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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

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Hi! I really love your writing and was wondering if you would do a part 2 of the fic you did for @kitsunesongs birthday?

The one where Nie Huaisang meets Xiao Xingchen and "persuades" him to go to the Nie Sect.

sequel to this one

Xiao Xingchen and Nie Mingjue got along just as disgustingly well as Nie Huaisang might have predicted, and it was starting to tick him off.

Not just him.

“It’ll pass,” he remarked to the glowering young man sitting beside him. “It always does…eventually. Xiao Xingchen is no different.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Song Zichen said, voice tight and back even tighter. The temples and the sects were not on what one might call the best of terms – it was politely referred to as tensions – so Song Zichen had refused to even consider leaving Xiao Xingchen in Nie Huaisang’s not-so-capable hands, but he also wasn’t strong enough to stop him, so all it meant in the end was that he had to trail along with them like an imprinted duckling.

A duckling with no sense of humor.

“They all come and get knocked over the head with it,” Nie Huaisang said with a sigh, fanning himself. He’d seen it happen time and time again. “My brother, I mean.”

“Your brother…hits people?” Song Zichen said, sounding doubtful enough for Nie Huaisang to realize that even he’d fallen for it.

“No,” he said patiently. “They’re overwhelmed by admiration for how good of a big brother he is and want him for their own.”

Song Zichen’s expression appeared to be at war with itself: he couldn’t decide whether to scoff at Nie Huaisang’s patent ridiculousness, furiously deny that Xiao Xingchen was attempting to market himself for possible adoption, or sullenly acknowledge that he, too, would like to be the recipient of Nie Mingjue’s rough sort of affection.

It was all those meaningful hand-on-shoulder, serious eye-contact, respect-is-given-where-it-is-earned-and-I-respect-you things Nie Mingjue did without thinking about it – possibly it was just the dearth of decent parents among the Great Sects, and the smaller sects too come to think about it, but everyone was hilariously susceptible to it.

(He’d accidentally done it to Lan Qiren once, making the man actually glow with pride for a moment before he realized he was being complimented by someone at least a decade his junior and fixed his expression. It was a memory that warmed Nie Huaisang’s heart.)

“Still,” Nie Huaisang mused. “I will admit that this is getting out of hand.”

He’d known that Nie Mingjue would be fond of Xiao Xingchen, but he hadn’t anticipated how much his brother had apparently been longing for someone with whom he could have ethical and moral discussions that didn’t leave him scowling and looking sick to his stomach. The two of them shared a clear and forthright vision of the world – in which people were supposed to help others, fight evil and save innocents, and that everything else was a distraction – and what started out, to Nie Huaisang’s mind, as some sort of moral purist fan club had eventually sort of…escalated.

It wasn’t that Nie Huaisang forgot that his brother was a powerful sect leader and formerly the general of the combined forces of the cultivation world and therefore was a terrifying political powerhouse to be reckoned with, not really. It was that his brother so rarely ever did anything with his power and influence that it was easier to just…put it aside.

On a normal day, his brother was a simple person: he wanted his family and sect to be happy and safe and strong, the common people protected, and evil defeated – ideally courtesy of his blood-thirsty saber, after a brisk bit of exercise. Nie Mingjue was respectful of others, such that he rarely intervened where he wasn’t explicitly invited, and so his focus had always been Qinghe, its environs, and the surrounding sects that pledged their loyalty in exchange for Nie support and strength.

Xiao Xingchen had more ambitious ideas than that.

Maybe he should have done more to head off their enthusiasm before it got this far, Nie Huaisang grumbled in his thoughts. But his brother seemed so happy, lighter than he’d been in years, less angry at everything – and his sudden burst of activity was driving Sect Leader Jin up the wall, and that was just legitimately hilarious.

Still, it was one thing for Xiao Xingchen to say that he wanted to protect innocents and defeat evil, no matter where it was. In the end, he was a naïve and untried young man unfamiliar with the world, no matter how powerful his ancestry, and such things would always be met with indulgent smiles and virtually no interest, everyone assuming it was little more than a child’s daydream.

It was something completely different for Nie Mingjue, Chifeng-zun and Sect Leader to one of the Great Sects, to put out a call for all able-bodied cultivators with courage and skill to join together once more to sweep through the worst parts of the cultivation world and clean it up together.

After all, Lan Xichen might win the women’s vote, but among men, at least, Nie Mingjue was the most admired man in the cultivation world, bar none, the most idolized and revered and envied, and he was offering an opportunity to win valor by his side. Those who had fought in the Sunshot Campaign were enticed by the notion of something clean and straightforward, cultivator against evil the way it was supposed to be; those that didn’t have a chance to win glory the last time were champing at the bit to belatedly add “fought under Chifeng-zun’s command” to their personal legacies; those who had been too young for the war were excited by the possibility of fame and fortune…

Sect Leader Jin, who was advocating to be Chief Cultivator of the cultivation world, did not want there to be a roving war-bad of powerful cultivators under his chief-most rival’s personal command, traveling throughout the cultivation world and making friends with each other and winning fame left and right with only Nie Mingjue to thank for it.

Sadly for him, there really wasn’t anything he could do about it.

Especially not now that Nie Mingjue was no longer asking Jin Guangyao to come play for him so regularly.

The playing had been designed to help with his ever-worsening temper, if Nie Huaisang understood his brother’s curt explanation properly, but it hadn’t really been doing much, and Nie Mingjue was far too busy now to waste time with things like that.

(Nie Huaisang did not think about how his father had died, and how much stronger his brother was than his father had ever become. He did not think about the fact that Xiao Xingchen was said to be doomed, the way his brother was doomed, or the fact that his brother’s decision to stop listening to Jin Guangyao’s playing or Lan Xichen’s encouragement of it had come on the heels of meeting someone else who was trading away their chances at a long and happy life for a chance to try to improve the world.

He did not think about any of that, or of the slow halting explanation his brother had finally given him about all the things he knew-but-didn’t-know about his sect’s cultivation style, about his brother’s own personal prognosis, and he certainly didn’t think about how his brother clearly saw this whole ridiculous notion of a massive large-scale night-hunt as his final campaign, his legacy, to be left behind when he himself left the world.

It wasn’t relevant, because it wasn’t going to happen, Nie Huaisang wasn’t going to let it happen. So he wasn’t thinking about it.)

“It’s a good plan,” Song Zichen said, and Nie Huaisang looked at him. “I had wanted to start a sect with no bloodline, based only on friendship, but Xingchen and your brother are putting together a coalition of sects that is much the same thing. All of those young men becoming brothers in arms…”

“Women, too,” Nie Huaisang said, because it was true. There’d be plenty of unexpected marriages formed before this whole thing was done – Jiang Cheng had recently declared his intention of joining, the nephew he’d insisted on caring for personally carted around on a sling on his back, and he looked so positively dashing when he did it that the women of the cultivation world might even consider removing him from their blacklist one day.

Maybe.

Song Zichen nodded seriously. “Women as well. Regardless, the end result of what they are achieving is the same - unity, friendship, cooperation, rather than chaos.”

Nie Huaisang smiled. And then, because why not, he used the excuse to slide closer and nudge Song Zichen in the side with a hand that lingered. “Don’t count yourself out, Song-xiong. You’re contributing, too.”

Song Zichen did not appear convinced.

“You are!” Nie Huaisang insisted. “You just need to figure out what you’re good at – some purpose for yourself, some mission, or even just something to pass the time pleasantly. I’ll even help.”

