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lyraeon · 1 year

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at 20 I thought I was faking my depression and was "bad at life" and lazy like my family said. I still earnestly believed I was entirely straight and everyone knew girls are just nicer to look at. I still had a ton of ingrained racism and other bigotry from my Bush-worshipping family. My main dream of being an astronaut had been smashed by my anxiety and health problems, so I was trying to study Japanese because like every other weeb I thought I'd fit in better over there (lol), but I'd already flunked out of one college and been forced to quit another to get a second job. I was overdrawn constantly and often buying gas station gift cards at the grocery store so I'd only take one overdraft fee. I was dating someone horribly controlling who eventually earned the title "evil ex", dialed up my eating disorder, and traumatized me out of writing for 2+ years. I had several roommates because we all considered having the funds to go to anime conventions more important than personal space (and because back then we already thought $600/month was expensive). I spent any other free time half asleep at a friend's house cuz there I could play games and watch Intent videos. Half my meals came free from work, the rest were hacked together from stuff that worked out to $1/serving or so. The power or internet got turned off at least twice a year from non-payment.

at 25 I thought I was too depressed to deserve burdening others with my presence or existence. that I was a burden and purposeful downer and nothing would ever get better. I was still dealing with a ton of internalized transphobia, racism, and other bigotry that I had been taught was Just The Truth and still occasionally fall into. I was massively straight edge against weed and anything else (threatened to call cops on close friends) while also being a half bottle of vodka a day alcoholic just to get my brain to shut up enough to let me write or sleep. I didn't know how to have fun without alcohol, if at all. I had lost my ability to draw when I severely injured my wrist while i had no insurance. I tried going back to school, first for architecture then teaching, and flunked/dropped out of both. I was losing jobs every 6~8 months from being chronically late and being sick constantly. I manged to lose one on my birthday and wound up having to make some other tough choices because of it. I had only just reached the point where being overdrawn was a rare thing and I wasn't buying single gallons of gas with tip money. food was still often just ramen but I no longer had days where I didn't know if I'd get to eat, though I was often dependent on my then-bf. I had multiple teeth rotting and couldn't afford any treatment besides getting them pulled, and often not until they'd become infected.

by 30 I was finally on antidepressants and in therapy. I was on the road to physical therapy for shoulder and wrist injuries that had happened years earlier. I was pretty happy in my relationship. I held down one job for almost 3 years straight after getting medicated, then turned around and flunked/dropped out of college for the 5th time (Physics this time) because I was too anxious to take public transit reliably and STILL couldn't do homework anywhere but in class, so most projects never got done. I'd stopped being able to write (and am still running from the possibility my meds Took That from me because it doesn't come back if I stop them). Food had become a different struggle - I no longer had time, physical health, or executive function to cook reliably so I was spending too much on take out and causing wild fluctuations in my weight. I was hiding my eating disorder from my partner and my friends. I had begrudgingly un-estranged myself from my family to support younger cousins as they came out as queer. I had developed a healthier relationship with alcohol. I had accepted that, outside of addiction, drugs are a bodily autonomy thing and stopped being an ass to people about them. I had finally learned some damn etiquette around things like not accidentally outing people. I started streaming and making videos - stuff I had dreamed of since first watching Dead Fantasy and Red vs Blue and Weeblstuff in high school but had thought impossible after I lost the ability to draw.

I'm currently 35. This year I am living on my own for the first time (aside from 5 failed months at 18). I got divorced - a complicated, regretful process that was ultimately for the best but I could and should have handled better (and sooner). I've been in physical therapy long enough that I'm able to use chopsticks properly again and am thinking of trying to relearn drawing. It's also meant I can do the dishes and wash my hair on my own again, most days, so I'm relearning how to cook consistently. I'm reading (listening to) books again. I'm on year 8 of antidepressants and currently working with my doctor to fine tune what I'm on (and finally have a system to take them consistently). I've been diagnosed with ADHD and figured out I might also be autistic, and a lot of things in my life make way more sense when viewed through that context. I have appointments to get evaluated for ADHD meds, autism, shoulder surgery/other "PT isn't enough" treatments, teeth implants, and new glasses. my clothes have been put away 3 of the last 5 times I did laundry and I've learned that if I only own one dishwasher worth of dishes, the sink can't pile up. I've fully embraced that I'm polyamorous, pansexual, and demiromantic, and that I can be cis while also being "gender agnostic" - none of it really matters or processes to me, but I get that it does to others so I respect it. I'm seeing someone who makes me feel like I can do anything, is inspiringly ambitious themself, and is equally polyam, meaning I might also be asking out a cute girl soon and don't know where board game nights with the nice throuple I met might go. I'm having to do odd jobs and accept help from my dad to make ends meet, but I'm arguably a full time content creator now - something I literally didn't even let myself dream about when I was younger because it felt impossible, but which is fully worth the complications and budget crunching because it's so accommodating to my disabilities and uses so many of my talents. I'm still depressed, but I have hope that ADHD treatment will help cut through the remainder. Most days I just have hope, period. And more days than not, I'm genuinely happy for at least a while.

You'll find yourself.

It might take a while. There will be detours, mistakes, pain, tough choices, and a lot of hard work. But there will also be unexpected joys and more possibilities than you ever imagined.

Someday, you'll find yourself.

And when you do, it will be worth the wait, I promise.

#personal #though you can still reblog if you wanna #I was just having A Moment #and now for all the warning tags #mental health #tw eating disorder #tw alcoholism #ed tw #depression #adhd #tw abusive relationship #tw abuse #tw suicide #if you need anything else tagged lemme know #also sorry it's such blocks of text #i just kind of went full ramble

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mallowstep · 3 years

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how do you find the energy and motivation to write like... everyday?? i literally cannot write unless i am possessed by a thought in my brain and forced to spew out everything onto paper. and then i cant look at it again ot edit it. like, i really love writing and if im forced to do it for school i will, but i cant write for myslef.

practice.

first, i want to say that i am going to describe how i write, but it is not necessarily going to work for most people, because it has to do with my own psychology and mental health.

second, i want to say that i view writing as writing for pleasure or writing for work. poetry, for example, i write for pleasure, and i would not apply what i am going to discuss to poetry. that happens when i have something to say. it is OK to not want to write for work. that's acceptable and encouraged.

third, i want to dispel a myth. writing consistently is not about motivation. it is about discipline. and you should take heart in that, because motivation is hard to control. you can't force yourself to want to do something, no matter how hard you try. but if you build up discipline, you can learn to do it anyway.

i'm not going to go into that now, because i'm coming at this from the specific perspective of someone with adhd who uses pressure to force myself to function, which is...a hard balance to strike, and not something i can strictly recommend. it does work for some people. i think of it as an arch.

but i digress, i said i wasn't discussing the specifics of how i function in day-to-day life, lest i encourage others to do as i do.

okay. so. where am i going with all of this?

part one: a long, fairly incoherent ramble about me and mental health and writing

well. i don't think the idea of writing for yourself is very helpful to a lot of people. i do write for myself. but that doesn't get my ass in the chair and my fingers on the keyboard. the thing that does that is not social obligation to others, either, it is the firm knowledge that putting words on paper is going to keep me from falling apart.

i don't do that for myself. i don't do that for anyone but the human need to hold yourself together. i am very happy i feel that need at the moment, and every time i have stopped writing* in the past ten years, i have lost that need.

* writing here should really be replaced with a broader term. creating things. making things. working with my hands and something real. but writing is the best thing i know to fill this in myself.

writing does not feel optional. i started writing seriously when i was not-quite-a-teenager and had untreated depression. it was desperate, then. the need to know i was capable of feeling emotions. since then, writing has been different things at different times. it has been a social need. it has been a creative need. it has been a demanding drive. it has been something i drag myself to do because i know it is good for me.

i don't have to write. i could paint, or draw, or knit, or code, or any number of things. i have used all of those things, and more, in the past, but writing is something i also enjoy.

sometimes writing is dragging myself to the keyboard. it is not always a flurry of words as an idea seizes me. it is, "i am publishing the next chapter of ashes because it is monday and that is what i do on mondays." but.

it is monday, and that is what i do on mondays.

i hate not posting every day. i hate it. i am Untethered. i spent ca. three weeks over the summer completely disconnected from time, but. i post ashes today, it is monday, i move on, i go through the days and they are not the same.

i hate not posting every day. i know that i would be doing better if i could just break through and start again, but figuring out how is hard. some things i know (ibtwicm is stressful because another person is involved, and that means that i cannot work with betas, even though the one i have is absolutely wonderful and i adore her), but other things are just that nebulous idea of not enough time to start.

i don't always have the energy to write. some days are bad. some days my head hurts. i don't have the expectation that i will never miss a day of posting. i've taken plenty of time off. but i like the rhythm.

anyway. let me try to turn that incoherent ramble about me into something...actionable?

part two: what i tangibly do

i have a schedule. that is not requisite, but it saves me from making decisions. i have a schedule and i have fics and one-shots and they all slot into that schedule by arc. i could have done it by anything, but arc was convenient.

anyway.

i figure out what i'm posting when i wake up in the morning, and i try to skim over what i've already got before starting my day. i flick back and forth between writing and whatever i am doing throughout the day.

(which is why, as i transition back into my normal pace, the thing i have been doing to fill the gap will diminish. less au chatter snippets etc, because that is what i have been doing instead of writing.)

by the evening, i'm usually close to done with the draft. i spend a solid chunk of time patching it up, then i do a round of edits, finish my other work, do line edits, and post.

if i have time after that, i start looking at tomorrow's post.

that's it. sometimes i don't want to work on something. too bad. it's on the schedule. or even, "too bad, we're posting something today." unless i am having a bad (read: low spoon) day, i do not waver in that expectation for myself.

in fact, i think the only way ibtwicm will get done is if the final chapter two chapters go up un-beta'd, because the deviation from routine makes me impossibly frustrated with them. we shall see.

anyway. i have spent years building the discipline to be able to do that. if you rely on motivation, do not think you can just flip over and magically learn how to turn an empty page into words because you told yourself that is what you are doing right now. so.

part three: how to build discipline

i said i won't be covering this, and i'm not Really. i'm going to tell you how to get started, and i am going to be the Bad Guy. i am not capable of doing this kindly. there are other, better, resources i encourage you to seek out.

so. you can't start by just. throwing yourself into it. it won't work, it'll be frustrating, etc.

you want to figure out what a reasonable word count/day is for you. i shoot for 3k words/day, but i figure as long as i'm above 1k, i'm happy.

[aside: if you are going to be writing a lot in a day, please take care of your body. have good posture. know how to hold yourself. etc. i credit years of playing piano as giving me strong wrists and nice, curved fingers, and exercises to build and strengthen the same muscles as you use for typing, but just keep this in mind.]

anyway, there's no right number. 100 words is enough. it should be -- what works for me is a number that's just slightly higher than what i can do comfortably, because it means i have to be focused, which keeps me on track. i think this is important. it is not the only way.

and then you just meet that goal. if you're new to this, writing 100 words every day might be hard. you don't have to limit yourself to 100, just hit 100 every. single. day.

eventually that will feel easy.

"i don't feel like writing," you will think, "but i've figured out how to get around that."

then you either feel happy with what you're doing or push your word count up.

me? i don't measure how many words i write, because i've already done all of that. for all i bemoan research and being stuck, i'm generally exceptionally effective. i don't think that's bragging; i think the number of asks i have answered with scenes i whipped out of nowhere demonstrate that.

i have spent years getting to the point where i can open up a blank page, on a day when i feel like crap (emotionally), when i have no ideas and no motivation and every word i put on paper feels robotic and stiff and terrible, and still finish what i started. it's hard work. it might not be worth the effort. but. that's what i do.

#ask #anon #mine #personal #reblogs okay #writing #you know i don't think what i do is the only way or even the best way #what i do is the #what i need to do to be a functional human being #way #and that might not work for you but #i think at the least my thoughts on discipline and routine should be more universally applicable

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whetstonefires · 4 years

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mcu ethics bad

The thing is that, while I was angry at Tony during Age of Ultron, particularly when he rode over Bruce’s compunctions about building a giant combat super-robot and pressured him into the project like a very very bad friend who happened to also be wrong...

...and when he equipped Hulkbuster armor and fought the Hulk in the middle of a city rather than attempting de-escalation or attempting to haul the Hulk out into the giant adjacent desert....

(And my suspension of disbelief snapped like a frayed cable when he brought down a skyscraper that had had no time to be evacuated on a street full of fleeing people and the only reason we were given to believe he hadn’t just cold-bloodedly created massive civilian casualties was that he told his AI to find the impossible magic angle where doing this wouldn’t kill anyone...)

While I was angry with him then, and unspeakably relieved that he recognized his own damage and retired at the end, haha psych, I was revolted by him during Civil War.

It’s supposed to make us sympathize with a character more, spending so much time with them, getting into their heads, being shown their emotional drives and reactions to things, and we spent so much time with Tony during that film, understanding his point of view. And...I did understand him. He’s not complicated. I even sympathized with his emotional state.

