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a-little-slice-of-fandom · 3 years

Note

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the Irish-ness of Dracula, if you wanna ramble about it!

(Okay I just want to apologise for how long this took to answer because I know it’s been sitting in my inbox for over a month but..depression and work happened and I just didn’t have the time or energy to complete it. I seriously do apologise for this but I hope you enjoy the post anyway!)

So the first thing I need to clear up is this: the concept of a monster or a demon that feeds upon the life force of humans is not limited to one singular culture or folklore. In fact, this core concept is a wider cultural phenomenon and variations of it exist across both countries and continents. And no one country can take sole credit for the this core concept of vampires. Anyone who tries to claim otherwise either doesn’t know much about vampires or is intentionally being disingenuous. There can be cultural variations that are specific to certain folklores (and to just blatantly steal these would be cultural appropriation), but the main idea of vampires exists across a wide range of folklores and no singular person, group of people or culture can take credit for the creation of vampires.

However, arguably it was the work of Bram Stoker that aided in the solidification of the concept of Vampires that we know today. While there were other authors from a wide range of nationalities who wrote about Vampires before Stoker (including John William Polidori who wrote the Vampyre in 1819)...Dracula is the best known. (Now I personally believe that’s because Dracula is an absolutely banging novel, although I do concede that the prevalence of adaptations of Dracula from the 1920’s to today helps keep Dracula in the forefront of audiences minds.) In addition, it’s important to remember that Stoker was inspired by another Irish author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, who wrote the novel Carmilla. As far as I know, Le Fanu and Stoker actually worked together on a magazine!

Another thing I think that needs clarification is the common belief that Stoker heavily/religiously based Dracula on the historical figure Vlad the Impailer. This is heavily debated by scholars. While there’s an obvious, undeniable similarity between the names of these two...the similarities start to wain after this, with only small similarities between the two and there’s even literal contradictions between the history of Vlad the Impailer and Dracula’s history in the novel. In fact, there’s not much indication that Stoker based the character Dracula off Vlad the Impailer, or even that he had a working knowledge of Vlad the Impailer beyond the name. In all 124 pages of his notes, there’s nothing to indicate that Stoker’s inspiration for Dracula came from Vlad the Impailer.

(Plus Dracula in the novel wasn’t even originally called Dracula...he was called Count Wampyr in the original drafts of the novel and this was only changed, from what I can gather, in the last couple of drafts.)

In fact, I’d personally argue that that connection between Vlad the Impailer and Dracula is actually something that’s been retroactively added by other artists, for example the 1992 film “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” heavily leaned into this idea that Dracula and Vald the Impailer were one in the same, and as time has progressed people assume that these elements were in the original novel when that’s simply untrue! Stoker didn’t write that! It’s a retroactive addition by other artists that’s just assumed by the masses to be canon. This phenomenon is actually super interesting and it’s absolutely not limited to Stoker’s novel Dracula/the modern day perception of Dracula (another example would be Mary Shelley’s version of Frankenstein versus the modern day perception Frankenstein). I’m not sure if there’s a word for what this is, but I like the term “cultural canon”, where something that’s been added in by other artists has become as good as canon within the minds of the masses and as such is ingrained within the cultural perception of something, despite it having no basis within the original piece or even directly contradicting what is in canon.

(Now I’ll absolutely concede that Stoker taking the name of a historical figure and possibly their likeness from another country and making them into a literal monster is something that should be discussed. I don’t know how Vlad the Impailer is viewed within Romania - whether he’s viewed positively or negatively or a mixture - but regardless he was a historical figure and Stoker did eventually use that name for his own creative purposes. Again, Stoker didn’t say that Dracula and Vlad the Impailer were the same person, that’s other artists doing, but there’s still issues with Stoker that needs to be discussed)

Now, I’ve seen people talk about how Stoker took a lot of inspiration from the Baltic folklore surrounding vampires for his novel, but I don’t really know this folklore very well and therefore I don’t feel like I’m qualified to discuss it. If anyone is more well versed in this topic wants to add to this post then they’re more than welcome to! I don’t deny that Stoker too inspiration from places other than Ireland (like the novel is set in Whitby) but I just feel like people over hype the relation between stokers Dracula and Vlad the Impailer.

Now, onto the Irish mythology side!

So the most obvious inspiration for Dracula comes from the story of Abhartach. here is a link to an actual, respectable retelling of the story of Abhartach which I’d highly recommend people read (it’s really not that long) but the key points go as follows:

There was this Irish chieftain called Abhartach, who was really cruel and the townsfolk didn’t really like him. So, the townsfolk and another cheiftain (known as Cathain) banded together to kill Abhartach. They did succeed in killing him (yay), however, Abhartach just sort of...rose from the dead and began another reign of terror (not yay). However, Abhartach needed to be sustained by blood and required a bowlful every day to sustain his energy. Cathain comes back and kills Abhartach once again, but Abhartach rises from the dead once more and now needs more blood. Abhartach is only banished when Cathain uses a word made from yew wood and wounds Abhartach with it. Abhartach is buried upside down with a grant stone over the grave to stop Abhartach rising once again.

Sound familiar? The similarities between Abhartach and Dracula are undeniable! Yes, there’s some differences between the two but the core story here is almost identical. I could totally reword that paragraph, omitting the names, and it would be indistinguishable from a short summary of Dracula! Even the way that the main characters find out about the wooden weapon that can kill the monster is similar, as both Jonathan and Cathain go to wiser and older members of their community to learn more.

(Also please mythology blogs don’t come for me I know my retelling was an incredible oversimplification but I’m writing on my iPad and my thumbs are starting to hurt. People have wrote full papers on the similarities between Dracula and Abhartach and there’s so many more people more qualified than me, I’m just an 18 year old trying to make a fun and interesting tumblr post. Again, if anyone wants add anything like extra sources or more information or even to point out my mistakes then I more than welcome the additions)

Another piece of folklore that’s also said to have inspired Dracula is the Dearg Due. Now there’s multiple different versions of the tale, but the version I have heard goes like this:

There’s a noble woman who wants to marry a penniless peasant boy, but her dad disapproves and wants her to marry another man who is much richer. The rich man and the noble woman were eventually married but the woman didn’t love the rich man. In retaliation, the rich man locked the woman in a windowless castle where she starved to death. The woman was buried by the locals who took pity on her, but because she was buried hungry she came back to life and drank the blood of her father and her husband as revenge. The version I heard says that the dearg due now basically wanders ireland drinking the blood of men who have hurt or wronged women (as one should) but there’s other endings to the story.

(Again is anyone has a reliable source they want to share then please feel free to add!)

So this is another Irish piece of folklore that clearly includes some elements that we now associate with vampires. Now people (including Wikipedia) claim that this story was specifically what Stoker based Dracula on, and while I definitely think that Stoker was aware of this story and took inspiration from it, I personally think that the Dearg Due inspired the concept of Dracula’s wives more than Dracula himself.

However the key point still stands: Stoker was likely aware of these legends and even the most staunchly anti-Irish person would have to concede that there’s similarities between all three stories. And very rarely are these similarities discussed in classes about Dracula...which I feel is a real disservice. I don’t think students should have to have an intense knowledge of Irish mythology (my knowledge is spotty at best) nor do I think it should be an exam question...but even a brief acknowledgment of “hey, Stoker was inspired by these stories and you can clearly see similarities between them” would be nice. Moreover, it further solidifies my original argument that Stoker was, at least to some extent, Irish and that his Irishness inherently influenced his work.

Also...the social context of what was going on in Ireland in this period can’t be ignored! Again, while Stoker did spend time in both England and Romania, he spent a lot of his life in Ireland and therefore would have known what was going on in his own country.

Dracula was published in 1897, which is exactly 50 years after the worst year of the Irish Famine/ The Great Hunger/An Gorta Mór. Now I don’t have time to do a whole history of the Great Hunger but the effects of the famine were greatly exacerbated by the horrific mismanagement of Ireland by the British government and the British system of ruling in Ireland. How many people died during the famine isn’t clear, but we do know that the population of Ireland at the time was 8 million and the population today is 6 million...200 years later and we still haven’t recovered. So while we all like to joke about the fact that Stoker wrote about an unfeeling member of the aristocracy literally feeding off others with no remorse and basically ruining their lives...are we really going to pretend that there isn’t social commentary there? Scholars specifically think that Stoker was commenting on the absentee landlords (basically British aristocrats who owned land in Ireland but didn’t live there and as such didn’t care about the well being of their tenants) who would often have tenants forced off the land when they couldn’t pay rent...despite the fact that their tenenants were already starving and had no money because their only source of food and income failed.

(I’m not being shady by the way, I also love to joke about the social implications of Dracula, but I feel like people forget that the jokes have actual points behind them)

There was also a cholera epidemic in Ireland in 1832 which is generally accepted to be one of Stoker’s biggest inspirations. You can read more about the epidemic here if you wish, but I’ll summarise what I feel are the key points. Not only was Stoker’s mother from county Sligo and lived through this cholera epidemic, but Stoker also asked her to write down her memories of the epidemic and used her accounts to aid in his research of the cholera epidemic. Now the fact that he was actively researching this should indicate that it would influence his work, especially considering the situation in county Sligo was incredibly morbid. There’s accounts of the 20 carpenters in Sligo town being unable to make enough coffins to keep up with the amount of people dying, resulting in hundreds of dead bodies just lying on the street. However, the most horrific account from this epidemic was the stories of terrified nurses placing cholera patients into mass graves while they were still alive. Stoker himself literally stated that Dracula was “inspired by the idea of someone being buried before they were fully dead”. So while at first there seems to be very little relation between the novel and a medical epidemic, it quickly becomes clear that Stoker’s fascination with this historical event influenced his writing.

My overall point is that Stoker’s irishness inherently influenced his writing. Writers don’t write in their own little bubble, divorced from the world around them, their views and work are shaped by their position in society and their upbringing (it’s why I dislike death of the author as a literary theory). So when people try to claim that Dracula is a piece of British literature...it indicates either a lack of understanding of the context in which Stoker was writing in or a wilful ignorance founded on colonialist ideas. His influences are so obvious to me as an Irish woman but they rarely get discussed, and even if they are it’s seen as overreaching! To call Dracula British literature and to ignore the inherent Irishness of the novel does a great disservice to Stoker!

Anyways I really hope you enjoyed this discussion my love! Once again I apologise for how long this took to write. Also I’m sorry if this comes off as argumentative or anything, that absolutely wasn’t my intention, I just have a particular style of writing long posts haha.

#dracula #bram stoker #irish literature #british literature #bram stoker’s dracula #gothic #gothic literature #ask #ask answered #anon ask #anonymous ask #anon #anonymous #being irish is my only personality trait

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birbleafs · 4 years

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[fic] A Much Ado About (PSI)oulmates

Series: Saiki Kusuo no Ψ-nan || The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. Rating: T Genre: Humour, Breaking The Fourth Wall Character(s): Saiki Kusuo, Aiura Mikoto, Satou Hiroshi, Akechi Touma, Toritsuka Reita Warnings: None, save for canon-typical shenanigans Summary: Aiura decides to combine her divination abilities with Kusuo’s powers for a super special comedic segment on Affinity Levels. Fic can also be read on AO3 _______

Excerpt taken from clairvoyant Dame Mata-Mata’s advert for Amazing Psychic Services:

99.9% accurate affinity readings and guaranteed life-long happiness! Discover your twin flame with as little 10,000 yen per hour! Some would say it’s foolish to risk your future and wallet on such clandestine offerings, but we assure you, we are no worse than the underhanded brand marketing on children’s television series! Call 1800-TWINFLAMES -1234567 to book a reading today!!

***

Anyone who would believe such clandestine and shady offerings isn’t just a fool but a complete buffoon, Kusuo scoffs impassively at the flyer before him. This is definitely worse than the underhanded brand marketing on children’s TV shows.

“They’re a total noob at it, fer sure!” Aiura says, leaning in too close and posing next to Kusuo as she takes a wefie with her phone. “Like sure, the concept of twin flames and soulmates ain’t new, but to claim everyone has half a soul yearning to get jiggy with its other missing half for life-long bliss is like, a gross oversimplification.” I don’t really care to be honest, Kusuo deadpans. He stares sullenly at how Aiura’s arm is still wrapped around his; she offers him a cheeky grin and a peace sign, snapping yet another wefie before she finally slides away to the opposite seat. “Soulmates just have more natural affinity for each other,” Aiura says, batting her eyelashes at him coyly. “But just like with everything, it doesn’t mean you don’t need to put in any effort to make it work! Hey, speaking of which—the author has a super special birthday tradition where she writes and/or posts up a new story, so this fanfic can totally be about Affinity Meters, right?!” Don’t know what you’re going on about and still don’t actually care, Kusuo retorts, shoving a spoonful of coffee jelly into his mouth as he resolutely tries to enjoy his Sunday afternoon. But Aiura persists, easily breaking the fourth wall to elaborate further: “Just like how Kusuo can use the Affection Meter to quantify a person’s love for another, today we’ll combine Kusuo’s telepathy and my own divination abilities to measure soulmate compatibility via Affinity Levels! So, without further ado, let’s go, let’s goooo!” Aiura, no, Kusuo groans in quiet despair. “Miko-chan, YES!” Aiura whoops, fist-pumping the prologue away as the scene fades out. _______

Satou Hiroshi

Conventional. Moderate. Regular. Behold the quintessential stock background character, the pinnacle of normality—Satou Hiroshi. Standing at a height of 169.9 centimeters and weighing at precisely 61.0 kilograms—the exact national average of a healthy sixteen-year-old Japanese male—he is the gold standard, the epitome of normal. It’s a shame then that few recognize Satou-kun’s remarkable ordinariness, Kusuo muses, watching said background character ambling down the sidewalk with an approving smile. Nevertheless, perhaps that may be to my benefit. Surely our Affinity Levels must be pretty high; after all, we’re both normal and regular high-school teens who do not stand out much— “I don’t think using your powers to make yourself inconspicuous counts though,” Aiura says as she glances over Kusuo’s shoulder, puzzled at his fixation on someone so… well, boring. Kusuo isn’t even listening. We both have regular aspirations and hobbies, seeking only to live peaceful days! “Funnily, I now remember peeking at Normal-kun’s fortune for Hii-chan. And get this, his biggest dream is being on stage as a rock star! Like seriously, how typical can he get?” —So, taking into consideration all of the above, Kusuo presses on, undeterred by Aiura’s commentary, surely we would hit it off as friends with optimal affinity levels! “Uhm, Kusuo?” Aiura nudges him with her elbow, pointing at the meter hovering beside them. “Not to be a wet blanket and all, but the Affinity Meter started running again as you were waxing lyrical earlier, so now it’s showing that Normal-kun and your Affinity Levels are like, really just two stars at best.” She leans forward, squinting at the screen. “Simply because he thinks you’re okay but still a bit of a weirdo. Dayum, the nerve of this twerp!” Kusuo stares wordlessly at her for a beat, slack-jawed. A-Ahyuu…?

Affinity Level: ☆☆ _______

ii.

Akechi Touma

“It pains me to have to do this,” Aiura lets out a dramatic sigh. “But since Childhood Friends is a pretty popular trope in animanga, and therefore in fanfiction, I guess there’s no avoiding it.” Kusuo scowls, not liking where this is heading at all. It can totally be avoided. We can just avoid talking about it altogether. “Is that you, Kusuo-kun?” Akechi says as he suddenly appears at Kusuo’s side, curiosity in his eyes. “Oh, I see Aiura-san is here as well. I couldn’t help but notice how you two were standing and talking together so I thought I should come say hello, even though I was rather hesitant at first. I didn’t want to abruptly barge into your conversation, you see, as that would have been awfully rude, and I certainly don’t wish for you to think of me as rude, Kusuo-kun.” Yet here you are barging in anyway, blathering on incessantly like a runaway freight train, Kusuo remarks drily. “Well, I couldn’t help but overhear the mention of Affinity Levels,” Akeichi beams as he continues, unfazed by the jibe. “And I can’t say my curiosity isn’t the least bit piqued, even if I have little to no real interest or belief in the notion of soulmates. In fact, the existence of an actual soul remains debatable in scientific circles—” Exasperated, Aiura tries to interject. “Since you ain’t all that interested, mind if you just zip those lips for like five minutes? My hair’s gone all frizzy from the heat of your endless jabbering!” “However, these debates on the existence of the soul had also been instrumental to the understanding of the anatomy and physiology of the human body—” “Oh my God, please just stop yapping for ONE sec—!!” Aiura shrieks, tugging at her curls in frustration. She accidentally kicks the Affinity Meter to start running, and the lights blink and flash in a rapid blur before the meter gradually slows down to display four bright stars upon its screen. There’s a beat; the trio leans forward, staring at the meter in awkward silence. Kusuo’s brows are furrowed at the unexpected results; he shrugs it off as a fluke. Clearly there’s some technical issue with Affinity Meter (never mind that the meter works, in part, based on Aiura’s divination abilities, which have, to date, always been accurate). There’s just no way Akechi could ever beat Satou-kun on that scale, he’s too much of an abnormal— But Aiura is already moving forward, reaching out to grasp Akechi’s hand in a firm handshake. “Aiura-san? Is there something…?” She acknowledges Akechi’s curious gaze with a curt nod. “All right, I can’t deny it any longer. Not with that impressive detective aura of yours and with results like that on both Kusuo and my own Affinity Meter.” Oi, oi. Don’t start spouting weird nonsense now, Miss Abnormal! “All right, Akeinu! I hereby deem you a worthy rival in the fight to stand as Kusuo’s trusted sidekick!” “Oho! You’ve even given me a cutesy nickname as acknowledgment! I must say I’m quite flattered, Aiura-san.” How about I side-kick both of you out of my life right now? Kusuo sighs, mildly perturbed by this unexpected turn of events.

Affinity Level: ☆☆☆☆ _______

iii.

Toritsuka Reita

…… …… …… What, did you seriously think Toritsuka was getting a proper scene? He’s already way too pathetic. NEXT— “W-wait, did you just cut my scene?!” Toritsuka shrieks from the void like a headless chicken. “Don’t just write me off, Saiki-saaan!!” —Saiki exits stage left, pursuing normalcy. “And don’t just narrate yourself out!!”

