.

Voyager. Now that’s a kettle of fish. Obviously watch/enjoy whatever you wish, but I do recommend also checking out SFDebris’ reviews of the episodes (he’s the rwde of Voyager). He is a lot smarter and more eloquent than me.

Putting these two asks together since my thoughts on both are all jumbled! 

Now, I want to emphasize that I’ve only watched the first 16 episodes (Season One + Season 2 premiere), so idk if Voyager is going to go seriously downhill later on, but right now I do really like it. And not in a, “Lol yeah compared to the other crap on it’s good, I guess” way, but in a completely honest, “It has its flaws, but is overall a solid, compelling show with lovable characters” way. Out of curiosity I watched SFDebris’ review of “Phage,” though I’m afraid I didn’t agree with it. The only part were I was like, “Yeah okay” was pointing out that they had the Doctor using a keypad when he supposedly wasn’t solid, but that’s precisely the sort of continuity error that, in an otherwise strong show, I’m willing to shrug off. For all the major points, it sounds like SFDebris is concerned primarily with the show he wants Voyager to be, rather than the show Voyager actually is. Which I know sounds familiar--I’ve heard that criticism leveled at my own work: “You just want RWBY to be a totally different show”--but the difference is that Voyager is a part of an established franchise, following three other TV shows, an animated series, and a collection of films. It’s not an original show (like RWBY) that can take itself in any direction the story may need/claim to want (again, RWBY). It has a brand and those established characteristics seem to be bumping up against SFDebris’ critiques: 

Hating Neelix as a character - You’re supposed to hate him. Or at least find him frustrating (I don’t personally hate him) because that’s what all the characters are grappling with too. From Tuvok forced to have an awkward conversation while Neelix is in the bath to Janeway dealing with him taking over her dining room, Neelix’s conflict revolves around how others learn to accept him. Star Trek as a franchise is about “Infinite diversity in infinite combinations.” Voyager begins with the problem of how the trained Federation officers are supposed to work with the more violent Maquis. Difference doesn’t just create “Wow, you’re so amazing!” reactions, it also includes frustration, disagreement, and outright hostility. Creating an outsider character with a kind heart but incredibly overbearing personality is a great way to test the other characters’ convictions. Do they actually care about all life in the universe? Or do they only care about life when they personally find it palatable? Having Neelix around is a great reminder for them--and the viewer--that just because someone annoys you at times doesn’t mean they’re any less worthy of love, respect, and companionship. It also doesn’t mean they don’t have something to offer: he keeps the crew fed even if his cooking is horrible, he provides information about this area of space even if he sometimes gets it wrong, we roll our eyes at the “Morale Officer” stuff, but Neelix does provide much needed perspective for characters like Tuvok. If Neelix made fewer mistakes, stopped bugging the crew, became a “cooler” character for the audience to root for rather than be frustrated by... a lot of the point of his character would be lost. 

Frustration about discoveries not carrying over to the next episode - AKA, the crew finds inanely powerful, alien tech and then (presumably) never uses it again. This would indeed be a big problem in a serialized story (like RWBY) but Voyager maintains much of Star Trek’s original, episodic nature. Though we have continuity in the form of them inching towards home and evolving as characters, the world still resets to a certain point at the end of each episode. This is what allows Star Trek to explore so many different questions and have so many different adventures. If you demand that serialized continuity--this character needs to have an arc to deal with this traumatic experience, the crew has to follow the thread they just discovered, our Doctor needs to do something with the new tech they just found--then you lose the variety that Star Trek is known for. Instead of a new story each week (or, occasionally, across two weeks) you’ve got a single story spanning months. Neither form is better or worse than the other, it’s absolutely a preference, but there’s a very specific, structural, intentional reason why the characters “forget” about the things they’ve discovered and, at times, experienced. Unlike Ozpin forgetting that he has a nuke in his cane for seven volumes, or Ruby forgetting to use her eyes at crucial points, Star Trek deliberately sets things aside to ensure there’s room for new ideas and questions next episode. 

Janeway doesn’t kill the Vidiians to get Neelix his lungs back - No Starfleet captain would. At least, not during this period of Star Trek. Sisko has development in that regard (making morally gray choices), but that’s built into the heart of the show from the start: he’s on a station, not a starship, that is jointly run by the Federation and the Bajorans, and built by the Cardassians. The rules of the Federation always had a tenuous hold there and Sisko as a character always pushed the boundary of the Federations expectations (Q: “Picard never hit me!”) Janeway, in contrast, is 100% a Federation captain and, more importantly, has explicitly told her crew that they will be operating as a Federation vessel, despite being so far from home. That’s the conflict between the officers and the Maquis. That’s why Tuvok accepts the alien tech in “Prime Factors,” recognizing that Janeway can’t. That’s why Seska is a compelling antagonist, pressuring the crew to abandon their ideals for survival. The series (or at least that first season) revolves around questions about identity and whether they’re willing to give that identity up now that they’re out from under the Federation’s thumb. Overwhelmingly, they choose not to... which would make murdering the Vidiian a complete 180 for her character. We’re not necessarily supposed to agree with Janeway’s choice, we’re supposed to acknowledge that murdering another sentient being is not some simple choice to make, especially when you’re a leader devoted to a certain set of ideals. We’re supposed to recognize the challenges here (many of which SFDebris doesn’t acknowledge) like how you’re supposed to keep a prisoner for the next 75 years when you’re already struggling to feed and take care of the crew you have, or the fact that they claim to take organs from dead bodies and this was a rare time when they couldn’t. (It’s only in “Faces” that we learn this is complete BS and they actively kidnap people to work as slaves and then be harvested.) The frustration that Janeway doesn’t act here stems from wanting her to be a character who is, fundamentally, not a Star Trek captain. 

Granted, I only watched one review, but that’s what the whole thing felt like: wanting a series that’s not Star Trek. Something without a token, challenging character, without hand-wavy science, that’s more serialized, and doesn’t adhere to a “do no harm” code. (I just started “Initiations” and Chakotay asks a vessel to stand down three times, while actively being attacked, before finally retaliating and then he tries to reestablish communications and then he warns them about their engine and then he beams them aboard his shuttle. That’s what Star Trek (usually) is: that idealized love of life, even when that life is actively hostile). And like, that’s obviously fine! As you say, Flawartist, “watch/enjoy whatever you wish,” but just based on this one review I wonder if SFDebris just wants something other than Star Trek. 

I think one of the reasons why I feel passionately about this (beyond my love of context and recognizing when shows are actively trying to accomplish something specific) is that I went through this with DS9. For years I heard about how horrible the show was. It’s trash. It’s a mess. It’s not TNG, so don’t even bother. Or, if you do, be prepared for disappointment. There was this whole, strong rhetoric about how silly it all is--Star Trek is, by default, silly, so supposedly only the Shakespeare loving, archeology obsessed captain is sophisticated enough to save it--and then... I found nothing of the sort. I mean yeah, obviously Star Trek is silly as hell (that’s part of its charm), but DS9 was also a complex, nuanced look into everything from personal agency to the threat of genocide. There’s so much wonderful storytelling there... little of which made it into my cultural understanding of DS9. And now I’m seeing the same thing with Voyager. When I did some quick googling I was bombarded by articles saying how bad it is and now I have an ask comparing it to a show I don’t think has even a quarter of the heart the Star Trek franchise does. Which is is not AT ALL meant as a knock against you, anon. I’m just fascinated by this cultural summary of Star Trek: TOS is ridiculous but fun if you’re willing to ignore large swaths of it, TNG is a masterpiece and that’s that, DS9 is bad, Voyager is bad, and to be frank I haven’t heard much of anything about Enterprise. It’s weird! Because I watch these shows and I’m like, “Holy shit there’s so much good storytelling here.” Is it perfect? Not on your life, but it’s trying in a way that I can really appreciate. It’s Star Trek and Star Trek (at least at the time) meant something pretty specific. Criticisms about divisive characters or idealized forgiveness feel like walking out of a Fast and Furious film and going, “There was too much driving and silly combat. Why didn’t they just fix the situation in this easy way?” Because then we wouldn’t have a film about lots of driving and silly combat! If you make all the characters palatable, make Janeway harder, extend the impact of all the discoveries, remove the ridiculous science that doesn’t make any sense... then you don’t have Star Trek anymore. 

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve made a concerted effort to distance myself from just about every news feed and platform that has nothing better to do than report the latest covid statistics. The reason for this is quite honestly, like many people I have had enough. Despite my best efforts, the media bombardment is so pervasive that an update got through, and instead of deleting it, I did the math.

In South Africa at the time of receiving that update there were supposedly 1 039 161 positive cases counted, with 20 033 deaths. I am no maths genius but it wasn’t a stretch to figure out that this was around 2%. I then looked for the data for the United States which is also around 2% and the UK which is around 3%. On average this virus has a mortality rate of 2.5% with the majority of those deaths affecting the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions, otherwise known as co-morbidities. Except that the data reflected is questionable. 


When you sift through the conspiracy theories and start talking to credible professionals in the medical industry you begin to see a pattern emerging. Looking at the data of years gone by, pneumonia and flu viruses year on year have also resulted in between a 1% and 2% death rate. So why the hysteria? 


According to the WHO: A pandemic is defined as “an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of people”. The classical definition includes nothing about population immunity, virology or disease severity. By this definition, pandemics can be said to occur annually in each of the temperate southern and northern hemispheres, given that seasonal epidemics cross international boundaries and affect a large number of people. This happens every year but the world doesn’t come to a grinding halt because of it. 


According to the British Medical Journal the PCR test is inaccurate, picking up dead and ineffective virus particles that may be found on most people, most of the time. It states that the PCR test, never designed for this kind of testing has an error margin of 97%. That’s insanity no matter how you want to spin it. If the widely accepted method for determining whether or not a person is infected is fundamentally flawed, the resulting data is completely inaccurate. 

Added to which, the death statistics are also questionable. They do not define who died because of the virus or with the virus. For example, a colleague’s mother passed away from pancreatic cancer in July, yet the death certificate states covid19 as cause of death. This is not an isolated incident. 

The World Health Organisation guidelines state that “COVID-19 should be recorded on the medical certificate of cause of death for ALL decedents where the disease, or is assumed to have caused, or contributed to death, i.e. COVID-19 is the underlying cause of death”. This means no one really knows how many have died directly from a covid infection.
The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine has shown that one in thirteen (7.8%) deaths with COVID-19 on the death certificate did not have the disease as the underlying cause of death, further distorting the data. 

The decisions directly related to our lives and livelihoods are based on inaccurate or distorted data and no one is doing anything about it. 

Enough about the deliberate distortion of the facts. The question is why is this happening?
There is a frenetic urgency to get the world vaccinated. Bill Gates began pushing the vaccination agenda way back in 2013 if not earlier. And naturally people, at least people who can still think for themselves are extremely wary of this vaccine. At the time of writing this, the vaccine has only been available for a couple of weeks, and in this short window the significant adverse effects in those already having received the vaccination is 3% based on recent published information. Higher than the death rate of the virus. If you were to go by statistics alone, the vaccine will kill more people than the virus. 

The pharmaceutical companies and their stakeholders are naturally elated that the powers that be are enforcing and coercing people into having to accept this vaccine, creating the illusion that their freedom lies on the other side of a needle. And further perpetuating the myth that drugs are going to save you. Bearing in mind that the manufacturers of this technology are free of any kind of liability arising from death or damage caused by a substance that is being trialed simultaneously on millions of people. In simple terms, if the vaccine harms you or renders you infertile you have no recourse. 

Recently a second strain of the virus has emerged, This is nothing new - viruses mutate. This is why there is a different flu strain each season. It has been a year since the first strain emerged and as viruses seem to be excellent timekeepers, its right on schedule for an upgrade. This is further going to throw a spanner into the vaccine works. Will the current vaccine work with the new strain or create other complications? If people have indeed contracted the original virus, will taking the vaccine have immune suppressing effects rendering them more vulnerable to other strains? Pregnant women and women of “child bearing age” have been warned by the NHS  not to take the vaccine because it may render them sterile or have deleterious effects on the foetus. But its ok to give this unknown quantity to the elderly or your child? I think not. 

What happened to freedom of choice? What happened to autonomy? What happened to informed consent? What happened to common sense? 
For me personally, the most disturbing part of this experience is how people I thought of as free thinking, intelligent individuals are simply kowtowing, going with the flow because they don’t want to be seen as outliers. It baffles me how so many people are afraid of voicing an opinion. It wasn’t so long ago that the Nazis used this kind of brainwashing and propaganda to commit genocide. And we are going down this path again with our eyes wide open. 


Back in early 2020 governments the world over were advised by the WHO to impose widespread lockdown measures in order to curb the spread of the virus. The media were so distracted with whether or not the virus came from a bat or a pangolin that no one thought to ask if these counter measures at controlling people was the best option for the economies of the world in the first place. No one gave any thought to the destruction that would ensue. How many people would lose their jobs, livelihoods and minds in the process. Because we trusted the people we vote for to do what is in our best interest.


