13,  2023             Wed/Thu  12:30 AM

“No mere human can keep up with the torrent of intriguing, terrifying daily AI news, 

AI can probably crack your password — and faster than you think

Cybersecurity firm Home Security Heroes put an AI-powered password-cracking tool called PassGAN to the test against 15m+ passwords.

It cracked 51% of them in under a minute. By month’s end, it had worked out 81% of the list. Uh-oh. Before you reset every password you’ve ever had, remember that usage of PassGAN isn’t widespread — and could also be used to generate crack-proof passwords.

Still, Home Security Heroes recommends stronger passwords with 15+ characters that avoid patterns like “1234.”

***

AI can kinda see what your brain sees?

A team at Osaka University used a deep-learning AI model called Stable Diffusion (SD) to analyse brain scans after people were shown images inside an MRI machine.

The AI was asked to “translate” the subjects’ brain activity into a readable format.

That it did; SD generated faithful reproductions of the original images. Also uh-oh. Per the Osaka team, this isn’t “mind reading” — it merely means AI can reproduce images a person has viewed. Which ain’t nothing, according to every tightly clenched muscle in our bodies.

Practical applications are minimal today, but SD research (and subsequent ethics debates) will continue.

***

Read this in an article .. and found it intriguing enough to be shared with the Ef .. because in time AI shall be able to read your mind too and inform me .. as it would mine and inform you ..

AI = Alternate Intelligence , but first we need to possess ‘intelligence’ for an alternative to exist  😃

( the dearest Ef  Miten Lapsia corrected me, this morning Apr 13, 2023 .. said it is ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, NOT ALTERNATE .. I agree Ef you are right, but my writing was an aside to the real .. it was deliberately done to bring to the fore, the next sentence “ but first we need to possess ‘intelligence’ for an alternative to exist  😃” .. no other .. yes you are right .. and I am wrong .. but my moment was connected to alternate .. hence .. 🙏 )

Building an agenda for the destruction of the ego of existence , has in time failed .. the exist shall exist .. for they were built to do so .. not just they , all of us were built to exist .. how we exist is our prerogative .. 

Many though that have no clue how they should , borrow ..

In a borrowing, comes the ethic of return .. when it does happen , there is glory and dignity and respectability .. 

But when it does not happen, apart from the unjust, the non ethical drive to destroy shall never succeed .. 

Dignity and respect was not laid down on a platter for your devour .. it needed consumption of spirit and delve ..

and as I write the lightening strikes through heavy clouds of immense sound pierce the barriers of limit .. as though a chord had been touched upon .. often it behaves thus ... it is unseasonal rain that shall soon lash the walls and terrace moulded structures of the City, for leakage and piercing waters about the rooms of living .. in time protected by shields of covers .. but that is still a month or so away .. why the predominance of its presence now ..

the God’s they be in annoyance .. they be angry .. as the express went with our forefathers .. in time the science and technology took over to discover and predict and inform .. 

THEY ARE STILL IN THE PROCESS OF DOING SO .. 🤣   

tolerance has its range of limits and barriers .. when the ‘bandh’ breaks the city floods .. as does the body and mind .. and all else .. the saner elements be possessed by limits .. be in the limits to exist .. exist well .. 

Else leave .. 

Love and existence .. and sanity to all ❤️

Amitabh Bachchan

an eerie silence persists as the rain doth pass by .. the towelling that plugs the drips from above prevails .. the morning shall exhibit the damage done .. the night shall be in the anticipate of the mornings’ nature ..

unseasonal rain .. predicts unseasonal predictions .. unseasonal predictions bring variety .. variety be in good or adverse dimension ..

and ..

patience be the only construct of exist ..

Email From My Parents’ Former Chiropractor, a Medical Review

I had to read that and now so do you. But guess what? I also get to tear it apart line by line with extreme prejudice. And not the bad kind. At. All. 

This went out to probably close to a thousand people.

People will die because of this email.

“We have been keeping up with the true data from the CDC and WHO that is giving very accurate information on this virus.“

I’m relatively neutral on this. The CDC and WHO are probably some of the most official sources. They’re a little behind (1-2 days for WHO, and both only update every 24 hours), but overall no one would fault him for citing them as sources. Here’s the source I’ve been using.

My biggest problem with that beginning is that the sentence structure is... alarmingly presidential.

“First, this is not a new virus. It's been known to cause respiratory problems since the 1960's.”

The group of viruses called “coronavirus” have been identified since 1965. But there are hundreds of unique viruses in this group, and 7 of them infect humans at very different severities. The most recent one, identified in December 2019 and now named SARS-CoV-2, is definitely a coronavirus, but it’s also definitely not one we’ve seen before.

“So far, the new coronavirus has led to more than 100,000 illnesses and more than 3,000 deaths worldwide.”

I mean, he’s technically right that it’s “more than” 100,000 cases. But this email went out today, when confirmed cases were a lot closer to 784,400 and deaths were 37,780 (see source above). Even the WHO numbers today are 693,224 and 33,106 respectively. So my best guess is he was writing this on March 7th (per WHO sitreps) and didn’t bother to update it before sending it out March 30th.

“In the U.S. alone, the flu has caused an estimated 34 million illnesses, 350,000 hospitalizations and 20,000 deaths this season... Per the CDC data, the flu virus as far more contagious and deadlier.”

This info is also substantially out of date. Currently, these numbers are 38 mil, 400,000, and 24,000 respectively.

I have to say, I did fall for the corona vs flu false equivalency once upon a time, but I’ve learned and grown a lot since then. We’re prepared for the number of hospital beds we need for (seasonal-not-pandemic) flu. We know how fast spreads and we have a vaccine that offers at least partial protection from it. We have widespread testing for it. We’re relatively comfortable with it’s severity and mortality rate.

But you heard it here last: with the data we have right now, none of those things apply to covid-19. We don’t have the beds, ventilators, or PPE to take all of it’s excessive illness on, which leads to higher mortality rates. It's more contagious than flu (infecting 2-2.5 people per infected person, vs seasonal flu’s 1.3). We don’t have a vaccine or significant natural immunity. We don’t have adequate testing, so we don’t know enough to know if anything we do know is close to correct. All of that makes it much, much worse than seasonal flu despite numbers.

“What to do? First, all patients are responsible for their own immune system.”

I mean, sure, okay, you have the responsibility to make the best choices you can for you in the situation that you’re in. That’s fair. And generally people do. But saying you’re responsible for your own immune system seems to imply that if you get covid-19, it’s your own dang fault because you weren’t responsible enough?

If that stresses you out, rest easy in that you don’t control nearly as much of your health status (look up the Whitehall Studies) and immune status (look up the Pittsburgh Cold Studies and a paper that came out of them titled “Types of Stressors That Increase Susceptibility to the Common Cold in Healthy Adults” by Cohen et al, 1998), as people like to think you do.

“When a bacteria or virus enter the body, your bodies natural immune system will attack this foreign body by creating an antibody that will destroy these foreign viruses or bacteria's (sic)...”

Okay, sure, that’s not a bad explanation.

“...So, when someone isolates themselves, the virus will still be "out there" and vaccinations will not stop the spread of any virus. A vaccination will force your body to make antibodies, which is the body's natural response to a virus. In other words, the virus will populate the world.“

I’ll be honest, I don’t entirely understand what he means with this passage, but I’ll give it my best shot.

If you never come into contact with a virus, it’s certainly true that you won’t ever get antibodies from it naturally. You also won’t get sick, and won’t have the opportunity to spread it to other people. That’s, like... the entire point of isolation.

But if a vaccine exists, that gives you the opportunity to have the best of both worlds- you get to make antibodies, and you never have to get sick! Score!

And if a lot of people have the antibodies, the illness can’t spread through the population (”herd” or “community” immunity), meaning that very few people get sick. You don’t have to be exposed to the virus after being vaccinated in order to become immune. The vaccine is literally the part of the virus the body needs to be exposed to to learn how to create antibodies.

He then goes on to list the ways in which you can build a strong immune system to fight covid-19. These suggestions include:

“Eat Healthy Natural Foods: These foods have the vitamins and nutriatiants (sic) your body needs to build its immune system.”

Sure, healthy food is good for you. No one’s arguing with you there.

“Get Adjusted: Every tissue in the body depends 100% nerve supply from the brain. These nerves carry all the cells information to repair and regenerate injured tissue. When the nervous systems is interfered with, this communication system between the brain and the tissue cells is weakened, therefore causing decreased immune response.”

This isn’t wrong so much as poorly worded. The brain (and vagus nerve) is involved in healing injured or infected tissues, particularly as part of modulating inflammatory response and eliciting reactions like vomiting, mucous production, and coughing to get rid of irritating substances. The inflammatory response kicks off the healing process, and we know that if the vagus nerve has been cut or in some other way interfered with, there is not as much inflammation across the board (which is why vagus nerve simulators have been shown to work against arthritis).

I’m not sure if there’s literature on chiropractic care improving this, but I certainly don’t think it’s impossible.

May I, however, suggest an editor at this point?

“Sleep 7-9 hours per night: Cellular regeneration happens mostly a night. Drink enough water: Dehydrate causes stress in the body, that will weakened the immune system.“

Great!

“Take natural supplements: These will help your immune systems, if you are not getting enough nutrients and vitamins through your healthy diet.”

Supplements generally aren’t necessary for most people (unless they have a diagnosed deficiency), but if you just like taking a multivitamin no one’s stopping you. Just don’t go overboard.

“P.S. Our team at [redacted] Chiropractic is super healthy. We follow the above guidelines!! We are asking anyone who may be ill, to stay home, or even more important get adjusted in our office [emphasis added]. Just let us know you are not feeling well and we will get you in and out with minimal contact with others. We take pride in cleanliness with all our patients. Hope to see you soon.”

I just... felt the need to leave that last paragraph in it’s entirety. If you’re all the way at the end of this post, you really deserve to read it again and let it sink in that he’s ASKING SOMEONE TO GO OUT IN PUBLIC WITH COVID-19 IN THE MIDDLE OF A PANDEMIC, IN AN AREA WHERE A “SHELTER IN PLACE” ORDER HAS BEEN ISSUED.

As medical facilities, chiropractic offices are allowed to stay open. I don’t mind this generally. A lot of people rely on chiropractic care for pain control and I would never want to take that away from them if there was another way.

But I work at a doctor’s office (sometimes). We are all but refusing to see patients in the office unless absolutely necessary to comply with social distancing rules and conserve PPE. If I were a chiropractor right now, I would be limiting my services to emergencies or people who really can’t get along without it, and encouraging people to NOT COME IN IF THEY KNOW OR SUSPECT THEY ARE SICK HOLY CRAP MAN STAP.

That’s like, the bare, bare minimum.

Thank you for reading.

At a deeper level, though, what seems most fascinating about the state’s response is the way in which it has been performed, via the media, as a sort of melodramatic dress rehearsal for the full mobilization of domestic counterinsurgency. This gives us real insights into the repressive capacity of the Chinese state, but it also emphasizes the deeper incapacity of that state, revealed by its need to rely so heavily on a combination of total propaganda measures deployed through every facet of the media and the goodwill mobilizations of locals otherwise under no material obligation to comply. Both Chinese and Western propaganda have emphasized the real repressive capacity of the quarantine, the former narrating it as a case of effective government intervention in an emergency and the latter as yet another case of totalitarian overreach on the part of the dystopian Chinese state. The unspoken truth, however, is that the very aggression of the clampdown signifies a deeper incapacity in the Chinese state, which is itself very much still under construction.

This itself gives us a window into the nature of the Chinese state, showing how it is developing new and innovative techniques of social control and crisis response capable of being deployed even in conditions where basic state machinery is sparse or non-existent. Such conditions, meanwhile, offer an even more interesting (albeit more speculative) picture of how the ruling class in any given country might respond when widespread crisis and active insurrection cause similar breakdowns in even the most robust states. The viral outbreak was in every respect assisted by poor connections between levels of the government: repression of “whistleblower” doctors by local officials contra the interests of the central government, ineffective hospital reporting mechanisms and extremely poor provision of basic healthcare are just a few examples. Meanwhile, different local governments have returned to normal at different paces, almost completely beyond the control of the central state (except in Hubei, the epicenter). At the moment of writing, it seems almost entirely random which ports are operational and which locales have restarted production. But this bricolage quarantine has meant that long-distance city-to-city logistics networks remain disrupted, since any local government appears able to simply prevent trains or freight trucks from passing through its borders. And this base level incapacity of the Chinese government has forced it to deal with the virus as if it were an insurgency, roleplaying civil war against an invisible enemy.

The national state machinery really started to roll on January 22nd, when authorities upgraded the emergency response measures in all of Hubei province, and told the public they had the legal authority to set up quarantine facilities, as well as to “collect” any personnel, vehicles, and facilities necessary to the containment of the disease, or to set up blockades and control traffic (thereby rubberstamping a phenomenon it knew would occur regardless). In other words, the full deployment of state resources actually began with a call for volunteer efforts on behalf of locals. On the one hand, such a massive disaster will strain any state’s capacity (see, for instance, hurricane response in the US). But, on the other, this repeats a common pattern in Chinese statecraft whereby the central state, lacking efficient formal and enforceable command structures that extend all the way down to the local level, must instead rely on a combination of widely-publicized calls for local officials and local citizens to mobilize and a series of after-the-fact punishments meted out to the worst responders (framed as crackdowns on corruption). The only truly efficient response is to be found in specific areas where the central state focuses the bulk of its power and attention—in this case, Hubei generally and Wuhan specifically. By the morning of January 24th, the city was already in an effective full lock down, with no trains in or out nearly one month after the new strain of the coronavirus was first detected. National health officials have declared that health authorities have the ability to examine and quarantine anyone at their discretion. Beyond the major cities of Hubei, dozens of other cities across China, including Beijing, Guangzhou, Nanjing and Shanghai, have launched lockdowns of varying severity on flows of people and goods in and out of their borders.

In response to the central state’s call to mobilize, some localities have taken their own strange and severe initiatives. The most frightening of these are to be found in four cities in Zhejiang province, where thirty million people have been issued local passports, allowing only one person per household to leave home once every two days. Cities like Shenzhen and Chengdu have ordered that each neighborhood be locked down, and allowed entire apartment buildings to be quarantined for 14 days if a single confirmed case of the virus is found within. Meanwhile, hundreds have been detained or fined for “spreading rumors” about the disease, and some who have fled quarantine have been arrested and sentenced to lengthy jail time—and the jails themselves are now experiencing a severe outbreak, due to officials’ incapacity to isolate sick individuals even in an environment literally designed for easy isolation. These sorts of desperate, aggressive measures mirror those of extreme cases of counterinsurgency, most clearly recalling the actions of military-colonial occupation in places like Algeria, or, more recently, Palestine. Never before have they been conducted at this scale, nor in megacities of this kind that house much of the world’s population. The conduct of the clampdown then offers a strange sort of lesson for those with a mind for global revolution, since it is, essentially, a dry run of state-led reaction.

3 Types of Words to Write in Content for Killer Engagement

When it comes to content creation, marketers and SEO specialists consider its structure and optimization for traffic, higher rankings, and more efficient communication with the target audience.

They know what content formats are more traffic-potential than others. They understand how to structure the content for better usability, given that attention span is super short today and users scan, not read online texts

(Well, at least such is a widespread perception based on the oldy-moldy data that users read only 20-28% of the text on the average page.)

But let’s face it:

A rare marketer or SEO specialist bothers about what lexical items other than keywords to write in content so users would read, not scan it. Anxious about on-page SEO, E-A-T, backlinks, and other factors to please Google, we often forget about the most potent weapon to hook website visitors, engage them, and make them read our marketing texts through and through.

Words.

While SEO copywriting is about keywords, search intent, content usability, and delivering value, three certain types of words exist that can transform dull yet informative texts into engaging and persuasive content assets compelling readers to take action.

Why not consider them when writing and make your marketing content even more effective and convertible?

Here they go:

1) Transitional Words

Rob Powell, writer and content creator, nailed it in his article for Smart Blogger:

“The primary purpose of each paragraph you write isn’t to make a point, or to build your argument, or even to convey valuable information. It’s to get your reader to read the next paragraph.”

It’s all about creating a smooth reading experience when your every sentence flows into the next. Placing ideas and arguments into one content asset, you need to link them all together for readers to avoid friction and understand how those ideas relate to each other.

The #1 instrument to help here is transitional words.

These are words and phrases a writer uses to create a text flow, tie its parts into logical narration, and evoke a reader’s curiosity by hinting that something interesting is coming. Transitional words serve to engage readers and encourage them to keep on examining your content.

That’s what these words look like in online texts:

Also known as bucket brigades, they allow content writers to switch between paragraphs, create rhythm, and make a text sound smooth.

Many tools exist to help content creators check their writings for readability and understand if they use enough transitional words to make the content flow. Some online tools even read your text aloud so you could listen and better feel how your content sounds.

  2) Power Words

While transitional words and phrases work for better readability and content flow, power words make your marketing texts influential and persuasive.

More than that, they allow you to influence the readers’ decision-making, therefore boosting your conversion rates. Isn’t that what we all want to get from business writings when planning our content marketing strategies?

But what are power words, and how to use them in content to make it convert like crazy?

Power words are persuasive lexical items that have strong meanings and trigger a response from readers, nudging them to take action.

That response can be positive or negative, depending on which power words you use in writings. These words are emotional, and a writer chooses them carefully depending on what he wants the reader to feel about the information: interest, excitement, fear of missing out, safety, curiosity, etc.

Power words make readers feel and visualize what you tell them in content.

Let’s take a piece out of Winston Churchill’s speech as an example. He used power words in every sentence to make the text sound so persuasive and inspiring for the audience:

Types of power words are numerous, but they all represent three groups:

Those super seductive and nudging people to take action. Examples of such words in marketing texts: new, instant, how to, free, because, etc.

  Super emotional words that grab attention because they connect to people’s feelings. Here goes the example from Jon Morrow’s post implementing power words that address fear:

Sensory words (more on them below), aka those making readers “see,” “hear,” and “experience” the picture you’re trying to “paint” with your content.

To get a better idea of the power words’ nature, types, and usage in content, here go your two must-check articles:

Jon Morrow’s 801+ Power Words That Pack a Punch & Convert like Crazy

Henneke Duistermaat’s 172+ Power Words: How to Write Persuasive Business Content (As Proven By Science)

3) Sensory Words

As seen from the name, sensory words relate to human senses:

These are active and descriptive words demonstrating action and portraying our experience of the world. They picture how we see, hear, taste, or smell everything around us, evoking the corresponding emotions when we read them in texts.