He was about to suggest that they go to bed together �� listen, he was shallow and Song Zichen was a very pretty person – but Song Zichen frowned, ducking his head a little in thought.

“Well, there is something,” he said slowly. “I thought, if it was true, that I might go deal with it. Although it’s only a rumor I heard…”

“I love rumors,” Nie Huaisang assured him, shelving his proposition for the moment. “What is it?”

“Have you ever heard of someone,” Song Zichen asked, “by the name of Xue Yang?”

#mdzs #nie huaisang #song lan #nie mingjue #xiao xingchen #my fic #my fics #disaster incoming #Anonymous

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arcticdementor · 3 years

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Wokeness has not simply taken over the CIA, as the entire foreign policy establishment has moved in the same direction. A particularly sinister aspect of this shift is that we are seeing a merger between a fanatical new faith and long-standing institutions specializing in manipulating populations.

Spreading democracy is an important part of American foreign policy. While it’s fashionable to brush off concerns with democracy as hypocritical or just a cover for power politics (“look at Saudi Arabia!”), I believe that outside of the Middle East, where pretty much everyone is non-democratic, American foreign policy is driven by ideological goals that aren’t reducible to material interests.

In this worldview, all countries called “democracies” have reached the end of history, while all others are candidates for regime change, if not today then when the time is right. When countries fight back against this, it’s considered aggression on their part. Hillary Clinton believes that Putin interfered against her in the 2016 election because she spoke out against his government as Secretary of State. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s certainly what I would do if I were Putin, and the lady who tried to overthrow me was running for president.

It seems strange that such a concept would drive US foreign policy, given how little Americans themselves agree on what is or isn’t “democratic.” Was Trump casting doubt on the legitimacy of 2020 “undemocratic”? How about when Democrats did the same in 2016? What about gerrymandering? Court packing?

These are silly debates, and I feel sorry for people who have strong opinions on them, which always boil down to “what my side does is democracy, what the other side does isn’t.”

…

Nonetheless, the American government clearly has something in mind when it uses the term, and it often relies on non-governmental institutions (NGOs) as supposedly objective sources of information. One of the most important of these is Freedom House, and it is therefore worth looking at the organization in some depth.

According to its financial report, in the fiscal year that ended in 2019, Freedom House raised $48 million. Of that, $45 million, or 94%, came from the American government. Its current President is Morton Abramowitz, a lifelong American diplomat. The Chair of the Board is Michael Chertoff, who was Secretary of Homeland Security under the second Bush.

Looking at the 12 members of the Executive Board, and just going off their bios on the Freedom House website, it appears that 6 have had jobs for the federal government, with at least one other appearing to have worked as a government contractor.

You might think that an organization that is funded almost completely by the American government, and staffed by former American officials, wouldn’t have much credibility as an “independent non-governmental organization.” Yet it is called an NGO, and regularly cited by the press as an objective authority on which government actions are legitimate.

Much of what is called “civil society” functions this way. The American government then uses the work of “independent” organizations to justify its own policies, as you can see by going to the State Department website and searching for “Freedom House.”

…

Freedom House has represented the American foreign policy establishment as long as it has existed. According to its own website, the organization at its founding in 1941 had among its leaders Eleanor Roosevelt and Wendell Willkie, the Republican who lost to FDR in 1940. So imagine a “non-governmental organization” today being founded by an alliance of Jill Biden and Donald Trump.

After advocating for American entry into World War II, Freedom House supported the Cold War. Although the website mentions these facts, it tends to downplay or ignore its more recent history, which has involved cheerleading for disastrous wars in the Middle East.

…

So it is this organization, run by former American officials and funded by the US government, whose former Chairman was also the director of the CIA and helped lie the country into Iraq, that is the nation’s most important source for deciding who is or isn’t free.

Recently, Freedom House released its annual report on the state of democracy in the world. It would be one thing if the organization simply declared some countries “democracies” and others not. Instead, it gives a number to each country on a scale that goes up to 100, updating the scores on a yearly basis. So in 2020, Ethiopia gets a 24, Switzerland is a 96, and North Korea is a 3. After 20 years of war, the US has managed to get Afghanistan to 27.

Here’s an interactive map where you can find out how well your country is doing.

There’s actually a formula that they use to calculate each score, although it’s not always clear what causes a country to gain or lose points. 40% of the score is determined by how well a country does on “Political Rights,” and 60% on “Civil Rights,” with subsections under each of these headings.

The 2021 report tells us that 2020 saw “the 15th consecutive year of decline in global freedom.” Sounds really bad. But it’s one thing to say, that for example, the US is freer than China, or that the coup in Myanmar was a blow against democracy. It’s quite another to pretend to have a neutral formula that can compare the state of democracy in say Hungary versus France, the US versus Canada, or Syria versus Cuba. But that’s what Freedom House gets tens of millions of dollars a year from the American government to do.

…

In Europe, Freedom House tells us that “Hungary has undergone the biggest decline ever measured in Nations in Transit, plummeting through two categorical boundaries to become a Transitional/Hybrid Regime last year. Poland is still categorized as a Semiconsolidated Democracy.”

That’s a nice coincidence, how the two European countries that have moved in the most conservative policy direction are the ones also becoming more “authoritarian.” Looking in more detail, it appears that Freedom House classifies conservative countries as authoritarian in two ways

1) Portraying things that would otherwise be considered normal politics as “authoritarian”, while ignoring things that are similar or worse when done by non-right wing governments; and

2) Just directly penalizing countries for conservative policies.

…

This map gives the game away.

…

The connection between how many genders a government acknowledges and its level of democracy is never explained. The report also mentions the Polish government’s opposition to abortion and Slovenia reducing funding for its public broadcaster.

Many conservatives in the United States criticize the media and would like to ban abortion, cut funding for NPR, and not have schools teach that gender is a social construct. They may be surprised to learn that they are engaging in “anti-democratic” activities.

To show the kind of hackery at work, here’s the report on Poland for 2020. We are told that the Archbishop of Kraków describes “LGBT as a ‘rainbow plague’ bearing similarities to communism.” So apparently countries are judged based on the wokeness of their clergy, so Poland loses a point in part for that, and appears to get another point deducted for some combination of the government’s positions on birth control, abortion, and gay adoption.

You can really tell that American conservatives annoy Freedom House analysts more than any other people in the world. In the US, not only are conservatives’ views on abortion and gay marriage undemocratic, but so are their positions on organized labor, with Freedom House mentioning a Supreme Court ruling that government employees could not be forced against their will to contribute to public sector unions.

…

Not only does Freedom House portray the behavior of conservative governments in an unflattering light, but it looks past what are much clearer violations of individual liberty and democratic norms when they are committed in the service of left-wing social or political goals.

Sweden, for example, is one of only three countries to receive a perfect score of 100. This is despite having hate speech laws, which have in the past been used to arrest Christian preachers for their interpretation of the Bible. Norway, another “perfect democracy,” in 2020 expanded its hate speech laws to cover gender identity, with punishments of up to three years in prison for violators.

“Whether a country arrests people for speech” seems like it could be a clear criterion an organization interested in democracy can use, but Freedom House prefers a vague points system that allows it to penalize countries for everything it doesn’t like.*

…

As seen above, Freedom House doesn’t mind criticizing the United States; the country after all only gets an 83, making it a not very good democracy. Yet it’s notable what the US doesn’t lose points for: NSA spying programs, and the prosecution of journalists who have brought them to light. Julian Assange is, in the words of Glenn Greenwald, “responsible for breaking more major stories about the actions of top US officials than virtually all US journalists employed in the corporate press combined,” and he’s now facing life in prison. Yet Assange goes unmentioned in the 2020 report, along with Edward Snowden.