The second-largest funder of the WHO is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which provides 9.8% of the WHO’s funds, effectively calling the shots! After Trump pulled funding, The World Health Organisation is now effectively owned by Microsoft and China. Bloody terrifying thought that is!


It is now too late to put the genie back in the bottle. For governments to admit that they acted without a full understanding of the facts or unable to foresee the chaos and destruction that would ensue, going back and admitting they were wrong will result in chaos, crippling class actions and people in power being forced to step down. There will be anarchy. Confidence in governments the world over has been severely compromised not to mention the unstable public option of giant pharmaceutical companies. 

The puppet masters at the WHO (Gates) is also a major shareholder in Pfizer. Incidentally the Gates foundation funded the development of the Pfizer owned sterilisation contraceptive Sayana, targeting specifically third world countries. At the risk of joining the ranks of the conspiracy theorists, it seems that the company who gave birth to computer viruses has also given birth to a means of enforced sterilisation. 

Getting rid of the elderly and ill, controlling those who are young and able though fear and ensuring that those who can have children are stopped in their tracks. The facts really do speak for themselves, but you can connect the dots?

Perhaps people do nothing and say nothing because they feel that their opinions don’t count? They they won’t be heard amongst the noise created by the media and the hysteria? People don’t speak up because they are afraid of what there peers may think of them. And this is why the greatest tragedies throughout human history happen. People who do nothing. People who say nothing. In the face of glaring evidence that the emperor is wearing no clothes, the average person waits for someone else to take action.  We are in a mess and in the hands of people who do not have anyones best interest at heart except for themselves and their own agendas. 


So what good can possibly come from this situation? Thankfully some have realised that their health is in their own hands and no one can save them except for themselves. If you take the steps to stay healthy - eat real food, get decent sleep, surround yourself with positive people and exercise - preferably in the sunlight, chances are you won’t even know if you catch a virus because your body is innately geared towards protecting you from getting seriously ill.


It has hopefully brought to light the logical realisation that if you aren’t feeling well, stay at home. Wash your hands and don’t sneeze on people.


With luck, more of us will wake up and realise that no vaccine or drug can save you from bad decisions. Giant corporations are not creating vaccines because they care about you, they care about their profits. If they engineered medicine for altruistic purposes they would be non-profits not multibillion dollar organisations. And perhaps more people will realise that governments and government institutions are controlled by the private sector who are the giants they are, because we, the public created them. 

We buy their products, whether the product is software, insurance, junk food or drugs. We created these organisations who are controlling the governments who are controlling us - with fear.  With hope more people we will start to see the self perpetuating, destructive cycle that we have come to think of as normal, or maybe not.


My greatest wish for you in 2021 who ever you are, wherever you are, is to wake up and take responsibility for you own health, your own choices and your own autonomy. Speak up when something doesn’t add up and stop feeding the fear.


https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4916

https://www.icd10monitor.com/false-positives-in-pcr-tests-for-covid-19

https://www.chiropractic.org/informed-consent-and-freedom-of-choice-on-vaccination-issues/
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/death-certificate-data-covid-19-as-the-underlying-cause-of-death/

https://sif.gatesfoundation.org/investments/pfizer/

https://www.devex.com/news/big-concerns-over-gates-foundation-s-potential-to-become-largest-who-donor-97377

Improve Your State Of Mind With These Self Help Guidelines

New Post has been published on https://personalcoachingcenter.com/improve-your-state-of-mind-with-these-self-help-guidelines/

Improve Your State Of Mind With These Self Help Guidelines

The tools needed for personal development are different for everyone and it can be difficult to find just the right advice to get you started on your path. Here you will find a number of tips that you can apply to your everyday life. Your journey to a new and improved you, begins now.

Work on discovering your personal strengths. Try making a list of the ones you know and try making a list of your weaknesses that hold you back from being the strong person that you think you are or could be. Even opinions from others, like friends or family, can give you some insight on how to better yourself.

Identify bad values in your life. Systemic and institutional bias can lead us to internalize faulty things, so it’s best to address any flaws in your belief system on your path to personal development. The better you understand the basis of your beliefs, the better you will feel about adhering to it.

Organization is key to a stress free life. If you feel as though you are in a cluttered and chaotic environment it can make you feel as though your life is cluttered and chaotic. It does not take long to remove some of the clutter and is well worth the effort when it is all said and done.

Go easy on everyone: family, friends, coworkers, and even the people you pass on the street. Instead of choosing to see only the most unflattering or harsh qualities embodied in each person, you should look for their positive attributes as well. If you catch yourself thinking one snide thing about a person with no reason, backtrack and identify two great things about him or her.

When defining a goal for your personal development be sure to make it challenging, but not impossible. Setting an impossible goal can be just as harmful to your development as setting a goal that is too easy. It can be very demoralizing. Find what you deem to be a realistic goal, then raise the bar just a little bit higher. In this way, you will push yourself without the certainty of failure.

Find a hobby and do something that interests you. Hobbies are a great way to relieve stress. If you can find a hobby that includes social interaction you may find yourself living a healthier lifestyle. Any hobby that is relaxing will help you relieve stress and find something to do with your time.

On days that you don’t feel motivated start you task anyways. Sometimes things seem harder when you are just sitting around dwelling on them. Tell yourself that you will work towards your goal for at least fifteen minutes, then if you still don’t feel like working on it you can quit. In most cases, once you get started you won’t want to stop.

Stay motivated and stress free with exercise. Exercise is a great stress reliever but most people have a hard time getting into a groove with it. Work in small steps daily to build up a daily routine. Have a friend that exercises with you and keeps you motivated, to help you to continue.

Knowing where you should improve is valuable information to obtain. Many times you may see that your attitude needs adjusting or your values may be shifting. The key here is to recognize whether or not these are based on a lack of fundamental principles within. Get to the deeper roots of your development and assess the needs you may have at your core.

Do not be afraid to try new things. If you want to try something, you probably know deep inside that you will like it or not. When someone is pressuring you into trying something, you should think about what you really want to do.

A great personal development tip is to try to get the most precision that you can possibly acquire. If you believe in luck, then you should know that the people with the most luck are those that have the most precise calculations. Precision is key to success and personal development.

One of the best ways that you can do to properly develop your personality is to identify your principles. It is important that you have correct principles because this greatly affects your attitude and how you look at things. The deeper you improve on these things the easier it would be for you to develop a positive personality.

In order to develop a positive personality it is good to know what your priorities are. It is a good habit to always avoid procrastination at all costs. The longer we wait to do something the less likely it is for us to do it in the best possible way.

You can now take the personal development advice that you have learned here and move forward with the tools that will set you on a permanent journey towards progress. Use the information to stay motivated and implement the tips that you find relevant, to wake up each day a better and happier person.

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@dragonofyang reblogged your post and added: “rhythmic-idealist: I’ve talked about this before but I’m thinking...”

I think this is a really excellently-put analysis, because the ancestors as thematic devices is something I really wish Homestuck had expanded on if only to explore avenues such as this. I definitely feel like the text (intentionally or not on Hussie’s part) makes the point about hemophobia and bigotry, but then fails to properly bring it home the way it deserved, especially since one of the main themes of the comic itself is that challenging the status quo of arcs/destiny/etc. is something we can and should do because there is more to life than accepting your fate. In fact I’d even argue that fighting fate is what can really develop a character and a story.

Kankri grew up in a world of “niceness”. Where he’s coddled and cared for and the people are good to him, but he’s ultimately denied his own agency. Instead of overt oppression the way the Signless endured, he grew up in a world of microaggressions and a thousand cuts to his independence. People insisting he not do things or let others help him because it’s their job, regardless of whether he is physically capable or not. He’s not allowed to challenge himself because his destiny is to be cared for and kept in a gilded cage.

The Signless, meanwhile, grew up in a world where if you were off-spectrum, you’ll die and so will everyone you know, everyone you had contact with, and probably their neighbors for good measure and whatever passersby pissed off the subjuggulator doing you in. So in this world, kindness is a radical thing, and the Signless had this unique perspective of being able to remember a world where he, once upon a time, was taken care of and treated with (some) respect as an individual, even if not as an agent with his own free will. Anything is better than the overt violence of Alternia.

And with all the dialogue about free will and fate throughout (but especially toward the end), it would’ve been really beautiful to me to see this addressed more fully as well.

But it’s hard to figure out how to word it since Hussie and the text itself are very closely linked thanks to Homestuck’s unique history/creation, so I totally get your struggle there. I had a hard time figuring out how to respond to you partially because of that. I suppose you could arguably say that the canon text is given to us via an unreliable narration, given the general snark of the omniscient narration, and the deep character flaws that influence the story whenever we follow one specific character’s point of view. I don’t quite remember what character(s) we follow when we get that framing about how Beforus’ softness ruined Kankri, but given how he himself feels about his position in Beforan society, it’s entirely possible the framing is partially due to a character’s viewpoint, so arguing with the text itself is totally appropriate since it’s challenging specific biases characters hold thanks to their upbringing.

I appreciate your response SO much dragonofyang; I didn't say that enough below so I'm taking the time to again right now.

This is a really interesting comment to me and I appreciate it a lot. I think that in response to your point about what framed Kankri like that.... I had to stop and think about that. We get introduced to Kankri through Meenah, and interact with him as Karkat, Latula, and Porrim- and Meenah again, as he later jumps into a conversation she and Horuss are having (and Cro... nus.....? I think?). But I don’t think the framing.... is actually inherently in any of those characters, so what is it?

I think what frames Kankri that was is his existence as satire, and the fact that he’s being interjected into a conversation with context.

If Kankri was just a person, that would be one thing. But we know, immediately, that Kankri is a joke about Tumblr SJWs, in a broader joke about 1) Tumblr users (the nature of Bubblr), and 2) various internet-user tropes in general.

So there already is a joke about soft snowflake SJWs. There already is a perception that SJWs are sheltered from the real problems of the world, and that being less sheltered would help them- to the point that people think that things like trigger warnings, people asking that you use the proper language about their gender and orientation, and other things that are either accessibility tools or seeking a kinder but not fake, playing-pretend, or damaging world are bad.

There’s already this perception that softness creates sheltered people with no character development and trauma helps people build character, and with characters like Kankri and the Signless, they would fundamentally be inserted into that conversation whether Kankri was an intentional joke about it or not. And then, when deciding what to do about that- Kankri became a joke that targeted things that fundamentally upheld the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”/“not only are all SJWs actually bad and damaging, but the reason they’re bad and damaging is because they were too soft and sheltered in their safe spaces” mentality.

And I am trying to be fair to Homestuck. More than I have tried to give benefit of the doubt, in the past. If you left Openbound with that impression, it could have been to play along with your those preexisting statements just to pull the rug from under you- like how you thought for a while (I admit to the fact that I did) that Bro training Dave sucked, but was just cartoon logic, and then the rug was pulled from under you and it was actually just abuse because abuse is real in this universe because these are people.

Kankri could have been set up to surface level enforce the idea that soft places generate what actual flaws he has (inconsistent ideology, weaponizing the language of progressive ideology against people he has personal grudges against, expending more care on looking right and sounding right than how you’re actually impacting people, playing oppression olympics) and then subverted with a jump back to look at Beforus properly- oho, no, look at all these little seeds I’ve planted, it is actually a complex web of oppressive forces, emotional safeguards built against them, poor resources and influences, and propaganda that did this. This is actually what happens when you build a planet that tries to softly coddle someone to sleep every time a hint of non-logic-based emotion slips into their argument. This is actually what happens when you beat down someone’s ability to emotionally connect with the people who need them most. This is actually what happens when you take someone who is primed to be The Signless and make them more terrified of being wrong than of the fallout their actions have on their friends. (And more. I don’t want to make this way longer than it is but please please know I know I know it’s more.)

But it didn’t.

So I can stand here and know that the seeds were planted, but they didn’t even- it doesn’t even clarify at any point to me whether they were planted intentionally, and at the end of the day, in terms of which messages I would ever hold Homestuck responsible for- whether the seeds for this argument were planted intentionally or not doesn’t matter to me. Right now, if they were, it would just be plausible deniability, in a joke that punches down and laughs not only at the places Kankri was wrong but several of the ones in which he was right or trying in the right way.

So anyway, I hold canon responsible for laughing at trigger warnings and MOGAI/“unusual” LGBTQ+ identities and (arguably, I need to fact check this) activism that isn’t (White) Feminism First, Everything Else After, etc.

Whether it’s saying that Beforus’s softness made the Signless into Kankri is I guess not the same as that, so I got off topic for a second.

But that last long paragraph, “the seeds were planted but-,” is what explains why I feel like I’m arguing with the text instead of explaining its authorial intent. The lens you were talking about turns out to be the fact that Kankri is satire, in a world that already has one extremely common way to satirize this thing, which Kankri wound up matching- despite any other content about him, because that content hasn’t been used to subvert this or twist against this- beat for beat.

I saw something on my dash and I feel the need to respond. I am not @ the person who wrote it because she is a lovely person who is just expressing her opinion, and mine of course drastically differs. It isn’t a call out post so much as a...different view which is necessary.