Affinity Level: N.A. _______

iv. Aiura Mikoto

“At first glance, you might think we make for an odd couple,” Aiura says with a coquettish smile. “And how it seems absolutely cray that we could get along. Or like, that we don’t mesh just ‘cause our personalities clash way too much or somethin’.” She chuckles at the notion, running perfectly manicured nails through her luscious locks. “I mean, it’s obvs only those inexperienced with the inner workings of the heart would think that. Because opposites attract, y’know? It’s the push-pull dynamism between us that spices things up! Like two tango dancers stirring up a flame on the dance floor—it keeps things refreshing and exciting, but still comforting and familiar in the end, like sharing a nice, warm bath at the end of the day, or cuddling up together at the sofa, feeding each other spoons of dessert…” Aiura pauses, blushing when she catches sight of the Affinity Meter fluttering gently by her shoulder, at the line of stars glowing from the screen, a beacon of reassurance of their status as soulmates. She turns towards Kusuo, suddenly self-conscious as she tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “Say, Kusuo… How about we head to that nice dessert buffet together and—” Only to realize she had been practically talking to thin air all this time. “H-Huh?! Aww, gimme a break! Where did you run off to this time, Kusuooo?!”

Affinity Level: ☆☆☆☆☆ _______ v.

Coffee Jelly

Good grief—finally some peace and quiet. Kusuo sighs as he leans back into the leather seat of his booth, in a nondescript cafe far away from his usual annoyances. He dips a spoon into his dessert bowl, lifting a dark sliver of coffee jelly to his mouth, and smiles in absolute contentment. There’s a soft whirr, and then a ping from somewhere below. He flicks a furtive gaze at the Affinity Meter hovering at the empty space beside him, curious despite himself. The endless line of glowing stars are probably a bit much, but he smiles anyway at the screen. Huh. I guess it works after all.

Affinity Level: ☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

—End— _______ Notes:

It’s tradition for myself to spend my birthday writing and/or sharing a new fic (happy birthday to me!! lol). I also had this sitting in my draft for way too long and decided to kick myself to finish it. Apologies for any typoes/errors.

Comments and critique are always welcomed for my fics—I'd like to hear what you think, if you've enjoyed this! Thanks for reading :)

#saiki kusuo no psi nan #the disastrous life of saiki k.#saiki kusuo #aiura mikoto #fanfic #psychickers #too lazy to tag all the characters here #but it's basically the pk psychickers + mr. normal-kun lol

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magpiemorality · 4 years

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Virgil and Deceit (but mostly Deceit), a ramble by me

I got ideas for days about these boys, lemme tell you.

I already sorta touched on Deceit and Virgil a bit in the last ramble, but the connection between them and their huge difference to the other sides is just too interesting not to talk about further (and yes Remus is also different but for a whole other reason that deserves it’s own post).

So in the last ramble I went over how I think Patton could be responsible in his emotional reaction to his moral conflict for creating Virgil and then Deceit. Deceit either with, through or fuelled by Virgil’s power in some way (the latter I think is less likely as I'm of the strong opinion that a lot of Virgil's anxious existence stems from Patton feeding Thomas's insecurities rather than creating the anxiety himself autonomously and then passing it on to, in this case, Patton).

People in the fandom talk about who the opposites are of each side kinda a lot, creating these diametrically opposed pairs, and while I'm not sure that's entirely accurate and is kind of an oversimplification of each one individually; there is something to be said for certain sides being practically anathema to one another, but that’s the second topic I’ve mentioned now that I’ll get to in it’s own time. The subject itself however, implies that each side is created equal, and that now that we have 6 sides that each one matches up nicely. Which, well, they don’t. For one because there’s almost certainly more sides out there, and for two? Because not all sides are created equal.

Virgil and Deceit, for example, don't necessarily feel like sides of Thomas's personality in the way the others do; so much as a tool that interacts with that personality and is entirely influenced by the other sides, and just so happens to have developed into an entity of their own because of the other sides and Thomas's perception of them as separate parts of his identity (read: Patton’s perception of them as separate parts of Thomas in order to distance himself from them as parts of himself).

What I mean by sides of the personality and not, is as follows: for Patton for example; emotions and morality (and the difference between those two things makes me wonder curiously if there's a head canon to have about two smaller sides merging at some stage...) are fundamental basics of any person, just like logic (in his base form as essentially education and knowledge) and creativity (essentially being original thought) are. I’d argue it’s almost entirely impossible to have a human that isn’t comprised of those three things.

Deceit (who should really be named Denial, and my two cents here is that Daniel would make a great name reveal for him but that's neither here nor there) however, is what Patton put into place in order to both hide certain Anxiety-inducing parts of himself and keep Thomas convinced- for what Patton clearly believes is Thomas's own good- that he's a good person because he doesn't have those aspects at all. Lying to yourself isn't a personality trait in and of itself; but something quite different. In the case of the Sanders Sides series I guess we could consider him a lackey for Patton- his 2IC in maintaining Thomas's sense of inherent goodness as a person. I'm surprised Deceit wasn't more miffed by Patton's opposition to his job, and I have my fingers firmly crossed that they'll hash it out at some point. I mean really- even the Are There Healthy Distractions video was full of Deceit's handiwork- it's textbook denial to distract from an issue and take your mind off it. And Logan pointed out exactly how that can be good for you, right...? In fact; Logan in Dealing With Intrusive Thoughts went against Patton’s Patented Moral Compass quite a lot while pointing out what Remus was (just a part of Thomas’s imagination) and why he was only personified as bad because Thomas (and Patton) had decided he was (and no I’m totally not worried for Logan because I think he’s going to be the side to push Patton into dangerous self-reflection and force him to face his actions and consequences and therefore come under fire from Mr. All-Powerful... But that’s also for a different ramble).

Now going back a bit to pre-Deceit (if I was a better writer I'd have done this in order); Virgil/Anxiety was most likely formed early on when Patton started to emotionally react badly to being confronted by those parts of Thomas that morally he doesn't think he should have. He maybe took the place of a much smaller and weaker Fear (fear of the unknown, instinctive fear, survival instinct) that had been around for a long time as Patton distanced himself from his own conflict and brought it to life as Anxiety instead, and was just allowed to really flourish while Patton was fuelling him unconsciously (maybe a little bit consciously). And I'm so convinced it was Patton because why would Roman as ‘original thought’ be at all bothered by his own intrusive side at that stage? Why would Logan be bothered by anything internally when he's generally not that kind of emotive? Only Patton has the motive and profile to instigate Virgil's growth, and it's entirely reasonable to me that as Virgil got a bit out of hand, Patton took it upon himself to sort things out for Thomas. (Even as I'm writing this I'm wondering if its possible that Logan was involved, with his calm and blunt solutions to problems, that at that stage may not be as well researched and healthy as they are now... But I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt and say he would have advised against it for Thomas's sake and must therefore have not known about the situation, especially with his track record of having Thomas face his own truths recently.)

And that's not even going into depth on Remus... Guess that makes Patton a real deadbeat dad, of three poor misunderstood Dark Sides. One a worrying mirror of the worst parts of himself (Virgil); one just trying to work hard to please him (Deceit) and one who literally doesn’t know any better and was given up for adoption away from his picture perfect twin.

Gosh I hope they address some of this! :D

#patton sanders #unsympathetic patton #sort of #magpiemusings #roman sanders #sanders sides #deceit sanders #virgil sanders #headcanon #sanders sides theories #logan sanders

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theyearoftheking · 4 years

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Book 5: The Stand

Bloggers note: if you’re looking for a complete plot summary and a list of all the characters in this epic tome, this is not the blog post for you. Proceed with caution.

Once upon a time, there was a precocious ten year-old, with divorced parents. One parent embraced her weirdness and didn’t pay attention to what books she was bringing home from the library; and the other parent was my dad... who constantly wondered (aloud) why I wasn’t like normal kids.

Being of slightly above-average intelligence, I saw this as an affront, and did subtle things just to piss him off. Subtle things “normal” children probs wouldn’t do. The summer I was ten, my dad had picked up a paperback copy of The Stand, and was raving to me about how good it was. I remember he was fixated on people falling dead in their bowls of Chunky soup.

“Sounds like a cool book, maybe I’ll read it,” I commented.

“This isn’t a book for children. You still haven’t read that copy of The Hobbit I gave you.”

Hold my beer, motherfucker. I’m here for it. And The Hobbit was boring af. I never got past all the singing.

Just to piss him off, I read the book cover to cover, faster than he did. You know, like normal vindictive ten year-old girls do. I don’t have a lot of memories of my dad growing up, but I hold onto this one fast and tight, because I got mine in the end. I was like the Trashcan Man of the fifth grade set. Just with a worse haircut. See below.

Needless to say, my comprehension of The Stand almost thirty years later is a little bigger, wider, and deeper. It’s also colored by other epic “Good vs. Evil” reads (sigh, yes... even Tolkien); and King’s other works (mostly The Dark Tower). While at times this was not an easy book to read, I’m glad I powered through it. Ultimately, I feel rewarded I didn’t give up on page 872 like I had initially wanted to. I’m also glad I didn’t go with my gut instinct of reading the original released in in 1978, and then later on the uncut edition that was released in 1990. One reading of The Stand per year is more than enough, thank you. And besides, there’s fun pictures along the way! I mean, if I’m being honest, the book is mostly pictures with just a few words here and there to break it up. I’m absolutely kidding.

Let’s get into it, shall we?

First of all, I picked the worst fucking time to read this book. Coronavirus is probably going to kill the whole world, and I refuse to be one of the survivors like in The Stand. There’s not enough bourbon in Kentucky for me to survive that shit show. Additionally, my family is huge into board games, and we thought Pandemic might be a fun cooperative game to try. Spoiler: it’s awesome, we’re all hooked on it. I highly recommend it for your next game night. Maybe an End of the World/Pandemic theme?? You can all wear gloves and masks, eat shelf stable foods and bottled water, and play REM on repeat. Sounds... awesome.

But I digress. The Stand is your ultimate post-apocalyptic good versus evil showdown. A government employee with Captain Trips (the world ending virus) goes AWOL from his base, and takes a frantic road trip across the country with his family, where he manages to contaminate everyone he comes in contact with.

What is Captain Trips? Well, I’m so glad you asked! To hear a doctor explain it, “We’ve got a disease with several well-defined stages... but some people may skip a stage. Some people may backtrack a stage. Some people may do both. Some people stay in one stage for a relatively long time and others zoom though all four as if they were on a rocket-sled...”

The virus spreads (like viruses do), until there’s less than 15,000 people left in the country (rough estimate). The people still alive start having two types of dreams; either scary nightmares about The Walking Man, or peaceful dreams about Mother Abigail. Again... good versus evil. Guess who is who. If you need clarification, let me give you this one little quote about Randall Flagg, courtesy of Mother Abigail, “He’s the purest evil left in the world. The rest of the bad is a little evil. Shoplifters and sexfiends and people who like to use their fists. But he’ll call them. He’s started already. He’s getting them together a lot faster than we are. Before he’s ready to make his move, I guess he’ll have a lot more. Not just the evil ones that are like him, but the weak ones... the lonely ones... and the ones that have left God out of their hearts.”

And his followers?

“They were nice enough people and all, but there wasn’t much love in them. Because they were too busy being afraid. Love didn’t grow very well in a place where there was only fear, just as plants didn’t grow very well in a place where it was always dark.”

Yeah. I’m just going to leave that there for you to read and digest.

So, the remaining people from all over the country either ended up in Vegas with Flagg, or Boulder with Mother Abigail and The Free Zone; which is basically Bernie Sander’s Utopian dream.

God damn it! I swore I wasn’t going to get political and compare Donald Trump to Randall Fla-

Ok, so The Free Zone. Most of the people who come to Boulder, want to meet Mother Abigail Freemantle, the one hundred and eight year old black woman they’ve been dreaming about. She’s got a self-described case of the shine, and speaks stupid relevant truth to her followers, “I have harbored hate of the Lord in my heart. Every man or woman who loves Him, they hate Him too, because He’s a hard God, a jealous God, He Is, what He Is, and in this world He’s apt to repay service with pain while those who do evil ride over the roads in Cadillac cars. Even the joy of serving Him is a bitter joy. I do His will, but the human part o me has cursed Him in my heart.”

I’m not religious, but that hit hard. And it shows you the clear difference between Randall Flagg, and Mother Abigail.

Later on, Mother Abigail also hits us over the head, and explains to us why this book is titled, The Stand: “But he is in Las Vegas, and you must go there, and it is there that you will make your stand. You will go, and you will not falter, because you have the Everlasting Arm of the Lord God of Hosts to lean on. Yes. With God’s help you will stand.”

Spoiler: it doesn’t quite go according to her plan. Very few are left standing at the end.

So, The Free Zone. People come together, dispose of dead bodies, get electricity turned back on again, clear the roads of abandoned cars, and form a de-facto government. While lots of characters come and go (die. They die.) throughout the book, there are a few mainstays in The Free Zone: Franny, Harold, Stu, Larry, Nick, Tom, Nadine, and Lucy. But again... good versus evil. While most of the residents of The Free Zone are good, Flagg is able to whisper in the ears of some members, mostly Harold and Nadine, who end up defecting and making the trip to Vegas.

While socialist utopia is succeeding in Boulder, Flagg is ruling with fear of crucifixion in Vegas. His henchmen include Lloyd, and The Trashcan Man. Oh, Trashy... maybe one of King’s most iconic characters. He’s a bit of a firebug (understatement of the century), and really goes out in a blaze of glory (ha. Pun intended).

In fact, the two heroes of this book are Trashcan Man, thanks to his epic nuclear disaster; and simple-minded Tom Cullen, who is able to infiltrate Flagg’s inner circle, and successfully make it out, rescuing Stu Redman, who is dying in the desert with a broken leg and a horrible infection along the way. Tom Cullen is the character you root for. But Trashy is the character you’re always curious about. He’s like that rebel guy you dated in high school for ten minutes, and now stalk on Facebook, because you want to see what shady shit he’s up to twenty years later.

This is the biggest oversimplification I think I’ve ever written. The onus is on you to just pick up the damn book and read it yourself. Do it soon, because you might not have a lot of time left, what with Coronavirus breathing it’s death fumes down our necks.

For those still keeping track, we have TWO Wisconsin references in The Stand. The first was on page five, set in a gas station in East Texas, “...had covered himself with glory as a quarterback of the regional high school team, had gone on to Texas A&M with an athletic scholarship, and had played for ten years with the Green Bay Packers...”

I can’t help but feel Steve is a closeted Packers fan. He lives in Maine, so I know he’s contractually obligated to be a Patriots fan (gag), but come on... homeboy loves him some green and yellow.

The second reference comes from our friend Trashcan Man, while trying to find a walking route of possible destruction. “He had planned to get over to the west side of Gary, near the confusion of interchanges leading various roads towards Chicago or Milwaukee...”

Question... does Gary, Indiana still smell in a post-apocalyptic world? Asking for a friend.

We also start getting the Dark Tower references fast and heavy. I didn’t make note every time Steve referenced wolves, crows, or wheels; because we’d be up over a million references now. And Randall Flagg himself is straight out of The Tower. So that’s fun. And we have our first “ka” reference: “And it came to him with a dreamy, testicle-shriveling certainty that this was the dark man, his soul, his ka somehow projected into this rain-drenched, grinning crow that was looking at him...”

‘Tis ka, bitches.

Total Wisconsin Mentions: 8

Dark Tower References: 4

Book Grade: A-

Rebecca’s Definitive Ranking of Stephen King Books

The Shining

The Stand

‘Salem’s Lot

Carrie

Night Shift

Next up is The Dead Zone, which I must have watched a million times as a kid, because my mom was obsessed with it, but I’ve never actually read the book. So this should be fun! I mean... who doesn’t love reading a book and imagining Christopher Walken without his cowbell as the main character?

Long Days and Pleasant Nights, Rebecca

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howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 5 years

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Cult Conversion, Deprogramming, and the Triune Brain

Geri-Ann Galanti, Ph.D. California State University, Los Angeles, California

https://www.icsahome.com/articles/cult-conversion-deprogram-galanti

Abstract

This article presents a theoretical analysis of cult conversion and deprogramming based on the model of the triune brain. During participant observation at a Unification Church training camp, the author found, to her surprise, that her intellect was unaffected; the “brainwashing” affected her emotionally (limbic system). Cult life involves much ritual behavior (Rcomplex) but de-emphasizes intellectual processes (neocortex). Interviews with deprogrammers indicated that their goal is to get the cultist to see contradictions between cult doctrine and practice —in essence, stimulating the neocortex. Thus, cult conversion and deconversion emphasize different parts of the brain.

Several years ago I worked on a project on cult conversion and deprogramming. I spent time talking to deprogrammers and former cult members, and briefly stayed at a Unification Church training camp. Recently, in the process of preparing for a class I teach on the evolution of emotions, I read Carl Sagan’s The Dragons of Eden (1977), which is based upon Paul MacLean’s (1973) model of the triune brain. It gave me a new way of understanding what goes on during cult conversion and deprogramming. I would like to share my thoughts on that subject.

Before I begin, one caveat: Much of what I write is speculative and an oversimplification. Certainly, all parts of the brain are involved in most behavior. What I am suggesting is an emphasis on certain portions of the brain during certain types of activities. I do not intend this paper to be a neurological analysis of what occurs during cult conversion and deprogramming, but rather another perspective we can use in examining the phenomena.

The neurological approach may be useful in understanding those aspects of cult conversion and deconversion that do not readily submit to psychological analyses, for example, chanting’s sometimes puzzling effects, the development of phobias, and “triggers.” The neurological approach may also help account for the compelling quality of certain intense cult conversion experiences, such as those commonly associated with the Unification Church.

The Triune Brain

For those who are unfamiliar with the triune model, it simply suggests that the brain has three basic components, which evolved phylogenetically. In other words, as new classes and orders of animals evolved, natural selection worked to elaborate upon the form of the existing brain, adding to it, rather than creating a completely new version.

The oldest and most primitive is the Rcomplex, or reptilian brain. The four basic drives “feeding, fleeing, fighting, and sex” are based in the reptilian brain. It is the site of instinctive as opposed to learned behavior. Sagan suggests that ritualized behavior has its basis in the Rcomplex. Although in animals, much ritualized behavior is instinctive, learned rituals may also be located in the Rcomplex. They may be created in the neocortex, but once behaviors become ritualized, conscious thought is suspended. Chanting, for example, shuts off the conscious mind. Perhaps the reptilian brain takes over.

The second component of the triune brain is the limbic system, or mammalian brain. It is the primary site of the emotions. It contains the thalamus (the relay station for all information passed to the cerebral hemispheres), the hypothalamus (which regulates many functions, including hunger, thirst, sleep, heart rate, hormones, and the autonomic nervous system), the amygdala (associated with emotional memories), the pituitary (the master gland), and the hippocampus (which stores spatial memories).

The third component of the triune brain is the neocortex, generally thought of as the “thinking brain,” or the intellect. It contains the frontal, parietal, occipital, and temporal lobes. The frontal lobe is involved in decision making and anticipation of the future. The temporal lobes are associated with language, perceptual tasks, hearing, and memory store. The parietal lobes are related to spatial perception. The occipital lobe houses the visual sense.