On the question “Are there free and independent media?” the US only gets a 3 out of 4, because “Fox News in particular grew unusually close to the Trump administration” and “Trump was harshly critical of the mainstream media throughout his presidency, routinely using inflammatory language to accuse them of bias and mendacity.” The US gets 4/4 on the question “Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution?” Surveillance programs are mentioned, but here no points are deducted (the US also gets 4/4 on academic freedom).

It’s a strange algorithm that deducts points for criticizing journalists, but not for putting them in jail. It’s the algorithm you’d expect, however, from an organization run by former American government officials.

…

If the US government and the NGOs it relies on define conservatism as undemocratic, we will in the coming years find ourselves having hostile relations with nations that do not threaten American interests and whose only crime is offending the sensibilities of a liberal elite that holds positions that are far from universally accepted within the United States itself.

The potential implications for liberty at home are no less catastrophic. If conservatives are not only wrong, but “undemocratic,” it becomes easier for the other side to justify attempts to silence dissent and take extreme steps to prevent them from coming to power.

The media, when it advocates censorship or government suppression of its enemies, never says that it’s going about silencing dissenting views. Rather, the propaganda it uses involves classifying what the target is saying as “hate,” “disinformation,” or “foreign propaganda” to delegitimize the speech as unworthy of either First Amendment protection or respect from non-government institutions.

…

It’s fine to disagree with many aspects of American conservatism, as I certainly do. And it wouldn’t be correct to say that there is no objective measure of democracy one can use; certainly, some countries pick their leaders through fair elections, and others don’t. But democracy is supposed to involve a respect for various segments of society, and a consideration of their views. A definition of the concept that delegitimizes what large swaths of the population believe about economic and social issues, while overlooking the prosecution of journalists disfavored by American foreign policy elites, is little more than a tool of propaganda and potentially oppression.

Luckily, it’s easier to know what to do about Woke Imperialism than Woke Capital, or Woke Institutions more generally. The national security establishment does not survive by its ability to bring in voluntary donations or make money through selling products and services people want. Freedom House, like many other similar institutions, is almost exclusively dependent on the American taxpayer, despite the NGO label.

Given how much contempt the organization clearly has for a large portion of the public, and the threat to political liberty that can result from identifying democracy with one side of the political spectrum, there is no reason for that support to continue. While cutting it off would certainly be seen as “undemocratic” by Freedom House, it would remain at liberty to continue writing reports at its own expense.

#richard hanania #read the whole thing #freedom house #woke imperialism

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hysteriamodes · 4 years

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After watching “Gone Girl”.

So, uh, I have an unpopular opinion. I’m no expert on criminal investigations, I listen to a bunch of true crime podcasts, one that has a co-host, a retired detective, Paul Holes. I’m also a survivor of CSA, so I know how it goes down once you file a case to police and talked to a detective.

I can’t really say I like this movie completely -- don’t get me wrong, it’s a good movie, but... This is not how it works, lol.

It’s hard to really take a story seriously, knowing in real life that a criminal investigation into a disappearance would involve:

- Not just interviewing the spouse/significant other, interviewing those who have been previously romantically involved with someone. - Someone would have talked to Desi - Someone would have also looked into the stalking claims against Desi and if he was supposedly doing it electronically, there would have been a paper trail. Restraining orders are really hard to get. - If you buy a car and have to drive it, you need legitimate identification, have the title singed over, and register the car in your name, so the “getaway car” just seems so unfeasible to me. You can’t drive without plates, you’d get pulled over and sellers will take the plates from you. - Also, if you look on Craig’s List, it’s on your internet history. - They also would have had search warrants for electronic devices, including computers, and would have gone through that internet history. - You can pay cash for short-term rentals or hotels, but they still require ID. - Burner phones can be traced - “No body, no crime” -- the case built against Nick is completely circumstantial. Any rational prosecutor would have tossed it out and demanded more evidence, especially if no one’s double-checking for more suspects. The amount of blood they found at the crime scene is indicative of serious injury. Blunt-force injury like that as Amy claimed what happened would leave visible bruises, even for weeks, and would also have fractures. This lady rolls up (literally) to her husband just covered in blood and has no sign of that other than sexual intercourse. - CSI would have probed the convenient box cutter under the pillow, while she was supposedly tied up. I mean, seriously, what the hell? - Any investigator would be dubious of Amy’s responses during that interview. According to her, she was kidnapped and held for weeks, supposedly injured, and is so unusually cool. - In the same vein, you would have a victim’s advocate to check in on you and they too would fin that unusual. - They would bother to check Nick’s alibis, whereabouts, and where he was, so therefore, the credit card debt would look extremely dubious. Transaction IDs wouldn’t line up if Nick was out of the house, doing his thing, and Amy is buying stuff with his credit cards while he’s at work. Just saying. - Any smart investigator would have looked at the security footage of Desi and Amy calmly strolling up through the lake house, not of her being dragged in or at least sedated. Anyone sharp enough would have noticed that. - Desi’s phone would also have been traceable, so they would find out where he went, the casino, and there would have been security footage of Amy and Desi meeting. - Who’s to say that the people that robbed Amy didn’t notice. That woman saw through her shitty disguise and said nothing. There was a reward posted for finding Amy; that woman also could have called into the tip line and report her stay at this hotel or whatever. - The “clues”. A sensible person would have found them oh, so, convenient. - The “best friend” would have been interviewed, they would also disclose how long their friendship has been. - The hormone that comes up during pregnancy, that’s been diluted in water, wouldn’t be so potent enough to test... I’m still wondering what Amy’s motives were, she didn’t show Nick. She only showed her “friend” and it’s still not clear to me if the investigators checked into this.

I guess because I’m on the aro-ace spectrum, I probably don’t appreciate what this movie says about relationships and their roles and perceptions, but my thoughts were that Amy is clearly a sociopath, she has a troubled history, and that would have came up during investigations. Not to mention, Amy is just too Perfect, to the point she supposedly outwits the FBI. These are the same folks that work in more notorious disappearances, murders, and profiling outside of a self-absorbed couple. It just reminds me that law enforcement doesn’t take women criminals a seriously compared to men. Women are just as capable of absolute sociopathy as men, though there aren’t as many sociopathic women. Women that commit murder, schemes, and behave like this operate on a completely level compared to men.

The bottom line is, women that are criminals are underestimated and that’s what I saw in this movie. Sure, Nick is an absolute asshole, but he at least was knocked down a peg to see his own faults, even going as far as saying he won’t end the marriage for the sake of his unborn child (and... don’t get me started how Amy just conveniently came up with Nick’s sperm sample, after she said to him she didn’t want kids) upon discovering he’s going to be a father.

Amy could have ended this marriage in a divorce and bled him dry of his money. She could have ceased that bar, sold it, even take his sister to court because she was a co-owner, too. And given the “Amazing Amy” books, Nick still would have been publicly humiliated and even more humiliation would have came to him. A teacher, a well-known writer, having an affair with his students? I mean, come on. His friends would dump his ass, too.

Instead, Amy over-reacts, concocts this supposed disappearance and fabricated murder, in the 21st century, where even in the mid 2010s, you are completely traceable. Amy could have disposed of evidence all she wants, but the fact remains, people are nosy as fuck and would have noticed any of this shit. Amy, realistically, wouldn’t get away with this forever; she’d be sent to prison for life.

