#(also we have a C-level employee who lives / works from new york but ... apparently that's SUUUUPER different because she lived there when

[stillcominback]

𝚆𝙴𝙻𝙻, 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝚅𝙴𝚁𝙳𝙸𝙲𝚃'𝚂 𝙸𝙽: as a lot of you may know by know [ if you've caught any of my previous posts about it ], i'm moving with my parents back to california from texas -- where i've been for about 30 years -- because overall? it'll be good for me. i'm sick of texas for the most part, i literally can't afford to live on my own [ and honestly? i like being near my parents and would just have more security and better quality of life in CA ], and i just think sometimes a change is good!

i've been waiting to see if my job will let me keep my job [ and continue to pay me dirt, even! ] ... all i was asking is that i can live in california and work remote. well, the owner has decided he will not allow me to do that. is there a good reason? in my opinion: no. he's framing it [ in his conservative white man rich business owner brain ] that I'M the one making the choice to move because i could apparently just as easily stay in texas and get my own place etc etc etc. so it's on me! unfortunately, it's just not that simple, but i guess from a guy who runs a family business and has multiple homes, it's just hard to really grasp that concept.

i'm literally so furious and so heartbroken at the same time. i know it's not the best company, and yeah i guess, we can say this is for the best in the end? but that doesn't make it hurt less. i've been there for almost 11 fucking years. my ENTIRE career out of college. through ups and downs, i was always working my ass off and being a great employee ... shining reviews and reputation with literally everyone. it just hurts that that ultimately means nothing when i'm finally asking for something in return. i take the poverty wages, take the working in the office when i hate it for the most part, i've taken having to hear misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, every-phobic thing over the years ... then i ask for ONE thing in 11 years [ that's literally not even a big ask ] and it's a ✨no✨.

i feel so lost. like i don't even know how to be without this job, and as much as people tell me YOU'RE SO TALENTED! YOU'RE SO GREAT! YOU'LL FIND SOMETHING SOOOO MUCH BETTER! i wanna believe it, but my brain just ... doesn't. maybe it's imposter syndrome or just how fucking down on myself i feel right now. i still appreciate it because i literally don't know what i would do without my friends and family's support right now like ... even if i can't see it for myself, it means the literal world to me.

plus sides [ i guess ]: i should be able to keep my laptop [ but i'll lose adobe cc so ... i may need some recs or help on how to at least get photoshop cause idk how i'll carry on without it lmao ]; my manager who is a literal saint and one of the best people i know [ she actually pissed the owner off going to the mat for me lmao "he doesn't like to be questioned" ... insert the biggest eye-roll of my life ] ... but she said she would help me with literally everything from linkedin to my resume to a portfolio, and i know that'll be like everything to me while i just .... try to navigate all of this ON TOP OF trying to move.

ALSO: i think i can work until i leave, if that's what i want to do ... i'm still trying to figure all of this out because honestly? even though it's not much? i need the money. but then i'm also like i don't wanna do the owner any favors by having me work while they maybe start putting out feelers to replace me, yknow? BUT THEN AGAIN, i'm hurting my boss more than him [ and that's the twisted, frustrated thing about all of this ... it hurts us way more than it does anything to him but he still gets to make the choice for us ]. SO! i dunno! i may just use all my PTO and see how far that gets me lmao but i feel like at the end of the day, i have to look out for myself and maybe just trying to pull in as many paychecks as i can [ since we also don't have a hard 'we're moving!' date at the moment ] is the best idea ... even if the idea of going into the office and acting normal like literally makes me so ... 😤 but i dunno! my brain is a mess! afjhksdfda

SO YEAH. i just wanted to update you guys because i do consider you friends. whether we talk a little or a lot, i appreciate all of you so much and just wanted to keep folks in the loop with where my life and my head's at right now. not the best but ... just trying to keep it moving. honestly nooooo clue when writing is gonna happen here again??? i do miss / enjoy the distraction of plotting and talking about all this stuff so don't be shy, i just don't know when i'll have the time or capacity to just write here [ maybe once we move and stuff settles a little bit? ] -- but yeah, in the meantime, please come chat with me, let's plot dynamics and all that shit because it still makes me so happy and lets me take my mind on a little vacation lmao love you all, truly! ❤️

#** reblogging on some of my blogs to pass it around but! applies across the board: you can find most of my blogs in my pinned post here! ** #been on and off crying since like 4PM yesterday so it's been a ride lemme tell ya! #nothing like feeling like you wasted over a decade of your life at a job that never really cared about you #like MY boss does but stupidly she doesn't get to make all the decisions for HER own team #even though the owner is barely present and doesn't really know anything about us or the day to day so ... very cool of him #to make big decisions that can hurt a lot of people (and don't affect him one bit either way) #he just really doesn't seem to give a shit at all that it makes our lives so much harder for NO reason #it's just that he literally doesn't “like” remote working and doesn't want to set some kind of company-wide precedent #even tho i'm like moving isn't THAT easy lmao people aren't all just gonna mass exodus out my guy #(also we have a C-level employee who lives / works from new york but ... apparently that's SUUUUPER different because she lived there when #she was hired ........ *stares into camera*) #anyway!!! i'm just really frustrated and hurt and fucking terrified #and i appreciate literally anyone who bothered to read all this! lmao #i'll be around on mobile as per usual ❤️❤️❤️ #00. // OUT OF AMMO ( OOC POST. )

[statusquoergo]

Credit where credit is due, Gabriel did a nice job directing this episode. He had more screen time that I’m used to from actors pulling double duty, and he seems to have handled the extra workload well.

That’s not to say the episode was flawless. Yeah, by Season 9 standards, it was pretty good overall, but I mean. Season 9 standards.

We start off at home with Louis and Sheila having a terse exchange over tea as I wonder, yet again, why they’re together at all if they’re always so goddamn pissy about everything. Louis bemoans his demotion as Sheila irritably directs him to drink his rooibos and asks him what the big deal is, being that he didn’t even want the job in the first place (true). Louis parries that he only said that because Donna offered it to him the same night he found out about Sheila’s pregnancy (true), but at any other time in his life, he would have taken it (false). On the contrary, you may remember this fairly unambiguous exchange from “Pecking Order” (s08e02) between Doctor Lipschitz and Louis: “As I recall, you accepted Harvey becoming managing partner after Jessica left.” “That’s when I realized I didn’t want to be managing partner.” I suppose I’ve never accused this show of internal consistency before, why bother starting now?

Louis then delightfully compares himself to a ball-less cat and laments that though “the job wasn’t sunshine and rainbows, [he] was getting really good at it,” and excuse me but what? Forget that disastrous hearing that summoned Faye to their doorstep, his most recent acts as managing partner include trying to bully Professor Gerard into letting him be the keynote speaker at Harvard’s Ethic Conference to talk up his failing firm, and going completely off the rails trying to fire the poor IT guy for failing to digitally break into the New York State Bar Association. Louis sucked at being managing partner.

Next up is a reminder that I need to be careful what I wish for as Donna and Harvey discuss his reflexive support of her impassioned but quite incorrect argument against Louis trying to fire Benjamin, and how much she didn’t appreciate it. Turns out it wasn’t so reflexive; he did it because she thought she would like it, which is its own magnificently flawed concept—thinking she’ll get mad at him for disagreeing with her doesn’t say much for his respect for her integrity—but then Donna realizes that he’s afraid she’s going to leave him if he doesn’t unconditionally support her, and you just know the writers thought they were being real clever with this. (Wait, isn’t one of Harvey’s defining character traits his ability to read people? “You read books, I read people” was actually one of the first things he said to Mike in the pilot… Gosh it’s been a long time.)

As I was saying about this show’s internal consistency, two things about this whole exchange: One, all through Season 7, Harvey had no trouble calling Paula out when she was being ridiculous and disagreeing with her about all kinds of shit. Two, as recently as “Everything Changes” (s09e01), Harvey cooed that “[he’s] finally where [he’s] supposed to be” when he’s with Donna, to which Donna replied “We both are,” and like, are they a match made in Heaven right out of the box or what? His trust in their relationship is wildly inconsistent. Unless he wants to forfeit his autonomy for some reason? I don’t know, it’s weird and I don’t like it.

I also take issue with Donna’s dismissive “Oh, my god. Of course. Harvey, I’m not gonna leave you.” This has been an issue for him since forever, as she well knows, but rather than ask him what’s wrong—is he really afraid she’ll leave him over something so small?—or point out that he needs to go to therapy (if she wants to be tactful, she could ask if he wants to “talk to someone” about this), she treats it as an endearing character quirk, and someone needs to save Harvey from all this shit yesterday.