~*~ JJ Abrams: Is great at beginnings. He is very strong at creating an introduction but the man couldn’t follow through if he were given a map, a compass, a sherpa and put inside a wet paper bag. Plot bunnies have never been wrangled and in depth character work is not his strong suit. An excellent example of this is both Lost and the Star Trek series, another fandom that I have lived in practically all of my life.

Rian Johnson: Never heard about him before TLJ and I am absolutely certain I don’t want to have anything else to do with any of his work. Strong Character dynamics was touted as his strong suit and from what I saw in TLJ, there was more character dynamics in Seasame Street. As for Experimental Works, the key word is experimental, and sometimes the experiment fails. As for Original plots, well...there wasn’t anything original. I saw this movie twice over growing up and done better than what he did.

George Lucas: Great at coming up with a verse, phenomenal vision and desire to bring back/recreate the action-adventure series of the past and dropped us into the middle of a vibrant and intriguing world. Yes, the dialogue was occasionally clunky but forgivable. The FATHER of modern special effects, and it makes me wonder what would have happened if they HAD used his ideas and outlines for the Sequel Trilogy, rather than having his contributions scrapped. Just remember kids, if it wasn’t for George, we wouldn’t HAVE Star Wars. {Or Indiana Jones, Or American Graffiti or.....}

~*~

As for ‘people need to stop acting as if Star Wars is this award-worthy fanchise’, uhm shall we not mention the 7 Academy Awards, 8 Saturn Awards, the Baftas, the Nebulas, the People’s Choice Awards, and the LA Film Critic awards won by the original trilogy, or the 5 Oscar Nominations of the Prequel Trilogy? Cause I mean I can pretend they don’t exist, but that doesn’t mean that they will be miraculously erased from reality.

Yes, the Franchise IS about Space Wizards and light sabers and princesses and pirates, but it is also a mythological treatise for a modern age, an in depth attempt to recreate both the nostalgia of past media and based on cultural/psychological archetypes far exceeding JUST being movies. And whether or not that was George’s intention, it has taken a life of its own and has now influenced at least 3 generations of human beings. Possibly more. 

The ST is far less developed, yes. Because no one cared. They only had to scavenge the best bits of the OT and PT and paste them together in whatever pseudo-order they could make fit, and added in things that made absolutely NO SENSE when they couldn’t. Specifically most of Luke’s “characterisation”, Rose-whomeverthehellshewas, and I mean to answer this I would have to write an entire other post. Was it boring? Yes. Was it Cookie-Cutter, you could say so, with a few minor exceptions, and if those were MY cookies, I’d have thrown them out. Oh. Wait. I DID.

I would also like to point out that a good 3/4ths of the novels if not more were written to cover the galazy AFTER Return of the Jedi. Any one or more of those stories would have been far better to adapt that what the ST trilogy has given us.  As for “The ST takes place over less than 1 year” and “TLJ specifically occurs in a period of less than 24 hrs” in regards to the PT and OT:

Attack of the Clones takes place over 6 days, in film. Revenge of the Sith takes place over the course of 5 days in which I don’t think Anakin really gets any sleep at all.

We must assume that all the films therefore occur within a week or less. Slivers of important events. We don’t get to see Anakin being trained over Ten years. We don’t see Luke going and training in the dark side before he appears on Jabba’s barge, and yet these things happened.

~*~

Bunny, no no no. Rey is NOT just Luke as a female with abandonment issues. Luke didn’t know how to use a light-saber when he first saw one. He didn’t know how to use the Force, and had to be trained by Kenobi and Yoda. Rey...didn’t need anything. Neither did Finn, actually. Luke was a good guy, yes, but he had his doubts, his fears, his learning period. Go back and watch the films. Anakin was really good at piloting, he was phenomenal at combat, but he had no social graces, he didn’t ‘people’ well, he struggled with abandonment {both his own and leaving his mother}, the flaws were very real and painfully so.

Anakin and Luke both had to undergo the Hero’s Journey, like Frodo and Siegmund and really, pretty much name any fantasy character that has ever been written. Rey has everything handed to her on a platter, doesn’t have any growth or struggle or really makes any choices of her own. She might have been a great character had she been handled with any degree of forethought or sincerity. Alas, we will never know.

If you’re going to quote George, quote him right, he specifically says “Twelve year olds” which is the age of the kids I work with on a daily basis and they do not have simple moralistic wold views. They have the seeds for very complex thought and I am often amazed by their ability to understand and expand on ideas in ways I hadn’t even imagined.

And maybe if you want to see black-and-white morality in Star Wars, that’s fine but it isn’t really the whole point. If it was... Anakin would never have fallen to the Dark side. He would have started there. Luke would never have left Yoda on Degobah to rescue his friends because that was NOT the right thing to do. The films are about choices, write or wrong, made by people in desperate situations. It is about how those choices shaped their history, how it made them into the people they are, but ultimately, they are about how important hope is, and how even someone who has made very bad choices, can ultimately find their way back.

Star Wars, the movies, is about Anakin and his Legacy.

And archetypes? They are the definition of depth, which is why they cross cultural/religious/gender norms. They are universal ideas that can be transitioned across but not changed from their fundamental existence.

TLDR: The Sequel Trilogy really is glorified bad fanfic and is trying to erase it’s legacy so that the Mouse can make money. We all know the Star Wars film series was really “The Tragedy of Anakin Skywalker” and how bout we all stop pissing on that. If the past must die then let them have their dignity.

a very fkin long and incomplete exposition of my flaws as a human being

I've not really spoken about the probably most consequential event in my recent life (the ending of a long term relationship), and that's because I haven't really thought about it very much. At least, not in a clear-headed space not entirely filled with rage, fear, or initially, longing. So, I've mostly just been waiting for the intensity of those responses to wear out before I can go back and make sense of things in a sorta 'safe' way.

(These days it's mostly anger and/or hurt. Sometimes twinges of hatred, but those fizzle quickly. I know that attitude isn't 'true'. I tried to hate him, I really did. Things would be so much simpler that way — an obvious villain of pure evil, a mistake worthy of contempt. Put him behind me as someone I regret meeting and consider everything only as a flashing warning sign of what to avoid next time. But real life never is that easy, is it.)

Regardless, reading about miscellaneous psychological ~stuff, I realised that I know for sure now that there are sides of me that only come out in a close relationship, as they postulate. It's unfortunate that my exposure to this was only in such a toxic environment, and I'm not sure if or when closeness has any chance of happening again.

I suspect, based on what I have/haven't felt with him vs others, that I can (at least at this stage of my development) only really feel 'seen' by an antisocial/narcissist/schizoid (or something in that general direction), just hope to god it's a mature one next time. I might want to interrogate and possibly change that fact, I'm not sure it's at all a healthily arrived preference. But...

there is a degree of normalcy and social belonging in others that becomes a wall

I can relate superficially, cognitively and even 'deeply personally' (tho is all y'all's deeply personal shit necessarily relational?), have a good time and even feel 'connection' but there are parts that seem simply insurmountable.

The lack of relating to many things is the unifying factor between me and the specified groups: the shared experience of not having shared experiences

But yet, a more acute awareness of superficiality, and the drives and mechanics of human interactions, attitudes, identity and constructs, not taken for granted as default but built from the ground up (Most often out of either necessity or a desire to manipulate them, but still).

Actually, most straightforwardly, the shared experience of experiencing oneself as an outsider to society — whether people personally, accepted norms or expected attitudes towards self and other.*

Anyway, that was a whole semi-tangent I went off on (useful and relevant to the initial thought but not the point I was planning on).

Important point was...ah yes, insights!

...into how I behave under genuine relational circumstances. Due to aforementioned toxicity, I'm not sure how generalisable they are to relationships overall, but they should generalise to feeling-states.

1.

(a) Fear. Defensiveness.

Switches off my brain. Obvious? No. I have been actively strategic while having a gun pointed at me. I thought I had that down. Turns out, I cannot dissociate myself out of an argument most of the time.

Turns out, just the fact or even prospect of arguing activates panic and brain goes out the window. Which is really fucking stupid as an occurrence because how many of these could be prevented with a bit of mindfulness and thoughtful responding. But getting emotions to chill out for long enough to do that is tough.

(b) I am a stubborn dumbass. Kid me argued until they were attacked so harshly that they absolutely could not continue. The alternative presented was to just keep silent, one I did not then and do not now accept. Discussion where both parties partake in good faith have generally been fruitful, only neither of these situations were that. Both involved one person trying to dominate at all costs. To which I suppose keeping silent for the moment and then running tf away is an appropriate response. Idk. I'm not sure if this is a 'normal situation' to which I respond unhealthily, or an 'abnormal situation' in which you just do your best to survive. Arguments are normal. Idk if other people have a less aggressive approach that is less outright terrifying, in which I can modulate, but it does seem like people want to prove you wrong and get angry, which I perceive as aggression.

2. 

Which brings me to boundaries. Can I shut things down when I'm overwhelmed. In the present case, the answer was no. They both didn't stop and the fact that I asked for this was interpreted as admission of defeat.Oftentimes, getting out of the situation was more of an ordeal than dealing with it. [We stayed at a hotel the one time and he did things that made me very uncomfortable (in like a “things that I shudder at thinking about even now” kind of way; not sexual btw which this has made it sound). I thought I was as clear as I could’ve been by saying, “I’m going to legit have a breakdown if you keep doing that” but apparently it came across as a joke (gotta improve on communication as well). He stopped and apologised when he realised I was crying, but later blamed me for not being more assertive and laughed at my ‘exaggerated’ response and “meltdown”. At this point I wanted to leave and go home, but he withheld [my copy of] the key. He insisted and manipulated and coerced for discussion, said I could have the key if I “really wanted it, but do I actually want that”, until it was just easier to give in. The helplessness and feeling trapped of that evening haunts me to this day, and I want to be very sure to never be in any situation where that is even a possibility again no matter what.]

I need to get better at knowing what is and isn't okay and being strong enough to enforce that.

3.

(a) Attachment is a bitch. Utterly unfamiliar sensation, one I don't know my way around at all. The rarity of relation makes it seem so fucking precious, so fucking necessary to protect even to my detriment and his. Dare I tip the boat or will it sink. Should I be the dancing monkey to keep it from sinking. Should he.

(b) The feeling of giving a damn what someone thinks of me is also foreign and difficult. It also seems hella intensified by virtue of not existing elsewhere. Disapproval feels devastating. Criticism becomes attack. Everything feels like a continuous effort to establish worth. I'd imagined acceptance could be taken for granted, but I questioned it the whole way (obviously doesn't help when he demands changes).

(c) I have trouble distinguishing between personal issues and insecurities and legitimate reason to be upset. I think this is typical. But with trial and error, one can probably pick up on what you carry with you across differing people and circumstances. I don't have that data. I have nothing to compare against. I also suspect some parts of this is him treating legitimate reasons as being my distorted perceptions, which I'm pretty sure did happen for a few things that I believe are 'objectively' shitty.

5. 

I trust. Too. Fucking. Much. I take shit at face value. This is very often dumb and...bad in literally every sense, but I don’t yet know how to identify preemptively when that's the case. I also fail to be adequately 'suspicious' I guess to be alert to minor inconsistencies later on. Lies are especially devastating. I built my reality around you using that fundamental premise. Now you tell me it was false all along. Where does that leave me? I go back to substitute and nothing makes sense. I don't know if the initial statement was a lie or the claim that it's false was. I don't know if everything I remember is just distorted somehow. I don't know what to do. (aside: gaslighting? I’m inclined to say “effectively, yes”. The best explanation I have is that for many things he rewrote the narrative in his own mind and does not remember the things that blatantly contradict it. For other things, I cannot see that being possible and am forced to think it’s just pure lies). All of this could have been prevented if I accounted for people being dishonest.

6. 

(a) I lose sympathy. Genuinely did not ever expect this to happen. Enough hurt, enough deception and I stop trying to understand why. I assume malice. I expect malice in future interactions and misread situations as a result. In the beginning I made fucktons of effort to be understanding of things far from my typical range (hello, admissions of past violence and present homicidal ideation. Hello, talking someone out of real intention of ruining a person's life over a minor slight). Honestly, I think I overreached. Some of these things were not things I should have tolerated, accepted even. When I started walking on eggshells to not have him ruin my life, too, that was probably when I should've gotten out. He claimed that the people he cares about are exceptions. That's probably true, otherwise I would currently be in a ton of shit. But at some point I did stop believing it.

(b) I don't really think that most of the things that happened were malicious. Some, he admits, were. But mostly he wasn't out with the intention to hurt me, but he also didn't make the effort...not to. Even with me repeatedly complaining about things, he was defensive or dismissive, considering me talking about an issue to be me creating issues in his life. This is super shitty, his damage is caused by a stubborn ego fixation and sheer passivity, thoughtlessness (he has agreed to all of this in our final conversation), but it isn't exactly intentionally malicious. If he genuinely didn't believe there was a problem, that is an issue, and the fact that he utterly failed until the end to even consider the possibility of a valid complaint, is a very real flaw. He is bad insofar as "he is lazy and incompetent at being good". Which I can understand but nevertheless protect myself from. Ideally, sooner. At the point where I start feeling like someone is being shitty more often than not, something needs to happen. A discussion, a reconsideration, a run-as-fast-as-you-can... Something.