Amy isn’t like Thomason or Dani, she is a selfish, manipulative, and petty person. Thomason and Dani were true victims of circumstance and were so horribly traumatized, so caught up in hysteria and apathy subjected to them by men. Amy isn’t a victim; she had every chance to walk out of this, take ownership. If I was around a guy like Nick? I would have left him a long time ago. And I know that this whole movie is based on perception, but someone who’s so clearly narcissistic and so devoid of personality that she molds herself into the ideal “cool girl” would wise up and find another way, but no.

Yes, there is an argument that “women are crazy here”, but I just... I can’t.

I found myself more frustrated with this movie, so riddled with continuity errors and that it’s so unrealistic, with a narrator that may or may not be lying to the audience, who is also Completely Prefect and Untouchable that she’s practically a Mary Sue.

I’m also mad because there is a perception that women can make fake rape allegations and are already portrayed as conniving and scheming, and I feel like this movie just completely fed into these stereotypes. I will concede that it was likely doing that on purpose, but still, it’s not helping! Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good movie, everyone was really cool in it, and I’m sure the book is very different, but holy shit, this is like a bad episode of Law & Order: SVU.

#eeeeehhhhh #gone girl #murderino #this is not how it works #anyway i love SVU #this wold be olivia's worst nightmare lmao

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mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker · 6 years

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Question: Characters along with the rest of humanity, and most species, for that matter evolve. Why can’t Superman be married? Or Spider Man for that matter? Is it possible that books lose readers because the content doesn’t jive with the real world? Brevoort: The characters on most ongoing television series evolve very little, even over years. The same thing goes for characters in, say, comic strips. So I think that in certain ways, characters can evolve, but in others, it’s a bad idea to develop characters away from the very things that made them popular in the first place. To use a very old example, Fonzie the motorcycle-riding rebel was cool, Fonzie the High School teacher was lame. (And Fonzie the eventual married suburbanite with a motorcycle in his garage that he never touched because he was too busy earning a living to support his wife and two children would have been horrifying.) The appeal of Superman or Spider-Man has very little to do with them being married–and in fact, I think being married diminishes both of them on a conceptual level.

Tom Brevoort

Let’s debunk this statement by the guy who’s such a bad writer his biggest claim to fame is Fantastic Force a book even he has renounced and the guy who’s such a bad editor he doesn’t understand why Norman Osborn never killed just killed Spider-Man in spite of multiple stories (he worked on) explaining that.

TV doesn’t work like that anymore

First things first he demonstrates an unacceptably ignorant and dated attitude towards television for nearly 20 years now we’ve been seeing a shift towards telenovels or serialised stories in which the character evolution and exploration is critical and part of the overall appeal.

The Sopranos, Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad (the most acclaimed TV show of all time) all have character evolution BUILT into their foundation.

Sure ongoing sitcoms like Happy Days still exist but they have both been dying out, are generally less highly regarded and in some cases actively involve character development anyway.

In fact one of the most acclaimed and beloved sitcoms of the 1990s/2000s (before shows like Breaking Bad became more common) was Friends a TV show which maintained strong ratings and reviews throughout most of its 10 year run and most assuredly involved character development and evolution for most of it’s characters.

Rachel Green evolved from a pampered young woman woefully naive of working class life in the big city fleeing her own wedding and becoming a coffee waitress to a 30+ year old woman who could handle herself and city life whilst juggling a baby, dates, serious feelings for Ross and a position of responsibility within a major fashion company

Chandler Bing went from an immature and desperate bachelor chronically fearful of commitment and plagued by relationship insecurities to a married man and father who strove to make his serious relationship work. In fact his relationship with Monica Geller (who evolved in her own right) was widely popular and to many fans superior to the primary relationship drama of the show involving Ross and Rachel.

And again these examples happened in a show that ran for TEN years, putting to shame Brevoort’s claims about TV characters evolving ‘very little’ over the years.

Even in more controversial TV shows like Family Guy acclaim has gone to at least ATTEMPTS at character evolution such as when Bryan was killed off and seemingly permanently replaced with a new character. There was even backlash over the bait and switch when Bryan returned.

Manga aggressively doesn’t do this

Many manga series begin being published with no particular length in mind. But the overwhelming majority DO end.

This includes most of the highest selling ones no less, among which are the hyper popular Sailor Moon manga series and the even more popular Dragon Ball series. Their finate natures extend into their television adaptations as well which, like their manga counterparts, include A LOT of character development.

In fact few of the most highly regarded/highest selling manga series DON’T have notable character development.

In the case of Dragon Ball it ended in the mid-1990s and was revived in 2013, with one of the highest points of praise of the revival was the new character development it lent to the lead protagonist.

By the way did I mention that manga grossly outsells American comic books.

Character evolution was one of the foundation stones of the Marvel Universe

Not much to say on this point.

Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and the other legends who founded the MU in the 1960s instituted character development within the characters and intended for that development to be a thing.

Peter Parker literally develops in the course of his first appearance and his evolution continued throughout Stan Lee’s tenure. He began as a shy, introverted loner living with his elderly aunt and uncle to a more confidant young man in a serious romantic relationship, an apartment in the city he shared with his roommate and a legitimate social circle.

This was NOT an isolated incident.

Ben Grimm of the Fantastic Four began as aggressive and bitter person wracked with frustration over being a monster. As time went by he grew to accept his state more, became more friendly, humorous and gained a love interest in Alicia Masters whom he was serious about.

Namor the Sub-Mariner when reintroduced in the 1960s was torn up over the loss of his Kingdom Atlantis but in the course of the Lee/Kirby F4 run rediscovered said kingdom.

Hawkeye began life as a carnival worker turned criminal in cahoots with Soviet spy the Black Widow but evolved into a reformed hero and member of the Avengers.

Black Widow herself began as a Soviet spy villainess for Iron Man and then became a vigilante seeking justice by trying to bring in the outlaw Spider-Man.

These were all stories written by STAN LEE himself.

In Spider-Man’s case Stan Lee literally introduced Gwen Stacy with the explicit intention of eventually making her Spidey’s permanent love interest and future wife.

He ADVOCATED for Spider-Man to get married in the first place.

So character development and evolution was ALWAYS part of the inherent DNA of the Marvel Universe.

Sure, I get that you don’t want to wreck what made the characters popular in the first place or sell out on their core concepts.

I agree that with very few exceptions that’s where character evolution goes too far.

But if we’re talking about Spider-Man that bring me to my next point.

Being married didn’t develop Spider-Man away from what made him popular in the first place!

Spider-Man was NEVER popular because he was unmarried.

Never in the 25 years prior to his being married did any fan or creator state that they liked him because he was unmarried.

In fact no one ever said anything like that in regards to him being just plain single. Which makes sense considering for most of those 25 years he WASN’T single! He spent most of his time in steady relationships with Betty Brant, Gwen Stacy, Felicia Hardy, Mary Jane Watson and was involved with other women to some degree.

Nor was Spider-Man popular because he was ‘young’. Mostly because Spider-Man was never truly young the way people pretend he was. Spider-Man had adult responsibilities from issue #1 onwards and spent most of the Ditko run in costume or in the Daily Bugle, his working environment not his school or home environment.

Spider-Man was popular because he was relatively speaking ORDINARY.

Not young, not single, not unmarried.

ORDINARY, that thing that would encompass getting married eventually since MOST people do that and especially did that in the 1980s.

But hey...that’s just popularity. What about looking at this on a conceptual level?

Spider-Man’s core concept INVITES the idea of him being married

Spider-Man’s appeal might have been his relative normalacy but his core concept, the thing that defined his character could be summed up as this.

He is about the theme of responsibility/the relationship between power and responsibility within the context of being (relatively) ordinary.