The interruption to this…reconciliation isn’t quite as cringy as the can opener bit from the last episode, but I’ve gotta call it out for being just some truly lazy storytelling. Gretchen appears out of nowhere to tell them they “need to go see Louis,” on account of his demotion, and Donna’s deer-in-headlights response is “Oh, my god. We need to go to him right now.” Yeah, no shit, that’s what Gretchen just said, except this framing affords Harvey the opportunity to mount his noble high horse and declare: “No. You go to him. I need to go see Faye.” Which he does, dramatic music and all, declaring that “dammit, not everybody has to do everything by [her] book,” and I must point out that she demoted Louis for trying to fire the employee who he asked to perform an illegal activity that he failed to perform only because he was caught; in what book is that okay? He then asserts: “You want consequences, I’ll give you consequences,” which is delightfully reminiscent of that old classic, “I’ll give you something to cry about,” in that it makes absolutely no sense, and Harvey, you adorable impetuous dumbass, if your goal is to convince her to leave, I think you might be going about it in a little bit the wrong way.

Roll title crawl! (No seriously, that was all just the cold open.)

Anyway Donna does go to comfort Louis, already treating herself and Harvey as a unit when she assures him that “if [he] ever [needs her] or Harvey during any of this Faye bullshit,” they’re there for him, and dropping the much more interesting detail that she has a much older sister she doesn’t want to talk about who “turned every man she was ever with into an emotional doormat,” which I don’t have time to fic right now but I feel like might explain a lot. Then Alex and Samantha have an endearing little exchange wherein Samantha proposes doing something to help Louis and Alex clarifies that it has to be ethical, and it’s nice to know that at least a couple of people around here aren’t completely insane.

Speaking of things being insane, I won’t fault Gabriel for this because the direction itself is fine, but from a writing perspective, the narrative construct of this next scene is terrible. Harvey shows up at a meeting with Some Guy whose nondescript company is apparently, thanks to his board and the company’s lawyers, being taken over (by someone) against his wishes, and the only hint of context for any of this is that “the people” orchestrating this takeover are “related” to Faye. The obvious conclusion to this exchange is that Harvey is going to help this guy, who is apparently the CEO of this random organization, sue the company by acting as a shareholder rather than a C-level employee, and I still have no idea what the fuck is going on.

Back at the firm where I do kind of know what’s going on, Susan the Associate approaches Katrina with a problem she found in the VersaLife case Katrina’s working, and as soon as they gave her a name in the last episode, I know she was going to be important. More to the point, it looks like Katrina’s got herself an associate! (Remember when senior partners were required to hire their own associates? It was a whole big thing back in Season 1, I think.)

Next up, Louis is having lunch with an old friend, Saul the Judge, who informs him that some other judge is retiring or being fired or something, and offers him a judgeship, and there is so much wrong with this scene that I don’t even know where to begin.

Yes I do. Since when has Louis’s lifelong dream been to be a judge? This is literally the first time he’s ever expressed any interest in it, at all. And another thing, that is not how judicial selection works.

In New York State, judges, depending on the court, are either appointed by the governor and confirmed by the State Senate, nominated by a commission and approved by the governor, chosen at a partisan nominating convention and elected by the voting public, or appointed by the mayor. Qualified individuals can apply to be considered, such as by the Mayor’s Advisory Committee, but there’s no one-and-done offer/acceptance transaction between someone currently on the bench and his lawyer pal, so either this guy is offering Louis a job that doesn’t exist or, more likely, the writers don’t know shit about the New York City legal system.

Moving on. Harvey shoves a recusal form in Faye’s face as he informs her that he “got” a case against her old firm, and he’s “taking it,” as though he didn’t go way out of his way to hunt it down in the first place. He then throws a stupidly juvenile hissy fit, claiming he’ll use whatever he fucking has to to “win,” and prove his system his better than hers, but he won’t have to cross any lines because she de-balled (second reference, just as charming as the first) the guys at her old firm so much that “they’re shaking in their boots” at the mere threat of lawsuit. This whole exchange is basically a showcase of Harvey acting like a spoiled child, and I know he’s a passionate guy but I gotta say, I’m getting tired of this whole act.

Back to that clusterfucking disaster of a judgeship offer, Louis fesses up to Sheila but admits that he doesn’t want to accept the drop in salary with a kid on the way, or leave his friends in the lurch, and she in turn fesses up that she asked Saul to make the offer in the first place because “being a judge has always been [his] dream.” (SINCE WHEN?) Louis is incensed until she tells him that it was basically Saul’s idea, but that if he doesn’t take it now, he’ll never get the change again, which… Why? Well, I guess they haven’t pointlessly manufactured any tension in awhile. Anyway, Louis promises to sleep on it.

Elsewhere, Samantha proposes committing conspiracy to get Faye out of their lives and Alex shuts that shit right away, and I’m actually really enjoying their dynamic right now. Susan asks Katrina what she should do about a smart, funny paralegal she clicks with; Katrina, having “seen that before,” recommends finding a new paralegal, and I’ve never had this question before but is Katrina anti-Machel for some reason? Doesn’t matter. Susan proposes reaching out to opposing counsel, who just so happens to be an old family friend, and Katrina wisely tells her not to, but somewhat less wisely starts and ends her rationale with “Because I know,” which I’m sure won’t motivate Susan to act in any sort of way.

Now, I’m no dream theorist, but luckily this show has all the subtlety of a Liberace action figure, so it’s not too difficult to figure out what Louis’s subconscious mind is trying to say: He wants to humiliate Faye (for demoting him and taking over his firm), he wants to bang Donna (and maybe also Alex), he thinks of Harvey as his peer but also his inferior (who he wants desperately to impress and probably also to fuck), and his confidence is mainly derived from the approval and admiration of others. Also he wants to have sex with basically everyone. Maybe not Gretchen. But everyone else.

Dr. Lipschitz, to whom Louis was evidently relaying the events of this dream, finds the whole thing quite amusing, but points out that if Louis takes the judgeship, he won’t have his friends around him anymore. Double-edged sword and all that.

Part II

#suits usa #season 9 #s09e03 #analysis

[weekendwarriorblog]

Happy Effin’ Anniversary to Me!

I was going to write something as part of this week’s upcoming Weekend Warrior, because I’m celebrating a couple personal anniversaries this month. Maybe “celebrating” is too strong a word, because there really doesn’t seem to be much to celebrate right now.

Sure, I’m pretty darn happy I’m alive seven years after getting a stem cell transplant for the acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) that very nearly could have killed me in 2013.  I’m also still thrilled to no end that the good doctors of the James Hospital at OSU were able to find me a great stem cell donor like Michael Levin whose stem cells have helped give me a super-strong immune system that I feel can fight off anything (including COVID-19). But all of what I went through in 2013, and 2014, and 2015, and that I’m STILL going through with all of the long-term damage done by my leukemia and its treatment – stuff I’ve mostly kept to myself -- just doesn’t really seem like it was worth it anymore.

That brings me to my second anniversary…

As of this coming week (October 10), I’ll have been writing about movies for 19 years (!), mostly reviews and interviews and such, but up until 6 months ago, I was writing every single week about the box office, how movies might do at the box office, how movies did at the box office, etc. And I spent a LOT of time researching and analyzing and writing about these things over and over, week after week, with only a few gaps (like for that aforementioned leukemia treatment and stem cell transplant).

Right now, the box office is pretty much dead, and that’s because theatrical moviegoing is dead, and no one in any level of the movie business or in any level of government seems to want to do anything about it, except sit at home cowering and/or watching their substandard junk stuff on streaming or “virtual cinema,” if you prefer. Virtual indeed.

I have made my feelings pretty clear on this subject. In fact, I’m one of the few people who has constantly been putting my ass and neck on the line to convince people that going to the movies can be done safely, and what do I get for it? I get called names, have insults hurled at me, lost fucking friends – a few of them who I actually kinda liked, too – and here we are, six months after movie theaters were shut down in New York with absolutely zero sign that the governor will ever fulfill the promise he made months ago about “reopening the valve.” New York City has been in Phase 4 for over two months and he finally allowed indoor dining in NYC that the rest of the state has been able to do safely for months. No, apparently Cuomo has had the same lame-ass bullshit shoved down his throat about movie theaters being “death traps,” the same fucking yapping #FilmTwitter big shots going on and on about, “Oh, no, I need to protect my readers from themselves by warning them that if they go see a movie I write about in theaters, they will DIE!!!”

I have this great new job at Below the Line that I really like right now, but I’m still just sitting in front of my laptop every single fucking day for 12 to 15 hours trying to keep watching and reviewing movies in this far from ideal setting just for YOU, the five or six people who are reading this right now. So yeah, if I seem to be rather ornery on social media whenever a studio chickens out and decides to move their summer 2020 release to the summer of 2021, presuming things will be better by then and that there may be any movie theaters left then…  (and with apologies to Steve Martin)… EXCCUUUUUUUUSE ME!

Sure, I make a joke, but I’m pretty darn pissed off right now, but especially from the amount of lame-ass big mouths who are constantly pushing back at me anytime I make any sort of comment about movie theaters reopening safely, and not just on Twitter either.  I’ve made my case. I’ve written thousands of words and offered more than sufficient proof to allow people to make their own decisions.