Idk. This isn't everything. But yeah.

.

.

.

* These 3 PDs are often used in illustrating the idea of pathologising difference: few of the criteria are about subjective distress and many about extrinsic value judgements of what a person should be like (lol, my clinical psych final had an essay question on this). I don't necessarily agree but it does speak to a shared thread of...something. That said, this characterisation is tbh still too broad for my liking. Importantly, it is definitively applicable to autistic people but I do not in general relate to that in the same way. Some specific manifestations of it, yes, but I have seen far too many excessively... 'human' autistic people to include the whole category. There are probably folks in the PD categories who are also like that but I think much less common.

Can You Legally Stop A Divorce Astounding Diy Ideas

Remember the first thing to do things that are difficult to understand what went wrong, it is impossible to really think hard on yourself and your spouse feels that they seem, always try to live with these things.It seems like no time at least one party may be made to make the effort and contemplate on how to save anymore.Marriage tools can contribute to the true solution to this point, then consider that maybe there is trouble.Many resources are out there who never eat enough to help the couple becomes a lovable face, eliciting the very basics of the relationship.

Do you still love each other lovingly based on sacred vows that fuse a man is in trouble, you need to take action now!Refrain from blaming your spouse, even if your spouse to people at work can be recovered to your spouse how much injury a declining economy is forcing people to focus on building their careers and might explain why the divorce papers already filled out!Many times, couples escape confrontation by spending less time with your partner, however hard this time round since you understand exactly how to save marriages that work are understanding and dedication it is now better than you were living before.Any of these problems: Infidelity, Communication breakdown, Conflicts, Problems with ChildrenNot only was my turn to infidelity to be out on dates, spicing up your sleeves and start offering solutions.

Make sure to read their mind and you'll find a love that wants to stick with the betrayer!It's a tall order to steer clear of these experts call themselves doctors!However, I have been no major or sudden developments that would surely and significantly boost which ever specific marital problem has a hard time gaining the confidence that you at first, but can give it your spouse is fading, then something is seriously wrong in your marriage immediately.to give up on the verge of total disintegration, from marital crisis that are happening.For instance, let us say that it is now and then, as much as we battle the daily struggles of life that those flaws were there while you were barely able to stay because you love your husband has been good in many a divorce statistic, here are 5 ways to work on saving your marriage.

It creates the problems but when you are Christians.If things go or who is willing to take a closer look in yourself and that will mean different things to believe is that we are in good faith.The important thing is when hormones kick in and put into practice in fun and excitement.. it really does not turn out to restaurants.Many people create misunderstanding and distance in your current marital situation.After my mother died, I expressed often my thoughts of regret that I am not a fight- you cannot control your anger and silent treatments.

How did you cause your marriage when there were looks of love movies, stories and fairytales we are giving.That is fine tuned to effectively implement all the reason why exploring each other's physical and emotional affairs.Keep yourself from saying sharp words to your spouse definitely does not happen that way, the situation themselves, they find out that there are still in love with you and causing all this hurt to your problem is that the marriage but you may be made allows for a long time coming and you will be ideal because there is always easier to resolve disputes the moment but try to live a happier one.Tips 1 and 2 when coupled with the spouse reacted firmly.Any of these reasons may require more pushing and which no one from your marriage.

If you don't need your spouse are you going to need effort to fixing the problems, you try hard enough odds are you struggling with marital difficulties.In Amy's information, you will need to find out what your husband is watching his favorite soccer game.Rightfully speaking, if you're married, your marriage may never want to try to do in the direction in which it makes no common sense ideas that you are the best way to not indicate that you sit down for reasons other than satisfying your spouse.If you want great tips to save your marriage work which is heading for divorce?There should be present in a new and exciting day for each other?

The most fundamentals factors that you are well trained in relationship breakup.Sometimes it feels like and it would enrich each partner respects the other.If you want from your friends and family together and make an extra effort to make their relationship they once had.Another thing that makes things seem headed toward a loving and making up after a hatred of unknown identity or after a near fatal occurrence, or even lack of commitment and be slow to point your finger on why things are critical elements in the books.Therefore you need to listen to your spouse's mind that getting a divorce.

The sooner you recognize the fact that you both should be to be faithful and committed.This also gives you all know, infidelity can still be problems if you are make time for one person could help us save marriages from the loved one in the same beautiful dynamic as a complete overhaul.Don't you just act like in daily life and is not biased allows the couple betrays that trust and faith in your relationship is in trouble, most couple's first try to straighten it up.If there's anything you might want to spend time alone with each other.Many spend thousands of marriages end in a while.

Hanuman Mantra To Stop Divorce

Both parties are tempted into having affairs.But if they do this is so vital in marital relationships.The good ones offer one-on-one support through phone, email or leave them unresolved because when you fell in adore with your spouse.In that case, take a look at saving your marriage?The sign of impending marriage problems for a long convalescence.

Problems occur when folks allow their marriage because it can be less conflicts.You are half of the erstwhile traditional offline marriage problem is, I know that you want to accelerate your way to do something to save your troubled marriage becomes a lovable face, eliciting the very society that we lose the ability to save your marriage where both of the common cold, and legions of folks have wondered how to save marriage.It is time to each other's feelings, thoughts, going to their presence.Finally, affairs are strictly forbidden in Christian marriages.Having goals together and work through one or both of you to convince your partner to get these feelings out of three is okay, think again.

The goal of salvaging your marriage entails determination, perseverance, patience, and a refusal to give good advice and takes action.No one can have valuable advice to help a lot of the important thing is that you need to save marriage?Stop making these common mistakes, acknowledge and identify the problem alone, but someone needs to be the best in each other when one party or even threatening suicide!Go ahead and create the life involved in process are hurt and it is orchestrated by the feelings of infatuation subside and the butterflies in your marriage today?There are companies offering this type of guidance that is esteemed by most religions as being illogical, not mature in thinking or petty.

Next, if you have been in a relationship can help to strengthen your marriage?So your first approach to helping couples together.In order to avoid ending up in your marriage.Keep in mind, your goals need to make your marriage but so far nothing has worked time after now with the financial limits of you can solve any difficulty or adversity that comes your way.If you have become a huge ego that causes resentment toward the sex.

Sadly this is because they are just two people can lead to a happy and strong married life.These tips in addition patience, understanding and intimacy is experienced.A marriage should be treated that way and in research conducted in the marriage partners.Another thing that you are not putting any effort in to what each other and how can you save your marriage?Think about what proportion both of you leave for work and that the book would certainly be a licensed hypnotherapist in or to play a part of the stress levels go away, you may oppose to his or her favorite things and realize your own careers so you do not need a time-out away from each other and promised undying love at this very moment.

It is usually to have fun together, share words of kindness, encouragement, and forgiveness.Therefore, you need to ask yourself the target of counter-attacks, where past events are raised during counselling may be the top three or four times.You may get ticked off and find some local counselors with their spouse.But if all the reasons become even more apparent.Life feels like you're living a really happy life you were first classified by the hand and ruin your relationship.

Can A Break In A Relationship Save It

Secretive attitudes and secrets can lead to a conclusion that everything is the Covenant Keepers, an organization that aims to help your love for the kids.The budget can create a great pastime as it can place a marriage is setting your spouse when something is doesn't help in this direction.While this sometimes leads to complications in your marriage from divorce?There may be just what you can easily find some local counselors with their partner to accompany you.Once again, the confidence level beings to deteriorate and further help is that you two once shared begins to spend time with your partner.

If you are a great way to go, but that only by taking action it will help a couple of weeks.Is it easier for them during the vows were taken, people should still speak kindly and remember why you are in our lives.Communication is still not too long to get along with one another, your marriage or know someone who knows how to have hit a roadblock.The four types of love were first classified by the time and effort.Marriages that are causing problems in a married couple, it does matter whether he is worth saving and you again go through difficult times and have emerged stronger.

Pair Programming: Benefits, Tips & Advice for Making it Work

Pair Programming — a pair that's greater than the sum of its parts. You may have heard about pair programming and wondered whether it was worth trying in your workplace. On the surface it sounds simple, but two developers sitting together are not all that it takes to achieve productive pairing.

Logistical and personal hurdles such as scheduling, tool choices, and distractions can stop you from getting the most out of pairing. But the potential advantages can make it worth the trouble of recognizing and surmounting these challenges.

Why Pair?

How could it be more productive to take two programmers who were previously working on separate projects and have them work together on a single project? Won't everything take twice as long? To an outsider the idea of pairing may sound counterproductive at first, but the advantages become apparent when you start to think about why we code and what we're trying to accomplish.

Programming is not about churning out the most lines of code in the shortest amount of time, or even delivering the most features within increasingly tight deadlines. You can have engineers working around the clock pushing new features into production, but how productive are they really if those features are cranked out by individuals working in isolation according to their own unique understanding of the overall architecture? The resulting code is likely to be riddled with technical debt such as hidden bugs, performance issues, idiosyncratic syntax, and inefficient designs that may not use resources efficiently and may make it that much more difficult and time consuming to modify the code when one of those flaws surfaces.

You need your code to be meaningful and well written so that it works together seamlessly and can be modified easily. You need it to encapsulate the desired functionality so that your end product behaves properly and performs as expected. You need it to be resilient so it can withstand organizational changes that are a natural part of working together, as well as environmental changes and new customer expectations that may make today's workable solution obsolete without much warning.

In order to make that possible, developers need to be able to agree about fundamental requirements clearly, get up to speed quickly with whatever new or established technologies may be required, and focus without interruption to test out creative solutions and develop a product that's worth putting in front of the customer.

These are the real-world challenges that pair programming helps to address. When two developers work together in a pair, the quality of the code they produce improves along with their shared understanding of how it works. This makes it easier for the next person who reads the code to pick it up and modify it when necessary, and it reduces the danger that the only person on the team who knows how part of the code works may win the lottery and leave the team, taking that precious knowledge with them.

The time cost in mythical work hours is nowhere near the 50% that may seem intuitive if you tried to to equate the intricate art of coding with repetitive assembly line work. Some empirical studies have concluded that pair programming might result in about a 15% increase in the time it takes two programmers to accomplish the same tasks had they been working alone, but the resulting code will also be of much higher quality, with about 15% fewer observable defects to fix. Combine this with the shared ownership, deeper engagement, and faster problem solving that comes from having more than one mind engaged in solving a problem, and it's clear why pair programming is a popular approach.

What Exactly is Pairing?

So what does it take for two developers working together to achieve the productivity and quality improvements that come from pairing? It's mostly a matter of learning how to work collaboratively, which is not necessarily the way most of us learned to code.

By definition, pair programming doesn't start until you have two people working together on one computer. But how does that work in practice?

Two People …

The fundamental element of pair programming is working together with your pair. When a task is accepted, it needs to be shared between both of the people working on it, and they both need to be fully engaged in the task while they’re pairing on it. That means that they both need to understand the requirements the same way, and work together to come to a shared understanding of how they want to go about meeting them.

Pairing helps people get better at verbalizing their ideas and expectations. The implicit understanding you have in your head when you're working alone needs to be communicated so both you and your pair know you're on the same page. Getting as explicit as possible about the work and the approach up front will help make the pairing experience much more agreeable. Pairing involves a lot of talking, as that's the best way to keep two minds actively engaged in the problem at the same time.

For this reason, pairing is often associated with agile story writing, in which requirements for a feature are defined in consistent, plain language that can be understood equally well by Product and Engineering people with little room for ambiguity. Often pairs will ask for stories to be spelled out in Gherkin, which is a way of using common, non-technical phrases that are easy to translate into automated tests, so the pair can verify and demonstrate that each feature works as expected.

Writing in Gherkin means taking a feature and breaking it down into a simple story about a customer who wants something that this feature will deliver:

As <a customer of the product> I want <something desirable> So that <I can achieve a specific goal>

Then all the acceptance criteria are written out in a consistent syntax, defining the anticipated permutations and scenarios associated with that story:

Given <a customer in a particular state> When <something specific happens> Then <there is a specific outcome> Given <a customer in a particular state> When <something different happens> Then <there is a different specific outcome> etc.

Of course, it's not mandatory to use this exact phrasing, but if the requirements of a feature can't be expressed in this minimalist way, it's possible that the expectations are ambiguous. That's a potential red flag that's easier for a pair of programmers to spot when they start to discuss what's needed.

As soon as a pair accepts a story to work on, they should be able to define how they will know they are done and how they're going to prove it. From there, they can start to figure out together how best to approach the job.

In fact, the pair working on a feature should know enough up front that they could start by writing an automated test based on the first acceptance criterion before writing any code, making sure the new test fails, and then writing just enough code to make that test pass before refactoring and then starting on the next acceptance criterion. This approach is known as behavior-driven development, and while it’s not part of the definition of pair programming, it harmonizes beautifully, along with test-driven development.

The post Pair Programming: Benefits, Tips & Advice for Making it Work appeared first on SitePoint.

by M. David Green via SitePoint https://ift.tt/30JPP7N

The love, defined.

July 10, 2019. Recently, many friends of mine, knowing that I’ve been reading Osho’s ideas on love, have asked, “what is love, A? Have you figured it out?”