Again marriage fits in with the ordinary thing and since it’s a responsibility it hardcore fits in with the responsibility angle.

In other words being married might not be THE point of Spider-Man, but it ENHANCES him conceptually as opposed to ‘diminishing him’.

His Fonzie analogy sucks

Lets put aside for a moment how his Fonzie analogy is built entirely around his personal preferences.

As an analogy to how ‘cool’ Fonzie was it’s utterly asinine.

To begin with Happy Days first and foremost (and I’m prepared to be corrected on this) was fundamentally built around the idea of presenting 1950s nostalgia, specifically as told through the lens Richie’s life.

Not Richie’s teen years. Richie’s LIFE. It just started in his teen years.

Fonzie wasn’t even the main character, just the most popular and famous one.

Nothing in the core concept of Happy Days meant transitioning Fonzie into a teacher was ‘diminishing’.

It actually was an entirely positive and natural move for the character.

Fonzie was a suave ladies man and high school drop out.

For him to evolve to being an outright high school teacher is actually quite a positive and clever arc for his character.

He’s the last person you’d expect to wind up in that position but it also sends a good message about the positivity and importance of education.

It also makes sense within the context of the community minded Fonzie as a teacher he could interact and help the community in one of the most important ways of all, shaping the minds of youth.

It was also an organic way to keep the character around as he aged and being a motorcycle high school dropout looked less ‘cool and rebellious’ and more sad and pathetic.

Not to mention it was a way to keep teen characters in the show (however you feel about the execution of that concept) whilst the principle cast pushed forwards in their lives beyond that period.

Definitions of ‘cool’ are evolving

This isn’t even getting to touch on the idea that ‘high school teacher is lame’ vs ‘motorcycle riding rebel is cool’ is a overplayed and lame cliché that has also been debunked more than once.

As time moves on we’re starting to see a healthier balance in fiction about what constitutes being ‘cool’.

Batman is beloved within fandom as both the grim defender of the night AS WELL as being the patriarch of the Bat Family and having more touching moments between himself and his ‘sons’.

Superman often denounced as ‘uncool’ because he’s so ‘wholesome and old fashioned’ has been depicted as bad ass due to his immense power whilst this in recent years also being balanced out by his devotion to his family, the introduction of which in 2015-2016 saw an increase in sales and acclaim for the Superman books.

In the acclaimed manga/anime series Dragon Ball two of the protagonists are Goku and Vegeta, both of whom are iconic characters within manga and anime. And they are mostly iconic for being incredibly powerful martial artists who can kick major ass and look stylish whilst doing it. They’re also both family men.

Walter White is a recent iconic TV character who is also seen as ‘bad ass’ by many people. His alias of Heisenberg is touted within fandom as a way of portraying Walter as cool. His profession? High school teacher who is also a secret drug baron.

Spider-Man himself was beloved in part because he WAS a nerd and WAS wholesome and a Mama’s boy but he was also recognized as a more traditionally ‘cool’ superhero who could kick ass when necessary. Case in point wrecking the underworld to save Aunt May in the Master Planner Trilogy, defeating Venom to protect his family in Renew Your Vows and having one of his best battles with the mystical villain Morlun.

Oh by the way the latter happened when Spider-Man was a High school teacher!

His Superman points are stupid

We could just say look at the Rebirth era Superman sales and critical acclaim and leave it there but why not finish off with this.

Superman’s core concept and core appeal has NOTHING to do with being single, unmarried or in fact anything to do with being a bachelor.

Being married to Lois Lane does nothing but resolve a plot line that went nowhere for 50+ years and made Superman look like a stupid asshole because he was both lying to Lois, unable to commit and considered her shallow for not loving his entirely fake Clark Kent alter ego whom was made to look like a meek coward. He just presumed her to be shallow and fall for him because of his super powers as opposed to his actual personality as a good and heroic person.

Conclusion

Brevoort’s comments reveal him to be a reductive creative force, someone who’s old fashioned and has no grasping or appreciation for character development or it’s importance.

He was raised in an era where such things were not common and consequently doesn’t get that things not staying static is a GOOD thing.

He doesn’t understand that something being introduced as one thing and then organically and additively evolving into something else doesn’t make it ‘lame’.

In other words...he’s bad at his job.

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friend-clarity · 7 years

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Marriage and The Matrix

Washington Post, 7 September 2017, In major Supreme Court case, Justice Dept. sides with baker who refused to make wedding cake for gay couple

In a major upcoming Supreme Court case that weighs equal rights with religious liberty, the Trump administration on Thursday sided with a Colorado baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

The Department of Justice on Thursday filed a brief on behalf of baker Jack Phillips, who was found to have violated the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act by refusing to created a cake to celebrate the marriage of Charlie Craig and David Mullins in 2012. Phillips said he doesn’t create wedding cakes for same-sex couples because it would violate his religious beliefs.

The government agreed with Phillips that his cakes are a form of expression, and he cannot be compelled to use his talents for something in which he does not believe.

Is the postmodern world upside down? Yes, answers philosopher Edward Feser.

Indeed, the parallel with the Matrix scenario is even closer than what I’ve said so far suggests, for the implications of “same-sex marriage” are very radically skeptical. The reason is this: We cannot make sense of the world’s being intelligible at all, or of the human intellect’s ability to understand it, unless we affirm a classical essentialist and teleological metaphysics. But applying that metaphysics to the study of human nature entails a classical natural law understanding of ethics. And that understanding of ethics in turn yields, among other things, a traditional account of sexual morality that rules out “same-sex marriage” in principle. Hence, to defend “same-sex marriage” you have to reject natural law, which in turn requires rejecting a classical essentialist and teleological metaphysics, which in turn undermines the possibility of making intelligible either the world or the mind’s ability to understand it. (Needles to say, these are large claims, but I’ve defended them all at length in various places. For interested readers, the best place to start is, again, with the Neo-Scholastic Essays article.)

Marriage and The Matrix

Edward Feser June 29, 2015

Suppose a bizarre skeptic seriously proposed -- not as a joke, not as dorm room bull session fodder, but seriously -- that you, he, and everyone else were part of a computer-generated virtual reality like the one featured in the science-fiction movie The Matrix. Suppose he easily shot down the arguments you initially thought sufficient to refute him. He might point out, for instance, that your appeals to what we know from common sense and science have no force, since they are (he insists) just part of the Matrix-generated illusion. Suppose many of your friends were so impressed by this skeptic’s ability to defend his strange views -- and so unimpressed by your increasingly flustered responses -- that they came around to his side. Suppose they got annoyed with you for not doing the same, and started to question your rationality and even your decency. Your adherence to commonsense realism in the face of the skeptic’s arguments is, they say, just irrational prejudice.

No doubt you would think the world had gone mad, and you’d be right. But you would still find it difficult to come up with arguments that would convince the skeptic and his followers. The reason is not that their arguments are rationally and evidentially superior to yours, but on the contrary because they are so subversive of all rationality and evidence -- indeed, far more subversive than the skeptic and his followers themselves realize -- that you’d have trouble getting your bearings, and getting the skeptics to see that they had lost theirs. If the skeptic were correct, not even his own arguments would be any good -- their apparent soundness could be just another illusion generated by the Matrix, making the whole position self-undermining. Nor could he justifiably complain about your refusing to agree with him, nor take any delight in your friends’ agreement, since for all he knew both you and they might be Matrix-generated fictions anyway.