If you don’t want to go back to movie theaters than don’t go. You do whatever you want to do, but don’t give me shit when I request and yes, even demand, that I am given the right to do what I want to do, and that’s to be able to see movies in theaters again without having to get on a train to Connecticut or New Jersey. There are about a half dozen movie theaters sitting empty and dormant within walking distance from me, so the fact I have to go into another jurisdiction is actually more likely to spread the COVID that a.) I don’t have, b.) have never gotten and c.) don’t plan on getting anytime soon.

The way things are developing and with no new strong new releases being offered to movie theaters, they’re just going to start shutting down again out of lack of money to run them. It’s already happening and people who have made a pretty penny getting WAY overpaid for what they do for a living i.e write about movies,  just like I’ve been doing for 19 years, they seem to be celebrating every single time a movie is delayed. Every day this goes on, it seems even less likely movie theaters will ever be able to reopen. Not because they’re unsafe but due to the corporations trying to save their bottom lines while firing thousands of employees.

I can’t tell you how much it bristles me to no end knowing that there are hirable movie writers out there being paid $100k+ a year, more than double what I’ve made at my highest paying job as a movie writer, to sit at home and complain about anyone who wants to try to get movie theaters reopened, get people out of their houses and into theaters so that there will actually be movie theaters left by the time the studios decide to release their oh-so-precious tentpole movies.

I commend Warner Bros. and Christopher Nolan because they tried to do something that no one else out there had the balls to do, and that was to release Tenet in a market that had been so downtrodden, first by COVID and then by the movie critics, that there was no possible way the movie could have made anywhere near what it would have made if this pandemic had never happened. And once again, the theatrical naysayers celebrate.

I have made every effort I can to support this business, even if it’s just doing a bit of unnecessary traveling to another state to help a business that has given me everything (but also nothing) for the past 19 years of my life.

Don’t worry. I’m not quitting. There will still be a Weekend Warrior next week probably with just as many reviews as I’ve been writing since the pandemic started. That’s over 150 reviews in the last six months, if you’ve lost count, and they’re all on my Rotten Tomatoes page if you don’t believe me. I have no plans on slowing down.

And what do I get for that hard work every week? No fame, no glory, and nowhere even close to the money as many of the people throwing out insults along with one or two perfunctory reviews a month just to keep their memberships in some critics group or other valid… all while they sit at home on their fucking asses watching movies on their fucking computer screens (probably in their underwear). Just like I have been doing. (I have worn pants most of the time.)

But yeah, if these people want to keep attacking me, if they want to argue and fight over every single one of my ideals and my own personal rights as a human being? If some idiot bonehead loser like [NAME REMOVED] REALLY wants to start a war with me, then guess what? They’ve fucking got it*.

As of today, October 3, I’m ready to start my war, and it’s going to make Mad Max: Fury Road look like fucking Babe: Pig in the City*.

Maybe if George Miller ever gets around to making another movie, HE can try to save whatever’s left of movie theaters. It will probably be something like out of one of his “Road Warrior” movies, because “movie theaters” will just be people sitting cozzily in their cars, hopefully wearing pants and watching movies on the side of a building from the “safety” of their gas-guzzling, ozone layer depleting cars. Hurray.

(*A. I’m not REALLY starting a war. I’m just fucking around, and B.) This was actually a bit of self-deprecating humor about the weight I’ve gained during the pandemic because I’m NOT running around the city trying to get to screenings as I often was during pre-pandemic.)

#TheWeekendWarrior Movies

[communication-for-makers]

Week 8: The Making Of

From the brief for Assignment 2, begin to explore the bubble that you ended up in.  Consider what the relationship between you and the bubble looks like. You may look at the plain physical aspects of the bubble. Or, if you are interested, you may look at the social aspects, or critique this bubble as an emotional site, a political space, or a government construct. Document and visualise this in your journal. We may share some of this work in class.

I stayed during CoVID-19, alert level 4 and 3, in central Wellington. Due to CoVID, the Semester Break started early, and I used it to finish my first Assignment for this course.  I was working on task four, the curious instances, for which I chose a site located is in the Opera House lane. The site was once part of the shoreline that boarded Te Aro and where iwi gathered food. The cultural, historical significance it has to Maoris is not adequately represented because nothing apart from a sign and a Mural laying in the dark, nearly unnoticeable are indicating it. In the research I found that the local and central government is holding all the power in matters regarding Urban planning and are grounded in colonial practices (Livesey, p.267). There are range legal instruments for Maoris available, but they seem to be underutilised by the local government and are rarely used by Maori organisations due to the elusiveness around them. (Ryks, Pearson and Waa p.31)

For this Assignment, I wanted to explore this topic further because most know that colonialism is driven by racism. If we are aware of that, then why would we ground the local and central government in it?

We know colonialism is driven by racism if we have a look into history. In 1492, it was natural for the Europeans to extend their rules over foreign nations, often by military force or by gaining political and economic control of other areas (Mutu, p.3, 2013). Europe's belief system at that time is not a mystery. They believed to be militarily superior and to be culturally superior to indigenous and "non-white people" (Mutu, p.3, 2013) due to that they felt entitled to replace these inferior cultures with their own to "civilise" (Mutu, p.3, 2013) the people of the rest of the world. Therefore, the concept of colonisation is racist and morally reprehensible. 

How is one supposed to make ethical decisions if we are ruled by a government who is still grounded in racist concepts?

The government creates "economic, institutional and social injustices" (Mutu,p.3 2013) by doing so.

Legal instruments for Maoris being underutilised by the local government (Ryks, Pearson, & Waa, p.31, 2016) is an institutional injustice. Institutional injustices can create economic injustices which then can create social injustices. If one of these injustices exist, the other two are most likely to appear. It is a vicious circle.

"Treaty of Waitangi: The comic book" (Toby Morris) proves that New Zealand teaches the history of this country in a very one-sided way. European colonialism and that the British are getting away with a fraudulent document to this day has been conveniently left out.

It is made for schools in collaboration with the ministry of education, and the Crown owns all copyrights. By reinventing history and denying the racism which took place at this time, our society never learns from past mistakes. It means mistakes and history will be repeated. It makes racism an underlying part of New Zealand as it promotes a faulty memory (Kruger, 2018). The social injustice this creates for Maori is massive. The ministry of education making is unethical because their making has such a huge negative impact on all indigenous people in New Zealand as it creates systemic racism. 

On a personal note, in a class, we were given "Treaty of Waitangi: The comic book" (Toby Morris) before we read" Te Tiriti o Waitangi in a Future Constitution Removing the Shackles of Colonisation" (Mutu). I found that when I first read the comic text; I thought straight away, it was one-sided. Others in my class did not notice, or at least it seemed that way. I believe the reason that it stood out to me straight away is that I learned about Europe's colonialism in school. Germany has a traumatic history of wars and murders rooted in racism, and I believe one step to stop the racism in the heads of their society is to admit fault as a country and to teach coming generations the whole story.

I was interested in an Urban planning project which completely respected the visions of Tangeta Whenua and translated them accordingly because I wanted to see what the outcomes would be. I asked my tutors, for an example of this, and one of the cases was Tuhoe.

Past & History

Tūhoe's people never signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, but the Crown forcefully invaded their land (Warnock, n.d.)., Tūhoe and the government settled in 2013 (Warnock, n.d.). The Results of the Tūhoe Deed of Settlement (2013) were "financial redress of $170 million, an apology from the Crown and the right to manage Te Urewera National Park in partnership with the Crown". (Warnock)

Present

Te Urewera became a Landmark person hood legislation which means its "owned by no one" and" the land is a legal person" (Kruger, 2018). This concept refers to the Maori term Tangata Whenua and means" People of the Land". The land is no more extended property of someone which "shifts the relationship between nature and humanity" (Kruger, 2018). Tangata Whenua is a concept which is rooted in Maori customs and traditional values (Tikanga). Tikanga is the "the Māori way of doing things" and driven by the words "right" or correct". In the case of Te Urewera, the right way meant building sustainable villages which provide "companionship and are sociable villages" (Kruger, 2018). "Sustainable water systems and energy sources" (Warnock, n.d.). The Whanau is well integrated into the design process to ensure that "coming generations will know that they have been giving their lifestyle through the hapu & their iwi and not through the Crown" (Kruger, 2018). Sharing information that way is part of the Maori knowledge system and part of Tikanga too. They also built Te Kura Whare, their new "central headquarters for Tūhoe "(Warnock, n.d.) which is now the "15th building in the world to be certified as a Living Building" (Warnock, n.d.). It means it generates renewable energy, collects and treats its water and is constructed from non-toxic materials; therefore, no environmental footprint" (Warnock) Results like these and the national and international reputation proof they did it indeed the "right" way. "Department of conservation employees stated that New Zealand should follow their example, and the UN is using Te Urewera as an answer in dialogues with other countries" (Kruger, 2018). Those are truly remarkable accomplishments. Our current environmental crisis proves the need of their ideas and shows that if one changes their relationship with the land (Kruger, 2018) and changes their worldview, we can change issues like that.