Sagan (1977) summarizes the relationship between the triune brain and human nature as follows: the ritualistic and hierarchical aspects of our lives are influenced by the reptilian brain; the emotional, religious, and altruistic parts are largely localized in the limbic system; and the intellectual parts of our lives, those concerned with reason, are a function of the neocortex.

Brainwashing/Cult Conversion

Several years ago I wrote a paper on brainwashing based on my experiences at a Unification Church (“Moonie”) training camp (Galanti, 1984). I noted that to my surprise, the “brainwashing” that took place did not affect my intellect. I sat through a total of nine hours of lecture on Unification Church doctrine. As I sat there listening, I naïvely kept monitoring my brain for signs of brainwashing. There were none. With the zeal of a professional graduate student, I was able to silently critique both the content of the lectures and the methods of presentation.

I observed that the leaders began and ended each lecture by having the group sing a moving song. That felt good. It surrounded the whole lecture with an upbeat, positive feeling. (Thus, they began and ended the lectures by stimulating the limbic system.)

I noted that they allowed no questions. We were to “learn” the material, not question it. The lecturers spoke very quickly and wrote a lot on the board. There was no time to think. Everyone was too busy copying down the material. I asked one of the longterm members if she got bored listening to the same lectures over and over. She said no, that she heard something new each time. No wonder. We were given so much information that there was no time to really hear or process anything. Thus, even the part of the training that is ostensibly devoted to neocortical type learning actually involves very little thought.

So, I wasn’t brainwashed “if the term refers to our intellectual processes. But the Moonies did get to me. I had arranged to have a friend and former member pick me up from the camp. I remember saying to him afterwards, “I had a great time. Remind me again what’s so bad about the Moonies.”

The next day I was interviewing a former member of the Unification Church who had become a deprogrammer. I spent an hour or so asking her about her experiences as a cult member. Then I switched to the topic of deprogramming. I asked how she went about deprogramming someone. She looked me straight in the eye and said, “Exactly the way I’m doing with you right now.” I was stunned. I didn’t need deprogramming. I didn’t believe their doctrine. Yet, I, who had read many accounts of the abuses of the Unification Church, who had heard tales of horror from the mouths of several ex-members, yes, I had to be reminded “what was so bad about the Moonies.”

They had gotten to me, all right. But it wasn’t through my intellect. They got to me emotionally. (In other words, through the limbic system, not the neocortex.) And the emotional truth was far stronger than the intellectual one. I liked the people there. I had fun. We sang songs and played games and acted like children. I didn’t have to think about anything. They made all the decisions for me. My neocortex got a vacation.

Cults often emphasize ritual chanting, meditation, or prayer. It is well known that repetition induces trancelike altered states of consciousness. It is not clear how such altered states fit into the model of the triune brain, but since they are produced through the use of patterned, ritualized behavior, they appear to involve the reptilian brain more than the neocortex. Many scholars who have studied the process of cult conversion (e.g., Appel 1983; Clark, Langone, Schecter, & Daly, 1981; Conway & Siegelman, 1978) note that the self-induced trances impair neocortical functioning. In other words, trance states stop you from thinking.

The Moonies use a technique called “love bombing,” which certainly affected me on an emotional level. Love bombing basically consists of telling people how wonderful they are. For example, one morning “Jane” said to me, “You know, Geri, you’re really one of the most open people I’ve ever met. You don’t put up any defenses. You’re really open. I think that’s so great.” When she said this, part of my mind went on alert: love bombing, love bombing. But the other part thought, “Well, yes, but it really is true. She probably really means it.” In any case, it made me feel good. Intellectually, I realized what she was doing; emotionally, I bought it.

Jane showed me a letter written to her by one of her church “sisters.” It was very emotional. She told me that the letters that Unification Church members write to each other were much more meaningful than the shallow ones her birth sister writes. Those, she said, tend to be about daily events. Her church sisters write about their feelings. It was clear that in the Unification Church, feelings are more important than anything else. Members are encouraged to feel, not to think.

Margaret Singer (1979) writes about the problems faced by people coming out of cults. Among them is a severe inability to make decisions. This is not surprising. Cult members are not in the habit of making their own decisions: what to eat, when to eat, where to go, what to do, what to believe. All these and other decisions are made for them. Decision making involves the neocortex. Perhaps it is like a muscle that is weakened after disuse and needs exercise to get back into shape.

Many former members commented that they stayed in the cult out of fear. Cult doctrine teaches that the only path to salvation is through the cult. To leave is to risk eternal damnation. They were afraid of what would happen to them if they left. They were afraid of what would happen to their soul. Fear is a powerful emotion based in the Rcomplex. So, cults hook you and hold you by using the lower brain centers.

Deprogramming / Exit Counseling

I interviewed numerous deprogrammers about the process of deprogramming. The key factor they all mentioned was getting the cultist to see the contradictions in the cult doctrine and cult practices. In other words, deprogramming is largely an intellectual process. Today, exit counseling is distinguished from deprogramming by the lack of coercion. However, originally the term deprogramming referred to the process of countering the cults’ “programming,” and did not imply the use of coercion. In exit counseling, which has largely supplanted deprogramming, the emphasis is on information, again in an effort to reactivate the cult member’s critical thinking abilities. “Exit counseling is a voluntary, intensive, time-limited, contractual educational process that emphasizes the respectful sharing of information ...” (Clark, Giambalvo, Giambalvo, Garvey, & Langone, 1993, p. 155).

Steve DubrowEichel (1989) presents a near-transcript of a 5-day deprogramming. The turning point for “Ken,” the Hare Krishna who was being deprogrammed, occurred on the second day. It came when Curt, the deprogrammer, read from the official ISKCON version of the Gita. It stated that the true master’s home “is not illuminated by the sun or moon, nor by electricity.” Curt pointed out that electricity did not exist when the Gita was written. This triggered a long-repressed doubt in Ken, who said he had wondered how the saints could have written about electricity centuries before it was discovered. Prabhupada was supposed to be perfect, and here he had made an error. This discovery led Ken to find other inconsistencies in the doctrine. Curt complimented him by saying, “Hey, there you go! You’re thinking now, Jackson!” [emphasis mine] (p. 71). Ken replied, “It’s something, a thought that I never actually, I never confronted the questions in my mind because that would appear as a blasphemy” (p. 71).

In order to deprogram cultists, the deprogrammers have to get them to think again. Not feel, not react, but think. Using the triune model, the cult conversion process involves deemphasizing the neocortex in favor of the Rcomplex and limbic system, while the deconversion process emphasizes the neocortex.

Discussion

Many scholars have suggested various models of cult conversion, ranging from those that emphasize social-psychological processes (e.g., Cialdini, 1984; Galanti, 1984; Zimbardo, Ebbesen, & Maslach, 1977) to those that focus on information processing (e.g., Edwards 1979; Conway & Siegelman 1978) to those that stress the role of altered states of consciousness (e.g., Clark et al., 1981; Goldberg & Goldberg, 1982). What I am suggesting in this brief article is another way of thinking about both the process of conversion and deconversion.

I think much of the power of cult conversion comes from its use of the lower brain centers. Both Rcomplex learning and emotional learning are closely associated with survival and thus much more powerful than intellectual learning. If I am betrayed by my lover, I may never trust him “or any man” again. However, it may take me several lessons to learn to use a computer. Emotional lessons are learned far more quickly than intellectual ones. I need be bit only once by a dog to be afraid of dogs ever after. Limbic and Rcomplex learning obviously aren’t impossible to unlearn; if they were, psychotherapists would be out of business. Generally, however, it takes longer to unlearn such lessons than it does those of Anthropology 100 or Math 250.

My model focuses on MacLean’s concept of the triune brain. Both cult conversion and cult participation emphasize the use of the lower brain centers; in MacLean’s terms, the Rcomplex and the limbic system. Deprogramming, on the other hand, is designed to stimulate the neocortex. However, since the effects of Rcomplex and limbic system learning are so powerful, longer term therapy is often needed to undo the emotional damage done during the process of cult conversion. Ideally, the result of deprogramming and counseling is a reintegration of all parts of the brain.

References

Appel, W. (1983). Cults in America: Programmed for paradise. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Cialdini, R. (1984). Influence: How and why people agree to things. New York: William Morrow.

Clark, D., Giambalvo, C., Giambalvo, N., Garvey, K., Langone, M. (1993). Exit counseling: A practical overview. In M. D. Langone (Ed.), Recovery from cults: Help for victims of spiritual and psychological abuse (pp. 155-180). New York: W. W. Norton.

Clark, J., Langone, M., Schecter, R., & Daly, R. (1981). Destructive cult conversion: Theory, research, and treatment. Weston, MA: American Family Foundation.

Conway, F., & Siegelman, J. (1978). Snapping: America’s epidemic of sudden personality change. New York: Dell.

DubrowEichel, S. (1989). Deprogramming: A case study. Cultic Studies Journal 6(2), 1-117.

Edwards, C. (1979). Crazy for God: The nightmare of cult life. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall.

Galanti, G. (1984). Brainwashing and the Moonies. Cultic Studies Journal 1(1), 27-36.

Goldberg, L., & Goldberg, W. (1982). Group work with former cultists. Social Work 27, 165-170.

MacLean, P. (1973). A triune concept of the brain and behaviour. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Sagan, C. (1977). The Dragons of Eden. New York: Ballantine.

Singer, M. (1979, January). Coming out of the cults. Psychology Today, pp. 72 -82.

Zimbardo, P., Ebbesen, E., & Maslach, C. (1977). Influencing attitudes and changing behavior (2nd ed.). Reading, MA: AddisonWesley.

******************************

GeriAnn Galanti, Ph.D., is on the faculty at the Department of Anthropology at California State University, Los Angeles, and at the Statewide Nursing Program at California State University, Dominguez Hills. She is the author of Caring for Patients from Different Cultures (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991).

“Socialization techniques through which the UC members were able to influence” – Geri-Ann Galanti, Ph.D.

Take Back Your Life: Recovering From Cults & Abusive Relationships

Re-forming the Self: The Impact and Consequences of Institutional Abuse

Cult Indoctrination – and the Road to Recovery

Writings of former members Many recount their experiences in the organization or their journeys out of it

Scared of Leaving?

Moonwebs by Josh Freed

My Time with the Oakland Family – the Moonies

The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power

conformity

Contract for Membership in a Cultic Group or Relationship

#GeriAnn Galanti #brainwashing #FFWPU #Unification Church

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intoxicatingimmediacy · 6 years

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Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal on race, class and the evolution of Blindspotting

While Blindspotting deals with a lot of serious topics, surprisingly, the characters cope with these situations using a lot humor.

Casal: We very intentionally tried to make light of certain issues because that’s what people do when they’re trying to survive them. By showing the situations as they are, they are inherently horrifying. We didn’t have to do a lot of hardcore hits in the score. It’s jarring. Most of the sound design is naturalistic because it does the work. When you hear the police officer's gun go off, I think the only note I gave was, "Loud. Make the gun louder. Shake this room." Because it has to shake your entire body. If you’ve ever heard a gun go off within 20 feet of you, it shakes your entire body. That does the work of the horror. Humor is a coping mechanism. I think it inherently is paired with tragedy. The humor that exists in my life came from the people in the most pain, so I think we were trying to tell a story about things that were painful to a lot of people in a way that other people could hear it.

Diggs: I think we watch Colin do it really early on. He sees the shooting, and the next time we see him in Miles and Ashley’s (Jasmine Cephas Jones) house, he’s retelling the story and he’s clearly not OK. He has to share this with somebody, and he’s not going to cry. He can’t cry. That’s not a thing he’s comfortable doing, so what is he going do? We’re going about our lives. That’s another part of it, like, if you’re working, you don’t have time to grieve, really, you know?

Casal: That’s poverty. You get the stoplight to deal with it. You’re not on break. You got 10 moves that day... That’s your time to deal with grief. So it’s all expedited. All of it has to be. You have to process faster, you have to deal faster, you have to get back to neutral faster. Comedy expedites that.

Diggs: My dad just retired, thank God. He was driving a bus in San Francisco for Muni, a f--king horrible company. Both his parents died in the same month. They gave one day of bereavement for a death. He had to give up all of his sick leave to go take care of them, and even still, he only managed to get away for a week and then just started losing pay, they just stopped paying. My father’s one of the happiest people in the world, and to sort of get around him in this moment of extreme sadness, all I could think of trying to do is try to think of ways to make him laugh, try to tell jokes. That’s what the whole family was doing. Getting together and laughing, telling stories and remembering the good times, because that’s how you get through it. And you are going to have to go to work tomorrow, so get yourself in the highest spirits as possible so you don’t go up there and kill up a bunch of people or something. It’s a very serious situation.

Casal: Humor’s the language of the poor, man That’s the great thing about collective suffering. Everyone gets the joke, who’s from it. I think anyone who would come at us and be like, "You made light of an issue," must not be that close to it. Funerals are nothing but jokes to me. That’s every funeral I’ve ever been to, if it’s anything other than your first one. The first one is all tears. And then after that, it’s like, "This motherf--ker would have hated this."

When it comes to talking about all the big issues that Blindspotting tackles, why was it important to make sure that the topics of class and poverty weren't lost in the discussion?

Diggs: Well, race is made up, right? I mean, it doesn’t exist, but it affects our perceptions of everything. But it’s not the practical application of anything, right? Poverty is real. That affects everyday life. And I think, you know, the Bay Area happens to be a place - most of our process was about making things true to Oakland - is a pretty mixed-up place, and it is a place that is sometimes geographically separated, but it’s entirely based on class, really. So you do have a lot of Mileses in the hood. And we went to Berkeley High School, which is the only public high school in Berkeley, so everybody had to go there. And that was also kind of this situation where people are learning how to function around each other, whether they like it or not.

Casal: It’s a school that is full of kids from Richmond and Berkeley and Oakland and San Leandro and the Hills and Emeryville and you know, everywhere. Totally different economic situations across the board. That melting pot effect is very real in the Bay Area. You’re in with everyone, which is why you get such sharp people. That’s why we didn’t write Colin or Miles as dumb or naive. They’re particularly informed. Miles is a smart dude. He’s not unaware of racism. He’s not unaware of his privilege. Neither is Colin assuming that Miles doesn’t understand it. It’s a very nuanced thing that Miles is missing. He knows why he doesn’t say the n-word. It’s not because he’s worried he’s going to get beat up for it. Miles will f--k you up. He’s not scared. He’s politically making a choice. He probably could get away with it. And a lot of Bay Area white people do get away with it. These are smart characters, but the intersection of race and class is a lifetime of conversations to fully understand, and you’ll never fully understand everyone’s perspective. Early on I would tell people a good entry point into the movie is to think about Colin as having a crisis of how his race is impacting his life in this particular story and Miles is more about class. That is a dramatic oversimplification of what they’re actually going through, but it’s a nice entry point into the conversation if you need a place to jump in, but they’re both sort of dealing with both.

Diggs: On a national level, we’re only barely beginning to have even a broad-strokes conversation about race. In your day-to-day life you don’t deal with anything like that, particularly race. You know, that’s not how it comes up. You don’t have broad-strokes conversations. Everything is nuanced. What’s important to me about this film was that it’s not a film about issues, so we didn’t come at it with this brush that was like, "This is what you need to do tomorrow in order to fix racism." That wasn’t the point of this film. It was about how are these characters practically dealing with these things that are actually much more complicated than we are even capable of having the conversation on a grand scale. It’s hard to print stuff about this. You only have so many words. And even the freeze-framing of something for an essay doesn’t allow for the way a conversation develops in the moment between two people. That’s a thing that a film can do that is specific to what a film can do, so we tried to lean into that a little bit. We didn’t simplify anything. That would have been the worst thing for us in this movie, is sort of making it more simple than it is in real life. In reviewing drafts for me, it was like, I don’t know. Is there a way to complicate this that is honest? That was a lot of the notes I remember thinking about. What’s a way that we can make this feel more Bay Area by complicating the situation a little bit?

#blindspotting #rafael casal #daveed diggs

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ladylynse · 6 years

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can i get a summary of whirlwind? i read it but... i get a little confused sometimes -_-"

Ah, I’m sorry, Anon. I can think of a few things that might confuse you, but I’m sure there are plenty of others; if you decide to continue reading and notice specifics, let me know so I can try to clarify them!

Whirlwind, of course, is based off @queenofhearts7378‘s awesome Secret Quartet AU, and I decided to set the story in the NYC because that seemed to be the easiest place to get all the characters together. Thing is, since I’d initially meant for this to be a short, quick thing (it...probably won’t be), I cheated a bit in terms of the setup. I’m working off the assumption that Danny (DP) and Jake (AD:JL) already know each other, while Randy (RC:9GN) and Adrien (ML) don’t know anyone. This is important based on how they perceive each other.

Potential point of confusions:

1) Why Danny and Jake know each other. I’ve said that, to make my life a bit easier, I’m setting Whirlwind after Mirrored, even though it’s not an official sequel. Mirrored is my DPxAD:JL crossover. Long story short, Danny winds up in New York, crashes with Jake for a few days, and helps him deal with a ghost problem. (This is a vast oversimplification but I don’t want to spoil things in case you--or anyone else reading this--wants to read it.) The important point is that Jake and Danny know each other’s secrets. (Well, Jake and Susan Long know Danny’s secret; how much the others on Jake’s side of things figured out is a bit more vague.) So, Jake and Danny trust each other and have worked together before.

2) The timing of the scenes isn’t always chronological. Most of it is in order, but some things happen concurrently and others take a long span of time for the entire scene to play out, occasionally totally eclipsing a scene that is happening elsewhere. This is why there’s a rough guideline of the current time in each scene (most of it being on the Friday) to give you an idea of when it doesn’t occur right after the previous scene ended but rather in the middle of it. I’ve also got a timeline post that gives a brief summary of each scene if you ever need a quick refresher before checking out the next chapter.

Actual summary part: (under a cut because this is getting long)

When Jake meet the Oracle Twins, he's told three main things: 1) very soon, there are going to be attacks, 2) beware of the butterflies, and 3) he’ll have help from friends. Meanwhile, Adrien and his father come to town for a fashion show. Randy, mistakenly thinking that McFist was meeting someone to get more Weapons of Ninja Destruction, wound up in NYC because Marci wanted to go to this fashion show. (Randy is unsure if McFist has any side deal going on, but he’s not ruling it out.)

Adrien decides to sneak away from the preparations for the opening and explores the city, winding up in Gramps’s electronics shop. Before he can get directions to somewhere that sells camembert, Plagg gets him to leave because he can smell magic in the shop. He’s worried because legends of the MIraculous are widespread, and he doesn’t want Adrien to accidentally get mixed up in whatever kind of magic this is--or to lose his Miraculous (and Plagg himself) while he’s here since Hawk Moth isn’t the only one who wants them.