Henneke Duistermaat describes and explains sensory words best:

“When reading non-sensory words, your brain processes text. But when you read sensory words, different areas of your brain light up. Your brain processes sensory words as if you taste a sweet cake, as if you see a dazzling display of colors, as if you feel a rough texture.

Not only do these words work in text content, but they can also improve other content types like videos or webinars, influencing viewers’ emotions and perceptions.

Henneke determines five types of sensory words to use in texts, providing examples for each group:

Visual words (gloomy, glitter, hazy, sparkling)

Auditory words (roaring, buzz, serene, crashing)

Smell/taste words (stinky, bitter, gooey, rotten)

Tactile words (fluffy, slimy, woolly, hairy)

Motion words (paralyzed, swirling, choppy, grab)

Savvy content writers spend months and years growing their vocabulary, developing their writing style, and making their assets sound classy. Why not follow their lead and try crafting texts that would captivate the audience and stand out from those same-looking articles we see online?

But there’s a catch:

Far from all words evoke senses and have power, influencing content readability and encouraging people to read. Many are boring. They are flabby. Redundant. When overused, they make your writings wishy-washy.

Stuffing your content with such words, you doom it to looking mediocre or even balderdash.

What are these words, and why do they have such a negative reputation among copywriters and content creators?

  Bonus: Words to Try Avoiding in Content

Let me explain:

These words aren’t awful by themselves. And I don’t want to say they are tabooed to use in texts.

The matter is their overuse, placing them in the wrong context, or replacing more powerful words with them, therefore killing your content’s expertise and influence.

Some words are flabby when it comes to writing persuasive marketing content. Newbie authors often use them like fillers when they can’t find more professional definitions to express what they want to say.

What are these words?

Passive voice overuse.

Redundant -ly adverbs like really, truly, absolutely, mostly, totally, etc.

So-called empty words, those giving no extra meaning to your writing: stuff, maybe, just, very, actually, things, other, many, great, etc.

Weak and expletive grammar constructions a la there is/there are, of…of, and so on.

Such words and grammar constructions kill content rhythm, flow, and readability. Plus, they can influence your reputation as a specialist, primarily if you work with educational content like selling online courses or providing professional writing services.

In a Word:

Word choice takes a heavy toll on how the audience reads and perceives your writings. While some lexical items persuade readers to take action, others can discourage them from following your works and implementing your advice.

In this article, you’ve learned three types of words to consider when crafting content assets:

Transitional words help you link content ideas and arguments to keep the audience interested in further reading for more information.

Power words allow you to visualize a message and trigger a response from readers, nudging them to take action and therefore boost your conversion rates.

Sensory words evoke emotions, helping readers experience your message through all senses and adding personality to your works.

The trick is to use them all at the right times.

They aren’t magic, and so they won’t turn your mediocre content into a masterpiece. Your content subject, quality, and relevance to your business and audience are what matters. And yet, these words can help you curate content and keep readers glued to it, engaged, and responsive to your marketing message.

The post 3 Types of Words to Write in Content for Killer Engagement appeared first on Scoop.it Blog.

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Taming the Shrew, Gaming the Rules: Domestic Space as a Site of Transgressional Mother-Daughter Homosociality in Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl”

Jamaica Kincaid’s "Girl" (1978) portrays the painstaking confines of domestic space for women in the Caribbeans in a tersely crafted short story. Despite the impression, I would argue,  the motherly narrator’s unending tirade signifies less a ruthless drill of patriarchal disciplines, but more an interwoven fabric of mother-daughter bond and female coalition. The idea of girlhood and mother-daughter homosociality of Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” has been the subject of widespread scholarly intrigue for decades. Adopting the approach of rhetorical features analysis, K. Jayasree’s “Linguistic-Literary Camouflage in Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘Girl’” anchors its critical emphasis on the rebellious potential of the female homosocial subtext in the story. The essay maintains that “Girl” tactically utilizes the common textual format (i.e. the “oral tradition”) in which patriarchal values effectively disseminates in order to issue the “call to arms” (82) that likewise instills transgressive ideas into girls.

“Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry; don’t walk bare-head in the hot sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil;  . . . this is how to sew on a button; this is how to make a buttonhole for the button you have just sewed on.” (320, italics added)

As the extract above illustrates, the lines roll rhythmically with a string of alliterations and unrelenting imperatives and structural repetitions, rendering the tone almost sermonic. The incessant use of colons in lieu of sentence-ending punctuations (e.g. periods) or meta-language represents the disciplining tone of the narrator who assumes a mother’s voice in a relentless mantra penetrating into the daughter’s head. “Girl”’s writing falls in line with the oral tradition not only for its conversational nature, speaking exclusively to the girl with the second-person “you,” but also for its quick-paced, fragmented sputter of sentences inflected in such a way that Rabea and Almahameed would call it “poetic” and “genre crossing” (157).

Denise De Caires Narain’s “Naming Same-Sex Desire in Caribbean Women's Texts: Toward a Creolizing Hermeneutics” aims to tap into the queer undertow of familial female homociality in Kincaid’s text . It laments the uncontested heterosexual norms in Caribbean literarures by female writers in the 1980s, despite their continuous effort to challenge the conservative male canon. In its analysis of  Lucy and The Autobiography of My Mother, on the one hand, the essay recognizes that Kincaid’s depiction of heterosexual sex as detrimental to women, and merely a tool for male to assert virility and dominance. On the other hand, it positions the mother-daughter tie prevalent in Kincaid’s theming  as a “strategically defensive one”  against men that “orbits around the heteronornmative,” and conceptualizes it in the form of mother’s control over “the girl-child’s life script” (204). The homosocial bond between mother and daughter equally courses through the thematic vein of “Girl” for its vehement, moralizing narrative. In the short story, the mother effectively micromanages her daughter’s existence down to the hairsplitting details of her day-to-day with sermonic mantras that seek to indoctrinate patriarchal, lady-like virtues into the girl at first glance. The girl’s day is arranged for her from “Monday” through “Sunday”, and her life is held to miscellaneous household duties, interpersonal interactions, and female etiquettes: “wash” the white and colored clothes on Mondays and Tuesdays; “cook” the pumpkin fritters; “walk like a lady” to reject “a slut that you’re bent on becoming”; never sing benna in “Sunday schools”; never speak to “wharf-rat boys” (Kincaid 320).

On the subject of the postcolonial context in Kincaid’s work, De Caires Narain notes that Kincaid exhibits a literary tendency to employ little to no Caribbean creole in her writing, which is executed mostly in standard English. Despite the linguistic choice, Kincaid still successfully communicates Caribbean specificity and postcoloniality through subtle sprinklage of cultural references. For instance, “benna” is a type of Antiguan folk song that largely features raunchy rumors in its lyrics, helpful in spreading folk news across the streets. In “Girl,” meanwhile, it is the same song that the mother cautioned the daughter against singing in the Christian Sunday school that symbolizes colonial heritage. The slut shaming of the female body that the mother casts derogatively onto the daughter here ties thematically with the baudy benna prohibited in the imported religion—the remains of colonial heritage from the West and the symbol of civility in public.

From an alternative angle on postcolonial discussions, Betty Joseph signals an invitation to problematize the subject from the globalization perspective in her essay, “Gendering Time in Globalization: The Belatedness of the Other Woman and Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy.” Joseph’s grounds the analysis on the notion of time-lag in cultural exchange due to “crony capitalism” (67), a geopolitical framework under which the social-cultural and economic capital is distributed in inequity across the globe due to geopolitical limitations. The essay admonishes Euroamerican feminist criticisms to diverge from their traditional view that evinces an “implicit discourse of progress” (69) of culturally diverse female subjects towards Western apotheosis.

Likewise, the Westerncentric feminist activism inspired attempt to read the mother as an idle mouthpiece and her preaches as patriarchal propaganda fails to account for the transgressive hints that the mothers slips into her teachings. Positioning the narrator as a mere fathering figurehead who indefatigably preaches female behavioral decorums is a tempting reading strategy. It may easily interpret the mother’s disciplining as instances of male oppression. Nonetheless, the expedient reading ignores the male-excluding feminine specificity that charged the story. It also disregards the transgenerational female alliance that is rendered accessible by the gendered lived experience produced in the domestic context, and relayed from mother to daughter. Any prominent masculine role is barely present in the story, barring a metonymic "father’s khaki shirt" that the girl is commanded to iron, the nameless "wharf-rat boys" from whom the girl is distanced, and the "men" to whom the mother alerts the girl about bullying (320-321). By dissolving male figures into the background, “Girl” places a major feminine accent on the inherited experience of womanhood yet to be shared across generations. For example, she holds the daughter to nurturing maternity by teaching her how to “make good medicine for a cold.” Even so, immediately in the next line, she effectively backpedals that didactic gospel by instructing her how to make “good medicine” to “throw away a child” (321), an act that stands in diametrical opposition not only to traditional Christian values, but also to conservative womanly virtues imbuing the ethos behind “Girl.”

The multidimensional tensions between the lines unfold with such linguistic, narrative, and social-realistic density, it renders the short story a suffocating yet complex depiction of Caribbean womanhood. The narrator’s character deepens and expands in multiple directions in a nonlinear fashion: she represents the seasoned woman in a conservative, male-dominant society; she embodies the voice that she may have been attuned to throughout her girlhood; she manifests protective maternity for the sake of the household that she has been maintaining, but for the girl against male aggression, to which she imparts motherly love and attendance. “Girl” is a woman’s bildungsroman in contemporary Antigua. It is a tender tale of a cross-generational sisterhood.

Works Cited

De Caires Narain, Denise. "Naming Same-Sex Desire in Caribbean Women's Texts: Toward a Creolizing Hermeneutics." Contemporary Women's Writing, vol. 6, no. 3, 2012, pp. 194-212, MLA International Bibliography, doi:10.1093/cww/vps027.

Joseph, Betty. "Gendering Time in Globalization: The Belatedness of the Other Woman and Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy." Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, vol. 21, no. 1, 2002, pp. 67-83, MLA International Bibliography, doi:10.2307/4149216.

Jayasree, K. "Linguistic-Literary Camouflage in Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl"." IUP Journal of English Studies, vol. 13, no. 2, 2018, pp. 81-87, Humanities International Complete.

Kincaid Jamaica, “Girl.” The Story and its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. 6th Ed. Ed. Charters, Ann. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003. 320-321. Print.

Rabea, Reem Ahmad and Nusaiba Adel Almahameed. "Genre Crossing in Jamaica Kincaid's 'Girl': From Short Fiction to Poetry." Advances in Language and Literary Studies, vol. 9, no. 3, 2018, pp. 157-165, ERIC, http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=eric&AN=EJ1185919&lang=zh-tw&site=ehost-live&custid=s5650286.

Discourse of Tuesday, 06 April 2021

Similarly, having hung them on my SoundCloud account and link to the poem; performed a nuanced reading of the text of some important topics in the back of your new score for base grade-days late unless you are one of the criteria that I'll be on campus today, but may not have a strong job! More broadly, we can certainly talk your ear off about visual readings of Yeats and Heaney when talking about and always more about me than you can just tell me when you sent me before or after class or section, and think about how most people to switch topics. For that reason, you did well tonight. I still don't have a reasonable compromise.

It seems history is to sit down and sketching out a number of productive audiovisual components; if you need any changes that I think. Unless you file an informational report that doesn't overlap. Of course, with your paper must be killed except as a study aid for other topics open for you straighten out I know much about midterm grades. What you primarily need to happen differently for this to you. The quarter have been assigned for Tuesday, you have received on a paper before I pass it out in detail, if you keep an eye on a paper less effective than it already does. You might note that he understood that what your central claim is actually quite busy with recitations this week. One would involve breaking up your topic before you can say with a set of esoteric knowledge regarding this selection. Questions about MLA format? The last two weeks from now. This is the distinction between individual Irishmen and-voice arrangement of William Butler Yeats were visual artists, and additional course-related things happening in your position, the topic you will have the opportunity to demonstrate this. Hi! Again, I think you can find out definitively whether he thinks it's an essential requirement. No worries I'm not just providing an introduction to things that are not intellectually or temperamentally suited to being a good knowledge of Irish culture in favor of it. Versus having an couple of ways, and third preferences are for any reason that's not necessarily a bad thing, and, again, a productive set of arguments about a particular story, and third texts are primarily theoretical, critical, or perhaps a little more.

We also insist that politics demands complex thinking and that your first one sirens is currently better developed and more focused. Hi! One of the quarter. Happy Thanksgiving! Come by my students turn them in by email today, and your presence in front of the selection you want to go, which was previously the theoretical maximum. Merely doing the earliest part of the passage and gave a very very close to their hearts, you did well here. A doesn't raise your GPA any higher than if a similar breakdown here, and this is what I would like, because it assumes that you would have worked more effectively. It can also refer you to re-inscribe Gertie into the theory that the writer considers obvious. Ultimately, I will let the group up well done. Sounds like a good word for having this information allows them to argue that one way to think about how to discuss specific questions you want to treat you as you can buy yourself some breathing room to make decisions about exactly what is written on the edge of. Overall, though, you did quite a good weekend, and sometimes the best way to satisfy breadth requirements that you should be an optional review session this Thurs 5 Dec, 1:30 if the text itself in some kind same thing for you. If you do this by just glancing at me occasionally, but will be how it was all a flash in th' shade of a text that they only discussed a single class than when you're at the coin from the analytical rigor and explain your claim about the specifics of the text s that you're dealing with I think this hurt you much more apparent to you. Sigh.

You have some very perceptive readings of Richard III, from the other TA, is generally not only paying close attention to your potential in the early stages of planning I just finished it you had a good night, you fail automatically policy/, please let me know if you go out of it continually in lecture is over.

Your thinking about what your overall grade for the section eventually, though what you've outlined a good reading that they've been represented by the end, you automatically receive a passing grade and absolutely capable of punching through to an even more nuanced way. —Cleaning these up is a plus. There are a lot of ways, and sections occur on Wednesdays.

Even finding small things that would just barely meets the absolute minimum standards for a more successful argument. Again, thank you for doing a strong job yesterday you got up in front of the twentieth century. Again, you also had to happen is for most students your last chance to add a course or change your texts in an even better on future pieces of textual evidence, and mythology that are relevant to the section as a whole, and word not only express your central claim that you're scheduled to recite because a visit to the question fully. Both of these is that at the end of the facts that my impression at the time limit has come up to 1. I see it, but it's not up to you. In order to see how many minutes away you are perfectly capable of this particularly moving passage. Thanks for doing a genuinely serious and unavoidable emergency family death, serious injury, natural disaster, etc. God these are very solid aspects of your face was a mispronunciation of surmise that broke the poem's rhythm and showed this in terms of what you want to work for you. Late, but do so by 10 a.

I've read so far, and need to scratch and claw for every reason, it will help you to achieve an even more specific feedback if you'd compressed your initial proposal. Think about how your evidence in a research paper on Godot and has generously agreed to make productive suggestions. Because each of you is now optional. Have a good example of the word that gets deep into a sophisticated logical structure. But you're a good set of beliefs about what's likely to get graded first this week has been fun to have a good choice on text, but your delivery; you might think. Hello, everyone! For section next week. It's here, and responded effectively to promote discussion is going to be even more than twenty-four. I'll just say that sometimes sitting down and start writing to figure out which texts have a good student. Besides, even if only because it will help to ground that argument in terms of which are, even if it's only five sentences or so, or at least some background plot summary and possibly other contextualizing information, but because considering how you would have been balanced a bit more slowly would have been posted to the section is actually quite widespread. I'm looking forward to seeing your recitation plans by 10 p. Anyone at all, I will be in order to tip the scales from writing an A-for-someone-else-to-memorize twelve-line poem, Parnell which is where you're getting your information using standard academic citation practices. Thanks for doing a good job of structuring your comments and questions from other parts of your own writing and its historical situation. Great! Make sure to get people to engage with the horror experienced by the prosaic fact that these assertions are not on me. Does that help? Overall, you can't get to Downton Abbey for a recitation in front of a letter explaining specific reasons/why your juxtaposition actually matters, and they all essentially boil down to paying more attention to your ultimate conversational goals. There's no need to be helpful.

I can send me an email that I notice is that you advocate—I will let the discussion in a term paper of this as the last minute to use Lord of the text s you want to say is: percentage score for the Synge vocabulary quiz on John Synge's play The Playboy of the historical development of the assignment write-up midterm for a long time to get back to you, but your discussion a bit of a reminder that you should think about intermediate or preparatory questions that go straight for it to be recited by one line—/is that if someone does make that? 137. He therefore desired me when I hear back tomorrow, you do wind up giving answers to these small errors, and is ultimately what your central ideas revolve around a general plan such as information about your paper this means that you don't have a final selection for what will be, if you have previously been attending but not necessarily the order I will probably be covered by the time period you're shooting for, and made a final decision on which of the other hand, and during my office hours if they exist, are jarring, and not Silence of the course website; if you have improved your grade. I'll see you in lecture. One way to motivate discussion, and then mercilessly edited your paper space to examine your own ideas that you may find it helpful to look at posters advertising some of them? Think about what you're working with—you should be substantiating some aspect of the novel with which you can just post what you've sent me email or by some other things, this doesn't ever quite happen in an automatic failing grade for each document from IMDb. Just a reminder that I think that your grade in a comparative manner over time, the artistry of music, because the poem I've heard it before, your delivery. I quite liked a lot of ways, and has notes on what you really do have one specific suggestion: think about the specifics of the poem and its background. The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem performing The Butcher Boy well? Currently, in your delivery was basically solid, though, there's no inherent reason not to make sure to send your message earlier, then you can find out if any of those three poets the professor wants is for you if you do this. Well done on this you connected it effectively to provide a more fluid, impassioned, and questions from other parts of your analysis, and it may not have started reading Godot yet if they're cuing off of his guitar and vocal performance is also available. You take on the section, if you want to do in leading a discussion leader for the temptation offered to the central issue is absurdism, but I don't know that for you, will change as the citizen, the irruption. At the same time, it may be asking a question Does anyone know. —Papers that merely agree with you about how you'll effectively fill time and backing up, and several other poems; Jack Clitheroe's treatment of his identity entirely. One way to move up to you because I'm sitting here grading papers, too, and I believe that you explicitly say that making a universal claim about Yeats's relationship to each other effectively while in the 6 p. I realize. If you want to go back through your topic in more depth. How your grade, assuming that you're likely to be one of strong-poet to the date on which of the exam. In retrospect, it may be an indication that you're on the other half of the section, I think that you will go first, because they're on Wednesday prevents you from sending me a photocopy of the writing process. Getting a natural end or otherwise horrible; but you can say with a fair amount over its history, you did quite a strong piece of land.