Tamati Kruger and Kennedy Warne mentioned in the interview "Tamati Kruger: Down That way, Glory Waits" (Kruger) that we perhaps need a "people management act and not a resource management act" (Kruger, 2018). "Because people create the problems, in nature. We need to learn that we cannot own the nature, that it owns us. Most of the time, nature fixes itself if we let it. We need to learn to observe and listen." (Kruger, 2018) I am sure this concept makes sense to many of us as and it only a less popular worldview. Many might agree but do not act on it as we do not feel responsible enough to act on it."No responsibility makes one a ventriloquist" (Kruger, 2018). That point is fascinating because I can see this in many areas of our society. However, maybe we act that way too because we get taught to behave in a particular manner? In Kruger's opinion, "many Iwi's have lost their focus through the Treaty Settlement processes as that had asked them to operate as businesses. Iwi's initially function a collective kinship organisation with government duties. As a company making money is the goal and is seen as "good" in our society. Rather than doing that they should focus on working towards justice as the settlement alone will not do it" (Kruger, 2018). This statement is describing the process of westernisation Maori.

Conclusion:

The government needs to acknowledge the created economic, institutional and social injustices publicly to be able to fix them. It is necessary to be able to create an ethical society. One has to ask oneself why they would want to change if the system works for them? Feeling accountable for injustices is necessary for this. It is the obligation of the people that have created, perpetuated and benefited from a system of oppression to be the ones that dismantle it. Therefore, as a privileged person, one needs to disturb the system of power by speaking up or through making. However, how does one reach a society where one has a sense of entitlement and constant need to be worth more than an another (Phillips, 2003, p. 8)? The problems our society is facing should suggest us to change the system we operate. There is a need of showing that if all engage with Indigenous and multicultural perspectives and treat them with equal respect as we treat our one, we can solve not only injustices but also crises like the environmental one, That we need to stop treating anything, not mainstream, western, or white with "suspicion" (Phillips, 2003, p. 8) to be able to succeed. The necessity of Manaakitanga (Linda Tuhiwai Smith) needs to become apparent to all. 

Works Cited

Barbara Kruger and Lisa Phillips. (2003). Money talks. New York: D.A.P Distributed Art Publishers.

Kruger, T. (2018, September 9). Tāmati Kruger: Down That Way, Glory Waits. (K. Warne, Interviewer)

Linda Tuhiwai Smith, F. C. (n.d.). What works. Retrieved from Kaupapa Maori: http://whatworks.org.nz/kaupapa-maori/

Livesey, B. T. (2019, May). Settler Colonial Studies. Returning resources alone is not enough': imagining urban planning after Treaty settlements, pp. Vol. 9 Issue 2, p266-283, 18p. Retrieved from Settler Colonial Studies: https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2017.1409404

Mutu, P. M. (2013, April 22). Te Tiriti o Waitangi in a Future Constitution; Removing the Shackles of Colonisation. Napier: Te Rūnanga-ā-Iwi o Ngāti Kahu and the University of Auckland.

Ryks, J., Pearson, A. L., & Waa, A. ( 2016, 04, 01). New Zealand Geographer Vol. 72, Issue 1. Mapping urban Maori: A population-based study of Maori, pp. p28-40. 13p.

Toby Morris, R. C. (2018). Treaty of Waitangi: The comic book. Lift Education, All illustrations copyright Crown.

Warnock, A. (n.d.). https://thisnzlife.co.nz/tuhoe-leading-way-sustainable-design/.

  From the brief for Assignment 2, select a number of creative work examples from the list that intrigue you. Find out more about the potential that these examples would have to express your ideas

Collecting inspiration:

I looked in to Artist methods who used Art as Activism. Here some examples:

Manifesto: Art manifesto inspired by Arts like the Guerrilla girls. Their manifesto comes in the form of their slogan artworks. 

(https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/whats-on/exhibition/guerrilla-girls-reinventing-the-f-word-feminism?q=%2Fwhats-on%2Fexhibition%2Fguerrilla-girls-reinventing-the-f-word-feminism)

Collage 

(https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/young-women-climate-activists)

[bluewatsons]

Jonathan Glauser, Was the Right Lesson Learned from Libby Zion?, 27 Emergency Medicine News 38 (2005)

Seven years ago, a young woman was driving when her car was rear-ended. She suffered significant brain injury, and was in a coma for weeks. Today, she walks with some difficulty, her memory is flawed, and courts have declared her incompetent.

All of this would be of little note except that the person who rear-ended this young lady was a medical resident who had been on call and awake for 36 hours. The victim's family filed suit against the resident and against the hospital that employed her.

Anyone who has been through residency knows that hours on call exhaust doctors-in-training. It probably should come as no surprise that on-call duties might put the public in danger. Impairment associated with 24 hours of sleep loss is comparable with that associated with a 0.10 percent blood alcohol concentration. (NPR, Feb. 28, 2005, www.npr.org/templates/story.php?storyId-4512366, accessed March 8, 2005.)

In a prospective analysis during the 2002–2003 academic year, every scheduled night shift in a month resulting in a 30-hour stint increased the monthly risk of a motor vehicle crash during the commute from work by 16.2 percent. In months during which interns work five or more nights on call, their odds of falling asleep while driving were 2.39 times greater than baseline. (N Engl J Med 2005;352[2]:125.) Yet it is only relatively recently that any limits to residents' on-call duties have been promulgated, and they were not developed because those residents made the streets unsafe. This is despite the fact that drivers in the United States have been convicted of vehicular homicide for driving while impaired by sleepiness. (Massachusetts v. Salvaggio, N Berkshire County [Mass Dist CT 1994] No. 9428CR000504.) Appeals courts in two states have ruled that an employer's responsibility for fatigue-related crashes can continue after an employee has left work. (Faverty v. MacDonald's Restaurants of Oregon, 892 P. 2d 703 [Oreg 1995].)

Indentured Servitude

One may not expect much sympathy from attending physicians who have been entrenched in academia for decades and have set the rules for years. Long working hours have been a rite of passage between practically living in the hospital for very little pay to a cushy attending job with a six-figure salary. There used to be surgical programs that wouldn't hire residents who were married because that would interfere with their commitment to training, and perhaps they were right. Many have claimed that continuity of care is beneficial to patients and to the educational process, and continuity of care meant continuous oversight of one's patients during their entire hospital stay.

Surgical residents into the 1950s took call in-house three nights out of four, and were paid $50 a month for their time. Those jocks undoubtedly performed more abdominal operations than “girlie men” general surgeons today who have to have a positive CT scan before cutting out someone's appendix, who call interventional radiology to do a procedure that could just as well be accomplished with a scalpel, and who tend to worry a lot about operating where surgical pathology might not exist. The good old days when men were men also doesn't take into account the fact that house officers are paid a middle class wage today.

The Regulators

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education sets resident hours, which for the past two years have been set at 30 hours maximum at a stretch. In addition, house officers have to have a 24-hour stretch each week without patient care duties, and the weekly work-hour limit has been set at 80 hours, averaged over four weeks. Interestingly, the European Union stipulates a minimum rest time of 11 hours within each 24-hour period, effectively limiting duration of shifts to 13 hours for any physician-in-training. (European Working Time Directive, at www.incomesdata.co.uk/information/worktimedirective.htm#article3.)

The case of Libby Zion was perhaps one of the most influential in all of medical education. She was a young woman who was purported to have received substandard care by fatigued residents. A jury ultimately found the resident negligent and the hospital vicariously liable (JAMA 2004;292[9]:1051), but the case is instructive in many ways, and is worthy of review. The case had a profound impact on emergency care and attending supervision, and represented a frontal assault on graduate medical education as it existed in 1984.

Libby Zion was an 18-year-old woman who had undergone psychiatric treatment for stress. She had been treated with phenelzine, a potent MAO inhibitor. She also had been prescribed Percodan by her dentist, and for a fever and otalgia, erythromycin and chlorpheniramine. At some point in recent months, she also had received imipramine, flurazepam, diazepam, tetracycline, and doxycycline. She presented to New York Hospital with a temperature of 41°C, chills, myalgias, and arthralgias. She was evaluated by a second-year medical resident, who was not supervised by an emergency department attending staff.

She was writhing during her physical examination, and had some orthostatic blood pressure changes. After contact with her referring physician, she was admitted to the medical service, and given acetaminophen. She was agitated and shivering, and for this was prescribed meperidine. Sometime around 4 a.m., she became more agitated and confused. These symptoms were treated with physical restraints and haloperidol. She became more agitated around 6 a.m., and her temperature was noted to be 42°C. Cold compresses and a cooling blanket were ordered. At 6:30 a.m., she went into respiratory arrest and died. The medical examiner found evidence for cocaine by radioimmunoassay.