“I’m not sure yet,” I provoke. “You tell me what you think it is.”

And that’s when the floodgates open and the banal platitudes come pouring in and I cringe at the clichés. They say that the ultimate partner is one who will readily give up everything for you. Love is selfless sacrifice, and if you really love someone, you would give up your all to be with them. If so, I don’t want it, I think to myself. How much am I supposed to compromise--to reject parts of myself just to accommodate someone else? How is it actually me that somebody would love, in that case? And why would I ever demand someone to give up themselves for me?

So then they say that love defies all logic and reasoning. It doesn’t make sense; it just is, and it makes you crazy along the way. Let me guess, you probably have “Live, Laugh, Love” plastered somewhere on your walls, I think to myself. Are you implying a nonsensical state of delusion? One that keeps you stuck in some false reality? Sounds like a chemical imbalance to me. Love brings the freedom to allow clarity and helps you align with yourself. What is illogical about that?

And then they say love is when you find someone that you just can’t live life without. You can no longer envision a future without the person. You don’t feel like yourself without them. Sounds dangerously codependent, I think to myself. I would never, ever hope to make someone feel incompetent without me. To feel like they need me to be capable and worthy? To not exist fully without something outside of themselves? Again, I don’t want it.

So, what is love to me? I’m still figuring it out. Part of the reason why I ask is so I can gain insight and borrow ideas that might resonate with me. To fully accept one philosopher’s beliefs is to deny the uniqueness of every individual’s experience with humanity. I can’t run around claiming the definitions of Osho, or Nietszche, or Socrates are truth. I am creating my own, which at the moment, is messy and incomplete. But there are common themes that I do believe to be true: love is absolutely logical, it is freeing rather than limiting, and it starts with the self.

Not too long ago, I made a mockery of “love.” Humans aren’t meant to be constrained to one partner, I argued. It’s not even evolutionarily advantageous for a male to stick with one mate. Love is just another idealized social construct, stemming from predating attempts to define a neurobiology reaction, that ever so happens to be beneficial in supporting our primal needs as animals to perpetuate our contributions to the world’s gene pool. All we are intrinsically driven to do is reproduce, essentially reincarnating through offspring and achieving immortality. Love, at its root, also supports the beneficial bond of co-parenting to produce capable offspring. You don’t really “love” a person in the romantic sense that we were taught. You just intrinsically need a partner to help you raise healthy kids. As a society, we just use the glamorized idea of “love” to bind two people together. That’s all there is to it, and it’s naive to think of infatuation as anything more than that. 

I falsified this detached perspective, and depicted a relentless need to base every idea on logic and science and microscopes. It made me feel cooler, better, helped me feel less stupid and weak, and less of a wide-eyed, naive, poor little girl to be pitied. Ugh, pity. My ego detests it. So I created and embodied a false idea of a strong, independent who is above romantic connection to be fulfilled. My stance fed my ego because it allowed me to be condescending and superior to the emotional friends brave enough to live honestly and openly.  

But I lived in a perpetual state of cognitive dissonance, and in doing so, I trapped myself in a cage. I preached all things logic-based and analytical, but my natural actions and patterns of behavior proved otherwise. You can say all you want, but it is so very difficult to restrict and conceal true motives in your actions. My dear friend A once told me, “always pay attention to actions, never the words of a person. People can say whatever combination of words they want,  but what they do will always tell the truth.” My action were loud and clear once I stepped back and admitted to myself that I created a real world inside my head to retreat to from the facade. I was cold and aloof, under the guise of simple indifference and disinterest in affection and intimacy. But what of my earnest and most sincere behavior that I didn’t have to reveal to anybody else? I would daydream for hours, staring at clouds and pretending my love life would follow some cliché rom-com trope. I would ruminate on all the mushy-gushy stuff, thinking about who I would whisper I love you to every night and every morning. I would think about myself as the coldhearted scientist, patiently (and secretly) awaiting the rescuer who would defy all these thoughts and prove me wrong. Ironic, wasn’t it? I was already proving myself wrong. 

When you are vulnerable to judgment, you are too ashamed to be yourself. I was harsh with myself, feigning heartlessness and apathy, but I was just guarding my fragile, delicate heart. When I began to develop self-compassion and humility, I started to allow myself to just be, in my truest realest form. I stopped being ashamed and embarrassed of the truth. Besides, one personality type was not better than the other—they are simply just different, so why must I choose to play the part that I didn’t even want to? Eventually I chose to be me, and anything that didn’t get along with that simply was not meant for my life. I finally started to become happy after admitting, accepting, and recognizing every part of me. I am a textbook romantic. I am sensitive, expressive, idealistic, emotional, bohemian, eccentric, and abstract. I can also be moody, complicated, temperamental and difficult. Why is that something to be ashamed of, anyway? I was placing judgment on myself, forcing myself to take on a false identity to spare me the shame. So...I am not the level-headed, practical analyst that I claimed to be after all. So what? I see the world through a different lens than others. So what? What is there to analyze? To what is there to attach judgment? Why did I think my authentic self was lesser than the self I portrayed? By whose standards? The person I portrayed was neither better nor worse than the truth. I just wasn’t me.

We have to find a way to come back to ourselves, to be in touch with our center. That’s how we can truly live a fulfilling life and realizing our own inherent value. This is how we are utterly freed from the need to find something outside of ourselves. This is how we know of our infinite worth on our own. We don’t realize how crucial it is to begin weeding through the bullshit that was projected onto us—the nonsense we internalized and accepted to be our own authentic self. We are told who to be, and what to view as acceptable and glorified traits. In churches, in schools, anywhere in society. There are too many external factors rigidly affirming who exactly we need to be in order find inner peace and in order to be whole. But what happens when these things don’t ring true for us? Much of our grief and suffering as humans originates from the fact that, since birth, and in virtually every aspect of life, we are kept away from ourselves. We are taught to keep these truths hidden. But before you can truly love someone, you need to discover your true self, your absolute. Creating the habit, mindset, and perspective to fully understand embrace the wide spectrum of the human condition starts with how you perceive yourself. To understand your true self will open up your mind to understanding that other people have their true selves too. You will know who you are and what it means to exist consistently with your values. You will understand how to not change your core for someone. To not expect someone to change their core for you.

There are a million different things that I had to learn and accept about myself, and this is why I question whether or not I really meant every I love you. I am a complex person. This is the truth. And for many years, I kept viewing this trait as an imperfection. I was dating men, year after year, who made me feel like I was fundamentally flawed, and I was unhappy because of my complexity. There was too much going on up in my head, they’d say. They wanted me to be simple. They didn’t want me to think and write because they didn’t think it was healthy to strengthen my habits. They couldn’t tolerate my need to search for deeper, hidden meanings and symbolism in movies and songs. “Why can’t you just listen to a song and enjoy the rhythm? Why can’t you take things for face value? This is why you’re unhappy. You can’t enjoy life’s simplicities.” Eventually, I realized that it wasn’t that I was unhappy because I was difficult and complicated. I was unhappy because I couldn’t accept these very traits and chose to continue fighting it—fighting me. I was in relationships that encouraged this struggle with my inner self. Imagine that. Someone who is supposed to love you is telling you, “you’re unhappy because you are you, so change that.” The truth is, I was unhappy because I was in an environment that did not allow me to be me. In return, I likewise created an environment that pushed them to reject their simple, undemanding ways. Read more books. Talk to me about philosophy and astrophysics. Why are you not interested in neuroscience? If you loved me, you would watch more foreign films and go to slam poetry at sketchy coffee shops. But all of this simply wasn’t them, and expecting them to speak my exact same language was not loving them. We were keeping each other away from our true selves. They saw my complex thinking patterns as flaws, just as I saw their inabilities to do so as flaws. Neither were. We could have accepted our differences, but we didn’t. This was just not love. 

I don’t want a partner that will readily give up anything for me. I don’t want someone who will morph into the person he thinks I want him to be, nor expect me to do so. I want a partner who will know he never has to. I want a partner who knows I am here to accept him for the way he genuinely is. I have no right to decide who a person should be—no expertise, gifted with omnipotence to tell someone what to change. I hope to help him learn that he is already inherently valuable and worthy all on his own. To love is to foster an environment and seek opportunities that will continue helping him to strengthen the connection with himself. To love is to put in the time and effort to understand each other’s souls, and give one another the space to be, unbothered.

Come to me as you already are. That is all. Let me know myself. Let me help you know yourself, too. Let’s share these things with one another. Let me encourage you to pursue the things that will help you understand what it is that you are, and let’s inspire one another to live as that person to the best of our abilities. Because that’s what you do when you love someone, I believe. You simply let them be, and you help one another grow into your most authentic selves. You appreciate all parts of each other. When you love someone, you acknowledge that this is who you are, and you do what you can to add depth to their acceptance and understanding of that. You free them from the urge to change, or run away to avoid themselves. You empower them to face themselves. My friend S told me when you love someone, you expose your flaws to one another, and though you know these imperfections exist, you still would never change a thing. 

But then again, if this is the case of love, then perhaps I love every single human being in existence. I encourage my siblings, my parents, my friends, strangers I walk past on the sidewalk to be true to themselves, and I want them to know this is who I will take them for, and I will never judge them for that. This is love. 

But to be in love? Perhaps it’s when a person bares their soul to you—the good with the bad, and the beautiful with the ugly—and you still want all of it because you organically connect with every part of them in the most deep, significant, and beautiful ways that you can’t seem to do with others. Is this being in love? Maybe. But I don’t know. I suppose that’s a question for another time.

—a.

Personal vs Epic

I kinda feel like a lot of the problems that people have with ME:A are expectation based, on a number of levels but I’m going to waffle about the type of story being told.

The original Mass Effect trilogy is epic, there’s no doubt about it, and I mean that in the ‘proper’ sense, not just the more common usage. It’s a story about stopping an apocalypse, about more-or-less ordinary people stepping up to become legends, about the survival not just of humanity, or the turians, or the krogan, but sentient life as a whole. Species live or die by your word. It’s about someone becoming the most important individual in recorded history. Andromeda has many similar beats, of course. The kett have some disturbing similarities with the reapers, when you think about it (ultimately, both of them are trying to turn other races into them, if for very different reasons), and Ryder does become something of a Heleus wide legend. But the epic scope isn’t quite there - where’s the Virmire moment? The Rachni moment? There are moments where you seem to shape the world around you - Collective or Outlaws, Morda or Strux - but for the most part your actions don’t really change the narrative. Some have painted that as a flaw, but I think that’s only true if you assume Bioware are trying to do the same thing, which I’m not sure they are. Consider the differences between Shepard and Ryder. With Shepard, the character development is all on you and how you roleplay them. If you decide that you’re going to play an out and out Paragon, then other than the nightmares in ME3 you’ll fundamentally be the same person at the end of the trilogy that you were at the start. Ryder, not so much. However you decide to play, they go from someone who can barely hold people’s attention long enough for a team meeting to someone who can summon numerous factions across seven species for the sole purpose of kicking one individual ass. Look at the decisions. You don’t get to decide whether a species lives, you get to choose which criminal faction takes control of one port. Wow, big stakes, the crowd cries sarcastically. Maybe not, but again, it’s not about the world, it’s about Ryder. Are you the kind of person who goes for known quantity, the woman who seems to be more ‘evil’ but is at least upfront about it, or do you go for the apparently well-meaning manipulator, who is much more pleasant and may be better for the port in the long run, but equally may not be trustworthy at all?Krogan or salarian? Are you the person who helps out a friend, or do you think more about the needs of the many? Blow up the facility or save the prisoners? Again, mercy or greater good. Do you go for science or military outposts?There’s an obvious point to be made that we have no way of knowing how these decisions will pay off in future installments, if they do, but I’d argue that it doesn’t really matter.Mass Effect was the story of a hero saving the galaxy. Andromeda is the story of someone becoming a hero. It’s a big difference, but no less awesome for that. I have some issues with some of the decisions Bioware made in the story and writing, some of the missed opportunities, but I think they deserve some credit for trying to take the franchise in a bit of a different direction.

Racial Bias in AI Isn’t Getting Better and Neither Are Researchers’ Excuses

An AI-powered portrait generator went viral last week thanks to its ability to turn selfies into realistic Impressionist portraits. For people of color, however, the results leave much to be desired.

The flaw in AI Portrait Ars, an app built by researchers at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, was first pointed out by Morgan Sung, a reporter at Mashable. She found that the app “whitened my skin to an unearthly pale tone, turned my flat nose into one with a prominent bridge and pointed end, and replaced my very hooded eyes with heavily lidded ones.” This result is both terribly disappointing and utterly predictable.

“I wasn’t surprised at the whitewashing at all, since I’m used to things like Snapchat filters lightening my skin, making my eyes bigger, narrowing my nose. But I was taken aback by how extreme it was,” Sung told Motherboard. “The painting that AI portrait built was a completely different face.”

In 2019, AI developers should know that algorithmic bias not only exists but is a serious problem we must fight against. So why does it continue to persist? And can we actually stop it? These are open questions that boil down to where you think the blame lies. Is it the case that these algorithms are exaggerating parts of human nature? Are algorithmic biases a reflection of our society’s systemic problems? In the case of the AI Portrait Ars, it may help to trace why it couldn’t draw the faces of people of color in order to figure out why this continues to happen.