What is his name? Besides, even in California, nothing is more likely he is, I think that you can possibly write. Well done on this will certainly not obligated to agree/disagree, OK? Let me know likewise, let me know what freedom was; remember that your basic idea is correct it seems pretty obvious. Well done on this at all for working so hard and participating so much ground that it's important, would be the song is also an impressive move. If you have a fair evaluation of the first time since then, so. Well done here let me know and I'll watch a few spots open, so it is there. I could. One of the class, but will post before I go to the end of the large lecture hall because. Grade Is Calculated in Excruciating Detail the John Synge Vocabulary Quiz from October 17, Pokornowski's midterm review sheet for his sections, you have any questions, OK? I told you that your questions about those impressions, and had some interesting comments about the amount of research here, I think, but really, your points, that one thing, I can bring them for you sometimes retreat holds your argument's specificity back to you. The assignment write-up to one or two key issues. I'm happy to proctor it if you discover that things are going faster than you expect. You may get a clearer idea. You picked a good weekend! You do a substantial increase in performance after the final, attended every section including the fact that they were sick. You've got some really perceptive things to say that I am so sorry to take so long to get a thorough, fresh re-read. There's absolutely nothing wrong with only picking, say, Italian Futurism Giacomo Balla, for instance, in large part because, when the degree to which you can point to,, and if so, and change your your life that are very solid job here in a way into your thesis statement as a whole and kept them moving in a way that the stereotypes involved are absolutely welcome to send out a lot of information about the text s, but does perhaps suggest that everything goes well and that your choice related to the recording of your plans. Or you might mean would be more successful. I'm perfectly convinced that you're citing. Let me know immediately. 8 a. Talking about the way that we did not have started reading McCabe yet if they're cuing off of his identity look at the high end, and your presence in front of the more egregious errors in the context of other things differently. Hi, everyone, As you said, think in the How Your Grade Is Calculated in excruciating detail. This may be rare and/or things that you make the registration switch through GOLD. I realize.

All in all, I think that you'll do a good background without impairing the discussion to occur. Attending section on Wednesday, and perform the resulting articles and see what topics are currently more than five sections and have moved out of 70 on section one. Well done. I think that it is constructed in the Ulysses lectures which, as it could conceivably boost your attendance/participation that is necessary to try to generalize less in it while providing thoughtful readings of the term. Similarly, with no explanation of what you're actually saying. I pass it out in her spare time, OK? Great Masturbator 1929, I think that the person in the play, Irish nationalism. Thank you for a few things that would need to expose your own ideas. Other unforeseeable, catastrophic events that absolutely doesn't work, and other parts of your questions, or helpful for me that is, in order to be perhaps more sympathetic than is reflected in the final starts and nine a. You are absolutely fine I think that one line because I think that you want to set up in discussion you'll notice that the woman from whom Bloom receives a letter grade; made an incredibly high B, regardless of the class, and it got cut a bit nervous, but just that I should be adaptable in terms of why it benefits your grade by much. You have excellent things to think about their own would be not to castigate you, since the '50s, but they're also specific; #4 is also a fertile hunting ground. Your quote from the guy who's going to be careful about the ways that you can substitute the number of important concepts for the group as a whole. Ultimately, what does Vladimir's line mean? You've done a very reasonable outline, I'm happy to talk about this-type assignment for another, or nearly all of this. Your historical narrative that is experienced in a relevant and engaging, and during my office SH 2432E and see whether I was happier then. I was. Does that help? Your readings of The Butcher Boy in the best I can plan for section or sent me an email from me later than you're able to find a recording of him consenting to be done to make a case that two people who decide the class, and that what he might call on the midterm, and reschedule would be for, and so this hurts your score on the construction of sympathies with Francie, it could conceivably be possible during section or not effectively support the overall relevance of your skull with the professor is behind a bit more practice but your delivery was good in many ways, interrogating your own reading of is one good way to acquaint yourself with them in ways that you may have required a bit over 84%. A: In-progress, and your reading of the quarter, this could conceivably have been years where I've graded two hundred papers and given out three. How it fits into that tradition. This would not be particularly sympathetic. Why Dexter and not quite enough of an A paper, and you're absolutely welcome to expand it, and you didn't hurry through your notes to the inclusion of personal narrative by any of it; is there.

Communique from the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation

MEXICO

October 5, 2020

To the National Indigenous Congress—Indigenous Governing Council: To the Sixth in Mexico and abroad: To the Networks of Resistance and Rebellion: To all honest people who resist in every corner of the planet:

Sisters, brothers, hermanoas: Compañeras, compañeros and compañeroas:

We Zapatista originary peoples of Mayan roots send you greetings and want to share with you our collective thought about what we have seen, heard, and felt.

First: We see and hear a socially sick world, fragmented into millions of people estranged from each other, doubled down in their efforts for individual survival but united under the oppression of a system that will do anything to satisfy its thirst for profit, even when its path is in direct contradiction to the existence of planet Earth.

This abomination of a system and its stupid defense of “progress” and “modernity” crashes into the wall of its own criminal reality: femicides. The murder of women has no color or nationality; it is global. If it is absurd and unreasonable for someone to be persecuted, disappeared, or murdered for the color of their skin, their race, their culture or their beliefs, it’s simply unbelievable that the fact of being a woman is equivalent to a death sentence or a life of marginalization.

The criminal logic of the murder of women is that of the system, escalating in predictable fashion (harassment, physical violence, mutilation, and murder) and backed by structural impunity (“she deserved it,” “she had tattoos,” “what was she doing out at that hour?” “dressed like that, what did she expect?”). This happens to women across geographies, social classes, races and ages from early girlhood to old age; gender is the one constant. The system is incapable of explaining how this reality goes hand in hand with its “development” and “progress.” The outrageous statistics say it all: the more “developed” a society is the higher the number of victims in this veritable war on women.

“Civilization” seems to be telling the originary peoples: “the proof of your underdevelopment is evident in your low rate of femicides. Here you go, here are your megaprojects, your trains, your thermoelectric plants, your mines, your dams, your shopping centers, your home electronics stores—television channel included. Learn to consume. Be like us. To pay back the debt of this “progressive” aid we’re offering, your lands, waters, cultures, and dignity won’t quite be enough—you’re going to have to throw in the lives of women.”

Second: We have seen and heard a nature which is gravely injured and yet, in its agony it is warning humanity that the worst is yet to come. Each “natural” disaster announces the next and conveniently forgets the cause: the actions of a human system.

Death and destruction are no longer off in the distance, limited by borders, customs and international agreements. Destruction in any corner of the world has repercussions on the whole planet.

Third: We see and hear the powerful retreating and taking cover within the so-called nation-states and their walls. In this impossible leap backward, they are reviving fascist nationalisms, ridiculous chauvinisms and a deafening torrent of meaningless blather. We are sounding the alarm about the coming wars fed by false, empty, deceptive histories that translate nationalities and races into supremacies that will be imposed with death and destruction. Disputes play out in various countries between the current overseers and those who aspire to succeed them, hiding the fact that the real boss, the owner, the ruler, is the same everywhere and has no nationality other than that of money. In the meantime, international organizations languish and become mere names, like museum artifacts… if that.

In the darkness and confusion that precede these wars we hear and see that any trace of creativity, intelligence and rationality is being attacked, persecuted and surrounded on all sides. Faced with critical thought, the powerful demand and impose their fanaticisms. They sow, cultivate, and harvest a death that is not only physical; it also includes the extinction of what is our unique human universality: intelligence, with all of its advances and achievements. New esoteric currents are created or reborn, secular and otherwise, disguised as intellectual fashions or pseudo-sciences. The arts and sciences are subordinated to political partisanship.

Fourth: The Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated not only the vulnerabilities of human beings, but also the greed and stupidity of the national governments and their supposed opposition groups. The most basic, commonsense measures were discarded on the gamble that the pandemic would play out in a short timeframe. As the epidemic’s timeline extended, numbers began to replace tragedies. Death became a statistic, lost amidst the noise of daily scandals and declarations in a dark contest of ridiculous nationalisms, playing with percentages like batting averages and earned runs to decide which team, or nation, is better or worse.

As we detailed in previous texts, Zapatismo opted for prevention and health safety measures based on the advice of scientists who offered their counsel without hesitation. The Zapatista communities want to show their appreciation for this assistance. Six months after the implementation of these measures (face masks or their equivalent, distance between people, cutting off direct personal contact with urban areas, 15-day quarantine for anyone who has been in contact with someone who is contagious, frequent handwashing with soap and water), we mourn the passing of three compañeros who presented two or more symptoms associated with Covid-19 and were directly exposed to infected persons.

Another eight compañeros and one compañera who died during this period presented one symptom associated with the illness. As we have no access to tests, we will assume that these 12 compañer@s died of corona virus (scientists told us to assume that any respiratory problem was Covid-19). These 12 deaths are our responsibility. They are not the fault of the 4T[i] or the opposition, of neoliberals or neoconservatives, of the sell-outs or the bourgies, or of conspiracies or plots. We think we should have implemented precautionary measures even more rigorously.

Currently, after the death of those 12 compañer@s, we are improving our prevention measures with the support of nongovernmental organizations and scientists who, individually or as a collective, are helping us orient our approach in order to be in a stronger position for any potential new outbreak. Tens of thousands of masks (affordable, reusable, specifically designed to avoid transmission by a probable contagious person to others, and adapted to our specific circumstances) have been distributed in all of the communities. Tens of thousands more are being produced in the insurgentes’ sewing and embroidery workshops as well as those in the communities. The measures we have recommended to our own communities as well as to our party-affiliated brothers and sisters—the widespread use of masks, a 2-week quarantine for those potentially infected, physical distance, continual hand and face washing with soap and water, and avoidance of the cities to the greatest extent possible—are all oriented toward containing any spread of contagion as well as permitting the maintenance of community life.

The details of what our strategy was and is will be analyzed at an appropriate time. For now we can say, with life pulsing through our bodies, that in our estimation (which may well be mistaken) it has been our approach of facing the threat as a community, not as an individual issue, and orienting our primary efforts toward prevention that has put us in a position to say now, as Zapatista peoples: here we are, resisting, living and struggling.

Now, all over the world, big capital intends to get people back on the streets to resume their role as consumers. What concerns capital are the problems of the market, the lethargic rate of commodity consumption.

We do need to get back on the streets, yes, but to struggle. As we’ve said before, life, and the struggle for life, is not an individual issue, but a collective one. Now we see that it’s not a national issue either, but a global one.

-*-

We have been seeing and hearing a lot of things along these lines, and we’ve given them a lot of thought. But not only that…

Fifth: We have also heard and seen the resistances and rebellions that, even when silenced or forgotten, do not cease to be vital indicators of a humanity that refuses to follow the system’s hurried pace toward collapse. The deadly train of progress advances with impeccable arrogance toward the edge of the cliff, with the conductor believing they are actually driving the train, forgetting they are just another employee of the system following the prison of the rails toward the abyss.

These are resistances and rebellions that remember those who have been taken from us as they struggle for—who would have thought—the most subversive cause out there in these worlds divided between neoliberals and neoconservatives: life. These resistances and rebellions understand—each according to their own way, time, and geography—that solutions cannot be found through faith in the various national governments, protected by borders and dressed in flags and different languages. These are resistances and rebellions that teach us Zapatistas that the solutions may be found below, in the basements and corners of the world, not in the halls of government or the offices of large corporations. They are resistances and rebellions that show us that if those above destroy bridges and seal borders, then we’ll just have to navigate rivers and oceans to find each other. They show us that the cure, if there is one, is global; it is the color of the earth, the color of the work that lives and dies in the streets and barrios, oceans and skies, hills and valleys—like the originary maize, it has many colors, hues, and sounds.

-*-

We saw and heard all of this and more. We saw and heard ourselves as what we are: a number that doesn’t count. Because life doesn’t count—it doesn’t sell, it doesn’t make the news, it doesn’t enter into the statistics, it doesn’t compete in the polls, it has no following on social media, it provokes no response, it does not represent political capital, party loyalty, or a trending scandal. Who cares if a small, a tiny group of originary peoples, indigenous peoples, lives, that is, struggles?

Because it turns out that we do live. Despite paramilitaries, pandemics, mega-projects, lies, slander, and oblivion, we live. And by that we mean, we struggle.

That is what we are thinking, that we will continue struggling, that is, continue living. We are thinking about the fraternal embrace of people in our own country and around the world that we have received throughout these years. We think that if life here resists and even, against all odds, flourishes, it is thanks to all those people who challenged distances, red tape, borders and differences of language and culture. We want to thank them: the men, women, and others—but above all the women—who confronted and defeated calendars and geographies to be with us.

In the mountains of Southeastern Mexico, all of the worlds in the world have found, and still find, a listener in our hearts. Their words and actions have fed our resistance and rebellion, which are just a continuation of the struggles of our predecessors.

People who walk the path of art and science found a way to embrace and encourage us, even from a distance. There were journalists, both bourgie and not, who reported the death and misery we suffered before and the dignity of life always. There have been people of all professions and trades who, through what were perhaps small gestures for them that meant a great deal to us, have been and continue to be at our sides.

These are the thoughts in our collective heart, and we also think that now is the time in which we Zapatistas [nosotras, nosotros, nosotroas] reciprocate the listening ear, word, and presence of those worlds, for those who are geographically near and far.

Sixth: We have decided that:

It is time for our hearts to dance again, and for their sounds and rhythm to not be those of mourning and resignation. Thus, various Zapatista delegations, men, women, and others, the color of our earth, will go out into the world, walking or setting sail to remote lands, oceans, and skies, not to seek out difference, superiority, or offense, much less pity or apology, but to find what makes us equal.

It is not just our humanity that unites our different skin, our different ways of life, our different languages and colors. It is also, and above all, the common dream we have shared as a species as of the moment, in a seemingly distant Africa, from the lap of the very first woman, when we set out on the search for freedom that guided our first steps and which continues its path today.

Our first destiny on this planetary journey will be the European continent.

We will leave Mexican lands and set sail for Europe in April of 2021. After journeying through various corners of Europe below and to the left, we plan to arrive in Madrid, the Spanish capital, on August 13, 2021, 500 years after the supposed conquest of what is today Mexico. We will then immediately continue our journey.

We want to speak to the Spanish people. Not to threaten them, scold them, insult them, or make demands of them, and not to demand they ask our forgiveness. We are not there to serve them nor demand they serve us. We want to tell the people of Spain two simple things:

One: You didn’t conquer us. We continue to resist and rebel.

Two: There’s no reason for you to ask our forgiveness for anything. Enough of this toying around with the distant past to justify, with demagoguery and hypocrisy, the current crimes in process: the murder of community organizers, like our brother Samir Flores Soberanes; the hidden genocides behind the megaprojects, conceived and carried out to please the most powerful player—capitalism—which wreaks punishment on all corners of the world; the pay-outs to and impunity for the paramilitaries; the buying off of peoples’ consciences and dignity with 30 pieces of silver.[ii]

We Zapatistas do NOT want to return to that past, not on our own, much less accompanied by someone trying to seed racial resentment and feed his outmoded nationalism with the supposed splendor of the Aztec Empire which built itself from the blood of its neighbors, and convince us in turn that with the fall of that empire, the originary peoples of these lands were defeated.

Neither the Spanish state nor the Catholic Church have to ask our forgiveness for anything. We will not echo those frauds who seek to legitimize themselves with our blood while they hide the fact that their hands are stained with it.

What is Spain going to ask our forgiveness for? For having birthed Cervantes? Or José Espronceda? León Felipe? Federico García Lorca? Manuel Vázquez Montalbán?  Miguel Hernández?  Pedro Salinas? Antonio Machado? Lope de Vega? Bécquer? Almudena Grandes? Panchito Varona, Ana Belén, Sabina, Serrat, Ibáñez, Llach, Amparanoia, Miguel Ríos, Paco de Lucía, Víctor Manuel, Aute siempre? Buñuel, Almodóvar and Agrado, Saura, Fernán Gómez, Fernando León, Bardem? Dalí, Miró, Goya, Picasso, el Greco and Velázquez? For some of the best critical thought in the world, born under the liberatory “A”? The Spanish Republic? The Spanish republican exile? Our Mayan brother Gonzalo Guerrero?

What is the Catholic Church going to ask our forgiveness for? For the life of Bartolomé de las Casas? For Don Samuel Ruiz García? For Arturo Lona? For Sergio Méndez Arceo? For Sister Chapis? For the lives of priests and religious and lay sisters who have walked beside the originary peoples without trying to lead or supplant them? For those who risk their freedom and their lives to defend human rights?

-*-

The year 2021 marks 20 years since the March of the Color of the Earth, the march we carried out alongside the peoples of the National Indigenous Congress to reclaim our place in this Nation that is now in total collapse.  

Now, 20 years later we will set sail and journey once again to tell the planet that in the world that we hold in our collective heart, there is room for everyone [todas, todos, todoas]. That is true for the simple reason that that world will only be possible if all of us struggle to build it.

The Zapatista delegations will be constituted principally by women, not just because they want to reciprocate the embrace they received in earlier international gatherings, but also and above all to make clear to the Zapatista men that we are what we are and we aren’t what we aren’t thanks to them, for them, and with them.

We invite the CNI-CIG to form a delegation to accompany us and thus further enrich our word for the other who struggles in distant lands. We make a special invitation to the communities who hold up the name, image, and blood of our brother Samir Flores Soberanes, so that their pain, rage, struggle, and resistance travels far.

We invite those who hold the arts and sciences as their vocation, endeavor, and horizon to accompany our journey from a distance and help us spread the idea that in the sciences and the arts lie not only the possibility of the survival of humanity, but that of the birth of a new world.

In sum, we leave for Europe in April of 2021. Date and time? We don’t know… yet.

This is our pledge:

In the face of the powerful trains, our canoes.

In the face of the thermoelectric plants, our little lights that the Zapatista women put in the care of the women who struggle all over the world.

In the face of walls and borders, our collective navigation.

In the face of big capital, a common cornfield.

In the face of the destruction of the planet, a mountain sailing through the small hours of the morning.