Awful mistakes in the Zion case did not occur in the ED, and would not have been remedied by 24/7 attending coverage

The investigating grand jury did not file any criminal indictments against the hospital or its physicians, but found much fault with the system of residency training that “allowed” such a death to occur. Not surprisingly, because her father was an attorney and a reporter for the New York Times, heads were bound to roll, and not necessarily in a way representing a rational response to the case. The grand jury recommended that the New York State Department of Health (DOH) promulgate regulations mandating that all Level I emergency departments be staffed with physicians with specific training in emergency care and at least three years of post-graduate training, and ensuring contemporaneous oversight of interns and junior residents by attending staff or physicians with at least three years of training. The grand jury also said the DOH should promulgate regulations to limit consecutive working hours for junior residents and interns at teaching hospitals, and conduct a study to determine the feasibility of requiring Level I hospitals to implement a computerized system to check for contraindicated combinations of drugs. N Engl J Med 1988;318[12]:771.) Finally, they said legislation should be enacted to prescribe when a patient in a medical hospital should be physically restrained, and to standardize care and attention for such patients.

Other recommendations were related to limitation of shift length: no more than 12 hours in emergency departments, 16 hours outside of emergency shifts, with a minimum of eight hours in-between. The Committee on Emergency Services called for a maximum work week of 80 hours, with 24/7 supervision of acute care units by experienced physicians.

Supervision for In-Patient Units

It seems obvious to me that the really awful mistakes in the case did not occur in the emergency department, and would not have been remedied by 24/7 attending coverage in every New York emergency department, though such a recommendation is laudable.

It has not transpired that in-house coverage on medical-surgical floors be at the attending level, even though it would be apparent from the Libby Zion case that this setting was precisely the one in which more mature supervision was most desperately needed.

It also begs the question whether attending oversight would have diagnosed and treated her serotonin syndrome. It is still a fact that serotonin syndrome is quite rare, even with the Demerol, cocaine, phenelzine, and who knows what else in Ms. Zion's body from various sources. Having a physician present with three years of post-graduate training on site would hardly be a guarantee that such a physician would recognize the syndrome or know how to treat it. It is incredible to me that all but a small fraction of physicians at the attending level would have ever seen the disorder at all.

Lastly, it is not clear that any of the mistakes in judgment, such as giving meperidine, a drug with serotoninergic action, to an agitated patient in restraints, was the result of sleep deprivation. Sleep is good, and fatigue may very well be a threat to patient safety. It certainly appears to be a threat to the safety of drivers unfortunate enough to be on the road when a resident finally drives home. To all appearances, however, the clinical decisions in the Zion case were made due to poor judgment, not to sleep deprivation. While we may be better doctors at 3 p.m. than 3 a.m., it appears that Libby Zion may very well have received the same care during the afternoon.

The Bottom Lines

We should not have to generate data to show that interns working 30-hour shifts make 36 percent more serious medical errors than those same interns who work no more than 16 hours consecutively. This should be intuitive. The question is how to make up for the inevitable decreased house officer coverage at teaching hospitals. Some obvious answers: longer and less intensive residency programs, enhanced role for physician extenders, attending staff providing more patient care.

Cutting down a work week to 80 hours should theoretically not even be worthy of note. Airplane pilots have been cited here and elsewhere as critical to public safety, similar to medical personnel. Loss of continuity of patient care as well as decreased exposure to procedures during residency may very well negatively affect the quality and nature of physicians turned out.

The Libby Zion case brought up issues that should have had little to do with emergency care, yet affected emergency medicine in a huge way, with its subsequent mandate for supervision at the attending level. The ultimate upshot of the case has probably been positive in many ways, but not because the solutions had anything to do with the problems actually encountered by Libby Zion in 1984.

If it is true that fatigue is bad, and that care is best avoided between the hours of, say, 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. because doctors are not as coordinated, knowledgeable, or quick on their feet at 4 a.m. as 4 p.m., we as a specialty may want to look into ways of discouraging patients with non-life-threatening problems from showing up during those hours. There are many ways to do so such as EMTALA modifications for off-hour screening of nonurgent patients and surcharges for nonurgent care during graveyard shifts.

#fatigue #medical care #libby zion law #libby zion #emergency medical care #medicine #medical residency #regulation

[bountyofbeads]

How China Uses LinkedIn to Recruit Spies Abroad https://nyti.ms/2ZtOgga

How China Uses LinkedIn to Recruit Spies Abroad

Western intelligence officials say Chinese agents are contacting thousands of foreign citizens using LinkedIn, including former government officials.

By Edward Wong | Published Aug. 27, 2019 Updated 8:50 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted August 28, 2019 |

WASHINGTON — One former senior foreign policy official in the Obama administration received messages from someone on LinkedIn offering to fly him to China and connect him with “well paid” opportunities.

A former Danish Foreign Ministry official got LinkedIn messages from someone appearing to be a woman at a Chinese headhunting firm wanting to meet in Beijing. Three middle-aged men showed up instead and said they could help the former official gain “great access to the Chinese system” for research.

A former Obama White House official and career diplomat was befriended on LinkedIn by a person who claimed to be a research fellow at the California Institute of Technology, with a profile page showing connections to White House aides and ambassadors. No such fellow exists.

Foreign agents are exploiting social media to try to recruit assets, with LinkedIn as a prime hunting ground, Western counterintelligence officials say. Intelligence agencies in the United States, Britain, Germany and France have issued warnings about foreign agents approaching thousands of users on the site. Chinese spies are the most active, officials say.

“We’ve seen China’s intelligence services doing this on a mass scale,” said William R. Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, a government agency that tracks foreign spying and alerts companies to possible infiltration. “Instead of dispatching spies to the U.S. to recruit a single target, it’s more efficient to sit behind a computer in China and send out friend requests to thousands of targets using fake profiles.”

The use of social media by Chinese government operatives for what American officials and executives call nefarious purposes has drawn heightened scrutiny in recent weeks. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube said they deleted accounts that had spread disinformation about the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests. Twitter alone said it removed nearly 1,000 accounts.

It was the first time Facebook and Twitter had taken down accounts linked to disinformation from China. Many governments have employed similar playbooks to sow disinformation since Russia used the tactic to great effect in 2015 and 2016.

LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft, is both another vehicle for potential disinformation and, more important, an ideal one for espionage recruitment, American officials say.

That is because many of its 645 million users are seeking employment opportunities, often from strangers. To enhance their prospects, many former government employees advertise that they have security clearances.

LinkedIn is also the only major American social media platform not blocked in China because the company has agreed to censor posts containing delicate material.

Chinese agents often make offers over various channels, including LinkedIn, to bring the prospective recruit to China, sometimes through the guise of a corporate recruiting firm offering to pay them for speaking or consulting engagements or aid in research. From there, agents develop the relationship.

“The Chinese want to build these options with political, academic and business elites,” said Jonas Parello-Plesner, the former Danish Foreign Ministry official who reported the apparent recruiting attempt by the Chinese that began over LinkedIn. “A lot of this thrives in the gray zone or the spectrum between influence-seeking and interference or classical espionage.”

People who have just left government are especially vulnerable because they are often looking for new employment, he and other former officials say.

Nicole Leverich, a spokeswoman for LinkedIn, said the company proactively finds fake accounts to remove and has a team that acts on information from a variety of sources, including government agencies.

“We enforce our policies, which are very clear: The creation of a fake account or fraudulent activity with an intent to mislead or lie to our members is a violation of our terms of service,” she said.

Some photographs on fake accounts are generated by artificial intelligence, The Associated Press reported.

In multiple recent cases, LinkedIn proved to be an effective recruiting tool. A former employee of the C.I.A. and Defense Intelligence Agency, Kevin Patrick Mallory, was sentenced in May to 20 years in prison for spying for China. The relationship began after he replied in February 2017 to a LinkedIn message from a Chinese intelligence agent posing as a think tank representative, the F.B.I. said.

The Justice Department last October charged a Chinese intelligence agent, Yanjun Xu, with economic espionage after he recruited a GE Aviation engineer in a relationship that began on LinkedIn, according to the indictment.

Mr. Evanina, the counterintelligence chief, told Reuters last year that Chinese agents were contacting thousands of people at a time on LinkedIn. “It’s the ultimate playground for collection,” he said.

That level of activity has not dropped, though Mr. Evanina declined to give statistics.

“People in the private sector and academia are also being targeted this way,” he said this month. “Foreign intelligence services are looking for anyone with access to the information they want, whether classified or unclassified, including corporate trade secrets, intellectual property and other research.”

The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

The former Obama senior foreign policy official, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of jeopardizing future interactions related to China, described in interviews a monthslong recruitment effort by someone who appeared to be a Chinese spy.

In May 2017, five months after the official left his government job and just after he made a trip to China, someone called Robinson Zhang reached out via LinkedIn.