From Jake’s perspective, it looks like Adrien came in to scout the shop in order to assess their defenses and maybe come back and steal something later, especially he bolted before they had a chance to question him or otherwise learn more about him. This rather paranoid assumption is because Gramps recognized Adrien’s ring as the Miraculous which granted the bearer the power of destruction. The warning of attacks and the fact that there’s also a butterfly-shaped Miraculous mean Jake is instantly wary. He asks a favour from an old friend: Danny, who gets to NYC as fast as he can and gets filled in by Jake, so now they’re both suspicious of butterflies and cats.

The first attack comes at the fashion show. Randy--having tracked down Marci and McFist--is there to help fight the Critic who, despite not being overly monster-y, kinda seems like they’ve been stanked, and he figure it’s Ninja-o’-Clock. Since the Sorcerer is stuck in Norrisville, he thinks he might be dealing with the Sorceress, which gives him zero comfort when she should be in the Land of Shadows and not learning new tricks. When some kid in a cat suit shows up to fight the Critic, he rolls with it, and they defeat the Critic together. Of course, in order to de-stank people, he has to destroy their reason for being stanked (symbolic or otherwise). But when he snaps the pen, it’s not stank that leaves; it’s a butterfly. Chat Noir chases it down.

Danny and Jake (as Phantom and the Am Drag) are patrolling looking for some clue of this impending attacks, and they of course see someone dressed as a black cat running after a butterfly, maybe trying to herd it somewhere. They jump to conclusions. Danny grabs Chat Noir, and Jake torches the akuma (purifying it, though Adrien doesn’t know that). Randy (still as the Ninja), who had started to follow Chat Noir, sees a real, fire-breathing dragon and is utterly enthralled. He’s happy to make a new friend, filling in Jake on his fight with Chat Noir against the Critic. Jake isn’t totally convinced Chat Noir is the good guy and not just pretending--he has the power of destruction; how can that be good?--but he promises to keep an eye out for him and asks the Ninja to report on any sightings of his new friend, giving Randy his Fenton Phone for that purpose. (He’s thinking Chat Noir might either hold both Miraculous or be in cahoots with the other person who does; they have enough valuable stuff in the shop that it makes perfect sense for someone to try to steal it.) Now that he sees the venue where the attack took place, he’s worried for someone there, so he takes off to warn them about what’s going on.

While that is happening, Danny drops Adrien into the harbour. Well. Almost. That would’ve probably killed him, if he had. It was a near thing, but Danny catches him (remembering this is a human he’s dealing with, not a ghost) and lets Chat Noir exhaust himself by swimming most of the way to shore. Before he can reach dry land, Danny grabs him again and relocates them to a quiet rooftop that’s kinda out of the way. Adrien, who now knows Hawk Moth is in town because he just dealt with someone who’s akumatized, thinks that Phantom is ANOTHER akumatized person. He defends himself against this ghost’s ice attacks, but he used Cataclysm to break out of his ice prison earlier and is running on borrowed time. Danny is wary of being touched by someone who can destroy anything they touch, presumably even people (not knowing that Cataclysm is only something that can be used once before Adrien needs to ‘recharge’). He isn’t about to get too close. But Chat Noir isn’t fighting the way he expects, and when he finds himself face-to-face with a very scared boy, who quickly transforms back into Chat Noir and runs away, he wonders if he and Jake have made a big mistake somewhere. He tries to ask questions, but Adrien is having none of it because he’s panicking. Hawk Moth might know who he is now, the Critic’s akuma (to his knowledge; he’s wrong) is loose in the city and will no doubt proliferate, infecting other people, and now he has to figure out how to fight an ice ghost? It’s a lot to ask on top of the fashion show, which he is almost certainly going to be late for. He needs Ladybug, but all he’s got is a maybe-ally in this Ninja, if he ever shows up again, and the whereabouts of some secret magic shop that Plagg warned him to stay away from.

Danny tries to get a hold of Jake, but he’s not answering his Fenton Phone (because he took it off and then gave it away to someone who’s not entirely sure how to use it), so Danny heads back to the electronics shop to see if Gramps or Fu knew what had happened with Jake.

Potential point of confusion 3: Why would Hawk Moth attack when he doesn’t know Chat Noir is in NYC? Well, basically Jake has the right idea but the wrong person. Chat Noir isn’t behind it, Hawk Moth is. Hawk Moth simply isn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth and squander a chance to get the Cat Miraculous while Ladybug isn’t around to help her partner. But if he makes a random attack on a large crowd of people, well, that’s the way to draw out superheroes, isn’t it? So he can see who’s around. Figure out what they can do. Figure out what they have, what they might be protecting and where, and what power of theirs he can steal. There’s more than one reason to come to New York, after all.

Do you have any specific questions? I tried to err on the side of more detail than less, but I’m not entirely sure where I lost you. Please don’t be afraid to ask again--as many times as you need, since I may misunderstand you at some point; it’s happened before--as this isn’t a bother. It actually helps me to know where I lose people, since it lets me know what I need to work on tightening up in terms of my writing.

#secret quartet #fanfiction #danny phantom #adjl #miraculous ladybug #rc9gn #my writing #ladylynse #replies #Anonymous

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pocketseizure · 7 years

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Despite the occasional bouts of drama, I love the Zelda fandom, and I'm happy to be here. The only real unpleasantness I've encountered has had to do with Ganondorf. I want to talk about this a little, because I think it's representative of an alarming tendency in fandom as a whole.

I currently live in the United States; and, as I write this in October 2017, this country is in a very strange and difficult place. It's been like this for as long as anyone can remember, but the current presidential administration has brought some very ugly sentiments right out in the open. It was never particularly easy to be African-American or Arab-American, but since 2015 or so the violence of the rhetoric of prejudice has been overwhelming. We now have, for example, black women whose children were effectively lynched being subjected to all manner of humiliation and abuse for speaking out against police violence even as a mainstream presidential candidate won voters by belittling the Muslim family of a soldier who was killed in the line of duty.

This is just one of the many reasons why I personally am very sensitive to expressions of hatred against ethnic and racial minorities. Some people may feel confident in saying that tropes exist for a reason and that they don't understand why people get upset over the depiction of fictional characters, and I think it’s important to point out that not everyone who feels this way identifies as white. Fandom is supposed to be fun, after all, and no one wants to feel as if they're being lectured.

I totally get that, but I think fandom should be large enough to accommodate multiple views and approaches. When it comes to Ganondorf specifically, there used to be both silly jokes and serious analysis. On one hand, how ridiculous is the fact that he built himself a giant murder castle? On the other hand, how is Ganondorf's intense love/hate relationship with Hyrule representative of the legacy of colonial ideologies both within the game and in the real world?

Ganondorf is a clear and obvious villain in the Zelda universe. There are people in the fandom who love Ganondorf because he's a charismatic and fascinating character, and there are also people in the Zelda fandom who hate Ganondorf because he's just not a very nice person. All of this is totally understandable. The complication that arises with Ganondorf is that he is demonized according to real-world patterns of white supremacy, one of which is the common narrative that holds that the Evil Barbaric Dark-Skinned Oriental Other must be defeated by the virtuous heroes of a holy empire. Accordingly, the trouble I've experienced with fandom is that it's unfortunately very easy for people to slip into projecting negative racial stereotypes onto the fictional world of the games.

Like African-American and Arab-American men in the real world, Ganondorf is stereotyped in a number of fanworks as unintelligent, bestial, violent, and incapable of human emotion. This is a gross oversimplification of how the character is canonically portrayed in the games, but there are powerful cultural forces in our own societies (even if you're not living in the United States, and even if you're not white) that attempt to ensure that many of us become invested in the narrative of the Brutal Evil Dark Man to such an extent that we replicate it without intending to. Because of the nature of the games themselves, dealing with Ganondorf is always going to be tricky, which is why there needs to be a multiplicity of voices both addressing these issues (for example, what does it mean that Ganondorf is imprisoned without a trial?) while relieving tension with dumb jokes (because let's be real, you can bounce a quarter off that man's leotard-clad ass). In other words, there needs to be room in fandom for humor and pushback and smut and meta.

The upsetting tendency in Tumblr-based fandom I alluded to at the beginning of this post is that it's become so polarized that this sort of exchange is no longer possible. On one side of Tumblr are people who insist on ideological purity, and on the other side are people with good intentions who nevertheless feel alienated by The Discourse. What this means in practical terms is that, while one side of Tumblr is quick to attack anyone who engages with a problematic character, the other side of Tumblr has come to ostracize anyone who's interested in critique.

What's happened within the specific context of Zelda fandom, then, is that many people will only draw and write about and reblog the light-skinned protagonists, while many of the people who are interested in the darker-skinned antagonists are surprisingly tolerant of what would generally be considered borderline racist representations in any other context. It's not that any one approach to a character like Ganondorf is upsetting in and of itself, as it's only natural that different people are here for different things, but rather that the aggressive refusal to consider or even acknowledge the validity of alternative opinions and perspectives can make the Zelda fandom a very weird and uncomfortable place to be sometimes.

#Zelda fandom #fandom meta #this is all I'm going to say #that’s all folks #peace out #cw racism #cw white supremacy

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sitandbreatheitout · 4 years

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Day 9/40: Politics

Start at Day 1

It may seem strange for the topic of *politics* to feature prominently in the story of my *faith* journey [heads up, there’s still two more posts about it, sprinkled throughout this 40-day series], but it’s not surprising if you came of age within the 90s evangelical subculture. In the world I grew up in, being a good Christian was synonymous with voting Republican. Love of God and love of Country were so thoroughly entwined that at church youth events we pledged allegiance to the American flag AND the Christian flag, both of them standing together on stage.

Talking about politics requires me to step backwards from where we found ourselves yesterday, on the precipice of my faith deconstruction at age 30. The shifts that I’m going to describe today mostly happened during my mid-twenties. Because of the way evangelicals tie their religious identity to their political identity, my changing views had a deep impact on the rest of the journey, but at the time, they weren’t a deal-breaker for remaining in the evangelical church.

The view from here is murky when I try to remember where and how I absorbed the political messages I did. I do remember a few sources. Some of the messages were directly expressed from pulpits on Sunday mornings. Some were implied by the dehumanizing language we used when referring to our political opponents. Some were printed in the history books at my Christian school. Some were even dramatized on Adventures in Odyssey, the beloved kids radio show from Focus on the Family.

I was taught that America was a Christian nation, founded by Christians, based on Judeo-Christian values, and that God’s hand of providence was the reason behind our nation’s success. We saw America as a New Israel, God’s most recent chosen people, blessed in order to be a blessing to the world. I was also taught that in modern times there had been an unfortunate rise in secular thinking and a rejection of Biblical values, and that was the cause of all sorts of problems in the world.

Our job as Christians was to “take back” our culture and country for God. No one was better suited for the role of running the country (and everything else, for that matter) than Christians were, because we had the Holy Spirit guiding us from within. I’m so removed from this belief now that I can’t describe it without it sounding like a caricature or oversimplification, so bear with me, but we were very distrusting of all non-Christians. We believed that since they were being deceived by Satan, nothing truly good could come from them. Even people who claimed to be Christian but didn’t believe in the Bible the same way we did were suspect; “liberal Christian” was an oxymoron in our evangelical world. We believed all the things the Bible had to say about people who lived by the “flesh” instead of by the “Spirit”: that they desired to perform acts of “sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like” (Galatians 5:19-21). Yikes. No wonder we were scared of them.

So what does voting for the Republican party have to do with all this? How did it become the de facto political party of choice for white American evangelicals? That is a long and surprising-in-places history lesson that’s unfortunately outside the scope of this post [but don’t worry, it WILL come up again in a couple weeks]. Anyway, for our purposes, as it relates to how I experienced politics growing up, there is one very simple answer to those questions: ABORTION.

We understood abortion to be morally equivalent to murdering breathing babies who’d already been born. It was seen as a horrendously evil act, from the moment of conception on, regardless of the circumstances or effects of said conception. That was that: it was black and white. End of story. Kind of like how the seriousness of our belief in a literal hell overrode all other spiritual concerns, the seriousness of our belief that abortion was literally infanticide overrode all other political concerns. In both cases, the implications of our beliefs were gruesome to imagine. Ending abortion was the rally cry that united us, and at the end of the day (or rather: on Election Day), we were going to vote for the candidate who said they were "pro-life," no matter what. The Republicans reliably fit that designation, so they were our heroes, fighting the good fight against abortion.

There wasn’t a lot of nuance to my political views growing up. It’s similar to how my own kids are *very* emphatic that they like whoever it is I just told them I’m voting for. It’s because I’m their mom, not because they know anything about the candidate’s platform. Humans are social creatures, and we feel safest when we stay in step with the views of our tribe. The views of my tribe seemed mostly black and white to me, up through high school. Republicans = good, Democrats = bad. Conservatives = good, liberals = bad. Traditional family values = good, feminists and gay people = bad. Ronald Reagan and George Bush = good, Bill and Hillary Clinton = bad. Small government = good, big government = bad. Prayer in public school = good, patriotism = good, abortion = bad, welfare handouts = bad. We justified all of these positions using verses from the Bible, so we felt confident we were voting how God wanted us to vote.

So off I went to my conservative Christian college. There were several student-led clubs on campus, including a College Republicans group, and while I was a freshman, some students were petitioning to start a College Democrats group. This was shocking to a lot of us sheltered evangelical kids. At the time, I didn’t even know you COULD be a Christian and a Democrat. We debated amongst ourselves: what did it say about someone’s Christian witness if they supported the “godless" platform of the Democratic party? WHAT ABOUT THE BABIES?!

Where it got interesting was that I noticed the ratio of *minority students* was extremely high in the newly-formed College Democrats group. This troubled me, because it made me wonder that I might be missing some important piece of information regarding race and politics. Growing up in very white North Dakota (where there was a grand total of 5 black students attending my whole PreK through Grade 12 Christian school—I just counted in the yearbook), I had been blind to issues surrounding race. I was realizing I had a lot to learn, and that it might be wise to listen to the people whose voices had been overlooked by the dominant culture.

Another way college influenced my political beliefs was one of my favorite classes: Introduction to Logic, where we learned about reasoning and making good arguments. This wasn’t directly related to any specific political affiliation; rather, critical thinking is essential for evaluating political claims, no matter which side you’re on. I was a happy little nerd when we got to the section on “logical fallacies,” because while their existence was obvious (they frustrated me to no end: hello, debates on the playground), I wasn’t previously aware that anyone had formally studied and *named* them! The class proved that it wasn’t just my imagination; people really were making errors in reasoning ALL THE TIME.

By the time I graduated from college, I was still very much a Republican, but its link to my Christian identity was weakening. I was better equipped to spot bad arguments going forward, and I was starting to get suspicious of ones I had heard growing up.

In the lead up to the 2008 election, when I was 25, I read a book called Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals. It was one of the most controversial books I’d read to that point, though being published by evangelical Zondervan, it still stayed safely within the Christian bubble. After growing uncomfortable with the religious rhetoric around the War on Terror, I was soothed by the book’s Christian pacifist leanings. I wasn’t sure how realistic nonviolence was, but it seemed exactly like the kind of countercultural thing Jesus would have been into.

Most importantly, the book revealed a fascinating side of the Bible I’d never been exposed to before. I’d read through the entire Old and New Testaments, memorized whole chapters of it, heck, even graduated with Biblical Studies as my double major, and yet no one had explained in such interesting detail the socio-economic impacts of Old Testament laws and stories and Jesus’s teachings and ministry. Over and over the Bible shows God to be deeply concerned for the poor and vulnerable, and not all that impressed with powerful empires. It looked like evangelicals could come to different conclusions about politics, all while being faithful to the Bible.

In the end, I honestly can’t remember who I voted for that year, Obama or McCain. Either way, the 2008 election, the first time I'd ever *favorably* considered a Democrat candidate, was a turning point for me. Over the next 4 years, especially as I approached the beginning of my faith deconstruction, my political affiliation would change to Democrat— officially, but mostly privately. This was my first big break outside the beliefs of my Christian bubble, away from the safety of my tribe.