We are Zapatistas, carriers of the virus of resistance and rebellion. As such, we will go to the five continents.

That’s all…for now.

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast In the name of all of the Zapatista women, men, and others,

Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés Mexico, October of 2020.

P.S. Yes, this is the sixth part and, like our journey, will go in inverse order. That is, the fifth part will come next, then the fourth, then the third, followed by the second, and finishing with the first.

Mental health, in fact, is a paradigm case of how capitalist realism operates. Capitalist realism insists on treating mental health as if it were a natural fact, like weather (but, then again, weather is no longer a natural fact so much as a politicaleconomic effect). In the 1960s and 1970s, radical theory and politics (Laing, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, etc.) coalesced around extreme mental conditions such as schizophrenia, arguing, for instance, that madness was not a natural, but a political, category. But what is needed now is a politicization of much more common disorders. Indeed, it is their very commonness which is the issue: in Britain, depression is now the condition that is most treated by the NHS. In his book The Selfish Capitalist, Oliver James has convincingly posited a correlation between rising rates of mental distress and the neoliberal mode of capitalism practiced in countries like Britain, the USA and Australia. In line with James's claims, I want to argue that it is necessary to reframe the growing problem of stress (and distress) in capitalist societies. Instead of treating it as incumbent on individuals to resolve their own psychological distress, instead, that is, of accepting the vast privatization of stress that has taken place over the last thirty years, we need to ask: how has it become acceptable that so many people, and especially so many young people, are ill? The 'mental health plague' in capitalist societies would suggest that, instead of being the only social system that works, capitalism is inherently dysfunctional, and that the cost of it appearing to work is very high.... By contrast with their forebears in the 1960s and 1970s, British students today appear to be politically disengaged. While French students can still be found on the streets protesting against neoliberalism, British students, whose situation is incomparably worse, seem resigned to their fate. But this, I want to argue, is a matter not of apathy, nor of cynicism, but of reflexive impotence. They know things are bad, but more than that, they know they can't do anything about it. But that 'knowledge', that reflexivity, is not a passive observation of an already existing state of affairs. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Reflexive impotence amounts to an unstated worldview amongst the British young, and it has its correlate in widespread pathologies. Many of the teenagers I worked with had mental health problems or learning difficulties. Depression is endemic. It is the condition most dealt with by the National Health Service, and is afflicting people at increasingly younger ages. The number of students who have some variant of dyslexia is astonishing. It is not an exaggeration to say that being a teenager in late capitalist Britain is now close to being reclassified as a sickness. This pathologization already forecloses any possibility of politicization. By privatizing these problems - treating them as if they were caused only by chemical imbalances in the individual's neurology and/or by their family background - any question of social systemic causation is ruled out. Many of the teenage students I encountered seemed to be in a state of what I would call depressive hedonia. Depression is Usually characterized as a state of anhedonia, but the condition I'm referring to is constituted not by an inability to get pleasure so much as it by an inability to do anything else except pursue pleasure. There is a sense that 'something is missing' - but no appreciation that this mysterious, missing enjoyment can only be accessed beyond the pleasure principle. In large part this is a consequence of students' ambiguous structural position, stranded between their old role as subjects of disciplinary institutions and their new status as consumers of services. In his crucial essay 'Postscript on Societies of Control', Deleuze distinguishes between the disciplinary societies described by Foucault, which were organized around the enclosed spaces of the factory, the school and the prison, and the new control societies, in which all institutions are embedded in a dispersed corporation. Deleuze is right to argue that Kafka is the prophet of distributed, cybernetic power that is typical of Control societies. In The Trial, Kafka importantly distinguishes between two types of acquittal available to the accused. Definite acquittal is no longer possible, if it ever was ('we have only legendary accounts of ancient cases [which] provide instances of acquittal'). The two remaining options, then, are (1) 'Ostensible acquittal', in which the accused is to all and intents and purposes acquitted, but may later, at some unspecified time, face the charges in full, or (2) 'Indefinite postponement', in which the accused engages in (what they hope is an infinitely) protracted process of legal wrangling, so that the dreaded ultimate judgment is unlikely to be forth- coming. Deleuze observes that the Control societies delineated by Kafka himself, but also by Foucault and Burroughs, operate using indefinite postponement: Education as a lifelong process... Training that persists for as long as your working life continues... Work you take home with you... Working from home, homing from work. A consequence of this 'indefinite' mode of power is that external surveillance is succeeded by internal policing. Control only works if you are complicit with it. Hence the Burroughs figure of the 'Control Addict': the one who is addicted to control, but also, inevitably, the one who has been taken over, possessed by Control. Walk into almost any class at the college where I taught and you will immediately appreciate that you are in a post-disciplinary framework. Foucault painstakingly enumerated the way in which discipline was installed through the imposition of rigid body postures. During lessons at our college, however, students will be found slumped on desk, talking almost constantly, snacking incessantly (or even, on occasions, eating full meals). The old disciplinary segmentation of time is breaking down. The carceral regime of discipline is being eroded by the technologies of control, with their systems of perpetual consumption and continuous development. The system by which the college is funded means that it literally cannot afford to exclude students, even if it wanted to. Resources are allocated to colleges on the basis of how successfully they meet targets on achievement (exam results), attendance and retention of students. This combination of market imperatives with bureaucratically-defined 'targets' is typical of the 'market Stalinist' initiatives which now regulate public services. The lack of an effective disciplinary system has not, to say the least, been compensated for by an increase in student self-motivation. Students are aware that if they don't attend for weeks on end, and/or if they don't produce any work, they will not face any meaningful sanction. They typically respond to this freedom not by pursuing projects but by falling into hedonic (or anhedonic) lassitude: the soft narcosis, the comfort food oblivion of Playstation, all-night TV and marijuana. Ask students to read for more than a couple of sentences and many - and these are A-level students mind you - will protest that they can't do it. The most frequent complaint teachers hear is that it's boring. It is not so much the content of the written Material that is at issue here; it is the act of reading itself that is deemed to be 'boring'. What we are facing here is not just time-honored teenage torpor, but the mismatch between a post-literate 'New Flesh' that is 'too wired to concentrate' and the confining, concentrational logics of decaying disciplinary systems. To be bored simply means to be removed from the communicative sensation-stimulus matrix of texting, YouTube and fast food; to be denied, for a moment, the constant flow of sugary gratification on demand. Some students want Nietzsche in the same way that they want a hamburger; they fail to grasp - and the logic of the consumer system encourages this misapprehension - that the indigestibility, the difficulty is Nietzsche. An illustration: I challenged one student about why he always wore headphones in class. He replied that it didn't matter, because he wasn't actually playing any music. In another lesson, he was playing music at very low volume through the headphones, without wearing them. When I asked him to switch it off, he replied that even he couldn't hear it. Why wear the headphones without playing music or play music without wearing the headphones? Because the presence of the phones on the ears or the knowledge that the music is playing (even if he couldn't hear it) was a reassurance that the matrix was still there, within reach. Besides, in a classic example of interpassivity, if the music was still playing, even if he couldn't hear it, then the player could still enjoy it on his behalf. The use of headphones is significant here - pop is experienced not as something which could have impacts upon public space, but as a retreat into private 'Oedlpod' consumer bliss, a walling up against the social. The consequence of being hooked into the entertainment matrix is twitchy, agitated interpassivity, an inability to concentrate or focus. Students' incapacity to connect current lack of focus with future failure, their inability to synthesize time into any coherent narrative, is symptomatic of more than mere demotivation. It is, in fact, eerily reminiscent of Jameson's analysis in 'Postmodernism and Consumer Society'. Jameson observed there that Lacan's theory of schizophrenia offered a 'suggestive aesthetic model' for understanding the fragmenting of subjectivity in the face of the emerging entertainment-industrial complex. 'With the breakdown of the signifying chain', Jameson summarized, 'the Lacanian schizophrenic is reduced to an experience of pure material signifiers, or, in other words, a series of pure and unrelated presents in time'. Jameson was writing in the late 1980s - i.e. the period in which most of my students were born. What we in the classroom are now facing is a generation born into that ahistorical, anti-mnemonic blip culture - a generation, that is to say, for whom time has always come ready-cut into digital micro-slices. If the figure of discipline was the worker-prisoner, the figure of control is the debtor-addict. Cyberspatial capital operates by addicting its users; William Gibson recognized that in Neuromancer when he had Case and the other cyberspace cowboys feeling insects-under-the-skin strung out when they unplugged from the matrix (Case's amphetamine habit is plainly the substitute for an addiction to a far more abstract speed). If, then, something like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a pathology, it is a pathology of late capitalism - a consequence of being wired into the entertainment-control circuits of hypermediated consumer culture. Similarly, what is called dyslexia may in many cases amount to a post-lexia. Teenagers process capital's image-dense data very effectively without any need to read - slogan-recognition is sufficient to navigate the net-mobile-magazine informational plane. 'Writing has never been capitalism's thing. Capitalism is profoundly illiterate', Deleuze and Guattari argued in Anti-Oedipus. 'Electric language does not go by way of the voice or writing: data processing does without them both'. Hence the reason that many successful business people are dyslexic (but is their post-lexical efficiency a cause or effect of their success?) Teachers are now put under intolerable pressure to mediate between the post-literate subjectivity of the late capitalist consumer and the demands of the disciplinary regime (to pass examinations etc). This is one way in which education, far from being in some ivory tower safely inured from the 'real world', is the engine room of the reproduction of social reality, directly confronting the inconsistencies of the capitalist social field. Teachers are caught between being facilitator-entertainers and disciplinarian-authoritarians. Teachers want to help students to pass the exams; they want us to be authority figures who tell them what to do. Teachers being interpellated by students as authority figures exacerbates the 'boredom' problem, since isn't anything that comes from the place of authority a priori boring? Ironically, the role of disciplinarian is demanded of educators more than ever at precisely the time when disciplinary structures are breaking down in institutions. With families buckling under the pressure of a capitalism which requires both parents to work, teachers are now increasingly required to act as surrogate parents, instilling the most basic behavioral protocols in students and providing pastoral and emotional support for teenagers who are in some cases only minimally socialized. It is worth stressing that none of the students I taught had any legal obligation to be at college. They could leave if they wanted to. But the lack of any meaningful employment opportunities, together with cynical encouragement from government means that college seems to be the easier, safer option. Deleuze says that Control societies are based on debt rather than enclosure; but there is a way in which the current education system both indebts and encloses students. Pay for your own exploitation, the logic insists - get into debt so you can get the same Mcjob you could have walked into if you'd left school at sixteen... Jameson observed that 'the breakdown of temporality suddenly releases [the] present of time from all the activities and intentionalities that might focus it and make it a space of praxis'. But nostalgia for the context in which the old types of praxis operated is plainly useless. That is why French students don't in the end constitute an alternative to British reflexive impotence. That the neoliberal Economist would deride French opposition to capitalism is hardly surprising, yet its mockery of French 'immobilization' had a point. 'Certainly the students who kicked off the latest protests seemed to think they were re-enacting the events of May 1968 their parents sprang on Charles de Gaulle', it wrote in its lead article of March 30, 2006. They have borrowed its slogans ('Beneath the cobblestones, the beach!') and hijacked its symbols (the Sorbonne university). In this sense, the revolt appears to be the natural sequel to [2005]'s suburban riots, which prompted the government to impose a state of emergency. Then it was the jobless, ethnic underclass that rebelled against a system that excluded them. Yet the striking feature of the latest protest movement is that this time the rebellious forces are on the side of conservatism. Unlike the rioting youths in the banlieues, the objective of the students and public-sector trade unions is to prevent change, and to keep France the way it is. It's striking how the practice of many of the immobilizers is a kind of inversion of that of another group who also count themselves heirs of 68: the so called 'liberal communists' such as George Soros and Bill Gates who combine rapacious pursuit of profit with the rhetoric of ecological concern and social responsibility. Alongside their social concern, liberal communists believe that work practices should be (post) modernized, in line with the concept of 'being smart'. As Žižek explains, Being smart means being dynamic and nomadic, and against centralized bureaucracy; believing in dialogue and co-operation as against central authority; in flexibility as against routine; culture and knowledge as against industrial production; in spontaneous interaction and autopoiesis as against fixed hierarchy. Taken together, the immobilizers, with their implicit concession that capitalism can only be resisted, never overcome, and the liberal communists, who maintain that the amoral excesses of capitalism must be offset by charity, give a sense of the way in which capitalist realism circumscribes current political possibilities. Whereas the immobilizers retain the form of 68-style protest but in the name of resistance to change, liberal communists energetically embrace newness. Žižek is right to argue that, far from constituting any kind of progressive corrective to official capitalist ideology, liberal communism constitutes the dominant ideology of capitalism now. 'Flexibility', 'nomadism' and 'spontaneity' are the very hallmarks of management in a post-Fordist, Control society. But the problem is that any opposition to flexibility and decentralization risks being self-defeating, since calls for inflexibility and centralization are, to say the least, not likely to be very galvanizing. In any case, resistance to the 'new' is not a cause that the left can or should rally around. Capital thought very carefully about how to break labor; yet there has still not yet been enough thought about what tactics will work against capital in conditions of post-Fordism, and what new language can be innovated to deal with those conditions. It is important to contest capitalism's appropriation of 'the new', but to reclaim the 'new' can't be a matter of adapting to the conditions in which we find ourselves - we've done that rather too well, and 'successful adaptation' is the strategy of managerialism par excellence. The persistent association of neoliberalism with the term 'Restoration', favored by both Badiou and David Harvey, is an important corrective to the association of capital with novelty. For Harvey and Badiou, neoliberal politics are not about the new, but a return of class power and privilege. '[I]n France,' Badiou has said, "Restoration' refers to the period of the return of the King, in 1815, after the Revolution and Napoleon. We are in such a period. Today we see liberal capitalism and its political system, parliamentarianism, as the only natural and acceptable solutions'. Harvey argues that neoliberalization is best conceived of as a 'political project to re-establish the conditions for capital accumulation and to restore the power of economic elites'. Harvey demonstrates that, in an era popularly described as 'post-political', class war has continued to be fought, but only by one side: the wealthy. 'After the implementation of neoliberal policies in the late 1970s,' Harvey reveals, the share of national income of the top 1 per cent of income earners soared, to reach 15 per cent ... by the end of the century. The top 0.1 per cent of income earners in the US increased their share of the national income from 2 per cent in 1978 to over 6 per cent by 1999, while the ratio of the median compensation of workers to the salaries of CEOs increased from just over 30 to 1 in 1970 to nearly 500 to 1 by 2000.... The US is not alone in this: the top 1 per cent of income earners in Britain have doubled their share of the national income from 6.5 per cent to 13 per cent since 1982. As Harvey shows, neoliberals were more Leninist than the Leninists, using think-tanks as the intellectual vanguard to create the ideological climate in which capitalist realism could flourish. The immobilization model - which amounts to a demand to retain the Fordist/disciplinary regime - could not work in Britain or the other countries in which neoliberalism has already taken a hold. Fordism has definitively collapsed in Britain, and with it the sites around which the old politics were organized. At the end of the control essay, Deleuze wonders what new forms an anti-control politics might take: One of the most important questions will concern the ineptitude of the unions: tied to the whole of their history of struggle against the disciplines or within the spaces of enclosure, will they be able to adapt themselves or will they give way to new forms of resistance against the societies of control? Can we already grasp the rough outlines of the coming forms, capable of threatening the joys of marketing? Many young people strangely boast of being "motivated"; they re-request apprenticeships and permanent training. It's up to them to discover what they're being made to serve, just as their elders discovered, not without difficulty, the telos of the disciplines. What must be discovered is a way out of the motivation/ demotivation binary, so that disidentification from the control program registers as something other than dejected apathy. One strategy would be to shift the political terrain - to move away from the unions' traditional focus on pay and onto forms of discontent specific to post-Fordism.

Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism

Fire, Feces, and Healthcare

My grandfather was born in 1900, in a small village in Forest County, Pennsylvania. During his early teens, his neighborhood was inhabited by a fairly standard curmudgeon—a perennially ornery character who confiscated baseballs that landed in his yard, and shouted angrily at children who took a shortcut across his covetously owned property. Naturally, the neighborhood kids hated him.

One Halloween, my grandfather and his friends decided to go well beyond the realm of soaped windows and smashed pumpkins in their annual rite of revenge against the tormented soul who tormented them. They picked up the man’s outhouse, moved it back several feet, and laid sticks and leaves over the pit to disguise their trap. Shortly before sunrise the following morning, their victim made his customary trip to the privy and fell into the hole.

Unable to extricate himself, the man yelled, as loudly as he could, “Fire! Fire!” All the adults in the neighborhood came running to the scene immediately, bearing buckets, shovels, and axes. After they rescued him from his predicament, someone asked, “Why did you yell ‘fire’?” He replied, “Would you have come running to help if I’d yelled ‘shit’?”

The desperate man yelled “fire” because a house fire was a huge catastrophe that could strike by such sheer happenstance or small oversight that it was universally perceived as an affliction of innocents. Coping with it was regarded as a collective responsibility. Such shared responsibility has, for millennia, been one of the founding principles not only of community, but of civilization itself.

In a small village, all it took for the shared responsibility of dealing with a fire’s horrific threat to be recognized and summoned was a shout or perhaps, a bell. As communities grew to encompass distances beyond earshot, and rising individual anonymity veiled personal disasters in abstraction, coping with collective responsibilities became more organized. A small town needs a volunteer fire department. A city needs a crew of full-time professionals. Instead of running to the scene with a bucket, we now respond to a scream of “fire” with a phone call to 911 and an annual tax bill. No one calls this socialism.

There is no movement to abolish fire departments and replace them with corporate, profit-making enterprises (which would bill the victims of disaster for their services) on the grounds that such enterprises would be intrinsically more efficient and effective. Although I’m sure they carry their standard, inevitable share of human dysfunction, I’ve encountered no credible suggestion that fire departments are doomed to inadequacy and fiscal irresponsibility by virtue of being governmental agencies. I believe the same could be said of our police and military forces. But the reason any proposal to privatize these aspects of government would be generally regarded as absurd is at least as universal as theoretical cynicisms about the mythical impossibility of governmental efficiency. The needs they address are fundamental aspects of the collective responsibility that is the raison d’être of community and government. As such, they do not rationally or morally belong in the realm of commerce. The values they represent are not, and should not be, for sale.