But in the context of his actions, throughout the film, I gazed into that understanding the way I did into Kylo Ren’s face in the seconds after he first unmasked. I see you, I know you, everything you are is written here, and the lines of your shame and self-revulsion are so thick upon you, and you should be ashamed but your self-destruction does not expiate or justify one jot of the harm you do.

Because everything Tony did in Civil War came from a place of selfishness. He was selfish all throughout that movie down to his very spine.

And selfishness isn’t itself necessarily bad--you need a little, to get through life, you have the right to your own portion of it. Your boundaries and your needs. But the type of selfishness that is forcing other people pay dearly for your emotional comfort and sense of control: no.

That is tyranny. That is not acceptable.

And you know how I know he was being selfish? Because his motive for pushing the Sokovia Accords was his personal guilt for the destruction of Sokovia.

But the Accords didn’t address that at all! They were tangential to the issue! None of the terms of the Accords would have saved Sokovia--in fact, the existence of them could easily have prevented the evacuation and harm-reduction the Avengers managed there, without saving a single soul.

The Ultron crisis was something Tony did, not as Iron Man but as Tony Stark, with Bruce Banner’s help, and which Wanda as criminal fugitive later helped exacerbate, and which all the other Avengers were involved in only to mitigate harm.

Legislation, or...treaties, idk, the UN isn’t actually empowered to pass laws so who knows what this thing was...aimed at preventing another Sokovia would mandate constant ethical oversight of billionaire science man’s mad science. At the very least! He never has to run things by ethics boards because he’s self-funded, at the very least let’s invent a mechanism to make up for that.

That would address the actual Sokovia issue, both in terms of risks and in terms of Tony’s personal guilt feelings.

But no one suggests that! It’s not even on the table! Because no one, certainly not any government, can tell Tony Stark what to do unless he lets them, that’s been a clear matter of record since Iron Man 2.

And because no one writing this legal instrument of whatever description was actually motivated by wanting to avoid another Sokovia, or even another ‘Wanda tries to neutralize a suicide bomber but merely gives him a different, smaller victim pool’ incident.

They didn’t care! They blatantly didn’t care! The entire thing was a ghoulish use of the dead to gain enough political leverage over the Avengers to put a leash on them!

(Which might not be a bad thing in principle, everything needs its checks, but when the last quasi-governmental organization you worked for turned out to be Nazis who were only prevented from staging a mass slaughter of undesireables by the skin of your teeth, I think you’re well within your rights to be very choosy about who you agree to obey, and to be firmly against pledging your honor to follow people whose first move was dishonest coercive tactics.

Actually you’re well within your rights to demand to negotiate the terms of even a much less sweeping contract, even without the Nazis. The whole approach to this thing stank to high heaven.

The fact that it was written by the UN like a treaty, expected to be signed by private individuals like a contract, and then enforced like a law except not because 1) laws are for everyone 2) if you break a law you get a trial not extrajudicial incarceration and 3) being pressured to consent to a restriction and then punished for refusing consent is hypocritical circular logic and in fact police corruption at its finest, all continues to show it was a bullshit nonsense franken-document.)

The whole movie is people ghoulishly using the dead to manipulate Tony into making bad decisions in response to his emotional pain. That’s. The plot of the film.

Then Zemo staged T’Chaka’s assassination and framed Bucky for it to raise the tension, ramp up the pressure, and prevent any sitting-down and talking reasonably through this, which might have allowed for the recognition of how extremely bullshit the entire concept was.

Tony was being used. Tony was a tool of bad people for most of that movie, and while Zemo banked on using his wrath for it, the politicos were leaning on his guilt.

And there’s honestly little I hold in deeper scorn than going out and hurting other people to assuage your own guilt and treating this as having the moral high ground. No. You don’t have the moral high ground on account of your guilt motivation. You have it if the actions you took were just, or at least could reasonably be assumed to have been so at the time.

And Tony fucking knew they weren’t. He didn’t even last to the end of the movie before recognizing that he’d been manipulated and fucked up, and doubling back.

That he then walked into a different manipulation, turned on a dime, and had to be stopped from doing a murder doesn’t unwrite that.

And it drives me nuts that people will say Tony was acting out of principle while Steve was acting out of personal attachment. Because sure, the Bucky thing was important, was the reason he was walking forward against all opposition instead of standing still to argue, but it wasn’t the reason Steve said no, while...

Tony wasn’t acting out of principle. Tony isn’t...very good at having principles. That’s not even a criticism or condemnation, it’s just how he functions. Since Iron Man he’s been substituting good intentions and emotional investment, which has worked out to varying degrees. It works best for huge, difficult, very straightforward decisions like ‘ride the nuke through the portal and save my hometown.’ It works less well for nuanced situations.

Tony was, as usual, acting out of emotion. And some awful shitheads who’d figured out where his levers were had calculated how to jiggle his emotion switches in the right places to make him do exactly what they wanted.

And you can tell he wasn’t acting out of principle because, for example, someone who was trying to get the superhero community under outside control for the sake of harm mitigation...

...well, firstly wouldn’t have chosen to stage a massive battle? But it’s possible someone in the UN specifically told him to do that, and in theory they at the very least signed off on it, presumably for its PR value of making Captain America look deranged and violent since it’s a deranged decision from every other angle, so yay, he can pass that responsibility up the chain and not have to angst about it, as promised.

But I was going to say would not have approached a minor who (this timeline takes pains to show us) had no prior experience of battle or even, somehow, serious violent crime, to recruit him to go be a government child soldier on another continent, without his guardian’s knowledge or consent. There were overtones of blackmail in Tony’s approach, before it turned out Peter was such a big fan he didn’t need that. What the fuck frankly.

That is not the action of someone who wants to start doing things by the letter, scaling the violence down, keeping within the law and putting the power of decisionmaking in other people’s hands because he’s realized he can’t trust his own.

And frankly even if he did act like that I wouldn’t necessarily support his choices, in particular his snap decision to behave coercively toward other Avengers with vastly less social power and security than he has.

And that’s the other thing! Everything about ‘Tony + Accords BFFs’ rings so hollow because he has never thought rules applied to him, and he knows perfectly well the entire time he’s fighting to force this surrender of agency down other people’s throats that he is going to be practically immune.

This man was technically a terrorist, proabably the most prolific single terrorist in world history until his rogue android exceeded his body count, but he was immune to prosecution because he was in tight with the United States military-industrial complex and basically untouchable due to his status within capitalism, and pursuing their international goals anyway. In the time between Iron Man and Iron Man II he was basically a one-man upgrade of the US drone program, and so good at it that the crest of blood he carved through the Middle East allowed him to announce he had ‘privatized world peace.’

(You are never going to get a world peace worth anything on the basis of a giant flying gun, okay.)

He went to war as a private individual, against non-state actors who were not directly threatening him, which is very much defined as ‘mass murder’ in all domestic and international law, and the US army in response sued him for control of his weapon. And lost! Lost.

No one attempted to press charges. No one. Because Tony Stark is above all that. And he knows it.

And like. I’m willing to accept the mass murder under the heading of ‘superheroing’ within the terms of this setting! Even if, after his vengeance rampage on his specific kidnappers, this violence was kept strictly off-screen for a reason. I did that! I bent that far! Genre convention!

But this history is kind of vitally important to any analysis of what he thought he was doing, and what he actually was doing, when he decided to become the iron gauntlet of the Sokovia Accords.

The currently active member of the Avengers who needed muzzling most was very manifestly Iron Man, and he knew even as he jammed the muzzle on all his comrades to make himself feel better that it would affect him the least, even if he didn’t finally retire for real this time. You don’t force Tony Stark. Not if you want anything out of it but blown up. You persuade him.

And once you have...oh, look at what he can do.

#hoc est meum #mcu #tony stark critical #i am so angry with this man and i will never stop #i throw salt #an ocean of it

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kindacompetentlawstudent · 3 years

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Rosie explains law

Hi frens,

So while studying on winter break, I have decided to do something fun. Or well, I think it is fun. I am going to explain some funky fresh law concepts to yall. Because some of this information is just nice to know and it's interesting!

A DISCLAIMER BEFORE I START: I am a law student at a western, European law school. This means that I get taught concepts in the view of western, european law professors. This might mean that you get taught concepts or examples differently. We can absolutely discuss our differences, but just so that everybody is clear: I do not wish to push my opinion on international matters on you guys, I just really want to show you that international law is interesting and, dare I say: funky.

So, today class is on: statehood. This concepts asks the question: what is a state? How does something become a state? Why is place A a state and place B not? Let us all learn and discuss today.

First things first, we cannot start without some nice ✨ documents✨.Today we will primarily use these:

1. The 1934 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States. (old as fuck but we still love)

2. The United Nations Charter (bae)

3. The Chagos Advisory Opinion by the International Court of Justice (fun fact: I might be doing an internship here soon)

4. United Nations General Assembly resolutions 67/19 and 1514 (hella spicy because of reasons I will come back too I promise).

So: what are the main qualifications to become a state? (say, you are on tumblr at 4 am and want to convince people to join your state that focuses on Toto Wolff and Susie Wolff as a powercouple)

Well, article 1 of the Montevideo Convention is quite clear. To become a state, there are four criteria:

1. you have to have a permanent population (this can shift, yes, but there has to be a majority that identifies as your population)

2. you have to have a defined territory (you cannnot just move around and plant a flag and say: "we live here now for two weeks")

3. you have to have a government (notice how it does not say "democratic" or "functioning", we will get back to that)

4. you have to have the capacity to enter into relations with other states (THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE).

So, seems kinda easy right? Wellll, there are certain complications let's say. I will now explain those, using three examples: Kosovo, Palestine and IS. (please go back to the disclaimer loves).

Example 1: Kosovo.

Kosovo basically fulfills all the qualifications, however there is one little tiny problem. The capacity to enter into relations with other states. This is a crucial element to being a state, because if you cannot enter into relations, you will probably not survive as a modern state. With Kosovo this is a problem, because Serbia does not recognize Kosovo, and so do a bunch of other nations. This makes it very hard for the United Nations to recognize Kosovo as anything but an observer, because if the majority of nations do not recognize the state, the United Nations does not recognize it. This shows how hard it is to fullfill all these conditions in the eyes of every single existing state in the international community.

Example 2: Palestine.

Palestine is….quite the adventure. What makes it a little easier (it is still very very difficult, do not get me wrong) is that there have been discussions in the United Nations general assembly about the status of Israel. This has been discussed in General Assembly Resolution 67/19, about the status of Palestine. Palestine has the same problem as Kosovo, that certain countries do not recognize Palestine as a state, which makes it incredibly difficult for Palestine to function in the international community. Palestine has the status of an observer state, which basically makes it able to project its opinions into the general assembly, but is not able to vote. In the case of Palestine, this is crucial, because of their involvement with Israel and the Arabic World in committees like DISEC(which deals with disarmament and denuclearization). However, to publicly state that Palestine is a state is something most nations refrain from doing, to prevent conflict.

Example 3: IS (Islamic State)

This one is a little harder, because there is more than one criteria to discuss. The main ones being having a government and a defined territory (let's for argue sake say that entering into relations is already kinda difficult yeah?)

The defined territory is the main point to argue with IS. Seeing as they declared themselves a state in an area captured by war and terror, and more importantly the area that already belongs to another state (mainly Syria), it is hard to be able to fulfill this condition. The territory of IS seems to shift constantly and isn't easily pinned down. The second talking point is the government. As far as we know, IS does not have a recognized government (once again, could be wrong). They do have leaders and a certain system of bureaucracy, but to speak of a government is reaching. This shows that even if you have everything else, not fulfilling one of the conditions can be crucial.

Who then decides who is a state and who isn't?

In the international community there is a saying: you only obey those rules that you want to obey. This means that certain countries might not recognize certain treaties, or in extreme cases, other states. Who then decides who is a state and who isn't? Short answer: UN. Long answer: all of us and none of us.

See, art. 4 UN Charter states that: "Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of het Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations." This basically says: "come join, but follow our rules and do not be at war." This should make states like Kosovo and Palestine able to join the UN, and in the case of Palestine, they sort of did. However, to become a member you have to be approved by both the General Assembly (where all members gather) and the Security Council (France, US, UK, Russia, China). If one of the countries in the Security Council does not recognize you, they can veto your application. Then you're out. If the majority of countries in the General Assemblly do not like you and vote no: you're out. Because diplomacy and history exist, it makes it extremely difficult for new states or territories to become full members of the United Nations. This is the reason both Palestine and the Holy See (fancy schmancy name for the Vatican) are only observer parties.

In the end it is all just a game of who likes you and who you have pissed off, which makes it glorious, interesting and an absolute pain in the ass.

Hope you guys like this!

#lawblr #law #3L

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candleopen1 · 3 years

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Youngsters And Families Act 2014.

Family Members Law, Separation, Mediation, Pre.

Content

Children.

Mediation Does Not Function, Ive Currently Tried It.