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#exvangelical

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alexsmitposts · 5 years

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The Simple Truth About the Yemen Catastrophe Yemen, Saudi Arabia’s southern neighbor, is a human catastrophe that will go down in history as one of America’s biggest policy mistakes. This poor Middle East country is the perfect reflection of failing U.S. strategies that will only balloon as the years draw on. Here is a candid look at another proxy war to perpetuate a misshapen dream. The civil war in Yemen is about three things. Saudi/Israeli geostrategy, oil markets, and the geography of energy. Whatever else you hear about this most inhumane conflict, rest assured crude oil and natural gas are at the core of the conflict. With Saudi Arabia having already exhausted most of her oil reserves, only new finds in the region can prop up that ridiculous regime. I won’t get into the term “peak oil” here, I’ve already covered this many times. The point is, the world’s oil has to run out sooner or later, and places like Yemen are now becoming the battlegrounds for energy-dependent nations. The Big Energy Grab Yemen never was a big oil producer. Since the civil unrest began, the country’s relatively small output has been choked down to a dribble. But Yemen is a very young territory for exploration, when compared to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE and others in the region. Two older fields that only came online in the mid-1980s reached peak production in 2001, and most experts say Yemen is one of those “post-peak” countries with no chance of a resurgent economy. I am not one of these analysts. The so-called frontier fields offshore are an energy bonanza I believe is fueling Saudi Arabia’s and America’s war on these people. Yemen’s offshore frontier basins, and to a lesser extent those onshore, are what the Saudi coalition is after. The idea that the Saudi’s are deathly afraid of Iran is a construct built to separate people in every nation from the truth. Religious differences, Sunni versus Shia, Christian versus Muslim, they’re a convenient excuse as has always been the case. Take a look at this report by Mustafa As-Saruri, Ph.D., and Rasoul Sorkhabi, Ph.D. at GEOExPro. Take note also, of the offshore blocks bid on by western oil giants recently. On offshore and other new discoveries, I quote from another GEOEx report from the mid-2000s: “Yemen boasts twelve sedimentary basins, but oil production has come from only two of these, both lying in the center of the country, indicating that there is promising potential for further exploration both on and offshore Yemen.” Take note here, these new reserves would be sweet oil and not the sludge Saudi Arabia is thinning with seawater to get it to pump. I won’t get into technicalities, but much of Yemen’s oil wealth comes in the form of 41°API or above oil, which equates to quality and ease of extraction compared to what is currently coming out of Saudi Arabia. Cold War II Geostrategy This declassified (sanitized) CIA document tells us the Yemen situation in historical context, and show us U.S. policy toward the country is all about what I’ve suggested. Oil is a key factor, there is more oil than has been projected, and Yemen is part of a New Cold War hegemonic strategy by the U.S. and allies. Ironically, the CIA’s information and recommendations on Yemen in the 1980s proved wrong on many accounts. The experts creating these strategies were no less Anglo-European in their thinking than today’s analysts. They got the oil part right and missed the Soviet influence and North and South Yemen’s reunion totally. U.S. policy back then, as now, looked like cheerleading for big oil. In the aforementioned report, Hunt Oil, Amoco, and Texaco were the superheroes that would bring both Yemen into the U.S. stable of allied nations. Today, the strategy has only changed slightly. Almost 17 million people in Yemen are unable sustain themselves, and the western narrative still relies on religious differences to explain the divide between Yemen and its neighbors. U.S. think tanks have Detche Welle convinced the catastrophe is a Sunni-Shiite conflict. Israel’s Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center gives the same diagnosis. These vested interests all want you and I to believe that Saudi Arabia is trying to save Yemen from the same fate as Iraq! No, I am not kidding, read the DW story. And the Germans wonder why “peace is still elusive?” Religion has precious little to do with the conflict in Yemen today. The root causes of this proxy war are as I have stated. Right behind the energy war, the battle for geostrategic posture has put the people of Yemen in extreme peril. To find the proof of this, we have to scan the western mainstream until we reach our old friends Al Jazeera. They tell half the story with: “Reminiscent of the “Great Game” played out in Afghanistan between Great Britain and Russia more than a hundred years ago, Saudi Arabia and Iran are engaged in their own decades-long strategic rivalry for power and influence in the Middle East, stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Gulf and Arabian Sea. It is built mostly along sectarian and ideological lines – Saudi Arabia as the leader of the Sunni Muslim world, and Iran as the leader of the Shia Muslim world.” The other half involves post-colonialist nations that always have a hand in the affairs of nations at cultural and economic crossroads. Insert Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, alongside China and Russia here. Of course, the Al Jazeera piece is slanted toward Saudi Arabia and the Israeli contingent, but the “Great Game” recollection is sound. Yemen controls the entrance to the Red Sea through the Gulf of Aden and the Suez Canal. When all is said and done, this is the only story. Cold War II – same as Cold War I. Political Geo-Dynamics When we think of places like Iraq, Kuwait, or even Russia, we often think of the energy and natural resources. That is, where economics and geostrategy are concerned. Transit routes are not so often discussed beyond choke points like the Persian Gulf or the Suez Canal etc. How oil or natural gas gets from one place to another is a bit too wide a topic for the average Washington Post reader, let’s just face it. So, imagine how obtuse most Americans or Germans are when we talk about other market factors like OPEC’s competition, and shale helping America reenter the energy game in a big way, most people just don’t have the time to invest. Reading how Royal Dutch Shell, BP, and Exxon Mobil Corp. is doubling down on shale output, it’s just not sexy for most people. On top of this, try to explain the complexities of global competition between Russia and the United States with Europe sitting in between, and you lose almost everyone. If I may, a bit over oversimplification can help even the busiest reader understand what I mean by Political Geo-Dynamics. Geodynamics is about the processes which have shaped the Earth. So, if we overlay a political map on top of the quantities of natural resources on our planet, we end up with a pretty good idea where conflicts and other synergies will surface. Consumption/demand plays a major roll in how crises flux, as you can imagine. The Middle East had to become a crisis point for a number of reasons, not the least of which being OPEC’s squeezing of America back in the 1970s. But let’s not digress. America and Europe need more gas, corporations want to maximize profits in fulfilling the demand. Russia and Gazprom making a trillion euro off of the Europeans, for instance, is not something that is going to make Dutch Royal Shell, BP, or Exxon happy. Iran getting rich off the world’s biggest natural gas resources is not going to happen either. I won’t even get into Germany and the world’s most profitable energy company, E.ON. (2015 earnings $126.97bn) This is a topic all its own. Yemen satisfies three of three qualifying characteristics to be a target for annihilation. If the western alliance cannot have a puppet government in place, and if BP, Total, and Exxon cannot share in the offshore oil riches, then the bombs are going to fall until they can. America is going to have the geostrategic location and the bases, or the blood will flow. Yemen was just unlucky enough to have jutted out of the primordial ooze in the wrong place. It would not matter if Yemenis were Southern Baptists or Episcopalians, Donald Trump or any U.S. president would be backing Saudi Arabia and Israel in destroying the place or controlling it. This is a simple truth. Yemen is about container shiploads of money. The religious aspect is just for headlines people can understand. Christian versus Muslim, Good Old Boys versus Terrorists, you know the game. What bothers me most, besides the starving or blown to bits children, is that we cannot just come out and admit its about greed. Hitler was more honest than current leaders, at least. Lebensraum was about killing people in Eastern Europe to get their land. Why can’t our killing Yemenis be about America maintaining power? I bet most Yemenis wish they’d been born in Nova Scotia.

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weightlossfitness2 · 5 years

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The Truth about Energy Balance and Fat Loss

When it involves physique change, there’s no matter extra polarizing than “calories in vs. calories out.” Some argue it’s the be-all and end-all of weight reduction. Others say it’s oversimplified and misguided. In this text, we discover each angle of the controversy from “eat less, move more,” to hormonal points, to diets that supply a “metabolic advantage.” In doing so, we reply—as soon as and for all—how vital energy in vs. energy out actually is. And talk about what it means for you and your purchasers.

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“You’re either with me, or you’re against me.”

Everyone’s heard this one. But do you know the well being and health business has its personal model of the saying? It goes: “You’re either with me, or you’re stupid.”

I child, in fact!

But this type of binary mindset does gas loads of heated debates. Especially relating to one matter specifically: “calories in vs. calories out,” or CICO.

CICO is a straightforward method of claiming:

When you absorb extra power than you burn, you acquire weight.

When you absorb much less power than you burn, you drop some weight.

This is a basic idea in physique weight regulation, and about as near scientific truth as we are able to get.

Then why is CICO the supply of a lot disagreement?

It’s all in regards to the extremes.

At one finish of the controversy, there’s a gaggle who believes CICO is simple. If you aren’t shedding pounds, the reason being easy: You’re both consuming too many energy, or not transferring sufficient, or each. Just eat much less and transfer extra.

At the opposite finish is a gaggle who believes CICO is damaged (or perhaps a full fantasy). These critics say it doesn’t account for hormone imbalances, insulin resistance, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), and different well being issues that have an effect on metabolism. They typically declare sure diets and meals present a “metabolic advantage,” serving to you drop some weight with out worrying about CICO.

Neither viewpoint is totally flawed.

But neither is totally proper, both.

Whether you’re a well being and health coach tasked with serving to purchasers handle their weight—otherwise you’re making an attempt to learn to do this for your self—adopting an excessive place on this matter is problematic; it prevents you from seeing the larger image.

This article will add some nuance to the controversy.

I’ll begin by clearing up some misconceptions about CICO. And then discover a number of real-world examples exhibiting how far-right or far-left views can maintain of us again.

Rethinking widespread misconceptions.

Much of the CICO debate—as with many different debates—stems from misconceptions, oversimplifications, and a failure (by each side) to discover a shared understanding of ideas. So let’s begin by getting everybody on the identical web page for a change.

CICO goes past meals and train.

There’s an vital distinction to be made between CICO and “eat less, move more.” But individuals, particularly some CICO advocates, are likely to conflate the 2.

“Eat less, move more” solely takes under consideration the energy you eat and the energy you burn by way of train and different day by day motion. But CICO is basically an off-the-cuff method of expressing the Energy Balance Equation, which is way extra concerned.

The Energy Balance Equation—and subsequently CICO—contains all of the complicated interior workings of the physique, in addition to the exterior elements that in the end impression “calories in” and “calories out.”

Imperative to this, and infrequently ignored, is your mind. It’s always monitoring and controlling CICO. Think of it as mission management, sending and receiving messages that contain your intestine, hormones, organs, muscular tissues, bones, fats cells, exterior stimuli (and extra), to assist steadiness “energy in” and “energy out.”

It’s one hell of an advanced—and delightful—system.

Yet the Energy Balance Equation itself appears to be like actually easy. Here it’s:

[Energy in] – [Energy out] = Changes in physique shops*

*Body shops refers to all of the tissues out there for breakdown, comparable to fats, muscle, organ, and bone. I purposely haven’t used “change in body weight” right here as a result of I wish to exclude water weight, which may change physique weight impartial of power steadiness. In different phrases, water is a complicated, confounding variable that methods individuals into pondering power steadiness is damaged when it’s not.

With this equation, “energy in” and “energy out” aren’t simply energy from meals and train. As you possibly can see within the illustration beneath, every kind of things affect these two variables.

When you view CICO by way of this lens—by zooming out for a wider perspective—you possibly can see boiling it right down to “eat less, move more” is a big oversimplification.

Calorie calculators and CICO aren’t the identical.

Many individuals use calorie calculators to estimate their power wants, and to approximate what number of energy they’ve eaten. But generally these instruments don’t appear to work. As a end result, these people begin to query whether or not CICO is damaged. (Or whether or not they’re damaged).

The key phrases listed below are “estimate” and “approximate.”

That’s as a result of calorie calculators aren’t essentially correct.

For starters, they supply an output based mostly on averages, and might be off by as a lot as 20-30 % in regular, younger, wholesome individuals. They might fluctuate much more in older, scientific, or overweight populations.

And that’s simply on the “energy out” facet.

The variety of energy you eat—or your “energy in”—can also be simply an estimate.

For instance, the FDA permits inaccuracies of as much as 20% on label calorie counts, and analysis reveals restaurant vitamin data might be off by 100-300 energy per meals merchandise.

What’s extra, even should you had been capable of precisely weigh and measure each morsel you eat, you continue to wouldn’t have a precise “calories in” quantity. That’s as a result of there are different confounding elements, comparable to:

We don’t soak up all the energy we devour. And absorption charges fluctuate throughout meals varieties. (Example: We soak up extra energy than estimated from fiber-rich meals, and fewer energy than estimated from nuts and seeds.)

We all soak up energy uniquely based mostly on our particular person intestine micro organism.

Cooking, mixing, or chopping meals typically makes extra energy out there for absorption than might seem on a vitamin label.

Of course, this doesn’t imply CICO doesn’t work. It solely means the instruments now we have to estimate “calories in” and “calories out” are restricted.

To be crystal clear: Calorie calculators can nonetheless be very useful for some individuals. But it’s vital to concentrate on their limitations. If you’re going to make use of one, achieve this as a tough start line, not a definitive “answer.”

CICO doesn’t require calorie counting.

At Precision Nutrition, generally we use calorie counting to assist purchasers enhance their meals consumption. Other occasions we use hand parts. And different occasions we use extra intuitive approaches.

For instance, let’s say a shopper desires to drop some weight, however they’re not seeing the outcomes they need. If they’re counting energy or utilizing hand parts, we’d use these numbers as a reference to additional scale back the quantity of meals they’re consuming. But we additionally would possibly encourage them to make use of different methods as an alternative. Like consuming slowly, or till they’re 80 % full.

In each case—whether or not we’re speaking numbers or not — we’re manipulating “energy in.” Sometimes instantly; generally not directly. So make no mistake: Even once we’re not “counting calories,” CICO nonetheless applies.

CICO would possibly sound easy, but it surely’s not.

There’s no getting round it: If you (or a shopper) aren’t shedding pounds, you both have to lower “energy in” or enhance “energy out.” But as you’ve already seen, which will contain excess of simply pushing away your plate or spending extra time on the health club.

For occasion, it could require you to:

Get extra high-quality sleep to higher regulate starvation hormones, enhance restoration, and enhance metabolic output

Try stress resilience methods like meditation, deep respiratory, and spending time in nature

Increase your day by day non-exercise motion by parking the automotive a couple of blocks away out of your vacation spot, taking the steps, and/or standing when you work

Trade some high-intensity train for lower-intensity actions, so as to support restoration and scale back systemic stress

Improve the high quality of what you’re consuming, versus lowering the amount. This can will let you eat extra meals with fewer whole energy

Tinker with the macronutrient make-up of what you eat. For instance: consuming extra protein and fiber, or growing carbs and reducing fat, or vice versa

Experiment with the frequency and timing of your meals and snacks, based mostly on private preferences and urge for food cues

Consider briefly monitoring your meals consumption—through hand parts or weighing/measuring—to make sure you’re consuming what you suppose you’re consuming (as carefully as moderately doable)

Evaluate and proper dietary deficiencies, for extra power throughout exercises (and in on a regular basis life)

Consult along with your doctor or specialists if constant life-style adjustments aren’t transferring the needle

Sometimes the options are apparent; generally they aren’t. But with CICO, the solutions are there, should you hold your thoughts open and study each issue.

Imagine your self a “calorie conductor” who oversees and fine-tunes many actions to create metabolic concord. You’re on the lookout for something that might be out of sync.

This takes plenty of observe.

So, to assist, listed below are 5 widespread power steadiness dilemmas. In every case, it is perhaps tempting to imagine CICO doesn’t apply. But look a little bit deeper, and also you’ll see the ideas of CICO are at all times current.

5 widespread power steadiness dilemmas.

Dilemma #1: “I’ve been eating the same way forever, but suddenly I started gaining weight.”

Can you guess what occurred?

More than seemingly, “energy in” or “energy out” did change, however in a method that felt uncontrolled or unnoticeable.

The wrongdoer might be:

Slight will increase in meals consumption, attributable to adjustments in temper, starvation, or stress

An enhance within the quantity of power absorbed—attributable to new treatment, an unknown medical situation, or a historical past of persistent weight-reduction plan

Physiological adjustments that resulted in fewer energy burned throughout train and at relaxation

The onset of persistent ache, upsetting a dramatic lower in non-exercise exercise thermogenesis (NEAT)

Significant adjustments to sleep high quality and/or amount, impacting metabolic output and/or meals consumed

In all of those instances, CICO continues to be legitimate. Energy steadiness simply shifted in refined methods, attributable to life-style and well being standing adjustments, making it onerous to acknowledge.

Dilemma #2: “My hormones are wreaking havoc on my metabolism, and I can’t stop gaining weight. Help!”

Hormones seem to be a logical scapegoat for weight adjustments.

And whereas they’re in all probability to not blame as typically as individuals suppose, hormones are intricately entwined with power steadiness.

But even so, they don’t function independently of power steadiness.

In different phrases, individuals don’t acquire weight as a result of “hormones.”

They acquire weight as a result of their hormones are impacting their power steadiness.

This typically occurs throughout menopause or when thyroid hormone ranges decline.

Take, for instance, triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4), two thyroid hormones which can be extremely vital for metabolic perform. If ranges of those hormones diminish, weight acquire might happen. But this doesn’t negate CICO: Your hormones are merely influencing “energy out.”

This could appear a bit like splitting hairs, but it surely’s an vital connection to make, whether or not we’re speaking about menopause or thyroid issues or insulin resistance or different hormonal points.

By understanding CICO is the true determinant of weight reduction, you’ll have many extra instruments for attaining the end result you need.

Suppose you’re working from the false premise hormones are the one factor that issues. This can result in more and more unhelpful choices, like spending a big sum of cash on pointless dietary supplements, or adhering to a very restrictive eating regimen that backfires in the long term.

Instead, you already know outcomes are depending on the truth that “energy in” or “energy out” has modified. Now, this variation might be attributable to hormones, and if that’s the case, you’ll should make changes to your consuming, train, and/or life-style habits to account for it. (This may embody taking treatment prescribed by your physician, if acceptable.)

Research suggests individuals with gentle (10-15% of the inhabitants) to reasonable hypothyroidism (2-Three%) might expertise a metabolic decelerate of 140 to 360 energy a day.

That might be sufficient to result in weight acquire, or make it tougher to drop some weight. (One caveat: Mild hypothyroidism might be so gentle many individuals don’t expertise a big shift in metabolic exercise, making it a non-issue.)

What’s extra, ladies affected by polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS (about 5-10%), and people going by way of menopause, may additionally expertise hormonal adjustments that disrupt power steadiness.

So, it’s vital to grasp your (or your shopper’s) well being standing, as that may present precious details about the distinctive challenges concerned and the way you must proceed.

Dilemma #Three: “I’m only eating 1,000 calories a day and I’m still not losing weight!”

So what provides?

The conclusion most individuals leap to: Their metabolism is damaged. They’re damaged. And CICO is damaged.

But right here’s the deal: Metabolic injury isn’t actually a factor. Even although it could appear that method.

Now, their power steadiness problem might be associated to a hormonal situation, as mentioned above. However, when somebody’s consuming 1,000 energy a day however not shedding pounds, it’s often attributable to one of many two causes that comply with.

(No matter how easy they sound, that is what we’ve seen time and again in our teaching program, with over 100,000 purchasers.)

Reason #1: People typically underestimate their calorie consumption.

It’s simple to miscalculate how a lot you’re consuming, because it’s often unintentional. The commonest methods individuals do it:

They underestimate parts. (For instance, with out exactly measuring “one tablespoon of peanut butter,” it would truly be two, which provides 90 energy every time you do it)

They don’t observe bites, licks, and tastes of calorie-dense meals. (For instance, your child’s leftover mac and cheese may simply add 100 energy)

They don’t document all the pieces within the second and neglect to log it in a while

They “forget” to depend meals they’d wished they hadn’t eaten

Don’t consider this is usually a massive situation?

A landmark research, and repeated comply with up research, discovered individuals typically underestimate how a lot they eat over the course of a day, generally by greater than 1,000 energy.

I’m not bringing this analysis as much as recommend it’s not possible to be lifelike about portion sizes. But should you (or your purchasers) aren’t seeing outcomes on a low-calorie eating regimen, it’s value contemplating that underestimation could also be the issue.

Reason #2: People overeat on the weekends.

Work weeks might be disturbing and when Friday night time rolls round, individuals put their guard down and let free.

(You in all probability can’t relate, however simply strive, okay?)

Here’s the way it goes: Let’s say an individual is consuming 1,500 energy a day on weekdays, which might give them an approximate 500-calorie deficit.

But on the weekends, they deviate from their plan just a bit.

Drinks with buddies and some slices of late night time pizza on Friday

An further massive lunch after their exercise on Saturday

Brunch on Sunday (“Hey, it’s breakfast and lunch, so I can eat double!)

The remaining tally: An further four,000 energy consumed between Friday night time and Sunday afternoon. They’ve successfully canceled out their deficit, bumping their common day by day energy to 2,071.

The upshot: If you (or your shopper) have slashed your energy dramatically, however you aren’t seeing the anticipated outcomes, search for the small slips. It’s like being a metabolic detective who’s following—maybe actually—the bread crumbs.

By the best way, if downtime is downside for you (or a shopper), now we have simply the treatment: 5 shocking methods to ditch weekend overeating.

Dilemma #four: “I’m eating as much as I want and still losing weight, so this diet is better than all the others!”

This is perhaps the highest cause some individuals reject CICO.