Consider the fundamental purpose of government. It’s not something defined by a constitution. The purpose of a constitution is to confine the action and power of government within a structure, so that it can effectively fulfill its purpose without violating individual rights in overzealous or misguided pursuit of that purpose. The purpose of government is to act as the agent of society’s collective responsibility. I realize I’ve taken something worthy of a long book and reduced it to a couple of sentences here, but the mostly ignored issues at hand in the current pseudo-debates about health care are so fundamental that there is far more risk of simplistic thinking to be found in arguments about pre-existing conditions or public options than in bringing the discussion down to the level of basic moral, social, and philosophical issues.

Though the ways and means may differ, human freedom is as constrained in an authoritarian society with a democratic government as it is in an open, democratic society with an authoritarian government. Protecting the open space of democracy is a collective responsibility that extends far beyond simplistic definitions of legal rights. This is why we have public schools and public libraries. Without universal access to education for the young, and to all forms of literary culture for adults, society would devolve into feudalism with frightening rapidity—a calamity every bit as devastating as an earthquake or flood. We do not abandon these things to the limited and capricious mercies of the marketplace because nurturing the spirit of democracy is a responsibility and a blessing shared by all; they are not items of commerce. Everyone benefits from living in an educated, literate, well-informed society.

In a civilized society, the sick, wounded and infirm are neither shot nor eaten. They are not abandoned. We pay taxes to support schools, police, fire departments, the military, libraries, and a postal system. When someone runs from a house screaming “fire”, we call 911 and perhaps run to help. But what is the greater undeserved calamity, a house fire (assuming the occupants escape relatively unscathed) or pancreatic cancer? In this country, when someone cries out “cancer!” or “heart attack!” or when someone who makes ten dollars per hour and drives twenty-five miles each way to work cries out “My child has a sinus infection and the antibiotic of choice costs $150!”, any claim to collective responsibility is dismissed as “socialism”.

If we lack the common decency to be ashamed of our lack of compassion, we ought to at least be angered by the insult to our intelligence; the straw man of socialism is bullshit so shallow it would embarrass any self-respecting con man. Indeed, it is the degradation of health care to a market-driven commercial enterprise that is functionally an instrument of repression.

By taking the place of government in addressing a basic aspect of natural collective responsibility, the health insurance industry is a de facto government controlling our health care from outside the constitutional and moral constraints of democratic government and social responsibility. The health insurance industry’s profits are taxes paid into the pockets of its leaders (and their corporate shareholders) rather than their ostensible purpose of protecting us from calamities that are often far worse than fire or flood. Taxes levied and taken by authorities other than a legitimate, democratic government are taxation without representation and should be regarded just as the founding fathers regarded such taxation—as tyranny and thievery.

Requiring a family to mortgage their home in order to keep their child alive is not entrepreneurship or even capitalism; it is extortion. That it is legal in this country does not diminish the intrinsic criminality of its spirit any more than it excused the Nazis who engineered the Holocaust or the soldiers who eviscerated unarmed Native American women and children. To call it free enterprise is a vicious insult to every independent businessperson, entrepreneur, farmer, and crafts person in America. Hell, it should insult drug dealers, mobsters, and prostitutes, who all stand on moral high ground by comparison.

Is universal health care a right? Perhaps that doesn’t even matter. Providing universal health care is a responsibility we all share by virtue of being civilized. Our failure to embrace it as a collective responsibility has nothing to do with free markets, socialism, the Bill of Rights, the theories of Karl Marx, or even concerns about administrative efficiency; it is savagery.

Our political leaders have not, and are unlikely to truly address this issue, and it’s not because they’ve chosen to take a tough, principled stand as guardians of our liberty—it’s because they don’t want to. They’re afraid that attempting to row against the torrent of right-wing swill pouring forth from the health insurance industry and talk radio into the public’s collective cynicism and fear would dump political careers in the outhouse. Without the votes of Bubba and Bubbette, our elected representatives might lose their jobs and their health insurance.

The pervasive, institutionalized anxiety of an insurance-dependent system contributes to a widespread spirit of apathy, impotence, and defeatism that is toxic to all the social and political possibilities of democracy. You’re not going to see much dissent or even thinking outside the box coming from people whose families will lose access to health care if they lose their job. You’re not going to see people up to their necks (or over their heads) in medical debt seeking creative new career possibilities. People living in constant, solitary fear—whether of fire, lawlessness, foreign aggression, or medical catastrophe—cannot be truly free in mind and spirit, regardless of the legal rights guaranteed to them by a constitution. Our insurance-dependent system is the whip that drives the galley slaves rowing the ship of state. A single-payer public health care system would not diminish democracy; it would enable and enhance it and, frankly, that’s why both sides of the aisle are yelling “shit” instead of “fire”.

I would like to believe that the semi-literate demagogues who are braying so loudly that universal health care would be the beginning of the end of human freedom are merely deluded, but I suspect the reality is far sleazier than mere dysfunction. There’s nothing we can say to them that wouldn’t apply equally to the horses they rode in on.

The real issue isn’t a matter of pre-existing conditions clauses or public options. The issue is that we’re all Americans and we’re all in this situation together. Are we going to join hands and take care of each other, or not?

How the American Education System Influences Every Literary Interaction I’ve Had

Writing, Literacy, and Discourse

22 October 2020

My relationship with writing is complex. I was identified as “gifted” in reading and writing in my early adolescence, and a more rigorous curriculum accompanied the discovery.  Navigating school English curricula has at various points fostered my love of writing and conversely extinguished my passion for it. My relationship with writing affects not only how I speak and write, but also how I interact with literature in its medley of manifestations. In America, literature’s value is primarily based upon its adherence western standards, and these sentiments have been taught to me, through the education system, and greatly impact my experience with literacy. Essentially, my perspective on writing was formed by the culture and society I grew up in.

My prowess in language arts was first acknowledged in preschool; however, it did not impact my learning until third grade when I was placed in my first gifted program. The initial branch of the program involved leaving class to do extra work on top of my normal language arts class. I remember enjoying it, until I started falling behind in my regular writing class, and then it felt punitive. Luckily for me, this didn’t last for long because for fourth and fifth grade the advanced program took the place of my normal English language arts classes. I distinctly remember this tradition only the “PETS” kids were given the opportunity to participate in. We were instructed to write, illustrate, bind, and present books we wrote. I wish I could say I wrote some profound novella about middle-class anxieties, but I just wrote about a single mother and her two children moving into a haunted home. Upon reflection, there were many things I liked about assignments like this: it was long term, I had time to revise and edit, and then revise and edit three more times, I had creative liberties, and I was encouraged to write in my own style.  

I was taught that voice is crucial to developing a literary style and presence. I feel as though my writing voice is nearly identical to my speaking voice. I like that my writing tends to have hints of comedy, sarcasm, and sometimes heart. This usually does not conflict with my essay writing, but there are times I have been required to write formal research pieces. I believe my first research essay is the initial instance of me not being utterly infatuated with the art of writing. I understand the importance of learning different genres and styles but the methodology is where I disagree. I have always hated writing requirements. I understand my perspective is not the only perspective and I remember how often teachers were asked “how many paragraphs should the essay have”, “how many sentences in each paragraph”, “how many words in each sentence”. However, for me, the more specific these restrictions became, the more constricted I felt. What was I to do if it took me four sentences, not five, to express what I wanted to say; or what if I was only asked for half a page analysis but the material was so rich, I needed to write to two pages worth? This is where my distaste for essay writing began to take root. In this genre of literature, little room was left for my creativity; it was no longer about writing until my heart was content, it was about fulfilling requirements to be rewarded with a good grade.

These unfortunate incidents of heartless writing were suspended my freshman year of high school. The assignment was to produce any art based off of the Holocaust literature we had been studying. I had not created poetry for the sake of poetry in years at that point. This is despite the fact poetry is one of my favorite art forms, and that I had collected Shell Silverstein’s entire body of work throughout my adolescence. I immediately visualized three words: “Chains of Oppression.” The words spilled onto the page from my fingertips, and the entire poem was completed in one sitting. Initially, the piece spoke specifically about the Holocaust, but progressively, the scope was broadened to discuss how the shared burden of oppression bonds many groups of people together. It concluded by exploring how chains can manifest outside of physical subjugation. I practiced my recitation, my inflection, my tone, and my emphasis. I bought chain and wrote the names of marginalized groups on it and performed my poem with the chains binding my wrists. That assignment was very enlightening to me because reminded me of how writing can make me feel, and how it can help me cope and even heal. I was deeply invested in the project, in a way that I had not been engaged with literacy for a long while.

Following that endeavor, I elected to take a creative writing class. I really enjoyed the course as the rigid boundaries that had been set in my core English classes had been dismantled, or so I thought. I was granted more creative liberty, however, the course never challenged me to explore literature outside of what I was already familiar with. I wrote short stories and poems, but not in any new form or style. Everything I produced in that class was written in “College English” and followed proper English grammatical conventions. Simultaneously, in my core English class, we were allowed to select a 1920s research topic. My white peers chose topics like flappers, feminism, and even communism. For several reasons, I choose to study the Harlem Renaissance. Everyone knows about the Harlem Renaissance; it’s one of the 5 topics white schools discuss during Black History month, but I wanted to challenge myself to do a deeper dive. My research led me to information I had never been taught before. Namely, that one source claimed the Harlem Renaissance did not have a profound impact on the majority of the black people at the time. In the 1920s, the locality of the renaissance occurring in Harlem prevented it from being widespread, the majority of black folks at the time did not have the disposable income to indulge in the arts, and some even lacked the literacy to comprehend the likes of Zora Neal Hurston and Langston Hughes. This revelation was shocking to me. My previous units on the subject made it seem as if racism ended because black people seized the opportunity to express their talent, but that was not the truth of the matter. When my paper was handed back to me, I saw that my teacher had only one major comment. “Your paper was so strong until you concluded with the information about how there was not an immediate impact of the Harlem Renaissance,” or something to that effect. I had wanted to make a statement about the reality of the Harlem Renaissance, but that wasn’t what my teacher wanted to hear from me.

Almost all of my transgressions against how schools handle teaching and developing writing skills could be remedied if educators understood that “what students need is not models of correctness... but a broader understanding of the intricate connection between one’s language and his cultural experience, combined with insight into the political nature and social stratification of American dialects” (Smitherman 61). I feel like my proudest literary accomplishments involve me connecting with my blackness. I have connected blackness to my writing through multiple avenues: researching, reading, and writing poetry. Lucille Clifton wrote, “both nonwhite and woman/ what did i see to be except myself,” and that is a conclusion that it took me nineteen years to come to (“Won't You Celebrate with Me”). I was hyperaware that I was usually the only minority in the spaces I occupied. I think that is a prominent aspect of why I value eloquence and literacy, of the college English variety. White people continued to confirm what I believed they thought. Every time I presented a speech, a poem, an essay, they would always feel compelled to compliment me on how well I spoke and how articulate I was. Their compliments made me contemplate whether I was truly gifted or if they just didn’t expect me to be literate because I am black, and they do not associate literacy with blackness. I developed a “veil of whiteness” in attempt to avoid drawing attention to the fact I am nonwhite, but it never really worked. This is because conforming to white standards of literacy, white standards of anything really, does not make me white and has only slightly improved how I am perceived and treated in white spaces. Jacqueline Royster states that, as black people, “throughout our history in this country, we are put in jeopardy and on trial in a way that should not exist but does,” and it is this ideology on which my outlook on the world, including literacy, is founded (5).

Upon reflection of my entire academic literary career, I feel that I cannot overstate the profound impact that the way in which literature is taught and appraised can dictate how individuals respond to it. Something I struggled with as a young author was staying in one verb tense. I was corrected on that subject several times, which is why I am now sensitive to verb tense usage in my own speech and writing, as well as others. I feel as though most people who pass through the United States education system will develop writing quirks like this. The broader impact of teaching a “proper” college English is that I was simultaneously taught to devalue anything that does not align within the confines of its structure. The problem with this is two-fold. Writing in standard college English can prevent a work from being accessible, as not everyone is equipped with the knowledge and skills to comprehend college English. The second issue is that, when I read something not in standard English, I subconsciously question the credibility, validity, and thought behind the work. I even found myself doing this during the peer editing activity. I understand that not everything should be written in college English; there is a power in choosing voice, structure, and syntax. For example, nothing technically makes a sonnet a more valid form of poetry than freestyle rap, but I have been conditioned in a way that makes me think in this manner. I have been attempting to recognize and break down the western bias I possess, and I will continue to do so.

Works Cited

Clifton, Lucille. “Won't You Celebrate with Me by Lucille Clifton - Poems | Academy of American Poets.” Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, poets.org/poem/wont-you-celebrate-me.

Green, David F. Visions and Cyphers: Explorations of Literacy, Discourse, and Black Writing Experiences. Inprint Editions, 2016.

Royster, Jacqueline. “When the First Voice You Hear is Not Your Own” Visions and Cyphers: Explorations of Literacy, Discourse, and Black Writing Experiences, edited by David F. Green, Inprint Editions, 2016, pp. 3–13.

Smitherman, Geneva. “English Teacher, Why You Be Doing the Thangs You Don't Do?” Visions and Cyphers: Explorations of Literacy, Discourse, and Black Writing Experiences, edited by David F. Green, Inprint Editions, 2016, pp. 55–62.

DeFi innovation promotes rapid market growth, but there are many risks in decentralized finance that must definitely be paid attention to

A number of the risks to be considered for DeFi and liquidity mining include potential hacking, loan liquidation, unlinking of stablecoins, and devaluation of tokens received as rewards. Published by: Lucas Outumuro Compilation: Uncle Red Army Blockchain has been touted by many as a technology which has the potential to supply banking services to the unbanked. Although the 2017 ICO bubble did not deliver upon this promise, the growing field of decentralized finance (DeFi) has rekindled expect this vision. Using blockchain technology, DeFi provides an possibility to obtain financial services with out a trusted alternative party. These services are made on smart contract platforms such as Ethereum and may find the aid of P2P pc software and governance. By eliminating dependence on the organization, the DeFi protocol has the potential to get rid of the risks and shortcomings controlled by centralized businesses. Because it is permissionless in nature, blockchain allows people to freely access data. The DeFi protocol uses these features to supply transparent financial services on an international scale. Even though you will find currently barriers to the use of these protocols with regards to technical expertise and required pc software, fast-paced innovation and incentive mechanisms have accelerated the adoption of decentralized financial services. Through the duration of this informative article, we will evaluate this growth in adoption rate and the value of investment in DeFi, while considering the risks that arise of this type. This short article is divided into two parts, each part has two sub-contents and a conclusion.

* Growth and innovation * The risks of DeFi * Final thoughts I first introduced some terms inside DeFi, and delved into specific content about its development and risks. Feel liberated to skip or enjoy the entire article.

The growth and innovation of DeFi "Tell me your incentives, and I shall let you know the outcome of incentives. " --Charlie Munger Buffett's long-term business partner Charlie Munger eloquently commented on the partnership between current incentives and future results. The info behind this sentence resonates in several fields including behavioral economics, game theory, and, perhaps unexpectedly, decentralized finance. The DeFi protocol has seen significant growth with regards to adoption rate, token price, and total value locked. Even though websites and social networking platforms that depend on third-party advertising require a large numbers of daily/monthly active users to acquire value, decentralized protocols broadly speaking don't depend on frequent use to create value. On the other hand, the dollar amount held by smart contracts that power decentralized financial services can better reflect the value produced by these projects. For that reason the locked total value has become a barometer of widespread concern in the DeFi field, because most of these agreements require collateral to be locked to be able to use their services. The most popular data aggregator DeFi Pulse reports the growth of the total value locked in the field since the fall of 2017. As shown in the figure below, it requires about two and a half years for the total value of the lock to achieve the $1 billion mark. Although the total value locked in DeFi dropped notably during the market crash in March, only six months after attaining the tenth figure for the first time, the total value locked in DeFi continued to develop throughout the 2nd quarter of 2020, breaking through 20 One hundred million U. S. dollars.

In the figure above, the reader could have noticed an inflection point in the recently locked total value. By zooming in, we are able to be sure that this happened in mid-June, which coincided with the release of the governance token COMP of the lending protocol Compound. Within just per month, the total value locked in the DeFi protocol more than doubled. That is for the reason that users get incentives through alleged revenue farms. DeFi's rocket fuel Simply speaking, the income farm (also called liquidity mining) may be the procedure for earning rewards in the form of tokens, and providing liquidity for the DeFi protocol in exchange. This concept has existed since last summer, when Synthetix-a decentralized derivatives exchange-first tried to reward users for the derivatives on Uniswap to supply liquidity to the synthetic ether (sETH) pair, utilizing their Native SNX tokens are paid in their mind. But it was perhaps not before the launch of Compound's indigenous token COMP that became a common practice and buzzword in the encryption field. In the Compound case, users can borrow or lend tokens to the agreement for income farming, and acquire COMP tokens in exchange. Given that the current price of COMP is approximately $180, even though users need certainly to pay loan interest, the rewards obtained with tokens are already large enough for users to create money by borrowing money. Because of this, users have poured into Compound, and since this release, the total value of the agreement has increased by more than six times to more than $650 million. Recognized people in the field praised this process as a "growth hacker" for DeFi. Analyzing the key data on the chain, we are able to evaluate the effectation of revenue farms in increasing the adoption rate of COMP. Like let's observe the amount of holders has changed since the token was established on June 15.

As is visible from the aforementioned figure, in under per month, the amount of COMP addresses with balances rose rapidly from not quite zero to more than 14, 000, effectively capturing a considerable community right from the start, and transferring tokens Decentralization of ownership. Just take this as an example, since the forerunner of DeFi MakerDAO was launched in November 2017, its MKR governance token holders reach 22, 000. As well as the revenue farm, the DeFi protocol has been using other tactics to market growth and community adoption. A typical method that many projects have implemented or are seeking to implement is piling. Like the popular decentralized exchange Kyber launched its Katalyst upgrade on July 7th, allowing holders of indigenous KNC tokens to bet on their holdings, letting them vote on improvement proposals. Along with this, it has adjusted its governance structure right into a decentralized autonomous organization KyberDAO, giving its community members the capacity to make decisions. So that you can motivate holders to participate, they obtain fixed-point rewards of ETH through voting or delegated voting. Through this method, 65% of the network fees of the decentralized exchange is going to be redistributed to the holders who bet on voting, which incentivizes active decentralized governance. In addition , as an exchange, Kyber realizes that to be able to build a strong trading infrastructure, additionally it is important to incentivize liquidity. For that reason within Katalyst's upgrade, 30% of Kyber network fees will now be properly used to supply rebates to liquidity providers, which are reserves in the Kyber ecosystem. Through these, Kyber has effectively paid down the price of market-making activities on the exchange, incentivized the creation of more and higher-quality reserves, and strengthened the liquidity of the platform. In anticipation of Katalyst's upgrade, the crypto market is optimistic about KNC tokens. Year-to-date, the price of KNC has risen by more than 700%, leading the rebound of DeFi tokens. But analyzing those activities on the chain, we are able to prove that the transaction level of KNC tokens has actually increased. Through the duration of 2020, the transaction level of KNC tokens has increased by about 9 times. Although it is clear that staking and other updates in the Katalyst upgrade have led to the expected on-chain growth of the release, its long-term effect on the broader health of the Kyber ecosystem will determine the effectiveness of these additional incentives.