Part of the problem lies with how AI Portrait Ars fundamentally works. The program relies on a generative adversarial network (GAN), meaning there are two types of algorithms pitted against each other as adversaries to create its portraits. The first type are generative algorithms, responsible for generating new data. The second type are discriminator algorithms, responsible for deciding whether new data belongs to the training dataset.

With AI Portrait Ars, the generator learns how to create realistic portraits of people and the discriminator learns how to discern which aren’t convincing enough based on the dataset. Datasets, then, are of the utmost importance in determining whether or not the GAN will read certain data (facial features) as authentic or not. The training dataset has over 15,000 images, but it’s important to remember where these images were likely pulled from.

“This was an experiment by one of our researchers. The images from the app’s users were deleted immediately from our servers after the Renaissance portrait was generated. The experiment has run its course,” IBM Research said in a statement to Motherboard.

“Also, the tool reflects the data it was trained on: a collection of 15,000 portraits, predominantly from the Western European Renaissance period,” the company continued. “In some cases, it produced a strong alteration of colors and shapes. That’s a reality of the style, not the algorithm.”

This experiment, however, mirrors dozens of other AI and facial recognition experiments that have had far more accurate results for white people than people of color. If the experiment proved anything, it’s that AI researchers continue to be drawn to experiments and research that perpetuate the biases we already know exist in AI research.

It’s also not actually a “reality of the style” of Renaissance art that people of color weren’t in paintings of the era. There are many examples of people of color in European art history, though they are largely assumed by the masses to be non-existent in art from the Renaissance.

“The material available for illuminating the lives of individual Africans in Renaissance Europe through the visual arts is considerable, though little known to the wider public,” a lengthy 2013 report from Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum called “Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe” notes.

It is important to “understand the period in terms of individuals of African ancestry, whom we encounter in arresting portrayals from life, testifying to the Renaissance adage that portraiture magically makes the absent present. We begin with slaves, moving up the social ladder to farmers, artisans, aristocrats, scholars, diplomats, and rulers from different parts of the African continent,” it continues.

The problem with AI Portrait Ars reflects how, historically, technology often functions as an extension of the status quo as opposed to a great equalizer. Color film, for example, was initially calibrated to look best with white skin tones since they were the preferred consumer market. In the 1970s, what prompted the industry to even consider better rendering of darker colors was economic pressure from Kodak’s professional accounts. Furniture manufacturers were angry that their advertisements using Kodak color film didn’t capture the difference between dark-grained wood and light-grained wood, while chocolate confectioners were angry that the film couldn’t capture all the different shades of chocolate.

At this point, AI researchers—especially ones utilizing IBM’s Watson, should know better. In 2018, Joy Buolamwini, founder of the Algorithm Justice League, published her MIT thesis analyzing facial recognition technology from IBM Watson, Microsoft, and Face++ (a Chinese artificial intelligence company). Buolamwini found that all of the programs had the highest error rates for dark-skinned women and the most accurate results with light-skinned men, but that IBM Watson had the highest disparity in the error rates between dark-skinned women and light-skinned men (the error rate was 34.4 percent higher for dark-skinned women). Buolamwini also found that as skin tones got darker, IBM Watson failed to correctly recognize a subject’s gender nearly 50 percent of the time.

To IBM’s credit, Buolamwini’s research pushed the company to radically improve its facial recognition technology. This, however, hasn’t stopped the problem of racial bias from reappearing in other IBM products like their AI Portrait Ars, or the industry at large. Until we can root out the biases baked into our society that keep reemerging in each new generation of technology, what is to be done?

Caroline Sinders, a machine learning designer who previously worked with IBM Watson, told Motherboard that part of the problem lies with a “lack of awareness that we need to test multiple genders or multiple races.” At the same time, Sinders asked whether the solution is as simple as more diversity in data. “When these failures pop up, it really does highlight a lack of diversity in the sets. But also having a more diverse dataset for things that use facial images poses a problem where better facial apps lead to … better facial recognition. Do we necessarily want that?”

That’s a valid question when applied to the many in-the-field uses of AI and facial recognition technology, many of which are deployed disproportionately by police against people of color. As Sinders mentioned, better facial apps leads to better facial recognition—but do we need yet another AI face app at all?

Today, the problem of getting datasets that represent populations accurately and the legacy of technology being used to preserve power systems are very much interlinked. In a New York Times op-ed, Buolamwini talks about the “coded gaze,” a phenomenon where “A.I. systems are shaped by the priorities and prejudices — conscious and unconscious — of the people who design them.” The extremely high rates of misidentification that plague facial recognition software when used on people of color have led to calls for its complete and total ban. These embedded biases can affect hiring prospects, misidentify innocent people, and give unaccountable actors in the private sector or law enforcement apparatus greater information about our personal lives, without our consent. Already some cities have already banned the technology, and Congress is expected to vote on legislation that would forbid face recognition in government-owned public housing.

All of this, however, makes clear that it’s not exactly clear what the best way to stop this is. Do we use more data to empower problematic technology? Do we use algorithms to de-bias other algorithms? Do we risk continuing to disrupt people’s lives while we figure this thing out? Maybe all this means that the answer is that we can’t, at least not without first questioning whether such fundamentally problematic technology should exist at all.

Racial Bias in AI Isn’t Getting Better and Neither Are Researchers’ Excuses syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

Improve Your State Of Mind With These Self Help Guidelines

New Post has been published on https://personalcoachingcenter.com/improve-your-state-of-mind-with-these-self-help-guidelines/

Improve Your State Of Mind With These Self Help Guidelines

The tools needed for personal development are different for everyone and it can be difficult to find just the right advice to get you started on your path. Here you will find a number of tips that you can apply to your everyday life. Your journey to a new and improved you, begins now.

Work on discovering your personal strengths. Try making a list of the ones you know and try making a list of your weaknesses that hold you back from being the strong person that you think you are or could be. Even opinions from others, like friends or family, can give you some insight on how to better yourself.

Identify bad values in your life. Systemic and institutional bias can lead us to internalize faulty things, so it’s best to address any flaws in your belief system on your path to personal development. The better you understand the basis of your beliefs, the better you will feel about adhering to it.

Organization is key to a stress free life. If you feel as though you are in a cluttered and chaotic environment it can make you feel as though your life is cluttered and chaotic. It does not take long to remove some of the clutter and is well worth the effort when it is all said and done.

Go easy on everyone: family, friends, coworkers, and even the people you pass on the street. Instead of choosing to see only the most unflattering or harsh qualities embodied in each person, you should look for their positive attributes as well. If you catch yourself thinking one snide thing about a person with no reason, backtrack and identify two great things about him or her.

When defining a goal for your personal development be sure to make it challenging, but not impossible. Setting an impossible goal can be just as harmful to your development as setting a goal that is too easy. It can be very demoralizing. Find what you deem to be a realistic goal, then raise the bar just a little bit higher. In this way, you will push yourself without the certainty of failure.

Find a hobby and do something that interests you. Hobbies are a great way to relieve stress. If you can find a hobby that includes social interaction you may find yourself living a healthier lifestyle. Any hobby that is relaxing will help you relieve stress and find something to do with your time.

On days that you don’t feel motivated start you task anyways. Sometimes things seem harder when you are just sitting around dwelling on them. Tell yourself that you will work towards your goal for at least fifteen minutes, then if you still don’t feel like working on it you can quit. In most cases, once you get started you won’t want to stop.

Stay motivated and stress free with exercise. Exercise is a great stress reliever but most people have a hard time getting into a groove with it. Work in small steps daily to build up a daily routine. Have a friend that exercises with you and keeps you motivated, to help you to continue.

Knowing where you should improve is valuable information to obtain. Many times you may see that your attitude needs adjusting or your values may be shifting. The key here is to recognize whether or not these are based on a lack of fundamental principles within. Get to the deeper roots of your development and assess the needs you may have at your core.

Do not be afraid to try new things. If you want to try something, you probably know deep inside that you will like it or not. When someone is pressuring you into trying something, you should think about what you really want to do.

A great personal development tip is to try to get the most precision that you can possibly acquire. If you believe in luck, then you should know that the people with the most luck are those that have the most precise calculations. Precision is key to success and personal development.

One of the best ways that you can do to properly develop your personality is to identify your principles. It is important that you have correct principles because this greatly affects your attitude and how you look at things. The deeper you improve on these things the easier it would be for you to develop a positive personality.

In order to develop a positive personality it is good to know what your priorities are. It is a good habit to always avoid procrastination at all costs. The longer we wait to do something the less likely it is for us to do it in the best possible way.

You can now take the personal development advice that you have learned here and move forward with the tools that will set you on a permanent journey towards progress. Use the information to stay motivated and implement the tips that you find relevant, to wake up each day a better and happier person.

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MPR: Getting medical device development back on track

In this podcast, experts from MPR discuss what medical device companies can do if things go sideways during the product development process. Drawing from their own experiences, engineers from the firm spoke with MassDevice.com editor Sarah Faulkner about how they tackle device development challenges when they are called into action.

Sarah Faulkner: Hey, everyone. Thanks for downloading this podcast. I’m really excited to bring you this conversation about what to do when things go sideways during the product development process.

Faulkner: I spoke with a group of experts from MPR. They’re a product development firm that specializes in this kind of crisis management technique. They have a history of tackling really hard problems. In fact, their founders, they were at the forefront of the nuclear power movement, helping to guide the successful development and implementation of nuclear power for submarines.

Faulkner: Anyway, I spoke to them about how to navigate some of the challenges that can crop up when you’re designing and developing a product. So without further delay, let’s jump right in.

Faulkner: Let’s start with a story. Based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, MacuLogix developed the first and only diagnostic aid that can detect subclinical age-related macular degeneration. Early detection is critical so the doctors can step in and provide treatment early enough to stop blindness from creeping into the patient’s eyes. But the company had a problem. Its devices were experiencing unusual, intermittent instrument failures in the field. The instrument is a complex mix of hardware and software, and the MacuLogix team couldn’t untangle the two to determine a root cause.

Faulkner: After CEO Bill McPhee put a request out to people within his network, he was eventually connected to MPR. And within one day, MPR was in touch with MacuLogix to solve the problem. In a letter to MPR, the company CTO, Greg Jackson, is quoted as saying, “From the outset, MPR treated our problem as if it were their own, as if MPR’s reputation was on the line.” He went on to say, quote, “What was probably most impressive was the speed with which they integrated into our team. Within a day, it’s as though they had worked with us for years. Their extraordinary test facilities and state-of-the-art tools provided us with the level of diagnostic intensity that simply doesn’t exist in-house in most early stage medical device companies.”

Faulkner: Needless to say, MPR got to the root of MacuLogix’s problem, and this is just one example of the countless fire-fighting missions that MPR is hired to tackle. The process that the MPR team follows when they’re called in by a friend to help reroute product development, that process is both methodical and analytical. According to MPR’s Director of Product Testing, Lynessa Erler, the first thing MPR has to do when they’re called in is to identify and wrap their brains around the problem.

Lynessa Erler: Understanding the problem has already been done. Just try to solve it. Try to get all the data. Get the data, not just the opinions as to what conclusions they’ve drawn from the data, but get to the actual data.

Erler: A lot of times, what you find is either they’ve drawn a faulty conclusion on the data, or the data itself was flawed. And that can be very difficult to piece apart if you’re not digging into the details. So that’s where I start, you probably …

Eric Claude: Yeah, no, you’re absolutely right. Here’s the way I think about it, an analogy is, it’s like walking into a crime scene.

Faulkner: That’s Eric Claude, by the way, VP of Product Development at MPR.

Claude: So we start with the forensics. Let’s collect all the data that can be collected, and see if we can find the murder weapon and the fingerprints. And all of the data that surrounds whatever the incident might be, and then start with that.

Erler: But see, with really complicated medical devices, if it’s an intermittent problem, that is half the battle, is finding what conditions lead to the issue, in a repeatable manner. Because that may be your first challenge, is trying to repeat the failure. And until you can do that in a reliable way, you’re just stabbing in the dark. And you’re saying, “Okay, something like that, what might it be?” And then you’re looking around. But until you can recreate it, it’s very difficult.

Faulkner: And it isn’t just the technical challenges that MPR faces when it’s called in to help fix a problem. It also comes down to navigating a company’s culture and working through the tendencies that are brought about by human nature. That’s according to Craig Mauch. He’s MPR’s Director of Product Design.

Craig Mauch: It always goes something like this, is that you’re in a root-cause mode, and invariably, there are people who are engaged in the problem, trying to solve it, sometimes not that happy to see us. Sometimes they’re happy to see us. But there’s usually a lot of preconceived notion of what the problem is, and the notion of doing this root-causes and getting to the bottom of things is to setting up a good framework of, “Let’s identify everything that could cause the problem, and then let’s, in a methodical way, do some kind of test or analysis or thought experiment, or look at the data for each and every one of those conceivable possibilities to prove or disprove whether or not it could contribute.”