Divorce.

The Length Of Time Might Mediation Take?

Regrettably, There Is No Legal Aid For Arbitration Services Yet We Do Use A Range Of Fixed Fees.

Household Mediation

On the other hand, litigation is often required prior to the commencement of any family mediation session. These sessions are generally used to obtain parenting agreements, child custody agreements, and any other final arrangements that are required before the dissolution of the marriage or relationship is final. As such, these sessions may be very lengthy, taking weeks or even months to complete. Attorneys need to make sure all necessary documentation is in place and that the parents have the right to participate in these sessions. This paperwork will often include a parenting plan, and periodic reports about how things are coming along.

In a traditional trial-based environment, a mediator would bring the parties together to discuss and decide upon a plan of action. Mediation can also resolve specific issues, such as child custody and visitation. In addition, it can help to ensure that a divorce is fair and the best solution for all involved. Because a mediator brings unbiased opinions, there is a better chance for everyone involved to reach an agreement that both can agree upon. Also, it is quicker and less expensive than a lengthy litigation process through the courts.

Kids.

In a typical family mediation, an experienced mediator helps the parties to discuss their child custody, visitation, alimony, and other related issues in an atmosphere of calm and trust. By using their knowledge of laws and communication skills, the trained mediator helps the parties come to an agreement without court action. Family law attorneys are usually involved in the mediation process as well. (A good mediation expert should also be able to assist a client with an amicable divorce settlement, if desired.)

In domestic settings where dispute resolution is primarily concerned with interpersonal conflicts, family mediation services provide a distinct advantage over alternative dispute resolution procedures. The primary advantage is that it facilitates effective communication between parties and it minimises the time and energy spent during the mediation process. It is also well suited to complex unresolved matters where a wide range of views are available. It helps resolve sensitive issues quickly and inexpensively.

Mediation Does Not Work, Ive Currently Attempted It.

There are several ways in which family mediation can be used to help the parties resolve their disputes. It can be used for a simple dispute, such as a divorce, to help an unhappy couple finalize their separation before it gets too late. Divorce mediation can help the parties come together before they begin divorce proceedings, making it easier for them to agree on child custody, visitation, and other important matters. However, family disputes that involve more complex issues, such as adoption, annulment, parental rights, and possible spousal support cannot be settled through mediation.

Ethiopia rejects African mediation, pushes toward rebel-held Tigray capital - Reuters

Ethiopia rejects African mediation, pushes toward rebel-held Tigray capital.

Posted: Sat, 21 Nov 2020 10:13:35 GMT [source]

Family mediation is often viewed by non-legal persons as a quaint 'clan' meeting, with an un-representative formality (the mediator being one family member) where the parties negotiate and reach some sort of agreement. This is in contrast to the more common family courts where family disputes are adjudicated by a single judge, often having multiple parties. Family mediation has been likened to an international village, where everyone can 'contribute' towards solving problems. But is this truly the case?

Separation.

The most common type of family mediation service involves a professionally trained mediator helping the parties jointly identify their position, draw up a written agreement and finally agree upon a mutually acceptable divorce procedure. Such agreements may include child custody and access (although the latter is usually decided between the parties rather than the mediator). An additional advantage of family mediation is that it tends to result in a faster and cheaper transition into the next stage of a relationship after a divorce. Unlike the more expensive ex parte court proceedings, the mediator's help tends to ameliorate the financial position of both parties, and tends to smooth out any existing feelings of anger or resentment. Family mediation also tends to produce quicker progress in resolving the true issues of abuse, mental illness or conflict. The trained mediator helps the parties recognize and resolve the abuse issue at the earliest opportunity.

In contrast, ex parte court proceedings tend to take a much longer time to conclude and can be very expensive for the parties involved. This can adversely affect a family's financial situation, increasing the stress levels and resulting difficulties in maintaining employment. The mediators in ex parte courts also lack the requisite professional experience of which mediators trained in family mediation are capable. Furthermore, mediators are not properly equipped to handle delicate emotional issues such as anger and grief, which can impede successful resolution of a dispute.

For How Long Might Mediation Take?

In order for family mediation to work well, both parents must be willing to participate. Involving one or both parents will likely mean mediation will not be successful. Also, if the parents do not have good communication skills, the entire process may not go very well. If the parents are unwilling to communicate with each other, the parents may fight and hurt each other while trying to convince the other to agree with them. Involving both parents will help to ensure the mediation process goes smoothly and that both parents have a positive influence on the mediation process.

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Medicaid mediation starts at loggerheads over membership, timing.

Posted: Wed, 18 Nov 2020 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Family mediation can either occur in-house or it can be outsourced to a third party company that provides the service. There are some pros and cons associated with each option. Family attorneys who use in-house mediation often provide the session at a significantly lower cost to the law firm. They also find it easier to conduct the actual sessions as well. Additionally, they are able to skip through the agreements much quicker and get to the bottom of issues more quickly.

Family mediation is an autonomous member of the ADR family of services. It forms one of the fundamental pillars of family mediation services offered internationally today. It is not mandatory for courts in many states to employ the services of family mediators when divorces are taking place. However, the courts often have discretion to do so in extraordinary circumstances.

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Family mediation has proven to be a great alternative to traditional litigation when a couple wants to finalize a matter involving their children without having to go to court. The process works best when both parents work together voluntarily to agree on a custody agreement. Although mediation may not be able to solve every family problem, it has been proven to be an effective alternative to traditional litigation. When a couple chooses to use mediation to finalize their divorce, they should make sure they use the services of a reputable mediator who is experienced in family mediation and understands the process. If you need help with finding the right mediator, feel free to contact the law firm of an attorney who is experienced in family mediation.

Another important advantage of family mediation over civil partnerships is that it tends to be cheaper. The cost of family mediation typically falls between the cost of a civil partnership and the cost of attending a family law court proceeding. Therefore, by using a professionally trained mediator, you can save money on legal fees. A mediator is also more qualified to help you with your family law case because he or she has experience dealing with similar cases. The experience and knowledge that a mediator has will help him or her to provide unbiased and objective advice that will help you achieve the outcomes that you are looking for.

As stated previously, couples who decide to resolve their conflict without the use of a professional mediator will discover that they are often unable to resolve certain disputes. If these issues cannot be resolved without outside help, then an attorney may become necessary. In addition, when trying to navigate the litigation process without legal representation, spouses are often unsure of their rights and are confronted with a number of problems. Mediation is often a safer way to resolve any kind of conflict, because the mediator working for you will have a strong background in family law and familiarity with the ins and outs of family mediation. A good mediator will know how to quickly apply the Settlement Agreement and will also know how to apply it in court, should it ever become necessary. Finally, if discover the best mediation grange over sands is not available, family mediation can also provide a safe way to resolve any kind of conflict and achieve some resolution.

Mediation services are usually utilized at the time of separation or divorce and to help facilitate negotiations that would otherwise bog down the process. all things couples mediation alston is widely considered preferable by attorneys and other professionals because it tends to lower costs and take a lot of court time. https://whitehaven.lakesmediation.co.uk/ tends to provide a much more effective resolution than alternative dispute resolution methods such as mediation and trial. Many attorneys use family mediation to settle their clients' divorce without a long and costly trial. And, family mediators are often able to resolve a wide range of family issues including child custody, asset division, spousal and child alimony, and issues concerning children with special needs.

Help Desk: Mediation can help you to create a more open, diverse workplace - Baltimore Business Journal

Help Desk: Mediation can help you to create a more open, diverse workplace.

Posted: Thu, 03 Dec 2020 08:00:00 GMT [source]

A far better alternative to the civil partnership process is the family mediation process. One major advantage of a family mediation process is that it tends to be a less stressful event for everyone. With civil partnerships, parties are usually required to attend an extensive pre-mediation phase in which they are presented with information regarding their rights and obligations, and are asked to determine what the best solution will be for them. Civil partnerships often entail long court appearances and days of heated arguments; mediation tends to be much more relaxed and tends to result in quick and relatively inexpensive solutions.

The term family mediation comes from the family mediation process in the context of family law in Australia, where the family law system in that jurisdiction follows a system where mediation is the preferred method for resolving family disputes. International experience teaches that family mediation is not a foreign concept, but a perfectly logical extension of family law in domestic settings where conflict resolution is usually regarded as a matter of public record. International practice also shows that family mediation tends to result in a higher rate of successful outcomes (especially in cases where parents have been unable to resolve their disputes through other means). These observations are consistent with the view that family mediation, with its focus on consensus resolution, is preferable to other methods of dispute resolution, particularly when disputes concern sensitive issues such as divorce and children.

At the very first meeting, an arbitrator will certainly talk to you regarding what takes place in arbitration so you can choose if it's for you.

If you do not get to an agreement, anything that's been stated during the mediation needs to be kept confidential as well as can not be utilized in future treatments.

Although there is no statutory law of mediators, the CMC runs a system of voluntary law for civil/commercial and also workplace arbitrators and suppliers.

This videoproduced by the University of Exeter aids discuss more about the mediation process and also gives advice regarding what can aid the arbitration process succeed.

A court fee is billed when you release any kind of case, yet no different cost is produced the arbitration.

If you determine you do not want to moderate, they'll tell your company arbitration is not possible.

If agreement is reached in mediation, put in composing and also authorized, it is binding like any kind of other contract.

The conciliator will aid you locate a remedy which benefits you both and explain just how you can make an arrangement legitimately binding.

The moderator will concur with both sides which details can be shared outside the mediation and also exactly how.

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fuanteinasekai · 5 years

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Tanuma Kaname and the Anime Problem

A sweet—and significant—moment in the middle of “Unchanging Form” that redefined Natsume and Tanuma’s relationship. Anime version: not found.

A BRAZEN THEFT

There’s a moment in “The Time-Eater” when a de-aged, amnesiac Natsume is sitting alone in Tanuma’s house, watching Sensei totter off in search of a cure. His friends observe him with concern. Taki comments to Tanuma that while Natsume’s transformation is difficult to believe, his “un-childlike, wooden” expression is still recognizable. After a brief acknowledgment from Tanuma, she rambles on that it’s good Sensei found their help, but wonders what will happen to Natsume if he can’t turn back. Then she sees Tanuma’s face, and her tone changes abruptly: she apologizes to him, saying she’s sure Sensei will fix the problem, there’s just not much they can do themselves.

There’s little ambiguity in this sequence: the change in Taki’s tone is visually apparent in the style of speech bubbles—from the soft curves of “normal” speech to the more angular lines of emphatic speech. And the use of a “…” speech bubble makes it clear that Tanuma is responding with silence, not just listening from the outside. Even Taki’s body language supports this reading, her fist awkwardly balled up as if to say “oh crap, I screwed up.”

The effect is to create a contrast. Though Taki had shown concern at an earlier point in the story, she now demonstrates an ability to emotionally detach enough to speculate about undesirable results—she’s the kind yet tactless bookish friend. Tanuma, on the other hand, is too hurt by the thought to speak. The implication is that Tanuma is more invested in Natsume as someone he can emotionally relate to—not just a friend to take care of or have fun with, but a mental equal to share life with.

This theme continues, sometimes subtly, throughout the story. Whether it’s gently checking on a frightened Natsume while Taki giggles about how fun it was to chase him, or single-handedly dealing with Natsume’s fear of being hated by his caretakers, manga-Tanuma consistently demonstrates a higher level of attention and emotional intimacy. He’s even the one to beg Natsume to “come back,” a symbolically important role. The implied intimacy is not one-sided—Tanuma is the only character Natsume is unambiguously shown to regain memories of.

Yet when the anime adapted this scene, the dynamic is reversed. The visual staging and the progression of Taki’s tone of voice are changed to imply that she is, absurdly, apologizing to herself rather than Tanuma. The anime’s framing centers her and her stolen emotions, though it fails to do so for Tanuma later when it’s actually supposed to. Instead of reacting sadly to Taki’s rambling, Tanuma is shown observing with a blank expression at unrelated moments, looking as if he doesn’t understand why she’s upset.

The dialog remains exactly the same, simply recontextualized, and Tanuma is still shown reacting, merely at a different point; so it doesn’t save a millisecond of time or even art. The only practical reason for this change is to change the implication. In other words, the anime reversed the characterization of the manga in order to make the girl more sensitive than the boy. This continues throughout the episode: if a moment belongs to Taki, it’s Taki’s; if a moment belongs to Tanuma, he either shares it with Taki or gives it up entirely.

This is not an insignificant quibble. Taki and Tanuma’s personality differences and the way they relate to Natsume inform their roles in the broader story and the way their relationships with Natsume evolve. The anime erased one of the single most important aspects of this story.

Anime vs. Manga. [Remember that Japanese reads right to left.] The corruption of Taki’s “I screwed up” fist into an “I’m a delicate bird” fist is almost hilariously manipulative. Taki is feminine, but she’s anything but delicate—it’s one of her most admirable traits. And I could go on about the use of white space and merging shadows on the bottom left, but honestly the staging isn’t subtle. Natsume is talking to Tanuma, and Taki is watching. Any such implications preserved in the anime are so brief and unnoticeable as to be not worth crediting.