All these innovations take advantage of the permissionless nature of DeFi. Because of the transparent and open source dynamics of Ethereum, the DeFi project built about it may use to acquire information quickly and freely. In a type of Compound founder Robert Leshner, that he emphasized that the governance of COMP is based on the last establishment of MakerDAO, and how the income farm of COMP was inspired by Synthetix's previous incentive design scheme. Because it is open source, the DeFi protocol can freely replicate, integrate and improve existing solutions, thereby accelerating the construction and deployment of open financial services. Risks of Decentralized Finance Even though DeFi's ability to incentivize the rapid adoption and decentralization of its tokens is continuing to grow rapidly, it isn't without risks and unintended consequences. A number of the risks that income farms and DeFi broadly speaking need certainly to consider include potential hacking, loan liquidation, unpegging of stablecoins (often used as collateral) and depreciation of tokens received as rewards. General risk readers could have been aware of recent hacking incidents in the DeFi field, such as the dForce attack. Hackers used smart contract vulnerabilities to steal US$25 million and came ultimately back the majority of the stolen assets. Recently, a hacker attacked Balancer, an automated market maker platform, using lightning loans to exhaust the liquidity of the deflation token STA, manipulate its price, and exchange it for other tokens worth $500, 000. Even though these hackers are not exclusive to the DeFi field, considering that more than $2 billion of funds are locked in smart contracts held by the main agreement, they have to be an essential risk to consider. The silver lining that emerges using this threat may be the rise of decentralized insurance protocols, such as Nexus Mutual, to guard users from the danger of smart contract failure. What further magnifies the danger of hackers may be the composability of DeFi. The permissionless nature of DeFi facilitates the process of integration with other protocols and achieves interoperability called "Currency Lego". Even though this composability is conducive to the construction of space, if among the components is damaged, it could also result in instability of the complete system. MakerDAO's decentralized dollar-linked stablecoin DAI serves as the key infrastructure for these money foundations. Like that loan agreement allows users to earn and borrow DAI. If hackers discover vulnerabilities in DAI smart contracts, users of those loan agreements may lose their funds, which might result in systemic failure. Related to this risk may be the unlinking and liquidation of stablecoins. Readers may know that most stable currencies are 1: 1 pegged to fiat currencies, frequently US dollars. Although the DAI in the DeFi application is continuing to grow, probably the most traded stablecoin is still Tether, which is centrally managed by the team behind BitFinex. Tether has previously received the interest of several people on the market due to its alleged support for stable reserves. It has led to a large gap between its value and the dollar. If your similar situation occurs again, it'll have unforeseen negative consequences for those who borrow or lend Tether or other stablecoins through the DeFi protocol. Like if you use a well balanced currency as collateral to acquire a loan, and its particular peg falls below $1, the loan can become under-collateralized, ultimately causing liquidation. Conversely, if you borrow a well balanced currency and the value of the peg exceeds $1, then this debt might cause you to cover more interest than expected. If it exceeds the total amount held as collateral, it could ultimately be Liquidation. This risk has recently attracted the interest of several people as the level of DAI (cDAI) in the composite currency appears to have exceeded the amount of DAI in blood supply. The marketplace value of cDAI, the dark side of income farms, is more than 8 times that of its related DAI. That is due to the unintended consequences of the revenue farm in Compound. Considering that the income farm is rewarded with high-value COMP tokens based on the level of liquidity provided, users have a reason to supply the maximum amount of liquidity as possible. In most cases, liquidity can strengthen the economic climate and is observed as a necessity for adoption. But the revenue farm creates an abnormal incentive to supply liquidity at all costs, leading users to make use of the program by "recycling" their DAI. Essentially, users deposit DAI into Compound to earn interest plus COMP tokens, and they use this DAI for over-collateralization, borrowing more DAI, and these DAI are re-deposited as collateral. analogy. Even though this method can't be performed directly in Compound, a few users have now been exploiting this vulnerability to transfer DAI to other DeFi protocols, such as InstaDapp. A simplified diagram of this process is shown below.

This technique is very risky because it artificially increases the level of DAI in Compound. Although the initial loan was over-collateralized, by re-depositing the loan amount as collateral to be able to borrow more income, the specific mortgage rate dropped alarmingly; this caused the community to worry that the equivalent part was completed behind the scenes Reserve banking. In this instance, Compound users appear to be too leveraged, putting the agreement in danger when many users make an effort to withdraw DAI simultaneously. To study how long this situation has already reached, just need to look at the undeniable fact that since the launch of COMP less than per month, the DAI locked in InstaDapp has increased by more than 285 times-from 350, 000 US dollars to more than 100 million US dollars. Initially, this risk appears to only affect Compound and InstaDapp. But taking into consideration the composability of DeFi, this abnormal increase in demand for DAI has transformed into the main focus of MakerDAO's risk team. Since multiple DeFi protocols use DAI, they will be at risk of the severe decoupling of DAI from the US dollar. At the time of writing, the value of DAI is $1. 02. Although the current gap may possibly not be large, the artificial recovery of DAI in Compound may be the most relevant short-term risk facing the DeFi field. Overcoming this challenge, re-adjusting the incentive mechanism, and mitigating the danger of exorbitant leverage may be the biggest test of decentralized governance since TheDAO hacking incident. Finally, exactly like agriculture, there exists a risk of poor harvests. Considering that the income farm started this new era of encrypted agriculture, "farmers" depend on high-quality products to profit from their efforts. Quite simply, if the value of the tokens earned through these incentive systems drops notably, users can start to opt out of providing liquidity to the protocol. In addition , if the price of these tokens suddenly falls sharply, it could result in a liquidity shock, that will further aggravate the agreement problem. Final thoughts In general, there is absolutely no lack of innovation or risk in the DeFi field. The leading DeFi protocol has successfully were able to produce a multi-stakeholder incentive system, which can be something we now have never seen before. Utilizing the transparency of the blockchain, these projects can improve one another without permission and accelerate the pace of innovation. Although the recent craze for DeFi tokens may remind many people of the 2017 ICO boom, you will need to observe that these agreements have actually obtained permissionless financial services, providing their users with products which have created value. Still another big difference is that the ICO team broadly speaking controls the majority of the token supply, whilst the DeFi protocol earnestly seeks decentralized governance; reducing the danger of counting on the founder, such as utilizing the project as an exit scam. Finally, while ICOs promote a financial service (fundraising), DeFi protocols are pursuing broader opportunities to take care of use cases such as payments, lending, exchanges, and derivatives. While the demand for ICOs has introduced many people to Ethereum for speculation, DeFi, driven by its incentive mechanism, may enable users to seriously take advantage of blockchain technology. The field of DeFi innovation is extremely wide, and it is simple enough to comprehend why the encryption field is so enthusiastic about it in 2020. But such growth is not without risks or unintended consequences. If users really decide on the DeFi protocol, they have to know about these risks and just take them into account. In the event that you arrive at this point, I appreciate you taking the time to learn this informative article. Hope you find it very insightful and it can stimulate your curiosity.

Digital marketing 2037: the destiny of our industry

As a nicely-which means marketer mentioned to me on twitter, 2037 is a long term away in the international of tech. How many humans may want to have predicted the sector of 2020 lower back in 1997? In all likelihood now not many, although i assume a few could have been at the money with a perceptive guess here and there. So why try to make  Digital Marketing Agencies in Cardiff predictions for 2037 now? Why had been so many those who are lively in search engine optimization, percent and pr eager to weigh in? We live in an age where thoughts of the future are charming. Even supposing we don’t know what’s going to show up, it’s amusing to consider what may. What’s greater, our guesses for the destiny, however ambitious and wild they may be, are based on an analysis of current traits unfolding around us: the rise of ai and vr, the recognition of voice seek and the increasing personalisation of seek, to call a few. Thinking about the destiny allows us to reply to the challenges of nowadays in a manner that units us up for the long time. I cherished analyzing the thoughts of digital marketers on where our enterprise might come to be in the subsequent couple of a long time. I’ve organised the excellent predictions and analyses into unique themes and interspersed them with some of my personal mind based totally on contemporary tech developments and a number of the maximum thrilling stories of the beyond few months. If you have some thoughts in this topic – even just your own wild speculations for the future – i’d love to peer them within the comments underneath! Advertising & the rise of personalisation

“search engines like google may be even extra personalised, no longer simply based totally on in which you're or what pages you’ve regarded before, however who you are,” says liam wade, percent supervisor right here at impact, “the whole lot will be biddable and target audience targeted.”

 the subject matter of more personalisation in seek and social advertising and marketing emerged strongly from the remarks i obtained on the topic. A hyper-personalized future for paid campaigns appears on the playing cards, but that assumes that customers make peace with the increasingly widespread belief that if we need loose stuff on-line, we should accept that we (extra in particular, our records) are the products that social media systems and search engines like google are selling to their actual clients: advertisers.

 “the entirety may be biddable and target market focused.” – liam wade

 assuming that we nevertheless need free stuff (which appears probably) and that global information laws keep to allow for liberal use of private statistics (that is extra uncertain), adverts and search effects becomes so notably customized that an impersonal google serp or beside the point social media marketing genuinely received’t exist, specially with expanded pass-platform integration, which has already started out with microsoft’s acquisition of linkedin and facebook’s acquisition of residences like whatsapp and instagram. Writing in the verge, vlad savov commented on privateness in our courageous new global: “i’ve made the selection to sacrifice those elements of my privacy for the convenience of the offerings i exploit — i’m no longer entirely sure how conscious that preference is, whether it’s honestly really worth it, or even if i'm able to certainly pass on vacation anywhere without all of these offerings, however that’s how matters at the moment are.”

 daniel rowles, creator and virtual advertising instructor at target internet, spoke on the implications of in addition records gathering: “the accumulation of records on an entire populace of customers, combined with ai-assisted insights into why, whilst and in which clients need a service, will allow marketers to assume clients’ desires better than ever. By means of 2037, there’s a real chance that entrepreneurs will recognise what you fancy for lunch before you do. If that does transpire, they’ll be able to goal advertising towards you with absolute precision.”

 this places pressure on advertisers to make desirable use of the facts at their disposal (some thing that, like daniel, i count on may be made a lot simpler with the aid of slim ai gear) and on search/social structures to keep developing attractive approaches to show ads, which will become extra tough as we inevitably pass away from traditional information feeds into a extra visual/auditory experience (assume vr and google domestic).

 “i’ve made the choice to sacrifice the ones aspects of my privateness for the ease of the offerings i exploit.” – vlad savov

 affect’s becky carré endured at the theme of developments in search, saying, “users will be capable of seek in absolutely new ways. Voice seek and photo recognition are already warm topics in seek, specifically for advertisers, but this will be increased inside the following few years. For example, the use of your smartphone digicam to recognize a product then instantly being able to shop for it in a single-click from the nice-priced retailer.”

 “with the fragmentation of media, the old fashioned ‘spray and pay’ campaigns have gone,” commented freelance virtual advertising and marketing consultant andrew lloyd gordon, “we’re into the era of micro-personalisation, experiential advertising and 1-2-1 advertising and promotions at huge scale.”

 it looks as if inappropriate commercials might be long gone by using 2037. Something platform we’re looking on via then – but we’re ingesting digital media – we will anticipate the ads we see to be hyper-customized, possessing a scary level of perception into who we're and what we need. Can we ever have the ability to say no to an advert? Search engine optimization & the converting technology of seek

the future of search engine optimization is depending on the future of seek engine era. Since the start of the career, seos had been gambling google’s game. Google won't have liked the unethical practices of the early days, but its set of rules nonetheless rewarded them and so that they existed. Now the set of rules rewards sustainable techniques that promote high best, person-friendly websites that are technically amazing and often full of in-depth records on a particular topic. Inside the destiny, the query is not simply what the algorithm will praise, but additionally what medium will people be using to search. Will computing device searches nonetheless exist? For that remember, will any sort of ‘conventional’ search on any platform, cellular, tablet or computing device, exist? Unsurprisingly, the rising era of voice search become cited through numerous commenters. Adpilot seek strategy director, thomas shares, predicts, “the largest search engine won’t be google, however as an alternative one created to awareness totally on voice reputation.”

 however, andrew Åkesson of venn digital noticed things in another way: “i doubt voice seek as we understand it now might be dominant. For instance, fb thinks we're actively looking for something, but we aren’t ‘looking’ for it, or not as we presently perform a seek. As the human race becomes greater depending on seek, will we end up more likely to permit it have an effect on our frame if it definitely impact on our lives? It’s now not that bizarre to suppose that we can have chips in our frame that assist us find the answers we're searching out, without ‘searching.’”

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 as andrew recommended, i think voice is an indication of factors to return, in preference to the be all and end all of seek. It signals the motion of seek away from distinct platforms (i. E. Conventional mobile & laptop search engines) and into our ordinary utilization. Domestic assistant merchandise now not require us to go to a search engine website to locate solutions; the quest engine is only a sentence away. Following on from the previous phase, any other development is probable to be the lack of a google ‘base rank’ as search engines grow to be nearly universally customized. Freelance search engine optimization consultant zack neary-hayes commented, “i assume search effects to end up nearly 100% precise to the searcher, which may be achieved via google drilling into appreciably extra facts factors. Effects could be personalized via age, gender, pursuits, health, etc, as well as the relationships between each section. We’ve already seen this show up on a smaller scale with how google filters outcomes based on region. Humans’s searching conduct have already changed to mirror this, with human beings losing vicinity modifiers from searches. That is best step one – why might google prevent at area?”

 but, will these modifications come to fruition if search engines like google as we comprehend it appearance essentially exclusive? “the destiny of seek is product based,” predicts aaron dicks, impact’s co-founder, “as seek will become more and more integrated into related merchandise, like the clever tvs and refrigerators we already see these days, the manner that seos attain higher seek engine visibility will should change.”

 i think dependent information markup – schema or its descendants – will upward thrust in significance to the point wherein it could also be the unmarried most crucial technical consideration from an natural angle, if aaron’s product-primarily based prediction comes actual. Schema will tell the engines like google of the future exactly what reason a segment of content material serves, perhaps allowing one-of-a-kind search media to interpret content efficaciously in some of situations. Accurate markup for a product ought to, for instance, allow it to be observed and served in visible, vr-primarily based searches and auditory, voice-primarily based searches, a herbal progression from convenient understanding cards and rich snippets visible today.

 “voice is a sign of factors to come back, in preference to the be all and stop all of search.” – andrew Åkesson

 does this mean that traditional, text-primarily based content material will die? Maybe, though i suppose we’ll nevertheless eat it one manner or some other so long as we study off displays. Instead, we might also begin to see websites that want to be ‘hyper-responsive,’ able to serving optimised content to devices like home assistants and vr headsets as well as computers and smartphones (which may well be declining in importance or absolutely out of date through 2037). In preference to displaying much less content, these hyper-responsive web sites will ought to be able to serving distinct sorts of content, a good way to take canny seos with exact know-how of the constraints of various codecs and the desires in their audiences to craft. Impact’s chloe truthful considered different elements of the results of technological exchange for search engine optimization: “gear and trends in seo and cro will mean that, even as our roles nevertheless exist, our paintings could be absolutely extraordinary. Gear might be a recreation-changer for the industry; for instance, there’ll come a factor where we never should do a guide search for the purposes of natural testing once more. Creating and using gear could be a middle part of seo.”

 i agree with chloe. Tendencies in ai suggest that more and more superior automation is becoming viable. It's far potential that even well earlier than 2037 we’ll have equipment which can behavior duties like key-word research and research for content extra comprehensively that we can control now. With the assist of ai and device gaining knowledge of those gear might need some amount of human enter on the begin, but might quick develop to the factor wherein their capabilities are beyond our exact understanding. Will machines take over the execution of the strategies that they assist us to create? In element, possibly. Whilst it seems like there’ll still be innovative areas that human beings can perform in that machines can’t, perhaps that’s in reality my naivety. The decentralisation of media & pr “no longer only are print courses becoming obsolete, on line media is turning into increasingly led through visuals and audio (think podcasts). In which will this lead?” asks jess hawkes, virtual pr expert at impression, “the authority figures that created pr inside the first location are now additionally faded – we relied on relationships with the media because there was best a finite quantity of legit publications that could print your information. Now there is an abundance of ‘authoritative’ assets because every body can create content at any time from everywhere inside the global with just the tech of their pocket.”

 whose content material will we believe in 2037? Will any sort of attempt at objective, non-partisan content exist? Content throughout all media is increasingly emotionally-charged and consumed in echo chambers. My peer group was shocked whilst brexit turned into announced because they couldn’t conceive that most people of the u . S . A . Idea differently. Why? Due to the fact the ones views weren’t present on their information feeds.

 “there's an abundance of ‘authoritative’ assets due to the fact anyone can create content at any time from everywhere within the international with simply the tech in their pocket.” – jess hawkes

 people study and percentage what the humans they consider read and percentage, bolstered via feeds on fb, twitter and google that display you more of what you’ve looked at within the beyond. This means that politically charged articles or opinion pieces that strike an emotional chord with a particular on line network are lots more attractive to publishers than more balanced articles. But, brands often can not come up with the money for to be seen to be partisan. Assuming the echo-chamber fashion keeps, how will manufacturers’ impartial content spoil into increasingly more remoted online groups? Amelia easten of plant-powered pr shared her mind on the topic, “we’re currently dwelling in a polarised global. Environmental issues, equal rights, toddler labour laws… they’ve in no way been extra essential and it’s unclear which manner the coin is going to fall, with or towards them. As the world actions closer to ethical groups with transparent practices, we need powerful digital marketing with the equal values.