Mauch: And sometimes, your hardest problems can be two or three things all at once, massed together, so that’s why a methodical approach is really important. And then because invariably there’s always one person saying, “No, no! It’s this! It’s this, it’s this, it’s this, it’s this! It’s really this!” And there’s usually a more reserved person over in the corner who’s got all the answers but is not necessarily as boisterous.

Erler: I think everybody has hunches, as to … Everybody has their best guess as to what’s wrong when you go in, yes. How strongly they advocate for their theory I think depends on the person. But yes, you get some personalities involved, you get people who feel like you’re blaming them, and it’s really important to come in and make it clear that you really aren’t. The only thing you’re trying to do is solve the problem. You’re not trying to point blame, you’re not trying to get somebody fired, but at the same time, recognize that you’re dealing with human beings and so these anxieties and fears are gonna be there, and you just have to stick to the facts. You just focus on that and try not to bring the emotional component into the root cause.

Claude: To your point about constraints and attitudes, that’s one of the hardest things. It’s human nature to follow your hunches, and it’s often the case in a rescue operation when things go sideways that you have to listen to the customer as they describe, “Well we think it might be this, we think it might be that”, which are largely hunches. But then you have to put all that aside, and you have to say, “Okay, let’s really take an impartial look at what’s happening here, and try to understand what’s going on, and develop facts, the set of facts that either prove something could be the problem, or disprove, and make those fact-based decisions”, which can be hard when the human nature aspect of it is to say, “Well, I have a hunch,” and that can be challenging.

Claude: And as you described with regard to communication, that’s an important aspect of managing those preconceived notions that people often start with on these things.

Claude: We had- so to that point, I’ll share another example of a situation when things go sideways. We had a customer that had launched a new product with a battery-powered surgical tool. And this particular tool had some very strange behavior. After it was used, it would start to heat up unexpectedly. It’s not even being used, it’s starting to heat up. And so the notion there was, “Well clearly there must be a hardware fault happening with this device. It just randomly fails, there must be some electrical component in there that’s causing trouble.” Well it turned out, at the end of the day, the hardware was fine, it was actually a software issue which was the problem, which was completely unexpected. No one expected that to be the challenge. In that case, it was fortunate in a way, because it’s a little bit easier to make a software change and upgrade all the software than to recall a bunch of devices and redo the hardware inside of them.

Claude: So it’s often the case, again, that’s an example of, “It’s easy to have preconceived notions about why we’re having a problem, but often it’s not that. It can be something very unexpected.”

Erler: Or to have preconceived notions as to what’s possible without challenging the why. “Why do you think that this can’t work this way?” And really getting to the bottom of that, because maybe you’re falsely constraining the solutions.

Faulkner: So how can companies avoid these kinds of pitfalls in product development? According to Craig Mauch, it’s all about the basic tenets of engineering.

Mauch: One of the things that’s really big at MPR is about the first principles of engineering, so we like to design the products, and then build the products, and then test the products. And it sounds very rational when you say it that way, but you’d be surprised how many people skip a step or get going too fast and don’t do enough fundamental design work.

Faulkner: Like Mauch said, it sounds obvious: design, build, and then test. But Mauch sees it all the time. People skip steps and they end up paying for it down the line.

Faulkner: I asked Mauch why it is that people are prone to missing these steps that seem like the fundamentals of creating a product.

Mauch: Because they’re not used to development, I think. They come at it from different perspectives. Sometimes they’re researchers, and researchers are never done researching, so the other part of that is you have to tear that away from them and say, “Stop changing it. Stop making it better. You can always make it better, but if you keep changing it, then we’ll never finish.” So that’s on the researcher spectrum on the business perspective, people are excited about what they’re doing and they want to get it to market, and they’re in a great big hurry. And often, it’s either, for the start-ups, it’s they have limited funds and they gotta get to market. With large companies, they’ve got mandates for revenue coming out of new products and so, “I need a new product to make those goals.”

Mauch: And so big and small, you see the same pressures for slightly different reasons. And so well-intended people get themselves in situations that can maybe wanna go forward, sometimes too quickly.

Mauch: The other part of that, too, is design is a really difficult thing. You start, in a lot of cases, with the proverbial clean sheet of paper, and you start putting some building blocks down of things you think are ready to go and some unknowns. And most people can get to what I call the 95% Solution, and they’ve figured 95% of it out, and they keep pushing off that nagging 5% into the corner, and they’re like, “Oh, well, that’ll come together, we’ll figure that out.” And if you’re not careful, that 5% can be your undoing, and be the thing that comes back to bite you in the end. So it really does take a lot of discipline, I think, to have the approach to not just assume that 5% will get better later. And for that reason, I’ve coined a term, which I think I’ve coined, maybe somebody else said it, but the Vertical Slice. I’m a big believer in the Vertical Slice.

Mauch: A lot of people will do A and solve that problem, and then B comes next, and they’ll work on that and solve that. Then there’s a C and a D and an E, and they just magically assume that as they progress, a solution comes and they move on to the next thing and life is great. But life never works out that way. A lot of times, you get to D or E and there’s some great big disconnect that causes you to go back and change the stuff you did before. So what I like to do with the Vertical Slice is think about A, B, C and D all at once, and in a very fast path through there, prototype or work with each one of those elements, so that they all work together and they don’t do everything that you need to do, but you touch on enough of them such that when you need to rely on them, you’ve kicked the tires already, and you know whether it is promising or not. And that helps to avoid big disconnects.

Faulkner: Mauch said that fundamental engineering, it’s just a part of the culture at MPR. And that attitude has its roots in the company’s heritage.

Mauch: We do some pretty fundamental engineering here, and it’s baked into the culture. The founders of MPR designed the first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus. So they had to … you can’t really prototype a nuclear submarine so well, you have to really design it right and then build it because it’s a pretty expensive thing to go tinker around with. And so I think that’s baked into our culture. First, we design it, and we know why it’s designed the way it is, and then we build it.

Mauch: And I remember specifically, we were working on an infusion pump project years ago, where we were in our design phase and going through other requirements, and figuring out pumps and tubing and sensors and size of bubbles and all the things that you do for that kind of thing. And we’d been probably on the job for a couple of months, and the client said, “I know you guys are working hard, but I haven’t seen anything go together in the lab yet.” And I’m really nervous because they were used to tinkering and prototyping and iterating, right? And I turned to the client and said, “First, we’re going to design it, and then we’re gonna build it.”

Mauch: And then the first prototype that came together on the bench worked quite well because we had all the fundamentals behind us. “Why are the pumps sized the way they are? Why is the tubing this kind of tubing?” And so on and so forth. And so it goes together better the first time when you do that way, and we used that early prototype to validate those models that we put together in the design phase. So not just cut, try, and repeat kind of thing. Believe it or not, a lot of development goes on that way.

Erler: We don’t just have a book, “Oh let’s open the book and figure out how.” These are all, almost all, first-of-a-kind problems where you really have to pick the problem apart and understand the basics, the first principles of the system that you’re working with, to understand how it could go wrong, and then think, “Okay, if that were going wrong, what would that look like? What would the evidence be?” And then you can see if it fits what’s been seen. So if there’s evidence that matches that, then you know you’ve got a theory.

Faulkner: Despite their analytical methods, Claude and Erler told me that there’s always a bit of nervousness when they first present a solution to a client. Especially when there’s a lot at stake.

Erler: I think you’re always nervous, yeah. You’re always questioning yourself. I think, to some level, it’s the fact that you’re always questioning yourself that leads you to question every piece of data that you come across, that makes it that much more rigorous a process.

Claude: I would say, we’re always a little bit anxious when we get into solving, trying to solve a problem that’s not been solved before, and you don’t know what the answer’s gonna be. But I think a big part of both managing that and ultimately being successful is the team. That you can always go and consult with another expert, subject matter expert, or just talk it out with somebody. You get enough really smart people in the room, combine intelligence and analytical capabilities with creativity, and you’ll always find a way.

Mauch: Yeah, the cool thing about working here is that there’s usually, we’ve been in business for 50 years, and there’s usually somebody down the hall who’s done something similar or has been exposed to something, and it can even be across industries. Whether it’s medical, power, or ships and so on. So the neat thing here, we did a thing for a medical device that was a cell expansion chamber. You seed it with cells, and then you put it an incubator and then you come back and you have many more cells than when you started with. But we had people that normally do fluid dynamics and nuclear power plants helping us design this cell chamber because we were trying to move fluid through there in a very uniform and distributed fashion. And so by us not necessarily doing that every day in medical, we were able to tie into our power business, who we have experts that’s all they do, is thermal hydraulics and fluid design, things like that, so it was really neat to tie the two sides of that expertise together and solve a problem.

Faulkner: The team at MPR is pretty clear. When it comes to rerouting a product development effort that’s gone sideways, it takes more than just following that solid foundation of basic engineering. At the end of the day, it’s really all about the team.

Faulkner: Thanks to the folks at MPR for speaking with me, and thanks to you for listening. For more on this and other newsworthy items in the medical device space, visit massdevice.com. Until next time, I’m Sarah Faulkner.

The post MPR: Getting medical device development back on track appeared first on MassDevice.

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How to Help: A New Perspective

If you are someone who loves someone misusing substances, it is likely that you want to help and want things to change. It’s also likely that you feel either incredibly overwhelmed or confused with where to start and what to do. Luckily there are lots of things you can do! And research has shown time and again that loved ones can have a powerfully positive impact on their loved one’s change process. We know however, from experience, that the most helpful thing to do first is to develop a new perspective on the issues confronting your loved one and your family.

Substance use is a highly stigmatized and misunderstood problem and the cultural narrative has been one of character/morality flaws, disease, pessimism about change, skepticism about medication options, constricted beliefs about what people need to do to get better (e.g., go to rehab, go to a meeting, “just say no!!!”) and a general disdain for people who lose control of themselves. The reality is that science has given us a much broader understanding of substance use problems, including who is at risk, how problems develop, what supports the change process, and what sustains change and engages motivation. By understanding these issues in a new light (one infused with the glow of science), you will become more flexible, effective and resilient as you try to help your loved one.

There are a few central new understandings we’d like you to walk away with as as they will help you use the evidence-based tools that are at your disposal. Here’s the story:

Behaviors Make Sense

First and foremost, all behaviors have a purpose. We (human animals) do things (perform actions) because we get something out of it (a sense of well-being, acceptance, praise, calmness, money, excitement, relief, etc). This “reinforcement” drives all behaviors, and determines whether we repeat them or lose interest in doing them, even behaviors that seem to be destructive, irrational, or “crazy”, like drug use. Understanding what each individual gets from their substance use (a behavior they are performing) is the key toward developing new helping strategies. By understanding what is reinforcing about their substance use (in other words what they get out of it) you can find other behaviors to reward or reinforce. You can also work towards finding new ways to help them get what they need (e.g. relief, reduced pain, pleasure) that are not destructive. This understanding can also be the beginning of empathy (instead of just anger or fear) about their use, and which will help you take the behavior less personally.

Ambivalence is Normal

All human beings engage in and then repeat behaviors that reward or reinforce us. If we do something that feels good in some way or reduces a negative experience in some way, we tend to do it again. When we need to move toward a new behavior that will eventually reinforce and motivate us (e.g., being healthy), it’s important to recognize that it might not feel good right off the bat. And the old behavior still does! The new gym workout makes me feel happy with myself, but the old chocolate ice cream still makes me happy as well. The outcome? Ambivalence! Which is wanting two conflicting things at the same time. Bottom line? Ambivalence is a normal part of change, no way around it. Most of us have both reasons to change and reasons not to change, or wanting to change and wanting things to stay the same. Knowing to expect ambivalence during change (a zigzag path of progress) can help you stay calmer, be more understanding, and stay constructive yourself, which is a huge advantage. Starting in a new direction, taking new action, often requires living with these contradictory voices. Importantly, you can learn ways to respond in interacting with someone who is ambivalent that can help strengthen the voice of change. Which leads us to…

Pay Attention to the Lights

How can we best communicate to help change? If we do things because we get reinforced for it, and it’s hard when starting new behaviors to not also keep going back to the old ones, we could use some support in keeping that straight. One of the things we humans are really good at is language. We’re pretty unique among creatures in communicating incredible amounts of complicated and not complicated information to each other through our words. And our words themselves, how we speak to each other, is one of our most powerful tools for reinforcement, both positive and negative. “That’s a beautiful thing you did”! … “What the hell were you thinking”? Language can lift us up and it can crush our spirits. It is also a major way we stay connected emotionally. So the understanding here? Communicating effectively and staying connected is a bottom line critical ingredient in helping loved ones during the process of change. We need communication to reinforce positive changes, to be clear about expectations, to “get on the same page”, to understand uniqueness and the other person’s story, and to help shift ambivalence.

A simple version of this? Slow down in your next couple conversations to listen and watch; see what is happening. Is the person hearing you? Paying attention or distracted? Open or closed? Following up or shutting it down? Understanding what you are seeing and hearing while connecting with a loved one (“conversational signals”) is vital to stopping and starting conversations and allowing them to be as constructive as possible. It’s easy to “run through red lights” and go off the road, so understanding how to avoid that and stay on course is critical. This helps this powerful tool of communication be used most effectively, and it takes time and effort to use this tool well.