Prior to this episode, I had given the anime the benefit of the doubt, assuming that the numerous emotional scenes they cut from Tanuma repertoire were simply too long to fit. But there’s no such excuse here. Either (1) Taki’s lack of feminine intuition and Tanuma’s lack of masculine stoicism were unacceptable, or (2) the boy being more sensitive than the girl was too suggestive of queerness. Whether out of their own discomfort or to placate the audience, the anime has deliberately adapted the manga in a way that downplays Tanuma’s sensitivity and his emotional significance to Natsume. And while the above examples are among the most difficult to explain away, they are far from alone.

There’s a reason I’m bringing this up.

The popularity and availability of the anime mean that most people who’ve read the manga have also watched the anime—perhaps even seen the anime first—which means that their understanding of characterization and development is likely influenced by it. But Midorikawa-sensei isn’t using the anime to guide her writing, she’s using her own. (Little could be more obviously devil-may-care than making a story’s last minute reveal revolve around the color of something we’ve already seen. Have fun with that, anime!) And that means viewers (and readers) are being misled not only about what function characters play in the narrative, but also where the story is going.

DISTORTED LENS

For a look at the way a cynical, targeted heteronormative adaptation can influence characterization, themes, and even perception of the source material itself, there’s no better example than “The Other Side of the Glass,” a.k.a. the Omibashira Arc.

At first glance, the anime appears to have made a perfectly reasonable adaptation of the manga. When boiled down to plot points, it looks the same. And it’s still romantic enough, on Tanuma’s part, to make people uncomfortable (hat tip to the “fan” in the Crunchyroll comments complaining that Tanuma wasn’t Taki). Yet in reality, it’s a complete mess, with (in addition to a new cringe-inducing fake boy/girl scene) nearly the entire mansion sequence rewritten to change both the themes and characterization, spinning the emotional focus off its axis.

When I first read the manga, I was struck by two impressions: One, that it was much more delicate than the anime, with a painful, slow interplay between Tanuma and Natsume that spirals into emotional collapse for both. Two, that it was somehow also sloppy and inconsistent. At first I couldn’t put my finger on why, but then I realized, it was this:

Tanuma, looking supremely ungrateful, as Natori hands him the talisman stone.

What I perceived as “sloppiness” was actually the dissonance between the anime characterization and the manga. Because I had seen the anime first, I had subconsciously projected its version of the characters onto the manga, and thus found it jarring when, for example, the normally sweet manga-Tanuma continued to act petty and angry toward Natori long after the more assertive anime-Tanuma had shyly introduced himself.

Hmmmmm.

The anime’s replacement of manga themes with their own was too surgically precise to be unintentional. Once I recognized what they were doing, I started making accurate predictions about what else they would change. This is, without a doubt, a story revised to meet the anime’s priorities.

It would be impossible to list everything the anime changed without essentially transcribing the entire manga, so instead I will focus on three of the most important scenes.

Right to left, again!

First is the scene I mentioned above. This is where Natori apologizes to Natsume for not being able to get him out quickly, but also where Natori and Natsume treat Tanuma like a child—or worse, an object. Natori suggests splitting up and Natsume agrees, immediately charging Sensei with “following” Tanuma like he’s a wandering child, then with finding the exit. Tanuma is never addressed directly. Both Natori and Tanuma notice Natsume is in an agitated mental state, but it’s Tanuma who steps in and tries to provide emotional support, gently suggesting that they take a break. Natsume brushes him off, inadvertently rejecting Tanuma himself, and pretends to be okay. But in the next frame he’s mentally chiding himself not to “leave his heart unguarded” and “get led astray,” suggesting he’s afraid that his emotions for Tanuma will distract him and lead to disaster. Tanuma calls after him, but Natori interrupts with the talisman stone, snidely throwing his earlier rescue in Tanuma’s face: “Take this. It’s a protection stone. Since you’re no match for an ayakashi when it matters, are you?” Tanuma accepts with cold politeness, then gives up.

This is plainly intended to help set the groundwork for Tanuma’s emotional collapse. And it’s likely setting up his recklessness in dealing with Omibashira. The scene as a whole is a microcosm for the relationship issues that led to this point. Natsume relies on distance to maintain his equilibrium, pushing Tanuma away to “protect” him and calm his own mind, but also effectively rejecting Tanuma’s affection in the process. Though Tanuma tries to do something he’s actually good at, his rejection leads him to behave more recklessly so that he can be useful anyway—and perhaps earn Natsume’s respect. For his part, Natori is everything Tanuma thinks Natsume would prefer him to be: powerful, self-assured, with movie star looks. Perhaps worse, he speaks the judgmental opinions Tanuma is afraid Natsume holds, dismissing Tanuma as weak and useless. Natori takes Natsume’s side in pushing Tanuma away because it aligns with his cynicism: he, too, believes ordinary people must be rejected to be protected. That to make them “treasures” is to make himself “weak.”

In the anime, this becomes a scene where Natori does all the planning, where Natsume never pushes Tanuma away, where Tanuma insists on helping ineptly and Natsume is open about his fears. Instead of cruelly dismissive, Natori is silly with jokes about “not making a lady work.” Instead of distant and avoidant, explicitly trying to bottle up his emotions, Natsume is openly emotional, saying “If anything were to happen to you...” He’s far too articulate.

Thematic change #1: Instead of being emotionally repressed and struggling to adapt, Natsume becomes the Generic Hero, nobly worried about his foolish best friend who doesn’t know his own limits.

Second is this scene between Tanuma and Sensei. Here Tanuma fishes for validation from Sensei, pestering him incessantly about “that ‘Natori' guy” and “that ‘Reiko' girl.” He asks whether Natori can sense presences like they can, but Sensei brushes him off because sight is more important. He calls Natori “high pressure” but Sensei defends Natori, saying it’s a habit from having so many enemies. He’s about to interrogate Sensei about exorcists when Sensei finally snaps, saying “Don’t ask me, ask Natsume!” It’s a cruel, if not exactly intentional, reminder that Natsume never told Tanuma about Reiko or Natori or exorcists in general in the first place—yet another step closer to emotional collapse. Tanuma’s whole tone is clearly one of insecurity, digging for evidence that he’s better than Natori at something, however petty. Tanuma never lets go of this. Even at the end of the story, he’s making backhanded comments:

祓い屋って…やっぱり資格とか必要なんですか？ An “exorcist”.... Do you really need “qualifications” or whatever, after all?

This patent insecurity, framing Natori as a literal rival, evaporates in the anime adaptation. His exchange with Sensei about Natori is bastardized to make his opinion positive, with a laughably transparent “I think that ‘Natori’ exorcist might actually be a good person.” Instead of fishing for validation, Tanuma interrogates Sensei about how Natsume really felt about his involvement. As if he got involved out of bad judgment. As if it were not, instead, the emotional desperation of someone repeatedly shut out, repeatedly in the dark, finally having an opportunity to do something without being able to see Natsume tense up and try to escape. This reinvented scene is capped off with a wholly new comment from Sensei: “Someone weak like you will get eaten [in this world].”

Considering this scene was meant to be an illustration of Tanuma’s insecurities and his ineffective attempt to quell them, it’s almost comically cruel that the anime chooses to not only canonize Tanuma’s uselessness as a central theme, but to make their voice Sensei, the only character in the manga to give Tanuma any agency. Not only was Sensei the one who involved Tanuma in the first place (a fact the anime makes no attempt to explain), he’s also the one who trusted Tanuma with the task of freeing Natsume. The anime vaguely implies that Sensei and Tanuma worked up a plan together, but the manga was clear: Sensei more or less gives Tanuma a mask and kimono, slaps him on the back and says “you’re on your own.” Tanuma stumbled around interviewing dangerous yōkai by himself long enough to work up a sweat. The sake bottle gambit was all his.

(Though the above is mildly exaggerated for humor, it’s still more accurate than the anime.)

This scene doesn’t just miss the point, it flips it. Tanuma having good judgment is one of his central character traits. Natsume even says so in the same chapter, describing Tanuma as 思慮深い and 慎重, meaning that he is meticulously thoughtful, careful, and responsible. The problem, here, is not his lack of judgment. It’s that his judgment is overwhelmed by his emotions toward Natsume. Natsume, in his inexperience and emotional immaturity, has used the Natori-esque technique of outright avoiding people during yōkai problems. This leaves Tanuma with no outlet for his love and desire to support Natsume, a suppression and repression that eventually builds to the point of desperation. Natsume getting stuck in a bottle where Tanuma could not see or hear him was a crack in a wall that was already under a lot of pressure. As Tanuma says, blushing, at the end of the manga:

姿見えないから勢いで超キザなこと言った気がする… I have a feeling I got carried away when I couldn’t see you, and said something super-cheesy...

Thematic change #2: Instead of behaving uncharacteristically out of emotional vulnerability and insecurity, Tanuma is merely weak and foolish.

Third, we have the climax: Natsume’s emotional collapse when Tanuma finally gets hurt. Here, it’s the little details that really matter, like manga Natori showing up and utterly failing to acknowledge the collapsed boy at Natsume’s knees until Natsume falls apart. Anime Natori gets Sensei’s lines, reassuring Natsume as if he actually values Tanuma. Or the moment when Natori finally admits that Tanuma is important, which the anime gives soft-focus to emotionally center Natori instead of Natsume’s emotional needs. Or even the moment just afterward when Natsume—his and Omibashira’s eyes now open—regains his strength.

The manga has:

ぐずぐずするな夏目　あれを封じんとこいつもお前も帰れんぞ Sensei: Don’t dawdle, Natsume. Neither [you nor Tanuma] are going home if you don’t seal that guy. ああ　そうだな Natsume: Right!

The anime completely rewrites this:

夏目無理なら私が行くぞ Sensei: If you’re not up to it, I'll go. いや俺が行く俺が行きます Natsume: No, I’m going [to Sensei]. I’m going [to Natori].

Thereby making Sensei strangely soft, and Tanuma an emotional drain Natsume has to shake off, instead of someone Sensei recognizes as a motivator.

Again the anime misses the point of the original manga. Or, perhaps more likely, dislikes the point. Natori is not, as they would have it, here to be the knight in shining armor, saving the silly boys and wisely imposing emotional advice. Natori is usually wrong about emotions, and this has always been so.

Though he means well and tries his hardest to be a good mentor, it’s Natori who offered to take Natsume away from the Fujiwaras, and gave him a nightmare about it. It’s Natori who told Natsume he had to “choose a side” between yōkai and humans, directly contributing to the child god’s rejection of Natsume. It’s Natori who, on finally being told of the Book of Friends, said he’d rather just burn it. When they first met, Sensei described him as “full of hate” for yokai, and there’s no reason to believe he’s improved. Yorishima’s accusation that he’s becoming more like Matoba is in his second most recent appearance (as of the end of 2018).

This should be no surprise: he’s only 22 and on top of that lacks even 15/16-year-old Natsume’s experience with healthy emotional relationships. From a strictly logical perspective, he has no basis to be wise.

Furthermore, his given name 周一 (Shūichi) literally means “circuit one” or “lap one.” Though it’s typically used for a first-born son, here it has another meaning: Natori is the first version of Natsume himself. He was the powerful “good kid” (as Hiiragi called him, and as he called Natsume) who was turned bitter, isolated, and cynical by yokai trouble and emotional neglect. His attitude and his life reflect the direction Natsume was heading at the beginning of the series, when he says “I’d rather talk to [a yōkai exterminator] than to yōkai.” Natori is the little boy who “just wants to live alone,” all grown up and living alone.

In other words, Natori is what Natsume could have become without the unconditional love and acceptance of the Fujiwaras, and of Nishimura and Kitamoto; without the protective buffer of Nyanko-Sensei, and without the emotional pull of Tanuma. Perhaps without the cautionary tale of Taki: his inverted mirror in ability, desire for sight, and family life. (And gender.)

(Similarly, Reiko is the “avoided path” whose tragically short and lonely life is redeemed by the growth her “Book of Friends” forcibly imparts on her grandson—and she, too, makes an appearance here through Sensei.)

In fact, this is supported by, of all things, Natori’s paper bag mask. Besides being funny, it hides a bit of subtext. The marks are meaningless alone, but taken with the shape of the bag you get 肉. This is the word niku, meaning “meat,” but more importantly “flesh” as contrasted with “spirit.” Natori’s life, and his path, are preservative for the corporeal body, but spiritually sterile.

Natori is here not to be a hero, but to admit he is wrong and Tanuma is right. He is still Natsume’s best source for advice on human magic, and still the protective older brother figure, but he is utterly lacking in the kind of relationship experience that Natsume needs advice on. The best he can do is to say “it might be terribly difficult, but you need [what I threw away].”