Say somebody switches from a eating regimen of largely processed meals to 1 made up of largely entire, plant-based meals. They would possibly discover they’ll eat as a lot meals as they need, but the kilos nonetheless soften away.

People typically consider that is because of the “power of plants.”

Yes, crops are nice, however this doesn’t disprove power steadiness.

Because plant meals have a very-low power density, you possibly can eat lots of them and nonetheless be in a calorie deficit. Especially in case your earlier consumption was stuffed with plenty of processed, hyperpalatable “indulgent foods.”

It feels such as you’re consuming far more meals than ever earlier than—and, actually, you actually is perhaps.

On high of that, you may additionally really feel extra satiated due to the amount, fiber, and water content material of the crops.

All of which is nice. Truly. But it doesn’t negate CICO.

Or take the ketogenic eating regimen, for instance.

Here, somebody may need an analogous expertise of “eating as much as they want” and nonetheless shedding pounds, however as an alternative of plant meals, they’re consuming meat, cheese, and eggs. Those aren’t low-calorie meals, and so they don’t have a lot fiber, both.

As a end result, loads of low-carb advocates declare keto presents a “metabolic advantage” over different diets.

Here’s what’s almost definitely taking place:

Greater consumption of protein will increase satiety and reduces urge for food

Limited meals selections have reduce out a whole bunch of highly-processed energy they may have eaten in any other case (Pasta! Chips! Cookies!)

Reduced meals choices can even result in “sensory-specific satiety.” Meaning, if you eat the identical meals on a regular basis, they might grow to be much less interesting, so that you’re not pushed to eat as a lot

Liquid energy—soda, juice, even milk—are typically off-limits, so a higher proportion of energy are consumed from strong meals, that are extra filling

Higher blood ranges of ketones—which rise when carbs are restricted—appear to suppress urge for food

For these causes, individuals are likely to eat fewer energy and really feel much less hungry.

Although it may appear magical, the keto eating regimen ends in weight reduction by regulating “energy in” by way of quite a lot of methods.

You would possibly ask: If plant-based and keto diets work so nicely, why ought to anybody care if it’s due to CICO, or for another cause?

Because relying on the particular person—meals preferences, life-style, exercise degree, and so forth—many diets, together with plant-based and keto, aren’t sustainable long-term. This is especially true of the extra restrictive approaches.

And should you (or your shopper) consider there’s just one “best diet,” you might grow to be pissed off should you aren’t capable of stick with it. You might view your self as a failure and determine you lack the self-discipline to drop some weight. You might even suppose you must cease making an attempt.

None of that are true.

Your outcomes aren’t eating regimen dependent. They’re habits dependent.

Maintaining a wholesome physique (together with a wholesome physique weight) is about growing constant, sustainable day by day habits that show you how to positively impression “energy in” and “energy out.”

This is perhaps achieved whereas having fun with the meals you like, by:

Eating till you’re 80% full

Eating slowly and mindfully

Eating extra minimally processed meals

Getting extra high-quality sleep

Taking steps to cut back stress and construct resilience

It’s about viewing CICO from 30,000 toes and determining what strategy feels sane—and achievable—for you.

Sure, which may embody a plant-based or a keto eating regimen, but it surely completely won’t, too. And you already know what?

You can get nice outcomes both method.

Dilemma #5: “I want to gain weight, but no matter how much I eat, I can’t seem to.”

The CICO dialog doesn’t at all times revolve round weight reduction.

Some individuals wrestle to achieve weight.

Especially youthful athletes and people who find themselves very, very lively at work. (Think: jobs that contain guide labor.)

It additionally occurs with those that try to regain misplaced weight after an sickness.

When somebody deliberately eats extra meals however can’t pack on the kilos, it could seem to be CICO is invalidated. (Surprise.)

They typically really feel like they’re stuffing themselves—“I’m eating everything in sight!”—and it’s simply not working. But right here’s what our coaches have discovered:

People have a tendency to recollect extremes.

Someone may need had six meals in in the future, consuming as a lot as they felt like they might stand.

But the next day, they solely ate two meals as a result of they had been nonetheless so full. Maybe they had been actually busy, too, in order that they didn’t even suppose a lot about it.

The first day—the one the place they stuffed themselves—would seemingly stand out much more than the day they ate in accordance with their starvation ranges. That’s simply human nature.

It’s simple to see how CICO is concerned right here. It’s lack of consistency on the “energy in” a part of the equation.

One answer: Instead of stuffing your self with Three,000 energy in the future, after which consuming 1,500 the following, goal for a calorie consumption simply above the center you possibly can keep on with, and enhance it in small quantities over time, if wanted.

People typically enhance exercise after they enhance energy.

When some individuals all of a sudden have extra out there power—from consuming extra meals—they’re extra prone to do issues that enhance their power out. Like taking the steps, pacing whereas on the cellphone, and fidgeting of their seats.

They would possibly even push tougher throughout a exercise than they’d usually.

This might be each unconscious and refined.

And although it would sound bizarre, our coaches have recognized this as a authentic downside for “hardgainers.”

Your cost: Take discover of all of your exercise.

If you possibly can’t curtail a few of it, you might have to compensate by consuming much more meals. Nutrient- and calorie-dense meals like nut butters, entire grains, and oils may help, particularly should you’re challenged by your lack of urge for food.

Three methods to recreation the system.

Once you settle for that CICO is each complicated and inescapable, you might end up up in opposition to one quite common problem.

Namely: “I can’t eat any less than I am now!”

This is likely one of the high causes individuals abandon their weight reduction efforts or search around in useless for a miracle eating regimen.

But listed below are three easy methods you (or your purchasers) can use to create a caloric deficit, even when it appears not possible. It’s all about determining which one works finest for you.

Maximize protein and fiber.

Consuming increased quantities of protein will increase satiety, serving to you’re feeling extra happy between meals. And consuming increased quantities of fiber will increase satiation, serving to you’re feeling extra happy throughout meals.

These are each confirmed in analysis and observe that can assist you really feel extra happy total whereas consuming fewer energy, resulting in simpler fats loss.

This recommendation can sound trite, I do know. In truth, sometime when there are vitamin coach robots, “eat more protein and fiber” will in all probability be the very first thing they’re programmed to say.

But the reality is, most individuals making an attempt to drop some weight nonetheless aren’t centered on getting loads of these two vitamins.

And you already know what? It’s not their fault.

When it involves diets, nearly everybody has been informed to subtract. Take away the “bad” stuff, and solely eat the “good” stuff.

But there’s one other strategy: Just begin by including.

If you make a concerted effort to extend protein (particularly lean protein) and fiber consumption (particularly from greens), you’ll really feel extra happy.

You’ll even be much less tempted by all of the meals you suppose you ought to be avoiding. This helps to mechanically “crowd out” ultra-processed meals.

Which results in one other massive profit: By consuming extra entire meals and fewer of the processed type, you’re truly retraining your mind to want these indulgent, ultra-processed meals much less.

That’s when a cool factor occurs: You begin consuming fewer energy with out actively making an attempt to—slightly than purposely limiting as a result of you need to.

That makes weight reduction simpler.

Starting is straightforward: For protein, add one palm of comparatively lean protein—rooster, fish, tempeh—to 1 meal. This is past what you’d have had in any other case. Or have a Super Shake as a meal or snack.

For fiber, add one serving of high-fiber meals—specifically greens, fruit, lentils and beans—to your common consumption. This would possibly imply having an apple for a snack, together with a fistful of roasted carrots at dinner, or tossing in a handful of spinach in your Super Shake.

Try this for 2 weeks, after which add one other palm of lean protein, and yet one more serving of high-fiber meals.

Besides all of the upside we’ve mentioned up to now, there’s additionally this:

Coming to the desk with a mindset of abundance—slightly than shortage—may help you keep away from these anxious, pissed off emotions that usually include being disadvantaged of the meals you like.

So as an alternative of claiming, “Ugh, I really don’t think I can give up my nightly wine and chocolate habit,” you would possibly say, “Hey, look at all this delicious, healthy food I can feed my body!”

(And by the best way, you don’t even have to surrender your wine and chocolate behavior, no less than to not provoke progress.)

Shift your perspective.

Imagine you’re on trip. You slept in and missed breakfast.

Of course, you don’t actually thoughts since you’re relaxed and having a good time. And there’s no cause to panic: Lunch will occur.

But because you’ve eliminated a meal, you find yourself consuming a couple of hundred energy lower than regular for the day, successfully making a deficit.

Given you’re in an surroundings the place you’re feeling calm and pleased, you hardly even discover.

Now suppose you get up on a daily day, and also you’re actively making an attempt to drop some weight. (To prepare for trip!)

You would possibly suppose: “I only get to have my 400-calorie breakfast, and it’s not enough food. This is the worst. I’m going to be so hungry all day!”

So you head to work feeling burdened, counting down the minutes to your subsequent snack or meal. Maybe you even begin to really feel disadvantaged and depressing.

Here’s the factor: You had been in a calorie deficit each days, however your subjective expertise of every was fully completely different.

What should you may alter your pondering to be extra like the primary situation slightly than the second?

Of course, I’m not suggesting you skip breakfast on a regular basis (except that’s simply your choice).

But should you can handle to see consuming much less as one thing you occur to be doing— slightly than one thing you need to do—it could find yourself feeling lots much less horrible.

Add exercise slightly than subtracting energy.

Are you an individual who doesn’t wish to eat much less, however would fortunately transfer extra? If so, you would possibly have the ability to make the most of one thing I’ve referred to as G-Flux.

G-Flux, also called “energy flux,” is the entire quantity of power that flows out and in of a system.

As an instance, say you wish to create a 500-calorie deficit. That may like this:

Energy in: 2,000 energy

Energy out: 2,500 energy

Deficit: 500 energy

But it may additionally appear like this:

Energy in: Three,000 energy

Energy out: Three,500 energy

Deficit: 500 energy

In each situations, you’ve achieved a 500-calorie deficit, however the second lets you eat lots extra meals.

That’s one advantage of a higher G-Flux.

But there’s additionally one other: Research suggests should you’re consuming meals from high-quality sources and doing quite a lot of exercises—power coaching, conditioning, and restoration work—consuming extra energy may help you carry extra lean mass and fewer fats.

That’s as a result of the elevated train doesn’t simply serve to spice up your “energy out.” It additionally adjustments nutrient partitioning, sending extra energy towards muscle progress and fewer to your fats cells.

Plus, because you’re consuming extra meals, you might have extra alternative to get the portions of nutritional vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients you want so as to really feel your finest.

Win. Win. Win.

To be clear, it is a considerably superior technique. And as a result of metabolism and power steadiness are dynamic in nature, the effectiveness of this technique might fluctuate from individual to individual.

Plus, not everybody has the power or the need to spend extra time exercising. And that’s okay.

But by being versatile along with your pondering—and prepared to experiment with alternative ways of influencing CICO—you will discover your personal private technique for tipping power steadiness in your (or your purchasers’) favor.

If you’re a coach, otherwise you wish to be…

Learning find out how to coach purchasers, sufferers, buddies, or members of the family by way of wholesome consuming and life-style adjustments—in a method that optimizes power steadiness for every distinctive physique, character, and life-style—is each an artwork and a science.

If you’d wish to be taught extra about each, take into account the Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification. The subsequent group kicks off shortly.

What’s all of it about?

The Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification is the world’s most revered vitamin training program. It provides you the data, techniques, and instruments it’s good to actually perceive how meals influences an individual’s well being and health. Plus the power to show that data right into a thriving teaching observe.

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Whether you’re already mid-career, or simply beginning out, the Level 1 Certification is your springboard to a deeper understanding of vitamin, the authority to educate it, and the skill to show what you already know into outcomes.

[Of course, if you’re already a student or graduate of the Level 1 Certification, check out our Level 2 Certification Master Class. It’s an exclusive, year-long mentorship designed for elite professionals looking to master the art of coaching and be part of the top 1% of health and fitness coaches in the world.]

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oovitus · 5 years

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Calories in vs. out? Or hormones? The debate is finally over. Here’s who won.

When it comes to body change, there’s no topic more polarizing than “calories in vs. calories out.” Some argue it’s the be-all and end-all of weight loss. Others say it’s oversimplified and misguided. In this article, we explore every angle of the debate from “eat less, move more,” to hormonal issues, to diets that offer a “metabolic advantage.” In doing so, we answer—once and for all—how important calories in vs. calories out really is. And discuss what it means for you and your clients.

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“You’re either with me, or you’re against me.”

Everyone’s heard this one. But did you know the health and fitness industry has its own version of the saying? It goes: “You’re either with me, or you’re stupid.”

I kid, of course!

But this kind of binary mindset does fuel plenty of heated debates. Especially when it comes to one topic in particular: “calories in vs. calories out,” or CICO.

CICO is an easy way of saying:

When you take in more energy than you burn, you gain weight.

When you take in less energy than you burn, you lose weight.

This is a fundamental concept in body weight regulation, and about as close to scientific fact as we can get.

Then why is CICO the source of so much disagreement?

It’s all about the extremes.

At one end of the debate there’s a group who believes CICO is straightforward. If you aren’t losing weight, the reason is simple: You’re either eating too many calories, or not moving enough, or both. Just eat less and move more.

At the other end is a group who believes CICO is broken (or even a complete myth). These critics say it doesn’t account for hormone imbalances, insulin resistance, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), and other health problems that affect metabolism. They often claim certain diets and foods provide a “metabolic advantage,” helping you lose weight without worrying about CICO.

Neither viewpoint is completely wrong.

But neither is completely right, either.

Whether you’re a health and fitness coach tasked with helping clients manage their weight—or you’re trying to learn how to do that for yourself—adopting an extreme position on this topic is problematic; it prevents you from seeing the bigger picture.

This article will add some nuance to the debate.

I’ll start by clearing up some misconceptions about CICO. And then explore several real-world examples showing how far-right or far-left views can hold folks back.

Rethinking common misconceptions.

Much of the CICO debate—as with many other debates—stems from misconceptions, oversimplifications, and a failure (by both sides) to find a shared understanding of concepts. So let’s start by getting everyone on the same page for a change.

CICO goes beyond food and exercise.

There’s an important distinction to be made between CICO and “eat less, move more.” But people, especially some CICO advocates, tend to conflate the two.

“Eat less, move more” only takes into account the calories you eat and the calories you burn through exercise and other daily movement. But CICO is really an informal way of expressing the Energy Balance Equation, which is far more involved.

The Energy Balance Equation—and therefore CICO—includes all the complex inner workings of the body, as well as the external factors that ultimately impact “calories in” and “calories out.”

Imperative to this, and often overlooked, is your brain. It’s constantly monitoring and controlling CICO. Think of it as mission control, sending and receiving messages that involve your gut, hormones, organs, muscles, bones, fat cells, external stimuli (and more), to help balance “energy in” and “energy out.”

It’s one hell of a complicated—and beautiful—system.

Yet the Energy Balance Equation itself looks really simple. Here it is:

[Energy in] – [Energy out] = Changes in body stores*

*Body stores refers to all the tissues available for breakdown, such as fat, muscle, organ, and bone. I purposely haven’t used “change in body weight” here because I want to exclude water weight, which can change body weight independent of energy balance. In other words, water is a confusing, confounding variable that tricks people into thinking energy balance is broken when it’s not.

With this equation, “energy in” and “energy out” aren’t just calories from food and exercise. As you can see in the illustration below, all kinds of factors influence these two variables.

When you view CICO through through this lens—by zooming out for a wider perspective—you can see boiling it down to “eat less, move more” is a significant oversimplification.

Calorie calculators and CICO aren’t the same.

Many people use calorie calculators to estimate their energy needs, and to approximate how many calories they’ve eaten. But sometimes these tools don’t seem to work. As a result, these individuals start to question whether CICO is broken. (Or whether they’re broken).

The key words here are “estimate” and “approximate.”

That’s because calorie calculators aren’t necessarily accurate.

For starters, they provide an output based on averages, and can be off by as much as 20-30 percent in normal, young, healthy people. They may vary even more in older, clinical, or obese populations.

And that’s just on the “energy out” side.

The number of calories you eat—or your “energy in”—is also just an estimate.

For example, the FDA allows inaccuracies of up to 20% on label calorie counts, and research shows restaurant nutrition information can be off by 100-300 calories per food item.

What’s more, even if you were able to accurately weigh and measure every morsel you eat, you still wouldn’t have an exact “calories in” number. That’s because there are other confounding factors, such as:

We don’t absorb all of the calories we consume. And absorption rates vary across food types. (Example: We absorb more calories than estimated from fiber-rich foods, and less calories than estimated from nuts and seeds.)

We all absorb calories uniquely based on our individual gut bacteria.

Cooking, blending, or chopping food generally makes more calories available for absorption than may appear on a nutrition label.

Of course, this doesn’t mean CICO doesn’t work. It only means the tools we have to estimate “calories in” and “calories out” are limited.

To be crystal clear: Calorie calculators can still be very helpful for some people. But it’s important to be aware of their limitations. If you’re going to use one, do so as a rough starting point, not a definitive “answer.”

CICO doesn’t require calorie counting.

At Precision Nutrition, sometimes we use calorie counting to help clients improve their food intake. Other times we use hand portions. And other times we use more intuitive approaches.

For example, let’s say a client wants to lose weight, but they’re not seeing the results they want. If they’re counting calories or using hand portions, we might use those numbers as a reference to further reduce the amount of food they’re eating. But we also might encourage them to use other techniques instead. Like eating slowly, or until they’re 80 percent full.

In every case—whether we’re talking numbers or not — we’re manipulating “energy in.” Sometimes directly; sometimes indirectly. So make no mistake: Even when we’re not “counting calories,” CICO still applies.

CICO might sound simple, but it’s not.

There’s no getting around it: If you (or a client) aren’t losing weight, you either need to decrease “energy in” or increase “energy out.” But as you’ve already seen, that may involve far more than just pushing away your plate or spending more time at the gym.

For instance, it may require you to:

Get more high-quality sleep to better regulate hunger hormones, improve recovery, and increase metabolic output

Try stress resilience techniques like meditation, deep breathing, and spending time in nature

Increase your daily non-exercise movement by parking the car a few blocks away from your destination, taking the stairs, and/or standing while you work

Trade some high-intensity exercise for lower-intensity activities, in order to aid recovery and reduce systemic stress

Improve the quality of what you’re eating, as opposed to reducing the quantity. This can allow you to eat more food with fewer total calories

Tinker with the macronutrient makeup of what you eat. For example: eating more protein and fiber, or increasing carbs and lowering fats, or vice versa

Experiment with the frequency and timing of your meals and snacks, based on personal preferences and appetite cues

Consider temporarily tracking your food intake—via hand portions or weighing/measuring—to ensure you’re eating what you think you’re eating (as closely as reasonably possible)

Evaluate and correct nutritional deficiencies, for more energy during workouts (and in everyday life)

Consult with your physician or specialists if consistent lifestyle changes aren’t moving the needle

Sometimes the solutions are obvious; sometimes they aren’t. But with CICO, the answers are there, if you keep your mind open and examine every factor.