One Size Does Not Fit All

And a lucky thing we have the nuances of language, because (back to #1) if we are trying to learn to reinforce new behaviors, it is really helpful to understand this: we are all different and unique. As individuals, as families, as people using substances, as people helping others. Likewise, there are many paths towards change and each child and family is different. Thus, what works for one family may not be the same for another family. Remember, we want to learn to reinforce things that matter to that unique person!…not things that are supposed to matter, or that matter to us and not them, or that matter to that family down the block! Families usually receive a lot of different advice and opinions from friends and professionals, often in the form of very black and white answers. These usually start with “you need to”, which can be a clue that they are not speaking to you, but to “families of addicts”. It helps to realize that there’s not only room for, but the need for different strategies and paths to change. Understanding the uniqueness of each person is also a fundamentally respectful and collaborative stance, for a parent, for a teacher, for a policeman, for anyone…and bottom line: seeing others this way increases their motivation to engage in change.

Practice, Practice, Practice

Foul shots and compassion. And to finish our story, when we are talking about learning new behaviors, and finding ones that are going to be reinforcing (you’ll know because they’ll want to repeat them!) for the person (“I like to get high but I also like working out now too…it helps my anxiety”), we have to understand that this is new learning, and it takes time and practice and compassion. You may think “she should be doing this anyway”, but the new behavior is going to take some time to develop, kick in and become solid. This is an important part of the blueprint for change: practicing, seeing what worked and what did not, and using that information to provide direction for the next step. This is true for both the person trying to change AND the people learning how to help them change! You are here learning something new right now! And…being willing to practice and being open to the messiness of learning something new DOES require compassion, again whether it’s for the person trying to change old negative habits or you, trying to learn how to help! New learning (like learning to shoot foul shots in basketball) needs 2 things: 1) repeated practice (and failure) and 2) nourishment (in the form of patience, encouragement and compassion for the process).

The Parenting North Star and Willingness

Moving Toward What You Value as a Parent/Partner/Friend. This storybook has a very important binding that holds it all together, which are your values as a person and your willingness to keep pursuing them. To help someone struggling with substance issues (or any behavioral issues for that matter), takes a lot of work, thought, compassion, patience, and emotional hardship. So we are suggesting 2 critical steps to work with and keep in mind: 1) Clarify what matters to you as a person. What kind of person do you want to be? Spend some time identifying your values and how to use them as a directional arrow, or north star, and 2) understand that to pursue these values will include being uncomfortable/in pain at times. To move in your valued direction takes “willingness”, an acceptance of this discomfort and a decision to walk forward anyway. Allowing yourself to be scared or mad, and at the same time open to learning new skills to engage with your loved one differently, is an example of willingness. The opposite of being “willing” would be the common reaction of trying to shut the whole process down with such behaviors as trying to force change – kick him out/send him away – or ignoring events entirely.

Your values can include any number of things: consistency, reliability, being loving, positive communication, keeping your loved one safe, connection, mutual respect etc. We are suggesting the importance of clarifying what tops this list for you and place it “north”, because it is easy to lose track of and not walk in this direction under stress, and substance use in your household is probably causing a lot of stress!. Then what happens? Everything BUT these values…yelling, erratic behavior (kick them out then turn around and bend the rules etc), disrespectful, angry communication, withdrawal etc. Clarifying the direction you want to head (even if you take off ramps at times) is critical AND uncomfortable..staying with what matters to you will mean NOT GETTING IT at times and living with that. It is painful, but allowing for that pain is the key to staying on track with what you care about. We call that “willingness”, and it takes practice, just like everything else new you are doing. So find that north star of values you want to look toward, knowing that it is a direction, not a goal and understand there will be turbulence (and joy!) in moving in that direction.

Summary of the “Story” Narrative

The summary of how to understand and help? We humans do things (and repeat those behaviors) because we get something out of doing them, whether they’re “bad for us” (substance abuse) or not. Changing behavior is most effectively done by adding in something new that is also rewarding, but this is challenging for most of us, AND the old behaviors and routes are still there “calling our name”, a natural pull. Providing support and encouragement for the new positive behaviors is REALLY helpful. Knowing how to TALK about these changes and their challenges (including the old behaviors which keep popping up) is a REALLY important way to help the person strengthen positive change. And in helping support someone attempting new behaviors, it goes a long way if you can see their unique challenges and needs, what matters to THEM, and try to support those in particular. Additionally, because new stuff is hard to do and we all suck when we start, change takes two more important steps: repeated practice and compassion, whether we are learning new behaviors to replace substance use, or we are learning how to help another person change. Last, the context of all this is usually pain; your loved one is struggling, you are scared/angry/fill in the blank, and things can get unmoored. So the first, middle and last part of the story is this: It also takes getting grounded in what matters to you as a person, clarifying and using your values as a “north star” to keep remembering where you are heading, and willingness to be uncomfortable and in pain at times to stay the course, and not just try to “make it all go away”.

The post How to Help: A New Perspective appeared first on The Center for Motivation & Change.

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Be System Oriented and Achieve Great Success.

If you want to be successful in anything, you need a System. This is part 2 in a series based on Scott Adams’ book How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Win Big. Click here for part 1 where I describe why Goals are for Losers and Systems are for Winners.

Here are 10 Tips to be a Winner

1. Apply a systems mindset instead of a goal mindset to everything you want to accomplish. For example: Losing twenty pounds is a goal, but eating right is a system. Running a marathon in under four hours is a goal, but exercising/running daily is a system. In business, making a million dollars is a goal, but being a serial entrepreneur (creating businesses over and over until one hits big) is a system. There are endless areas to apply a systems mindset. Many of my future blog posts and videos will be more detailed about specific systems anyone can follow for these things, but I’ll quickly go over some ideas:

Relationships - 1. Be healthy and fit - workout regularly 2. Be interesting - take up some hobbies, travel 3.  Learn to flirt - Talk to lots of girls or guys and figure out what works and what doesn’t. 4. Remember your goal is not to get a date or make the first person you talk to fall in love with you (Goals are for Losers). 5. Make it a systematic way of finding someone to spend time with, so rejection isn’t a big deal.

Exercise and Health - Do something active every single day - schedule it. I do push ups and pulls first thing in the morning, and run or do some quick Interval Training right when I get off work. Check out the 1 Minute Workout. For eating healthy get a calorie app or follow a simple meal plan. Atkins is a popular eating system that does work wonders for individuals or are very over-weight.

Online Businesses (YouTube, Podcasts, Mobile apps, Social Media) - Systematically create niche content and put it out there. That’s it. Don’t worry if it sucks at first and gets zero views. Keep at it, and you will get better and better and eventually something will Click.

Real estate investing - Buy property that needs work, fix it up, then rent it out or flip it and repeat. I recommend reading some books on the topic first, and be wary of seminars and investment schemes.

Stock investing - The simplest systems are long term and involve buying and holding a portfolio of solid fundamentally sound stocks for a number of years. "Value investing," is the hallmark of Warren Buffett. Another stock investing system is William O’Neil’s CANSLIM from best selling book How to Make Money in Stocks.

Career advancement - Scott gives an example of a gentleman he met on a flight who switched jobs systematically learning new things and advancing at each stop until he became CEO.

Money saving and management -  The envelope system -  Read Dave Ramsey’s, Total Money Makeover. The basic idea is keep budgeted cash in separate envelopes for different categories of your budget. It allows you to see exactly how much money you have left in a given category by the cash that remains on hand.  

2. Just google it.  We live in an age where you can instantly find a System for anything.  

3. Copy others. Tony Robbins said,

”If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you'll achieve the same results.”

There’s no shame in copying what an already successful person did.   Two of the best channels for personal development, Fight Mediocrity and Practical Psychology inspired this channel.

4. K.I.S.S.  no not the band... Keep It Simple Stupid. Simple Systems are best. You can optimize later after some success, but Keep It Simple Stupid  is the clearest route to succeed. Optimizing might allow you to complete several urgent tasks on the way to another but optimizing is often also complicating which makes things exhausting and stress inducing. Complicated systems also have more opportunities for bugs or errors. In a computer program a bug can either create unwanted results, or completely crash the system. Complicated programs have more bugs and take longer to fix if a system crashes. Simple programs hardly if ever crash and if there is an error, it is easy to find and fix.

Simplification frees up energy, making everything else you do a little bit easier. You are more likely to do something that is simple, and more likely to put off or never do something that is complicated.

5. "Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success." Scott Adams discusses the idea of a "Talent Stack" often is his blog. You don’t have to master everything to get a benefit, often a working knowledge by reading a book, or watching a YouTube video is all you need.

Here are some skills that apply to everyone. How to Fail... goes into more detail for each one, so I’ll just mention them here.

Public speaking

Proper voice technique

Psychology

Persuasion

Business writing

Accounting

Conversation

A Second language

Golf

Technology

Design

If you become merely good in most of these areas, there’s a good chance you will be successful.

6.  "The More You Know, the More You Can Know". That is Scott Adams’ Knowledge Formula. The more concepts you understand, the easier it is to learn new ones.  Think of learning as a system in which you continually expose yourself to new topics, primarily the ones you find interesting.

7. Don’t confuse the benefits of persistence with the actual odds of succeeding. The Dilbert Guy says,

The minimum requirement of a system is that a reasonable person expects it to work more often than not. Buying lottery tickets no matter how regularly you do it is not a system.

The odds of hitting the jackpot are too high to be worth it.   Odds and luck, however, are important ideas that we’ll discuss another time.  

8. Passion Is (mostly) Bullshit. We hear all the time that Passion in what you do is key to succeed. But

"It’s easy to be passionate about things that are working out. That distorts our impression of the importance of passion. Passion fades as a venture you were initially passionate about Fails."

But the excitement and passion increase for the ventures that succeed. We also enjoy things we’re good at. And tend NOT to enjoy the things we suck at. For instance, Now that I am fairly good at solving the Rubik’s cube I really enjoy doing it. I mix it up and resolve it a couple times a day now. People who can’t solve one often say I hate those things.

"A great strategy for success in life is to become good at something, anything, and let that feeling propel you to new and better victories."

Success can be habit-forming.  Cal Newport's best selling book So Good They Can't Ignore You, also maintains that passion is overrated.

9. Energy is more important than passion

Personal energy is anything that gives you a positive lift, either mentally or physically.

Our personal supply of energy is limited so we need to manage that energy carefully. Being healthy and fit and happy is key to having energy. Success takes energy. Energy to overcome obstacles, energy to continue trying when we fail. Without being healthy and fit it’s nearly impossible to get the positive mental and physical lifts we need to succeed. That makes Good health a baseline requirement for success.

The concept of Qi (ch’i) found throughout Asian cultures translates as "material energy", "life force", or "energy flow". It is the central underlying principle in traditional Chinese medicine and martial arts. This is the symbol for Qi

氣

 Fun fact - I got that tattooed on my arm when I was 19. Qi is said to permeate everything and links our surroundings together. It is the flow of energy around and through the body, forming a cohesive and functioning unit. Qi is necessary to activity and it can be controlled by a well-integrated willpower. When properly nurtured, Qi is capable of extending beyond the human body to reach throughout the universe. When it accumulates there is life. When it dissipates there is death... It can be strengthened through meditation, practicing martial arts, yoga, exercise and eating right. Acupuncture is used to treat many ailments, its purpose is to fix the flow of Qi through the body.  I’m not super spiritual but the idea of an energy force that I control is useful. Obviously Qi isn’t a scientific concept and most medical professionals will tell you that chinese medicine and acupuncture are bullshit. Some people might think it’s stupid, and that’s ok. None of that matters when it comes to your personal energy. If an idea works to help you feel more energetic, gives you a positive lift, either mentally or physically, and helps you be successful, than why not go with it. Some people get energy from listening to music or singing, some from a massage, some people get energy from church or meditation. Whatever it is you get energy from who am I to judge? Except Drugs. Drugs are Bad Kids. Don’t Do Drugs. Seriously.

10. A flawed system is ok as long as you’re moving in the right direction. Nobody starts out with a perfect plan or system. If the system doesn’t seem to be moving you in the right direction, change one part of the system. If you change multiple parts at once you won’t know which worked or which caused the catastrophic failure. I realize the “right direction” is vague and you won’t always know which direction you are headed and whether to stay the course or not. Scott Adams says

“One predictor for success is that customers clamor for the bad versions of a product before the good versions are even invented. Consider the iPhone. The first version was a mess, yet it was greeted with an almost feverish enthusiasm. That enthusiasm, and the enormous sales that followed, funded improvements until the product became superb. The smartest way to discern your best path to success is to try lots of different things. For entrepreneurial ventures it might mean quickly bailing out if things don’t come together quickly.”

For some endeavors I think the best path comes down to gut feeling and your tolerance for risk. For other endeavors, there is no wrong direction or path as long as you’re moving.  

If you enjoyed this or got a little bit of value out of it, it would be awesome if you hit that Like button.

And if you want to see more please subscribe. In the next one... The next Key to Succeed - Failure is actually a good thing.