So, the skeptic’s position is ultimately incoherent. But rhetorically he has an advantage. With every move you try to make, he can simply refuse to concede the assumptions you need in order to make it, leaving you constantly scrambling to find new footing. He will in the process be undermining his own position too, because his skepticism is so radical it takes down everything, including what he needs in order to make his position intelligible. But it will be harder to see this at first, because he is playing offense and you are playing defense. It falsely seems that you are the one making all the controversial assumptions whereas he is assuming nothing. Hence, while your position is in factrationally superior, it is the skeptic’s position that will, perversely, appear to be rationally superior. People bizarrely give him the benefit of the doubt and put the burden of proof on you.

This, I submit, is the situation defenders of traditional sexual morality are in vis-à-vis the proponents of “same-sex marriage.” The liberal position is a kind of radical skepticism, a calling into question of something that has always been part of common sense, viz. that marriage is inherently heterosexual. Like belief in the reality of the external world -- or in the reality of the past, or the reality of other minds, or the reality of change, or any other part of common sense that philosophical skeptics have challenged -- what makes the claim in question hard to justify is not that it is unreasonable, but, on the contrary, that it has always been regarded as a paradigm of reasonableness. Belief in the external world (or the past, or other minds, or change, etc.) has always been regarded as partially constitutive of rationality. Hence, when some philosophical skeptic challenges it precisely in the name of rationality, the average person doesn’t know what to make of the challenge. Disoriented, he responds with arguments that seem superficial, question-begging, dogmatic, or otherwise unimpressive. Similarly, heterosexuality has always been regarded as constitutive of marriage. Hence, when someone proposes that there can be such a thing as same-sexmarriage, the average person is, in this case too, disoriented, and responds with arguments that appear similarly unimpressive.

Like the skeptic about the external world (or the past, or other minds, or change, etc.) the “same-sex marriage” advocate typically says things he has no right to say consistent with his skeptical arguments. For example, if “same-sex marriage” is possible, why not incestuous marriage, or group marriage, or marriage to an animal, or marriage to a robot, or marriage to oneself? A more radical application of the “same-sex marriage” advocate’s key moves can always be deployed by a yet more radical skeptic in order to defend these proposals. Yet “same-sex marriage” advocates typically deny that they favor such proposals. If appeal to the natural ends or proper functions of our faculties has no moral significance, then why should anyone care about whether anyone’s arguments -- including arguments either for or against “same-sex marriage” -- are any good? The “same-sex marriage” advocate can hardly respond “But finding and endorsing sound arguments is what reason is for!”, since he claims that what our natural faculties and organs are naturally for is irrelevant to how we might legitimately choose to use them. Indeed, he typically denies that our faculties and organs, or anything else for that matter, are really for anything. Teleology, he claims, is an illusion. But then it is an illusion that reason itself is really for anything, including arriving at truth. In which case the “same-sex marriage” advocate has no business criticizing others for giving “bigoted” or otherwise bad arguments. (Why shouldn’t someone give bigoted arguments if reason does not have truth as its natural end? What if someone is just born with an orientation toward giving bigoted arguments?) If the “same-sex marriage” advocate appeals to current Western majority opinion vis-à-vis homosexuality as a ground for his condemnation of what he labels “bigotry,” then where does he get off criticizing pastWestern majority opinion vis-à-vis homosexuality, or current non-Western moral opinion vis-à-vis homosexuality? Etc. etc.

So, the “same-sex marriage” advocate’s position is ultimately incoherent. Pushed through consistently, it takes down everything, including itself. But rhetorically it has the same advantages as Matrix-style skepticism. The “same-sex marriage” advocate is playing offense, and only calling things into doubt -- albeit selectively and inconsistently -- rather than putting forward any explicit positive position of his own, so that it falsely seems that it is only his opponent who is making controversial assumptions.

Now, no one thinks the average person’s inability to give an impressive response to skepticism about the external world (or about the reality of the past, or other minds, etc.) makes it irrational for him to reject such skepticism. And as it happens, even most highly educated people have difficulty adequately responding to external world skepticism. If you ask the average natural scientist, or indeed even the average philosophy professor, to explain to you how to refute Cartesian skepticism, you’re not likely to get an answer that a clever philosopher couldn’t poke many holes in. You almost have to be a philosopher who specializes in the analysis of radical philosophical skepticism really to get at the heart of what is wrong with it. The reason is that such skepticism goes so deep in its challenge to our everyday understanding of notions like rationality, perception, reality, etc. that only someone who has thought long and carefully about those very notions is going to be able to understand and respond to the challenge. The irony is that it turns out, then, that very few people can give a solid, rigorous philosophical defense of what everyone really knows to be true. But it hardly follows that the commonsense belief in the external world can be rationally held only by those few people.

The same thing is true of the average person’s inability to give an impressive response to the “same-sex marriage” advocate’s challenge. It is completely unsurprising that this should be the case, just as it is unsurprising that the average person lacks a powerful response to the Matrix-style skeptic. In fact, as with commonsense realism about the external world, so too with traditional sexual morality, in the nature of the case relatively few people -- basically, traditional natural law theorists -- are going to be able to set out the complete philosophical defense of what the average person has, traditionally, believed. But it doesn’t follow that the average person can’t be rational in affirming traditional sexual morality. (For an exposition and defense of the traditional natural law approach, see “In Defense of the Perverted Faculty Argument,” in Neo-Scholastic Essays .)

Obviously, though, the radically skeptical implications are less direct in the case of “same-sex marriage” than they are in the Matrix scenario, which is why most people don’t see them. And there is another difference. There are lots of people who believe in “same-sex marriage,” but very few people who seriously entertain the Matrix hypothesis. But imagine there was some kind of intense sensory pleasure associated with pretending that you were in the Matrix. Suppose also that some people just had, for whatever reason -- environmental influences, heredity, or whatever -- a deep-seated tendency to take pleasure in the idea that they were living in a Matrix-style reality. Then, I submit, lots of people would insist that we take the Matrix scenario seriously and some would even accuse those who scornfully rejected the idea of being insensitive bigots. (Compare the points made in a recent post in which I discussed the special kind of irrationality people are prone to where sex is concerned, due to the intense pleasure associated with it.)

So, let’s add to my original scenario this further supposition -- that you are not only surrounded by people who take the Matrix theory seriously and scornfully dismiss your arguments against it, but some of them have a deep-seated tendency to take intense sensory pleasure in the idea that they live in the Matrix. That, I submit, is the situation defenders of traditional sexual morality are in vis-à-vis the proponents of “same-sex marriage.” Needless to say, it’s a pretty bad situation to be in.

But it’s actually worse even than that. For suppose our imagined Matrix skeptic and his followers succeeded in intimidating a number of corporations into endorsing and funding their campaign to get the Matrix theory widely accepted, to propagandize for it in movies and television shows, etc. Suppose mobs of Matrix theorists occasionally threatened to boycott or even burn down bakeries, restaurants, etc. which refused to cater the meetings of Matrix theorists. Suppose they stopped even listening to the defenders of commonsense realism, but just shouted “Bigot! Bigot! Bigot!” in response to any expression of disagreement. Suppose the Supreme Court of the United States declared that agreement with the Matrix theory is required by the Constitution, and opined that adherence to commonsense realism stems from an irrational animus against Matrix theorists.