Mr. Zhang’s profile photograph features the Hong Kong skyline, and he identifies as a public relations manager for a company called R&C Capital. In a message to the former official, Mr. Zhang described R&C as “an international consulting company based in Hong Kong” that specializes in “global investment, geopolitical issues, public policy, etc.”

“I’m quite impressed by your CV and think you may be right for some opportunities, which are all well paid,” Mr. Zhang wrote, according to screenshots of the exchanges.

The words struck him as strange, the former official said, so he asked Mr. Zhang for a website. Mr. Zhang directed him to a home page with an image of the Eiffel Tower but little information about R&C Capital. It appeared to be “something he made up on the fly,” the former official said. (The New York Times viewed the site, which was deleted sometime after The Times emailed the company for an interview request.)

Mr. Zhang repeatedly indicated that his company could pay for a trip to China. The former official asked multiple times for more detail on the company but did not get any substantive responses.

In a message in August 2017, Mr. Zhang said that Zhejiang University had “already determined a candidate” for a conference on China’s Belt and Road infrastructure projects before suggesting other opportunities — even though the two had not shared any earlier exchanges about this or any other event.

The former official referred Mr. Zhang to a speakers’ agency representing him and has not heard from Mr. Zhang since.

Although the site for R&C Capital listed its address as No. 68 Mody Road in Hong Kong, there is no company by that name there. The company is also not included in the Hong Kong corporate registration database.

Mr. Parello-Plesner, the Danish official, had similar exchanges on LinkedIn with a user by the name of Grace Woo who contacted him in 2011.

Ms. Woo said she worked for DRHR, a headhunting company in Hangzhou, China. When she learned Mr. Parello-Plesner was visiting Beijing in 2012, she suggested he stop by Hangzhou to meet with the company. She asked for an image of his passport so she could make travel arrangements, but he declined.

Mr. Parello-Plesner agreed to meet in the St. Regis Hotel in Beijing. Ms. Woo never appeared, but a young man who said he was from DRHR guided Mr. Parello-Plesner to a conference room, where three middle-aged men welcomed him. They said they were from a government research organization, but they did not have business cards.

“I thought, ‘This meeting is very dodgy,’” Mr. Parello-Plesner said.

The men told Mr. Parello-Plesner they could fund his research if he worked with them, promising “‘really great access to the Chinese system,’” he said.

Mr. Parello-Plesner, suspecting the men were intelligence or security officials, reported the meeting to British officials when he returned to London, where he lived at the time.

“If I were LinkedIn, I would proactively do my homework now,” said Mr. Parello-Plesner, who has researched  China’s foreign interference operations  as a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and wrote about his encounter last year. “This was just the tip of the iceberg.”

DRHR was one of three companies German domestic intelligence officials singled out in December 2017 as front organizations for Chinese agents. Those officials concluded that Chinese agents had used LinkedIn to try to contact 10,000 Germans, and LinkedIn shut down some accounts, including those of DRHR and Ms. Woo.

Last October, French intelligence agencies told the government that Chinese agents had used social networks — LinkedIn in particular — to try to contact 4,000 French individuals. Targets included government employees, scientists and company executives, according to Le Figaro, the French newspaper.

It can be hard to pinpoint the origins of the people behind fake social media accounts. The former Obama White House official and career diplomat, Brett Bruen, said a user by the name of Donna Alexander contacted him in 2017 on LinkedIn. Her profile says she is a research fellow at the California Institute of Technology, but the photograph is of an actress.

A spokeswoman for the university said it has no record of an employee by that name.

Ms. Alexander’s network on LinkedIn includes White House officials and former ambassadors, according to screenshots seen by The Times. “This person seems to have ingratiated herself with or gotten accepted by a lot of people in the foreign policy structure of U.S. government,” Mr. Bruen said.

At the same time, Western intelligence agencies are discovering another potential issue with LinkedIn — some of their operatives have no account there at all, which might raise questions about a person’s true identity among foreign officials or counterintelligence agents. Mr. Bruen said one European official told him that his country’s intelligence agency was creating “the most boring LinkedIn profiles possible — a shallow cover so it doesn’t arouse suspicion.”

Cao Li contributed reporting from Hong Kong.

#china #china news #social media #social news #politics and government #us politics #politics #u.s. news #u.s. military #counterintelligence #technology #trump administration

[theconservativebrief]

It’s been a week since Louis C.K. made his attempt at a return to the public eye, but the ensuing outrage is continuing unabated.

On August 26, C.K. made a surprise appearance at New York’s Comedy Cellar, where he performed a 15-minute set to a standing ovation. It was C.K.’s first high-profile public performance since last November, when he admitted to having masturbated in front of multiple unwilling women.

For C.K.’s supporters, his performance was a welcome return to the fold, coming after C.K. had admitted his wrong and spent time out of the public eye. He’d taken his medicine, was the general argument, and now it was time for the public to let him come back to comedy as a changed man.

“Will take heat for this, but people have to be allowed to serve their time and move on with their lives,” wrote actor Michael Ian Black, in a tweet he later apologized for. “I don’t know if it’s been long enough, or his career will recover, or if people will have him back, but I’m happy to see him try.”

“[Louis C.K.] can be shamed, humiliated, lose millions of dollars, lose all of his projects, lose the respect of a lot of his fans and peers, and whatever else that comes with what he did, but since he can still do a comedy set for free at a 200 seat club a year later, it means he got off easy,” wrote SNL’s Michael Che in a series of now-deleted Instagram posts. “THAT’s how coveted fame is.”

But for others, C.K.’s appearance was a travesty.

“‘Comeback’ is not the right word for what is being floated here,” wrote Amanda Hess at the New York Times. “A comeback implies a hero’s journey — an adventure, a transformation, a triumphant return. This feels more like a malignancy. We try to cut men like him out of public life, but nine months later, we get a call with the bad news.”

“Do people deserve second chances? Of course,” wrote Arwa Mahdawi at the Guardian. “But the more important question to ask is why some people get second, third and fourth chances, while others are never even afforded a first chance? We should be asking ourselves how CK’s abuse of power robbed his victims of professional opportunities. We should be reminding ourselves that CK is not the victim in this situation.”

Personally, I can’t say whether or not Louis C.K. will ever be accepted back into the public eye, but this performance did nothing to convince me that he should be. Here are the three big things that he did wrong.

In Louis C.K.’s initial apology for his history of sexual misconduct last fall, he acknowledged that part of what made his actions wrong was that he had created a power dynamic in which women couldn’t walk away from him.

“What I learned later in life, too late, is that when you have power over another person, asking them to look at your dick isn’t a question. It’s a predicament for them,” he said. “The power I had over these women is that they admired me. And I wielded that power irresponsibly.”

But C.K.’s surprise set at the Comedy Cellar ended up recreating the same toxic power dynamic.

C.K.’s set was unannounced, and even the Comedy Cellar’s owner didn’t know he would be appearing. (Reportedly, C.K. walked up to the emcee and asked if he could have the mic for a bit.) Any members of the audience who did not feel comfortable watching C.K. perform and lending him their de facto support had no warning about what was about to happen. They couldn’t choose to stay home, because they didn’t know what they were about to watch.

And once C.K. took the stage, anyone who was uncomfortable with his set couldn’t necessarily just get up and walk out. The Comedy Cellar has and enforces a two-drink minimum, meaning that you have to spend a certain amount of money at the bar before you can settle your tab and go. Until you’ve reached your minimum, you’re stuck.

Women who were present at the set told Vulture that they weren’t pleased C.K. was there, but they felt uncomfortable speaking out against him. “If someone had heckled him, I think they would’ve been heckled out. It felt like there were a lot of aggressive men in the audience and very quiet women,” one said. “It’s the kind of vibe that doesn’t allow for a dissenting voice. You’re just expected to be a good audience member. You’re considered a bad sport if you speak out.”

So, to recap: Louis C.K. fell from grace after admitting that he had masturbated in front of women without their meaningful consent. He made his big attempt at a comeback by entering — without warning — a space whose rules discourage walkouts and whose culture discourages heckling. He took away his audience’s ability to consent to watch him.

The irony is not lost on the women who ended up witnessing his set. “It felt like he was being thrust upon the audience without telling them,” one said to Vulture.

C.K. did not just disappear for nine months as punishment for his sins. The career ramifications he suffered — getting dropped by Netflix, HBO, and FX; his movie getting shelved — came partly because his brand was toxic, but also as part of a workplace safety issue.

C.K. disappeared because he had demonstrated a pattern of predatory behavior around women over whom he had power, and he did it in their place of work. (Reportedly, he asked some women to watch him masturbate but didn’t even ask others; the women who said that he asked first have explained that C.K. had so much power over them that they felt they couldn’t say no.)