Imagine yourself a “calorie conductor” who oversees and fine-tunes many actions to create metabolic harmony. You’re looking for anything that could be out of sync.

This takes lots of practice.

So, to help, here are 5 common energy balance dilemmas. In each case, it might be tempting to assume CICO doesn’t apply. But look a little a deeper, and you’ll see the principles of CICO are always present.

5 common energy balance dilemmas.

Dilemma #1: “I’ve been eating the same way forever, but suddenly I started gaining weight.”

Can you guess what happened?

More than likely, “energy in” or “energy out” did change, but in a way that felt out of control or unnoticeable.

The culprit could be:

Slight increases in food intake, due to changes in mood, hunger, or stress

An increase in the amount of energy absorbed—caused by new medication, an unknown medical condition, or a history of chronic dieting

Physiological changes that resulted in fewer calories burned during exercise and at rest

The onset of chronic pain, provoking a dramatic decrease in non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT)

Significant changes to sleep quality and/or quantity, impacting metabolic output and/or food consumed

In all of these cases, CICO is still valid. Energy balance just shifted in subtle ways, due to lifestyle and health status changes, making it hard to recognize.

Dilemma #2: “My hormones are wreaking havoc on my metabolism, and I can’t stop gaining weight. Help!”

Hormones seem like a logical scapegoat for weight changes.

And while they’re probably not to blame as often as people think, hormones are intricately entwined with energy balance.

But even so, they don’t operate independently of energy balance.

In other words, people don’t gain weight because “hormones.”

They gain weight because their hormones are impacting their energy balance.

This often happens during menopause or when thyroid hormone levels decline.

Take, for example, triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4), two thyroid hormones that are incredibly important for metabolic function. If levels of these hormones diminish, weight gain may occur. But this doesn’t negate CICO: Your hormones are simply influencing “energy out.”

This may seem a bit like splitting hairs, but it’s an important connection to make, whether we’re talking about menopause or thyroid problems or insulin resistance or other hormonal issues.

By understanding CICO is the true determinant of weight loss, you’ll have many more tools for achieving the outcome you want.

Suppose you’re working from the false premise hormones are the only thing that matters. This can lead to increasingly unhelpful decisions, like spending a large sum of money on unnecessary supplements, or adhering to an overly restrictive diet that backfires in the long run.

Instead, you know results are dependent on the fact that “energy in” or “energy out” has changed. Now, this change can be due to hormones, and if so, you’ll have to make adjustments to your eating, exercise, and/or lifestyle habits to account for it. (This could include taking medication prescribed by your doctor, if appropriate.)

Research suggests people with mild (10-15% of the population) to moderate hypothyroidism (2-3%) may experience a metabolic slow down of 140 to 360 calories a day.

That can be enough to lead to weight gain, or make it harder to lose weight. (One caveat: Mild hypothyroidism can be so mild many people don’t experience a significant shift in metabolic activity, making it a non-issue.)

What’s more, women suffering from polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS (about 5-10%), and those going through menopause, may also experience hormonal changes that disrupt energy balance.

So, it’s important to understand your (or your client’s) health status, as that will provide valuable information about the unique challenges involved and how you should proceed.

Dilemma #3: “I’m only eating 1,000 calories a day and I’m still not losing weight!”

So what gives?

The conclusion most people jump to: Their metabolism is broken. They’re broken. And CICO is broken.

But here’s the deal: Metabolic damage isn’t really a thing. Even though it may seem that way.

Now, their energy balance challenge could be related to a hormonal issue, as discussed above. However, when someone’s eating 1,000 calories a day but not losing weight, it’s usually due to one of the two reasons that follow.

(No matter how simple they sound, this is what we’ve seen over and over again in our coaching program, with over 100,000 clients.)

Reason #1: People often underestimate their calorie intake.

It’s easy to miscalculate how much you’re eating, as it’s usually unintentional. The most typical ways people do it:

They underestimate portions. (For example, without precisely measuring “one tablespoon of peanut butter,” it might actually be two, which adds 90 calories each time you do it)

They don’t track bites, licks, and tastes of calorie-dense foods. (For example, your kid’s leftover mac and cheese could easily add 100 calories)

They don’t record everything in the moment and forget to log it later on

They “forget” to count foods they’d wished they hadn’t eaten

Don’t believe this can be a big issue?

A landmark study, and repeated follow up studies, found people often underestimate how much they eat over the course of a day, sometimes by more than 1,000 calories.

I’m not bringing this research up to suggest it’s impossible to be realistic about portion sizes. But if you (or your clients) aren’t seeing results on a low-calorie diet, it’s worth considering that underestimation may be the problem.

Reason #2: People overeat on the weekends.

Work weeks can be stressful and when Friday night rolls around, people put their guard down and let loose.

(You probably can’t relate, but just try, okay?)

Here’s how it goes: Let’s say a person is eating 1,500 calories a day on weekdays, which would give them an approximate 500-calorie deficit.

But on the weekends, they deviate from their plan just a little.

Drinks with friends and a few slices of late night pizza on Friday

An extra big lunch after their workout on Saturday

Brunch on Sunday (“Hey, it’s breakfast and lunch, so I can eat double!)

The final tally: An extra 4,000 calories consumed between Friday night and Sunday afternoon. They’ve effectively canceled out their deficit, bumping their average daily calories to 2,071.

The upshot: If you (or your client) have slashed your calories dramatically, but you aren’t seeing the expected results, look for the small slips. It’s like being a metabolic detective who’s following—perhaps literally—the bread crumbs.

By the way, if downtime is problem for you (or a client), we have just the remedy: 5 surprising strategies to ditch weekend overeating.

Dilemma #4: “I’m eating as much as I want and still losing weight, so this diet is better than all the others!”

This might be the top reason some people reject CICO.

Say someone switches from a diet of mostly processed foods to one made up of mostly whole, plant-based foods. They might find they can eat as much food as they want, yet the pounds still melt away.

People often believe this is due to the “power of plants.”

Yes, plants are great, but this doesn’t disprove energy balance.

Because plant foods have a very-low energy density, you can eat a lot of them and still be in a calorie deficit. Especially if your previous intake was filled with lots of processed, hyperpalatable “indulgent foods.”

It feels like you’re eating much more food than ever before—and, in fact, you really might be.

On top of that, you might also feel more satiated because of the volume, fiber, and water content of the plants.

All of which is great. Truly. But it doesn’t negate CICO.

Or take the ketogenic diet, for example.

Here, someone might have a similar experience of “eating as much as they want” and still losing weight, but instead of plant foods, they’re eating meat, cheese, and eggs. Those aren’t low-calorie foods, and they don’t have much fiber, either.

As a result, plenty of low-carb advocates claim keto offers a “metabolic advantage” over other diets.

Here’s what’s most likely happening:

Greater intake of protein increases satiety and reduces appetite

Limited food choices have cut out hundreds of highly-processed calories they might have eaten otherwise (Pasta! Chips! Cookies!)

Reduced food options can also lead to “sensory-specific satiety.” Meaning, when you eat the same foods all the time, they may become less appealing, so you’re not driven to eat as much

Liquid calories—soda, juice, even milk—are generally off limits, so a greater proportion of calories are consumed from solid foods, which are more filling

Higher blood levels of ketones—which rise when carbs are restricted—seem to suppress appetite

For these reasons, people tend to eat fewer calories and feel less hungry.

Although it might seem magical, the keto diet results in weight loss by regulating “energy in” through a variety of ways.

You might ask: If plant-based and keto diets work so well, why should anyone care if it’s because of CICO, or for some other reason?

Because depending on the person—food preferences, lifestyle, activity level, and so on—many diets, including plant-based and keto, aren’t sustainable long-term. This is particularly true of the more restrictive approaches.

And if you (or your client) believe there’s only one “best diet,” you may become frustrated if you aren’t able to stick to it. You may view yourself as a failure and decide you lack the discipline to lose weight. You may even think you should stop trying.

None of which are true.

Your results aren’t diet dependent. They’re behavior dependent.

Maintaining a healthy body (including a healthy body weight) is about developing consistent, sustainable daily habits that help you positively impact “energy in” and “energy out.”

This might be accomplished while enjoying the foods you love, by:

Eating until you’re 80% full

Eating slowly and mindfully

Eating more minimally processed foods

Getting more high quality sleep

Taking steps to reduce stress and build resilience

It’s about viewing CICO from 30,000 feet and figuring out what approach feels sane—and achievable—for you.

Sure, that might include a plant-based or a keto diet, but it absolutely might not, too. And you know what?

You can get great results either way.

Dilemma #5: “I want to gain weight, but no matter how much I eat, I can’t seem to.”

The CICO conversation doesn’t always revolve around weight loss.

Some people struggle to gain weight.

Especially younger athletes and people who are very, very active at work. (Think: jobs that involve manual labor.)

It also happens with those who are trying to regain lost weight after an illness.

When someone intentionally eats more food but can’t pack on the pounds, it may seem like CICO is invalidated. (Surprise.)

They often feel like they’re stuffing themselves—“I’m eating everything in sight!”—and it’s just not working. But here’s what our coaches have found:

People tend to remember extremes.

Someone might have had six meals in one day, eating as much as they felt like they could stand.

But the following day, they only ate two meals because they were still so full. Maybe they were really busy, too, so they didn’t even think much about it.

The first day—the one where they stuffed themselves—would likely stand out a lot more than the day they ate in accordance with their hunger levels. That’s just human nature.

It’s easy to see how CICO is involved here. It’s lack of consistency on the “energy in” part of the equation.

One solution: Instead of stuffing yourself with 3,000 calories one day, and then eating 1,500 the next, aim for a calorie intake just above the middle you can stick with, and increase it in small amounts over time, if needed.

People often increase activity when they increase calories.

When some people suddenly have more available energy—from eating more food—they’re more likely to do things that increase their energy out. Like taking the stairs, pacing while on the phone, and fidgeting in their seats.

They might even push harder during a workout than they would normally.

This can be both subconscious and subtle.

And though it might sound weird, our coaches have identified this as a legitimate problem for “hardgainers.”

Your charge: Take notice of all your activity.

If you can’t curtail some of it, you may have to compensate by eating even more food. Nutrient- and calorie-dense foods like nut butters, whole grains, and oils can help, especially if you’re challenged by your lack of appetite.

3 strategies to game the system.

Once you accept that CICO is both complex and inescapable, you may find yourself up against one very common challenge.

Namely: “I can’t eat any less than I am now!”

This is one of the top reasons people abandon their weight loss efforts or go searching in vain for a miracle diet.

But here are three simple strategies you (or your clients) can use to create a caloric deficit, even if it seems impossible. It’s all about figuring out which one works best for you.

Maximize protein and fiber.

Consuming higher amounts of protein increases satiety, helping you feel more satisfied between meals. And consuming higher amounts of fiber increases satiation, helping you feel more satisfied during meals.

These are both proven in research and practice to help you feel more satisfied overall while eating fewer calories, leading to easier fat loss.

This advice can sound trite, I know. In fact, someday when there are nutrition coach robots, “eat more protein and fiber” will probably be the first thing they’re programmed to say.

But the truth is, most people trying to lose weight still aren’t focused on getting plenty of these two nutrients.

And you know what? It’s not their fault.

When it comes to diets, almost everyone has been told to subtract. Take away the “bad” stuff, and only eat the “good” stuff.

But there’s another approach: Just start by adding.

If you make a concerted effort to increase protein (especially lean protein) and fiber intake (especially from vegetables), you’ll feel more satisfied.

You’ll also be less tempted by all the foods you think you should be avoiding. This helps to automatically “crowd out” ultra-processed foods.

Which leads to another big benefit: By eating more whole foods and fewer of the processed kind, you’re actually retraining your brain to desire those indulgent, ultra-processed foods less.

That’s when a cool thing happens: You start eating fewer calories without actively trying to—rather than purposely restricting because you have to.

That makes weight loss easier.

Starting is simple: For protein, add one palm of relatively lean protein—chicken, fish, tempeh—to one meal. This is beyond what you would have had otherwise. Or have a Super Shake as a meal or snack.

For fiber, add one serving of high-fiber food—in particular vegetables, fruit, lentils and beans—to your regular intake. This might mean having an apple for a snack, including a fistful of roasted carrots at dinner, or tossing in a handful of spinach in your Super Shake.

Try this for two weeks, and then add another palm of lean protein, and one more serving of high-fiber foods.

Besides all the upside we’ve discussed so far, there’s also this:

Coming to the table with a mindset of abundance—rather than scarcity—can help you avoid those anxious, frustrated feelings that often come with being deprived of the foods you love.

So instead of saying, “Ugh, I really don’t think I can give up my nightly wine and chocolate habit,” you might say, “Hey, look at all this delicious, healthy food I can feed my body!”

(And by the way, you don’t actually have to give up your wine and chocolate habit, at least not to initiate progress.)

Shift your perspective.

Imagine you’re on vacation. You slept in and missed breakfast.

Of course, you don’t really mind because you’re relaxed and having a great time. And there’s no reason to panic: Lunch will happen.

But since you’ve removed a meal, you end up eating a few hundred calories less than normal for the day, effectively creating a deficit.

Given you’re in an environment where you feel calm and happy, you hardly even notice.

Now suppose you wake up on a regular day, and you’re actively trying to lose weight. (To get ready for vacation!)

You might think: “I only get to have my 400-calorie breakfast, and it’s not enough food. This is the worst. I’m going to be so hungry all day!”

So you head to work feeling stressed, counting down the minutes to your next snack or meal. Maybe you even start to feel deprived and miserable.

Here’s the thing: You were in a calorie deficit both days, but your subjective experience of each was completely different.

What if you could adjust your thinking to be more like the first scenario rather then the second?

Of course, I’m not suggesting you skip breakfast everyday (unless that’s just your preference).

But if you can manage to see eating less as something you happen to be doing— rather than something you must do—it may end up feeling a lot less terrible.

Add activity rather than subtracting calories.

Are you a person who doesn’t want to eat less, but would happily move more? If so, you might be able to take advantage of something I’ve called G-Flux.

G-Flux, also known as “energy flux,” is the total amount of energy that flows in and out of a system.

As an example, say you want to create a 500-calorie deficit. That could like this:

Energy in: 2,000 calories

Energy out: 2,500 calories

Deficit: 500 calories

But it could also look like this:

Energy in: 3,000 calories

Energy out: 3,500 calories

Deficit: 500 calories

In both scenarios, you’ve achieved a 500-calorie deficit, but the second allows you to eat a lot more food.

That’s one benefit of a greater G-Flux.

But there’s also another: Research suggests if you’re eating food from high-quality sources and doing a variety of workouts—strength training, conditioning, and recovery work—eating more calories can help you carry more lean mass and less fat.

That’s because the increased exercise doesn’t just serve to boost your “energy out.” It also changes nutrient partitioning, sending more calories toward muscle growth and fewer to your fat cells.

Plus, since you’re eating more food, you have more opportunity to get the quantities of vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients you need in order to feel your best.

Win. Win. Win.

To be clear, this is a somewhat advanced method. And because metabolism and energy balance are dynamic in nature, the effectiveness of this method may vary from person to person.

Plus, not everyone has the ability or the desire to spend more time exercising. And that’s okay.

But by being flexible with your thinking—and willing to experiment with different ways of influencing CICO—you can find your own personal strategy for tipping energy balance in your (or your clients’) favor.

If you’re a coach, or you want to be…

Learning how to coach clients, patients, friends, or family members through healthy eating and lifestyle changes—in a way that optimizes energy balance for each unique body, personality, and lifestyle—is both an art and a science.

If you’d like to learn more about both, consider the Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification. The next group kicks off shortly.

What’s it all about?

The Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification is the world’s most respected nutrition education program. It gives you the knowledge, systems, and tools you need to really understand how food influences a person’s health and fitness. Plus the ability to turn that knowledge into a thriving coaching practice.

Developed over 15 years, and proven with over 100,000 clients and patients, the Level 1 curriculum stands alone as the authority on the science of nutrition and the art of coaching.

Whether you’re already mid-career, or just starting out, the Level 1 Certification is your springboard to a deeper understanding of nutrition, the authority to coach it, and the ability to turn what you know into results.

Interested? Add your name to the presale list. You’ll save up to 33% and secure your spot 24 hours before everyone else.

We’ll be opening up spots in our next Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification on Wednesday, April 3rd, 2019.

If you want to find out more, we’ve set up the following presale list, which gives you two advantages.

Pay less than everyone else. We like to reward people who are eager to boost their credentials and are ready to commit to getting the education they need. So we’re offering a discount of up to 33% off the general price when you sign up for the presale list.

Sign up 24 hours before the general public and increase your chances of getting a spot. We only open the certification program twice per year. Due to high demand, spots in the program are limited and have historically sold out in a matter of hours. But when you sign up for the presale list, we’ll give you the opportunity to register a full 24 hours before anyone else.

If you’re ready for a deeper understanding of nutrition, the authority to coach it, and the ability to turn what you know into results… this is your chance to see what the world’s top professional nutrition coaching system can do for you.

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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The most important scene in Brad Bird’s Incredibles 2 comes early on and offers a brilliant summation of everything the writer-director does so well.

The Parr family, having attracted the attention and irritation of the government with their superhero shenanigans, sits in a lonely motel room, munching on Chinese food. They’ve just saved the city of Municiberg from the Underminer, who set his giant drill on a path to destroy City Hall.

But officials don’t see all of the destruction that was averted — they only see the rubble that actually exists. Yes, nobody wants supervillains like the Underminer robbing banks, but there’s a process in place to ensure those banks and the money within them, and having superheroes leap in to save the day just complicates that process.

The scene is notable both for its small, detailed animation — pay attention to how Bob Parr (aka Mr. Incredible) can’t seem to grasp anything with his chopsticks and finally just stabs an eggroll through the middle — and for the way it tosses a bunch of questions the movie knows it can’t possibly answer up into the air. To change the law that has made superheroes illegal, the Parrs will have to break it, to show that superheroes can still be useful. Or, as G-man Rick Dicker wearily sighs in an earlier scene, “Politicians don’t trust anyone who does a good thing just because it’s right. It makes them nervous.”

The first time I saw Incredibles 2, all of these ideas jostling for space within the movie struck me as a movie frantically searching for a story to tell, one it eventually found but that didn’t quite cohere with everything else. The second time through, though, the movie made more sense to me as a meditation on the popularity of superhero stories and what it means to live in a world where what’s legal isn’t always what’s right. It doesn’t offer solutions, because it knows there aren’t any.