This isn’t just a moment of realization for Natori—it’s a dramatic reversal. The boy he was so foolishly, cruelly dismissive of, believing him to be nothing but an intrusive, “reckless” child, is actually a desperately devoted key to Natsume’s happiness. In a sense, we’ve known this all along. The standard Japanese word for “necessary” [that Natori uses] is 必要 (hitsuyō), and it contains the same kanji as Tanuma’s given name 要 (Kaname). There’s good reason: Kaname literally means “the most important person or piece.” He is the lynchpin of Natsume’s emotional growth.

We see this just three stories earlier in “The Long Road Home” when Tanuma confronts Natsume for lying about his parents' photo, thereby setting his visit to his childhood home in motion. This visit makes Natsume feel “lighter” and helps him let go of the past so he can recognize the Fujiwaras as his (new) true home. Tanuma’s role is so important he gets an entire third of the arc. In other words, Tanuma is the anchor who steadies Natsume so he can have stronger relationships with ordinary people.

In downplaying Natori’s cynicism, the anime also erases the reversal, and with it the sense that Natori has been convinced of the impossible by Natsume’s loving (if unintentional) description of Tanuma’s devotion. This opens up the scene for a broader interpretation that's about ordinary relationships in general instead of Tanuma specifically.

Thematic change #3: From Natori the avatar of emotionally barren power conceding to Tanuma the avatar of love, to Natori the charming if a bit silly hero saving Tanuma from driving Natsume away.

These are not the only losses, though they are the largest thematic issues. The anime suffers continuously from a Natsume who is far too aware and open about his emotions, and a Tanuma who doesn’t get interrupted or sabotaged. The groundwork for their respective breakdowns is poor.

The result is a two-parter that satisfies as many fans as possible, at the cost of Tanuma’s (and Natori’s) symbolic role. Anime Natori is fluffed up for his fans, and anime Tanuma is sweet enough to satisfy his fans without threatening those who would be uncomfortable with his fundamental centrality. In other words, it’s a cynical, heteronormative adaptation that assumes there is no long-term purpose to Tanuma’s role—an assumption they may come to regret.

力になりたいと頑張ってもやはり出来ない・かなわないということはあって、前向きに行動をとればとる程それにぶちあたってしまう田沼。話したいけれど話すと、そいうジレンマに田沼がおちいるとだんだんわかってきた夏目。それを見て、それ見たことか！と言いたいけれどそうとも言ってしまえない不思議な可能性に、口から出る言葉が変わっていってしまう名取。と、それぞれの立場のズレあいが描けてとても楽しかったです。普段描けないような夏目の表情が描けた先生ナツメもワクワクしながら描けました。あらためて夏目は表情とぼしい奴だなと実感しました。

Tanuma, who wants to help, but can’t no matter how hard he tries. Who, having things he cannot handle, finds that the more positively he takes action, the more he runs into that problem.

Natsume, who wants to talk, but is gradually coming to understand it leads Tanuma into that dilemma.

Natori, who wants to say “See, I told you so!” but finds himself unable, a curious possibility escaping his mouth instead.

I enjoyed drawing the meeting of these incongruous positions. I was also excited about drawing expressions on Sensei-Natsume that I normally can’t. I felt a renewed sense that Natsume was a guy with few expressions.

In Part 2, I’ll be talking about the textual basis for canonical Tanuma-Natsume soulmates, and how this is downplayed by the anime.

#Tanuma Kaname #Natsume Takashi #Natsume's Book of Friends #natsume yuujinchou #田沼要 #夏目貴志 #夏目友人帳 #Let's be honest #this turns into #田夏 #eventually.#meta #a bit of Natori meta in here too #technically #Several large images behind the cut.#Sorry if you're on a bad connection!#anime vs manga

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ofvernacular · 5 years

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Tom McCarthy’s ‘Satin Island’ and the Anthropological Apparatus

What does an anthropologist do? U., a corporate anthropologist and the protagonist of Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island, tells the readers of the novel that “Structures of kinship; systems of exchange, barter and gift; symbolic operations lurking on the flipside of the habitual and the banal: identifying these, prising them out and holding them up, kicking and wriggling, to the light—” is his job (McCarthy 15). U. is the in-house ethnographer for a consultancy evasively called The Company. The Company “advised other companies how to contextualize and nuance their services and products. It advised cities how to brand and re-brand themselves; regions how to elaborate and frame regenerative strategies; governments how to narrate their policy agendas—to the press, the public and, not least, themselves.” Peyman, The Company’s head and another elusive figure through the novel, liked to say that “[They] dealt…in narratives” (McCarthy 16).

A narrative, defined primordially by the Oxford dictionary as a “written account of connected events,” is further defined as a “representation of a particular situation or process in such a way as to reflect or conform to an overarching set of aims or values.” The narrative, taken as a representation of a set of values, can be likened to an ideology. Ideology, as Louis Althusser proposes, is a “representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.” Althusser says that what we commonly call ideologies are one of many “world outlooks,” which when examined

As the ethnologist examines the myths of a “primitive society,” are largely imaginary, i.e. do not correspond to reality. However, while admitting that they do not correspond to reality, i.e. that they constitute an illusion, we admit that they do make allusion to reality, and that they need only be “interpreted” to discover the reality of the world behind their imaginary representation of that world.

(Althusser 693)

If we understand The Company’s role as that of dealing in narratives, in investigating the existing ones and articulating new ones as consultations to other companies and governments, then we come to view the company as an agent of ideologization. When Peyman first hired U., he told him that “the Company needed an anthropologist because its entire field of operations lay in analysing groups, picking apart their operations and reporting back on this” (McCarthy 49). U. being the company’s anthropologist, was their specialist in the intellectual discipline of people and society. Therefore, U. determined the narratives that operated in society, that is, uncovered the imaginary relationships between individuals of society and their real conditions, and found ways for companies to modify these imaginary relationships to their own profit. Whenever the Company took upon a project, the brief would be worked at from “several angles, bringing all [their] intellectual disciplines to bear upon [it]…and slapping the pertinent offerings of each of these down on the collective table.” These offerings would be amalgamated into a concept, and Peyman would convert these concepts “into tangible undertakings that had measurable outcomes” (McCarthy 50) via the Company which, U. claimed, had “supplanted [family, or ethnic and religious groupings] as the primary structure of the modern tribe” (McCarthy 48). How specifically did U. aid the Company’s clients in achieving this?

…we unpick the fibre of a culture (ours), its weft and warp—the situations it throws up, the beliefs that underpin and nourish it—and let a client in on how they can best get traction of this fibre so that they can introduce into the weave their own fine, silken thread, strategically embroider or detail it with a mini-narrative (a convoluted way of saying: sell their product).

(McCarthy 25; emphasis mine)

With this construction of narratives for companies, U. helped them gain hegemony, or “social power or domination” (Rivkin 673) in society. These mini-narratives allowed companies to subtly reconfigure the imaginary relationships of people to their real conditions. Antonio Gramsci proposed that “power [could] be maintained without force if the consent of the dominated can be obtained through education and other kinds of cultural labor on the part of such intellectuals as priests and journalists” (Rivkin 673). U. was an intellectual employed by The Company for this very purpose. Gramsci said that society could be fixed into two major “superstructural levels,” one being “civil society” or all private organisations, and the other “political society” or the State.

These two levels correspond on the one hand to the function of “hegemony” which the dominant group exercises throughout society, and on the other to that of “direct domination” or command…

The intellectuals are the dominant group’s “deputies” exercising the subaltern functions of social hegemony and political government.

(Gramsci 673)

The dominant group, comprising of the owners of production, that is the corporations, thus control the dominant ideology of the society, meaning that they have hegemony over the society, and U., being an intellectual, stands at the base of this distribution of ideas, or these mini-narratives. The dominated group, or general society, accepts this domination by giving “spontaneous consent…to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group…historically caused by the prestige which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production.”

To further our understanding of how these mini-narratives function in society, we must look at U. as a representative of “the great masses of people” (Gramsci 637) to the corporations, or to “the dominant group” and consider representation through the work of Gayatri Spivak. By representing what the public wants to the corporations, U. is “[speaking] for” them, in a political sense, as opposed to ‘re-presenting’ them in the sense of art or philosophy (Spivak 275). Just as an agent of colonialization would study the natives of their inhabited colony and represent them to the Empire, U., in the capacity of an Ethnographer (historically also recognized as professional agents of colonialization), would do field research which was

…about identifying and probing granular, mechanical behaviours, extrapolating from a sample batch of these a set of blueprints, tailored according to each brief—blueprints which, taken as a whole and cross-mapped onto the findings of more “objective” or empirical studies…lay bare some kind of inner social logic, which can be harnessed, put to use.

(McCarthy 25; emphasis mine)

and present it to the company, or the modern day Empire. An example of this was the way U. had, for a breakfast cereal company, unravelled the symbolic significance behind the first meal of the day, behind fasts and breaking them, and feed all his interpretations and discoveries back to the client, for them to incorporate these cultural insights into their branding and packaging to make their way back into people’s shopping carts. The conception of representation as a tool of indirect oppression and even social control helps us understand the deep hegemony formed by the Company, in which U. played a crucial role. In chapter 4 of the novel, while U. pondered his “official function as a corporate ethnographer, [which] was to garner meaning from all types of situation,” he realised that sometimes he allowed himself to think that “[his] job was to put meaning in the world” and not the other way around (McCarthy 38). Later in the novel, in chapter 12, we see a development in these ponderings.

Around this time, my attitude not only to the Great Project but also towards Koob-Sassen [Project] underwent a sea-change. I started seeing the project as nefarious. Sinister. Dangerous…Worming its way into each corner of the citizenry’s lives, re-setting (“re-configuring”) the systems lying behind and bearing virtually on their every action and experience, and doing this without their even knowing it…

I started to regress my own part in it all…I was quite literally underground: secreted…among the Company’s foundations…This afforded me no power to shape the Project in a formal or official way—but to unshape it, sabotage it even…

(McCarthy 154, 155)

Upon this moment, U. realized his subversive power as an agent of ideologization, as a mediator of the narrative built between the dominant group and the masses. Koob-Sassen was the Company’s latest and till now most consequential project. His “issuing erroneous interpretations and assertions, or even insinuations, could lead to key decisions being made later that were catastrophically bad ones…[He] could do it, if [he] wanted: [he] could torch the fucker…” (McCarthy 154). The Koob-Sassen project, U. claimed, was so important that there wasn’t a “single area of your daily life that it [hadn’t], in some way or other, touched on, penetrated, changed; although you probably don’t know this.” This pervasiveness is reminiscent of ideological manifestation. Ideologies, enabled through narratives constructed by dominant groups, are so deeply worked into the frame of society that they affect the lives of all individuals, however go by unnoticed. A similar demand of overarching theorisation, titled the Great Report, was made by Peyman to U. personally. It was the Company’s ultimate assignment for U. that he had the liberty to create and work on whenever he could.

“The document, [Peyman] said; the Book. The First and Last Word on our age. Over and above all the other work you’ll do here at the Company, that’s what I’m really hiring you to come up with. It’s what you anthropologists are for, right?

…you don your khakis, schlep off to some jungle, hang out with the natives, fish and hunt with them…then, after about a year, they lug your bales and cases down to the small jetty that connects their tiny world to the big one…send you back to your study…you write the book.

Not just a book: the fucking Book. You write the Book on them. Sum their tribe up. Speak its secret name.”

(McCarthy 70)

This directive can be seen as problematic in many ways. Peyman, the head of the Company which not only directly influences the dominant ideology, but also dispenses ideologies to other companies, other centres of narrative distribution, is demanding an almost “codex” on the “modern tribe,” the entire populous of the era. This overreaching, overarching text, U.’s representation of the social order and the intrinsic logic that determines that social order, could be used corporately for the purposes of ultimate hegemony. This need for a fantastic “brand-new navigation manual” (McCarthy 71) betrayed the Company’s intent to be colonizers of the entire era, the supreme capitalist-industrialists. For the course of over half the novel we see U. investigate the “symbolic operations lurking on the flipside of the habitual and the banal,” (McCarthy 15) indulging in identifying patterns and connections between oil spills and parachutist deaths, hoping to find some “universal structure lurking beneath nature’s surface” (McCarthy 18). We can understand why a professional ethnographer was chosen for this corporate project, for ethnographers specialise in investigating practices and social behaviours, it is their job to uncover the symbolic, that is the conceptual, purpose of human acts. Any concept to be expressed, according to Ferdinand de Saussure, must be attached to a signifier. “A science that studies the life of signs within society is conceivable,” (Saussure 60) and it is called semiology. Culture, like language, is a semiotic affair, claims anthropologist Clifford Geertz (5). Culture, being a collection of such symbols, can be read as a text, interpreted in its own way, and U. does just that. In investigating various cases of parachutist deaths and oil spills, he looks for intertextuality to explain connections that may govern the occurrence of these events. U. being the medium through which the interpretation of what is signified through any social event is passed onto the Company for entwinement into the dominant ideology, becomes a locus of translation. He maintains dossiers, collections of observations and interpretations, on a variety of events, for professional and personal purposes. The intertextuality within cultural practices or social events becomes quite literal in the case of this ethnographer. U. becomes the translator of culture for the companies, an intermediary between these far-removed dominating groups and the masses.