In fact, the current position of opponents of “same-sex marriage” is worse even than that. Consider once again your situation as you try to reason with Matrix theorists and rebut their increasingly aggressive attempts to impose their doctrine via economic and political force. Suppose that as you look around, you notice that some of your allies are starting to slink away from the field of battle. One of them says: “Well, you know, we have sometimes been very insulting to believers in the Matrix theory. Who can blame them for being angry at us? Maybe we should focus more on correcting our own attitudes and less on changing their minds.” Another suggests: “Maybe we’ve been talking too much about this debate between the Matrix theory and commonsense realism. We sound like we’re obsessed with it. Maybe we should talk about something else instead, like poverty or the environment.” A third opines: “We can natter on about philosophy all we want, but the bottom line is that scripture says that the world outside our minds is real. The trouble is that we’ve gotten away from the Bible. Maybe we should withdraw into our own faith communities and just try to live our biblically-based belief in external reality the best we can.”

Needless to say, all of this is bound only to make things worse. The Matrix theory advocate will smell blood, regarding these flaccid avowals as tacit admissions that commonsense realism about the external world really has no rational basis but is simply a historically contingent prejudice grounded in religious dogma. And in your battle with the Matrix theorists you’ll have discovered, as many “same-sex marriage” opponents have, that iron law of politics: that when you try to fight the Evil Party you soon find that most of your allies are card-carrying members of the Stupid Party.

So, things look pretty bad. But like the defender of our commonsense belief in the external world, the opponent of “same-sex marriage” has at least one reliable ally on his side: reality. And reality absolutely always wins out in the end. It always wins at least partially even in the short run -- no one ever is or could be a consistent skeptic -- and wins completely in the long run. The trouble is just that the enemies of reality, though doomed, can do a hell of lot of damage in the meantime.

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blockheadbrands · 7 years

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9 Habits of Highly Successful Cultivators

According to Cannabis Business Times:

More than $5 billion in state-legal marijuana flew off store shelves in 2015, and national sales are expected to boom as voters and legislators christen new markets and relax rules. But with the piecemeal end of prohibition, growing the plant is more complicated than ever.

That’s partially because the sprouting industry confronts a pile of rules, but also because growers are often raising thousands of plants at a time.

Today, above-board growers must work not only to raise plants, but also to cultivate employee talent and build relations with neighbors, while dutifully obeying regulations they often have worked to help shape, ensuring on-site biosecurity, investing in technology and developing a niche.

Some of the nation’s leading cultivators spoke with Cannabis Business Times and shared lessons they have learned along the way, as well as basic best practices for anyone looking to follow in their footsteps.

1 Pick Your Partners Wisely

It’s one of the most important rules in life and in business: Commit to a business partner with whom you’re compatible.

Former high school biology teacher Tim Cullen, co-owner of the large Colorado Harvest Company, says he found a good match in partner Ralph Morgan, but all around him sees shotgun marriages exploding or slowly coming unglued.

“It would be easier for my wife and I to get divorced,” he says, than it would be for him to break up with Morgan. “My wife and I just have one son and own one house. If Ralph and I got divorced, we have 80 employees, we have six buildings, we own a lot more real estate together, we have a lot more money at stake. Ralph and I cannot get divorced.”

Cullen says it’s important for partners to be compatible in work ethic and complementary in experience and demeanor. He brought to the table a larger grow operation, Morgan a stronger retail presence. “We were just like nice puzzle pieces that fit together,” he says, with similar ages and family experiences meshing well.

But everyone hasn’t been so fortunate.

John Lord, the owner of LivWell, a business described in media reports as Colorado’s largest grower — but not by Lord, who pleads ignorance to that fact — says he chose not to have a partner after a rocky past relationship.

Lord’s pre-cannabis professional background includes the tightly regulated manufacture and sale of baby products to big-box retailers; he says that throughout the cannabis sector would-be industrialists like himself have partnered with younger people enthusiastic about growing the plant.

“What happens in a lot of situations is you ended up with the senior money guys and the young entrepreneurial grower, and that was your marriage. And most of the times that relationship has ended badly,” Lord says.

Many younger growers, he says, consider growing cannabis an art form, something he says is not conducive to a large marijuana-growing business that must turn out reliable product, just like grocery stores, without whimsical variation.

When manufacturing a product on an industrial scale, “you can’t just randomly say, ‘I want to make purple ones today,’ ” he says, noting he’s also seen many formerly illicit growers have trouble adjusting to a rules-compliant MO.

As cannabis businesses grow, all sorts of relationships grow into business partnerships. Some grow out of friendships and others vaguely resemble a family farm.

Rachel Cooper of Washington state’s Monkey Grass Farms, one of the state’s largest growers as a Tier III operation, says her business associates are a pleasure to work with. They’re her mother, father and sister, with past careers in construction, nursing and corporate procurement.

“At least with family, we get over things really quickly, and at the end of the day we’re working to the same goal,” says Cooper, who handles the business’ marketing and public relations. “It’s been fun, actually.”

2 Shape Regulations Before They Shape You

Around the nation’s capital, Corey Barnette is becoming a familiar face, advocating with municipal leaders to tweak local laws and appearing at a press conference last year with three U.S. senators to unveil a bill that would undo federal prohibition on medical marijuana.

Barnette, easily one of his city’s most accessible and civically minded medical marijuana growers, knows the value of molding the regulatory clay before it hardens. “In our industry right now, there’s a serious risk that legislators and regulators will get it wrong simply because they don’t know,” he says. “It does us no good to propose a medical marijuana bill if once we pass those laws it prevents patients from getting the care they need.”

There’s been success so far for D.C.-based cultivators like Barnette, with the city drastically expanding qualifying medical conditions from a short list to one of the nation’s most relaxed standards, and lifting a cap of fewer than 100 plants per grow operation to 500 and then 1,000.

But Barnette, sole owner of District Growers, is not done lobbying. He says one of his next targets is a restriction on licensees moving their grow location, and he’s hoping legislation will soon pass allowing his company to move.

Right now, Barnette is forced to grow his plants only to a small size to cope with limited growing space and his desire to offer a wide range of strains. District Growers’ facility has about 700 plants now, but only 250 would fit if they were grown larger.

“The space I need to grow 95 plants is radically different than 1,000 plants,” he says. “Luckily we had the foresight that at some point these rules had to relax. The question was how long it would take.”

If not for businesspeople going down to city hall, he says, the evolution of laws would have been much slower.

Cooper says Monkey Grass Farms works with a lobbyist in Washington state’s capital to ensure the business’s needs are well-represented, and Cullen says about 25 percent of his time is devoted to rubbing shoulders with decision-makers.

3 Prevent the Need for Pesticides

The U.S. government currently does not approve any pesticides for use on cannabis, which remains federally illegal, and the presence of chemicals on retail product has led state regulators and consumers to panic in states like Colorado, where officials have scrambled to curb their use and where a lawsuit (that has since been dropped) was filed last year by consumers against LivWell for alleged pesticide use.

Growers say one of the most effective ways to reduce the need for pesticides is to simply keep gardens clean.

Lord says LivWell stopped using synthetic pesticides a year ago and advises other growers to do the same, but he says that is, more than anything, to ward off bad press. The public is naive, he says, if it believes unblemished supermarket produce is organically grown.

Still, bureaucrats in places like Colorado and Oregon now are giving their blessing to some pesticides due to labels not explicitly ruling out use on cannabis. Lord says, “There are certain products that are approved now, [which] my guys wouldn’t have within 100 yards of our grow.”

Cullen says his company also had to adjust to changing rules, but has managed to work with restrictions by strictly following an integrated pest management protocol, though he says some insects he’s come to tolerate, particularly gnats.

His staff wears what Cullen calls “hospital gown uniforms” to limit outside contamination.

Some growers, of course, eagerly embrace organic solutions.

The co-owners of northern California’s Artifact Nursery, established last year and already topping more than 2,000 clients, seek out nature’s fixes.