In most industries, if an employee is fired for sexually harassing his underlings, it’s considered poor form to rehire said employee nine months later just because he has shown up and requested his job back. You need assurance of some kind that he has taken steps to correct his behavior, understand what he did wrong, and prevent himself from harassing people again. You need proof that demonstrates that you aren’t putting people in danger by letting this person back into the workplace.

In C.K.’s apology, he wrote, “I have spent my long and lucky career talking and saying anything that I want. I will now step back and take a long time to listen.” Even if you were to set aside the fact that C.K.’s definition of “a long time” is apparently nine months, he has yet to demonstrate that he has put in the necessary work to assure us all that he isn’t going to harass women again when given the chance. If anything, his willingness to spring his presence on an unsuspecting and potentially unconsenting audience suggests the opposite.

There is a common theme to all of the instances of sexual harassment that C.K. committed: He consistently targeted young up-and-coming comedians who did not have his level of institutional power. He harassed them and made them feel unsafe in professional spaces, and that negatively impacted their careers. And when they came forward about what he’d done to them, their careers suffered more.

“Since speaking out, I’ve experienced vicious and swift backlash from women and men, in and out of the comedy community,” wrote C.K. accuser Rebecca Corry in a Vulture article in May. “I’ve received death threats, been berated, judged, ridiculed, dismissed, shamed, and attacked​.”

None of the women whom C.K. targeted have the institutional power to walk into the Comedy Cellar on the spur of the moment, grab the mic, and be met with a standing ovation. And C.K. does not appear to have used any of his own enormous institutional power to raise the platforms of these women. Instead, he’s stood by and stayed quiet while they are harassed for having come forward to speak publicly about what he did to them.

Here’s the situation we’re left with: Louis C.K. has not done anything that we know of to make up for his actions and the way they negatively affected his victims. He has not done anything that we know of to show that he even understands the extent to which his actions negatively affected his victims. He has not done anything that we know of to assure us that he won’t sexually harass women again in the future.

Instead, he showed up to a venue that customers can’t just walk out of and inflicted his presence on the audience with no warning. He recreated the power dynamics that made him dangerous to begin with. And he did it all in a bid to convince the public to accept him back into their good graces.

But if his standing ovation at the Comedy Cellar is any indication, no matter how many people have their doubts about C.K., he will always have plenty of vocal and enthusiastic supporters ready to cheer him on.

Original Source -> Louis C.K.’s controversial comeback attempt, explained

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

[newssplashy]

World: An oil giant is taking big steps. Saudi Arabia can't afford for it to slip

RAS TANURA, Saudi Arabia — This port, on the calm blue waters of the Persian Gulf, operates with militarylike precision.

At the top of the hexagonal control tower, staff dressed in neat white uniforms with officers’ epaulets keep watch, looking over the sweep of countless storage tanks and ships.

“If a target tries to hide behind a ship, we can see him,” said Salah al-Ghamdi, the chief pilot at the facility.

Thousands of ships depart these waters annually, transporting the wealth of crude beneath the Saudi Arabian desert to gas-guzzling nations. The kingdom accounts for almost one-sixth of world oil exports, and even a minor disruption here could send shudders through global markets.

The state-run oil giant that operates the port, Saudi Aramco, is the economic force behind Saudi Arabia’s transformation into a regional powerhouse. The deep oil reserves, which the company extracts, transports and sells, have made the country an important part of a geopolitical equation that includes the United States, China and Russia. Leveraging its engineering expertise, Saudi Aramco has built schools, roads, hospitals and much of the other infrastructure that girds Saudi society.

As the kingdom prepares for its next evolution, Saudi Aramco is again central — in a role that leaves the company and the country at risk.

The Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has unveiled an ambitious effort called Vision 2030 to wean the country from its dependence on oil and overhaul the economy. As part of his plan, he wants to sell a piece of the state oil giant to the public, in part to raise money for other investments.

It is one of the mostly highly anticipated initial public offerings, which Salman estimates could value Saudi Aramco at $2 trillion. But a stock sale leaves the opaque company more exposed to outside forces, a compromising position for a political beast with a powerful hand over prices at the pump.

With global prices north of $70 a barrel, Saudi Arabia and its oil giant are under pressure to increase production. It could put them at odds with some other nations in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which meets this week.

“Saudi Aramco has always carried the kingdom on its back,” said Jim Krane, an energy and geopolitics fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute. “But to support the kingdom in the coming decades, it needs to transform itself.”

In essence, Salman wants the kingdom and Saudi Aramco to plan for the day far in the future when the oil age draws to a close. The present is already making the crude business look less attractive. Countries around the world are shifting to renewable power, while technological advances like electric cars are eroding demand for oil.

To diversify, Aramco is building vast new facilities that will turn crude into more profitable petrochemicals, and it is increasingly drilling for gas. It is also working with Google to establish data centers in the kingdom to develop data-analytics and cloud-computing capacity.

But the IPO will draw scrutiny to a company whose inner workings have long been kept out of sight. Pressure from investors, combined with a prince in a hurry to transform his country, could jeopardize the long-term approach that has made Aramco a dominant force.

For two years, a special team has been working with an array of Western bankers and advisers, preparing for how to handle quarterly reporting of results and coordinate trading between stock exchanges. A local Saudi listing seems certain, but London, New York and bourses in Asia are still in the running for a piece.

Amin H. Nasser, Aramco’s chief executive, said in an interview that the company was preparing to list in all those locations. Speaking with a picture of Salman in the background, he added, “It makes us ready for any market the government decides.”

The ‘Golden Ghetto’

Othman al-Khowaiter was born in 1933, the same year that Standard Oil of California secured a sweeping oil concession from the founder of Saudi Arabia. The Khowaiter family was made up of poor farmers, and as a child, he worked as a houseboy. He would follow the same path as the country’s nascent energy business.

The founder, King Abdulaziz ibn Saud, needed cash to run his country, created from a patchwork of tribes. The U.S. company, the predecessor to what is now Chevron, paid him 50,000 British pounds’ worth of gold for the contract. The company sent teams of U.S. geologists to explore Saudi Arabia’s deserts, accompanied by Bedouin guides and soldiers from the king to ward off raiders.

Lacking today’s sophisticated tools to find oil and gas underground, they interpreted clues on the surface — fossils, domes and folds in the rock — that hinted oil may be trapped underneath. One geologist, Ernie Berg, noticed that a wadi, or ancient riverbed, took a mysterious turn. He surmised that the bend had been caused by a large uplift, indicating an underlying oil field.

It led to the 170-mile-long Ghawar field, which remains by far the world’s largest oil discovery. Such finds altered Saudi Arabia’s prospects. After a pause during World War II, money started coming in, and jobs were suddenly on offer for the new company, the Arabian American Oil Co., or Aramco.

Aramco soon became a magnet for men like al-Khowaiter. In a society that had long been defined by tribal connections, the company modeled itself as a meritocracy offering young hopefuls the chance for advancement. Al-Khowaiter spent several days in 1949 crossing the country, hitching rides with passing trucks from his home in central Saudi Arabia, to Dhahran on the eastern coast, where Aramco was ramping up its operations.

“I heard about people working for Aramco, that the door was open to getting an education,” al-Khowaiter said, over tea and pecan pie.

Back then, Al Khobar — now a major port near Dhahran — was a medieval-looking walled town that lacked the facilities, roads or people needed for an international oil hub. Saudi employees there lived in palm-thatched huts and were plagued by diseases like malaria.

Al-Khowaiter, who was sent by the Saudi government to study petroleum engineering at the University of Texas, eventually spent 35 years at the company, rising to become vice president for drilling before retiring in 1996. He still lives in Dhahran, now Aramco’s headquarters, in a gated community dotted with date palm trees known as the golden ghetto, a wealthy enclave with a Mexican theme restaurant and a golf course, among other entertainment.

Stories like al-Khowaiter’s are common, the most famous being Ali al-Naimi’s. Al-Naimi, the son of a pearl diver and his Bedouin wife, began studying at an Aramco-sponsored school, and was first hired by the company as an office boy at 12 years old. He embraced U.S. culture, even learning to play shortstop in baseball, and pestered the company to send him abroad — first to Beirut and then to the United States, where he earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees.

In 1988, al-Naimi became Aramco’s chief executive, the first Saudi in the position. In 1995, he was named Saudi Arabia’s oil minister.

“Without Aramco, I don’t know what life would be,” al-Khowaiter said. “We would not be at the level we are now.”

A Unique Long View

Aramco’s path has long been driven by politics. Riyadh’s relationship with the United States frayed during the Arab-Israeli war in 1973. Washington supported Israel. In retaliation, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states imposed an oil embargo on the United States. That same year, the Saudis took a 25 percent stake in Aramco, eventually gaining full control by 1980.

The U.S. influence is still apparent. Many expatriates stayed, and U.S. companies kept buying and selling Saudi oil. Unlike the rest of Saudi Arabia, where recreation and entertainment are largely forbidden, Aramco compounds have baseball diamonds and movie theaters. Men and women work together and mingle in public. English is widely spoken.