We can understand the nature of far-removedness of those who dominate by the way that they are titled or signified in the novel. The Company always remains the company, and is never signified as anything more specific. “To the anthropologist, it’s generic episodes and phenomena that stand out as significant, not singular ones…the more generic, therefore, the more pure, the closer to an unvariegated or unscrambled archetype.” (McCarthy 74). The Company was a generic consultancy, pure and archetypal. This loose signification also helped bolster its affective value for the reader, helping it encompass more meaning and signify more concepts than a more accurate signifier. The lesser the difference between The Company and other companies, the more overarching, overbearing its presence was made to seem. The Company was further headed by an equally illusory character, Peyman, who for his employees was “everything and nothing.”

Everything because he connected [them] individually and severally…connected [them]…to [their] own age… He connected the age to itself and, in doing so, called it into being. At the same time he was nothing. Because, in playing this role, he underwent a kind of reverse camouflage.

That’s a Peyman thing. You would find yourself saying this several times a week—that is, seeing tendencies Peyman has named or invented, Peymanic paradigms and inclinations, movements, everywhere, till he appeared in everything; which is the same as disappearing.”

(McCarthy 52)

Peyman’s signification as a god-like figure who was “above” and reclusive reinforced the Company’s signification as an overbearing presence in society. It was told that Peyman “took up spectral residence within some sacred recess full of ministers and moguls over whom he held sway” (McCarthy 53). This description solidified the hegemony that was held by him and exercised through the apparatus of the Company. However, as much as Peyman connected everything to everything, it was still U. who mediated much of society to Peyman, becoming one of his most valuable right-hand men. The writer of Peyman’s fantastic Great Report, the translator of cultural texts, and one of Peyman’s personal interpreters of culture.

Towards the end of the novel, in a chapter revealing the story of another character Madison, the woman U. is dating, we are given testimony to the unassailable nature of a hegemony. In a narration of Madison’s activism days, she tells U. about an incident where protesters against capitalism at the G8 summit in Genoa were gathered, beaten and held by the police. Her narration followed into an account of her abduction by a strange old man in a mansion who made her enact various classical poses. At the end of this encounter she was released from the mansion without many of her belongings except her wallet. When U. asked her how she reached home, she narrated

I saw a little airport icon by the [train] stop just before Turin…so that’s where I got off and bought a ticket back to London—again, with my credit card. I remember thinking that it was ironic.

That it was my credit card that saved me after I’d been protesting against capitalism.

(McCarthy 198)

This account helped place the incontestability of a hegemony once put in place. The dominant ideology was the one in the book that took the ultimate position, the final word. There was no final cultural subversion, U., in the last pages of the book when given the opportunity to investigate his much fantasized Satin or Staten Island took up no such opportunity, and the existing fate of society was accepted by all the characters.

This essay, in conclusion, tried to trace the story of U.’s struggle with the nature of his company’s work, and understand his company’s role as that of a hegemony in society, with U. being one of its principle propagators of ideology. The essay made it important to understand the works of Gramsci, Althusser, Spivak, and Saussure to forward the argument made, with select references to Anthropologist Clifford Geertz.

#english literature #literature #anthropology #critical theory #literary theory #hegemony #gramsci #spivak #althusser #geertz

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walkedental · 3 years

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Dental implants Durham

A dental implant may be a "root" device, usually produced with titanium, utilised in dentistry to allow for restorations that look like a tooth or list of teeth to restore missing teeth. Most of implant has a titanium screw (resembling a tooth root) that has a roughened or smooth surface. A good number of dental implants durham are composed of commercially pure titanium, which is supplied in 4 grades might the length of carbon and iron contained.

They can be used as the support and retention of dentures, fixed bridgework and also the replacing several missing teeth.

Pretty much all dental implants placed today are root-form end osseous implants , i.e., they appear like a genuine root (and thus possess a "root-form"). They are put with the jaw bone and be placed on surrounding jaw bone. The bone for the jaw accepts and Osseo integrates considering the titanium post.

Osseo integration refers back to the fusion for the implant surface with the nearby bone. Dental implants will fuse with bone, nevertheless they lack the periodontal ligament, so they'll feel slightly unique of natural teeth do during chewing functions.

The implants remain rigid in place of have any flexibility that natural teeth have as they are attached individually towards periodontal ligament.

Ahead of the advance of root-form end osseous implants, most implants were either blade end osseous implants , in this particular is very important for the metal piece placed with the bone resembled an apartment blade, or sub-periosteal implants , where a framework was constructed to lie upon and was placed on screws towards the exposed bone for the jaws.

Dental implants may be used to support several dental prostheses, including crowns, implant-supported bridges or dentures. They doubles as anchorage for orthodontic tooth movement. The usage of dental implants permits un-directional tooth movement without reciprocal action.

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Placing implants such places could cause prolonged and/or permanent numbness of period of time lip and jaw. An awfully undesirable outcome indeed!

Although a lot of dental professionals can provide implants, for you to do your due diligence and guarantee that the professional you pick, is trained and experienced in dental implant procedures.

Oral surgeons, Periodontitis, Endodontists and general dental practitioners who've had the actual required training and education can perform this specific repair for you.

Any dental implant procedure seriously isn't usually painful during or following a surgical placement. Usually performed with conditions topical anaesthetic but alternative methods like nitrous oxide, IV sedation and/or general anaesthetic procedures are available.

Would like to have your General Practitioner do this action, be sure to ask the amount of that person done. And exactly how when and where they were given their learning implant procedures.

The healing time required before loading and placing the denture, crown or fixed bridge in the implant are vastly different widely. I do think most practitioners will grant from 2-6 months with the recovery process and finish bone integration to have place.

Nevertheless, the immediate placement into web sites extraction site and immediate loading has become more considering that the success for this action are usually quite acceptable.

Should you experience a dental implant advertisement that states “Teeth in any day”, it’s really a procedure right for your completely edentulous (no teeth present) case where the many teeth need to be extracted or are already extracted.

You might consider ask tend to be success rate for dental implants? Well that rrs dependent upon the operators skills, on the coffee quality and variety of bone present, the patient's good oral cleaning and condition of uncooperative teeth and supportive gum tissue.

A patients who smokes, have diabetes, poor good oral cleaning habits and/or other compromising the health issues are NOT superb candidates for a profitable implant procedures.

The rate of success in good candidates can be really high. Around 95%. The money necessary an dental implant is commonly $1,250 to $3,000. Based upon your needs, additional costs for things for example if you are a posterior mandible, bone regeneration, sinus elevation, and wide diameter or narrow diameter implants can easily escalate the charges involved up to $15,000 to $30,000 for the overall strategy of the top of or lower jaw.

That being said, an associated cost of any un-complicated single implant varies between 1500.00 and 3,000.00 depending your address and who is coming along the surgery.

Many dental schools for instance may have a relatively specialty program which could offer to perform one particular implant for a large discount compared to personal practice. Consequently, living near a dental school and become accepted constantly in their dental school implant program, you might also provide an implant or implants done at a lower life expectancy price.

Know that most estimates given for implants don't invariably add some superstructure that might be placed on the implant. Therefore, it can be as much you discover how much the total cost might be including the price the crown or crowns, bridgework or dentures specifically required.

For edentulous patients with to put on lower dentures, the implant procedure is among the most next most convenient thing to sliced bread. Providing are a fantastic candidate and can also afford it, dental implants can improve yourself considerably.

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datavan · 3 years

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Cassandra Demo

In this second blog post, I am going to show everyone how to create your very own 3 node Cassandra cluster. You will have to have some items set up beforehand. The first item that will need to be created are three different virtual machines, each with a working operation system. In this exercise, I have created three different VM using the VMware Work Station; each with a working Linux Ubuntu OS. (Why Linux Ubuntu? No real reason, I just like that OS. Beware that for different OS, there will be different commands that I might not cover).

The second item that will need to be set up is a two-parter. Both the Java Development Kit and the Python Software Development Kit need to be functional in each VM, for Cassandra to be able to execute properly. In this exercise, I have installed the most current stable version the JDK available. The only thing I will mention, in case anyone is following along with the blog, do remember to include the following line of code in your .bashrc user profile file:

#$ export PATH=$PATH:~/Documents/jdk1.8.0_202/bin

It is the only way Cassandra will recognize that the JDK is running on your OS.

As for the Python SDK, that is a whole another animal all together. The following commands (2 commands) need to be entered on command line, within the Python directory:

#$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local

#$ make

Once this is done, the source code for Python itself has been compiled. You will also need to download PIP, which lets you manage libraries, directories and drivers for Python. Now with the way Python works, you can have several versions of Python present on the same OS. You need to make sure the version you are working with is Python 2.7 (Documentation does say that it supports 3.6, 3.7 and 3.8). The last item you will download for the SDK is the Cassandra-driver, which lets the python interpreter talk to the ./cqlsh program (more on that later).

#$ pip install cassandra-driver.

Why both Java and Python? Cause nothing in programming in ever truly easy. Java is what your Cassandra node uses to execute its programming, because Cassandra itself was written in Java. Now, the CQL Shell or cqlsh for short is the command line shell use to interact with your Cassandra nodes. Python is the native protocol driver for this shell. There is indication when I read the cqlsh documentation, that other languages can be used for talking to the cqlsh; but for the purposes of this blog I will be using Python. I did not go into further research about that particular topic.

The last item you need to research before we can further and start the set up of our Cassandra nodes, is probably the most complicated one of them all. You need to find out the IP address for each of the VM. A simple ip addr, will do the trick. The three ip address for my VM are the following:

Cassandra Node 1 – 192.168.8.135

Cassandra Node 2 – 192.168.8.136

Cassandra Node 3 – 192.168.8.137

Once, the VMs are setup (each with a working OS, JDK, SDK and the IP address are recorded) Cassandra can finally be downloaded. I am working with the latest stable version of Cassandra 3.11.10. Once unzip, the configuration file cassandra.yaml is the only thing that needs to be modified and/or touched.

Just a quick intro before we move on. YAML (or YAML Ain’t Markup Language) is a human-readable data-serialization language, commonly used for configuration files where data is being sorted or transmitted. I just wanted to make sure everyone knows that bit of information; there is a lot more to YAML.

With that out of the way, we are going to start setting up our first Cassandra Node, or cass1. There are several things that can to be configured, but there are only two decision that have to be made in this YAML file (When looking from the perspective of this test cluster, in industry a lot more settings would be considered). The first decision is naming the cluster; for the cluster to work, all of the cluster nodes must have a shared name between them. Its how they first recognize themselves within the cluster ring. In my case, I used the cluster name ‘INTP – 362’.

Cluster Name

It is important that you make the name simple and easy to reproduce. My first test cluster had a more complicated name in the intent to be funny, and two of my nodes would not “gossip” to one another (more on gossiping later). And I used copy and paste, which sometimes does not work.

Once the cluster name is decided on. The next decision are the seed nodes and non-seed nodes. A seed node serves two functions:

When a new node joins the cluster, it will learn about the topology of the cluster or ring by contacting a seed node.

They are also what assist other nodes in gossip convergence.

A seed node is still not a single point of failure; if a seed node “dies”, a cluster can survive without. I choose cass1 and cass2 to be my seed nodes. It is industry standard to at least have 3 seed nodes per cluster; the typical small sized cluster is around 5 nodes. Since, I only have 3 nodes, I decide to just do 2 seed nodes to demonstrate what they do. To set up the seed nodes, the IP address for each of the selected nodes are to be place, in between the double quotes; separate by commas but with no spaces in between (see image below).

Seed Nodes

With the seeds nodes and the cluster name taken care of, the basic decision-making process to get this cluster running is done. I do want to point out that there are many other settings and configurations that can be made through this YAML file. Everything from how many concurrent read or write can be done at a time, which ports each node will use to communicate thought TCP/UDP (Ports 7000, 9042), what is a cache size for different types of operations; so many different settings I am not getting into because really there is no time. But I will speak about to two particular settings that gave a lot of problems for several days. Those are Listen Address and RPC Address.

Just to expand out knowledge base, RPC is a framework or set of tools that allow programmer to call a piece of code in a remote process. Again, there is a lot more to this framework; but that is the bare minimum just to understand why this address is important.

As a default, Listen Address and RPC Address come with the value ‘Localhost’; which should work since they do use the localhost to work. They even suggest just leaving it blank, since that will activate:

InetAddress.getLocalHost()

A protocol that will find the local IP address of the machine and retrieve for use. Except its not reliable, it even mentioned in the configuration file that it might not work. The documentation for both Cassandra and the YAML configuration file does not, to my knowledge, ever mention how to deal with this. Why do I mention this? Because in this case, the nodes will not actually wake up (at least in my experience). The actual best thing to do, is to actually use the IP Address number itself. My lesson learned here is that sometimes hardcoding an important value is necessary.