Co-owner Jamie Westbrook* says he watched a nature documentary with his son where a small forest mushroom’s spores infected and then killed an insect before it sprouted a new mushroom from the corpse and unloading another dose of biological warfare on nearby insects.

“Literally the next day I was reading through the farm bureau magazine on companies that had isolated these from the wild,” he says, prompting him to buy the product.

Westbrook says using natural pesticides that affect only the surface of a plant is ideal, as they can simply be washed away, unlike systemic pesticides that travel through a plant’s vascular system and potentially deposit themselves in soil.

Some of his other go-to treatments are organic oils — including sesame and clove — which are applied to plants with a backpack sprayer, coating them and suffocating mites, some of which are microscopic.

Joshua King*, Westbrook’s business partner, says the best measures to reduce the need for pesticides sometimes are the simplest.

“The best preventative is keeping plants healthy,” he says, with “simple things like having fly strips around,” and adding hydrogen peroxide to water or a nutrient solution and applying it to soil/media, can help prevent bacteria in the water, pythium (a waterborne root disease), to some extent, and other things that effect roots. Plus, the residual is oxygen, which the roots love.

(Note: In the world of microbe organic cultivation, however, the use of hydrogen peroxide is not advisable for anything but cleaning.)

“There’s a lot of tricks you learn over the years,” King says. “Organic is very time consuming.”

4 Be a Good Neighbor

What democracy giveth, democracy can take away. It’s a lesson learned across the nation as jurisdictions legalize marijuana. In Washington state, Monkey Grass Farms had first-hand experience beating back a ban. And much like dealing with pests, prevention matters.

“Our county planning board was trying to ban producers/processors,” Cooper recalls. “It stemmed from some neighbors who were angry there was a pot farm a few blocks from their house.”

“Some people do find it very offensive, and it’s important to educate them that we’re good businesspeople and that we’re setting up legitimate businesses,” she says.

Barnette says although there’s a steady march to repeal prohibition, “there’s still a significant level of taboo, and it’s important at all times to be aware of that. We have to be aware that not everyone everywhere utilizes cannabis.”

5 Consider Investing in Technology

As commercial cannabis growers ramp up production, some are turning to technologies and equipment that save valuable staff and production time, that make products more consistent, and that also save them money.

Artifact Nursery’s owners say that they recently decided to push the technological envelop by turning to LED lights for the company’s clone-producing mother plants, which require more than 15 hours of light each day to be arrested in a vegetative state. The gamble has paid off, Westbrook says, and the nursery now uses 80 percent less electricity than it did previously.

Cullen says one piece of machinery that’s been invaluable is an electric Twister trimmer for some products — “a godsend,” he says.

An “Agritech” computer helps mix nutrients for different plant rooms, and monitors temperature and other environmental parameters.

6 Gather the Right Team and Help Your Workforce Grow

Lord says he fired many of LivWell’s original employees, finding they fancied themselves master growers and artists rather than industrial farm workers.

David Bonvillain, founder and CEO of Elite Cannabis Enterprises in Colorado, says he has seen this more often than he would like in the industry. “The delusion of grandeur just because you grow an agriculture crop is insanity and needs to be stomped out,” he says. “Nobody else but cannabis cultivators see themselves as some gift from above. They all need to spend a six-month tour-of-duty in a four-acre production tomato greenhouse with the teams in there grinding all day, every day and get a reality check on what this is about to be like for them.”

As a solution, Lord says that he now works to educate his employees and provide them a career path, with an eye toward retaining talent.

The staff generally starts off as trimmers, about 70 of them working the field currently, and after a while it becomes clear whether they have the desire and skill to move forward, Lord says. If they stick around, they have a 401K plan and opportunities for growth.

“We put them through training and get them to understand there are probably 1,000 ways to grow cannabis, but we’ve chosen one, and you will follow that regardless of your personal preference,” he says.

Several PhD holders and botanists are on staff, Lord says, and the company works to ensure they, too, grow in knowledge. Seven members of the company’s research and development team traveled to Panama last year for a large agricultural conference.

“We’re not going to find the answers within the cannabis world,” he says. “It’s going to come from high-tech agriculture. We’ve exceed the knowledge base by a long way.”

Bonvillain suggests that if you want to be a truly qualified expert, “Get a degree or the equivalent through work/life experience. Be the very best at your craft. Learn everything possible. A ‘master grower’ should know every methodology, every style, everything about the plant from the cell structure to growing mediums (all of them) to [integrated pest management] strategies, as well as have a comprehensive knowledge set on what does what within those strategies.

“They should understand the fundamentals of planning and supply chain, the cost of goods sold,” he says, “all the way through the tiers of costs. And they should understand personnel management and control/compliance documentation procedures and interpersonal communication skills,” he says.

Cooper says Monkey Grass Farms similarly had to weed through employees, but that there remains a core team that feels it’s progressing together. Among the businesses’ important hires were an operations manager and someone who ensures strict compliance with regulations.

“We’ve found some very loyal employees. They’ve been growing with us, and we’re hiring consultants to educate them,” she says.

Cullen, meanwhile, has found investing in a solid bookkeeper and a chief operations officer essential to success. A federally illegal business can’t be too careful, and a large grower can’t do everything themselves, he notes.

7 Consider Certification

While growers can’t call themselves organic, a federally regulated term, they can choose third-party certifications that at least verify their practices.

Artifact Nursery sees their “Clean Green” certification as a reflection of their values, but also sees it as useful in attracting customers. “Some people really care about what you’re using on their product,” Westbrook says. “You get the whole gamut of people with different moral imperatives and concerns.”

Other certifications exist, such as the Patient Focused Certification (PFC), established by Americans for Safe Access, one of the nation’s largest medical marijuana advocacy groups.

The PFC program applies standards backed by compliance inspections, staff training and an independent consumer complaint process, giving dispensaries with which growers work a sense of quality assurance. Medical growers, distributors and labs are eligible for the certification.

“Certification from patient-focused organizations using objective criteria can help cannabis farmers establish safe and reasonable industry standards,” says PFC Program Manager Tim Murphy, which also can be useful “as states adopt product safety regulations.”

Lord says he’s not seen the recreational industry turn en masse to non-governmental certifications, at least not yet. Consumers must be able to recognize the meaning of a certification for it to have value, he says.

8 Don’t Try to Do Everything. Focus on What You Do Best

“Far too many groups try to take on too much and frequently don’t have the experience, expertise or bandwidth to do everything well,” says Elite Cannabis’ Bonvillain. “Just because you ‘can’ make a new product (say, a tincture) doesn’t necessarily mean that you should. Many folks fail to consider all facets of product development, packaging, labeling, distribution, customer service, etc.”

If you are going to do it all yourself, he says, “pick the right internal partners for your organization. Otherwise, strategically partner with strong third-party organizations that can complement your capabilities while you complement theirs.”

9 Early Bird Gets the Worm

It’s difficult to know when the moment is right to jump into the cannabis-growing market. Currently, state lines are walls through which locally legal product cannot pass, leaving open the door for would-be cultivators on the other sides of those walls.

“The time is still out there for a lot of people,” says Cullen, who credits his success in part with being among the first to enter Colorado’s medical market, which he did after growing on a small scale for himself and his father following their diagnosis with the same medical condition.

*Editor’s Note: Names have been changed at the interviewees’ request.

TO READ THE ARTICLE ON CANNABIS TIMES, CLICK HERE.

http://www.cannabisbusinesstimes.com/article/nine-habits-of-highly-successful-cultivators/

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