Saudi Aramco’s success, in many ways, is tied to its roots. It is run more like a private company than a state-run fief, with top executives typically chosen for competence rather than connections. Its employees are efficient, skilled and highly educated, making Aramco an outlier in a kingdom where state control has stifled innovation and limited the kinds of opportunities that should be available in such a wealthy country.

The company is widely praised for embracing technology and, unlike many government-controlled energy companies, finishing projects on time and on budget. While Aramco does not disclose its financial results, analysts say its large, long-running fields most likely mean that the costs of bringing the oil out of the ground are among the lowest in the industry. Rystad Energy, a Norwegian market research company, estimates Saudi Aramco’s operating costs to be $4.88 for each barrel of oil. Last year, Exxon Mobil reported worldwide production costs of $10.12 a barrel.

Its Saudi parentage gives the company an advantage over the likes of Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell. Aramco doesn’t face the relentless quarter-to-quarter pressure to produce profit. It can take a really, really long-term view, and over the years has persistently opted for the most advanced — and expensive — technology to ensure it will be able to pump vast quantities of oil for decades.

“Saudi Aramco has a much better business model than the international majors,” said J. Robinson West, chairman of the BCG Center for Energy Impact, a consultancy.

When Aramco first drilled at the Shaybah oil field in the 1990s, it picked a then unusual and costly process known as horizontal drilling. Rather than exploring straight down into the ground, Aramco’s wells lace through Shaybah. One has so many branches it is known as the fish bone.

They more than compensate for the cost, though. During the process, the wells have more contact with oil-bearing rocks to produce more crude, while expending less energy on pumping.

This approach is one reason giant fields like Ghawar continue to produce despite having been tapped for decades. Fields in areas like the North Sea in Europe, or in the Gulf of Mexico, have declined sharply.

“Saudi Aramco has the longest time horizon in the industry,” said Daniel Yergin, an oil historian.

With oil reserves pegged at about 260 billion barrels — far more than any publicly listed competitor — Aramco has around 70 years’ worth of resources at present production levels. It has the two largest oil fields ever discovered. And more are coming, with the recently developed Manifa capable of producing 900,000 barrels of oil a day. Western oil majors only rarely get access to such giant deposits.

“We are in a unique position where we have exclusive access to all of Saudi Arabia’s fields,” said Suha Kayum, an Aramco research scientist. “We basically develop our fields to last for centuries.”

Change Is Coming

About an hour’s drive from Dhahran, a gargantuan industrial complex dominates the desert landscape. Two square miles, it looks like a small city, except people are eerily absent and the streets are lined with pipes, storage tanks and smokestacks. Sadara, as this complex is called, represents what could be the new Aramco.

The ambitious project, which began operating last year, is the result of a $20 billion investment by the company and its partner, Dow Chemical. In all, 26 plants brew an array of petrochemicals from oil and gas for foam, insulation and plastics, as well as chemicals that will go into adhesives, coatings and cosmetics.

The idea is not only to feed expanding world markets for these products, but also to sow the seeds of a diversified Saudi economy. Officials hope Sadara will drive growth in industries like furniture and car parts, providing jobs to the country’s young and fast-growing labor force.

“We see the world changing,” said Abdulaziz al-Judaimi, Aramco’s senior vice president for chemicals and refining. “It is very much for us to read the future, and engineer our future in a way that we keep our market share.”

Aramco is separately trying to up its output of natural gas. Past policies and Saudi geology have left the kingdom surprisingly short of gas, which is increasingly used in electricity generation. The company is even on the hunt for international gas deals that could bring fuel back to Saudi Arabia, a role reversal for one of the world’s most dominant exporters.

But whether politics and profits can peacefully coexist in this blend is a big uncertainty for Saudi Aramco.

Investors in a public Saudi Aramco may want to know why the company has research centers across the globe when others have been cutting back.

They might question why the company needs to lend executives and engineers to the government to carry out pet projects for the kingdom, like building a university on the Red Sea.

Or they might wonder why Saudi Aramco maintains as much as 2 million barrels a day of spare pumping capacity for the country to intervene in world markets, an amount equal to the total oil production of Nigeria.

“They have a gold-plating mentality,” Floris Ansingh, a former head of Royal Dutch Shell’s operations in Saudi Arabia, said of Aramco. “They are very demanding on the technical side. They act like a rich company.”

After a public listing, he said, “this mentality has to go.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

STANLEY REED © 2018 The New York Times

source https://www.newssplashy.com/2018/06/world-oil-giant-is-taking-big-steps.html

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[douchebagbrainwaves]

COUPLE GUYS, EITHER WITH DAY JOBS OR IN SCHOOL, SUICIDE WAS A CONSTANT TOPIC AMONG THE SMARTER KIDS

Finally, by watching users you can support per machine will be the best, but merely to explain the apparently too neat workings of the natural world. You'll also have a handful of centers and one dominant one, that's going to be more meaningful. So tablet makers should be thinking: what else can we put in there? Being strong-willed but self-indulgent in the sense we mean when we talk to them about what they really want you, either because they're inappropriate, or not important, or c that they aren't. They go out for dinner together, talk about ideas, whether they want to invest millions in a company is getting cheaper. So any language comparison where you have lots of worries, but you can learn quickly. This is great news for the marginal. A round eventually.

I moved to New York, where people walk, but not smiling. It's hard to distinguish from a partisan attack on them, but I found that what the teacher wanted us to do was grow that core incrementally. There are several reasons why, but it doesn't cost much. They raise enough money to hire people to fill the gaps in some a priori org chart. Start your own company. The message Berkeley sends is: you should expect a plan that promises freedom at the expense of others. In my nephews' rooms the bed is the only clear space. You don't want small in the sense of being about hacking, and just look at the work of a painter in chronological order, you'll find that everyone else was, including us. This is a dumb plan. They're in a different position because they're investing their own money.

Their living expenses are low. Now founders would prefer to sell less, and VCs usually a million or more. The very implementation is different. That's how the two are only loosely coupled. What we know of their predecessors comes from fragments and references in the press about online commerce. I mean truly evaluate whether your startup is connected to a specific industry, you may not have had this as an explicit goal. When one looks over these trends, is there any overall theme? The more mobile startups get, the more valuable it is to get every distraction out of the woodwork every month or so.

In the middle you have people working on something like the Sieve of Eratosthenes. In a notebook you can guess what a scribble means by looking at good programs—not even Google. Almost every company needs some amount of natural benevolence. The stranger your tastes seem to other people that got everyone else: that's what made even grandmas and 14 year old girls want computers. And more importantly, by selecting that small a group you can get at least someone really loves. In poor countries, things we take for granted, or to speak a foreign language fluently, that will usually be. If you're experienced at negotiations, you already know might send you an email with a new protocol. And founders and early employees of startups, and b someone who took the trouble to develop high-level language is what the situation deserved.

Most people I know have problems with Internet addiction. And when Jobs found someone to give Apple serious venture funding, on the radar screen may be different from what lawyers do, and even now I don't win consistently. Let's think about how to cure it. When meeting people you don't really understand them. A program is a program you were writing for yourself. Ditto in engineering. Beyond that, they want in too; if not, not. Even if nerds cared as much as shoes have to be introduced to a whole new piece of software. It would be a good thing for investors that this is concealed, but it would work for any kind of business plan for a new type of number you've made up, and they'll use it.

But valuable ideas are very close to good ideas, and instead of trying to answer was how many there were of them. I can't think of any successful startups whose founders came to speak at Y Combinator often have the downtrodden air of refugees. After a while they all blur together. So what does this mean? And we in the present are not a fallen people, who are merely the inheritors of a tradition growing out of what was, 700 years ago, but now it's simply repeated as if it were a conscious trick, he would have had to struggle against them. They're like dealers; they sell the stuff, but they want to do. A friend of mine said, Most VCs can't do anything really well unless you love it, and it was like trying to predict beforehand, so lots of people use them for that purpose. The programmers you'll be able to give up the new powers it had acquired. Most users probably don't. There they have the same inexpensive Intel processors that you have to do more than find good projects. I explained in The Refragmentation, that was like a sine wave.

Here. For one thing, artists, unlike apple trees, often deliberately try to trick us. We've all seen comments like this: shareholder shares percent————————-with the addition of a heh or an emoticon, prompted by the all too accurate sense that something is truly missing. Expose all transactions, and you tend to deal with uncertainty is to analyze it into components. Instead you should draw a few quick lines in roughly the right place to look was in the same problem there. You're just looking for things that people haven't realized yet that the way to succeed is through following the rules. Imagine what it would look like. The reason is a phenomenon I call schlep blindness. Iterate.

Thanks to Richard Florida, Ingrid Bassett, James Bracy, Carolynn Levy, Jessica Livingston, Patrick Collison, Eric Raymond, and Chris Anderson for putting up with me.

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