But the movie is also keyed in to something that’s always present in Bird’s work, something that’s caused some to accuse him of being an objectivist along the lines of Ayn Rand: an obsession with the rights of the exceptional and how they can be stacked up against everybody else.

Incredibles 2 strikes me both as Bird’s deepest exploration of this idea and his biggest refutation of it. Bird might be fascinated by the exceptional among us, but he’s also not interested in exceptionalism if it doesn’t benefit the larger community.

Brad Bird Photo by Juan Naharro Gimenez/Getty Images for Disney

The works of author Ayn Rand — including Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and others — have been hugely influential on the thinking of various political and economic theorists over the years. (Among current politicians, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan is a notable devotee.) To put Rand’s writings in modern terms, you could describe her objectivism as a kind of extra-strength libertarianism, in which the truly great among us should, as much as possible, not be shackled by the law or by conventions.

Atlas Shrugged is her magnum opus, a futuristic dystopia in which citizens who don’t contribute to society leech off the business classes, who create both wealth and useful material goods (mostly trains and railroads). The action of the book — if a book so heavy in long discussions of philosophy can be said to have “action” — mostly involves the various characters learning that society needs them more than they need society, that the world is only as strong as its strongest, who should be subject to as few rules and regulations as possible. Rand stops just short of saying, “Billionaires should be able to straight-up murder whomever they want,” but reading the book, you have to think the idea occurred to her at some point.

This is a vast oversimplification of a book I read once in high school for an essay contest, but Rand’s ideas that regulations are bad and wealth creators are good have trickled down into the modern Republican Party in ways that are hopefully obvious.

The question is if they’ve also trickled down to influence the films of Brad Bird, one of modern animation’s few auteurs, but also a writer-director who keeps returning to the idea that society places unnecessary constraints on exceptional individuals. You can see where the comparisons come from.

Bird has made just six films — 1999’s The Iron Giant, 2004’s The Incredibles, 2007’s Ratatouille, 2011’s Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, 2015’s Tomorrowland, and 2018’s Incredibles 2 — and four of those wrestle with the above idea at length. There’s a touch of that idea in Iron Giant (which we’ll get to), but it doesn’t dwell on it at length, while Ghost Protocol (one of the finest modern action movies) is mostly about how it would be totally rad to free climb the world’s tallest building. (Ghost Protocol and Tomorrowland are live-action; the other four films are animated.)

The “objectivist” tag was first applied to Bird extensively after the first Incredibles. And to be sure, the very premise of the film plays in this territory: superheroes have been outlawed due to safety concerns, and one character bellows, “With everyone super, no one will be!” This is particularly true of a concluding scene in which young Dash Parr, blessed with super-speed, intentionally throws a race at a track meet. The plot reason for this is that he can’t let anybody know he has superpowers (which are still illegal), but it plays as a weird critique of the idea of participation trophies and the attempt to make sure no child’s feelings are hurt.

The criticism followed Bird through Ratatouille — which is ostensibly about how anyone (even a rat) can cook but is also kind of about how if you don’t have talent, you should get out of the way of people who do — and especially Tomorrowland, in which a group of geniuses abscond to an alternate universe where they build the sci-fi future imagined in the ’50s and ’60s and mostly abandoned in our modern era of imagined dystopias.

A world where the exceptional cordon themselves off and refuse to save the rest of the world is literally Galt’s Gulch from Atlas Shrugged, where the book’s mysterious hero, John Galt, hides out to proclaim his superiority to everybody else. And now Incredibles 2 toys with many of these same themes, which makes sense as a continuation of the first film. (When I asked him about these themes, he mostly punted on answering the question, saying he didn’t think about it that much when writing his movies.)

I think it’s worth considering all of these ideas in the context of Bird’s career, which got a bit of a late start. After beginning as a young wunderkind animator at Disney in the early ’80s, Bird was fired after raising his concerns that the company was half-assing it, instead of trying to protect its rich legacy.

Bird spent much of the ’80s bouncing from project to project — he worked on, among other things, a Garfield TV special and the Amazing Stories episode “Family Dog” (his directorial debut) — until in the early ’90s, he landed a job as the animation supervisor on a new TV show named The Simpsons, a job that made his career and allowed him to direct Iron Giant. When that movie flopped, he was brought to Pixar thanks to a college friendship with John Lasseter (who has recently been pushed out of the company after accusations of sexual misconduct).

But his directorial debut still didn’t arrive until he was in his early 40s. And while that’s not exactly unprecedented, it is at least a little unusual in an industry where someone with the evident talent of Bird likely would have proceeded through the ranks of a major animation company and directed his first film somewhere in his 30s.

Bird’s self-admitted demanding nature likely make him difficult to work with — something that surely contributed to his difficulty getting a film made, despite numerous almost-realized projects, like an animated adaptation of the comic The Spirit. (Bird was also probably hurt by his certainty that “animated film” and “kids film” shouldn’t be synonymous, even though animated films aimed at adults have always been difficult sells in Hollywood.) It makes sense that Bird’s frequent musings on the shackling of genius might be a political, but it’s just as possible this is an artistic idea, based on the struggles he had getting his career to take off. (My friend David Sims has had similar thoughts at the Atlantic.)

So, yes, we could read Bird’s filmography as a celebration of Ayn Rand and of climbing very tall buildings. But we’d be remiss if we didn’t also read it in the context of the career of a director who felt stymied at every turn for almost 20 years, before he unexpectedly became one of the most successful directors of his generation almost out of nowhere.

Even then, we’d be missing something big.

The Iron Giant paints a very different picture of how those with great talents should behave. Warner Brothers

One of the things that makes that early motel-room scene in Incredibles 2 so potent is the fact that there’s no clear right answer to the issues that Bird raises via his characters. Nor is there a right answer in a later scene in which Helen Parr (Elastigirl) talks with a new friend about whether the ability to create something great or the ability to sell it to the mass public is more important to the world. Nor in the frequent arguments about whether breaking unjust laws is the right thing to do, even if society requires people to be law-abiding to function.

It’s impossible for any animated movie to truly be “timely” because they’re produced on such a long timeframe. But Incredibles 2 feels eerily tapped in to the political debates we’re having around the globe right now. If you have massive amounts of power and feel like the world is circling the tubes, is your primary duty to society or to the self? Or your family? Or all of the above? Brad Bird doesn’t know this answer, so the movie doesn’t either.

This is a common thread across his filmography. All of his movies grapple with objectivist themes, to be sure, but they also don’t conclude that doing what’s best for the self is what’s best for everybody. The closest thing to an answer Bird ever provides is “Do what’s right, and what’s right is what benefits the most people.”

In short, his movies always posit that the exceptional should be allowed to express their talents to the best of their abilities — but only insofar as they can benefit society at large.

What’s interesting is how often Bird’s most openly objectivist moments and story ideas are presented as bad things. That collection of geniuses making up Tomorrowland, for instance, invents a machine meant to bring doom to our world, while the famous line about being special or super from Incredibles is actually spoken twice — the first time by a child and the second time by the movie’s villain. Helen is the closest thing the Incredibles franchise has to a moral conscience, and she’s always the one on the side of the idea that “everyone is special.” We just have different talents.

Ratatouille might be the best developed expression of this idea among Bird’s films. His portrayal of a restaurant as a collection of people who do very specific jobs to the best of their abilities, all adding up to a kind of symphony, is very much like filmmaking, with the film’s hero, Remy the rat, standing in as a director. The movie’s villains are those who would stand in the way of Remy realizing his full talents — but you can also read that as being against prejudice, as a celebration of the idea that anyone can cook and great art can come from someone you’d never expect (like a young and hungry would-be animator from Montana, not exactly a hotbed of Hollywood talent).

It’s telling that Ratatouille’s great chef is a rodent and not the gangly human who discovers he’s the son of a great, dead chef. Talent isn’t always predictable, following along conduits you’d expect. But when you find it, it’s best to encourage it but also make sure it’s tempered with kindness, as it is in Ratatouille, a movie where even the restaurant’s waitstaff is briefly but memorably celebrated.

All of which brings us back to The Iron Giant, a movie rarely discussed in conversations about Bird’s interest in exceptionalism. If any Bird creation is exceptional, it’s a giant metal man who eats railroads and can become a literal death weapon, but the arc of the film is about the giant trending away from that which makes him exceptional and would harm others, and toward what about him is exceptional that could benefit others. It’s a movie about a really amazing walking gun who decides, instead, to become Superman.

Superman’s a fitting icon to consider as a way to understand Bird’s ultimate philosophies. Yeah, he could kill all of us with a flick of his fingernail, but he doesn’t. So could the superheroes of Incredibles 2, but they make the choice not to.

That’s why Incredibles 2 stands so beautifully as Bird’s most fully engaged wrestling with all of these ideas. It never offers easy answers because there aren’t any. The question of how we build a society that benefits everybody and gives them the same rights as everybody else, while still allowing people as much freedom as possible to exercise the talents and abilities unique to them, isn’t one that can be answered easily. It’s arguably the work of democracy itself, and it will never be finalized, as long as human beings strive for a better world. Thus, those of us who are exceptional, be they people or rodents or whole countries, are only as exceptional as they are good.

While it’s not always easy to determine the right course of action, determining what’s good almost never is. It’s what takes you away from celebrating the self and back toward figuring out how that self can fit into the community of others, how your own exceptionalism can become a part of the great symphony of life.

Original Source -> Why Incredibles director Brad Bird gets compared to Ayn Rand — and why he shouldn’t be

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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creativesage · 6 years

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(via Age Diversity and Innovation Teams – Innovation Excellence)

By Pete Foley

Diversity is good for innovation. Integrating different backgrounds, fields of expertise, depths and breadths of knowledge and experience all help to create new interfaces where innovative ideas can spark and thrive. Likewise, diverse thinking styles and personality types help foster balance between ideation, creativity, execution and delivery.

There are lots of ways to increase diversity, but should this include age?

Are we better of with younger, passionate teams that challenge the status quo, or more mature teams that leverage broader experience and expertise? Or are these both stereotypes, and age doesn’t really matter.

Homogeneity in innovation teams… is generally a bad idea

In the case of age, teams dominated by experience can find it harder to challenge givens and norms. They are also susceptible to confirmation and functional fixedness biases fueled by common experience. As a result they may move teams too quickly from ideation into execution and delivery. However, teams lacking experience may have a counter propensity to repeat historical failures – Not just reinventing the wheel, which even when it is not novel, can still be useful, but also reinventing concepts that are neither useful or novel, analogous to New Coke, Newton PA’s and DeLorean’s. These are concepts that are obviously bad in hindsight, but less so in real time.

Age and Scientific Creativity

A common assumption is that innovation is a young person’s game. Indeed, Max Planck said “Science advances one death at a time” and Einstein once commented that “a person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of thirty will never do so”. Indeed, many discoveries that led to Nobel prizes in Physics and Quantum mechanics were made by scientists while in their 20’s or 30’s. But this is no longer the case, and the mean age of Nobel Prize winning achievements since 1980 is a little under 50 years old. I believe this reflects that as fields mature, it takes longer to accrue the critical mass of knowledge necessary for even the most brilliant to make breakthrough advances.

It’s Been a Long Time Since… I Rock and Rolled

It’s not just science where innovation can appear to be dominated by youth. For the past two years we have sadly seen far too many Rock and Rollers pass on, from my personal hero David Bowie, to Prince, Tom Petty, George Michael, Chris Cornel, Greg Allman, and However, as painful as their loss was, most of them appeared to have long since passed their creative and commercial peaks. They are not alone, the Beatles, Stones, Bowie, The Who, Elton John, Led Zeppelin all produced their masterpieces in their twenties or thirties. With all due respect, few people go to see Paul McCartney or The Who these days primarily to hear their new songs.

There are always exceptions, such as Bowie’s heart wrenching Blackstar, or Lou Reed’s beautifully crafted Love and Death, but in general, rock and roll innovation belonged, and still belongs to the young. But Rock and Roll is also a ‘young’ art form.

If we look more broadly at the arts, correlation between youth and creativity is less clear. Michaelangelo may have completed David in his late 20’s, but was also actively creating masterpieces until his death at a very respectable age of 88. Mozart composed his ninth symphony at the astonishing age of 16, but his Jupiter symphony, often considered his most innovative, was completed just a couple of years before his untimely death at age 35, at least suggesting he may not have peaked creatively. While life spans were often shorter as we look back in history, Picasso, Dali, Da Vinci were all highly creative throughout their careers.

The Myth of 10,000 Hours

Another concept that supports some correlation between maturity and peak innovation is the idea that 10,000 hours forms an essential foundation for innovation, and 10,000 hours takes time to accrue. This is not a bad concept as a general principle, but is also a vast oversimplification. In reality, the critical mass, and hence total hours of experience needed to innovate is going to vary enormously between different disciplines, and also between individuals. In some cases, 10,000 hours can even get in the way, as it can require unlearning. As a personal example, I came of age as a musician along with Punk Rock.

Unfortunately, I started learning how to play guitar at a young age, and so had close to 10,000 hours when punk rock exploded onto the music scene. At that moment in time my experience was often a distinct disadvantage. Audiences demanded raw, primitive guitar and bass parts. Mine instead sounded, and were, contrived, as I was trying to unlearn the complexity I’d already learned, which is extremely difficult.

A Case for Balance

Often a balance of experience and naivety is the ideal. Nobody wants to go under the knife of a raw, creative ‘punk rock’ surgeon, or take off in a plane flown by a ‘punk rock pilot’. However, the ideal for complex surgery is often not the most senior surgeon either, as she will often only operate a couple of times a month. An ideal balance is likely a junior surgeon with the automatic motor skills and habits of someone who operates routinely many times a day, teamed with a senior surgeon, who has accumulated experience of most oddities and exceptions, and who can draw on that deep experience in the face of the unexpected.

It’s a loose analogy, but mixed levels of experience are not a bad goal for an innovation team, bringing together recent real world experience, open minds, deep knowledge and hard earned experience. Mixed ages also bring a diversity of empathy. For example, older people are typically better at understanding some of the physical limitations associated with age, such as poorer eyesight, reduced physical strength and mobility. But these can also be great proxys for simplification that also works across broader demographics. A package that is easily read by a senior also carries a simpler message that requires less cognitive bandwidth for everyone.

Managing the Cost of Experience

Finally, one argument I’ve heard for teams with a strong bias for youth is that they are cheaper. So what if they make a few mistakes, it’s still cheaper than employing expensive, proven innovators. There may be cases where this is true, especially in digital domains where experiments are cheap to run, and can be turned around very quickly. But I’d still argue for some experience, especially as a little experience can go a long way, and potentially be spread across multiple teams. And experience not only helps prevent us from repeating past errors, but also helps in understanding why something does or doesn’t work. Even if we can run infinite A/B tests, unless we underpin results with theory and understanding, we’ll never develop predictive capability, and so be vulnerable to competition who design experiments based on hypothesis, or perhaps don’t always need to experiment at all.

Also, innovation teams should not be solely about delivering results. They are also about developing capability, and this grows best in groups with mixed experience, where mentoring and experience sharing occurs in both directions.

In Summary: Age and Experience Diversity Will Generally Deliver Multiple Benefits:

1. Help to avoid reinventing the equivalent of the Newton or the Edsel: Have at least one or two members of the team who have enough history and experience to avoid reinventing epic failures.

2. Avoid the ’seen it all, done it all’ trap, and have enough openness to challenge ‘Givens’ and sacred cows. Just because a concept failed before doesn’t mean it will fail now. Some ideas are ahead of their time, and some are enabled by new technology in ways it is hard for someone who failed before to see.

3. Grow Capability. Mixed experience teams pass experience and theory onto younger members faster than they can learn simply via trial and error, but also force more experienced team members to sharpen the saw, challenge sacred cows, and add new creative life to their processes.

4. Provide first-hand empathy for age based differences. A young designer can always don rubber gloves and glasses to experience limitations of age. But living with it brings deeper insight. Likewise, just because older demographics may take longer to adopt new technology, it doesn’t mean it won’t work for them. Younger team members can often show older ones opportunities they may find hard to imagine.

Aiming for age diversity doesn’t mean we shouldn’t consider weighting teams for age or other attributes. Using personality types as an example, if we want a team that is going to create a lot of new ideas, then consider overweighting for openness. If we have tight deadlines, and are in a race to market, maybe overweight in conscientiousness.

Likewise, the demographic targets, technical expertise, or the size of the disruption we need to make for different projects may favor a bias towards different age groups. But a designed in bias like this is different to the kind of unintended homogeneity that can come from pulling together a team of similar seniority based primarily on functional expertise, rather than also considering length of experience, personality type, and T-shaped innovation capability.

Of course, age is only a proxy, and some people achieve a critical mass of experience at a young age. Others remain high energy, challenging and contrarian for all of their lives. An individuals innovation age is somewhat analogous to Dr. Mike Roizen’s Real Age concept as applied to health. Because of differences in diet, exercise, weight, abuse and chronic illness, two people of the same chronological age may differ quite significantly in wellness, likely lifespan, and overall physical health.

Likewise, innovators who are constantly learning new things, exploring and publishing in new areas, and collaborating with other individuals in a wide variety of fields may just maintain a younger innovator age. But overall, it’s at least worth considering deliberately mixing ages in a team, especially in organizations where it is common for everyone at a similar hierarchical level to be of somewhat similar age.

[Entire post — click on the title link to read it at Innovation Excellence.]

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Speaking of Innovation and Innovators...

We are proud and honored to have had our @CreativeSage company Twitter account chosen for the sixth year in a row now (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017), for the Top 50 Innovation Twitter Sharers List! We want to thank Innovation Excellence and everyone in our community who voted for our account again this past year.

Additionally, Founder/CEO/Chief Imagination Officer Cathryn Hrudicka maintains a multidisciplinary artist account at @CathrynHrudicka that some of you may want to follow, too. She has served as an Artist-in-Residence, and can recommend other Artists-in-Residence in all artistic disciplines, for companies and organizations.

At Creative Sage™, we love to work with clients on social innovation, educational innovation, healthcare innovation, civic and government innovation projects, as well as corporate innovation projects. Our core capabilities include creativity training and coaching, and the design and facilitation of innovation programs, including in the areas of design thinking, arts-based processes, applications of science and neuroscience tools when appropriate, change management, and business model innovation.

We have been very effective in helping organizational leaders and employees move through transitions and cultural changes. We work with for-profit, nonprofit, B-corps, trade associations, and other types of organizations.

In addition to offering our services in creativity and innovation program design, consulting, leadership coaching, and training, we may be able to help your organization define and choose a Chief Innovation Officer (or another innovation management role) — or our founder, Cathryn Hrudicka, may be able to serve in that role for your organization, on a contract, part-time or limited full-time basis.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you would like to discuss your situation and how we can help your organization move forward to a more innovative and profitable future. You can also call us at 1-510-845-5510 in San Francisco / Silicon Valley.

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