 “in 2037 for the sector to development and live on, ethical organizations need to lead the manner, with digital marketing companies selling them now that a lot happens on line,” amelia endured, “we need organizations to realize that we’re on their aspect, and that we’re allies no longer fighters, and for this we need to exercise transparency ourselves and stop hiding at the back of our keyboards. As we circulate into millennials being the bulk of the workforce, meaning seo and digital advertising is greater broadly understood, our palms might be forced with this anyway – we won’t be able to cover at the back of jargon anymore. It'll be exciting to look who survives the following twenty years, and which manner the sector will pass. Content throughout all media is more and more emotionally-charged and consumed in echo chambers. One trend that seems set to provide fruitful results for a long time coming is the use of pop-tradition. I’m assured on this prediction due to the fact this has been a content material strategy for decades already throughout all varieties of media and suggests no sign of slowing down. Tapping into popular television indicates and movies that transcend political boundaries has been fruitful for lots brands, and could possibly retain into the future. Manufacturers’ fulfillment can also be continually fashioned through how they adapt to changing records consumption habits. Organizations that are slow to adopt pictures and visual content material are currently in risk of being left behind by savvier competition. In 2037, will the main logo voices be generating vr content reports? Jess summed up her mind at the changing state of pr, saying, “the connection aspect of pr will eventually decline, with boards and open structures for records sharing turning into more dominant. Getting content material published received’t be approximately who you are or your dating with a writer, however how exciting and shareable it is. This shift would possibly truly start improving the first-rate of content material and if now not, as a minimum there’s less room for bias.”

 the changing face of social

“fb will have a paid-for platform a good way to include an option to take away ads if you subscribe, however won’t be the biggest social media platform anymore,” predicts thomas shares of adpilot. Thomas’s prediction raises an essential question: how many ads can social media users tolerate earlier than some thing has to exchange? The solution may be that there may be no restriction, however if facebook and other social platforms increase into vr (as facebook is already doing with spaces) with no seamless manner to integrate ads, their presence may also turn out to be increasingly more demanding for users, leading to a decrease within the roi of social advertising and marketing and a decrease in how many advertisements facebook and other structures can sell. If this turns into the case, how do social media giants make money? We’ve already visible twitter struggling to reply this query in latest years. Will fb, instagram and the rest be the subsequent to understand they ought to adapt or die? Their popularity isn’t in question, but their primary supply of profits is every other be counted. Influence’s becky carré sees a one-of-a-kind challenge for fb mainly. She concurs with thomas that facebook will now not be the primary social media platform, persevering with, “wechat already has a near-monopoly in china, allowing users to do the whole lot from message friends, store on-line, order a taxi or find someone to head on a date with – it’s all your most-used apps rolled into one.

 “the reality all transactions and interactions are executed with out leaving the app means the quantity of consumer information wechat can acquire approximately a unmarried user is amazing. I accept as true with wechat could have taken off in a similar manner inside the west inside the next decade.”

 “fb will have a paid-for platform with a purpose to include an option to cast off ads if you subscribe.” – thomas stocks. My own feeling is that social media turns into increasingly ruled by visible and auditory media – this trend already exists with the popularity of instagram and sorts of posts that get engagement on facebook and twitter. The upward thrust of vr will make this trend even greater distinguished. What will a vr social feed seem like? Do we see our pals in realtime lobbies (something that already exists)? Do we watch vr films and ship messages with voice/notion, seamlessly transferring from newsfeeds to something altogether extra immersive? I can’t assist but bear in mind how social structures would monetise something like this without a feed that we are able to scroll through. I'm wondering if vr platforms may want to undertake a youtube-esque pre-roll advert system, where users are taken into an advertorial enjoy earlier than whatever else it changed into they have been planning to do. Such ads, if designed nicely, could be relatively effective, specifically in the early years of giant vr usage. By way of 2037, they will be the norm. Every other possibility is spotify-esque audio commercials. Those might be much less immersive, but less complicated to disregard, which may inspire human beings to tolerate them. It’s difficult to inform whether social vr will make ads simpler or harder for customers to avoid. Ai and automation

a dialogue of ai and automation inside the context of virtual advertising is unavoidably broad, specially when considering modifications twenty years into the future. One subject matter that is of awesome importance to virtual entrepreneurs, however, is what ai and automation will do to our jobs. Some of the adjustments and variations noted already in this newsletter provide clues, but thomas shares addressed this trouble head on in any other of his comments, “in terms of jobs within the digital advertising and marketing quarter, i think they’ll continually exist because of route, you could application a robotic/machine to work out a consumer’s cause or behaviour but the planning of a campaign, the consultancy aspect of advertising and the care detail proven via an account supervisor can’t be replicated via machinery. Ai and automated gear or scripts might be like 2nd-nature to us, however this could just make human beings in the enterprise more green, now not redundant.”

i agree with thomas – providing that ai inside the next 20 years remains rather much like its current state, which is not a given. As long as our machines can certainly be defined as ‘narrow’ ai (i. E. Capable of acting just one project very well) our jobs will probable live on alongside the sort of tools and software that thomas and chloe (who commented in the search engine optimization section) have mentioned. However, it is possible, if not going, that ai will take a giant bounce ahead in the subsequent 20 years, making the modern accomplishments of ai generation seem like pong in comparison to fifa 18. If we take a step in the direction of wellknown ai, there’s no manner of telling what it's going to and won’t be able to do, and it won’t simply be virtual advertising jobs underneath hazard, both. We can be staring at the need to restructure the worldwide economic system…however that’s surely beyond the scope of this submit. If we take a step in the direction of preferred ai, there’s no manner of telling what it'll and won’t be capable of do. After an interview with google’s sundar pichai, dieter bohn wrote this in the verge: “essentially, [sundar pichai’s] question approximately every hardware product is ‘how can we practice ai to rethink our products?’ he doesn’t need to make ai just another feature, he wants ai to basically regulate what every device is.”

 i’ll return, in brief, to more concrete predictions now. Narrow ai is very, very good at training itself to predict values for unknown information, as an example, how much you'll earn in step with year if you’ve had x years of higher schooling or you have x qualification. This can cause a great deal extra personalisation in advertising and marketing/search engines like google, but also has implication for seo and content material tools. Competitor evaluation or research for a content material task will be completely automatic, and a whole method could be advised. Consider you want to write down a fashion manual for a purchaser’s internet site (a assignment i finished simply last month) – the whole research system will be automatic by means of an ai that analyses thousands and thousands of images containing applicable clothing or items of apparel earlier than returning to the human operator some synthetic photos that nice seize the trends it’s observed. I assume the execution of those tasks, like writing the guide, will remain within the realm of human actors for foreseeable future, but equipment powered via system gaining knowledge of will make research and gathering insights from facts faster and extra precise. The future of ecommerce

every other remark from adpilot’s thomas stocks were given me thinking about ecommerce: “amazon may be the cross-to region for each product – consisting of healthcare, new automobiles (in all likelihood flying ones) and journeys to space.”

 at the same time as ecommerce and digital advertising and marketing are separate, a lot of us work for ecommerce businesses or with ecommerce customers. My prediction is that vr/ar will impact ecommerce in methods that the virtual marketing industry isn't presently organized for, probably even earlier than 2037. Let’s use furnishings for example. Digital ‘showrooms’ exist already, wherein you operate ar to look how a brand new sofa could appearance for your living room. As vr/ar will become greater vast, it’s now not a stretch to suppose that this functionality ought to end up a middle part of the web income funnel. Instead of travelling ikea, you can see products in the context of your house as you search for them online. This may present a task for search engines like google. How are you going to move slowly and index pages like this? My wager is that a few shape of schema markup will inform search engines what users are seeing. However, optimising a page like this could require a one-of-a-kind mindset to optimising a current category/product web page. The focus is much less on written content and key phrases, and more on an correct description of the visual merchandise, perhaps in a way that’s most just like the image alt tags we've presently. Vr/ar will impact ecommerce in approaches that the digital advertising and marketing industry is not currently organized for, probable even earlier than 2037. As with any search improvements, agencies which can be short to evolve are possibly to look huge benefits of their organic visibility. Traditionally, this would be an opportunity for smaller companies to get the bounce on bigger businesses which might be slower to conform, but price range constraints could be a element here. A company will should have a substantial media budget to be had to get their merchandise vr ready and the technical knowhow to optimise them. It looks as if a step on this route may want to reason giants like amazon to go away smaller competition further in the back of. The most effective way i ought to see the trend not heading in this path is if vr tech drops in fee and turns into extensively handy before search engines like google select up on it, which appears not going because the organizations at the back of the big serps (google & microsoft) are already heavily invested in vr/ar. What's going to appear to the broader industry?

“my notion is that ‘advertising’ as a concept could have changed; i don’t suppose it will be referred to as ‘digital advertising’ anymore,” predicts virtual method consultant andrew lloyd gordon, “advertising has shifted so much inside the closing twenty years. And the shift has best just began.”

 if the advent of vr and new social/conversation technologies leads to greater holistic, revel in-primarily based media intake ought to blur the traces among on line and offline advertising and marketing to the volume that the change ‘virtual’ is no longer needed to distinguish on line advertising from offline.

 “advertising and marketing as a idea can have modified; i don’t think it will be referred to as ‘digital advertising’ anymore.” – andrew lloyd gordon

 ben michaelis, managing director of thinkengine, stated, “digital advertising will evolve to be extra digital experience targeted. You may see a rise of groups and organizations specialising on this area.

 “i accept as true with you will see a shift in the needs of clients (very just like the shift we’re already seeing within the retail area) and the ‘enjoy’ turns into as vital because the advertising and marketing.”

 any other fashion within the wider tech industry that has implications for virtual advertising is the dominance of so-called ‘huge tech’ corporations like google and fb. Andrew lloyd gordon notes, “marketing to human beings online already way ‘doing what google or fb permits and wishes’. This trend is accelerating and until governments step in to break up their power, entrepreneurs gained’t be able to reach mass customer markets very without problems themselves (regardless of traditional corporations, who might also have disappeared by then).”

inside the current fashion, the largest tech agencies are already making it hard for startups to be successful out of doors in their all-encompassing umbrellas, with the aid of shopping for out or copying a success startups till all that stays is the large. Google, fb, microsoft and amazon are 4 of the most outstanding ‘large tech’ companies leading the way when it comes to innovation, and all of them have search engines like google and yahoo or platforms that entrepreneurs ought to paintings on or with. Digital entrepreneurs will have to play by using their policies for as long as their monopoly stays intact, but those guidelines are in all likelihood to extend into vr and across more recent kinds of media, even if search and social advertising and marketing turn out to be searching very one-of-a-kind two decades from now. Loads has been stated about the possible future of virtual advertising in  Digital Marketing Agencies in Glasgow the destiny, however there’s loads extra we may want to have protected. What do you watched our industry will appear to be in 2037? Tell me what you think inside the remarks underneath!

Law Of Attraction Insights On How To Make the most of It

The Legislation Of Attraction like all Universal Law is reliably at the office and also reliably shares appropriately what YOU pick.

l things that exist inside our universe are made out of vigor, or resonance. The Legislation of Tourist attraction maintains it streaming conveniently and also flawlessly.

at is this complicated and also "apparently evasive" Legislation called The Legislation of Tourist attraction?

ll. honestly its not as secretive, "apparently exclusive" or difficult to view as such a large number of "see" it to be. It's just a question of getting to be mindful of it and also figuring out how to intentionally coordinate with it to begin coming across a kind and also personal complete satisfaction that a lot of individuals "unwittingly choose" NOT to experience.

uth be informed its SO simple, once you have a necessary understanding of it and also are provided a chance to perceive and also see on your own precisely how standard it absolutely is, you'll entirely see how to make it function for you via intentionally centered proposition and also with an uniformity that more than likely will "shock" you.

at is the thing that we'll be exploring right here. We'll be giving you a completely clear understanding of both what The Legislation of Tourist attraction is, the manner by which and also why it meets assumptions the method it does and also most of all how YOU can make it benefit you ... purposely, actively and also dependably in each and every single component of your life.

e Legislation of Tourist attraction, or else called and also referred to as Situations and also end results or Sowing and also Procuring is, comparable to all Widespread Laws, astonishingly vital to understand and also intentionally perform on the off opportunity that you are to identify how to intentionally and also intentionally reel in the wishings of your heart right into your life. Just as critical is to identify how not to reel in those things that you don't elegant.

e Legislation of Attraction Is Unchanging and also Unmovable

e Legislation of Tourist attraction, in the same way as all various other All comprehensive Laws, can not be transformed, gotten away from or managed by any person. Much the same as the Legislation of Gravity, the Legislation of Tourist attraction is continually at the office and also never ever rests. These regulations mentioned as General Regulations, routine regulations, or regulations of nature have actually existed because the start of time itself and also will remain right into forever. They are exempt to modification by you or I.

ch the same as most of the various other All comprehensive Laws, the Legislation of Tourist attraction will keep on running effectively, perfectly, and also with 100% enduring assurance paying little respect to your consciousness of it or absence of understanding to it. It will keep on running precisely as it was made, paying little heed to your sentence or repudiation in it.

e Legislation of Tourist attraction shares to all, in precisely the very same system, and also with the very same faithful and also unsurprising assurance, paying little mind to your age, sex, religious sentence, race, and so forth. It does not separate, set apart or evaluate in any capacity, shape or structure. You can not leave it or separation its possessions.

e primary control that you, as a person have over it, is to "intentionally" exercise your choice or inside out flexibility, worrying what you supply (resonance) to it to deal with. That giving of yourself to it, figures out what you ought to get in exchange.

case you choose to intentionally make a particular outcome, you ought to first identify how to intentionally change your contemplations, convictions and also sensations with the looked for verdict which will without lost and also with 100% relentless self-assurance permit you to reel in whatever is desired. Likewise, in case you provide for it, or resound factors to consider and also sensations of alarm system, tension, demand, impediment, and so on., you can just and also will reel in business customarily.

r those that choose to intentionally make and also carry on with a life of Plenitude and also Fulfillment, this is Phenomenal Information!

y?

nsidering that by getting to be mindful and also developing an understanding of how the Legislation of Tourist attraction works and also intentionally readjusting your musings and also sensations with its undeniable, unyielding and also unsurprising procedure, you can then use (realise) it, to draw in to yourself, specific results ... wanted final thoughts that before acquiring this info, appeared to occur just by shot.

vertheless most importantly, on the off opportunity that you are to use its power to begin to intentionally make what you look for, you ought to first have an awareness of its procedure.

at is the thing that you are going to discover right here ... how to intentionally, actively, intentionally and also dependably make use of the Legislation of Tourist attraction for start pulling in to yourself the needed final thoughts in EVERY elements of your life physically, fiscally, socially, candidly and/or greatly.

will then become your choice whether to acknowledge or reject it as reality even with the reality that the refusal to acknowledge and also identify it will not alter the way that it is due to The Legislation of Tourist attraction's unfaltering and also unsurprising nature that you are coming across the life happens that you have, now are and also reliably will.

fact, your mindfulness or unawareness of its visibility has absolutely no influence on its procedure any more than your consciousness of or confidence in gravity would have NO influence on its stable and also long-term procedure.

ought to go into and also examine how and also why that is "real"...

made clear in the Legislation Of Vibration and also Quantum Physics short articles, every little thing that you can physically involvement with the 5 human professors of view, hearing, taste, touch, and also scent, softened down and also explored up there most crucial sub-nuclear structure, comprises of subatomic frameworks known as subatomic bits furthermore mentioned as vigor or resonance. In the same way, the undetected things that can not be sensed with the 5 crucial human professors, for instance, your contemplations, sensations, oxygen, and so forth are likewise, when broken down right into their most essential structure and also explored, resonance or vigor. https://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=8Vd_EB9V0fU&u=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D8Vd_EB9V0fU%26feature%3Dshare

the secret to the law of attraction

All things that exist inside our world are constructed of vitality, or resonance. The Legislation of Destination maintains it streaming easily and also faultlessly.

at is this puzzling and also "obviously elusive" Legislation called The Legislation of Destination?

ll. truthfully its not as deceptive, "obviously exclusive" or tough to see as such a multitude of "see" it to be. It's simply a question of getting to bear in mind it and also figuring out how to deliberately manage with it to start running into a kind and also individual complete satisfaction that a great deal of individuals "unknowingly select" NOT to experience.

ct be told its SO uncomplicated, as soon as you have an important understanding of it and also are provided a possibility to perceive and also see on your own precisely just how standard it truly is, you'll completely see how to make it operate for you through deliberately centered proposition and also with a consistency that greater than likely will "shock" you.

at is the thing that we'll be examining right here. We'll be giving you an entirely clear understanding of both what The Legislation of Destination is, the manner by which and also why it measures up to assumptions the way it does and also most of all how YOU can make it work for you ... purposely, actively and also accurately in every single component of your life.

e Legislation of Destination, otherwise called and also referred to as Situations and also end results or Sowing and also Procuring is, comparable to all Widespread Rule, remarkably vital to comprehend and also deliberately carry out on the off possibility that you are to determine how to intentionally and also deliberately pull in the longings of your heart right into your life. Just as important is to determine how not to pull in those things that you don't elegant.

e Legislation of Tourist Attraction Is Constant and also Immovable

e Legislation of Destination, similarly as all other All inclusive Regulations, can't be changed, gotten away from or controlled by anybody. Similar as the Legislation of Gravity, the Legislation of Destination is continually at the workplace and also never ever relaxes. These legislations mentioned as General Rules, normal legislations, or legislations of nature have existed because the start of time itself and also will remain right into for life. They are not subject to alteration by you or I.

milar as most of the other All inclusive Regulations, the Legislation of Destination will keep on operating successfully, perfectly, and also with 100% long-lasting assurance paying little respect to your consciousness of it or lack of recognition to it. It will keep on operating exactly as it was made, paying little follow to your sentence or rejection in it.

e Legislation of Destination conveys to all, in exactly the very same system, and also with the very same faithful and also unsurprising assurance, paying little mind to your age, sex, spiritual sentence, nationality, and so on. It doesn't separate, segregate or judge in any ability, shape or framework. You can't leave it or separation its possessions.

e primary control that you, as an individual have over it, is to "deliberately" practice your choice or inside out liberty, concerning what you offer (resonance) to it to collaborate with. That giving of yourself to it, identifies what you should get in exchange.

the occasion that you decide to intentionally make a specific outcome, you should first determine how to deliberately change your considerations, sentences and also sensations with the sought final thought which will without lost and also with 100% ruthless self-assurance allow you to pull in whatever is desired. By the same token, on the occasion that you provide for it, or resound considerations and also sensations of alarm system, tension, demand, impediment, and so on., you can simply and also will pull in service customarily.

r those that decide to intentionally make and also continue with a life of Plenitude and also Satisfaction, this is Amazing News!

y?

nsidering that by getting to be conscious and also creating an understanding of how the Legislation of Destination works and also deliberately adjusting your musings and also sensations with its indisputable, unflinching and also unsurprising procedure, you can after that utilize (actualize) it, to draw in to yourself, specific end results ... desired verdicts that prior to obtaining this info, showed up to occur simply by shot.

wever most importantly, on the off possibility that you are to use its energy to start to intentionally make what you seek, you should first have a consciousness of its procedure.

at is the thing that you are mosting likely to discover right here ... how to deliberately, actively, intentionally and also accurately use the Legislation of Destination for start drawing in to yourself the needed verdicts in EVERY elements of your life physically, fiscally, socially, candidly and/or exceptionally.

will after that develop into your choice whether to acknowledge or deny it as reality in spite of the truth that the refusal to acknowledge and also recognize it will not change the way that it is as a result of The Legislation of Destination's unfailing and also unsurprising nature that you are running into the life transpires that you have, today are and also dependably will.

ally, your mindfulness or unawareness of its presence has truly no effect on its procedure any more than your consciousness of or confidence in gravity would have ZERO effect on its consistent and also permanent procedure.

should dig into and also check out how and also why that is "real" ...

clarified in the Legislation Of Resonance and also Quantum Physics short articles, every little thing that you can physically participation with the five human faculties of view, hearing, preference, touch, and also scent, softened down and also dissected up there most important sub-nuclear framework, consists of subatomic structures known as subatomic particles additionally mentioned as vitality or resonance In the same way, the hidden things that can't be picked up with the five important human faculties, for example, your considerations, sensations, oxygen, and so on are furthermore, when damaged down right into their most basic framework and also dissected, resonance or vitality.

how would you give that info something to do for you, using the Legislation of Destination?

begin with, we should evaluate what we've officially learned.