What is going on in the background is that the nodes can’t gossip. What is gossip? It’s the protocol that Cassandra uses to communicate between nodes. It’s a peer-to-peer system, that periodically exchanges state information about themselves and about other nodes in the ring. Basically, Cassandra nodes are just gossiping all the time, about how they are doing.

The gossiping protocol is very similar to the TCP three-way handshake; so much so that in the Cassandra server start up process, it is called a handshake. In the image below, you can the different Cassandra nodes handshaking each other.

Handshake

I think that is enough for now about the YAML configuration file; there is a lot more to it, entire Wikipedia pages just dedicated to explaining each one of the different settings. We are moving to yet another program that needs to be install for Cassandra to run. Why didn’t I mention this one before? Because its not mentioned anywhere (Note: I am not bitter about this).

iptables is this cool linux utility that lets you block or allow traffic, it’s a neat firewall. Cassandra needs it install and running to be able to gossip to other nodes. In iptables, there are policy chains, which are:

Input - this is for incoming connections.

Forward - incoming connections not being delivered locally, think a router.

Output - this is for outgoing connections.

Now, I only had so much time to actually research iptables and all its useful commands. Due to time constraints I concentrated on understanding the command I needed to run my Cassandra nodes. The command is:

#$ sudo iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -s 192.168.8.135 -m multiport --dports 7000,9042 -m state --state NEW,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT

A – Type of policy

p – Type of connection the protocol uses

s – Is the IP address to listen for

m multiport – is when there are multiple ports

dport – The ports to listen for

m state – The state of the connection (The only states I know of are NEW and ESTABLISHED)

j – Is the command for the response policy (Accept, Drop or Reject)

This command must be done on each node, with the other nodes IP address (so the command must be entered twice in each node). Finally, Cassandra will be run. There is an order to these things. Seed nodes must be woken up first before non-seed nodes, it is the only caveat to waking up Cassandra nodes to start gossiping.

To confirm that the nodes are running and gossiping, Cassandra comes with application called nodetool. The application will take different commands, the only one we care about at the moment is the status command.

Nodetool program

The UN means Up and Normal, which is really the piece of information we care about. This means each node on the rack is running. Since we have confirmed all the Cassandra nodes are up and running. The CQL shell program can be started. In the bin directory, the following commands needs to be typed:

#$ ./cqlsh 192.168.8.135

The IP address at the end of the command must be the IP address of the node you want to access. As you can see from the image below, I am still in Cassandra node 1. But I am able to access another Cassandra node though its IP address.

Accessing different nodes

With the CQL shell running, we can finally explore the CQL language. It is very similar to SQL, super similar. It is basically the same thing (at least syntax-wise it does not behave the same way), with some key exception. All the relational part of SQL is non-existent in CQL. That means no JOINS, no FOREIGN KEYS, none of that stuff. But the following commands, are all permissible (and again Syntax is the same, but the behavior of the command might be different):

Alter

Create

Delete

Insert

Select

Update

Where

There are more commands, I am just showcasing the classic ones. Let’s start with the creation of a KEYSPACE (Database in the SQL world). The command is the following:

#$ CREATE KEYSPACE test WITH replication = {‘class’:’SimpleStrategy’, ‘replication_factor’ : 3};

Finally, replication at work. There are two replication classes. The SimpleStrategy class, which will assign the same replication factor to the entire cluster. This is used for evaluation purposes, single data center test (Like what I am doing in this blog), and development environments. In industry they use the second class, called ‘NetworkTopologyStrategy’. This strategy is for assigning the replication factor to each data center in a comma separated list, giving you more flexibility and control. The Data center names must match the snitches data center name. In a real data center, there are snitch nodes; in basic terms the snitch determines which data centers and racks nodes belong to. The snitch allows network topology to be discovered, thus making routing more efficient.

A note about replication factor for both strategies, the number does not have match the number of nodes present in your cluster. It is not a requirement for the command to run. There can be a KEYSPACE with a replication factor of 2, in a 5 nodes cluster. It is documented that it is recommended that your replication factor does not exceed the number of nodes present in your cluster (But again this will not cause any immediate problems). The following command is not recommended, with my current cluster set up:

#$ CREATE KEYSPACE test WITH replication = {‘class’:’SimpleStrategy’, ‘replication_factor’ : 4};

But it is permissible. Why? The idea of scaling. I could start setting up KEYSPACEs with replication factor of 4 in my cluster right now, and add a new node (cass4) in the future.

Now that we have our KEYSPACE set up. We can now proceed to create a table and inserting some data.

#$ CREATE TABLE student (name text PRIMARY KEY, id int, age int);

#$ INSERT INTO student(name,id,age) VALUES (‘alex’,105,32);

With everything set up correctly, we can see the replication happening. I used cass1 to insert my data. And the KEYSPACE, TABLE and data was replicated into the other nodes.

Cassandra Node 1 – test data

Cassandra Node 2 – test data

Cassandra Node 3 – test data

As observed in all three different nodes, the student table is present.

The last cool thing I am going to show you, is how UPDATEs are a bit different in CQL vs SQL. In SQL an UPDATE command is both a read and a write; and this is important to note, because it first reads the tablespace and if the WHERE clause is not present the UPDATE will not happen. In CQL, the UPDATE command is only a write. This means that if the WHERE clause of an UPDATE command is based on a primary key (see example below), the UPDATE will happen as an INSERT if the row does not exist. I will showcase this in action, in the demo video.

UPDATE command in CQL

I hope this blog brought to light some of the lessons I learned while trying to navigate my way through Cassandra. Lessons like the value of documentation, but that ultimately there might be vital information missing; further research into some unexpected places might be need; and even some trial and error might be a possible avenue. I also hope I help shed some light on the world of NOSQL, and the cool application (cool to me at least) that is Cassandra.

Thank you so much for reading my blog

Here is the Demo Video.

youtube

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multipleservicelisting · 3 years

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How North Korean millennials use makeup to rebel

Written by Stella Ko, CNNSeoul, South Korea

Aspiring actress Nara Kang puts on a coral red lipstick and gently rubs orange blush onto her cheeks, the white glitter swept under her eyes sparkling as she tilts her head in the light.

Kang would never have been able to do this back home in Chongjin, North Hamgyong Province.

“Putting on red lipstick is unimaginable in North Korea,” she says. “The color red represents capitalism and that may be why North Korean society does not let you wear it.”

Kang now lives in Seoul, South Korea. The 22-year-old fled North Korea in 2015 to escape a regime that restricted her personal freedoms, from what she wore to how she tied her hair.

Most people in Kang’s hometown were only allowed to wear a light tint on their lips — sometimes pink but never red — and long hair had to be tied up neatly or braided, she says.

“Putting on red lipstick was unimaginable in North Korea,” says Nara Kang. Credit: CNN

Kang would walk through alleys instead of main roads to avoid encountering the “Gyuchaldae,” North Korea’s so-called fashion police.

“Whenever I put on makeup, older people in the village would say that I’m a rascal smeared with capitalism,” recalls Kang. “There was a patrol unit every 10-meters to crackdown on pedestrians for their looks.”

“We weren’t allowed to wear accessories like this,” she says, pointing at her silver rings and bracelets. “Or dye our hair and let it loose like this,” she gestures to her wavy locks.

A staff poses next to a board displaying approved hairstyles at a women’s salon in the Munsu Water Park complex in Pyongyang, North Korea in 2018. Credit: Carl Court/Getty Images

According to two defectors CNN interviewed for this story, who left the regime between 2010 and 2015, wearing clothes perceived as “too Western” such as miniskirts, shirts with written English and tight jeans, can be subject to small fines, public humiliation or punishment — though the rules vary in different regions.

Depending on the alleged offense or the patrol unit, the defectors said some offenders were made to stand in the middle of a town’s square and endure harsh criticism from officers. Others were ordered to perform hard labor.

“Many women are instructed or advised by (their) house, school or organization to wear tidy clothes and (have a) clean appearance,” explains Nam Sung-wook, a professor of North Korean studies at Korea University.

Pedestrians wait for a bus in Pyongyang, North Korea in 2017. Credit: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images

They may have been living in one of the world’s most restrictive states, but Kang says she and other North Korean millennials still kept up with fashion trends outside the country.

It’s easy, she says, if you know where to look.

Black market culture

Translated as “marketplace,” Jangmadang is the name given to the local North Korean markets that sell everything from fruit, clothing and household products. They started prospering during the great famine in the 1990s when people realized they couldn’t depend on government rations.

Many North Koreans still shop at these markets for daily necessities, but they are also the source of illegal products smuggled into the country. Foreign content, including movies, music videos, and soap operas, is copied onto USB drives, CDs or SD Cards in South Korea or China and smuggled into North Korea, according to the South Korean Unification Ministry.

This is also a method that many human rights organizations use to send in information challenging the regime.

Activists fill water bottles with rice, cash and K-pop-filled USB sticks to be thrown into the sea towards North Korea on Ganghwa island, South Korea in 2018. Credit: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images

“North Korean young urbanites are getting culture from the outside world,” says Sokeel Park, South Korea country director of research and strategy for human rights group Liberty in North Korea.

“This has an effect even in fashion trends, hair styles and beauty standards inside North Korea,” adds Park. “If young North Koreans watch South Korean TV programs, they may want to change their hair or clothes to what South Koreans look like.”

Joo Yang puts on a pearl necklace she designed in Seoul, South Korea. Credit: CNN

Before she fled North Korea in 2010, defector and now jewelry designer Joo Yang says she and her friends used to visit the Jangmadang markets to find USB sticks with films and popular music videos from South Korea.

At the market, Yang says female smugglers would talk in a distinct Seoul accent to attract the attention of young women who had already been exposed to South Korean culture. Sometimes merchants would take customers to their homes where there would be rooms full of clothes and cosmetics, according to Yang.

South Korean cosmetics were two to three times more expensive than North Korean or Chinese-made products, she says. She had to pay two weeks’ worth of rice to purchase a single mascara or lipstick from South Korea.

Cosmetics display inside a store in Seoul, South Korea in 2019. Credit: CNN

The marketplace is so popular with millennials that they are referred as the “Jangmadang generation,” says Park, who produced a documentary by the same name examining the lives of young North Koreans and their impact on society.

The famine disrupted the schooling system, so many of the Jangmadang generation literally grew up shopping in the markets, and have a greater insight into capitalism than previous generations, he adds.

Yang says she has seen the style of women in North Korea evolve based on the looks of popular K-dramas.

“If young North Koreans watch South Korean TV programs, then they may want to change their hair or clothes to what South Koreans look like. So this has an effect on fashion trends, hairstyles and beauty standards in North Korea,” says Park. He adds fashion and beauty trends extend beyond the surface, they signal an implicit change within the society.

North Korea’s beauty industry

Despite the absence of internationally-recognized North Korean cosmetics brands, North Korea’s state media KCNA claims its cosmetics industry is thriving. In November, Pyongyang hosted a national cosmetics show where “more than 137,000 beauty products” were presented, including “new soaps to help remove waste matter from skin and functional cosmetics (to help) blood circulation, beauty goods and anti-aging cosmetics” according to KCNA.

Kim Jong Un inspects the Pyongyang Cosmetics Factory in 2017. Credit: STR/AFP/Getty Images

Kim Jong Un is building on the legacy of his grandfather, North Korea’s founder Kim Il Sung who created the country’s first cosmetics factory in 1949. Kim Il Sung, who had previously used cosmetics to boost the morale of female soldiers in Manchuria during the battle with Japan, realized the power of beauty in changing people’s minds early on. Following his footsteps, the younger Kim is investing in state-run brands Unhasu and Bomhyanggi to develop the “world’s best cosmetics,” state news agency KCNA reported in 2017.

The recent push to develop the domestic cosmetic industry comes amid deepening international sanctions, which have made it even more difficult for North Korea to import high-quality ingredients and products, according to Professor Nam.

Nam said Kim saw also an opportunity in the growing popularity of South Korean beauty products to produce his own version of Korean cosmetics for export, taking inspiration from the packaging of South Korean products as well as their popular ingredients like ginseng.

North Korean cosmetics displayed in Nam’s office show resemblance to South Korean products’ packaging. Credit: CNN

Earlier this year, KCNA reported that the domestic Sinuiju cosmetics factory had “developed various functional cosmetics like eyelashes growth serums and beauty masks for acne treatment,” and was exporting them to other countries like Russia and China.

‘Beauty is freedom’

Locally-made cosmetics might be readily available in North Korea, but they don’t have the same cache or variety as foreign brands.

People who wear smuggled foreign cosmetics are not only experimenting with their own looks, but trying to push the boundaries of what’s acceptable in North Korea, Park said.

“You are wearing clothes that you are not really supposed to, which has been influenced by illegal foreign media,” he said. “Then you’re signaling to your community and to your friends that you are kind of different and willing to break these rules that are at least low level.”

Joo Yang puts on a red lipstick in her apartment in Seoul. Credit: CNN

Pyongyang’s attempts to control citizens’ personal choices can only go so far, wrote North Korean culture expert at Dong-A University, Professor Dong-wan Kang, in a government-commissioned paper on the topic of South Korea’s influence on the hermit kingdom.

“Although North Korean authorities crack down on fashion and hairstyles of the so-called decadent culture of capitalism, there is a limit to the total control of their citizens’ desire and needs,” writes Kang.

“Following South Korean influences on clothing, makeup and hair disrupts everyday expectations and can lead to dissatisfaction and skepticism about the North Korean regime. Mimicking South Korea, they are deviating from the society and it shows that a subculture has been formed as a factor of regime resistance.”

Both Yang and Nara Kang say in South Korea they are able to express themselves in a way they weren’t allowed to before.

“When I first went to a cosmetics store in South Korea, I swear I thought I went to a toy store in North Korea because there was a huge variety of colors like toys,” recalls Kang.

Colorful lip glosses are displayed inside a cosmetic store in Seoul, South Korea. Credit: CNN

“For me, beauty is freedom,” she says. “Now I have more ownership over my beauty.”

Yang said a lot of her friends in North Korea were enraged by not being able to dress the way they wanted.

“We are brainwashed by the North Korean government, so we still like the Supreme Leader, but the desire to look pretty is another issue,” says Yang. “The anger starts building up inside you, questioning why shouldn’t I do it?”

Park, who works with a lot of newly arrived defectors in South Korea, foresees a bigger change that beauty can bring in North Korean society.

The activist explains that the government has become aware of the younger generation rebelling against state-approved culture. This is pushing them to adapt and to allow some degree of flexibility in order to maintain power.

“It basically forces the government to answer the question: Are they going to go with this change or are they just going to try and repress (it)?”

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preciousinformation · 3 years

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Drivers of evolution

Genomes vary vastly when it comes to size and number of genes. However, the complexity of an organism is little correlated to its size, and only slightly to its number of genes. What makes species complex? One can say that species that constantly have had to adapt to new environments may have evoluted more different genes, however, if a species have had a long evolutionary “break” from potential dangers or food deficiency, the evolutionary drivers have lowered its speed as well. But what are the main genomic drivers of evolution, how does it happen? We have all heard of the good old mutations, that are driven by random forces and once in a while result in a trait that is more advantageous than other existing traits in the population. If this trait is allowed to shine and inherited further and becomes a commones to the species, one could say it evoluted. Mutations exists in multiple forms, from a single base not causing any trouble, to a lethal single base mutation, examplewise a deletion or insertion leading to a change of reading frame. Larger structural mutations are also very possible, with several mechanisms more or less controlling this randomness. Anyhow, there are multiple more mechanisms occurring. Plants, like wheat and strawberries, are in contrast to diploid humans, polyploids. They have multiple copies of their whole genome in every single cell in contrast to e.g. humans, which have two copies). Plants have genomes ranging from 100 million bp up to 100 billion bp, and (un-correspondingly to this) contain between 30.000-100.000 genes. For comparison, humans have approximately 23.000 genes in a genome of 3 billion basepairs. One human average gene contains 27.000 basepairs, but can vary from as little as 1000 bp to 2.4 million bp. Easily said, there is little consistency in structure and genes other than its chemical structure, which is the only predictable source of information when investigating unknown genomes and genes. This is an example of the huge variation existing between species.

But back to the point: there are several reason for polyploidy, where often four or six chromosome copies exists in each species (3 and 5 are found to be unstable). This phenomenon arises from a little mitotic or meiotic catastrophe such as nondisjunction, where an unequal number of chromosome copies ends up in the new formatting cells. The gametes have complete sets of duplicate chromosomes, uike its parents. Polyploids can arise within a species (autopolyploidy), or as a result of hybridization between species(allopolyploidy). Autopolyploidz are essentially homozygous at every locus in the genome, whereas allopolyploids are heterozygotic to varying degrees, depending on the divergence of the parental genomes. There are both advantages and disadvantages with this phenomena, but that’s another chapter.

Even though flowering plants commonly possess genome duplications, other types of species are also prone to it, but they are often less stable and lethal. I read somewhere that as much as 10% of child abortions in human is a result of this phenomenon. However, ancient whole genome duplication known as paleopolyploidization, have been reported in most evolutionary lineages. Tentatively, more sublineages in the animal kingdom has undergone polyploidization events one or two times, where fish are known to have undergone at least one 80 million years ago, and two in total for the well-studied salmon. These events have been important in the development of a range of species.

Rather than the whole genome duplicating, single genes or sequences are also able to duplicate themselves, creating an extra copy of its function (if any). A mutation in this extra copy is not as dangerous as in the original copy, which makes it more open for accepting alterations leading to new functions.

Another contributor to the genetic variation are transposable elements (TEs). These are elements or genes that are able to jump around in the genome, which can lead to interruption of other sequences or itself. The sequence either cuts or copies itself out of its region and pastes into another place. A sequence can also be copied into the DNA from transcribed RNAs, requiring the enzyme reverse transcriptase to back-copy itself into to the genome. These are called retrotransposons and exists in two forms; LTR (long terminal repeated) which have long identical DNA-sequences largely repeated in the ends of the retrotransposon, and non-LTRs being the opposite. Most non-LTRs can be categorized further into SINEs and LINEs, being short- and long interspersed nuclear elements. Larger genomes and polyploid genomes tend to have more TEs than smaller genomes. More than 40% of the human genome are transposons, which indeed is a decent amount. They have been connected to disease on several occasions, not strangely as they possess the possibility to totally ruin vital function. However, these elements are also drivers of variation, and are thought to be important contributors to evolution.

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thebestuxedo · 6 years

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TUXEDO STYLE OPTIONS

Wearing a belt is not at all advisable with a Tuxedo, traditionally the trousers are held up with a pair of braces (suspenders, if you’re American) - until recently these had fallen out of fashion, but are now experiencing a trendy revival along with smarter dressing more generally. Some men, however, do find braces uncomfortable, in which case your best bet is making sure the waist measurement of your trousers is spot on! Any trousers can be made with braces buttons sewn into the waistline to allow for the use of braces.For many gentlemen, the Tuxedo, also known as the Dinner Suit (or somewhat less precisely, the Dinner Jacket) is the pinnacle of smart menswear. Indeed, although more formal types of suit exist and are still used, such as the Morning Suit, by modern standards the Tuxedo is probably the most formal suit type that is most regularly used and readily recognised - it is, after all, what Hollywood types wear to the Oscars, and what the Oxbridge set turns to for attending glamorous parties.

As the “Dinner Suit” moniker suggests, the Tuxedo has its origins in attending formal dinners. That said, the terms formal, informal, smart and casual are all somewhat relative; the dinner suit was actually considered a more casual form of dress compared to the Morning Suit and other more formal attire worn in the daytime by gentlemen of the 19th and 20th centuries, but at the same time, dinner, and dressing for the evening, was a more formalised affair on the whole. Hardcore menswear zealots will still tell you that a gentleman should change into his dinner suit after 7pm, but of course, we’re not in the 19th century anymore!

Regardless, the dinner suit has survived as the go-to gentleman’s attire for formal dinners and evening events; essentially anything where it is requested that attendees wear “Black Tie”, which is the overall term for this practice and refers to the black colour of the bow tie traditionally worn with such an ensemble. There is also the now rather rare and more formal White Tie, but we’ll leave that for another time!

Un-Conservative Blue

While traditional Black Tie dress is...well...black, over the years a few adventurous types have occasionally experimented with very dark colours that are close to black, achieving the dark silhouette with a slight hint of something fun and a tad rebellious! Dark shades of blue have become acceptable, particularly in the modern era. This dark and deep, yet saturated blue will make you stand out while still keeping in the spirit of Black Tie. Avoid anything brighter than this! While you’re being less formal and more playful, you might as well opt for a shawl collar lapel.

Bond-ish Navy

Navy Blue or Midnight Blue has become a widely accepted alternative option to the black Tux. More rakish than black, but less rogue-ish than a more colour-rich blue, a Navy dinner suit will stand you in good stead in most circles. This has become particularly popular since Daniel Craig’s portrayal of James Bond starting wearing dark blue dinner suits!

Conservative Black

This is the most traditional option and the go-to for most gentlemen. You can’t really put a foot wrong here, so it’s a safe bet if you’re new to formal events, and while some Black Tie events are flexible enough for variations, if the invite says Black Tie: Formal, then black is sure to fit the bill.

Tropical Flair: The White Dinner Jacket

Speaking of James Bond, he’s been known on a few occasions (usually when visiting tropical locales) to wear a white or ivory dinner jacket with black formal trousers. This practice arose from gentlemen attending formal events in warmer climates and is generally considered acceptable in hot weather or summer months. It’s a more casual jacket style better paired with a cummerbund, and easily suits shawl collar lapels, although peak lapels are also fine and look quite sharp with the pale fabric. Note that the trousers paired with such a jacket should still be formal dinner suit trousers (with a strip of fabric covering the outer leg seam, and no cuffs) rather than just ordinary suit trousers!

Tuxedo Shawl Collar vs. Peak Lapel vs. Notch Lapel

Peak lapels are most traditional and most formal, so if you want to be sure of getting it right, go for a peak! A shawl collar lapel is perfectly acceptable for most Black Tie events, although it is much more casual - unless you’re meeting Royalty you will probably be fine with it, however. Notch lapels traditionally are a no-no on a Tuxedo, as these are intended for the regular lounge suit. Pockets should always be welt pockets; avoid patch pockets and trouser cuffs as these are innately casual features.

More conservative: Peak Lapels Perfectly acceptable: Shawl Collar Not traditional: Notch Lapels.

One-Button vs. Two-Button Tuxedos

The traditional dinner jacket has a one-button fastening at the waist for a lower buttoning point and a cleaner look. However, the one-button fastening can be somewhat unsympathetic to men of a heavier build, in which case, there’s no harm in opting for two-buttons. Three-button Tuxedos are a faux pas and to be avoided at all costs.

Most traditional: One button If you're yet to start that diet: Two buttons Avoid: Anything else. Three buttons is a big no-no. Double-breasted tuxedos are trendy but very difficult to pull off in practice.

On The Delicate Matter Of Vents

Traditionally the dinner jacket features a ventless back, again for a cleaner look, however, this can be unflattering on some men - if you are comfortable describing your posterior as slender, you might consider trying the traditional ventless option. But with that said, we’ve heard stories of old English tailors arguing the point that ventless is all vanity and no function, and that twin vents, while not traditional, is actually their preferred choice. At any rate, double vents and single vents are both acceptable alternatives for the modern gentleman.

More traditional: No vents Your best choice: Double (side) vents Also fine: Single vent

Colours & Accessories

Remember with Black Tie that although colours are acceptable to an extent, this can sometimes be difficult to pull off well and is not traditional - whether a non-traditional approach is taboo or not depends on who is inviting you to what event; if it’s ultra-conservative in tone then play it safe.

If in doubt, choose black and white! A black bow tie and cummerbund is always acceptable, as is a white pocket square. As a rule of thumb it is most sensible to opt for a black bow tie (because it’s a black tie event!), preferably made from silk. A cummerbund and pocket square are better areas for colour experimentation and would also be preferably silk, although we’d advise caution here and perhaps choose one of the two items to be colourful. Plains are also safer than patterns and we’d advise that, if you must have a patterned item, pick just one.

A Word On The Waist

If you want to look your best in Black Tie attire then a little word of advice; keep your waistline covered at all costs. Yes, you may see movie stars attending award ceremonies wearing just the jacket and trousers with no cummerbund or waistcoat, but quite simply; they’re doing it wrong! The join between trouser and shirt is prone to rumples and is generally somewhat inelegant, making it completely counter to the aim of a good dinner suit, which is all about elegance, smooth lines, contrast and monochrome consistency, and eye-pleasing shapes.

A cummerbund is the least formal but mostly widely-used and easily-sourced option, it’s believed it may have originated from the habits of devil-may-care cavalry officers (probably Hussars, who traditionally wore a sash with their uniform) and/or by military gentlemen attending events in warmer climates, such as India (where the word is believed to have been derived from the Hindu “karmarband”), where a waistcoat was too stuffy. It was originally just a silk sash tied around the waist. Now though, it’s a purpose-built item with an easy-to-use fastening - just make sure you wear it with the pleats facing upwards. Although the origin is probably more flamboyant, black has become the conventional colour option for silk cummerbunds, although coloured variants can also be acceptable - just avoid matching it to the bow tie or pocket square (unless the bow tie is also black and the same material, of course).

Please bear in mind that all we are writing here is advice! We do talk about menswear or Black Tie “rules”, or that certain things “should” be worn, or are “better”, a certain way, but it’s important to remember these are guidelines of best practice and that they are there sympathetically. We, after all, do want you to look your best, and sticking to some simple principles is the easiest and quickest way to achieve this with little effort or fuss. And once you’ve got it sorted just one time, you always know what to put on next time you have a formal event to attend!

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