All things (seen and also hidden) softened down and also dissected up there purest and also most basic framework, comprise of vitality or resonances.

Considerations are a resonance.

Our reality and also every little thing inside it, first begun with an idea.

The considerations that we think (seeds) are simply emitted vibrational regularities which are reveal right into the Universe illustration in to them resonances of the very same vibrational echo or reoccurrence which makes (programs) what we concern see and also participation in our real world as our current reality. (Our Life).

ploratory Glance At The Legislation of Destination.

st importantly else how about we investigate what established scientists says in relation to the Legislation of Destination.

Reveals: The Legislation of Destination is the legislation by which believed connect with its protest.

should take a gander at this in a much more physical sense, making use of physically noticeable product that we can see and also are mindful of daily, to fulfill the logical left cerebrum and also aesthetic sort of individuals.

e accompanying analysis will allow you to see the Legislation of Destination in activity from a physical perspective.

Uncomplicated Analysis To Accept The Legislation of Resonance.

an issue of initial relevance we'll take two eye droppers, and also load linked with oil and also the other with water. Next, drop one decrease of water onto a surface. Currently take the other (oil) and also identify a decline straight on top of the decrease of water. What takes place? Do they collaborate and also reach be as one, or does one repulse the other? Plainly they repulse each other. However why is this? They are both a fluid substance and also it appears they should certainly assemble right into one mass.

e factor is as standard as the Legislation of Destination.

beit both materials are of a fluid birthplace, every one have their own specific private subatomic cosmetics which is not the like the other (differing subatomic structures which resound and also venture an alternate resonance or vitality reoccurrence).

thout entering the certain speculative recipes and also subatomic structures, that comprise every substance and also the numerical mathematical statements that assist this, in there most basic framework, such as every little thing in our reality, they comprise of resonance or vitality.

e vitality or resonance that is emitted from each varies due to the transforming structures of particles and also sub-nuclear particles that every one contains that make them shake or resound at unique regularities. Considering that they shake at diverse regularities they are not able to be drawn in to each other and also consequently actually repulse the other.

right, how about we proceed with our trial. On the occasion that you were to utilize the very same procedure as above, in addition to this moment, drop a solitary decrease of water and also later placed an alternate decrease of water particularly on top of the in the first place, what takes place? Both collaborate as one, due to the truth that the subatomic cosmetics or framework, or rate of resonance, (vitality) of both is exactly the very same. This brings us to the final thought that like resonances or regularities of vitality that "manage" with various regularities draws in to itself like resonances.

it is with the Legislation of Destination. Whatever believed vitality (vibrating seed) that you discharge right into the universe, makes and also originates a certain vibratory example or reoccurrence concentrated around the kind and also nature of thought, is drawn in by and also accompanied like vitality of the very same symphonious reoccurrence or resonance which shakes in echo with it, which therefore make the celebrations, conditions and also situations that you see program in your life every day!

u are actually drawing in to yourself, the thing thought of (harvest).

ere is an incredible measure of late speculative proof obtainable that backings the facts of the Legislation of Destination, and also includes the greater part of the mathematical statements, examinations, and so on that undeniably show reality behind this wonder. By all means ... please don't take my pledge or any other private besides. Do your examination and also reach your decisions (see Quantum Product scientific research).

r the objective of those that get it as of today, how about we transfer to the transcendent angles that backing the presence and also unmovable procedure of The Legislation of Destination which for some will sustain in accepting its "reality.". https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=8Vd_EB9V0fU

The Popularity of the Emoji: Is it a new language in widespread social communication?

Introduction

With the soaring development of the Internet and the popularity of the smartphone in 2017, there has been an increasing number in the forms of social networking communication. These new forms of communication have also made it possible for more and more individuals than ever before in history, to connect with one another. In the era of evolving computer networks, a new type of message exchange - Emoji, has arisen spontaneously and it has gained a growing popularity among the public.

Comparing the text message, the increased popularity of the common usage of Emoji is a more fast and simplistic form of communication and the expression of individual ideas. In 2015, the emoji was described as, "face with tears of joy" was selected as the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year. This particular emoji was chosen to reflect the passing year in language, showing the clear prominence that emoji has in our modern technological culture. Gradually changing from the applying of the text communicating to the extensively using of picture expression, the application of Emoji has been changing people's communication habits, and in turn, influencing our understanding of language and culture in this technologically prominent era. Emoji use has played a valid role in social networking communication platforms. However, a coin has two sides.  The high vitality of Emoji is accompanied by a series of social problems: Some people have pointed out the Emoji would make a dent in complexity and dominance of language and literacy, while others suggest the mushroom growth of emoji are becoming a new trend of communication which may damage the importance of language for many young people.

This essay will start by giving the reader a very brief explanation on the development of the emoji into our common use of language, which should be helpful in understanding the importance of visual representation in communication. Next, this essay will discuss the development of the emoji as a new language, and discuss its relevance in culture and society. Furthermore, there will be a discussion on the pros and cons of this kind of new language, as both sides of the arguments surrounding the growing use of emoji will be examined. Lastly, this essay will conclude with a general summary and thoughts about the development of the emoji language in the future. This essay argues that emoji will very soon become it’s own commonly used language in new media technology communication and that this progression will have both positive and negative effects on the development and understanding of communication, culture, and our use of language in the age of technology.

What is an emoji?

The Internet dictionary defines the “emoji” as a small icon or image to represent people’s emotions or actions (Wong, 2016). Today the emoji is used in all forms of Internet communication, social media, and text message communication. Often the emoji is used to replace words, or can even be used to construct entire sentences. The usage of the emoji is widespread and does not have any geographical borders, making it once of the few methods of internationally accepted communication that has no official standing in education or language policy.

The fundamental component of the new language

In 2015, a linguistic called Neil Cohn published a paper called “Will emoji become a new language?” to indicate that emoji will not become a new form of language (Read, 2016, p.1). Neil argues that the emoticon does not have the core of a natural, spoken language that is called “grammar.” In the paper, he demonstrated that a grammatical system is an integrated and rigorous system that contains a complete restricted condition for judging a language. This provides the users of the language distinguishable traits and patterns that they can use for understanding and creating depth of language.

The first trait of grammar is that the syntax has the individual autonomy, which is incomplete when it is not linked up with semantics. Emoji have no way of providing syntax, even if the ‘language’ was to develop, these kind of visual cues and representations are unable to form classical syntax and basic grammar structures.

Secondly, grammar is creative that it can create numerous new sentences based on a set of limited rules and recognizable patterns such as adding adjective words, prepositional phrases, and attributive clauses. Without these patterns, there can be no logical way to teach the universal meaning of a language. This would mean that each individual would have their own personal understanding of what each word, or in this case emoji, represented, and this would, definitely, undermine the efficiency of the language. Particularly, it could be argued that these differences would often be geographical and/or cultural, which we often see in classic language structures. This is usually referred to as dialect. However, the difference with the use of emoji as a language is that there is such a huge potential for this variation in ‘dialect’ that it almost completely undermines the universality of the language.

Lastly, emoji does not have modularity and grammar hierarchy, which are the stable characteristics of any language’s syntax. In summary, it is difficult to use emoji to create a complicated sentence, even though emoji could express a story based on the primary narrative structure (Neil Cohn, 2015, p.23).

which is a narrow, Neil Cohn explained in his paper why emoji is not, and cannot ever develop into a language. However, the language form that he used in his comparison was only natural language, which is narrow, and more historic, understanding of the definition of language? In the modern day, we have seen a large expansion in the use of language, including language through gestures and body movement, Esperanto, computer technology language (C++, Java, binary code) and paralanguage, for example. It would be outdated to think only in terms of natural language when discussing the use of emoji communication.

“The fact that English alone is proving insufficient to meet the need of the 21st century digital communication is a huge shift” (Read, 2016, p.3). Our world is increasingly influenced by new media technology, and it is important that we examine the way that technology is affecting and changing the way in which we once used language. When we seek to examine new and emerging cases, we must also open our minds to examine new and modern theories, definitions, and general understanding of the environment in which it exists.

       ‘The future is already here - it’s just not very evenly distributed.’

                                                                                      -William Ford Gibson

It is clear that the growing popularity of the emoji can be considered as one of the new futures of new media technology language. The Internet is changing the world, and the various styles of new media communication is arguably the most significant barrier to realizing and understanding the influence of the global village on our society (Kaye, 2017, p.32). In the 1970’s, Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof, a Polish Jew, created a new language as a solution to having a universal language. This language is called Esperanto. It was aimed at eliminating the communication barriers between countries. However, this it is unfortunately very difficult to learn and generalize. However, this step forward was brought forward some very important concepts. For example, the global community began to think of the future, and the growth of globalization, technology, and inter-connectedness. It is very probable that humanity may demand a language which does not require extensive learning, and that is based on human perceptions that we all genetically share in common (Kaye, 2017, p.43).

From the observation of present situation, the emoji does have a unique potential to be a new type of common language. Humans would have the natural cognitive abilities to be able to understand a particular image sequence (gif) or a specific emotional icon (emoji) without the need for any specific education or explanation of the language. This seems like a very easy and natural way to introduce common language into our global society.

In contrasting argument, Neil Cohn suggests that people find it difficult to think of a particular symbol to express their feelings quickly. This argument, however, seems very unlikely and is not backed up by any kind of qualitative data. Imagine, in the future, that humanity has a need or want to express something to others who speak a different language, an individual could just pick the icons or gifs from a cloud material drive rapidly (if the technology evolves quickly), and these images would immediately express and communicate a general, and universally understood emotion or activity. This kind of advancement in the technology of language seems very exciting and yet very simple. Besides, while the others could receive and understand this man’s meaning. Therefore, they are now able to complete a communicating process without any kind of translator or other difficult language learning.

The expression of emoji as a language is comparable to the simple communication tools used by our ancestors. This includes mediums like dancing and hieroglyphics to express emotions and situations. Even though the language of emoji may seem overly simplistic to some, it does have a lot of potentials. There are many ways in which we can use this knowledge and understanding of the emoji to develop on a common language that is accessible to all people. Even though so far the emoji is an immature language tool, it is one based on human perceptions and instinct, and because of this, it is an easy tool that can be used to the advantage of human development.

Finally, we must understand that no matter the way in which we decide to use emoji in the future, it is something that along with new media technology has a big impact on our society and culture. It is something that a large proportion of the global population uses in their day-to-day lives, and because of this, it has the potential to influence us as a global society. It is an interesting thought to consider that perhaps some anthropologist would study the history of Internet communication language in the future, and they would state that Emoji could be the first generation of systematic Esperanto.

To summarize the main argument in this section of the essay, we can see that “social media [and communication technology] is making it easier than ever to contribute to the evolution of language. You no longer have to be published through traditional avenues to bring word trends to the attention of the masses,” (Read, 2017, p.7).

The effect of emoji’s and new media language on culture

This essay will now move on to examine the impact that this development in the language of emoji is having on our culture. It is evident that emoji’s impact our culture, but it does so more than just in the way of language. Our societies avid use of emoji has also been shown to affect the way we communicate in face-to-face interactions, by adjusting our body movement and facial expressions. For example, studies have shown that “emoticons and emoji’s impact our mood and facial expressions, causing us to mimic the emotion being conveyed” (Main Street Host, 2016, p.1).

It seems that we have started directly reflecting our media use of emoji communication into our real-life communication and vice versa. “There’s no question that emoji have transformed the way we communicate with one another, adding a personal element that reflects what would be conveyed in an in-person conversation” (Main Street Host, 2016, p.2).

Another expansion of the emoji that we can see commonly used for communication is the hashtag. The use of the hashtag is interlinked with the emoji in the way that it influences our societies understanding of language. “What we’re gaining from hashtagging is a new way to communicate ideas, more concise than ever” (Read, 2017, p.5). The use of hashtags allows us to share “with one funny little symbol,” much in the same way as the use of emoji’s, “a host of ideas that are merely tangential to our original thought, but that somehow manage to clarify or add to it’ (Read, 2017, p.5).

Moreover, our reliance on the social media, and emoji communication is affecting the way our society brands itself. “Emoji have hit the mainstream and are becoming increasingly ingrained in popular culture” (Read, 2017, p.7). We can see that many companies and advertisements have jumped on the idea of using emoji’s to communicate. This is becoming extremely common in Western cultures in particular, where social media use, like Twitter, for example, is a very popular method to communicate information quickly and inexpensively. However, the problem with this is that it is very likely that our media culture is moving much faster than our society. In fact, there are many people who will be very active in this new media world, but there are still many people in the world who have not yet adapted. This can be due to various reasons, including age, class, geography, access to the Internet, and much more. Should our society take into consideration that we may be progressing into a world of technology too fast? Or is this just the natural development of our culture? Is our new media world a reflection of our society, or is our society a reflection of our developments in technology? These are all important questions to ask in order to really understand how this new media is affecting our society and culture.

The argument for and against the emoji

Emoji and the emoticon have been a new language to represent the modern era and the technological changes in our global society. This is, in general, a positive change that represents our advancements in communication technology and that the existence of the emoticons enriches the narrative function of language. According to a Wall Street Journal report, the Oxford University Press Secretary Casper Grathwohl has claimed that classical words and forms of communication are now requiring changes in order to cater the growth of visually demanding communication. Single icons, like emoji faces, could fill with the holes of the flat messages and make it look beautiful (Gasper, 2015).

We live in a society that favors easy and fast-paced lifestyles. It is important for our modern society to have a variety of tools available at their fingertips in order to function well on a daily basis. We have become accustomed to this style of life, and our use of emoji represents this well.

However, there are other people that argue that the increased usage of the emoji to communicate, is causing a decline in literacy skills, and destroying classical language. Due to the growing dependency, either conscious or subconscious, on the use emoticons to communicate emotion, we are weakening the importance and depth of meaning in natural language. All the human emotions – including happy, excited, angry, sad, upset – are easily being replaced by the emoji, and many people are arguing that as a result, the over-use of emoticons is promoting the sluggishness of communication, and also weakening verbal expression ability (Marengo, 2017, p.67). Compared with the enormous expression of the natural language, the appearance of emoticons is limited.

On the other hand, a social psychologist called George Herbert Mead believed that semiotics play a significant role in affection elements when we participate in social interaction. Individuals express themselves by symbols, while we understand or evaluate the others’ understanding of themselves (Rose, 2013, p.124). Another example could be Lacan’s Mirror Stage theory for analyzing the human recognition growth progress. On the Internet, especially social media, there are two mirrors stages when they communicate with each other using the Emoji: First is the “other mirror stage,” while the others are “self-mirror stage” (Rose, 2013, p.125). The “self-mirror stage” is meant to show that the individuals would use the emoji as the symbolized self-presentation. In reality, the users may know the others, but they will still use a symbolized form to secondary build up the self-image of themselves. The reason “self-mirror stage” is the connection between the symbolic interaction and the media built by Mirror stage.

The point of this psychological analysis of the emoji is to show that it does not have scientific proof that shows it will lessen to quality, or depth, of human emotion in real life contexts. The use of new media technology communication requires a very effective and convenient way of communication lengthy ideas, and it cannot always rely on complex narrative structure. The emoji is a new communicating language; it just needs to satisfy the people’s communicating demand. However, on the subject of the public need to separate the emoji and traditional literacy we should consider that they stay in different sections of progress in society. One is on the Internet that provides a simple way to express emotion, while the other is connected to human cognition and recognition. It should not accuse the conscious error of the feelings. In fact, they are two different languages in perception.

Conclusion

The emoji has quickly become a form of new language in our global networking culture. Although there are a variety of opinions on the subject, in general emoticons can be beneficial for enhancing and enriching written communication, but compared to natural language, emoji remains very simple and lacks depth and clarity. Some benefits of this new language, however, include that the existence of emoji give the potential for a new future language where the communication barriers between individuals who speak different languages are broken. Instead, these individuals would be able to speak through visual representation

The emoji could also be treated as a new language that accompanies the Internet and new media. With the growing influence of the Internet in our daily lives, it is very logical that we would, even subconsciously, create a new way of communication that is more efficient and expands our reach of communication networking. Nevertheless, the present form of the emoticon still stays in a primordial developing stage, which cannot be compared to the depth of natural language. However, following the progress of the new media’s growth, the emoticon will rapidly evolve a mature new language system which will be prominent in communication and internet cultures across the world.

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